She melted again into a long, loud wail, and he proposed nervously that they should walk into the gardens near by. He said little, and that contemptuously, tossing his cane at the birds, much interested in a statue, delighted with the visitors beneath the maroon trees; and she followed him here and there, very weak, for she had eaten no breakfast, and not so deceived but she knew that he labored to wound her. He asked her into a cafe, cavalierly, and was very careful to make display of his napoleons as he paid. He did not invite her, but she followed him to his hotel again, and here, as if with terrible ennui, he threw himself upon his bed and feigned to sleep, while she crouched at his table and wrote him a contrite letter. It was sweetly and simply worded, and asked that he should let her return to him for his few remaining days in Paris. If he could not grant so much, might she speak to him in the street; come to see him sometimes, if only to be reviled; love him, though she could not hope to be loved? She gave him this note with her face turned away, and faltered the request that he would think ere he replied, and hurried to the balcony without, that she might not trouble him with the presence of her sorrow.

How the street beneath her, into which she looked, had changed since the nights when they talked together upon this balcony! There was bright sunshine, but it fell leeringly, not laughingly, upon the columns of the Odean Theatre, upon the crowds on the Boulevard, upon the decrepit baths of Julian, upon the far heights of Belleville, upon her more cheerlessly than upon all.

She listened timorously for his word of recall. She wondered if he were not writing a reply. Yes, that was his manner; he was cold and sharp of speech, but he was an artist with his pen. She thought that her long patience had moved him. Perhaps she should be all forgiven. Aye! they should dwell together a few days longer. It was a dismal thought that it must be for a few days, yet that would be some respite, and then they could part friends; though her heart so clung to his that a parting should rend it from her, she wanted to live over their brief happiness again.

"Oh!" said Suzette, in the end, laying her cheek upon the cold iron of the balcony, "I wish I had died at my father's home of pining for something to love rather than to have loved thus truly, and have it accounted my shame. If I were married to this man I could not be his fonder wife; but because I am not he despises me. All day I have crawled in the dust; I have made myself cheap in his eyes. If I were prouder he might not love me more, but his respect would be something."

She rallied and took heart. Pride is the immortal part of woman. With a brighter eye she entered the room. Her letter, blotted with tears, lay crumpled and torn upon the floor at his bedside, and he, with his face to the wall, was snoring sonorously.

"Ralph Flare," cried Suzette, "arise! that letter is the last olive branch you shall ever see in my hand; adieu!"

He opened his eyes yawningly. Suzette, with trembling lips and nostrils, clasped the door-knob. It shut behind her with a shock. Her feet were quick upon the stairs; he pursued her like one suddenly gone mad, and called her back with something between a moan and a howl.

"Do not go away, Suzette," he cried; "I only jested. I meant this morning to search you out and beg you to come back. I would not lose you for France—for the world. Be not rash or retaliatory! become not the companion of this Frenchman who has divided us. We will commence again. I have tested your fidelity. You shall have all the liberty that you need, everything that I have; say to me, sweetheart, that you will stay!"

For a moment her bright eyes were scintillant with wrath and indignation. He who had racked her all day for his pleasure was bound and prostrate now. Should she not do as much for her revenge?

"I have no other friend now," he pleaded; "my nights have been sleepless, solitary. In the days I have drunk deeply, squandered my money, tried all dissipations, and proved them disappointments. If you leave me I swear that I will plague myself and you."

"Oh! Ralph," said Suzette, "I do not wonder at the artfulness of women after this day's lesson. Something impels me to return your cruelty; it is a bad impulse, and I shall disobey it. I thank God, my baby, that I cannot do as you have done to me."

She wept again for the last time, but he kissed her tears away, and wondered where the great shame lay, upon that child or upon him?



PART VI.

DESERTION.

When the last fresh passion was over, Suzette, whose face had grown purer and sadder, roused Ralph Flare to his more legitimate ambition. "My child," she said, "if you will work in the gallery every day I will sew in one of the great magasans."

To see that he commenced fairly, she went with him into the Louvre, and he selected a fine Rembrandt—an old man, bearded and scarred, massively characterized, and clothed in magic light and shadow.

As Ralph stood at his easel, meditating the master, Suzette now fluttered around him, now ran off to the far end of the long hall, where he could see her in miniature, the sweetest portrait in France. At last he was really absorbed, and she went into the city to fulfil her promise. She was nimble of finger, and though the work distressed her at first, she thought of his applause, and persevered.

Their method was the marvel of the unimaginative Terrapin, who made some philosophic comments upon the "spooney" socially considered, and cut their acquaintance.

They breakfasted at the cremery at seven o'clock with the ouvriers, and dined at one of Duvall's bouillon establishments. Suzette found the work easier as she progressed. She was finally promoted to the place of coupeur, or cutter, and had the superintendence of a work-room, where she made four francs a day, and so paid all her expenses. At the end of the second month he took the money which he otherwise would have required for board, and bought her a watch and chain at the Palais Royale. At the same time he put the finishing touch to his picture, and when hung upon his wall, between their photographs, Suzette danced before it, and took half the credit upon herself.

Foolish Suzette! she did not know how that old man was her most dangerous rival. He had done what no beautiful woman in France could do—weakened her grasp upon Ralph Flare's heart. For now Ralph's old enthusiasm for his profession reasserted itself. It was his first and deepest love after all.

"My baby," he said one night, "there was a great artist named Raphael—and he had a little mistress, whom I don't think a whit prettier than mine. She was called the Fornarina, just as you may be called the Coutouriere, and he painted her portrait in the characters of saints and of the Virgin. She will be remembered a thousand years, because Raphael so loved and painted her. But he was not a great artist only because he loved the Fornarina. He had something that he loved better, and so have I."

"One more beloved than Suzette?" she cried.

"Yes! it is art. I loved you more than my art before; but I am going back to my first love."

Suzette tossed her head and said that she could never be jealous of a picture, and went her way with a simple faith and toiled; and as she toiled the more, so grew her love the purer and her content the more equal. She was not the aerial thing she had been. Retaining her elasticity of spirit, she was less volatile, more silent, more careful, more anxious.

It is wiser, not happier, to reach that estate called thought; for now she asked herself very often how long this chapter of her life would last. Must the time come when he must leave her forever? She thought it the bitterest of all to part as they had done before, with anger; but any parting must be agony where she had loved so well. As he lay sleeping, he never knew what tears of midnight were plashing upon his face. He could not see how her little heart was bleeding as it throbbed. Yet she went right on, though sometimes the tears blinded her, till she could not see her needle; but the consciousness that this love and labor had made her life more sanctified was, in some sort, compensation.

One Sunday she rose before Ralph, and thinking that she was unobserved, stole out of the hotel and up the Boulevard. He followed her, suspiciously. She crossed the Place de la Sorbonne, turned the transept of the Pantheon, and entered the old church of St. Etienne du Mont.

It was early mass. The tapers which have been burning five hundred years glistened upon the tomb of the holy St. Genevieve. Here and there old women and girls were kneeling in the chapels, whispering their sins into the ears of invisible priests. And beneath the delicate tracery of screen and staircase, and the gloriously-painted windows, and the image of Jesus crucified looking down upon all, some groups of poor people were murmuring their prayers and making the sign of the cross.

Ralph entered by a door in the choir. He saw Suzette stand pallidly beside the holy water, and when she had touched it with the tips of her fingers, and made the usual rites, she staggered, as if in shame, to a remote chair, and kneeling down covered her face with her missal. Now and then the organ boomed out. The censers were swung aloft, dispensing their perfumes, and all the people made obeisance. Ralph did not know what it all meant. He only saw his little girl penitent and in prayer, and he knew that she was carrying her sin and his to the feet of the Eternal Mercy.

He feigned sleep in the same way each Sunday succeeding, and she disappeared as before. After a while she spoke of her family, and wondered if her father would forgive her. She would not have forgiven him three months ago, but was quite humble now.

She sent her photograph to the old man, and a letter came back, the first she had received for two years.

She felt unwilling, also, to receive further gifts or support from Ralph. If I were his wife, she said, it might be well, but since it is not so, I must not be dependent.

Foolish Suzette again! She did not know that men love best where they most protect. The wife who comes with a dower may climb as high as her husband's pocket, but seldom lies snugly at his heart. Her changed conduct did not draw him closer to her. He felt uneasy and unworthy. He missed the artfulness which had been so winning. He had jealousies no longer to keep his passion quick, for he could not doubt her devotion. There was nothing to lack in Suzette, and that was a fault. She had become modest, docile, truthful, grave. A noble man might have appreciated her the better. Ralph Flare was a representative man, and he did not.

His friends in America thought his copy from Rembrandt wonderful. Their flattery made his ambition glow and flame. His mother, whose woman's instinct divined the cause of his delay in Paris, sent him a pleading letter to go southward; and thus reprimanded, praised, rewarded, what was he to do?

He resolved to leave France—and without Suzette!

He had not courage to tell her that the separation was final. He spoke of an excursion merely, and took but a handful of baggage. She had doubts that were like deaths to her; but she believed him, and after a feverish night went with him in the morning to the train. He was to write every day.

Would she take money?

"No."

But she might have unexpected wants—sickness, accident, charity?

"If so," she said trustfully, "would not her boy come back?"

He had just time to buy his ticket and gain the platform. He folded her in his arms, and exchanged one long, sobbing kiss. It seemed to Ralph Flare that the sound of that kiss was like a spell—the breaking of the pleasantest link in his life—the passing from sinfulness to a baser selfishness—the stamp and seal upon his bargain with ambition, whereby for the long future he was sold to the sorrow of avarice and the deceitfulness of fame.

There was a sharp whistle from the locomotive—who invented that whistle to pierce so many bosoms at parting?—the cars moved one by one till the last, in which he was seated, sprang forward with a jerk; and though she was quite blind, he saw her handkerchief waving till all had vanished, and he would have given the world to have shed one tear.

He has gone on into the free country, and to-night he will sleep under the shadow of the mountains.

She has turned back into the dark city, and she will not sleep at all in her far-up chamber.

It is only one heart crushed, and thousands that deserve more sympathy beat out every day. We only notice this one because it shall lie bleeding, and get no sympathy at all.



PART VII.

DISSOLVING VIEW.

That he might not meet with his own countrymen, Ralph halted at Milan, and in the great deserted gallery of the Brera went steadily to work. If, as it often happened, Suzette's pale face got between him and the canvas, he mentioned his own name and said "renown," and took a turn in the remote corridor where young Raphael's Sposializo hung opposite that marvel of Guercino's—poor Hagar and her boy Ishmael driven abroad. These adjuncts and the fiercer passion of self had their effect.

He never wrote to Suzette, but sent secretly for his baggage, and was well pleased with the consciousness that he could forget her. After three months he set out for Florence and studied the masterpieces of Andrea del Sarto, and tried his hand at the Flora of Titian.

He went into society somewhat, and was very much afraid his unworthy conduct in Paris might be bruited abroad. Indeed, he could hardly forgive himself the fondness he had known, and came to regard Suzette as a tolerably bad person, who had bewitched him. He burned all her letters, and a little lock of hair he had clipped while she was asleep once, and blotted the whole experience out of his diary. The next Sunday he went to hear the Rev. Mr. Hall preach, and felt quite consoled.

The summer fell upon Val d'Arno like the upsetting of a Tuscan Scaldino, and Ralph Flare regretfully took his departure northward. All the world was going to Paris—why not he? Was he afraid? Certainly not; it had been a great victory over temptation to stay away so long. He would carry out the triumph by braving a return.

In accordance with his principles of economy, he took a third-class ticket at Basle. He could so make better studies of passengers; for, somehow, your first-class people have not character faces. The only character you get out of them is the character of wine they consume.

He left the Alps behind him, and rolled all day through the prosaic plains of France; startling the pale little towns, down whose treeless streets the sun shone, oh! so drearily, and taking up boors and market-folks at every monastic station. There was a pretty young girl sitting beside Ralph in the afternoon, but he refused to talk to her, for he was schooling himself, and preferred to scan the features of an odd old couple who got in at Troyes.

They were two old people of the country, and they sat together in the descending shadows of the day, quite like in garb and feature, their chins a little peakish, and the hairs of both turning gray. The man was commonplace, as he leaned upon a staff, and between their feet were paniers of purchases they had been making, which the woman regarded indifferently, as if her heart reached farther than her eyes, and met some soft departed scene which she would have none other see.

"She has a good face," said Flare. "I wish she would keep there a moment more. By George, she looks like somebody I have known."

The old man nodded on his staff. The rumble of the carriages subdued to a lull all lesser talk or murmurs, and the sky afar off brought into sharp relief the two Gallic profiles, close together, as if they were used to reposing so; yet in the language of their deepening lines lay the stories of lives very, very wide apart.

"The old girl's face is soft," said Ralph Flare. "She has brightened many a bit of Belgian pike road, and the brown turban on her head is in clever contrast to the silver shimmer of her hairs. How anomalous are life and art! How unconscious is this old lady of the narrow escape she is making from perpetuation! Doubtless she works afield beside that old Jacques Bonhomme, and drinks sour wine or Normandy cider on Sundays. That may be the best fate of Suzette, but it must be an amply dry reformation for any little grisette to contemplate. For such prodigals going home there is no fatted calf slain. No fathers see them afar off and run to place the ring upon their fingers. They renounce precarious gayety for persistent slavery. The keen wit of the student is exchanged for the pipe and mug and dull oath of the boor. I wish every such girl back again to so sallow a fate, and pity her when she gets there."

And so, with much unconscious sentimentality, and the two old market people silent before him, Ralph Flare's eyes half closed also, and the lull of the wheels, the long lake streaks of the sedative skies, the coming of great shadows like compulsions to slumber, made his forehead fall and the world go up and down and darken.

It was the old woman who shook him from that repose; she only touched him, but her touch was like a lost sense restored. He thrilled and sat stock still, with her withered blue hand on his arm, and heard the pinched lips say, unclosing with a sort of quiver:

"Baby!"

He looked again, and seemed to himself to grow quite old as he looked, and he said,

"Enfant perdu!"

The turban kept its place, the peaked chin kept as peaked; there seemed even more silver in the smooth hair, and the old serge gown drooped as brownly; but the sweet old face grew soft as a widow's looking at the only portrait she guards, and a tear, like a drop of water exhumed, ran to the tip of her nostril.

"Suzette!" he said, "my early sin; do you come back as well with the turning of my hairs? Has the first passion a shadow long as forever? Why have we met?"

"Not of my seeking was this meeting, Ralph. Speak softly, for my husband sleeps, and he is old like thee and me. If my face is an accusation, let my lips be forgiveness. The love of you made my life dutiful; the loss of you saddened my days, but it was the sadness of religion! I sinned no more, and sought my father's fields, and delayed, with my hand purified by his blessing, the residue of his sands of life. I made my years good to my neighbors, the sick, the bereaved. I met the temptations of the young with a truer story than pleasure tells, and when I married it was with the prelude of my lost years related and forgiven. With children's faces the earnestness and beauty of life returned; for this, for more, for all, may your reward be bountiful!"

There is no curse like the dream of old age. Ralph Flare felt, with the sudden whitening of each separate hair, the sudden remembrance of each separate folly; and the moments of grief he had wrung from the little girl of the Quartier Latin revived like one's mean acts seen through others' eyes.

"Pardon you, child, Suzette?" he said; "to me you were more than I hoped, more than I wished. I asked your face only, and you gave me your heart. For the unfaithfulness, for the wrath, for the unmanliness, for the tyranny with which I treated you, my soul upbraids me."

"How thankful am I," she answered; "the terror to me was that you had learned in the Quartier lessons to make your after-life monotonous. I am happy."

Their hands met; to his gray beard fell the smile upon her mouth; they forget the Quartier Latin; they felt no love but forgiveness, which is the tenderest of emotions. The whistle blew shrilly; the train stopped; Ralph Flare awoke from sleep; but the old couple were gone.

He went to Paris, and, contrary to his purpose, inquired for her. She had been seen by none since his departure. He wrote to the Maire of her commune, and this was the reply:

"Ralph, Merci! Pardonne!

"SUZETTE."

He felt no loss. He felt softened toward her only; and he turned his back on the Quartier Latin with a man's easy satisfaction that he could forget.



THE PIGEON GIRL.

On the sloping market-place, In the village of Compeigne, Every Saturday her face, Like a Sunday, comes again; Daylight finds her in her seat, With her panier at her feet, Where her pigeons lie in pairs; Like their plumage gray her gown, To her sabots drooping down; And a kerchief, brightly brown, Binds her smooth, dark hairs.

All the buyers knew her well, And, perforce, her face must see, As a holy Raphael Lures us in a gallery; Round about the rustics gape, Drinking in her comely shape, And the housewives gently speak, When into her eyes they look, As within some holy book, And the gables, high and crook, Fling their sunshine on her cheek.

In her hands two milk-white doves, Happy in her lap to lie, Softly murmur of their loves, Envied by the passers-by; One by one their flight they take, Bought and cherished for her sake, Leaving so reluctantly; Till the shadows close approach, Fades the pageant, foot and coach, And the giants in the cloche Ring the noon for Picardie.

Round the village see her glide, With a slender sunbeam's pace! Mirrored in the Oise's tide, The gold-fish float upon her face; All the soldiers touch their caps; In the cafes quit their naps Garcon, guest, to wish her back; And the fat old beadles smile As she kneels along the aisle, Like Pucelle in other while, In the dim church of Saint Jacques.

Now she mounts her dappled ass— He well-pleased such friend to know— And right merrily they pass The armorial chateau; Down the long, straight paths they tread Till the forest, overhead, Whispers low its leafy love; In the archways' green caress Rides the wondrous dryadess— Thrills the grass beneath her press, And the blue-eyed sky above.

I have met her, o'er and o'er, As I strolled alone apart, By a lonely carrefour In the forest's tangled heart, Safe as any stag that bore Imprint of the Emperor; In the copse that round her grew Tiptoe the straight saplings stood, Peeped the wild boar's satyr brood, Like an arrow clove the wood The glad note of the cuckoo.

How I wished myself her friend! (So she wished that I were more) Jogging toward her journey's end At Saint Jean au Bois before, Where her father's acres fall Just without the abbey wall; By the cool well loiteringly The shaggy Norman horses stray, In the thatch the pigeons play, And the forest round alway Folds the hamlet, like a sea.

Far forgotten all the feud In my New World's childhood haunts, If my childhood she renewed In this pleasant nook of France; Might she make the blouse I wear, Welcome then her homely fare And her sensuous religion! To the market we should ride, In the Mass kneel side by side, Might I warm, each eventide, In my nest, my pretty pigeon.



THE DEAF MAN OF KENSINGTON.

A TALE OF AN OLD SUBURB.

* * * * *



CHAPTER I.

THE MURDER.

Between the Delaware River and Girard Avenue, which is the market street of the future, and east of Frankfort Road, lies Kensington, a respectable old district of the Quaker City, and occupying the same relation to it that Kensington in England does to London. Beyond both Kensingtons is a Richmond, but the English Richmond is a beauteous hill, with poetical recollections of Pope and Thomson, while our Richmond is the coal district of Philadelphia, flat to the foot and dingy to the eye.

Kensington, however, was once no faint miniature of the staid British suburb. The river bending to the eastward there conducts certain of the streets crookedly away from the rectangular Quaker demon who is ever seeking to square them. Along the water side, or near it, passes a sort of Quay Street, between ship-yards and fish-houses on the one side, and shops or small tenements on the other, and this street scarcely discloses the small monument on the site of the Treaty Tree, where William Penn in person satisfied the momentary expectations of his Indian subjects.

Nearly parallel to the water side street is another, wider and more aristocratic, and lined with many handsome dwellings of brick, or even brown-stone, where the successful shipbuilders, fishtakers, coal men, and professional classes have established themselves or their posterity. This street was once called Queen, afterward Richmond Street, and it is crossed by others, as Hanover, Marlborough, and Shackamaxon, which attest in their names the duration of royal and Indian traditions hereabout. Pleasant maple, sometimes sycamore and willow trees shade these old streets, and they are kept as clean as any in this ever-mopped and rinsed metropolis, while the society, though disengaged from the great city, had its better and worser class, and was fastidious about morals and behavior, and not disinclined to express its opinion.

One winter day in a certain year Kensington had a real sensation. The Delaware was frozen from shore to shore, and one could walk on the ice from Smith's to Treaty Island, and from Cooper's Point to the mouth of the Cohocksink. On the second afternoon of the great freeze fires were built on the river, and crowds assembled at certain smooth places to see great skaters like Colonel Page cut flourishes and show sly gallantry to the buxom housewives and grass widows of Kensington and the Jerseys. A few horses were driven on the ice, and hundreds of boys ran merrily with real sleighs crowded down with their friends. A fight or two was improvised, and unlicensed vendors set forth the bottle that inebriates. In the midst of the afternoon gayety a small boy, kneeling down to buckle up to a farther hole the straps on his guttered skates, saw just at his toe something like human hair. The small boy rose to his feet and stamped with all his might around that object, not in any apprehension but because small boys like to know; and when the ice had been well broken, kneeling down and pulling it out in pieces with his mitten, the small boy felt something cold and smooth, and then he poked his finger into a human eye. It was a dead man. No sooner had the urchin found this out than he bellowed out at the top of his voice, running and falling as he yelled: "Murder! Murder! Murder!"

From all parts of the ice, like flies chasing over a silver salver toward some sweet point of corruption, the hundreds and thousands swarmed at the news that a dead body had been found. When they arrived on the spot, spades, picks, and ice-hooks had been procured by those nearest shore, and the whole mystery brought from the depths of the river to the surface.

There lay together on the ice two men, apparently several days in the water, and with the usual look of drowned people of good condition—glassy and of fixed expression, as if in the moment of death a consenting grimness had stolen into their countenances, neither composed nor terrified.

The bodies had been already recognized when the main part of the crowd arrived. Kensington people, generally, knew them both.

"It's William Zane and his business partner, Sayler Rainey! They own one of the marine railways at Kensington. Come to think of it, I haven't seen them around for nearly a week, neighbor!" exclaimed an old man.

"It's a case of drowning, no doubt," spoke up a little fellow who did a river business in old chains and junk. "You see they had another ship-mending place on the island opposite Kinsington, and rowin' theirselves over was upset and never missed!"

"Quare enough too!" added a third party, "for yisterday I had a talk with young Andrew Zane, this one's son (touching the body with his foot), and Andrew said—a little pale I thought he was—says he, 'Pop's about.'"

Here a little buzz of mystery—so grateful to crowds which have come far over slippery surface and expect much—undulated to the outward boundaries. As the people moved the ice cracked like a cannon shot, and they dispersed like blackbirds, to rally soon again.

"Here's a doctor! Now we'll know about it! He's here!" was exclaimed by several, as an important little man was pushed along, and the thickest crowd gave him passage. The little man borrowed a boy's cap to kneel on, adjusted a sort of microscopic glass to his nose, as if plain eyes had no adequate use to this scientific necessity, and he called up two volunteers to turn the corpses over, keep back the throng, give him light, and add imposition to apprehension. Finally he stopped at a place in the garments of the principal of the twain. "Here is a hole," he exclaimed, "with burned woollen fibre about it, as if a pistol had been fired at close quarters. Draw back this woollen under-jacket! There—as I expected, gentlemen, is a pistol shot in the breast! What is the name of the person? Ah! thank you! Well, William Zane, gentlemen, was shot before he was drowned?"

The great crowd swayed and rushed forward again, and again the ice cracked like artillery. Before the multitude could swarm to the honey of a crime a second time, the news was dispersed that both of the drowned men had bullet wounds in their bodies, and both had been undoubtedly murdered. Some supposed it was the work of river pirates; others a private revenge, perpetrated by some following boat's party in the darkness of night. But more than one person piped shrilly ere the people wearily scattered in the dusk for their homes on the two shores of the river: "How did it happen that young Zane, the old un's son, said yisterday that his daddy was about, when he's been frozen in at least three days?"



CHAPTER II.

THE FLIGHT.

A handsome residence on the south side of Queen Street had been the home of the prosperous ship-carpenter, William Zane. His name was on the door on a silver plate. As the evening deepened and the news spread, the bell was pulled so often that it aided the universal alarm following a crime, and a crowd of people, reinforced by others as fast as it thinned out, kept up the watch on ever-recurring friends, coroner's officers and newspaper reporters, as they ascended the steps, looked grave, made inquiries, and returned to dispense their information.

But there was very little indignation, for Zane had been an insanely passionate man, rather hard and exacting, and had he been found dead alone anywhere it would probably have been said at once that he brought it on himself. His partner, Rainey, however, had conducted himself so negatively and mildly, and was of such general estimation, that the murder of the senior member of the film took on some unusual public sympathy from the reflected sorrow for his fellow-victim. The latter had been one of Zane's apprentices, raised to a place in the establishment by his usefulness and sincere love of his patron. Just, forbearing, soft-spoken, and not avaricious, Sayler Rainey deserved no injury from any living being. He was unmarried, and, having met with a disappointment in love, had avowed his intention never to marry, but to bequeath all the property he should acquire to his partner's only son, Andrew Zane.

What, then, was the motive of this double murder? The public comprehension found but one theory, and that was freely advanced by the rash and imputative in the community of Kensington: The murderer was he who had the only known temptation and object in such a crime. Who could gain anything by it but Andrew Zane, the impulsive, the mischief-making and oft-restrained son of his stern sire, who, by a double crime, would inherit that undivided property, free from the control of both parent and guardian?

"It is parricide! that's what it is!" exclaimed a fat woman from Fishtown. "At the bottom of the river dead men tell no tales. The rebellious young sarpint of a son, who allus pulled a lusty oar, has chased them two older ones into the deep water of the channel, where a pistol shot can't be heard ashore, and he expected the property to be his'n. But there are gallowses yet, thank the Lord!"

"Mrs. Whann, don't say that," spoke up a deferential voice from the face of a rather sallow-skinned young man, with long, ringleted, yellow hair. "Don't create a prejudice, I beg of you. Andrew Zane was my classmate. He gave his excellent father some trouble, but it shouldn't be remembered against him now. Suppose, my friends, that you let me ring the bell and inquire?"

"Who's that?" asked the crowd. "He's a fine, mature-looking, charitable young man, anyway."

"Its the old Minister Van de Lear's son, Calvin. He's going to succeed his venerable and pious poppy in Kensington pulpit. They'll let him in."

The door closed when Calvin Van de Lear entered the residence of the late William Zane. When it reopened he was seen with a handkerchief in his hand and his hat pulled down over his eyes, as if he had been weeping.

"Stop! stop! don't be going off that way!" interposed the fat fishwife. "You said you would tell us the news."

"My friends," replied Calvin Van de Lear, with a look of the greatest pain, "Andrew Zane has not been heard from. I fear your suspicions are too true!"

He crossed the street and disappeared into the low and elderly residence of his parents.

"Alas! alas!" exclaimed a grave and gentle old man. "That Andrew Zane should not be here to meet a charge like this! But I'll not believe it till I have prayed with my God."

Within the Zane residence all was as in other houses on funeral eves. In the front parlor, ready for an inquest or an undertaker, lay the late master of the place, laid out, and all the visitors departed except his housekeeper, Agnes, and her friend, "Podge" Byerly. The latter was a sunny-haired and nimble little lady, under twenty years of age, who taught in one of the public schools and boarded with her former school-mate, Agnes Wilt. Agnes was an orphan of unknown parentage, by many supposed to have been a niece or relative of Mr. Zane's deceased wife, whose place she took at the head of the table, and had grown to be one of the principal social authorities in Kensington. In Reverend Mr. Van de Lear's church she was both teacher and singer. The young men of Kensington were all in love with her, but it was generally understood that she had accepted Andrew Zane, and was engaged to him.

Andrew was not dissipated, but was fond of pranks, and so restive under his father's positive hand that he twice ran away to distant seaports, and thus incurred a remarkable amount of intuitive gossip, such as belongs to all old settled suburban societies. This occasional firmness of character in the midst of a generally light and flexible life, now told against him in the public mind. "He has nerve enough to do anything desperate in a pinch," exclaimed the very wisest. "Didn't William Zane find him out once in the island of Barbadoes grubbing sugar-cane with a hoe, and the thermometer at 120 in the shade? And didn't he swear he'd stay there and die unless concessions were made to him, and certain things never brought up again? Didn't even his iron-shod father have to give way before he would come home? Ah! Andrew is light-hearted, but he is an Indian in self-will!"

To-night Agnes was in the deepest grief. Upon her, and only her, fell the whole burden of this double crime and mystery, ten times more terrible that her lover was compromised and had disappeared.

"Go to bed, Podge!" said Agnes, as the clock in the engine-house struck midnight. "Oblige me, my dear! I cannot sleep, and shall wait and watch. Perhaps Andrew will be here."

"I can't leave you up, Aggy, and with that thing so near." She locked toward the front parlor, where, behind the folding-doors, lay the dead.

"I have no fear of that. He was always kind to me. My fears are all in this world. O darling!"

She burst into sobs. Her friend kissed her again and again, and knew that feelings between love and crime extorted that last word.

"Aggy," spoke the light-hearted girl, "I know that you cannot help loving him, and as long as he is loved by you I sha'n't believe him guilty. Must I really leave you here?"

Her weeping friend turned up her face to give the mandatory kiss, and Podge was gone.

Agnes sat in solitude, with her hands folded and her heart filled with unutterable tender woe, that so much causeless cloud had settled upon the home of her refuge. She could not experience that relief many of us feel in deep adversity, that it is all illusion, and will in a moment float away like other dreams. Brought to this house an orphan, and twice deprived of a mother's love, she had only entered woman's estate when another class of cares beset her. Her beauty and sweetness of disposition had brought her more lovers than could make her happy. There was but one on whom she could confer her heart, and this natural choice had drawn around her the perils which now overwhelmed them all. Accepting the son, she incurred the father's resentment upon both; for he, the dead man yonder, had also been her lover.

"Oh, my God!" exclaimed the anguished woman, kneeling by her chair and laying her cheek upon it, while only such tears as we shed in supreme moments saturated her handkerchief, "what have I done to make such misery to others? How sinful I must be to set son and father against each other! Yet, Heavenly Father, I can but love!"

There was a cracking of something, as if the dead man in the great, black parlor had carried his jealousy beyond his doom and was breaking from his coffin to upbraid her. A door burst open in the dining-room, which was behind her, and then the dining-room door also unclosed, and was followed by a cold, graveyard draft. A moment of superstition possessed Agnes. "Guard me, Saviour," she murmured.

At the dining-room threshold, advancing a little over the sill, as if to rush upon her, was the figure of a man, dressed, head to foot, in sailor's garments—heavy woollens, comforter, tarpaulin overalls, and knit cap. He looked at her an instant, standing there, shivering, and then he retired a pace or two and closed the door to the cellar, by which he had entered the house. Even this little movement in the intruder had something familiar about it. He advanced again, directly and rapidly, toward her, but she did not scream. He threw both arms around her, and she did not cry. Something had entered with that bold figure which extinguished all crime and superstition in the monarchy of its presence—Love.

A kiss, as fervent and long as only the reunited ever give with purity, drew the soul of the suspected murderer and his sweetheart into one temple.

"Agnes," he whispered hoarsely, when it was given, "they have followed me hard to-night. Every place I might have resorted to is watched. All Kensington—my oldest friends—believe me guilty! I cannot face it. With this kiss I must go."

"Oh, Andrew, do not! Here is the place to make your peace; here take your stand and await the worst."

"Agnes," he repeated, "I have no defence. Nothing but silence would defend me now, and that would hang me to the gallows. I come to put my life and soul into your hands. Can you pray for me, bad as I am?"

"Dear Andrew," answered Agnes, weeping fast, "I have no power to stop you, and I cannot give you up. Yes, I will pray for you now, before you start on your journey. Go open those folding-doors and we will pray in the other room."

"What is there?"

"Your father."

He stopped a long while, and his cheek was blanched.

"Go first," he whispered finally. "I am not afraid."

She led the way to the bier, where the body, with the frost hardly yet thawed from it, lay under the dim light of the chandelier. Turning up the burners it was revealed in its relentless, though not unhappy, expression—a large and powerful man, bearded and with tassels of gray in his hair.

The young man in his coarse sailor's garb, muffled up for concealment and disguise, placed his arm around Agnes, and his knees were unsteady as he gazed down on the remains and began to sob.

"Dear," she murmured, also weeping, "I know you loved him!"

The young man's sobs became so loud that Agnes drew him to a chair, and as she sat upon it he laid his head in her lap and continued there to express a deep inward agony.

"I loved him always," he articulated at last, "so help me God, I did! And a parricide! Can you survive it?"

"Andrew," she replied, "I have taken it all to heaven and laid the sin there. Forever, my darling, intercession continues for all our offences only there. It must be our recourse in this separation every day when we rise and lie down. Though blood-stained, he can wash as white as snow."

"I will try, I will try!" he sobbed; "but your goodness is my reliance, dearest. I have always been disobedient to my father, but never thought it would come to this."

"Nor I, Andrew. Poor, rash uncle!"

"Agnes," whispered Andrew Zane, rising with a sudden fear, "I hear people about the house—on the pavement, on the doorsteps. Perhaps they are suspecting me. I must fly. Oh! shall we ever meet again under a brighter sky? Will you cling to me? I am going out, abandoned by all the world. Nothing is left me but your fidelity. Will it last? You know you are beautiful!"

"Oh, sad words to say!" sighed Agnes. "Let none but you ever say them to me again. Beautiful, and to the end of such misery as this! My only love, I will never forsake you!"

"Then I can try the world again, winter as it is. Once more, oh, God! let me ask forgiveness from these frozen lips. My father! pursue me not, though deep is my offence! Farewell, farewell forever!"

He disappeared down the cellar as he had come, and Agnes heard at the outer window the sound of his escaping. When all was silent she fell to the floor, and lay there helplessly weeping.



CHAPTER III.

THE DEAF MAN.

The inquest was held, and the jury pronounced the double crime murder by persons unknown, but with strong suspicion resting on Andrew Zane and an unknown laborer, who had left Pettit's or Treaty Island, at night, in an open boat with William Zane and Sayler Rainey. A reward was offered for Andrew Zane and the laborer.

The will of the deceased persons made Andrew Zane full legatee of both estates, and left a life interest in the Queen Street house, and $2000 a year to "Agnes Wilt, my ward and housekeeper." The executors of the Zane estate were named as Agnes Wilt, Rev. Silas Van de Lear, and Duff Salter. The two dead men were interred together in the old Presbyterian burial-ground, and after a month or two of diminishing excitement, Kensington settled down to the idea that there was a great mystery somewhere; that Andrew Zane was probably guilty; but that the principal evidence against him was his own flight.

As to Agnes, there was only one respectable opinion—that she was a superb work of nature and triumph of womanhood, notwithstanding romantic and possibly awkward circumstances of origin and relation. All men, of whatever time of life and for whatsoever reason, admired her—the mean and earthy if only for her mould, the morally discerning for her beautiful quality that pitied, caressed, encouraged, or elevated all who came within her sphere.

"Preachers of the Gospel ought to have such wives," said the Rev. Silas Van de Lear, looking at his son Calvin, "as Agnes Wilt. She is the most handy churchwoman in all my ministration in Kensington, which is now forty years. Besides being pious, and virtuous, and humble before God, she is very comely to the eye, and possesses a house and an independent income. A wife like that would naturally help a young minister to get a higher call."

Young Calvin, who was expected to succeed his father in the venerable church close by, and was studying divinity, said with much cool maturity:

"Pa, I've taken it all in. She's the only single girl in Kensington worth proposing to. It's true that we don't know just who she is, but it's not that I'm so much afraid of as her, her—in short, her piety."

"Piety does not stand in the way of marriage," answered the old man, who was both bold and prudent, wise and sincere. "In the covenant of God nothing is denied to his saints in righteousness. The sense of wedded pleasure, the beauty that delights the eye, love, appetite, children, and financial independence—all are ours, no less as of the Elect than as worldly creatures. The love of God in the heart warms men and women toward each other."

"Oh, as to that!" exclaimed Calvin, "I've been warmed toward Miss Agnes since I was a boy. I think she is superb. But she is a little too good for me. She looks at me whenever I talk to her, whereas the proper way of humility would be to look down. She has been in love with Andrew Zane, you know!"

"That," said the preacher, "is probably off; though I never discovered in Andrew more evil than a light heart and occasional rebellion. If she loves him still, do not be in haste to jar her sensibility. It is thoughtfulness which engenders love."

The young women of Kensington were divided about Agnes Wilt. The poorer girls thought her perfect. But some marriageable and some married women, moving in her own sphere of society, criticised her popularity, and said she must be artful to control so many men. There are no depths to which jealousy cannot go in a small suburban society. Agnes, as an orphan, had felt it since childhood, but nothing had ever happened until now to concentrate slander as well as sympathy upon her. It was told abroad that she had been the mistress of her deceased benefactor, who had fallen by the hands of his infuriated son. Even the police authorities gave some slight consideration to this view. Old people remarked: "If she has been deceiving people, she will not stop now. She will have other secret lovers."

Inquiries had been made for some time as to who the unknown executor, Duff Salter, might be, when one day Rev. Mr. Van de Lear walked over to the Zane house with a broad-shouldered, grave, silent-eyed man, who wore a very long white beard reaching to his middle. As he was also tall and but little bent, he had that mysterious union of strength and age which was perfected by his expression of long and absolute silence.

"Agnes," said Mr. Van de Lear, "this is an old Scotch-Irish friend and classmate of the late Mr. Zane, Duff Salter of Arkansas. He cannot hear what I have said, for he is almost stone deaf. However, go through the motions of shaking hands. I am told he has heard very little of anything for the past ten years. An explosion in a quicksilver mine broke his ear-drums."

Agnes, dressed in deep black, shook hands with the grave stranger dutifully, and said:

"I am sure you are welcome, sir."

Mr. Salter looked at her closely and gently, and seemed to be pleased with the inspection, for he took a small gold box from his pocket, unlocked it and sniffed a pinch of snuff, and then gave a sneeze, which he articulated, plain as speech, into the words: "Jericho! Jericho!" Then placing the box in the pocket of his long coat, he remarked:

"Miss Agnes, as one of the executors is a lady, and another is our venerable friend here, who has no inclination to attend to the settlement of Mr. Zane's estate, it will devolve upon me to examine the whole subject. I am a stranger in the East. As Mr. Van de Lear may have told you, I don't hear anything. Will I be welcome as a boarder under your roof as long as I am looking into my old friend's books and papers?"

"Not only welcome, but a protection to us, sir," answered Agnes.

He took a set of ivory tablets from his pocket, with a pencil, and handing it to her politely, said:

"Please write your answer."

She wrote "Yes."

The deaf lodger gave as little trouble as could have been expected. He had a bedroom, and moved a large secretary desk into it, and sat there all day looking at figures. If he ever wanted to make an inquiry, he wrote it on the tablets, and in the evening had it read and answered. Agnes was a good deal of the time preoccupied, and Podge Byerly, who wrote as neatly as copper-plate, answered these inquiries, and conducted a little conversation of her own. Podge was a slender blonde, with fine blue eyes and a mischievous, sylph-like way of coming and going. Her freedom of motion and address seemed to concern the stranger. One day she wrote, after putting down the answer to a business inquiry:

"Are you married?"

He hesitated some time and wrote back, "I hope not."

She retorted, "Could one forget if one was married?"

He replied on the same tablet: "Not when he tried."

Podge rubbed it all off, and thought a minute, and then concluded that evening's correspondence:

"You are an old tease!"

The next morning, as usual, she wrapped herself up warmly and took the omnibus for her school, and saw him watching her out of the upper window. That night, instead of any inquiries, he stalked down in his worked slippers—the dead man's—and long dressing gown, and, after smiling at all, took Podge Byerly's hand and looked at it. This time he spoke in a sweet, modulated voice,

"Very pretty!"

She was about to reply, when he gave her the ivory tablet, and put his finger on his lip.

She wrote, "Did you ever fight a duel?"

He shook his head "No."

She wrote again, "What else do they do in Arkansas?"

He replied, "They love."

Then Mr. Duff Salter sneezed very loudly, "Jericho! Jericho! Jericho!" Podge ran off at such a serious turn of responses, but was too much of a woman not to be lured back of her own will. He wrote later in the evening this touching query:

"How do the birds sing now? Are they all dumb?"

She answered, "Many can hear who never heard them."

He wrote again, "Are you suspicious?"

She replied, "Very. Are you?"

He shook his head "No."

"I believe he is," said Podge, turning to Agnes, who had entered. "He looks as if he had asked that question of himself."

Duff Salter seized his handkerchief and sneezed into it, "Jericho-o! Jericho-wo!"

Podge was sure he was suspicious the next night when she read on his tablets the rather imputative remark,

"Is there anything demoralizing in teaching public schools?"

She replied tartly, "Yes, stupid old visitors and parents!"

"Excuse me!" he wrote; "I meant politicians."

She replied in the same spirit as before, "I think politicians are divine!"

Duff Salter looked a little wondering out of those calm gray eyes and his strong, yet benevolent Scotch-Irish countenance. Podge, who now talked freely with Agnes in his presence, said confidently:

"I believe I can tantalize this good old granny by giving him doubts about me! I am real bad, Aggy; you know that! It is no story to tell it!"

"Oh! we are both bad enough to try to improve," exclaimed Agnes absently.

"Jericho! Jericho! Jericho!" sneezed Duff Salter.

He came down every evening, and began respectfully to bow to Agnes and to smile on Podge, and then stretched his feet out to the ottoman, drew his tablets up to the small table and proceeded to write. They hallooed into his ear once or twice, but he said he was deaf as a mill-stone, and might be cursed to his face and wouldn't understand it. They had formed a pleasing opinion of him, not unmixed with curiosity, when one night he wrote on the back of a piece of paper:

"Have you any idea who wrote this anonymous note to me?"

Podge Byerly took the note and found in a woman's handwriting these words:

"Mr. Duff Salter, I suppose you know where you are. Your hostesses are very insinuating and artful—and what else, you can find out! One man has been murdered in that family; another has disappeared. They say in Kensington the house of Zane is haunted.

"A WARNER."

Podge read the note, and her tears dropped upon it. He moved forward as if to speak to her, but correcting himself hastily, he wrote upon the tablets:

"Not even a suspicious person is affected the least by an anonymous letter. I only keep it that possibly I may detect the sender!"



CHAPTER IV.

A SUITOR.

Duff Salter and the ladies were sitting in the back parlor one evening following the events just related, when the door-bell rang, and Podge Byerly went to see who was there. She soon returned and closed the door of the front parlor, leaving a little crack, by accident, and lighted the gas there.

"Aggy," whispered Podge, coming in, "there's Mr. Calvin Van de Lear, our future minister. He's elegantly dressed, and has a nosegay in his hand."

"Can't you entertain him, dear?"

"I would be glad enough, but he asked in a very decided way for you."

"For me?"

Agnes looked distressed.

"Yes; he said very distinctly, 'I called to pay my respects particularly to Miss Agnes to-night.'"

Agnes left the room, and Duff Salter and Podge were again together. Podge could hear plainly what was said in the front parlor, and partly see, by the brighter light there, the motions of the visitor and her friend. She wrote on Duff Salter's tablet, "A deaf man is a great convenience!"

"Why?" wrote the large, grave man.

"Because he can't hear what girls say to their beaux."

"Is that a beau calling on our beautiful friend?"

"I'm afraid so!"

"How do you feel when a beau comes?"

"We feel important."

"You don't feel grateful, then; only complimented."

"No; we feel that on one of two occasions we have the advantage over a man. We can play him like a big fish on a little angle."

"When is the other occasion?"

"Some women," wrote Podge, "play just the same with the man they marry!"

Duff Salter looked up surprised.

"Isn't that wrong?" he wrote.

She answered mischievously, "A kind of!"

The large, bearded man looked so exceedingly grave that Podge burst out laughing.

"Don't you know," she wrote, "that the propensity to plague a man dependent on you is inherent in every healthy woman?"

He wrote, "I do know it, and it's a crime!"

Podge thought to herself "This old man is dreadfully serious and suspicious sometimes."

As Duff Salter relapsed into silence, gazing on the fire, the voice of Calvin Van de Lear was heard by Podge, pitched in a low and confident key, from the parlor side:

"I called, Agnes, when I thought sufficient time had elapsed since the troubles here, to express my deep interest in you, and to find you, I hoped, with a disposition to turn to the sunny side of life's affairs."

"I am not ready to take more than a necessary part in anything outside of this house," replied Agnes. "My mind is altogether preoccupied. I thank you for your good wishes, Mr. Van de Lear."

"Now do be less formal," said the young man persuasively. "I have always been Cal. before—short and easy, Cal. Van de Lear. You might call me almost anything, Aggy."

"I have changed, sir. Our afflictions have taught me that I am no longer a girl."

"You won't call me Cal., then?"

"No, Mr. Van de Lear."

"I see how it is," exclaimed the visitor. "You think because I am studying for orders I must be looked up to. Aggy, that's got nothing to do with social things. When I take the governor's place in our pulpit I shall make my sermons for this generation altogether crack, sentimental sermons, and drive away dull care. That's my understanding of the good shepherd."

"Mr. Van de Lear, there are some cares so natural that they are almost consolation. Under the pressure of them we draw nearer to happiness. What merry words should be said to those who were bred under this roof in such misfortunes as I have now—as the absent have?"

Podge saw Agnes put her handkerchief to her face, and her neck shake a minute convulsively. Duff Salter here sneezed loudly: "Jericho! Jerichew! Je-ry-cho-o!" He produced a tortoise-shell snuff-box, and Podge took a pinch, for fun, and sneezed until the tears came to her eyes and her hair was shaken down. She wrote on the tablets,

"Men could eat dirt and enjoy it."

He replied, "At last dirt eats all the men."

"It's to get rid of them!" wrote Podge. "My boys at school are dirty by inclination. They will chew anything from a piece of India rubber shoe to slippery elm and liquorice root. One piece of liquorice will demoralize a whole class. They pass it around."

Duff Salter replied, "The boys must have something in their mouths; the girls in their heads!"

"But not liquorice root," added Podge.

"No; they put the boys in their heads!"

"Pshaw!" wrote Podge, "girls don't like boys. They like nice old men who will pet them."

Here Podge ran out of the room and the conversation in the front parlor was renewed. The voice of Calvin Van de Lear said:

"Agnes, looking at your affairs in the light of religious duty, as you seem to prefer, I must tell you that your actions have not always been perfect."

Nothing was said in reply to this.

"I am to be your pastor at some not distant day," spoke the same voice, "and may take some of that privilege now. As a daughter of the church you should give the encouragement of your beauty and favor only to serious, and approved, and moral young men. Not such scapegraces as Andrew Zane!"

"Sir!" exclaimed Agnes, rising. "How dare you speak of the poor absent one?"

"Sit down," exclaimed Calvin Van de Lear, not a bit discomposed. "I have some disciplinary power now, and shall have more. A lady in full communion with our church—a single woman without a living guardian—requires to hear the truth, even from an erring brother. You have no right to go outside the range at least of respectable men, to place your affections and bestow your beauty and religion on a particularly bad man—a criminal indeed—one already fled from this community, and under circumstances of the greatest suspicion. I mean Andrew Zane!"

"Hush!" exclaimed Agnes; "perhaps he is dead."

A short and awkward quiet succeeded, broken by young Van de Lear's interruption at last:

"Aggy, I don't know but it is the best thing. Is it so?"

"For shame, sir!"

"He wouldn't have come to any good. I know him well. We went to school together here in Kensington. Under a light and agreeable exterior he concealed an obstinacy almost devilish. All the tricks and daredevil feats we heard of, he was at the head of them. After he grew up his eyes fell on you. For a time he was soberer. Then, perceiving that you were also his father's choice, he conspired against his father, repeatedly absconded, and gave that father great trouble to find and return him to his home, and still stepped between Mr. Zane and his wishes. Was that the part of a grateful and obedient son?"

Not a word was returned by Agnes Wilt.

"How ill-advised," continued Calvin Van de Lear, "was your weakness during that behavior! Do you know what the tattle of all Kensington is? That you favored both the father and the son! That you declined the son only because his father might disinherit him, and put off the father because the son would have the longer enjoyment of his property! I have defended you everywhere on these charges. They say even more, Miss Agnes—if you prefer it—that the murder of the father was not committed by Andrew Zane without an instigator, perhaps an accessory."

The voice of Agnes was heard in hasty and anxious imploration:

"For pity's sake, say no more. Be silent. Am I not bowed and wretched enough?"

She came hastily to the fissure of the door and looked in, because Duff Salter just then sneezed tremendously:

"Jericho-o-o-o! Jer-ry-cho-o-o!"

Podge Byerly reappeared with a pack of cards and shuffled them before Duff Salter's face.

They sat down and played a game of euchre for a cent a point, the tablets at hand between them to write whatever was mindful. Duff Salter was the best player.

"I believe," wrote Podge, "that all Western men are gamblers. Are you?"

He wrote, to her astonishment,

"I was."

"Wasn't it a sin?"

"Not there."

"I thought gambling was a sin everywhere?"

"It is everywhere done," wrote Duff Salter. "You are a gambler."

"That's a fib."

"You risk your heart, capturing another's."

"My heart is gone," added Podge, blushing.

"What's his name?" wrote Duff Salter.

"That's telling."

Again the voices of the two people in the front parlor broke on Podge's ear:

"You must leave me, Mr. Van de Lear. You do not know the pain and wrong you are doing me."

"Agnes, I came to say I loved you. Your beauty has almost maddened me for years. Your resistance would give me anger if I had not hope left. I know you loved me once."

"Sir, it is impossible; it is cruel."

"Cruel to love you?" repeated the divinity student. "Come now, that's absurd! No woman is annoyed by an offer. I swear I love you reverently. I can put you at the head of this society—the wife of a clergyman. Busy tongues shall be stilled at your coming and going, and the shadow of this late tragedy will no more plague your reputation, protected in the bosom of the church and nestled in mine."

Sounds of a slight struggle were heard, as if the amorous young priest were trying to embrace Agnes.

Podge arose, listening.

The face of Duff Salter was stolid, and unconscious of anything but the game of cards.

"I tell you, sir!" exclaimed Agnes, "that your attentions are offensive. Will you force me to insult you?"

"Oh! that's all put on, my subtle beauty. You are not alarmed by these delicate endearments. Give me a kiss!"

"Calvin Van de Lear, you are a hypocrite. The gentleman you have slandered to win my favor is as dear to me as you are repulsive. Nay, sir, I'll teach you good behavior!"

She threw open the folding-doors just as Duff Salter had come to a terrific sneeze.

"Jericho! Jericho! Jer-rick-co-o-o-oh!"

Looking in with bold suavity, Calvin Van de Lear made a bow and took up his hat.

"Good-night," he said, "most reputable ladies, two of a kind!"

"I think," wrote Duff Salter frigidly, as the young man slammed the door behind him, "that we'll make a pitcher of port sangaree and have a little glass before we go to bed. We will all three take a hand at cards. What shall we play?"

"Euchre—cut-throat!" exclaimed Podge Byerly, rather explosively.

Duff Salter seemed to have heard this, for, with his grave eyes bent on Agnes, he echoed, dubiously:

"Cut-throat!"

With an impatient motion Podge Byerly snatched at the cards, and they fell to the floor.

Agnes burst into tears and left the room.

"Upon my word," thought Podge Byerly, "I believe this old gray rat is a detective officer!"

There was a shadow over the best residence on Queen Street.

Anonymous letters continued to come in almost by every mail, making charges and imputations upon Agnes, and frequently connecting Podge Byerly with her.

Terrible epithets—such as "Murderess!" "A second Mrs. Chapman!" "Jezebel," etc.—were employed in these letters.

Many of them were written by female hands or in very delicate male chirography, as if men who wrote like women had their natures.

There was one woman's handwriting the girls learned to identify, and she wrote more often than any—more beautifully in the writing, more shameless in the meaning, as if, with the nethermost experience in sensuality, she was prepared to subtleize it and be the universal accuser of her sex.

"What fiends must surround us!" exclaimed Agnes. "There must be a punishment deeper than any for the writers of anonymous letters. A murderer strikes the vital spot but once. Here every commandment is broken in the cowardly secret letter. False witness, the stab, illicit joy, covetousness, dishonor of father and mother, and defamation of God's image in the heart, are all committed in these loathsome letters."

"Yes," added Podge Byerly, "the woman who writes anonymous letters, I think, will have a cancer, or wart on her eye, or marry a bow-legged man. The resurrectionists will get her body, and the primary class in the other world will play whip-top with the rest of her."

Agnes and Podge went to church prayer-meeting the night following Calvin Van de Lear's repulse at their dwelling, and Mr. Duff Salter gave each of them an arm.

Old Mr. Van de Lear led the exercises, and, after several persons had publicly prayed by the direction of the venerable pastor, Calvin Van de Lear, of his own motion and as a matter of course, took the floor and launched into a florid supplication almost too elegant to be extempore.

As he continued, Podge Byerly, looking through her fingers, saw a handsome, high-colored woman at Calvin's side, stealing glances at Agnes Wilt.

It was the wife of Calvin Van de Lear's brother, Knox—a blonde of large, innocent eyes, who usually came with Calvin to the church.

While Podge noticed this inquisitive or stray glance, she became conscious that something in the prayer was directing the attention of the whole meeting to their pew.

People turned about, and, with startled or bold looks, observed Agnes Wilt, whose head was bowed and her veil down.

The voice of Calvin Van de Lear sounded high and meaningful as Podge caught these sentences:

"Lord, smite the wicked and unjust as thou smotest Sapphira by the side of Ananias. We find her now in the mask of beauty, again of humility, even, O Lord, of religion, leading the souls of men down to death and hell. Thou knowest who stand before Thee to do lip service. All hearts are open to Thee. If there be any here who have deceived Thine elect by covetousness, or adultery, or murder, Lord, make bare Thine arm!"

The rest of the sentence was lost in the terrific series of sneezes from Duff Salter, who had taken too big a pinch of snuff and forgot himself, so as to nearly lift the roof off the little old brick church with his deeply accentuated,

"Jer-i-cho-whoe!"

Even old Silas Van de Lear looked over the top of the pulpit and smiled, but, luckily, Duff Salter could hardly hear his own sneezes.

As they left the church Agnes put down her veil, and trembled under the stare of a hundred investigating critics.

When they were in the street, Podge Byerly remarked:

"Oh! that we had a man to resent such meanness as that. I think that those who address God with slant arrows to wound others, as is often done at prayer-meeting, will stand in perdition beside the writers of anonymous letters."

"They are driving me to the last point," said Agnes. "I can go to church no more. When will they get between me and heaven? Yet the Lord's will be done."



CHAPTER V.

THE GHOST.

Spring broke on the snug little suburb, and buds and birds fulfilled their appointments on the boughs of willows, ailanthuses, lindens, and maples. Some peach-trees in the back yard of the Zane House hastened to put on their pink scarves and bonnets, and the boys said that an old sucker of Penn's Treaty Elm down in a ship-yard was fresh and blithsome as a second wife. In the hearts and views of living people, too, spring brought a budding of youthfulness and a gush of sap. Duff Salter acknowledged it as he looked in Podge Byerly's blue eyes and felt her hands as they wrapped his scarf around him, or buttoned his gloves. Whispering, and without the tablets this time, he articulated:

"Happy for you, Mischief, that I am not young as these trees!"

"We'll have you set out!" screamed Podge, "like a piece of hale old willow, and you'll grow again!"

Duff Salter frequently walked almost to her school with Podge Byerly, which was far down in the old city. They seldom took the general cut through Maiden and Laurel Streets to Second, but kept down the river bank by Beach Street, to see the ship-yards and hear the pounding of rivets and the merry adzes ringing, and see youngsters and old women gathering chips, while the sails on the broad river came up on wind and tide as if to shatter the pier-heads ere they bounded off.

In the afternoons Duff Salter sometimes called on Rev. Silas Van de Lear, who had great expectations that Duff would build them a much-required new church, with the highest spire in Kensington.

"Here, Brother Salter, is an historic spot," wrote the good old man. "I shouldn't object to a spire on my church, with the figure of William Penn on the summit. Friend William and his sons always did well by our sect."

"Is it an established fact that he treated with the Indians in Kensington?" asked Duff Salter, on his ivory tablets.

"Indisputable! Friend Penn took Thomas Fairman's house at Shackamaxon—otherwise Eel-Hole—and in this pleasant springtime, April 4, 1683, he met King Tammany under the forest elm, with the savage people in half-moon circles, looking at the healthy-fed and business-like Quaker. There Tammany and his Indian allies surrendered all the land between the Pennypack and Neshaminy."

"A Tammany haul!" interrupted young Calvin Van de Lear, rather idiotically. "What did the shrewd William give?"

"Guns, scissors, knives, tongs, hoes, and Indian money, and gew-gaws—not much. Philadelphia had no foundation then, and Shackamaxon was an established place. We are the Knickerbockers here in Kensington."

"An honest Quaker would not build a spire," wrote Duff Salter, with a grim smile.

Duff Salter was well known to the gossips of Kensington as a fabulously rich man, who had spent his youth partly in this district, and was of Kensington parentage, but had roved away to Mexico as a sailor boy, or clerk, or passenger, and refusing to return, had become a mule-driver in the mines of cinnabar, and there had remained for years in nearly heathen solitude, until once he arrived overland in Arkansas with a train from Chihuahua, the whole of it, as was said, laden with silver treasure, and his own property. He had been disappointed in love, and had no one to leave his riches to. This was the story told by Reverend Silas Van de Lear.

The people of Kensington were less concerned with the truth of this tale than with the future intentions of the visitor.

"How long he tarries in Zane's homestead!" said the people that spring. "Hasn't he settled that estate yet?"

"It never will be settled if he can help it," said public Echo, "as long as there are two fine young women there, and one of them so fascinating over men!"

Indeed, Duff Salter received letters, anonymous, of course—the anonymous letter was then the suburban press—admonishing him to beware of his siren hostess.

"She has ruined two men," said the elegant female handwriting before observed. "You must want to be the subject of a coroner's inquest. That house is bloody and haunted, rich Mr. Duff Salter! Beware of Lady Agnes, the murderess! Beware, too, of her accomplice, the insinuating little Byerly!"

Duff Salter walked out one day to make the tour of Kensington. He passed out the agreeable old Frankford road, with its wayside taverns, and hay carts, and passing omnibuses, and occasional old farm-like houses, interspersed with newer residences of a city character, and he strolled far up Cohocksink Creek till it meandered through billowy fields of green, and skirted the edges of woods, and all the way was followed by a path made by truant boys. Sitting down by a spring that gushed up at the foot of a great sycamore tree, the grandly bearded traveller, all flushed with the roses of exercise, made no unpleasing picture of a Pan waiting for Echo by appointment, or holding talk with the grazing goats of the poor on the open fields around him.

"How changed!" spoke the traveller aloud. "I have caught fishes all along this brook, and waded up its bed in summer to cool my feet. The girl was beside me whose slender feet in innocent exposure were placed by mine to shame their coarser mould. We thought we were in love, or as near it as are the outskirts to some throbbing town partly instinctive with a coming civic destiny. Alas! the little brook that once ran unvexed to the river, freshening green marshes at its outlet, has become a sewer, discolored with dyes of factories, and closed around by tenements and hovels till its purer life is over. My playmate, too, flowed on to womanhood, till the denser social conditions shut her in; she mingled the pure current of her life with another more turgid, and dull-eyed children, like houses of the suburbs, are builded on her bosom. I am alone, like this old tree, beside the spring where once I was a sapling, and still, like its waters, youth wells and wells, and keeps us yet both green in root. Come back, O Love! and freshen me, and, like a rill, flow down my closing years!"

Duff Salter's shoulder was touched as he ceased to speak, and he found young Calvin Van de Lear behind him.

"I have followed you out to the country," said the young man, howling in the elder's ear, "because I wanted to talk to you aloud, as I couldn't do in Kensington."

Duff Salter drew his storied ivory tablets on the divinity student, and said, crisply, "Write!"

"No, old man, that's not my style. It's too slow. Besides, it admits of nothing impressive being said, and I want to convince you."

"Jericho! Jericho!" sneezed Duff Salter. "Young man, if you stun my ear that way a third time I'll knock you down. I'm deaf, it's true, but I'm not a hallooing scale to try your lungs on. If you won't write, we can't talk."

With impatience, yet smiling, Calvin Van de Lear wrote on the tablets,

"Have you seen the ghost?"

"Ghost?"

"Yes, the ghosts of the murdered men!"

"I never saw a ghost of anything in my life. What men?"

"William Zane and Sayler Rainey."

"Who has seen them?"

"Several people. Some say it's but one that has been seen. Zane's ghost walks, anyway, in Kensington."

"What for?"

"The fishwomen and other superstitious people say, because their murderers have not been punished."

"And the murderers are—"

"Those who survived and profited by the murder, of course?"

"Jer-ri-choo-woo!" exploded Duff Salter. "Young man," he wrote deliberately, "you have an idle tongue."

"Friend Salter, you are blind as well as deaf. Do you know Miss Podge Byerly?"

"No. Do you?"

"She's common! Agnes Wilt uses her as a stool-pigeon. She fetches, and carries, and flies by night. One of the school directors shoved her on the public schools for intimate considerations. Perhaps you'll see him about the house if you look sharp and late some night."

"Jer-rich-co! Jericho!"

Duff Salter was decidedly red in the face, and his grave gray eyes looked both fierce and convicted. He had seen a school director visiting the house, but thought it natural enough that he should take a kind interest in one of the youthful and pretty teachers. The deaf man returned to his pencil and tablets.

"Do you know, Mr. Van de Lear, that what you are saying is indictable language? It would have exposed you to death where I have lived."

The young man tossed his head recklessly. Duff Salter now saw that his usually sallow face was flushed up to the roots of his long dry hair and almost colorless whiskers, as if he had been drinking liquors. Forgetting to use the tablets, Calvin spoke aloud, but not in as high a key as formerly:

"Mr. Salter, Agnes Wilt has no heart. She was a step-niece of the late Mrs. Zane—her brother's daughter. The girl's father was a poor professional man, and died soon after his child was born, followed at no great distance to the grave by his widow. While a child, Agnes was cold and subtle. She professed to love me—that was the understanding in our childhood. She has forgotten me as she has forgotten many other men. But she is beautiful, and I want to marry her. You can help me."

"What do you want with a cold and calculating woman?" wrote Duff Salter stiffly. "What do you want particularly with such a dangerous woman—a demon, as you indicate?"

"I want to save her soul, and retrieve her from wickedness. Upon my word, old man, that's my only game. You see, to effect that object would set me up at once with the church people. I'm told that a little objection to my prospects in the governor's church begins to break out. If I can marry Agnes Wilt, she will recover her position in Kensington, and make me more welcome in families. I don't mind telling you that I have been a little gay."

"That's nothing," wrote Duff Salter smilingly. "So were the sons of Eli."

"Correct!" retorted Calvin. "I need a taming down, and only matrimony can do it. Now, with your aid I can manage it. Miss Wilt does not fancy me. She can be made to do so, however, by two causes."

"And they are—"

"Her fears and her avarice. I propose to bring this murder close home to her. If not a principal in it, she is an undoubted accessory after the fact. Andrew Zane paid her a visit the night the dead bodies were discovered in the river."

"You are sure of this?"

"Perfectly. I have had a detective on his track; too late to arrest the rascal, but the identity of a sailor man who penetrated into the house by the coal-hole is established by the discovery of the clothing he exchanged for that disguise—it was Andrew Zane. Concealment of that fact from the law will make her an accessory."

"Jericho! Jericho!" sneezed Duff Salter, but with a pale face, and said:

"That fact established would be serious; but it would be a gratuitous and vile act for you, who profess to love her."

"It is love that prompts me—love and pain! A divine anger, I may call it. I propose to make myself her rescuer afterward, and establish myself in her gratitude and confidence. You are to help me do this by watching the house from the inside."

"Dishonorable!"

"You were the friend of William Zane, the murdered man. Every obligation of friendship impels you to discover his murderer. You are rich; lend me money to continue my investigations. I know this is a cool proposition; but it is better than spending it on churches."

"Very well," wrote Duff Salter, "as the late Mr. Zane's executor, I will spend any proper sum of money to inflict retribution upon his injurers. I will watch the house."

They went home through Palmer Street, on which stood the little brick church—the street said to be occasionally haunted by Governor Anthony Palmer's phantom coach and four, which was pursued by his twenty-one children in plush breeches and Panama hats, crying, "Water lots! water fronts! To let! to lease!"

As Duff Salter entered the house he saw the school director indicated by Calvin Van de Lear sitting in the parlor with Podge Byerly. For the first time Duff Salter noticed that they looked both intimate and confused. He tried to reason himself out of this suspicion. "Pshaw," he said; "it was my uncharitable imagination. I'll go back, as if to get something, and look more carefully."

As the deaf man reopened the parlor-door he saw the school director making a motion as if to embrace Podge, who was full of blushes and appearing to shrink away.

"There's no imagination about that," thought Duff Salter. "If I could only hear well enough my ears might counsel me."

He felt dejected, and his suspicions colored everything—a most deplorable state of mind for a gentleman. Agnes, too, looked guilty, as he thought, and hardly addressed a smile to him as he passed up to his room.

Duff Salter put on his slippers, lighted his gas, drew the curtains down and set the door ajar, for in the increasing warmth of spring his grate fire was almost an infliction.

"I have not been wise nor just," he said to himself. "My pleasing reception in this house, and feminine arts, have altogether obliterated my great duty, which was to avenge my friend. Yes, suspicion was my duty. I should have been suspicious from the first. Even this vicious young Van de Lear, shallow as he is, becomes my unconscious accuser. He says, with truth, that every obligation of friendship impels me to discover the murderers of William Zane."

Duff Salter arose, in the warmth of his feelings, and paced up and down the floor.

"Ah, William Zane," he said, "how does thy image come back to me! I was the only friend he would permit. In pride of will and solitary purpose he was the greatest of all. Rough, unpolished, a poor scholar, but full of energy, he desired nothing but he believed it his. He desired me to be his friend, and I could not have resisted if I would. He made me go with him even on his truant expeditions, and carry his game bag along the banks of the Tacony, or up the marshes of Rancocus. Yet it was a happy servitude; for beneath his impetuous mastery was a soul of devotion. He loved like Jove, and permitted no interposition in his flame; his dogmatism and force were barbarous, but he gave like a child and fought like a lion. I saw him last as he was about to enter on business, in the twenty-first year of his age, an anxious young man with black hair in natural ringlets, a pale brow, gray eyes wide apart, and a narrow but wilful chin. He was ever on pivot, ready to spring. And murdered!"

Duff Salter looked at the door standing ajar, attracted there by some movement, or light, or shadow, and the very image he was describing met his gaze. There were the black ringlets, the pale forehead, the anxious yet wilful expression, and the years of youthful manhood. It was nothing in this world if not William Zane!

Duff Salter felt paralyzed for a minute, as the blood flowed back to his heart, and a sense of fright overcame him. Then he moved forward on tip-toe, as if the image might dissolve. It did dissolve as he advanced; with a tripping motion it receded and left a naked space. In the darkness of the stairway it absorbed itself, and the deaf man grasped the balustrade where it had stood, and by his trembling shook the rails violently. He then staggered back to his mantel, first bolting the door, as if instinctively, and swallowed a draught of brandy from a medicinal bottle there.

"There is a ghost abroad!" exclaimed Duff Salter with a shudder. "I have seen it."

He turned the gas on very brightly, so as to soothe his fears with companionable light. Then, while the perspiration stood upon his forehead, Duff Salter sat down to think.

"Why does it haunt me?" he said. "Yet whom but me should it haunt?—the executor of my friend, intrusted with his dying wishes, bound to him by ancient ties, and recreant to the high duty of punishing his murderers? The ghost of William Zane admonishes me that there can be no repose for my spirit until I take in hand the work of vengeance. Yes, if women have been accessory to that murder, they shall not be spared. Miss Agnes is under surveillance; let her be blameless, or beware!"



CHAPTER VI.

ENCOMPASSED.

"He looks scared out of last year's growth," remarked Podge Byerly when Duff Salter came down-stairs next day.

"Happy for him, dear, he is not able to hear what is around him in this place!" exclaimed Agnes aloud.

They always talked freely before their guest, and he could scarcely be alarmed even by an explosion.

Duff wrote on his tablets during breakfast:

"I must employ a smart man to do errands for me, and rid me of some of the burdens of this deafness. Do you know of any one?"

"A mere laborer?" inquired Agnes.

"Well, an old-fashioned, still-mouthed fellow like myself—one who can understand my dumb motions."

Agnes shook her head.

Said Duff Salter to himself:

"She don't want me to find such an one, I guess." Then, with the tablets again, he added, "It's necessary for me to hunt a man at once, and keep him here on the premises, close by me. I have almost finished up this work of auditing and clearing the estate. I intend now to pay some attention to the tragedy, accident, or whatever it was, that led to Mr. Zane's cutting off. You will second me warmly in this, I am sure."

Agnes turned pale, and felt the executor's eyes upon her.

Podge Byerly was pale too.

Duff Salter did not give them any opportunity to recover composure.

"To leave the settlement of this estate with such a cloud upon it would be false to my trust, to my great friend's memory, and, I may add, to all here. There is a mystery somewhere which has not been pierced. It is very probably a domestic entanglement. I shall expect you (to Agnes), and you, too," turning to Podge, "to be absolutely frank with me. Miss Agnes, have you seen Andrew Zane since his father's body was brought into this house!"

Agnes looked around helplessly and uncertain. She took the tablets to write a reply. Something seemed to arise in her mind to prevent the intention. She burst into tears and left the table.

"Ha!" thought Duff Salter grimly, "there will be no confession there. Then, little Miss Byerly, I will try to throw off its guard thy saucy perversity; for surely these two women understand each other."

After breakfast he followed Podge Byerly down Queen Street and through Beach, and came up with her as she went out of Kensington to the Delaware water-front about the old Northern Liberties district.

Duff bowed with a little of diffidence amid all his gravity, and sneezed as if to hide it:

"Jericho!—Miss Podge, see the time—eight o'clock, and an hour before school. Let us go look at the river."

They walked out on the wharf, and were wholly concealed from shore by piles of cord-wood and staves.

"I like to get off here, away from listeners, where I need not be bellowed at and tire out well-meaning lungs. Now—Jericho! Jericho!" he sneezed, without any sort of meaning. "Miss Podge," said Duff Salter, "if you look directly into my eyes and articulate distinctly, I can hear all you say without raising your voice higher than usual. How much money do you get for school teaching?"

"Five hundred dollars."

"Is that all? What do you do with it?"

"Support my mother and brother."

"And yourself also?"

"Oh! yes."

"She can't do it!" exclaimed Duff Salter inwardly; "that director comes in the case. Miss Podge, how old is your brother?"

"Twenty-four. He's my junior," she said archly. "I'm old."

"Why do you support a man twenty-four years old? Did he meet with an accident?"

"He was taken sick, and will never be well," answered Podge warily.

"Excuse me!" exclaimed Duff Salter, "was it constitutional disease? You know I am interested."

"No, sir. He was misled. A woman, much older than himself, infatuated him while a boy, and he married her, and she broke his health and ruined him."