Transcriber’s Note:

New original cover art included with this eBook is granted to the public domain.

DOROTHY HARCOURT’S SECRET
Sequel to “A Deed Without a Name”

BY

MRS. E. D. E. N. SOUTHWORTH

Author of

“To His Fate,” “The Lost Heir,” “A Noble Lord,” “Sweet Love’s Atonement,” “Zenobia’s Suitors,” Etc.

A. L. BURT COMPANY

Publishers New York

POPULAR BOOKS

By MRS. E. D. E. N. SOUTHWORTH

In Handsome Cloth Binding

Price per volume, 60 Cents

Beautiful Fiend, A

Brandon Coyle’s Wife

Sequel to A Skeleton in the Closet

Bride’s Fate, The

Sequel to The Changed Brides

Bride’s Ordeal, The

Capitola’s Peril

Sequel to The Hidden Hand

Changed Brides, The

Cruel as the Grave

David Lindsay

Sequel to Gloria

Deed Without a Name, A

Dorothy Harcourt’s Secret

Sequel to A Deed Without a Name

“Em”

Em’s Husband

Sequel to “Em”

Fair Play

For Whose Sake

Sequel to Why Did He Wed Her?

For Woman’s Love

Fulfilling Her Destiny

Sequel to When Love Commands

Gloria

Her Love or Her Life

Sequel to The Bride’s Ordeal

Her Mother’s Secret

Hidden Hand, The

How He Won Her

Sequel to Fair Play

Ishmael

Leap in the Dark, A

Lilith

Sequel to The Unloved Wife

Little Nea’s Engagement

Sequel to Nearest and Dearest

Lost Heir, The

Lost Lady of Lone, The

Love’s Bitterest Cup

Sequel to Her Mother’s Secret

Mysterious Marriage, The

Sequel to A Leap in the Dark

Nearest and Dearest

Noble Lord, A

Sequel to The Lost Heir

Self-Raised

Sequel to Ishmael

Skeleton in the Closet, A

Struggle of a Soul, The

Sequel to The Lost Lady of Lone

Sweet Love’s Atonement

Test of Love, The

Sequel to A Tortured Heart

To His Fate

Sequel to Dorothy Harcourt’s Secret

Tortured Heart, A

Sequel to The Trail of the Serpent

Trail of the Serpent, The

Tried for Her Life

Sequel to Cruel as the Grave

Unloved Wife, The

Unrequited Love, An

Sequel to For Woman’s Love

Victor’s Triumph

Sequel to A Beautiful Fiend

When Love Commands

When Shadows Die

Sequel to Love’s Bitterest Cup

Why Did He Wed Her?

Zenobia’s Suitors

Sequel to Sweet Love’s Atonement

For Sale by all Booksellers or will be sent postpaid on receipt of price.

A. L. BURT COMPANY, PUBLISHERS

Copyright 1885, 1886.

BY ROBERT BONNER.

Renewal granted Mrs. Charlotte Southworth Lawrence for 28 years from Dec. 16, 1913.

DOROTHY HARCOURT’S SECRET.

Dorothy Harcourt’s Secret

CHAPTER I
EARLY IN THE MORNING

It was one o’clock on Christmas morning when the Christmas sleigh returned to the Wesleyan Flats, bringing Santa Claus and his two aides.

As soon as the three alighted, a man from the livery stable, who had been engaged to meet them at that hour, mounted the box to take the conveyance home; but not before he had received a liberal gift.

The house was all ablaze with light.

There had been Christmas Eve festivals in almost every suit of apartments in it.

Mr. Merritt lifted little Owlet—so tired and so sleepy, yet so divinely happy—and bore her into the house.

’Pollyon Syphax was on duty in the hall, and stared at the three figures in the black waterproofs that covered their disguises from head to foot.

They went upon the elevator, reached Roma’s parlor and found her reclining in her armchair by the center table, reading the “Golden Legend” by the light of a shaded lamp.

Madame Nouvellini lay fast asleep in her invalid chair, nor did she wake up on the entrance of the party.

“What sort of a time did you have?” inquired Roma, as the weary Santa Claus sat down on the sofa with the sleeping child across his knees.

“A very fine time. The ground, or rather the snow, was so hard and smooth, and the horses so fresh, that I am sure they got over the ground with more than steam-engine express speed! Guided by our policeman, I think we visited every poor neighborhood, and even every criminal locality in the ten miles’ square.”

“That was right; for there are innocent children everywhere, even in the guiltiest haunts. Ah, poor children! If I have lost Will Harcourt, I must devote my life and all it holds to them! What am I saying? Whether I have lost him or not, I will devote all that I may of my life to the rescue of the lost children?”

“What!” inquired the lawyer. “Is your stout heart failing that you talk of the possibility of losing Will Harcourt?”

“Oh, no! I do hope—but ‘hope deferred maketh the heart sick.’ No news comes,” sighed Roma.

“The young man may have been smuggled on board some outbound ship—may be across the ocean by this time!”

“What makes you think so?”

“I do not exactly think so. I only throw out the idea on speculation, as a possible explanation of the failure of all our plans to discover him! Well, my dear, I must be going now! It is twenty minutes past one. I suppose the people in this house mean to keep it up all night. To-morrow I shall come and give you a report of to-night’s work—‘To-morrow?’ It is to-morrow now!—Christmas is more than an hour old!” said the lawyer, as he arose and carefully laid the sleeping child on the sofa.

“We made a great many people happy to-night, but the happiest of all was little Owlet! There are children’s parties in the mansions of the rich everywhere, but I doubt if any among them enjoyed themselves as little Owlet did to-night. She has gone to sleep, tired out with a surfeit of happiness. Good-evening, my dear,” he said, warmly pressing Roma’s hand. “Come, boy!” he added, shaking up the dozing Tom, who, Virginia negro fashion, had dropped himself down on the floor and gone to sleep.

When the two had left the room, Roma knelt down by the sofa, and began to undress the child softly and deftly, so as not to awaken her if it were possible to avoid doing so.

Mr. Merritt had already taken off her mask, and the removal of her other disguises was comparatively easy.

But as Roma rolled her gently over, stealing, as it were, her clothing off her, the child partly awoke, and murmured in her sleep:

“Oh, you dear little baby—here’s—a dolly for you, and—candy and——” She dropped into deeper sleep with the words on her lips.

Roma put the child in her own bed. Then she looked at Marguerite, and saw that she was sleeping well, with ice water, milk and all else within reach that she might want during the remainder of the night.

Then at length Roma herself went to bed and to sleep, and slept soundly, notwithstanding the loud revelry that was going on over her head and under her feet, and on the opposite side of the hall.

Late as was the hour when she retired, she awoke quite refreshed at her usual time—seven o’clock in the morning. Her little bedfellow was still sound asleep, living over in dreams the happiest ride and night she had ever had in her little life.

Roma covered the sleeping face with a thin handkerchief, and then opened the windows to air the room and passed into the parlor.

Her protégée, Marguerite Nouvellini, was not only awake, but sitting up in her adjustable chair, with a breakfast tray before her.

“I was so hungry when I woke up that I wheeled myself in reach of the bell, and rang and ordered breakfast. Did you care?” she inquired, seeing Roma’s surprised look.

“Oh, no, my dear,” Roma hastened to say; “though if you had touched the timbre on your stand, you would have waked me, and I could have done it all for you and saved you the fatigue of pushing yourself about the room.”

“Oh, it did not tire me—not at all. Oh, this chair! I don’t believe that even you, who bought it for me, know half its merits. I said it was bed and chair and carriage to me. It is more than that. It is legs! I can go where I please about the room with just the lightest little push on this little knob. See!”

And the invalid wheeled herself around the room and back again to her stand.

“I see,” said Roma; “it works easily, and you are so much stronger.”

“Oh, ever so much stronger and better. I shall soon get well now. Thanks to you, dear friend. But I should never have got better if you had not brought me out of that miserable room, where the only choice I had was between sitting in the bitter cold or having a smoking fire in the wretched little iron stove, and I think the smoke was worse than the cold. And then that straight-backed little chair! And the diet of bread and tea, that was always cold before it reached me! Ah, I was dying of discomfort more than of a cough when you found and rescued me. And now, in this lovely room, in this lovely chair, and with the clean, soft steam heat, and all the good things you give me to eat day and night, and, above all, you yourself! You are always breathing the breath of life over me—if it is not a sin to say it. And I shall soon be well and strong. And, oh! may the Lord open some way for me to show my love and gratitude to you! I have not talked so much as this since the day I was taken down sick,” she concluded, with a smile.

“No, dear, you have not, nor do I think it wise in you to tax your strength in doing so now,” said Roma.

But the invalid was in a talking mood.

“When I woke up this morning, the first thing I saw was Owlet’s mask and dress, and I knew she had got home safe,” she said.

“Oh, yes! and she was in bed long before several other children of the house who were dancing; and Mr. Merritt thinks she was happier than them all,” said Roma.

While they talked together, little Owlet suddenly appeared before them, ready dressed for breakfast. She had risen in her quiet way and made her simple toilet silently.

Then Roma produced her Christmas presents, a lovely wadded silk dressing gown for Madame Marguerite, and a workbox, completely fitted, for Owlet. Both were delighted, and declared—what all people declare to the giver of Christmas gifts—that the present was just exactly what the receiver most wanted.

“I am glad you didn’t give me a doll,” said Owlet.

“Why?” inquired Roma, with a smile.

“I don’t like dolls.”

“But why?”

“Because they are not alive.”

“Oh! But neither are workboxes alive,” said Roma, smiling.

“But workboxes don’t look as if they are alive, and dolls do. Besides, workboxes are so useful, and dolls are of no use on the face of the earth.”

“Not to play with?”

“No. Who wants to play with a thing that looks like it ought to be alive, and ain’t?” inquired this solemn little monster.

“Why, all the little girls I ever saw loved to play with dolls,” said Roma, much amused by the oddity of the “type” before her.

“Then if they do, I think they are not possessed of common sense.”

“You are certainly a fairy changeling. You can’t be a human child,” said Roma.

“I don’t know about that. I don’t remember what I was at first. I only remember being Madame Marguerite’s little girl. And now I am going upstairs to go to the bottom of mamma’s big trunk and get my Christmas present for you,” said Owlet; and away she sped.

Her mother called her back, and said:

“Bring the little red morocco case down with you, too.”

“With papa’s picture?”

“Yes, with papa’s picture.”

The child flew away, and after a little space returned with the miniature case in one hand and a small casket in the other. She thrust the case into her mother’s hand and then ran eagerly to Roma, opened the little casket, and displayed a simple little necklace of turquoise beads.

“This is for you. Oh! try it around your throat. Please do. It will look so lovely on your white throat.”

Roma kissed the child, took the necklace, and clasped it around her neck.

“There! It just suits you! Don’t it? It is blue, like your eyes. But your eyes are darker. Mamma said I might give you this,” said Owlet in delight.

Meanwhile, Madame Marguerite was opening the little case.

“Here,” she said, “I want you to look at the picture of my husband. See how handsome he was!”

Roma took the miniature, which was in the form of a locket, and set around with a circle of pearls of the purest quality.

But as soon as her eyes fell upon the pictured face it took all her great self-control to keep still.

“Is he not handsome?” inquired Madame Marguerite.

“Many people might think so,” answered Roma.

“Don’t you think so?” asked the widow, with a little tone of disappointment.

“I am a blonde, which is, perhaps, the reason why I do not much admire fair men.”

“Oh! I see.”

“This was your husband, you say?”

“Yes, of course.”

“What was his name?”

“Guilliaume Nouvellini.”

“A Frenchman?”

“Yes. There’s where I got my French name, for I am not a French woman, though I did dance at the Theatre Française and the Gaieté.”

“How long ago did he marry you?” inquired Roma, with consummate self-command.

“Six years ago this New Year. And we were very happy for about another year. Then he died, when little Owlet was but three months old. Well, all that is past and gone these five years ago. One must not dwell on one’s past sorrows if one means to live and work in this world.”

“Pardon me for asking so many questions, but I feel very deeply interested in this matter,” said Roma, as she gazed on the miniature. “But—was your husband with you when he died?”

“Ah, me! No. I was in Paris with my young babe. He had to go to San Francisco on some very pressing business, I know not what, and there he was taken ill of some fatal fever. He wrote me several letters while he was on his sick bed. Then at last came a letter from his physician, announcing his death, and a newspaper with his obituary in it. Ah, me! It was a great sorrow, but one must not dwell on their own sorrows if they want to be of any use in this world. I did not have that locket brought down here merely to show you my poor husband’s handsome face, but to do this. Please let me have the locket again.”

Roma put it in her hand.

She touched a little spring, took the miniature out of the jeweled locket, and put the latter in Roma’s hand, saying:

“I want you to have these pearls, dear. You see, they are very fine, else I would not offer them. Do take them, dear. They are all I have to give you. Get them reset in a brooch, and wear it sometimes for my sake.”

Roma took the pearls, and kissed the forehead of the donor with tears in her own eyes.

But Madame Marguerite was pressing the dis-set picture to her lips and to her heart.

“Are we going to have any breakfast to-day, ma’am? You and I, I mean. My stomach has gone to my backbone,” said Owlet.

“Come, my dear; we will go down,” replied Roma, who, since she had had an invalid domiciled in her parlor, and a little companion to accompany her to the restaurant, always went there for meals.

“Now we will see what they will give us for a Christmas breakfast,” said Owlet as she entered the elevator.

“What would you like?” inquired Roma.

“Milk, real milk, not milk and water; cake and preserved strawberries.”

“A rather bilious bill of fare, Owlet.”

“Well, then, I won’t eat it; and mind you don’t, either! A person ought not to eat anything to make them sick; any person who does that is not possessed of common sense,” said Owlet authoritatively.

“I think you are quite right, ma’am,” said Roma, smiling.

“What makes you always call me ma’am? I’m not a married woman.”

“Oh, you are not!”

“Why, of course not. I’m not even engaged. You know I’m not. So what makes you call me ma’am?” demanded Owlet.

“Well,” said Roma, slowly and thoughtfully, “in high courtesy, ladies of distinction, married or unmarried, are, or used to be, always addressed as ‘madam’ or ‘ma’am.’ Now I think a young personage like yourself, who is too wise to hear a fairy tale because you say it is not true—though it may be, for aught you know—or to play with a doll because it is not alive—though they may also be in some sense—ought certainly to be honored with the title of madam.”

Owlet gazed at the lady in solemn and sorrowful wonder and disapprobation, and then she gave utterance to her feelings:

“If anybody else in this world but you was to talk like that I know what I should think.”

“Well, what?” inquired the amused lady.

“They were not possessed of common sense,” said Owlet gloomily.

“Very few people are so happily endowed according to your standard.”

The elevator came down, with a little jar, to the basement floor, and Roma led her small friend out into the hall and through to the restaurant.

“We are not mad with each other, are we?” inquired Owlet as they seated themselves at one of the remote corner tables.

“Why, certainly not! We are the best of friends always.”

“I’m glad of that, because I only told the truth, and it was for your good, too; because I do love you, really.”

The breakfast bill of fare laid before them by the obsequious waiter arrested attention and stopped the conversation; and after the meal was served Owlet was too much engaged with her milk, bread and eggs to favor Roma with any more “wisdom in solid chunks.”

When they returned to the parlor upstairs they found Mr. Merritt there, waiting for Roma.

“Any news of Will Harcourt?” she inquired as she shook hands with him.

“None whatever. We must do now what we should have done in the beginning—advertise for him,” replied the lawyer.

“You mean in the personal columns of the daily papers and by initials and guarded hints?”

“No. I mean by a straightforward advertisement in the advertising columns for information respecting the whereabouts of William Everard Harcourt, late of Lone Lodge, West Virginia, who left his home on the Isle of Storms, coast of Maryland, on the fifteenth of last November, and has not been heard from since, and offering a large reward for intelligence that shall lead to the discovery of his fate.”

“That will be making his mysterious disappearance very public.”

“Yes; but it is absolutely the only hope left of finding him.”

“But if this advertisement should come to the knowledge of his poor mother?”

“My dear lady, Dorothy Harcourt, by all accounts, is not in a mental condition to appreciate it. She thinks her son is at his college. She has forgotten all recent events—that is, if we may credit the report of Miss Wynthrop.”

“Yes, I know. Well, since it is so absolutely necessary you may insert the advertisement in all the papers.”

“Now, my dear child, there is another matter on which I wish to speak to you. You, who were a very queen of society, why do you seclude yourself from the world here in the midst of Washington City in the height of the fashionable season? Why do you not send your cards to your friends who are present here, and would be so glad to invite you to their parties.”

“Oh, Mr. Merritt, how can I, under present circumstances? I have no wish to go out. Although I have done no wrong, I feel as if I were a social pariah.”

“That is morbid—very morbid! The story of your wrongs is not known at all beyond the precincts of the judicial chambers; and even if it were known, it would only invest you with a deeper interest, that would hold much admiration and no censure whatever.”

“I could not tolerate such a personal interest, Mr. Merritt,” replied Roma.

“Then, my dear, if you will make a hermit of yourself, would not your country house be a more attractive abode than a suit of apartments in a crowded flat?”

“Ah! you are anxious to get rid of me, Mr. Merritt,” said Roma archly.

“You know better than that; but the truth is, I am off for San Francisco, on sudden and imperative business, and must go by the early train to-morrow morning, and I hate to leave you here alone. If you will not go out I would much rather know that you were with your old neighbors at Goblin Hall.”

Roma glanced at Madame Marguerite, whose chair had been wheeled to one of the back windows, through which she was looking out upon the little piece of woods left standing at some little distance from the house. She seemed absorbed in thought, and gazing rather on vacancy than on the limited landscape before her.

“Ah! I see—I see,” sighed the lawyer. “You are making yourself a martyr to that poor little soul! Why not send her to the Providence Hospital?” he inquired, lowering his voice to a tone inaudible to any ears beyond Roma’s.

“Because it would break her heart. Besides, when I ‘introspect’—to use your own words, Mr. Merritt—I find that it gives me so much happiness to make her comfortable that there is no merit at all in my serving her; and, of course, not the least suggestion of self-sacrifice,” replied Roma in the same low key.

“Well, well, my dear, as you will. I am going to church at St. John’s for the Christmas service. You, I suppose, cannot leave your invalid. Good-morning. Shall see you again before I leave.”

Roma’s dream for her protégée was to take her to Goblin Hall as soon as the spring should open, if the invalid should be well enough to bear the journey.

The daily improvement warranted the hope. So did the words and manners of the attending physician. It is the religion of the medical doctor to inspire hope in his patient and his patient’s friends, whether there be any reasonable grounds for it or not. It is one of his methods of cure.

Marguerite grew so much better that she could walk from room to room.

This improvement continued for weeks, and the invalid, who never had lost her spirits, even in her worst days, grew buoyant with anticipation of her summer holiday in the country.

“I shall like your Goblin Hall,” she said; “and I know it must be haunted. I dote on a haunted house, though I never was in one in my life. I do believe in ghosts, and I don’t believe one word about the name being rightly Goeberlin Hall. I believe it is really and truly Goblin Hall, so called on account of its ghost.”

“Oh, it has a ghost and a haunted room,” said Roma very gravely.

“There, I said so!” exclaimed Marguerite.

“And you shall occupy it, if you wish to do so,” added Roma.

“Oh, no, thank you. I don’t want to do that. I only want to feel that there is such a room in the old colonial house, and, when other people are with me in the evening, to hear the ghostly footsteps and voices in the distance. But I don’t want to be near them and away from everybody else. Oh, no,” said Marguerite, laughing and shaking her head.

Owlet looked and listened in solemn disapproval.

“What do you think about it, ma’am?” inquired Roma, to draw the child out.

“I don’t like to say,” she answered.

“Oh, but I insist.”

“Well, then, if Tom had talked that way I should think Tom was not possessed of common sense.”

“Oh!” exclaimed Roma.

“Don’t mind her,” pleaded Marguerite. “She don’t know any better. She is such a strange child. Her mind is not right. I do think she is half an idiot.”

“Oh, no, indeed, she is not. But where did she pick up that phrase she is so often repeating?”

“The Lord knows. I don’t. She has had such a strange life for a child. She has never had any other children to play with—never! nor any permanent nurse; but has been changed from hand to hand as I have traveled from country to country. Don’t mind the poor little devil—I beg pardon. But she is half an idiot.”

Owlet fixed the speaker with her large, solemn brown eyes, but made no remark, nor did Roma; for at that instant Mr. Merritt was announced. He had just returned from his Californian trip, and his first call was upon Roma.

“Well, my dear, have you had any news?” he inquired after he had shaken hands with all in the room and had taken a seat, and Marguerite had been wheeled into the adjoining chamber.

“Not one word. I begin to credit a suggestion that you once made me—that Will Harcourt has crossed the ocean,” Roma replied.

“Then I will cause advertisements to be inserted in all the leading papers in the capital cities of Europe.”

“I have already done so, and am waiting results. I have another source of anxiety. I have not heard from Mrs. Harcourt since you left, and you know the reason why I cannot write to inquire.”

“Yes; I will do so to-day. Hanson has not shown up in any way, I suppose?”

“No. I have seen no notice of him or his yacht since that one we both read late in November. Pray, dear friend, never mention the creature’s name in my presence again. I wish to forget his existence.”

“His sister, your old schoolmate and bosom friend. She was a fine girl. What of her?”

“She was not his sister, nor even his half-sister, thank heaven! He was only the stepson of her stepfather by a former marriage. Reba is traveling in Europe, and our correspondence happily suspended without any painful explanations.”

“That is well. And now, my dear, I must leave you, as I have a very busy day before me,” said the lawyer as he shook hands with her and withdrew.

Four days later he brought a letter from Miss Wynthrop, saying that Mrs. Harcourt’s condition was unchanged, and that her mind was principally occupied with anticipations of seeing her dear son, who, as she told everybody, was pursuing his law studies in the University of Virginia, but would come and spend his Easter holidays with her.

“Evidently she has forgotten all about the marriage at which she was present, and apparently all about my existence. That may be well. But if she had only forgotten the marriage, and not forgotten me, I might still write to her, still comfort her, as the betrothed of her son,” said Roma with a sigh.

“I wrote another letter by the same mail by which I wrote to Miss Wynthrop. The second letter was to Dr. Wall, the Logwood practitioner, who is attending Mrs. Harcourt, to inquire into her condition. In reply, he informs me that she is affected with softening of the brain, that there is no hope of her recovery, though she may live for many years. It is very sad! Sadder than death!”

“Yes,” sighed Roma. “Oh, if I could only go to her, or have her with me! Ah! Where is her son?”

The lawyer sighed, and shook his head in hopeless helplessness, and soon after rose and took leave.

The early days of the New Year were very fine, but toward the middle of January the weather changed. A cold wave swept over the city, bringing fierce snowstorms.

Madame Marguerite felt the change, and began to cough, and complain of oppression on her chest, with fever. Her attendant physician treated her for these symptoms, and Roma nursed her tenderly.

But, as if the severe weather was not sufficiently injurious, something went wrong with the great furnace, or the pipes, it was difficult to tell which, and the rooms were imperfectly heated.

Marguerite shivered and flushed or broke into heavy perspirations.

She was too ill to be removed from the house, but Roma did all that was possible to make her comfortable. She wheeled her reclining chair up against the steam pipes on the wall and stretched a screen around it.

One morning a crisis came. Marguerite was seized with a severe fit of coughing, which resulted in hemorrhage.

Roma held the bowl and supported the fragile form until the flow ceased. Then she laid the sufferer back on the reclining chair.

“Oh—that—was—good,” murmured Marguerite, very faintly; “that—was—relief.”

And though she was very weak, weak almost unto death, she seemed to suffer less from oppression and difficulty of breathing.

Roma administered a restorative, and told her not to speak or move again for some time.

Then Roma looked at Owlet, who was sitting very still on the other side of the chair, holding her mother’s hand and looking up into Roma’s face with large, solemn eyes.

“Do not be distressed, my dear. It is over now,” the lady said.

“Oh, I’m not. It does her good. She says it does. She had it once before, and it did her good. She said it did. Only she is so weak after it,” the child replied.

It required all Roma’s self-command to keep up a cheerful countenance. She knew better than the child, of course, and even better than the child’s mother, what these hemorrhages meant, and what the relief they brought suggested.

From this time forward she was, if possible, even more careful, more attentive and more tender to the sufferer than ever before.

Marguerite was extremely weak in body, but not the least depressed in mind. She talked only of recovery and of going to the country.

“I feel so light,” she said, “since I got relieved of all that bad blood that oppressed my chest. I shall get well now. This is only the last of January, and I shall have plenty of time to get well and strong before the first of April. And, oh, my little idiot will see the flowers burst into bloom! Do you know she was never in the country in her life, and never saw a growing rosebush, except in a pot?” So she would talk.

And as a season of mild weather ensued, she grew better, and under skillful medical treatment and tender nursing and good feeding continued to improve every day until the severe cold and high winds of early March came. Then she took cold again, no one knew how; began to cough and complain of oppression, suffocation and fever. Yet her spirits never flagged, nor did she once think of death.

“It is only another cold,” she said to Roma, “but when this month is past then will come the lovely spring, and I shall be well, and go to the country. You are going on the first of April, are you not?”

“Yes, dear, if you should be well enough.”

“Oh, I shall be well enough, never fear.”

One day, when the doctor had made his usual morning visit, he made a slight sign to Roma that he wished to speak to her alone.

So when he had taken leave of his patient Roma followed him into the hall.

“It is my duty to tell you,” he said, “that our poor young patient will not probably live out this month. If she has any friends or relatives, they should be informed of her condition. Try to ascertain the facts without alarming her.”

“Yes, I will,” replied Roma.

And after the doctor had left her she stood revolving in her mind how she should proceed. She soon made up her mind, and re-entered the room.

Marguerite herself led the way up to the subject.

“It is a lovely day for the middle of March,” she said faintly, as she usually now spoke.

“Yes, a very lovely day.”

“If the weather keeps on like this we might soon go to Goblin Hall.”

“Yes, dear. And the Hall is such a great, roomy house that I wish I could fill it up with visitors.”

“Oh, no; only you and me and my poor little fool.”

“I did not mean strangers, dear, but friends. Now, have you no friends or relations that you would like to have with you? I could easily invite them to come and visit you there; and it would be so pleasant, not only for you and for them, but, most of all, for me.”

“How good you are! Oh! you are an angel! But, no, I have no one in the whole world belonging to me, that I know of, except my grandmother, old Madam Arbuthnot, of Arbuthnot, in Scotland; and she never saw me, nor I her. She must be over seventy years old now.”

“How is it that you never saw her?”

“Oh, she cast my mother off for marrying an actor. My mother was her only child, and she cast her off for marrying my father, who was a play actor, because, you see, she was not only of a very high family, and very proud of her descent, but she was a member of the Church of Scotland, and very strict in her religion.”

“Ah!” said Roma, revolving some curious questions in her own mind, but giving them no utterance.

“My father and mother both fell into poverty, somehow or other, I never knew how, and from the time I was seven years old, and learned to dance on the stage, supported them until they died, when I was sixteen; then I went to Paris, and danced for myself until I married.”

“There, do not talk any more just at present. You are tired,” said Roma; and she went and brought the invalid a glass of milk punch, which the latter drank with the avidity with which she took all nourishment.

A few days later Roma obtained from her protégée the full address of Madam Arbuthnot, to be used in case of necessity.

It was:

“Madame Griselda Margaret Arbuthnot, Arbuthnot Castle, Killharrt, Caithness, Scotland.”

Another severely cold spell, with high winds and driving snow.

Marguerite grew much worse. She could no longer lie down, or even recline, but sat straight up in her chair, propped and supported on all sides.

She suffered extremely from oppression, fever and suffocation, but still her spirits never fell. She never thought of death. She spoke, when she was able to speak, only of getting well and of going to the country.

One bright morning, near the end of March, she had her chair wheeled to the windows, where she could look out and see the piece of woods behind the house, and watch the first softening and swelling of the twigs of the trees before they began to burst into leaflets.

“Oh, how I shall enjoy the country!” she said, and then a terrible fit of coughing seized her. Roma hurried to her side, and not a minute too soon. The red stream of blood burst from her lips and poured into the bowl that the lady held, until the pale sufferer sank back again on her chair, murmuring faintly:

“Oh!—that—was—such—relief. I am—ever—so much—better now”—and died.

It was so sudden at the last—so awfully sudden—that even strong Roma was stupefied by the event, and could not realize it. She set the sanguine bowl on the table and gazed at the dead form. She was aroused by the low voice of Owlet, saying:

“Mamma is better now. She is always better after one of these. It is bad to look at, but it makes her better; she always says so. She is better, really, now, is she not?” pleaded the child, looking in doubt at the changed features of her mother.

“Yes, my darling, she is better now,” said Roma in a broken voice as she took the hand of Owlet to lead her away.

But the child was now gazing in terror at the face of death. She snatched her hand from Roma’s clasp and flung herself upon the dead bosom, crying:

“Mamma! mamma! Oh, mamma! What is the matter now? What makes you look so? Oh, ma’am, what is the matter with my mamma? Why don’t she speak to me?”

Roma lifted the child in her arms, sat down on the sofa, held her to her heart, and said:

“Your mamma is better, my darling—better than she ever was in all her life before. God has taken her now, and made her well.”

“No, He hasn’t! There she is, and something awful is the matter with her! Oh! let me go to my poor mamma!” sobbed the child, struggling to get out of the arms of her friend.

Roma would not coerce her; she let her go. And Owlet rushed back to the side of the dead, and began to kiss and hug and cry and call, without meeting any response.

“Oh! why don’t she answer? Oh! why don’t my own mamma speak to me?” wailed the child, looking up to her friend for an explanation.

“She does not answer you, my child, because she is not here.”

“Why, there she is!” cried Owlet, pointing with tearful persistence to the lifeless form in the chair.

“No, darling, that is not your mamma. If it were, she would answer and caress you; but it is only the body she lived in when she was with us. But the body was poor and weak and sick and suffering, and the Lord drew her out of it and took her to a better place. Listen, darling. Your mamma is alive and well now. She is not sick any more. If my body was to be weak and sick, and more torment to me than use to anybody, the Lord would take me out of it to a better place, and make me well. Our bodies are not ourselves—they are only the things we live in; they are no more ourselves than our gloves are our hands, or our shoes are our feet. Do you understand, dear? Your mamma is not here in that body; she is well and happy in a better place. You understand?”

“Oh, yes, but I want my mamma. Oh, I want my own mamma!” the child wailed, and would not be comforted.

Roma held her again in her arms, and kissed and embraced her, and wished with all her heart that some one would come into the room. Some one presently came.

It was the doctor, on his daily visit.

“It is all over,” she said in a low tone as she pointed to the dead.

“As I have been expecting to find it daily for the last week,” the physician replied. Then:

“How long since?” he inquired.

“About half an hour, doctor. I am here alone with this child, and cannot leave her. Will you kindly see the proper people and send them here for the last offices? Some woman, of course, must be on hand. Please, also, see Mrs. Brown, our janitress. I must engage a large room on this flat. There are plenty of vacant rooms in the house now, since the exodus of the fourth of March. Will you kindly attend to these matters?”

“Willingly, my dear child,” said Roma’s old friend, who then took a clean towel from a rack, spread it over the dead face, and left the room.

Owlet sobbed herself to sleep on Roma’s bosom, and then the lady tenderly lifted her, bore her into the adjoining chamber, and laid her on the bed.

An hour later an undertaker and his assistants came to the room, introduced by Mrs. Brown herself, who was really full of sympathy and helpfulness.

A large front room, on the same floor, was prepared, and there the body of Margaret Nouvellini was laid out to await the day of the funeral, which was set for the following Friday.

Late in the afternoon, Roma, leaving the child asleep on her bed, and leaving her hired assistants to air her rooms and set them in order, went down to the restaurant to get the cup of tea she so much needed.

When she returned to the upper floor she thought she would look into the chamber of death to see that all was done decently and in order.

It was a large front corner room, with high windows, whose sashes were up and Venetian blinds closed. The heat had been turned off, and the room was intensely cold, as well as half dark.

She discerned the white-sheeted form on the table, in the middle of the floor, and there also, to her surprise and sorrow, she saw little Owlet, who had drawn a chair to the side of the bier, and climbed upon it, and was resting head and arms upon her mother’s cold body.

“Catherine, darling! darling! don’t stay here in the cold. It is not right, dear. Let me take you away and get you something to eat,” said Roma, gently taking hold of the child.

“Oh, no! Please don’t touch me! I don’t mind the cold. I don’t want anything to eat! I want to stay here with my mamma—my own mamma!” Owlet pleaded, struggling to retain her place.

Under any other circumstances but that of the intense cold of the room, Roma would have let the child have her way; but now she gently expostulated with her.

“It has turned bitterly cold within the last few hours, darling, and the heat is turned off the room, and all the windows are open, and you will be sick if you stay here.”

“I don’t mind being cold or sick! I want to stay here with mamma, poor mamma—my own dear mamma!”

“But, love, your mamma is not here; she is well and happy in a better place. But you will make her unhappy if you stay here in the cold by the body that she has left, and make yourself ill. Cannot you understand that, Catherine?”

“Oh, yes, I know! I know!” gasped and sobbed the child. “I know, but I can’t help it! I can’t help it! I am not possessed of common sense myself now! But I can’t help it! You may take me!” she cried, holding out her arms to the lady, who lifted her, pressed her to her bosom, and bore her away.

Three days later, on Friday afternoon, the mortal remains of Marguerite Nouvellini, followed only by the officiating clergyman, the Rev. Mr. Martin; Roma, little Catherine, the lawyer and the physician, were borne to their last resting place at Oak Hill Cemetery, where, in the little Gothic chapel, the religious services were held, and Roma took the orphan home to her own heart.

As soon as the party returned to the house Roma requested her two old friends, Lawyer Merritt and Dr. Mix, to enter with her, as she wished to consult them.

They accompanied her to the parlor of her flat, where she sat down, with little Catherine on her lap, and begged them to be seated.

Then she said:

“I wish to adopt this child as my own, unless some one who has a better right should claim her.”

“Oh, no!” here broke in little Catherine, clinging closely to her protectress. “No! no! no! No one but you! you! you!”

Roma pressed the child to her bosom and continued:

“At least, I shall keep her for the present, and until some one with a better right shall claim her.”

“No! no! no!” again protested the child. “No one but you shall have me!”

Again Roma soothed her, and then resumed:

“What I wished to consult you about is this: There is a large, packed Saratoga trunk upstairs that belonged to this child’s mother. Should I go through that trunk to obtain from it any papers that may be there—information concerning the child’s relatives—or should I put a seal upon the trunk and leave it intact until it is claimed?”

“I should say,” said the lawyer, “that you had better search first, and seal it afterward, if necessary. If the little one had any inheritance the Orphans’ Court might appoint you her guardian and trustee; but as she seems to have nothing—but the trunk—I do not think it would be worth while to go through the formality. Since you are determined to adopt the little one, just act by her and her small effects as if she were your own.”

“I agree with you,” said the doctor.

“Oh, yes! I give myself to you! you! you! and to no one else!” passionately exclaimed little Catherine, clinging to her protectress.

“Very well, then, darling; I will keep you. Do not be afraid,” said Roma.

Then turning to the lawyer, she added:

“I ought to tell you, perhaps, that the child has, or had, a great-grandmother, a Madam Arbuthnot, of Arbuthnot, in the Highlands of Scotland—a woman of rank, who discarded this child’s grandmother more than thirty years ago, since when there seems to have been no communication at all. The old lady, if living, must be nearly eighty, I should think. Under the circumstances, ought I to write to her?”

“Yes,” answered the two gentlemen simultaneously.

Then the doctor arose and took leave.

But the lawyer lingered.

“I have something to tell you,” he said. “I could not tell before. It is good news, my dear Roma. William Harcourt is found.”

CHAPTER II
A MAN OF WOE

To return to Will Harcourt, and that fifteenth of November, when, at midnight, he disappeared from the Isle of Storms.

The earth was as heavily burdened with sorrow that night as all nights. There were men and women and children starving, freezing, perishing, in garrets, in cellars, and in the streets; there were men and women and children watching the dying faces of their best beloved; there were human beings languishing in prisons, hospitals, lunatic asylums; there were criminals in condemned cells, waiting the execution of their death sentence; but perhaps the most miserable being on the face of the burdened earth on that fifteenth of November was Will Harcourt, as he turned away from the face of his beloved and confiding Roma and walked with his Evil Genius down to the water side to take the boat.

He spoke no word after leaving the house, but walked moodily, with his head hanging upon his breast and his arms down by his sides.

Hanson perceived his deep despair, and even his selfish heart was touched.

“Brace up, man! brace up!” he cried, clapping Harcourt heartily on the shoulder, as they passed through the stubble field on their way down to the boat. “You have lost Roma, to be sure, but you are not the first man ever disappointed in love; and this wisdom of the ages declares that ‘there are as good fish in the sea as ever were caught out of it.’ You are very young yet. You will be in love, or fancy yourself in love, with a score of women yet before you are fit to marry.”

Harcourt replied never a word, but walked on like a condemned prisoner before his executioner.

“Oh, come! Pull yourself together! You have lost Roma, to be sure; but just consider what you have saved, man—your life, your liberty, your good name, your future, your ambition, your proud career, your aged mother’s life and peace of mind, your betrothed bride’s honor and reputation—all these that you have saved by one sacrifice, you would have lost, had you been proved a swindler, a sneak thief and a murderer. Be wise, and reflect on the things you have saved, not on the girl you have lost, and who, after your deed, must have been lost to you in any case.”

Still Harcourt did not speak.

They went down to the sands, where the boat was waiting.

“Good-by! Bon voyage!” cried Hanson, gayly lifting his hat as Harcourt went slowly, mechanically into the boat and dropped upon his seat.

The men, without a word, laid themselves to their oars and rowed rapidly to the steamer that lay waiting off the coast.

She was already getting up steam, and as soon as the men and passenger boarded her, and the boat was hauled up, she started on her southern course.

There was no one on deck but the pilot, the watch, and the one passenger who had just come on board. All the rest, even the boat’s crew, had turned in.

Harcourt sat in the stern of the steamer, with his eyes fixed on the dark water beneath.

The wrench of his parting with Roma lacerated his heart; the thought of his treachery toward her tortured his conscience. Was there a criminal on earth so black as he? Was there a soul in hell so miserable?

What would Roma think of him when she should come to know his deed? Truly “a deed without a name,” that no law had ever forbidden, because no man or devil had ever dreamed of it!

He loathed himself and his life as he loathed death and putrefaction.

And yet it seemed to him that all he had done and all he had suffered was the work of unforeseen, irresistible destiny. He had never intended to do wrong. He had never thought it possible for him to commit one dishonorable act. He had aspired to live a perfectly upright and honorable life; to be a credit to the aged and widowed mother who had lost all on earth but him, and whose hopes in age and sorrow were centered on him; to be worthy of the noble girl who had given him her priceless heart, in his poverty and privation.

He had labored and suffered to gain an education and a profession; he had denied himself not only all the pleasures of youth, but all the comforts of life; he had worn himself out with toil and want to this end!

Then he had gone to the Isle of Storms as hotel clerk, not only to get up his strength in the bracing sea air and better living of the seaside resort, but to earn money enough to pay for his last college course.

Ah! If he could have foreseen the end of his fatal sojourn there!

He was lured into the downward path without seeing whither he was going. He was expected to be polite and obliging to the guests of the house, and he was willing and anxious to be so.

When his office duties were not pressing he was expected to join in any amusement in which he might assist, and he was delighted to do so.

For courtesy, he would take a hand at a game of cards where one was wanted to make up a party; for courtesy, he would take a glass of champagne when invited to do so, and he never dreamed of danger until destruction overtook him; never dreamed of wrong or danger until that fatal night in September when he fell into the trap of a professional gambler, and played and drank and drank and played, and drank again, until he lost his reason, and staked money that was not his own, and lost it to the gambler, who had been scheming for that very sum from first to last of the game.

Was not that destiny? Forewritten, unforeseen, irresistible destiny?

So it seemed to the wretched youth, as, leaning over the steamer’s side, gazing into the dark water of the bay, he reviewed the story.

And then he remembered his vain pleadings, with groans and tears, to the obdurate gamester to return the embezzled money, if not as a restitution, then as a loan, to be repaid with usurious interest, if it took the loser’s whole life to do it.

Then, when all his prayers had been denied and derided, and the swindler had left him alone with his anguish and despair, came the mad desperation that seized him, and fired him with the thought that it would be right to try the only means in his power to recover the embezzled money—to take his pass-key and go to the swindler’s room in the dead of the night, and withdraw the stolen sum from the thief’s possession. And he recalled how he went on this perilous venture, and succeeded in getting back the money, when a slight noise caused him to look around, and he saw the gambler sitting up in bed and leveling a pistol at his head; how instinctively he sprang upon the would-be murderer and seized and turned his hand; how the pistol went off and shot the gambler dead!

Was not this destiny? Forewritten, unforeseen, irresistible destiny? So it seemed now to poor Harcourt in his unutterable misery.

Then passed before his mental vision his swift, instinctive action of closing up the room within and escaping through the window, which shut with a spring; the night alarm; the breaking into the room; the discovery of the dead man, with his brains blown out, and the discharged pistol in his stiffened hand; circumstantial evidence that convinced the spectators then, and the coroner’s jury afterward, that the death of Yelverton had been suicide. And then, when all seemed over, and the secret of that tragedy buried in the conscience-stricken soul of Harcourt only, came the accusation from the hidden witness, Hanson, who had seen the whole drama through a knothole in a wooden partition that divided his room from Yelverton’s.

Was not this destiny? Forewritten, unforeseen, irresistible destiny? So it seemed to the doomed youth who reviewed the story.

And Hanson had demanded, as the price of his secrecy, nothing less than the hand of Harcourt’s betrothed bride, and the connivance and assistance of Harcourt in obtaining it by a treacherous plot; and threatened that, in case these conditions should not be accepted, to denounce the wretched clerk as the midnight robber and murderer, to bring him to the gallows or to the State prison for life, and so to wreck the lives of the two innocent and honorable women whom he loved best on earth.

What could he do but accept the cruel, the crushing, the infernal terms offered him? he asked himself.

Was not this destiny? Forewritten, unforeseen, irresistible destiny?

So Harcourt swore to himself, before high heaven, that it was; that he could not have foreseen or prevented one step in that downward path to perdition.

He was not responsible, he said to himself, for anything that had happened; and yet he loathed himself as a wretch unfit to live. And how Roma would loathe him when she should know that he had betrayed her into the power of his rival for some unexplained reason! And what would his mother think when she should be told that through his connivance and assistance Roma Fronde had been entrapped into marrying Hanson when she thought she was marrying Harcourt? And what would all his friends think when they should hear the degrading truth? If his mother could be spared the knowledge of his dishonor he thought he could bear the contumely of all the rest of the world. If, for her own sake, she could be spared this, which could only be a less sorrow and a less shame than his trial for robbery and murder and his death on the gallows could be.

Oh, the poor, humiliated mother! Oh, the fair, forsaken bride! He had sinned to save them both from shame and sorrow, and now he awoke, as from a dream, to find that he had not saved them after all.

For what was Roma’s condition now? And what would Dorothy Harcourt’s be soon.

Oh, the maddening conflict of emotion! Oh, the despairing confusion of thought! Oh, the cruel fate that had brought him to this and compelled him to live! Why could he not be annihilated? Where was the mercy of Heaven?

He looked down on the waters of the bay. They were very dark and still, and almost smooth enough to reflect the starlit sky.

“There is peace,” he murmured to himself; “peace, rest and oblivion. Why should I not seek it, as a child seeks sleep? Oh, that I might sink to sleep, and sleep forever!”

For a moment the insane temptation of the suicide overshadowed him. It would be so easy, so very easy, for him to drop quietly over the steamer’s side and find death and forgetfulness in the deep waters of the Chesapeake. No one would see him sink. No one would miss him until the next day. Even then no one would know but that he had got off the boat at some of the landings where she stopped to put off or take on passengers or freight. No one there would be sufficiently interested to inquire what had become of him. In fact, no one there even knew his name, or anything about him beyond the fact that he had been one of a wedding party on that trip. They were now on the broadest part of the bay. No one would ever find his body or know his fate. The opportunity was there, the temptation strong.

Roma would not care anything about the mysterious fate of the missing wretch who had entrapped her into marriage with his rival and her own once rejected suitor. Only, perhaps, she would be better pleased to know that he had met his well deserved punishment.

But his poor, widowed old mother! She would care. Worse than sorrow for a dead son would be the torture of anxiety on account of a missing son whose fate or condition was unknowable. He was her only child, her only support, her only hope. Could he desert her in her age and destitution, and leave her with a load of intense anxiety and horrible doubt added to her burden of sorrow and poverty? Could he, dare he, bring this last and bitterest anguish upon her?

No! no! no! Hard and ignoble as life must henceforth be to him, he must bear it—bear it for fifty or sixty years to come, perhaps.

What right had he, indeed, to seek the repose of death, even if it should be repose instead of eternal retribution? He, a sinner above all sinners! Even though he felt that all he had done and all he had suffered was the work of a forewritten fate, yet none the less did he feel that he was this sinner above all sinners, with no right to repose in death, no right to comfort in life.

Yet he must live and work without hope or heart in life or labor. He must live and work, not to attain the honors he had dreamed of, longed for, aspired to, and must finally have attained but for this fatal first false step, which had precipitated him to perdition; not for these brilliant hopes that formed his “Paradise Lost,” and never to be “Regained”; not as an ardent student or teacher in the schools and colleges, among the books and companions that he loved, and in the atmosphere that was his higher life! Oh, no! He had forfeited all that. He was unworthy of such companionship.

Should he dare to attempt to earn his living, and pay for his education, as a teacher of boys?

Ah, no! He must live and work as a hard laborer in some dockyard or depot, carrying heavy burdens, unfit to associate with the honest workmen who had lived worthy lives; and he would deny himself everything but the barest necessities of existence to keep his poor old mother in the comforts of life so long as she should live.

This hard labor and hard living should be the self-inflicted “penal servitude” which he felt that he deserved, and which he knew would have been the lightest sentence for his deed which the law could have imposed, and even lighter, as it did not include imprisonment.

To devote all his hard earnings to his aged mother’s benefit, and to go to see her sometimes, to cheer and console her, should be his own only comfort in his self-imposed expiation.

And he must begin this penal servitude in some city where he was not known, so that he might keep the secret of his fall from her. She must never know of his poverty, privations and hard labor. He would always contrive to appear before her, on his visits, as a gentleman—however unworthy the name—so long as she should live.

Afterward, when she should have finished her long pilgrimage on earth, and passed away to join her beloved ones gone before, then——

Then, when there should remain no one to be distressed and degraded by his crime, then he would discharge his hardened conscience of the intolerable load it bore, and give himself up to justice, to be dealt with according to law.

Not until then could he hope for peace.

At last he succeeded in marking out his future external life with sufficient clearness of outline, but his internal life was strangely distracted and confused. He felt himself to be “a sinner above all sinners,” and at the same time the irresponsible victim of a chain of circumstances, the work of irresistible destiny.

So deep was his mental abstraction from all surrounding things and movements, that he knew not when the man at the wheel or the watch on deck was relieved until a hand was laid on his shoulder, and a kindly voice said:

“Young gentleman, you are looking very ill. Hadn’t you better go below and turn in?”

It was the early morning watch who spoke to him, and he answered wearily:

“I thank you. Yes, I think I will.”

And he rose slowly and went to his stateroom, and threw himself into the lower berth. For some time he lay awake there, intently thinking, intensely suffering, but with thought and emotion revolving still in the same circle around the tragedy—the destiny of his life. At length the body could bear no more, but succumbed to the exhaustion of many nights’ vigilance, and he sank into sleep, which was at first a fitful doze and afterward a profound slumber, which lasted until noon the next day, when he awoke to find the boat at Richmond.

Oh, that awakening! Oh, the agony of returning to life, to memory and to misery, and to the revolving of thought and feeling around the destined tragedy! Living it all over again, as if he were sentenced to do so until death!

Without arranging his disordered hair or dress, he went up on deck, looking so wild and haggard that one of the deck hands remarked to another:

“That young fellow has been on a big drunk, and is paying for it now, you bet.”

Harcourt had no intention of stopping in Richmond. He was too well known in the Queen City of the South. He would go to the North, and lose his identity in some large town where he had never been before.

New York City offered the largest human wilderness in which to lose himself. He had never been there in his life, and had no acquaintances there except the Bushes and that Belial, Hanson. Hanson was away, and the Bushes would not be at all likely to discover him in changed identity.

He would go to New York by the first boat.

He declined the breakfast offered him by the steward, gathered his baggage and had it transferred to the New York boat, which was getting up steam to start on her northward voyage. He sat on the deck, staring off into vacancy, as the boat turned and steamed down the river.

“Young fellow getting over a long spree, I shouldn’t wonder,” remarked one passenger to another, as they noticed the pallid skin, haggard features and inflamed eyes of poor Harcourt.

He knew nothing of these comments, but sat there, gloomy and abstracted, until he was aroused by a voice near him.

“How do you do, sir?” it said.

He looked up, dazed by the sudden and familiar address from a stranger.

“You don’t seem to recognize me.”

Harcourt gazed for a moment longer without speaking.

“Charles Cutts, don’t you know, who landed from a passing yacht at the Isle of Storms late one night in September last—a night memorable for the tragedy enacted there, you know,” said the stranger.

“I—remember—you—now,” Harcourt faltered, changing color from pallor to green ghastliness.

“Ah! I see that the very sight of me, calling up the memory of that night, has quite upset you, and I don’t wonder,” said Cutts, taking a seat beside the agitated young man.

“I—I—have not been well lately—I—I have but recently recovered from a very severe fit of illness,” faltered Harcourt, in explanation.

“Been ill? Indeed, you look as if you had been, poor fellow! I am sorry for you. I ought not to have mentioned that dreadful occurrence that drove even me away from the house,” said Cutts sympathetically.

And yet he went on speaking of it.

“I fled away from the scene of the so-called suicide the next morning.”

“The so-called suicide,” muttered Harcourt involuntarily.

“Yes; that was what they called it, you know.”

“The—the—coroner’s jury—after—after investigation—found it so,” said Harcourt hoarsely.

“Oh, yes. Sharp fellows, that coroner’s jury. I need not have run away from them, as I did by the very boat that went to fetch the coroner.”

“Did you—run away—from them?”

“Yes; for fear of being summoned as a witness. I did not want to, in the case of that scoundrel Yelverton. I knew the fellow in Baltimore. The world is well rid of him. I think so now, and thought so then. That was the reason why I hurried off in the early boat that went to fetch the coroner from Snowden, to avoid being summoned to give evidence.”

“But—but—your room was—at the opposite side—of the hotel. You could have known nothing—of—of the manner of—Yelverton’s death,” said Harcourt, speaking as with the difficulty and hesitancy of an expiring man.

“I know it was not a suicide,” said Cutts positively.

“Oh, my Lord!” exclaimed Harcourt, starting to his feet and gazing into the stolid face of the speaker, who had also risen.

“I don’t wonder it upsets you. It did me, I know.”

“But it was proved beyond all doubt that Yelverton died by his own hand,” said the young man, trying to rally his forces.

“Bosh! Proved to the satisfaction of the Snowden Dogberries who sat on the coroner’s jury! But there, young man, I have already said more than I ever intended to say to any mortal on that subject; only, you know, the sudden sight of you here on the boat recalled the whole thing to my mind.”

“But, pray tell me what reason you have for supposing——” began Harcourt, but his tormentor cut him short.

“I will tell you, nor any one else, nothing. I will hold my tongue, so help me Heaven, unless——”

“Unless what?” asked Harcourt.

“Unless ‘in the course of human events,’ as Thomas Jefferson said, some innocent man should be charged with that very murder, as may happen, for the verdict of a coroner’s jury is not necessarily and invariably final. In such a case, to save the innocent, I would denounce the guilty.”

“You know the guilty one, then?” faltered Harcourt.

“I have said my last word on this subject, young man, and I am sorry for having said any word about it. It is the first time; it shall be the last, except in the exigency to which I have alluded. You, too, should turn your thoughts to other matters. Exciting subjects are not good for convalescents,” said Cutts, walking away to avoid further discussion of the subject.

Harcourt felt stunned. He dropped back in his chair, scarcely able to ask himself, much less answer to himself, the question, how much did Cutts really know of that night’s tragedy; yet feeling sure of one thing—that the Baltimore broker had no disposition to denounce him.

And between them the subject was never mentioned during the voyage.

CHAPTER III
EXPIATION

The steamer reached New York harbor a few minutes after sunrise.

As soon as she ran alongside of her pier Harcourt came up on deck.

Charles Cutts was there, standing with two or three other passengers, waiting for the gangplank to be laid down for them to pass ashore.

“Going to stay long in New York?” inquired Cutts, coming to his side.

“I do not know yet,” answered Harcourt.

“Come this way,” said Cutts, lowering his voice and walking some little distance from the group.

Harcourt followed anxiously.

“Now that we are to part,” said Cutts in a still lower tone, “I wish you to promise me one thing.”

“What is it?” inquired Harcourt, seeing that Cutts paused and hesitated.

“Never to mention the secret I told you yesterday morning,” said Cutts solemnly.

“But you told me no secret,” replied Harcourt.

“Well, then, the fact that I hinted as to knowing something more about the death of that scoundrel, Yelverton, than the coroner’s Dogberries ever suspected. I never mentioned the fact to any human being before. Heaven knows I don’t know what in the devil possessed me to speak of it to you, unless it was because you were the first and the last and the only man, except the porter, that I spoke to on that one fatal night of my visit to the Isle of Storms. Promise me, on your word of honor, that you will not speak of it to any one until I give you leave.”

“I promise on my word of honor,” replied Harcourt, in amazement; for if this man had really seen the manner of the death of Yelverton by any unknown means, why should he think it necessary to bind him, Harcourt, the culprit, by a promise never to mention his knowledge?

“We may, or may not, ever meet again. In the meantime, I rely on your honor to keep your promise,” said Cutts.

“You may do so,” replied the young man, still dazed.

“Well, good-by.”

The gangplank was down, and the passengers were going off the boat.

“Good-by,” returned Harcourt, and followed the stream to the pier to begin his new life.

First he went to a barber’s shop and had his handsome dark mustache shaved off, and his rather long, silken dark hair cut short.

Then he went to a tailor’s and procured a rough suit of clothes, which, after trying on, he kept on, and had his traveling suit put up in a parcel, which he took under his arm.

New York shopkeepers are used to all sorts of queer customers, but they certainly did look a little curiously after this strange young man.

“An escaped lunatic, I shouldn’t at all wonder,” remarked the proprietor.

Harcourt went in search of cheap lodgings in the lowest and most crowded part of the city.

He saw many placards on the front of tall, dingy tenement houses with rooms to let, furnished or unfurnished, with or without board. But on inquiry he found they were rooms on crowded floors, full of bad air, and he wanted an attic or a loft, however poor and bare, that he might have the fresh air which was so needful for the preservation of his health and ability to work.

At length, after some hours’ wanderings, he found what he wanted on a street near the water. It was one of the oldest houses of old New York, the basement and ground floors used for small groceries and dry goods and the upper floors as tenements. The attic, of two large rooms, each with two dormer windows, was occupied only by a poor, solitary seamstress, who lived in the front room. The back room was vacant, and bare of furniture, but, like the attic rooms of many old houses, in city as well as country, it had a small open fireplace, with cupboards on each side of the chimney, and its two dormer windows gave a fine view of New York Bay, with its picturesque headlands and islands.

Seven dollars a month, in advance, was the price of this attic room.

Harcourt paid the money, and went out to buy the cheapest furniture, in the smallest quantity that he could get on with, but not from second-hand dealers; his inherited fastidiousness shrank from the close contact of discarded household goods of whose antecedents he knew nothing.

He bought a narrow cot, a straw mattress and pillow, two sets of bed linen, two pairs of blankets and a woolen spread, a pine table, a cane chair, a tea kettle, a coffee pot, a gridiron, and some little crockery and cutlery. All his furniture, new though it was, did not cost him more than twelve dollars.

He had this all arranged in his room before night.

Lastly, he went down to the baggage room of the steamer, claimed his trunk, and had it brought up to his attic.

When he had paid the truckman, and shut the door upon him, he knelt down beside his trunk, and with a little chisel began to pry out the small brass-headed tacks that formed the initials of his name—W. E. H.

To the agent of whom he rented the room he had given the name of William Williams, persuading himself that the doubling of his first name and the suppression of the other could scarcely be called giving a false name.

He did not wish to take into his new life the old name. His reluctance did not come from any remnant of false pride. All that was gone now, and William Harcourt knew that labor with the pick or shovel, the hod or trowel, honestly performed, was just as honorable as labor with the pen, the pencil or the voice.

But he wished to guard against the chances of his mother’s discovery of his hard life, which would certainly give her great pain and distress, and lead to questionings that could not be answered.

For the present he hoped and believed that she was enjoying a rare season of comfort and happiness in the society of Ruth Elde, at Goblin Hall, and with the prospect of several weeks of uninterrupted peace.

He did not dare to write to her just yet; nor did he think she would be uneasy at not hearing from him. She would just think that he was so much absorbed in his happiness that, knowing she was well cared for at Goblin Hall, he had delayed writing. She was not jealous or exacting, this noble Dorothy Harcourt.

Later she must know the truth—that Roma Fronde had married William Hanson and not William Harcourt; but, oh! let it be as much later as possible. How should he tell her? How should he explain his own part in that wrong? He could not think, and he told himself it was not necessary to think just now.

He had borne as much of the burden of heavy thought as he could bear without going mad.

When he had finished picking the tacks out of his trunk, and shoved it across the bare floor into a corner, he began to feel faint from fatigue and fasting. He was also very cold, for there was no fire in the room.

He went out again, and bought a bucket of coal, a parcel of kindling wood, a box of matches, a loaf of bread, a mutton chop and a little coffee, sugar, pepper and salt.

Then he returned to his attic, kindled a fire in his rusty little grate, filled his kettle from the water spigot at the end of the hall, and cooked his frugal supper.

He had been accustomed, in his struggling college days, to wait upon himself, as we have seen, and that had in some measure prepared him for his present life. He was habitually neat, and when he had finished his meal he washed up all utensils, set his room in order, and then went to sit at one of the dormer windows to look out upon the night. A starlit sky hung over the bay, with its islands and headlands and its groves of shipping.

The hum of the city was far below him, and at this hour it was much lessened. The house was also very still. No sound was to be heard but the monotonous motion of the sewing machine worked by the seamstress in the next room. In this silence and solitude, thought overwhelmed him. Imagination conjured up the picture of Roma in her island prison, in the power of William Hanson. He could not bear this. He started up with a suppressed cry, and ran downstairs and into the crowded streets. He pushed through the crowd to get at freer space and fresher air, and went on toward the piers.

He walked rapidly up and down one of the most deserted-looking, to fatigue himself into the need of rest and the possibility of sleep. He walked for hours, until he began to feel weary; then he slackened his pace, but still walked and walked, being resolved to so exhaust his physical powers that his mental faculties might find rest in unconsciousness. He walked up and down until from very prostration he had to stop and sit down on a pile of planks left lying there.

He had been sitting there some time, felt somewhat rested, and able to return to his lodgings, and was about to rise and retrace his steps, when his attention was attracted by the figure of a man coming toward him. The man was of low stature, slight and slim, and would have looked like a boy but for his stooping shoulders and long beard. He came on, tottering like an inebriate.

Something in his form and manner compelled Harcourt to look at him. He came on, tottering from right to left, passed Harcourt without seeing him, and went on toward the end of the pier. Harcourt, moved by some inspiration he could not understand, arose and followed him silently, closely.

When the stranger reached the end of the pier, where the water was deep, he paused, looked down profoundly, much as Harcourt himself had looked into the depth of Chesapeake Bay two nights before.

“There is peace there,” the stranger murmured, using the very words that Harcourt had used under a recent similar temptation.

And then he threw up his arms for the fatal leap.

But Harcourt’s swift arms were cast around him and held him back.

The would-be suicide struggled hard to release himself, but he was weak, very weak, and Harcourt, inspired by the sudden joy of saving him, held him fast.

“Let me go! Who are you that would save a tortured and maddened wretch from rest and peace?” demanded the stranger, still struggling, though now very feebly, for his poor strength was failing, and he seemed more like fainting than resisting. “Who are you? Who are you, I say?”

“Another tortured and maddened wretch, who, two nights ago, if conscience had not restrained him, would have sought rest and peace as you wish to seek them now, but would not have found them, as you would not have found them if you had taken that fatal plunge. What is your trouble, man? Tell me. Possibly, possibly, possibly, I may be able to help you bear it. God grant that I may! Come, what is your trouble?” demanded Harcourt, setting the stranger down upon a large box, placing himself at his side, and passing his arm around the man’s waist, the better to protect him from himself.

“Trouble!” cried the other. “Trouble enough! Illness all autumn. No work. Wife and children freezing, starving, in a cellar. No food for two days. Everything pawned but just enough clothes to cover our nakedness. Trouble, indeed!”

“Good Heaven! good Heaven! It is incredible! ‘In a whole city full!’” exclaimed Harcourt, quoting Hood. “Come with me. The stores are not all closed yet. We will get coal and wood, and have a fire and a supper. Come!”

“I—I——What do you mean?” demanded the dazed little man.

“‘All men are brethren.’ I cannot see my brother hunger or freeze while I have the means of getting him food and a fire. Come with me.”

And Harcourt arose and took the man by the arm and raised him up.

The two walked from the pier.

There was a restaurant near at hand, Harcourt first took his protégé in there, ordered beefsteak and coffee, and made him eat.

“How far is your home from this place?” inquired Harcourt.

“About half a block.”

“All right,” said the young man. “We will have something cooked just here and take it with us as soon as it is ready.”

And he ordered half a gallon of stewed oysters, a quart of strong coffee, and bread and butter for six, to be put in a hamper to be taken away.

“I don’t know how many you have at home,” he said, “but the order for six I judged a safe guess.”

“There are three at home—my wife, son and daughter, the two last quite small children, the boy seven, the girl five,” said the stranger.

“All right. You feel better now?” inquired the young man.

“Yes, much better, thanks to you; but how or when can I ever repay you?”

“You are repaying me now. I was feeling as unhappy as you yourself were when I was so blessed as to save you from suicide. I, too, feel better, much better now. I am fully repaid.”

“It is good of you to look at it in that light. But have you had trouble, too?” inquired the stranger with much feeling.

“Yes, but we will not talk of trouble now. We both feel better. Here comes the waiter with the wife’s and children’s supper in the hamper; let us go to them—that is, if you have finished.”

“Oh, I have finished,” said the stranger, pointing to the empty platters, which he had cleaned.

Harcourt paid the bill for the stranger’s supper and for the contents of the hamper.

Then both arose and left the restaurant, followed by the waiter, with the hamper, who went with them to bring back the crockeryware.

The stranger led the way to a dingy tenement house with an open cellar door. The stranger dived down into this cellar, followed by his two companions.

They found themselves in a deep, murky room, with a damp flagstone floor, damp brick walls, a musty atmosphere, without furniture, without fire, and without light, except from the street gas lamp that stood directly in front of the house, and shone down into the cellar.

By its light they saw three miserable human beings—a young woman, a little boy, and a baby girl—huddled together on the damp floor, as if trying to keep each other warm.

“Come, wife, cheer up! Help has come! Here is supper for you and the children!” said the husband, taking the hamper from the waiter, who was staring in astonishment at the party he had been called upon to serve.

“You can go back now. It is but a step to your place, and come later for the dishes—or I can send them around,” said Harcourt, slipping a quarter into the waiter’s hand.

“All right, sir,” said the latter, now quite understanding, despite Harcourt’s rough suit, that “a gentleman” had chosen to relieve a starving family.

The husband and father had hastily arranged the food on the cellar floor, and the famished wife and children had gathered around. He had put a cup of coffee in the hands of his wife, and was now giving hot milk to the two children.

It was a Rembrandt picture, seen in the glare of the street gas lamp.

“Have you no light?” inquired Harcourt.

“Light! Should we have light when we have not fire, and hadn’t food until you brought it?” exclaimed the man.

“Then I will hurry out and try to get some candles and some coal before the stores are closed,” said Harcourt. And away he went.

He succeeded in buying a bucket of coal, a bundle of kindlings, a box of matches, a pound of candles, and a pair of tin candlesticks.

With these he returned to his new friends, kindled a fire in the stove, lighted two candles, and placed them in the candlesticks, on the floor, and then looked around.

There was no furniture of any description in the cellar, unless a pile of ragged bedclothes, in the dryest corner, next the chimney, could be called such.

“I see what you are looking for, sir! But they are all at the pawnbroker’s, every stick! And the rags would have been along with the rest if any broker would have advanced ten cents on them, to buy the children bread to-day.”

“It is dreadful, my friend, dreadful! I wish I could do more for you now, but the stores are all closed. Make yourself as comfortable as you can, under the circumstances, to-night, and to-morrow I will see you again. What is your name, by the way?”

“Adler, sir; Abel Adler.”

“Mine is Williams. Good-night. You will see the hamper of dishes returned?”

“Oh, yes, sir! Thank you more than words can say,” responded Adler.

“More than words can say,” repeated his wife.

“Good-night! good-night!” said Harcourt hastily, and he hurried out from the cellar.

It had cost him almost as much to relieve the pressing necessities of this poor family as it had to furnish his own bare attic room, and both outlays had nearly exhausted the remains of the funds from the payment of that “old debt” which the “pious fraud” of Ruth Elde, assisted by her Joe, had invented.

Poor Harcourt did not grudge the money, but he felt that he must find work at once, or have nothing to send to his mother, when, in the course of weeks, he should write to her.

He went up to his attic, but as soon as he found himself alone there his temporary feelings of relief left him. While with Adler and his family he had really felt better, as he had said; but it was the surrounding and reflection of their happier feelings.

Now, in the solitude of his attic, remorse and despair seized him again, much on account of his share in that tragedy at the Isle of Storms, but more, far more, for that which had come of it—his black, black treachery to Roma Fronde. The first might be expiated when he should give himself up to justice to suffer the penalty of his offense; but the last—the last! How should he ever atone for the irreparable wrong done to Roma?

In the soul’s utter extremity to whom can it go but to its Father in heaven?

Harcourt cast himself down prone upon the floor, and called upon the name of the Lord, not for pardon—he dared not—but for some means, through however much of suffering for himself, to atone for his sin to Roma.

“I can do nothing! nothing!” he cried. “I have fallen hopelessly into the pit! But with Thee ‘all things are possible.’ Thou holdest in Thine almighty hands the springs of all life and all activity. Oh, make it so that I may be sacrificed, humiliated, destroyed, for her sake, so that she may be happy!”

In his deep despair time passed unheeded. He lay face downward on the floor of his attic, sometimes giving vent to the anguish of his soul in deep groans, sometimes rolling over, but always falling into the same position, face to the floor.

So the wretched night passed, and the morning dawned and found him there.

In the midst of his misery he became conscious that some one was knocking at his door, and had been knocking for some few seconds.

“Who is there?” he called at length, as he slowly rose from the floor.

“It is I, your next neighbor. Are you ill? Can I do anything for you?” inquired a sweet voice from without.

Will Harcourt instantly opened the door, and saw in the uncertain light of the dawn a woman standing there. But whether she was young or old, pretty or plain, he could not tell.

“Oh! you are all in the dark,” she said. “Let me go and bring my candle.”

And she was off like a shot, before Harcourt could speak to prevent her.

But he went to his cupboard and lighted his own candle, so that when she came back with hers the darkness had fled.

By this light he saw that she was a middle-aged woman; but as middle age is a sort of “movable feast,” anywhere between thirty and sixty, let us be a little more definite, and say that she was about forty, and not at all of the pale, thin, starved needlewoman and tenement-house type whom to see or hear of is so heartrending. She was plump, fair, rosy, blue-eyed and light-haired, with a cheerful and kindly expression, and she was neatly dressed in a gown of some cheap blue woolen material and a white bib apron.

“You have been ill all night, I fear, and I am very sorry for it,” she said as she set her candlestick down on the table and looked at him. “I heard you groaning just as soon as I stopped my sewing machine and could hear anything, but you ceased soon, and I didn’t think much of it, but went to bed and to sleep. I always sleep like a top; but this morning, as soon as I woke up, I heard you groaning worse than ever, and I blamed myself for not attending to you last night. Now what is the matter? Tell me. I am a right good nurse and doctress, but not professional, so I don’t cost my patients anything.”

“You are very kind, and I truly thank you, but I am not ill in the body,” replied Harcourt, with a feeble smile.

“Not in body! Then in mind. But you have not slept all night, I know, and so you are not well in body, any more than in mind. Lie down there on your bed, and I will go and make you a cup of coffee. No denial, and no thanks, please! I won’t have the first, and I don’t want the last,” said the neighbor; and leaving her candle with the other, to make the room more cheerful, she went back to her own apartment.

Will Harcourt certainly felt soothed and comforted by the homely kindliness of his neighbor, and even supported by the motherly authority she assumed over him. He went and lay down as she had bid him do.

Soon he heard her stirring about around her stove in the next room, humming in a low tone a popular school song:

“Sing at your work, ’twill lighten

The labors of the day;

Sing at your work, ’twill brighten

The darkness of the way;

Sing at your work, though sorrow

Its lengthened shadow cast;

Joy cometh with the morrow,

And soon the night is past.”

Presently she came in with a generous cup of coffee and a plate of buttered toast on a battered little black Japan waiter, the whole covered with a clean, white, well darned old napkin.

She sank down on the solitary chair beside the bed, and holding the waiter of breakfast in her lap, said:

“Now sit up and take this, while I get a good look at you.”

Again, with a feeble smile, Harcourt obeyed her, took the offered cup from her hand, and while he eagerly quaffed the fragrant coffee, which he found so grateful to his parched throat and fainting frame, she regarded him with the eyes of experience.

“Yes, young man,” she said gravely and tenderly, “you have seen trouble—plenty of trouble, but that is the lot of human beings. ‘Man is born to trouble as the sparks to fly upward.’ Ah! and if we in trouble go upward in spirit to Him who can turn our trouble to our greatest good, then it will be well with us. Everything is good that sends us to Him. But there, I am not going to preach to you. I am not wise enough nor good enough to do that. I only wanted to drop that one little hint.”

“But,” said Harcourt, setting down his empty cup on the waiter she still held, “if one has sinned—grievously, basely, atrociously sinned—what then? What then?”

She looked at his pale, haggard, questioning face for a few moments and then said:

“You are putting a case that is not your own, I feel sure. You are incapable of baseness or atrocity. Yet I will answer your question. If one has sinned—feels that he has so sinned—despairs because he has so sinned—still let him go to his Father in heaven. To whom else in the universe could he go?”

“To Christ.”

“He is the Father. But I told you I would not preach, and I won’t. I only wished to say this simple thing: Whatever your trouble may be, take it to your Saviour God. Now let me bring you another cup of coffee.”

“Are you not mixing spiritual and material up very considerably?” inquired Harcourt.

“We cannot help mixing them up in this world. Were they not so mixed in the ‘last supper’? Are they not mixed everywhere in this world?” said the woman as she took up the waiter and went off to her room to replenish the empty cup from the hot coffee pot on her stove.

“Thank you,” said Harcourt as he received the second cup from her hands. “Thank you. But I feel like a sneak and a coward to be sitting here taking all these attentions from you and telling you nothing about myself.”

“You will tell me after a while. I do not wish to force your confidence. You will find relief in telling me after a while; but not so much as you will find when you carry your burden where I told you to carry it, and where your New Testament would have told you, if you had read it.”

“How do you know I don’t read it?”

“Because if you did you would not be so low down. Read your New Testament. But, there, I won’t preach.”

Will Harcourt smiled. His neighbor so often declared she would not preach, yet she preached all the time.

She began again:

“I will give you three words: Read (the Word of God), work, pray. Now I will leave you. But call on me any time, day or night, and I will come to you.”

She took up her little waiter and left the room.

“If the blessing of such a miserable wretch as myself could avail, I should bless her; but I can obey her. I will read, work and pray. But, oh! Roma! Roma! Roma! Where are you now? How are you now? Will you become reconciled to the love of that man who loved you enough to wreck his soul and my own for your sake? I must not think of it. That way, indeed, ‘madness lies.’ Who is my kind neighbor, I wonder? She came and ministered to me, and never told her name or asked mine. True Arabian kindness! The janitor downstairs said that she was a poor seamstress, who worked for the ready-made clothing department of a large store in Grand Street, and that she was a most respectable woman. To me she is only my neighbor, with a little gift of preaching. Well, I must be up and doing. I must go out and look for work.”

He went to the water tank and filled his pitcher, and then washed his face and hands, brushed his hair, whisked his rough suit of clothes, and went down the four flights of stairs that led to the street door.

Outside, he suddenly thought of Adler’s family, and determined to go to see them before going to seek work.

But he had not walked half a block before he met Adler.

“Well,” he said, “how is the wife, and how are the babies?”

“All well and happy. Had the best breakfast of a month past off what was left of last night’s supper.”

“I am glad to hear it,” said Harcourt, and he thought how little it took to make some people happy.

“You certainly brought me luck, young boss,” said the man.

“I am glad to hear that, also, if it is true; but I do not see how I could have done so.”

“Why, my luck turned last night, when you picked me out of the very jaws of hell—first, in the shape of a good meal for self and wife and kids, the first of any sort we had in two days; then a good night’s rest for all, which came from satisfied hunger; then a good breakfast from the fragments that remained; then, early this morning, a message from my old boss to come to work on Rue Street. My boss is in the employment of a contractor who is pulling down a row of tenement houses in Rue Street, to put up a row of fine buildings for stores. They say these houses have been condemned by the commissioners, and now they have got to go. Turn around and walk with me, boss, and I’ll tell you all about it. You see, I am on my way to work, and want to get there in good time.”

Harcourt turned about, and as they went on he asked his companion:

“Do you think that I could get work on that same job?”

“You, boss!” exclaimed Adler, stopping in his astonishment and gazing on the speaker.

“Yes; I am looking for a job,” quietly replied Harcourt.

“You—looking for a job—of that sort?”

“Of any honest sort.”

“But that is hard labor of the roughest and dirtiest—pulling down moldy and pestiferous old houses.”

“No matter; I shall be glad to get it.”

“Well, I am hit hard—hit harder than I ever was in my life!”

“How so?”

“Why, boss—not to be offensive—I—I—I—thought you were a gentleman and a scholar.”

“Need a man be less a gentleman and a scholar because he takes any honest work he can get, rather than live in idleness and go in debt?”

“You have got me there, boss, sure as a gun. But I should think you might do better than that—might get a salesman’s place in an uptown store. You would be sure to be popular among customers, with your figure and address.”

“But why should I seek a salesman’s situation in preference to a laborer’s?”

“Well, it is nicer and cleaner, and you would be in better company.”

“I do not think so; and I prefer to take work that offers itself, rather than to seek it in vain.”

“Very well, young boss. Here we are,” said Adler, as they turned the corner, and were at once deafened by a tremendous crash, and choked by a great enveloping grayish-white dust.

“There!” exclaimed Adler, as soon as by coughing and sneezing he had in some measure cleared his air pipes, “there! that was the plastering from some failing partition wall. It was an accident, of course. They never intended a wall to come down like that; but you see they can’t always prevent it, any more than miners can always prevent a caving in or an explosion. So you see, sir, the work is not only dirty, but dangerous.”

“So much the more suited to me,” muttered Harcourt under his breath.

“I hope no one was hurt by the falling of that wall,” said Adler, hurrying on to the scene of destruction, closely accompanied by Harcourt. The workmen employed on the job were waiting for the cloud to clear away.

To Adler’s anxious inquiries they answered that no one was hurt, no one having been near the wall when it fell. Adler inquired for his own boss, and was directed where to find him.

He went, still accompanied by Harcourt.

The “boss,” a tall, hard-featured, dark-skinned man, with gray hair and beard, and clothed in a business suit, received the workman with a kindly smile, but said:

“You are an hour behind time, Adler. I shall have to dock you a quarter of a day.”

“I know that, sir, and I am sorry, but couldn’t help it.”

Then Adler presented his friend, “Williams,” and succeeded in getting him “taken on” at a dollar a day.

Then their section of work was pointed out to them, and they went together toward it.

“You see,” said Adler, as they hurried on, “you see, as we are an hour behind, we are docked a quarter of a day; that is, instead of getting a dollar, we shall only get seventy-five cents. Just think of it! We work ten hours for a dollar, and if we are one hour behind they dock us the wages of two and a half. ’Tisn’t the boss’s fault; it’s the contractor’s. Ross is not a bad man himself.”

So Harcourt’s self-inflicted penal servitude commenced; and, indeed, it was a most severe penance to the young man.

He did not mind the muscular exertion, the painful fatigue of back and limbs unaccustomed to hard work, but the dust, the dirt, the stench, formed a purgatory to his sensitive nerves.

That first night, when he was on his way home with Adler, he offered to lend the man money to get his goods and chattels out of pawn, and the latter thankfully accepted the help.

He went to his attic, and, first of all, took a sponge bath and changed all his clothing. He felt as if he could scarcely live and breathe until he had done that. Then he kindled his fire, cooked his chop, boiled his coffee, and ate his supper.

When he had washed up his few dishes and put them away, he snuffed his candle, lighted another, set them on the table, and sat down to read.

Through all this he had heard, and continued to hear, the monotonous thumper-thumper-thumper-thumper of his neighbor’s sewing machine. She did not come near him, however, although he felt sure that she would come if he should call her, and he felt less lonesome on that account.

About ten o’clock the first fruits of his hard work began to appear, in the shape of great fatigue and drowsiness. He went to bed, and, despite mental trouble, slept soundly—slept until the movements of his neighbor about her room waked him up, only in time to get a hurried breakfast and hasten off to his work, to escape being docked a quarter of a day for losing one hour.

This is a fair sample of many days and nights spent by young Harcourt. He allowed himself no indulgences, not even a newspaper, so he never saw the advertisements for himself, nor, if he had, could he have answered them.

He determined that at the end of one month he would write to his mother, or go to see her. He thought that for one month she would be living in comfort, and even in luxury, at Goblin Hall, and that she would excuse his silence in his supposed honeymoon at the Isle of Storms. His honeymoon! Oh! Father of Mercies! was ever mortal man wounded as he was? His mother would be in blissful ignorance of his real position. There would be no one to tell her. Hanson would not, and Roma could not. Roma would be Hanson’s closely watched prisoner until he should have won her love or conquered her into submission, and then he would take her on his yacht to Europe.

Oh, the infernal thought! And the traitor who had betrayed her to this captivity! Why did not some thunderbolt from heaven fall upon his accursed head? He could not think of Roma’s condition and keep his senses. He fled the subject.

He would write to his mother, or visit her at the end of the month, and he would explain, or not, as circumstances should seem to indicate.

Such was his resolution.

But before the month ended a catastrophe prevented the execution of his plans.

When the work of tearing down and clearing away the old Rue Street tenement houses was finished Harcourt, still following in the wake of his friend, Adler, got employment in the upper part of the city, where a large number of men were at work blasting rock.

He had been engaged with that gang about a week, when, at an explosion, a piece of rock struck him on the side, breaking three of his ribs and knocking him down senseless from the nervous shock.

No one knew him there but Adler, who instantly identified him.

He was carried to the nearest hospital and entered under the name of William Williams. He was supposed to be, and reported to be, a native of South Wales, his complexion and his general appearance favoring that theory.

I will not weary my reader with any details of his illness. Let it be enough to say that it was long, tedious, and very dangerous. The utmost skill and devotion of the hospital doctors and nurses only sufficed to save his life, after many weeks, as “a brand plucked from the burning.”

And if his illness was long and tedious, his slow convalescence was even longer and more tedious.

Adler and his “neighbor” had been constant in their visits to him, whenever they were allowed to see him.

It was late in December when he had been stricken down. It was late in March when he was reported cured.

He was to have been discharged on Monday morning, but Adler pleaded that he might be let out on Sunday, as on that day he and another friend would be at leisure to take charge of him and see him comfortably installed in his home. Adler’s plea was granted.

Adler and his neighbor both came that day to escort him home.

When he reached his attic room he found everything in good order—a fire lighted in the stove, and materials for a good dinner on hand.

“How is this?” he inquired, turning to his two friends.

“We did it,” said Adler. “But I ought to tell you. Your month wanted a few days of being up when you were stricken down, so when I heard that you were not likely to be out of bed for two months to come, even if then, I took it upon myself, as your next friend, you know, to give up your room to save the rent. And as you had paid in advance, without any promise of giving warning when you wanted to leave, I had no trouble with the agent. And then I and Annie, your neighbor here, moved all your traps into her room for safe keeping. And when we heard that you were to come out this week I went and engaged the room again, and we moved your traps back and fixed it up for you, and here you are.”

“Heaven bless you both,” said Harcourt fervently as he sank into his chair.

“Oh, that’s all right. One good turn deserves another,” said Adler carelessly.

“Now, will you tell me the name of my good neighbor here, whom I have only known as my neighbor?” Harcourt asked.

“Annie Moss. I thought you knew. I thought everybody knew her. She is a widow, quite alone in the world, except for the boy brother of her late husband, who is out in Colorado somewhere, seeking his fortune, but not finding it, somehow. He never sends her anything,” Adler exclaimed.

“He can’t help it, poor fellow. His one dream is to strike ore some day and make a lady of his mammy, as he always calls me, though I am only his elder sister-in-law,” Annie added; and then she began to prepare chicken broth for the convalescent.

Harcourt made some faint effort to prevent her, and to wait on himself, but neither Annie nor Adler would permit him to stir from his chair. When his meal was ready they drew the little table up before him.

“But you? Have you dined?” anxiously inquired Harcourt, before tasting his soup.

“Oh, I am going right away now to get my dinner with the wife and babies. Only day in the week I can do it, you know. In better quarters now, right around the corner, over the baker’s shop. Will look in again to-night. Good-by. Annie’ll take care of you,” said Adler, and he left the room.

“And you?” said Harcourt, turning to his neighbor.

“I am going to keep you company in a bowl of this soup. That is all,” said Annie, and she took a bowl and spoon from the corner cupboard, helped herself from the pot on the stove, and sat down near him.

“I am afraid I have got very much in debt,” said Harcourt uneasily.

“Don’t be afraid of anything. Be quiet, and rest on this blessed Sabbath day. To-morrow, when you look into your affairs, I think you will find that you are not in debt at all, except to Adler, who must have advanced a month’s rent before he secured this room for you again—not that he has said anything about it, though.”

“Well, I have enough to pay him, but the hospital——”

“You were in the free ward there.”

Harcourt’s pale face flushed crimson.

“In the pauper ward?” he murmured.

“You could not help being there. It was not your fault. Why should a man mind that, if it is not his fault?” inquired Annie.

“Why, indeed?” assented Harcourt humbly.

“Besides, if you do not like to rest under an obligation, you can, when you are able, make some donation to the hospital that may cover the cost of your treatment there. And now that you have finished your soup you must lie down and try to sleep, and I will take these things into my room and wash them up,” said Annie, and she also rose and went away.

Harcourt stretched himself on his bed, but he did not go to sleep.

His mind was full of anxiety. It was now four months since that fraudulent marriage ceremony—four months since he had seen or heard from his mother or written to her.

Where was Roma now? Traveling in Europe with her husband, probably. Had she become reconciled to her lot? And what was her judgment of him? He did not dare to think.

Perhaps in the future, when his poor mother should have passed to her eternal home, and he should give himself up to justice, “to be dealt with according to law,” and the whole story of his life’s deep tragedy should come out, Roma might judge him leniently. But how was that poor mother, even now? How had she borne the suspense and anxiety of his mysterious silence? Did she perhaps think that he had gone abroad with his rich wife, and totally forgotten his poor mother? Or had she in some way learned the truth?

He felt that he could not write at this late date; he must go and see his mother, and find out her condition for himself.

He had saved a little money from his wages. He arose and went to his trunk to see how much that might be. He found the key hanging on the little nail in the dark corner of the cupboard, where he had been accustomed to keep it.

Either Annie had never found it when she removed his goods from the room, or else she had replaced it, for there it hung.

He took it down, unlocked his trunk, and found and counted his money. Nineteen dollars. Enough to repay Adler the sum advanced for his rent and to bear his expenses to Logwood. Besides, there was his trunk full of costly wearing apparel that he would never want again, and might sell for a considerable sum. He would sell everything except one suit of gentleman’s clothing and three changes of fine underclothing, which he would keep to wear when he should go to see his mother.

His mind was now made up.

He locked his trunk and threw himself on his bed again.

After a while his neighbor brought him a large cup of tea, which he drank gratefully.

“Now,” she said, taking away the empty cup, “I will bid you good-night; but if you should want anything, call me, and I will come to you.”

And with these words she went away.

Later Adler came up.

Then Harcourt told him of his wish to go and see his aged mother.

“I cannot wait to write and hear from her. I must fly to see her. I did intend to go to see her within a few days, when I was prevented by that accident that laid me up for nearly three months. I am her only son—her only child, indeed—and she is a widow. I must go and end her suspense,” Harcourt explained.

“Yes, indeed, you must go,” Adler assented.

Then Harcourt told his friend of his wish to dispose of his trunkful of clothing.

And Adler mentioned the name of a second-hand dealer who would give him a fair price.

“That is, as fair as ever they give. You know, whether it is a book or a coat that you want to sell second-hand, they will tell you that they will have to sell it at half price; and to make any profit they can only give you quarter price. I will go with you there to-morrow, at the noon recess.”

Harcourt thanked him, and the appointment was made.

Adler stayed with his friend until nine o’clock, and then left him, with the advice that he should go to bed.

Harcourt followed his good counsel, and retired, but could not sleep.

CHAPTER IV
NEWS

He rose early from a restless bed, dressed, and made a cup of coffee.

Afterward he selected the clothing he meant to retain, and locked the other in his trunk.

A little after twelve o’clock Adler came in, accompanied by a dealer from Chatham Street, to whom Harcourt exhibited his trunk of wearing apparel.

The dealer looked carefully over the whole assortment, and then for a gentleman’s wardrobe worth at least two hundred dollars, trunk included, offered—fifty.

This was indeed a sacrifice, and Adler loudly protested; but Harcourt was anxious to conclude the bargain and be off on his journey.

So he took the fifty dollars cash and delivered over the trunk, which the dealer agreed to send for, and did send for in the course of the afternoon.

Adler went back to his work.

“I shall start for Washington by the night train,” Harcourt said, on seeing him out.

“All right; that leaves at nine-thirty. I shall drop in here to see you off. But what about your room?”

“I shall leave it just as it is, for I expect to return to it in a week or ten days’ time.”

“Glad to hear that,” said Adler, as he hurried away.

Harcourt went back to his room and packed his traveling bag.

When all his preparations for the journey were completed Harcourt went and rapped on the door of his neighbor’s room.

The monotonous thumper-thumper-thumper-thumper of the sewing machine stopped while she arose and came and opened the door.

She looked surprised and pleased at the appearance of her visitor in his genteel morning suit. It was the first time he had ever come to her door.

“I am going away for a few days, Mrs. Moss, to see my mother. Before I say good-by let me thank you again for all your great kindness to me,” he said.

“I wish you would not make so much of a simple matter of duty, done with much satisfaction. But come in and sit down, and tell me all about it, if you have time,” she answered.

“Thank you. I have not much time, but I would like to come in,” he answered.

He followed her, and took the chair she offered.

It was a large, clean room, barely furnished with a table and four chairs, a corner cupboard, a cooking stove, a sewing machine, a chest of drawers, and a little white bed; but the neatness and cleanliness of the place could not have been surpassed.

“There is not much to tell,” he said. “My mother is old—quite old, for I was her youngest born, the child of her age. I am all that she has left. I fear that my long silence in the illness has made her painfully anxious, and I think the best and soonest way to alleviate that anxiety will be to go to her at once, instead of writing.”

“I think you are quite right. Indeed, you should never have left her.”

“I did not willingly, but ‘necessity knows no law.’”

“Ah! true, now long will you be gone?”

“Not over ten days.”

“And your room?”

“Please use it yourself, whenever you like to change the scene, and look out on the bay instead of the street,” said Harcourt with a smile.

“Thank you; I will.”

“And now I must say good-by. I hear Adler’s step on the stairs, and he has promised to see me off,” said Harcourt, rising.

“Good-by,” she said, giving him her hand.

And so they parted.

Adler was waiting for him in the passage, and greeted him with a hearty “Good-evening.”

Harcourt put on his ulster, his seal hat and his gloves.

Adler took up his carpetbag, and insisted on carrying it.

They walked to the Cortlandt Street ferry, which was not far off, took the boat, and in due time reached Jersey City and the depot.

“Take my advice,” said Adler, as they went toward the ticket office, “‘cuss the cost,’ and take a sleeping car. You are not yet strong enough to sit up all night.”

“But must do so, nevertheless,” replied Harcourt, true to his resolution of stern self-denial.

He took his ticket, bade his friend a hasty good-night, and hurried to the train, and just boarded it as it began to move slowly out of the station.

To some constitutions the motion of the cars is a sedative, particularly at night, when darkness and drowsiness help the effect. This was the case with Harcourt in his weakened condition.

As the hours of the night passed on he dozed, dreamed, woke up, and dozed again, until at length his slumber grew deeper, and he slept until the train reached Washington, at six o’clock on that dark March morning.

He had intended to take the train immediately for West Virginia and go directly to Logwood and Lone Lodge cabin to see his mother, but on finding himself in Washington an irresistible longing seized him to go down to Snowden and get news of Roma.

Without stopping to get breakfast he hastened to change cars, and was soon en route for Southern Maryland.

The close of the day brought him to the little seaside town.

He was known there only as the late hotel clerk, and not at all as the sometime suitor for the hand of the heiress of the Isle of Storms.

He walked from the depot to the village hotel, and entered the barroom.

The landlord, who was on duty there, instantly recognized him, and rose to greet him.

“Ah! How do you do, sir? How do you do? You are a great stranger here. And yet I have been looking for you a long time, too,” he said, offering his hand, and heartily shaking that of the young man.

“Looking for me?” inquired Harcourt.

“Yes, for weeks past, I may say.”

“But why?”

“Well, you know, if you remember, I am postmaster.”

“I know that.”

“Well, then, piles and piles of letters have come here for you, and here they are. I advertised them, all to no purpose, and on the first of next month I meant to send them to the dead-letter office.”

“Where are they? Give them to me,” eagerly demanded Harcourt.

The landlord took them from a pigeonhole marked H and handed them over.

“Are these all?” inquired the young man.

“Them’s all,” replied the landlord.

The “piles and piles” had resolved themselves into five letters.

Harcourt sat down on the first seat that offered, glanced at the dates on the postmarks, and selected the latest, as having the last news, and that was three weeks old. It had been written, at the instance of old Martha, by the hand of May Wynthrop, imploring Mr. Harcourt to come and see his mother, who was in good bodily health, but who was pining to see him.

“She was in good health three weeks ago, thank heaven! And yet she must have suffered several weeks of suspense and anxiety previous to that. I must lose no more time, but take this night’s train for Logwood,” Harcourt thought to himself.

He opened and read the other letters, but they were all to the same purport.

When he had finished them all he put a strong constraint upon himself, and inquired:

“Can you tell me anything about the young married couple who came down here last November to spend their honeymoon on the Isle of Storms?”

For all answer, “mine host” lifted up his head, pursed up his lips, and gave a long whistle.

“What does that mean?” inquired Harcourt.

The landlord grew very grave.

“See here, young gentleman,” he said solemnly, “I don’t know the rights of it, but this is certain—bride and groom quarreled and parted before they became husband and wife.”

“What!” demanded Harcourt, starting to his feet.

“It is a positive fact, I do assure you. The marriage never went any further than the ceremony. The contract never went into effect. The bride swore that she was married to the man without her own knowledge or consent, and that she would never acknowledge him as her husband. Passing strange, but true as truth.”

Harcourt dropped into his chair again, overwhelmed with emotion.

“Well?” he exclaimed. “Well, what next? What became of her?”

“She managed to communicate with her friends, and they came—a middle-aged gentleman and lady—and they took her off the island. The party stopped here, though I didn’t know the least in the world who they were, or that the beautiful young woman was the bride, or that there was any trouble. It was long after they left here that I found out all about it.”

“How did you find out at last?” inquired Harcourt.

“Through things that happened. On the very afternoon the bride left the island with her friends one of the most terrible storms that ever visited these parts came up. That was why the party stopped here instead of going right on, as they meant to have done. Well, among other damage that the storm did, it carried away the boats and boathouses from the island, and left the people cut off from communication with the mainland and the rest of the world. But in a week or ten days after there comes a fine, fast-sailing yacht to the isle, and stays a few hours, and then sails away again. And we all here, knowing nothing about the real facts, thought the bride and groom had gone off on a cruise, probably to southern waters—coast of Florida, Gulf of Mexico, or the West Indies.”

“Go on,” said Harcourt eagerly.

“Well, after a while, I thought of those two poor negroes left there alone, without any means of communicating with the mainland and the rest of the world. So, on one mild day in Indian summer, I jest got Len Poole to take me in his big boat over to the island, to see after them poor niggers, who might be starving for aught I knew. People may think it was curiosity that took me, if they like, but it was not, sir, it was not. It was humanity, sir, humanity.”

“I have no doubt of it,” said Harcourt, who was anxious for the remainder of the story.

“Well, sir, I went, and it was from them two honest niggers that I heard the facts about that quarrel and parting. Why, they told me from the time she entered the house, a newly married bride, in her wedding dress, to the time her aunt came and took her away, she never permitted him to cross the threshold of her door. No, sir! There was a vixen for you!”

“Did the man make any opposition to her departure?” Harcourt inquired.

“No; he was not in a state so to do. Her cruelty had driven him to drink. He was dead drunk when she left with her aunt and uncle, and he didn’t come to himself until the next morning, when he woke up to find that the old folks had carried off his bride and the storm had carried off his boats so that he couldn’t go after her. Then there was the loveliest little circus you ever heard of in your life. He was harlequin, clown, pantaloon, and a whole menagerie of wild beasts, all in one, and them niggers was the only audience. But the lady was gone, and the lady was safe!”

“Oh, glorious Roma! Queen! goddess! I might have known that you would deliver yourself from the power of the beast!” muttered Harcourt to himself, and he felt as if the last few months had been only a dark nightmare, from which he was now awakening. Not that even now he hoped ever to possess Roma, but—she had escaped the deep dishonor of a union with Hanson; and now such a load was lifted off Harcourt’s breast, he breathed so freely; he was almost happy. Yes, though he might never see Roma again, though she could never be able to forgive him for the foulest wrong ever done to any human being; though he must remain in her memory as one guilty, degraded, accursed, still he was now almost happy, for she was free and safe. She, his queen—ah! no, not his queen! But she, the queen, the goddess, the glorious woman, who had liberated herself, was free! “Thank God! Oh, thank God!” he breathed from the depths of his heart.

“Seems like you take a great interest into this, sir. Now, if you’d like to get the facts at first hand, you can just hire a boat and go over to the island, and them niggers will tell you all about it, and take pleasure in so doing,” said the landlord.

Harcourt reflected—as well as a man might reflect who was in a tumult of emotions—and then inquired:

“What time does the train pass here which connects with the Western Virginia line?”

“At eleven-fifty-five sharp.”

“That will give me time to go to the isle. I will walk down to the beach and see if I can get a boat; and I should like some supper at about eleven o’clock, before I leave for West Virginia,” said Harcourt.

“Oh, you go by that train, do you?”

“Yes.”

“All right. You shall have supper before you go.”

“Thank you,” said Harcourt, with a short bow, as he left the office.

He walked down the village street until it merged into the country road that led to the water’s edge.

There, after some little inquiry, he found a boatman and then a boat.

The sun had set, but the sky was very clear, and brilliant with starlight. The wind was low, and the waters were still, and all circumstances favored a safe and pleasant row to the isle, that lay, as usual, like a preadamite sea serpent, coiled on the dark, glimmering surface of the sea, some miles distant from the shore.

Harcourt took one oar and the boatman took the other. A rapid row of half an hour brought them to the isle.

“It will be cold for you to remain here. Will you come up to the house?” inquired Harcourt as he stepped ashore.

“Oh, Lord, no! I’ll just fasten the boat, and walk up and down here to keep myself warm until you come back, if you won’t be long,” replied the boatman.

“I shall be an hour, at least. But if you feel cold, come up to the house at any time.”

“All right; I will.”

Harcourt stepped rapidly up the rugged face of the crest and toward the dark mass of buildings on the top. The house seemed all shut up and dark.

He walked around to the rear of the mansion, and saw one dim light shining through a low window—kitchen window, probably; but before he could approach nearer a chorus of barks from three dogs defied him, and these were instantly followed by the appearance of an old negro man at the door beside the window, and a startled voice inquiring:

“Who dar? Name o’ de Lord, who is yer, an’ wot do yo’ want?”

“’Rusalem, is that you?” inquired Harcourt, by way of opening conversation, though he was sure of the old man’s identity.

“Cose it’s me! But who de name o’ de Lord is yo’? Shet up, dogs! Hol’ yo’ jaws dar, I tell yo’! A body can’t hear deirselves speak fo’ yo’! Who is yo’, an’ wot do yo’ want yere?”

“Don’t you remember Will Harcourt, who was clerk here last summer?”

“W’y, sho! ’Tain’t yo’! W’y, Lor’s! ’Member yo’? Well, I reckon I doane ’member nobody else! Down, dogs! Stop it, can’t yo’? Come in, sah. Well, Lor’s! Who’d a think to see yo’ here? Come on. My ole ’oman’ll be moughty proud to see yo’. ’Deed will Wilet!”

Harcourt followed the old negro into the spacious kitchen, where a huge fire was burning in the open fireplace, at the lefthand corner of which sat Wilet, smoking her pipe.

“Yere, ole ’oman! Yere’s a stranger come to see us! Young Marse William Harkurt, wot used to be clerkin’ yere long o’ dat po’ w’ite trash, Tom Todd—Tom Todd! He were a proper fellah fo’ a young g’eman to be clerkin’ long o’, or fo’ ’spectable colored people to be sarvin’, he were! But, Lor’s! de worl’s turn upside down, it is!”

Meanwhile, Wilet had risen from her seat, put down her pipe, and was courtesying to the visitor.

“Now, yo’ take dis cha’, yite ’fo’ de fire, young ge’man. Sorry we ain’t got no fire in de pa’lor fo’ yo’,” she said, drawing up the one comfortable seat of the room, a flag-bottomed rocker with a patchwork cushion.

“Thank you. This will do very well,” said Harcourt, taking his seat, and then adding: “Now, sit down, both of you, for I wish to have a talk with you; and take your pipes. I don’t object to smoke.”

“Wouldn’t yo’ condorcent to take a pipe yo’se’f, sah? Ise got a new clay one, an’ some prime bakker,” said ’Rusalem politely.

“Thank you, no. I never smoke, though I do not dislike it.”

“Well, den, young marse, it’s a cole night, an’ so I’ll jes’ hang my kettle ober de fire, and pit some apples down to yoast on de haff, an’ ’Rusalem will get out his jug o’ w’isky—it’s prime, an’ none o’ p’ison, like Tom Todd used to sarve out to his cursemores—Tom Todd! We knows dis is prime, caze we gits it yight f’om de ’stillery, an’ it ’quainted wid de ’stillerers. An’ I’ll make yo’ de lubblies’ bowl o’ apple toddy, wid sugar an’ spices, an’ ebberyfin’ ’cordin’, like I use’ to brew fo’ ole Marse Henry Guyon an’ de gemmen, o’ winter nights; an’ ebbery single gemman drink my apple toddy, an’ praise it to de skies. Yes, sah. An’ now I gwine to make some fo’ yo’.”

“No! no! I thank you very much, but I never drink anything of the sort. I wish to speak to you about the young couple who came here to spend their honeymoon,” said Harcourt.

“Honeymoon!” echoed Wilet. “Honeymoon! Whew! Whip yo’ hosses!—pepper-winegarmoon! witriolmoon!—fire-an’-brimstonemoon!” exclaimed Wilet.

“I heard in Snowden that they had parted,” said Harcourt.

“Look here, young ge’man,” said Wilet, “I ’members yo’ come down in de boat ’long ob dem, but didn’t come in, nor likewise eben speak to nobody. Yo’ went yight back to de boat. But ef yo’ had come in an’ stayed yere—oh! I tells yo’ yo’d ’a’ seem a circus!”

“Tell me all about it.”

“Well, seein’ as yo’ seems to be an intermit frien’ ob de parties, I doane care ef I do,” said Wilet, and she began, and told Harcourt the whole story of Roma’s two days’ ordeal while a captive on the Isle of Storms. She told him more than she had told the landlord of the Snowden Hotel, whom she did not recognize as a friend of the family. She told him how it was that Roma, captive, guarded, had yet managed to communicate with her friends. For Wilet, either by accident or eavesdropping, had overheard the story of the carrier pigeon, as discussed by Roma and Mr. and Mrs. Gray on the morning of her departure from the island.

“Oh, Roma! your own glorious deliverer!” said Harcourt to himself, when the story was finished. “Now I can brave and bear the very worst that fate may have in store for me. Now you are free, queen!”

He arose, and thanked Wilet for her information, gave each negro a dollar to buy “bakker,” and declining their urgent offers of supper and bed, he bade them good-night, and returned to the boat, near which the boatman was walking up and down, beating his breast and sides to keep warm.

Half an hour’s rapid rowing took them to the mainland.

Harcourt found his supper waiting at the hotel. He had just time to eat it, pay his bill, and catch the night train for West Virginia.

CHAPTER V
DOROTHY HARCOURT’S SECRET

It was a wild, windy, blustering night in March when the train ran into Logwood.

Will Harcourt was the only passenger who got off at that little way station, and he had no luggage but his carpetbag, which he carried in his hand.

It was but eight o’clock, yet it was quite dark, and the station was deserted by all except the ticket clerk and the night porter. There was not a vehicle of any kind on the spot, nor, indeed, if there had been would Harcourt have availed himself of the convenience.

Without even entering the station he stepped from the platform down to the country road, and set off on a brisk walk to Lone Lodge plantation.

After his harassing journey in the cars, on a zigzag, cross-country route, during which he had had to change trains several times, and twice to wait hours for the connection, he felt it as a sort of relief to walk, to stretch his limbs along a direct road, on this dark, wintry, but bracing night. The wind was in his back, too, and rather helped than impeded his progress.

An hour’s rapid walk, up and down hill, through woods, and across streams rudely bridged by logs, brought him in sight of Lone Lodge. Lights glanced between red curtains of the lower windows, showing that the family had not yet retired.

But it was not to the house of his forefathers that he was going. Before he reached the acacia avenue, leading up to the front of it, he turned to the left and followed a little path down the wooded hill that brought him to the edge of the narrow, singing stream that ran half around the hut.

He crossed it, and looked at the humble cot which had been his mother’s shelter ever since the loss of their home and fortune.

There was a dim light shining through the little window of the kitchen, but none through that of his mother’s room. It struck him as strange and ill-omened, and now, as he came nearer, he saw that there was something the matter with the roof of the house, he could not see what.

Full of misgiving, he went and rapped at the door.

A frightened voice answered him:

“Now, who dar? Wot yo’ want dis time ob night? I got gun! ’Deed is I! I shoot! ’deed will I!”

“It is I, Martha! Open the door and let me in! How is mother?” called Harcourt impatiently.

Open flew the door, disclosing Martha’s tall figure and astonished face. Before she could speak, Harcourt repeated his question:

“How—how is my mother?”

“She—she’s well—dat is, toler’ble well. The Lord a-messy upon me, young marse! Who’d ’a’ ’spected to see you yere to-night? Come in, honey. Come in an’ warm yo’se’f,” said the woman, standing aside to let him pass.

“Thank heaven, she is well! Has she retired?” inquired the young man as he entered the kitchen and threw himself into the only chair, which Martha had hastily set by the little fire of pine knots.

“Yes, sah, de ole madam is ’tire.”

“Is she asleep, do you think?”

“Oh, yes, young marse—soun’.”

“Then I can go in and look at her without disturbing her,” said the young man, rising to pass into the other room.

“No, yo’ can’t, young marse! No, yo’ can’t, indeed, sah! Set down an’ rest yo’se’f!” exclaimed the woman.

Harcourt dropped into his seat. A new fear seized him.

“What do you mean?” he demanded. “You say that she is well, you say that she is sound asleep! Do you mean—do you mean——”

“I mean yight wot I say, nuffin besides. De ole madam is asleep in her comfortable bed, but it ain’t in dis mis’ble log house; it’s in de big house wot used to was her berry own,” Martha explained, in breathless haste.

Harcourt threw himself back on his chair with a sigh of relief, and then said:

“I don’t understand you. You mean to say that your mistress is staying at Lone Lodge?”

“Dat’s wot I mean to say, young marse.”

“But still I don’t understand, how she should be there.”

“I know yo’ don’t, young marse; but now ef yer let me get yer some water to wash dat dere brack ingyne smut often yo’ face, an’ make yo’se’f comfor’able w’ile I hangs on a kittle an’ get yo’ some supper, den I’ll tell yo’ all about it,” said Martha. And she got up and filled two large pitchers, one with hot water from a pot that stood on the hearth, and one with cold water from a pail on the shelf, and took both into the adjoining room, which had once been her mistress’.

Harcourt not unwillingly followed her, deferring his interest until after he had finished his simple toilet.

“I’s got a heap to tell yo’, young marse, an’ dat’s de trufe; but I kin tell it to yo’ w’ile yo’ eatin’ yo’ supper,” said Martha, as she laid some clean, coarse towels on the rough washtable.

“Now I’s gwine to hurry up dat supper,” she added, as she left the room.

I don’t know how it is, but the negroes of Maryland and Virginia, no matter how poor they may be in all other respects, always, or nearly always, contrive to have “something good to eat in the house.”

When Harcourt had thoroughly washed and combed himself, and changed all his clothes from the resources of his carpetbag, he went into the kitchen, to find a substantial supper laid on the neat table, and a pot of fragrant tea steaming on the hearth.

“I ’pared it all yere, young marse, ’caze I didn’t want to ’sturb yo’ w’ile yo’ was washin’ an’ dressin’, nor likewise to keep yo’ waitin’ arter yo’ got t’rough. Now it’s all yeddy fo’ yo’.”

Harcourt sat down to tea, home-made bread, sweet butter, new-laid eggs and fried rashers of bacon. And if he did not do honor to Martha’s cooking it was because his appetite was not yet good, and not because the supper was plain, as the poor woman insisted that it was, with many apologies.

“See, ef I’d knowed yo’ was comin’, young marster, I’d had some hot yoles an’ fried chicken, an’ cakes an’ ’serves; but yo’ tak’ me so unawares,” she said, as she removed the dishes and cleared the table.

“Indeed. I have had all I want, Martha, except the news you promised to tell me, and I am ready for that now.”

“All yight, young marster. Yo’ draw yo’ cha’ up to de fire, an’ soon’s ebber I fole up dis tablecloff I come an’ sit down on dat little cricket an’ tell yo’ all about it. I’s got heaps to tell yo’, an’ dat’s de trufe,” said Martha, completing her last act in setting the place in order.

Then she drew a small bench—called in her parlance a cricket, probably because of its being an humble little chimney-corner seat, and began her story.

“Yo’ know dat time w’en ole mist’ess went sudden to de city?”

“Yes,” sighed Harcourt.

“Well, she nebber tell me wot took her off so sudden. Said she’d tell me w’en she got back. But, Lor’!”

“What?”

“W’y, ’fo’ she were ready to come back, my po’ ole man—po’ Moses—tak’ sick; he did, my po’ ole man did; an’ w’en he t’ought he was goin’ to die he got a letter writ to ole mist’ess to come home, ’caze he had somefin mighty pa’tickler to ’fess to her ’fo’ he went. Yo’ heerd all ’bout my po’ ole man goin’ to glory, o’ coorse, young marster?”

“No,” Harcourt replied, with a twinge of compunction, for he had forgotten even to inquire after faithful old Moses, although he might have missed him from the cabin. “I am very sorry to hear of your loss, Martha; very sorry indeed.”

“An’ yo’ nebber year ’bout it ’fo’, young marse?”

“Never.”

“Now, see dat, now. W’ere yo’ been all dis time, not to year ’bout it, young marse? But dere, I know yo’ been off to collidge, ’way f’om eberybody, ’cept ’twas books an’ sich. An’ nobody to yite to yo’, ’cept ’twas ole mist’ess, an’ she not capable of yitin’ eber since my po’ ole man die. So ’ow could she tell yo’?”

“Stop!” exclaimed Harcourt, again alarmed and mystified. “Just now you said that your mistress was well. Now you say that she was incapable of writing to me. How is this?”

“Young marse, she is as well—de ole madam is—as any ageable ole lady ob her time ob life can be in body healf; but she can’t settle down her min’ on to yitin’; no, she can’t—de ole madam can’t. But she’s well—well an’ likewise happy; happier now ’an’ she hab been since de ole marse fell in battle—de ole madam is. Yes, sah!”

“Happier! Thank heaven! But how and why should she be happier, or happy at all—the poor mother?” inquired Harcourt, more and more bewildered.

“Now, young marse, if yo’ will hab patience, an’ let me tell yo’ a straight story, I’ll tell it, an’ no lie; but doane yo’ jump or ’xclaim, or yo’ll be sure to put me out.”

“Very well; very well, Martha. Pray go on.”

“Well, den, de ole madam, w’en she were wrote for by Miss Marg’et up to de big house, she come yight down, she did—de ole mist’ess did—by de night train, so she ’ribed at Logwood in de dark, lonesome hours arter midnight, an’ got yere jus’ ’fo’ day, de ole madam did, mos’ we’ out.”

“Poor, dear mother! At her age, too!”

“Yes, at her age, too. It’s de trufe. Well, as my po’ ole man was asleep jus’ den, an’ we didn’t wan’ to wake him, fo’ fear it would shorten ob his days—hours, I mean—I ’suaded ob de ole madam to go to bed, an’ I gib her a cup o’ tea, wid furty drops ob lodomy in it—yes, sah, did—an’ I knowed wot I was a-doin’ ob, fo’ she was dat we’ out, an’ same time dat ’cited, I knowed ef she didn’t go to sleep yight off, somefin would happen to her.”

“Martha!” Harcourt exclaimed, “it was a hazardous thing to do, without the doctor’s orders.”

“Dere want no doctor in yeach, an’ de case was immigrent. ’Sides w’ich, I knowed wot to do my ownse’f, an’ I did it. De ole madam didn’t train me in nussin’ not fo’ nuffin—de ole madam didn’t, ’deed didn’t she. An’ I gib her de sleepin’ stuff on de sly, unbeknowed to herse’f, I did. An’ de ole mist’ess she took it, an’ went to sleep, an’ slep’ like a angel, she did, de ole mist’ess did, tell two o’clock in de arternoon. My po’ ole man he woke up fus’, my po’ ole man did, and he ’quired ’bout de ole mist’ess, an’ w’en he yeared as she were in de house he were satisfied, my po’ ole man were; an’ he waited patient till she wake up, an’ had her breakfas’, my po’ ole man did. Young marse, if ebber Marfar Mungumbry go to de dark worl’, it’ll be all along ob pious lyin’,” suddenly exclaimed the woman, interrupting her story.

“How so?” inquired Harcourt.

“’Caze I had to lie yight an’ lef’ dat day.”

“But why?”

“To keep dem two po’ souls quiet. W’en de ole mist’ess wake up, she say, she do, she say:

“‘Is Moses ’wake yet?’

“An’ I answer an’ say, I do:

“‘No, ole mist’ess, my po’ ole man is soun’ ’sleep.’

“An’ dat were lie de fus’. An’ den I say:

“‘I yeckon by de time yo’ get dress an’ get yo’ breakfas’, my po’ ole man will youse up.’

“Den I jus’ slip ’way one minute to see how my po’ ole man was gettin’ on. An’ dere he was moanin’ to hisse’f, an’ gettin’ berry impatient at long las’, an’ sayin’, as soon as ebber he see me:

“‘Is she ’wake yet? Oh, is she ’wake yet?’

“An’ I say:

“‘No; she soun’ ’sleep.’

“’Caze yo’ see, young marster, I wanted de ole mist’ess to get a comfor’able breakfas’ fo’ gwine frough any tryin’ time, long ob my po’ ole man. An’ dat was lie de frurd. An’ so I kep’ on gwine f’om one to tudder, lyin’ fas’ as a horse could trot, ’til ole mist’ess was dress’ an’ had her breakfas’ good.”

“Well? And then?” demanded Harcourt.

“Den I tole her as my po’ ole man was woke up, an’ she went in to see him. An’ w’en she see how low he were she look mighty ’stress, an’ she say—de ole madam say:

“‘Moses,’ she say, ‘I’m berry sorry to see yo’ sick.’

“An’ she set down by his bed an’ put her han’ on his fo’head. An’ he say—my po’ ole man say:

“‘Mist’ess, I ain’t wurvy fo’ yo’ to care ’bout me.’

“Den he say to me, he say:

“‘Marffy, chile, yo’ go ’way. I got somefin to say to de madam w’ich I mus’ say to herse’f alone.’

“So, young marse, I went out ob de room, an’ lef’ de ole mist’ess settin’ by my ole man, wid her deliky han’ on his fo’head. An’ I went, an’ ’gan fo’ to make up de ole madam’s bed, an’ put her yoom to yights. An’ all de time I was a-doin’ ob it I yeard de mummerin’ ob deir woices in de yudder yoom, but couldn’ year wot dey was a-sayin’. An’ sometimes I yeerd a moan, but didn’t dare fo’ to ’trude ’fo’ I was called. An’ arter I had done de ole madam’s yoom I went an’ wash up all de breakfas’ t’ings an’ clean up de kitchen. ’Deed, by dat time, I frought it weer time fo’ dem to call me in, ’specially as I didn’t year no mo’ talkin’. W’en I were done cleanin’ up I went close to de do’ an’ listened, but couldn’ year nuffin, but ebery little while a moan, like some one in deep ’stress. Well, young marse, I waited ebber so long, an’ as nuffin could be yeard but dat moanin’, moanin’, I got ’larmed, an’ I jus’ peeped in’ an’ den I went in——”

Here suddenly the poor woman broke into a storm of sobs and tears, throwing her apron over her head, and rocking herself to and fro.

Harcourt did not attempt to comfort her. He did not know how. He could only say:

“I am very sorry for you, Martha—very sorry.”

“’Tain’t no use, young marster,” she said, as soon as she had recovered her voice amid subsiding sobs and tears. “’Tain’t a bit ob use! Me cryin’ nor yo’ bein’ sorry; not a bit ob use in dis worl’. ’Twon’t change nuffin as is past an’ gone. Dere, I’s done now,” she added, wiping her eyes with her checked apron. “An’ now I’ll tell yo’ wot I foun’ w’en I went in dat yoom.”

“Don’t hurry or distress yourself, Martha,” said Harcourt kindly.

“I mought’s well tell, an’ be done wiv it. Well, young marse, w’en I went inter dat yoom I foun’ ole mist’ess kneel in’ down on he flo’ by de side ob de bed, wiv her head bowed down on de quilt, an’—an’—an’ my po’ ole man—dead!”

Another wild burst of sobs and tears interrupted the narrative.

Harcourt could only repeat the words that rose sincerely from his heart:

“I am very, very sorry for you, poor, dear Martha.”

“Dere, I didn’t fink as I was gwine to ’ave so bad as dis. I didn’, fo’ a fac’. It ain’t no use, I know, but I can’t help ob it, young marse. I can’t, indeed,” she said.

“I know it, poor soul. Don’t try to tell me any more to-night,” said Harcourt.

“Oh, but I mus’. Young marse, it were de ole madam wat was moanin’. My po’ ole man—bress his heart!—were pas’ all dat. He were layin’ dere, peaceable as a sleepin’ baby. I heaved a prayer up to de Lord, an’ den I jus’ kiss my po’ ole man, I did, an’ den I took hol’ ob de mist’ess’ han’, I did, an’ she a-moanin’ low, an’ lif’ her up an’ sipport her wiv bofe arms, an’ lead her out inter her own yoom, an’ set her down in her own cha’, an’ she a-moanin’ an’ a-moanin’. I couldn’ speak, young marse; not den I couldn’.”

“I can well believe it,” said Harcourt.

“No, I couldn’t say nuffin. I could on’y keep on heavin’ prayers out’n my heart up to de Lord. But de ole madam, she speak fus’. I doane b’liebe she knowed as my po’ ole man was gone, ’caze she said, my ole mist’ess, she said, wiv her eyes up:

“‘Oh, de disg’ace, Marfar! Oh, de disg’ace as has fall on me in my ole age. I’s bore sorrow an’ poverty an’ bereabement wivout murmurin’, but dis is wuss dan all de res’. Oh, de disg’ace! disg’ace!’”

Harcourt turned very pale. What was this that his mother had heard from her dying servant? Was it—could it be that the old man had become acquainted with the secret of the Isle of Storms? And how could this have happened except through the treachery of Hanson?

“What,” he faltered, “what was this secret Moses told my mother that caused her such anguish?”

“She nebber tole me, young marse, an’ I had too much ’spec’ fo’ her to ax questions.”

Harcourt wrung his hands together as they lay on his knees, and set his teeth to keep down, if possible, all utterance of the agony that tortured his heart. The next words of the woman reassured him:

“No, she nebber give no word, de ole mist’ess didn’t, ob what de trubble yeally was. But she kept on sayin’:

“‘Oh, de disg’ace! de disg’ace! Wot will my son say if he year ob it? Wot will my high-speeryitted, hono’ble Will say to dis dishonor as has fall on us? Wot will he say? Oh, I hope he will nebber, nebber year ob it!’”

“So,” thought Harcourt, with a sigh of relief, “it is not the secret of the Crest House suicide that has been told my mother. But what can it be? What disgrace, in heaven’s name, could have come to us?”

“So she kep’ on moanin’ an’ moanin’, ’til at las’ she seem to take frought, an’ she say, my ole mist’ess say:

“‘Po’ ole Moses, he meant well; he did it all fo’ me! Go to him, Marfar, an’ tell him dat I freely fo’gibs him, for I do.’

“Dat was de way, young marse, as I knowed she didn’t know as my po’ ole man were gone. Yo’ see, arter hearin’ the wuss she mus’ a drop yight down by de bed w’ere I foun’ her, an’ kivered up her head, an’ never moved ’til I come an’ helped her up an’ took her out, an’ so she nebber knowed w’en my po’ ole angel breaved his las’. He mus’ ’a’ ’parted berry peaceful.”

Martha stopped, wiped away a few quiet tears, and resumed:

“I ’suaded my ole mist’ess to lay down, an’ den I made her a cup o’ tea an’ gib her, an’ at las’ I went to my po’ ole man to set long ob him an’ hab my cry out, ’caze I was fillin’ up an’ chokin’ all de time de ole madam was talkin’ an’ moanin’, an’ I didn’t wan’ to let out ’fo’ her. Dat arternoon I did my las’ dooty to my po’ ole man. Dere wa’n’t nobody to do nuffin dat day but me. An’ ef dere’d bin frousan’s, I wouldn’ ’a’ let anybody tech my po’ ole angel but me—no, sah, I wouldn’—not ’til de man wid de coffin came, I wouldn’.”

“And you were alone there with your mistress, without any help?”

“Yes, sah, ’til Mr. Silence Wyn’op come. Some ob dem w’ite folks used to come ebery day. Dey was moughty good to me w’ile my po’ ole man was sick, yit’ letters fo’ me an’ sent good tings to eat fo’ him. Yes, dey did. Dat ebenin’ Mr. Silence he come, an’ w’en he fin’ how it all was yere, he tuk all de ’sponsibility on hisse’f, young Mr. Silence did, an’ had eberyting ’tended to, he did—young Mr. Silence did—an’ my po’ ole angel had as ’spectable a funeral as I could wish—yes, he had. An’ he’s gone to glory, ’caze he were a good angel, an’ nebber frought ’bout hisse’f—no, sah, he didn’t. An’ he’s gone to glory, an’ I won’t be long ’hind him—dat’s wot comfo’ts me mos’ ob all.”

“And your mistress?” inquired Harcourt.

“Oh, w’en I tell her my po ’ole man were gone she were berry sorry—berry sorry fo’ him an’ berry sorry fo’ me, an’ moughty good she was to me; but she nebber lef’ her bed, de ole madam didn’. Eben fo’ de fun’al she seem perfec’ly ’x’austed, an’ she did nuffin but moan an’ groan, an’ mutter ’bout disg’ace.”

“Yet you told me in the beginning of your talk about her that she was happier now than she had been since the death of my father.”

“Yes, young marster. I ’xplain ’bout dat p’esently. But dat time w’en she lay in bed, moanin’ an’ groanin’ was las’ November, an’ dis is March. Dat time she did nuffin but griebe ober wot she called disg’ace an’ shame, ’til I frought she would ’a’ died, or loss her min’, I did.”

“And she never dropped a hint of the nature of the secret she had heard from Moses?”

“Nebber, young marse, f’om dat day to dis.”

“Was it——” slowly began Harcourt, as his mind doubtfully and painfully reverted to the Crest House tragedy—“was it anything of recent occurrence?”

“Currants? No, young marse, ’twan’t nuffin ’bout no currants, do’ I did take all I wanted fo’ de ole madam’s jelly, out’n our ole garden up to de big house, it was wid de w’ite people’s leabe; no, sah, ’twan’t de currants.”

“You mistake me; I mean to ask if this secret, told by Moses to his mistress, was about anything that happened lately—within the last six months, for instance?”

“Lor’, no, young marse! but years an’ years ago, f’om de time de ole house an’ furnitur’ was sold ober ole mist’ess’s head to dese p’esents.”

“What could it have been, this disgrace to the family, unknown to my mother until it was revealed by Moses? Have you no idea at all of its nature, Martha?”

“Well, young marse, I has had my ’spicions, an’ I’s had ’em f’om de fus’, an’ dey’s growed stronger since my po’ ole man went to glory.”

“What were your suspicions?”

“Well, young marse, dough I nebber breaved dem to no libin’ soul, I do yeckon as I ought fo’ to tell yo’, seein’ as yo’ is de head ob de family like, arter de ole madam.”

“Yes, it is certainly your duty to let me know the truth about this alleged disgrace,” said Harcourt solemnly.

“Now, young marse,” exclaimed Martha, firing up, “I wan’ yo’ to understan’ one fing, fus’ off, as I nebber said it were no disg’ace, an’ nebber ’liebed it to be no disg’ace, an’ no sin, an’ no shame, an’ no yong done to nobody in dis worl’. Dat’s wot I nebber b’liebes it not to be.”

“Then why should it have distressed my mother and hurt poor, dear old Moses’ conscience?”

“W’y, Lor’, Marster Will! Yo’ been to collidge, an’ doane know how some people’s conshence—an’ good people’s conshence—ain’t got yight good sense. Some people’s conshence won’t let ’em go to a dancin’ party, an’ some odder people’s conshence won’t let ’em eat meat o’ Fyday! An’ so it go. Now, my po’ ole man’s conshence had a sort o’ saf’enin’ ob de brain—it was dat tender. He would nebber hab done wot he did, dough it were not yong, ’cept as he ’sidered ob it, on’y fo’ de ole madam’s sake. Ah! he would ’a’ gibben his soul as well as his body fo’ de ole mist’ess’s sake, wot he nebber would ’a’ done to save me f’om starvin’—dough I ’peat, it was no yong, ’cept as his saf’ conshence ’sidered it. He nebber did no yong in al de days ob his life. He were too good fo’ dis worl’, my po’ ole man were, bress his heart,” said Martha, again wiping away the intrusive tears.

“Yes, Moses was a good man, one of the very best I ever knew in all my life, but still that which he did, whatever it was, was not only wrong in his eyes, but in those of his mistress, else she could not have been so distressed,” said Harcourt.

“Oh, yes, she could, young marse. It was her pwide, an’ her pwide had no mo’ sense in it dan my ole man’s conshence. Her pwide had saf’enin’ ob de brain wus’n his conshence!”

“Well, but what was it? What did Moses do?” rather impatiently demanded Harcourt.

“I gwine tell yo’, young marse, yight now. Yo’ know w’en we-dem all lib up in de big house in de good ole time ’fo’ de wah?”

“I should think so.”

“Yo’ was a b’y den, but still yo’ muss’ ’member how Moses were dinin’-yoom sarvint, an’ how he had charge ob all de silber in de house.”

“Oh, yes.”

“Berry well, den. An’ yo’ ’members de time w’en de sale were?”

“I was in college then, and knew nothing of it until I came home, to find my mother turned out of house and home, and having her only shelter in this poor hut.”

“So yo’ was, young marse, an’ so yo’ did. Well, jus’ ’fo’ de crash come, an’ w’en we fus’ knowed it was comin’, wot yo’ fink my po’ ole man did?”

“I don’t know. What did he do?”

“In de dead o’ night he tuk all ob de silberware—de big tea tray an’ teapot an’ coffee pot, an’ de urn an’ de sugar bowl, an’ de punch bowl, an’ tankards, an’ goblets, an’ spoons an’ forks, an’ sugar tongs, an’ ebery singly fing, an’ totes ’em up de hill inter de big woods, far f’om any yoad or paff, an’ buries ob ’em in a deep hole he had dug, an’ covers ob ’em up, an’ covers de top ob de place wid dried leabes an’ sticks an’ fings, to ’ceal de new turned up yeth. Dere! dat’s wot my ole man did, an’ he did it fo’ de ole mist’ess, not fo’ hisse’f.”

“Then you must have known of this act as well as suspected it.”

“Look yere, young marse, I knowed ’bout dat buried silber all de time, not as my ole man eber tol’ me, fo’ he didn’t; but I foun’ out—nebber min’ how, at present, but I foun’ out. But, Lor’, sah, I nebber, nebber frought as dat was wot de po’ ole man had on his conshence. I didn’t ’sider dat to ’mount to anyfing. No, sah. It’s on’y lately as I knowed it was nuffin ’tall but de buried silber.”

“At the sale was no inquiry made for the silver?”

“Oh, yes, marse. One ob de men did ’quire fo’ it, an’ sent fo’ my ole man to gib ’count ob it, an’ dat stranger f’om de Norf he say to my ole man:

“‘Is yo’ de butler?’

“An’ my ole man answer back:

“‘No, sah, my name ain’t Butler, nor likewise nuffin else but Moses Mungumbry, sah.’

“Den dat w’ite man f’om de Norf he laugh out loud, an’ say:

“‘Well, yo’ de man-servant ob de house, anyway. Now, w’ere’s de silber?’

“Den my ole man tell a pious frode, he did, fo’ ole mist’ess’s sake, an’ say, he say:

“‘De silber, sah? De silber hab gone de way ob all flesh, an’ been sol’ off little by little, long ago—long ’fo’ de morgidge gib a lean on to de lan’. Yes, sah, it went to pay debts, an’ to buy sugar an’ tea an’ sperrets fo’ de ole madam.’”

“Where was your mistress when this conversation took place?”

“Her had come to dis cabin airley in de mornin’, ’fo’ dem furriners f’om de Norf come, her had. She didn’t wan’ to see ’em.”

“Oh, yes—of course. I might have known she was not there. She might have been questioned, and she would surely have contradicted Moses, and insisted on the silver being produced.”

“Oh, yes; so she would. Dem w’ite men f’om de Norf knowed dat, too, ’caze dey ax w’ere she war; an’ my ole man sweared his soul to Satan as she had gone to Washington city on a visit to de Presiden’. An’ den dey tackled me, an’ cross question ob me like a murder trial. But dey didn’ get nuffin out’n me—no, sah! I were a better han’ at pi’us frodes dan my ole man, an’ I sweared my soul to partition as all de silber had been sol’ fo’ ’visions in de wah, an’ I didn’ fink no harm o’ tellin’ pi’us frodes to dem heethun fo’ my ole mist’ess’s sake. My conshence has got good sense, it has. Well, dey s’arched up, an’ dey s’arched down, but, Lor’, dey couldn’ fin’ nuffin. An’ wa’n’t I glad! An’ me an’ my ole man look at one anodder, an’ he look werry onhappy. His conshence wa’n’t sensible.”

Harcourt said nothing to try to enlighten Martha’s mind on this subject. He knew it would be of no earthly use.

After a pause Martha resumed:

“Well, sah, w’en eberyt’ing got settled down, an’ de Wyn’ops bought de ole house an’ lan’, an’ mos’ ob de furnitur’, an’ we was tryin’ to make ole mist’ess comfo’table in de cabin——”

“Why didn’t you get somebody to write to me?” Harcourt interrupted.

“Ole mist’ess wouldn’ year to it. She say, ole mist’ess say, yo’ wasn’ to know nuffin ’tall ’bout de sale, fear yo’d come yunnin’ yere ’fo’ yo’ tarm was out. She yighted letters to yo’ ebery week, didn’t she? I knowed she sent letters to de pos’ office at Logwood ebery free four days by my ole man.”

“Yes, she wrote to me, but she never told me of the change; nor did I hear of it until I came home that summer vacation. But go on.”

“I was gwine to say, young marse, ef it hadn’t been fo’ dat hidden silber, ole mist’ess would ’a’ suffered want. Yes, sah, she would! My po’ ole man were ’ployed cart drivin’ fo’ de Wyn’ops, but dough dey paid well, de work wa’n’t stiddy, an’ it wa’n’t ’nough to keep ole mist’ess in comforts. So de silber was took out’n its hole, little by little, in de dead ob night, an’ sol’ to buy ’visions.”

“How did Moses manage to dispose of it without detection?”