Masters came to a sudden halt, and dropping his bag, uttered a loud cry. The curtained door of a grog-shop opened upon him. A hatless man dashed out, swearing horribly, and all but fell into Isaac's arms. With a cry of terror the runner dodged the pedestrian, and bolted down the street. Not twenty feet behind him bounded his pursuer.

By this time the country boy had slipped into the shadow of the building, where he could see without being seen. In that moment Isaac caught sight of a dazed group of men within, and the profile of the pursuer against the hot light of the saloon. He saw a brute holding a pistol in his out-stretched hand. Before Isaac understood the situation, the weapon shot out two flames and two staccato reports. These were followed by the intense silence which is like the darkness upon the heels of lightning.

Isaac's eyes were now strained upon the creature who was shot. He saw the man stagger, throw up his hands, and fall. He heard a groan. At that time the murderer with the smoking revolver was not more than ten paces away. As he fired, he had stopped. When he saw his victim fall, he gave a hoarse laugh.

By this time the lights in the saloon were put out, and its occupants had fled. The rustle of human buzzards flocking to the tragedy had begun. A motion that the murderer made to escape aroused the New Hampshire boy to a fierce sense of justice. A few bounds brought him by the side of the ruffian, who looked upon him with astonishment, and then with inflamed fear. Isaac furiously struck the pointed pistol to the pavement, and grasped the fellow's waist. Then he knew that he had almost met his match. Isaac held his opponent's left arm by the wrist, and tightened the vise. The murderer held the boy around his neck with a contracting grip such as only a prize-fighter understands. Neither spoke a word. It was power—power against skill.

There was a crash and a cry and a fall. But not until Isaac knew that the man under him was helpless did he utter a sound. Then he called: "Police! Police!"

The answer was a blinding blow upon the crown of his head. Then, before his head swam away into unconsciousness, he felt a strange thing happen to his wrists.

* * * * *

The first lieutenant, the captain, and the superintendent are different beings from the officer of the street, who has no gilt stripes upon his sleeves. The one, having passed through all grades, is supposed to have been chosen not only because of his fidelity and bravery, but because of his discriminating gentleness or gentlemanliness. The other, a private of the force, often a foreigner, with foreign instincts, and eager for promotion (that is, he means to make as many arrests as possible), confuses the difference between rudeness and authority, brutality and law. By the time he is a sergeant sense has been schooled into him, and he ought to know better.

The superintendent looked at Isaac steadily and not unkindly, while he listened to the officer's story.

"Off with those bracelets!" he said, sternly.

Isaac Masters regarded the superintendent gratefully. For the first time since he had been rebuffed by the station policeman, his natural expression of trust returned to his face.

"I'll forgive him," said the boy of a simple, Christian education. "It was dark—and he made a mistake." Isaac wiped the clotted blood from his cheeks. "Can I go now?"

Even a less experienced man than the white-haired superintendent would have known that the young man before him could no more have committed a crime or told an untruth than an oak. The policeman who had clubbed him, perhaps with the best intentions in the world, hung his head.

"Let me hear your story first." The superior officer spoke in his most fatherly tones. He really pitied the country lad.

"What is your name? Where do you come from? How did you get there? Tell me all about it. Here, sergeant, get him a glass of water, first."

"Perhaps a little whiskey would do him good," suggested a night-hawk who had just opened the door of the reporters' room. Blood acts terribly upon even the most stolid imagination. Beneath that red-streaked mask it needed all the experience of the superintendent to recognize the innocence of a juvenile heart. As Isaac in indignant refusal turned his disfigured head upon the youthful representative of an aged paper, he seemed to the thoughtless reporter the incarnation of a wounded beast. The young fellow opened the door, and beckoned his mates in to see the new show that was enacting before them. It is only fair to say that it is due to the modern insanity of the press for prying into private affairs that the worst phase of the tragedy I am relating came to pass.

Isaac Masters told his story eagerly and simply.

"I have done nothing to be arrested for," he ended, looking at the superintendent with his round, honest eyes. "I only did my duty as anybody else would. Now let me go. Tell me, Mr. Officer, where I can get a decent night's lodging, for I am going home to-morrow. I've had enough of this city. I want to go home!"

Something like a sob sounded in the throat of the huge boy as he came to this pathetic end. Every man in the station, from the most hardened observer of crime to the youngest reporter of misery, was moved. Isaac himself, still dizzy from the effects of the blow, nauseated by the prison smell, the indescribable odor of crime which no disinfectants can overcome, confounded by the surroundings into which he had been cast, and trembling with the nameless apprehension that all honest people feel when drawn into the arms of the law, swayed and swooned again.

The sergeant and the reporters (for they were not without kind hearts) busied themselves with bringing him to. From an opposite bench the murderer lowered, between scowls of pain, upon the man who had crushed him. There had been revealed to him a simplicity of soul residing in a body of iron. He saw that the country lad had fainted, not from physical weakness, but because of mental anguish. Such an apparent disparity between mind and body had not been brought to the saloon-keeper's experience before.

"He is the only witness, you say, officer?" inquired the chief. "Are you sure?"

"Yes, sorr!"

"We'll have to hold him, then. It's a great pity. I don't suppose he could get a ten-dollar bail." The superintendent shook his gray head thoughtfully. His subordinates did the same, with an exaggerated air of distress.

"Where am I? Oh!" What horror in that exhalation, as Isaac realized the place he was in! He staggered to his feet.

"Give me my bag, quick!" he exclaimed. "I will go."

"I'm afraid you can't go yet." The superintendent spoke as if he hated to do his duty.

"Not go? Why not? You have no right to hold an innocent man!"

"In cases of assault and murder, the witnesses must be held until they can furnish bail. That is the law." The white-haired man hurried his explanation, as if he were ashamed of it.

"I will come back."

The officer shook his head.

"I give you my word I will." Isaac clasped the rail pleadingly.

"I'll have to lock you up to-night; the judge will settle the amount of your bail to-morrow."

"Lock me up? I tell you I have no friends here! How can I get bail? Where will you put me?"

"Show him his cell," replied the chief to his sergeant.

"Come along," said the policeman kindly. "All witnesses are treated that way. We'll give you the most comfortable quarters we've got."

He took Isaac by the arm after the professional manner. The young man flung off the touch. For an instant his eyes swept the station menacingly. What if he should exert his strength! There were two—three—four officers in the room. He might even overpower these, and dash for liberty. He saw the livid reflection of electric lights through the windows. Unconsciously he contracted his sinews, and tightened his muscles until they were rigid. Then the hopelessness of his position burst upon him like a red strontian fire. He felt blasted by his disgrace.

"What are you doing to me?" he cried out. "Put me in prison? My God! This will kill my mother!"

The next morning at ten o'clock Tom Muldoon was released on ten thousand dollars bail. The surety was promptly furnished by the alderman of the—th Ward. Muldoon was to present himself before the grand jury, which met the first Monday in each month. As this was the beginning of the month, his appearance could not be required for three weeks at least, and by mutual agreement of the district attorney and the counsel for the defendant, action might be put off for one or even for two months more, pending the recovery or eventual death of the assaulted. This would give the saloon-keeper plenty of time for the two ribs that Isaac Masters had crushed, to mend!

There are sensitive men and women who would go insane after spending an innocent night in a cell. In the dryest, the largest, the best of them there is everything to debase the manhood and nauseate the soul. The tin cup on the grated window-sill, half-filled with soup which the last occupant left; the cot to the right of the hopeless door, made of two boards and one straw mattress; and that necessity which is the nameless horror of such a narrow incarceration—that which suffocates and poisons; then the flickering jet up the concrete corridor, casting such fitful shadows by the prisoner's side that he starts from his cot in terror to touch the phantoms lest they be real; the alternate waves of choking heat and harrowing cold; the hammering of the steam-pipes; the curses, the groans, and the eruptive breathing of the sleeping and the drunken; the thoughts of home, and friends, and irreparable disgrace; the feeble hope that, after all, the family will not hear of this so far away; and the despair because they will—mad visions of suicide; blasphemy, repentant tears and prayers, each chasing the other amid the persistent thought that all things are impotent but freedom. Oh, what a night! What a night!

There are souls that have existed five, ten years under the courtine of Catharine in the Petropavlovskaya Fortress—drugged, tortured, at last killed like rats in a hole. All the while the maledict banner of the Romanoffs writhes above them. What has been the power to keep alive thousands of prisoners in those bastions, beyond the natural endurance of the flesh? The glory of principle.

No wonder that a ghastly face and haggard eyes and wavering steps followed the keeper to the American court-room the next morning; for nothing could be tortured into a principle to stimulate Isaac's courage. It is easy to die for right, but not for wrong.

There were three short flights of iron that led past tiers of cells, through the tombs, into the prisoner's dock. Isaac dully remembered the huge coils of steam-pipe that curled up the side of the wall. He thought of pythons. As he passed by, the prisoners awaiting sentence held the rods of their doors in their hands, like monkeys, and swore, and laughed, and shot questions at the keeper as he passed along.

"Have you no friends in the city?" proceeded the judge, after he had examined the witness.

Isaac shook his head disconsolately. "I have about five dollars; that is all, and my bag—and, sir, my character."

"Then I am afraid I shall have to hold you over in default of bail until the trial." The judge nodded to the sheriff to bring on the next case.

"Where are you taking me?"

"To the City Jail," answered the sheriff curtly. "Come along!" With a mighty effort Isaac wrenched himself loose, and strode to the bar.

"Judge!" he cried. "Judge, you wouldn't do that! Let me go! I will come back on the trial. Look at me, Judge! What have I done? Why should I be sent to prison? I am an honest man!"

But the judge was used to such scenes, and he turned his head wearily away.

"The law requires the government to hold the witness in default of bail, in cases of capital crime." The judge was a kind man, and he tried to do a kind act by explaining the subtle process of the law again to the lad. When he had done this, he nodded. And now the men approached Isaac to remove him, by force if necessary. But the New Hampshire boy stood before the bar of justice stolidly. His eyes wandered aimlessly, and his lips muttered. Paralysis swept near him at that instant.

"Am—I—imprisoned because I am friendless and poor? Is this your law?"

The judge shrugged his shoulders, but many in the court-room felt uncomfortable.

"Then," spoke Isaac Masters, rising to his greatest height, and uplifting his hand as if to call God to witness, "if this is law—damn your law!" It was his first and last oath. Every man in the room started to his feet at the utterance of that supreme legal blasphemy. But the judge was silent. What sentence might he not inflict for such contempt of court? What sentence could he? The witness had no money, wherewith to be fined, and he was going to prison at any rate. The judge was great enough to put himself in Isaac's place. He stroked his beard meditatively.

"Remove the witness," he said. This was sentence enough. Although two officers advanced cautiously, as if prepared for a tussle, a babe might have led the giant unto the confines of Hades by the pressure of its little finger. For Isaac wept.



* * * * *

There were two other witnesses in the white-washed cell to which Isaac was assigned. It was on the south side, and large, and sunny, and often the door was left unlocked; but the cell looked out into a crumbling grave-yard. One of these witnesses was a boy of about eighteen, pale to the suggestion of a mortal disease. It did not take Isaac long to find out that this complexion did not indicate consumption, but was only prison pallor. The other prisoner was less pathetic as to color, but he was listless and discouraged. The only amusement of these men consisted in chewing tobacco in enormous quantities, playing surreptitious games of high-low-jack, in reading the daily paper, a single magazine, and waiting for the sun to enter the barred window, and watching it in the afternoon as it slipped away. These two men tried to cheer the new comer in a rude, hearty way; but when the country lad learned that they had been in detention for six months already, held by the government as main witnesses against the first mate of their brig, their words were as dust. They only choked him.

"What did you do," Isaac asked, "to get you in such a scrape?"

"We saw the mate shoot the cook; that's all."

"If I'd known," said the pale boy, with, a look out of the window, "how Uncle Sam keeps us so long—I wished I hadn't said nothing. But we get a dollar a day; that's something." And with a sigh that he meant to engulf with his philosophy, the boy turned his face away, so that Isaac should not suspect the tears that salted the flavor of the coarse tobacco.

The dark outlook, the blind future, the hopeless cell, the disordered table, the lazy life that deadened all activity but that of the imagination, the lack of vigorous air, the lounging companionship, but, above all things, the thought of his mother and Abbie, and the brooding over what he dared to call an outrage perpetrated, in the name of the law, upon himself—these things made a turmoil of Isaac's brain. There was a daily conflict between the Christian and the criminal way of looking at his irreparable misfortune which he was surprised to find that even the possession of his father's Bible could not control.

There were times when it needed all his intelligence to keep him from springing on the keeper, and running amuck in the ward-room, simply for the sake of uttering a violent, brutal protest. Then there were hours when he was too exhausted to leave his cot. At such a time he wrote a letter, his first letter to his mother, and he made the keeper promise to have it mailed so that no one could possibly suspect that it started from a prison.

"DEAR MOTHER"—it ran—"I have not written to you for three weeks since I have been here, because I have been sick. I am now in a very safe place, and am doing pretty well. I clear my food and board and seventy-five cents a day. I have not been paid yet. I think you had better not write to me until I can give you a permanent address. I read my Bible every day and love you more dearly than ever. I have tried to do my duty as you would have me. Give my love to Abbie. I will write soon again.

"Ever your affectionate son,

"ISAAC."

The simpleton! Could he not suspect that country papers copy from city columns all that is of special local interest, and more? And did he not know that it is one of the disgraces of modern journalism that no department is so copiously edited, annotated, and illustrated as that of criminal intelligence?

Could he not surmise that on the Saturday following his incarceration the very mountains rang with the news? That it should be mangled and turned topsy-turvy, and that in the eyes of his simple-minded neighbors he should be thought of as the murderer, by reason of his great strength? For how could it come into the intelligence of law-abiding citizens and law-respecting people, that a man should be shut up in prison, no matter what the newspapers said, unless he had done something to deserve it? What did the mountaineers know about the laws of bail, and habeas corpus? And could such news, gossiped by one neighbor, repeated by another, confirmed by a third, fail to reach the desolate farm-house in which a woman, feeble, old and faint of heart, lay trembling between life and death?

The grand jury meets on the first Monday of each month to indict those for trial against whom reasonable proofs of guilt are obtained. The saloon loafer had been shot in the groin, and pending his injuries indictment was waived. In proportion as the wound proved serious and the recovery prolonged, trial was postponed.

Isaac Masters had now been locked up six weeks. He had not yet heard from home, and had only written once. About noon, one day, the keeper came to tell him that a woman wished to see him. Isaac thought that it was his mother, and the shame of meeting her in the guard-room surrounded by tiers upon tiers of murderers and thieves and petty criminals overcame him. The man of strength sat down on his cot, and putting his hands over his white face, trembled violently. The guard, who knew that Isaac was an innocent man, spoke to him kindly.

"Go! go!" said the prisoner in a voice of agony, "and tell my mother that I will be right there."

"Mother!" ejaculated the guard. "She's the youngest mother for a man of your size I ever see." He winked at the sailor, and went.

Then Isaac knew that it was Abbie, who had come alone, and he tightened his teeth and lips together, and went down.

Isaac slowly came down the perforated iron stairs that were attached to his prison wing like an inside fire-escape. On the bench in the middle of the guard-room sat Abbie—a little, helpless thing she seemed to him—facing the entrance, as if she feared to remove her eyes from the door that led to freedom.

Abbie was greatly changed. She was dressed in black. If Isaac had been a free man, this fact would have startled him. As it was, he was so spent with suffering that his dulled mind could not understand it. At first Abbie did not recognize her hearty lover. His huge frame was gaunt and wasted. His ruddy face was white, and his cheeks hung in folds like moulded putty. His country clothes dropped about him aimlessly. From crown to foot he had been devastated by unmerited disgrace. Grief may glorify; but the other ravages.

This meeting between the lovers was singularly undramatic. Each shrank a little from the other. They shook hands quietly. His was burning; her's like a swamp in October dew. He sat down beside her on the bench awkwardly, while the deputy looked at them with careless curiosity. He was used to nothing but tragedy and crime, and to his experienced mind the two had become long ago confused.

"Mother?" asked Isaac, nervously moving his feet. "Didn't she get my letter?"

The girl nodded gravely, tried to meet his eyes, and then looked away. Tears fell unresisted down her cheeks. She made no attempt to wipe them off. It was as if she were too well acquainted with them to check their flow.

Then the truth began to filter through Isaac's bewebbed intellect. He spread his knees apart, rested his arms upon them, and bent his head to his hands. His great figure shook.

"Oh, my God!" he sobbed. "My God! My God!"

"Oh, don't, Isaac, don't!" Abbie put her hand upon his head as if he had been her boy. "Your mother was as happy as could be. She was happy to die. We buried her yesterday!"

How could she tell him that his mother had died of grief—too sorely smitten to bear it—for his sake?

But Isaac's head rose and fell—rose and fell rhythmically between his hands. His breath came in low groans, like that of an animal smitten dead by a criminally heavy load.

"She sent her love before she passed away. She wanted you to come back to the farm as soon as you could. She believed in you, Ikey, even if you were in prison. She said Paul was in prison, and that it was a terrible mistake. She knew your father's son would not depart from his God!"

As Abbie uttered this simple confession of country faith, the pitiful man lifted up his eyes from the tiled floor and looked at her gratefully. His dry lips moved, and he tried to speak.

"Yes," was all he said, with fierce humility. Then the lack of breath choked him.

"She made me promise not to give you up, and to come and see you. Of course you are innocent, Ikey?" Abbie did not look at him.

"Yes," he answered mechanically.

"I know," she said softly.

Of what use were more words? They would only beat like waves against the granite of his broken heart. The two sat silent for a time. Then Abbie said, "I must go." She edged a little towards him, and touched his coat.

"When will you come out? I will explain it all to the minister and the neighbors. We will be married as soon as you come home. She wanted us to! Oh, Ikey! Oh, Ikey! My poor—poor boy!"

Isaac arose unsteadily. It was time for her to go, for the turnkey had nodded to him.

A fierce, mad indignation at his fate and what it had wrought upon his mother and upon his honorable name blinded him. He did not even say good-by, but left the girl standing in the middle of the guard-room alone. At any cost he must get back to his cell. Supposing his mind should give way before he got there? He staggered to the stairway. He threw his hands up, and groped on the railing. A blindness struck him before he had mounted two steps. He did not hear a woman's shriek, nor the rushing of feet, nor the sound of his own fall.

When he awaked, he was alone in the witness cell; and when he put his white hands to his hair, he felt that his head was shaven. The chipper prison doctor told him that he was getting nicely over a brain fever.

* * * * *

It was three months after this before the case of Tom Muldoon came upon the docket. The man whom the saloon-keeper had shot had but just been declared out of clanger and on the road to recovery.

When the case was called, the district attorney arose from his desk under the bench, and represented to the court that as for some unforeseen reason the said Frank Stevens, who had been maliciously and wilfully assaulted and shot by the said Tom Muldoon, had refused to prosecute, the prosecution rested upon the government, which would rely upon the direct evidence of one witness to sustain the case.

The district attorney, who was an unbought man, and whose future election depended upon the number of convictions he secured for the State, now opened his case with such decision, vigor, and masterful certainty that the policemen and other friends of the defendant began to quake for the boss of the—th Ward.

"And now, your honor, I will call to the witness-stand a young man of stainless life, whom the government has held as a witness since the brutal assault was committed. He is in the custody of the sheriff of the county, Isaac Masters!"

All eyes turned to the door at the left of the bench. There was a bustle of expectancy, and a pallor upon the face of Tom Muldoon.

"Isaac Masters!" repeated the attorney impatiently. "Will the court officer produce the witness?"

The judge rapped his pencil on the desk in a nervous tattoo. Above all things he detested delay.

"I hope Your Honor will grant me a few moments," said the attorney, annoyed. "The witness must surely be here directly."

"It can go over—" began the judge indulgently, when he was interrupted by the entrance of the sheriff of the county himself. This man beckoned to the district attorney, and the two whispered together with the appearance of great excitement.

"Well?" said the judge, yawning. "Produce your witness."

But the attorney for the government came back to his place slowly, with head bent. He was very pale, and evidently much shaken. The saloon-keeper's face expanded with hope, as he leaned aside and whispered to a friendly wardman.

What was the evidence? Where was the witness? Silent? Why? The question flashed from face to face in the court-room. Had he escaped? Or been spirited away? Such things had been known to happen. Or had he become insane during his incarceration? Such things had been known to happen, too. Gentlemen of the law! Gentlemen of the jury! Sheriff of the county! Judge of the Superior Court! Where is the witness? We demand him on penalty of contempt. Contempt of your Honorable Court? Contempt of court!

What? Is he not here? After all this cost to the State, and to the man? Why has he not met his enforced appointment? If not here, why was the innocent witness suffocated behind bars and walls, while the murderer was free to dispense rum?

"Your Honor," began the attorney, with white lips, "a most unfortunate occurrence has happened, one that the government truly deplores. The witness has been suddenly called away. In fact, Your Honor—hem!—in short, I have been informed by the sheriff that the witness cannot answer to the summons of the court. He is disqualified from subpoena. In fact, Your Honor, the witness died this morning."

The lawyer took out his handkerchief ostentatiously. He then bent to his papers with shaking hands. He looked them over carefully while the court held its breath.

"As the government is not in possession of any evidence against Muldoon, I move to nolle prosequi the case."

"It is granted," said the judge, with a keen glance at the bloated prisoner, whom wardmen and officers of the law were already congratulating profusely.

"Order!" continued the judge. "Prisoner, stand up! You are allowed to go upon your own recognizance in the sum of two hundred and fifty dollars."

The next case was called, a new crowd entered the vitiated room, and the court proceeded with its routine as if nothing unusual had happened.

And the silent witness has passed out of every memory but mine, and that of one poor girl mourning in the New Hampshire hills.



THE SUN'S LIGHT

BY SIR ROBERT BALL,

LOWNDEAN PROFESSOR OF ASTRONOMY AND GEOMETRY AT CAMBRIDGE, ENGLAND; FORMERLY ROYAL ASTRONOMER OF IRELAND.

The light of the great orb of day emanates solely from a closely fitting robe of surpassing brightness. The great bulk of the sun which lies within that brilliant mantle is comparatively obscure, and might at first seem to play but an unimportant part so far as the dispensing of light and heat is concerned. It may indeed be likened to the coal-cellar from whence are drawn the supplies that produce the warmth and brightness of the domestic hearth; while the brilliant robe where the sun develops its heat corresponds to the grate in which the coal is consumed. With regard to the thickness of the robe, we might liken this brilliant exterior to the rind of an orange, while the gloomy interior regions would correspond to the edible portion of the fruit. Generally speaking, the rind of the orange is rather too coarse for the purpose of this illustration. It might be nearer the truth to affirm that the luminous part of the sun may be compared to the delicate filmy skin of the peach. There can be no doubt that if this glorious veil were unhappily stripped from the sun, the great luminary would forthwith lose its powers of shedding forth light and heat. The spots which we see so frequently to fleck the dazzling surface, are merely rents in the brilliant mantle through which we are permitted to obtain glimpses of the comparatively non-luminous interior.

As the ability of the sun to warm and light this earth arises from the peculiar properties of the thin glowing shell which surrounds it, a problem of the greatest interest is presented in an inquiry as to the material composition of this particular layer of solar substance. We want, in fact, to ascertain what that special stuff can be which enables the sun to be so useful to us dwellers on the earth. This great problem has been solved, and the result is extremely interesting and instructive; it has been discovered that the material which confers on the sun its beneficent power is also a material which is found in the greatest abundance on the earth, where it fulfils purposes of the very highest importance. Let us see, in the first place, what is the most patent fact with regard to the structure of this solar mantle possessed of a glory so indescribable. It is perfectly plain that it is not composed of any continuous solid material. It has a granular character which is sometimes perceptible when viewed through a powerful telescope, but which can be seen more frequently and studied more satisfactorily on a photographic plate. These granules have an obvious resemblance to clouds; and clouds, indeed, we may call them. There is, however, a very wide difference between the solar clouds and those clouds which float in our own atmosphere. The clouds which we know so well are, of course, merely vast collections of globules of water suspended in the air. No doubt the mighty solar clouds do also consist of incalculable myriads of globules of some particular substance floating in the solar atmosphere. The material of which these solar clouds are composed is, however, I need hardly say, not water, nor is it anything in the remotest degree resembling water. Some years ago any attempt to ascertain the particular substance out of which the solar clouds were formed would at once have been regarded as futile; inasmuch as such a problem would then have been thought to lie outside the possibilities of human knowledge. The advance of discovery has, however, shed a flood of light on the subject, and has revealed the nature of that material to whose presence we are indebted for the solar beneficence. The detection of the particular element to which all living creatures are so much indebted is due to that distinguished physicist, Dr. G. Johnstone Stoney.

In the whole range of science, one of the most remarkable discoveries ever made is that which has taught us that the elementary bodies of which the sun and the stars are constructed are essentially the same as those of which the earth has been built. This discovery was indeed as unexpected as it is interesting. Could we ever have anticipated that a body ninety-three millions of miles away, as the sun is, or a hundred million of millions of miles distant, as a star may be, should actually prove to have been formed from the same materials as those which compose this earth of ours and all which it contains, whether animate or inanimate? Yet such is indeed the fact. We are thus, in a measure, prepared to find that the material which forms the great solar clouds may turn out to be a substance not quite unknown to the terrestrial chemist. Nay, further, its very abundance in the sun might seem to suggest that this particular material might perhaps prove to be one which was very abundant on the earth.



I had occasion to make use of the word carbon in a lecture which I gave a short time ago, and I thought when I did so that I was of course merely using a term with whose meaning all my audience must be well acquainted. But I found out afterwards that in this matter I had been mistaken. I was told that my introduction of the word carbon had quite puzzled some of those who were listening to me. I learned that a few of those who were unfamiliar with this word went to a gentleman of their acquaintance who they thought would be likely to know, and begged from him an explanation of this mysterious term; whereupon he told them that he was not quite sure himself, but believed that carbon was something which was made out of nitro-glycerine! Even at the risk of telling what every schoolboy ought to know, I will say that carbon is one of the commonest as well as one of the most remarkable substances in nature. A lump of coke only differs from a piece of carbon by the ash which the coke leaves behind when burned. As charcoal is almost entirely carbon, so wood is largely composed of this same element. Carbon is indeed present everywhere. In various forms carbon is in the earth beneath our feet, and in the air which we breath. This substance courses with the blood through our veins; it is by carbon that the heat of the body is sustained; and the same element is intimately associated with life in every phase. Nor is the presence of carbon merely confined to this earth. We know it abounds on other bodies in space. It has been shown to be eminently characteristic of the composition of comets. Carbon is not only intimately associated with articles of daily utility, and of plenteous abundance, but with the most exquisite gems of "purest ray serene." More precious than gold, more precious than rubies, the diamond itself is no more than the same element in crystalline form. But the greatest of all the functions of carbon in the universe has yet to be mentioned. This same wonderful element has been shown to be in all probability the material which constitutes those glowing solar clouds to whose kindly radiation our very life owes its origin.



In the ordinary incandescent electric lamp, the brilliant light is produced by a glowing filament of carbon. The powerful current of electricity experiences so much resistance as it flows through this badly conducting substance, that it raises the temperature of the carbon wire so as to make it dazzlingly white-hot. Indeed the carbon is thus elevated to a temperature far in excess of that which could be obtained in any other way. The reason why carbon is employed in the electric lamp, in preference to any other substance, may be easily understood. Suppose we tried to employ an iron wire as the glowing filament within the well-known glass globe. Then when the current was turned on that iron would of course become red-hot and white-hot; but ere a sufficient temperature had been attained to produce the requisite illumination, the iron wire would have been fused into drops of liquid, the current would have been broken, and the lamp would have been destroyed. Nor would the attempt to make an incandescent lamp have proved much more successful had the filament been made of any other metal. The least fusible of metals is the costly element platinum, but even a wire of platinum, though it would stand much more heat than a wire of iron or of steel, would not have retained the solid form by the time it had been raised to the temperature necessary for an incandescent lamp.

There is no known metal, and perhaps no substance whatever, which demands so high a temperature to fuse it as does the element carbon. A filament of carbon, and a filament of carbon alone, will remain unfused and unbroken when heated by the electric current to the dazzling brilliance necessary for effective illumination. This is the reason why this particular element is so indispensable for our incandescent electric lamps. Modern research has now taught us that, just as the electrician has to employ carbon as the immediate agent in producing the brightest of artificial lights down here, so the sun in heaven uses precisely the same element as the immediate agent in the production of its transcendent light and heat. Owing to the extraordinary fervor which prevails in the interior parts of the sun, all substances there present, no matter how difficult we may find their fusion, would have to submit to be melted, nay, even to be driven off into vapor. If submitted to the heat of this appalling solar furnace, an iron poker, for instance, would vanish into invisible vapor. In the presence of the intense heat of the inner parts of the sun, even carbon itself is unable to remain solid. It would seem that it must assume a gaseous form under such circumstances, just as the copper and the iron and all the other substances do which yield more readily than it to the fierce heat of their surroundings.

The buoyancy of carbon vapor is one of its most remarkable characteristics. Accordingly immense volumes of the carbon steam in the sun soar at a higher level than do the vapors of the other elements. Thus carbon becomes a very large and important constituent of the more elevated regions of the solar atmosphere. We can understand what happens to these carbon vapors by the analogous case of the familiar clouds in our own skies. It is true, no doubt, that our terrestrial clouds are composed of a material totally different from that which constitutes the solar clouds. The sun evaporates the water from the great oceans which cover so large a proportion of our earth. The vapor thus produced ascends in the form of invisible gas through our atmosphere, until it reaches an altitude thousands of feet above the surface of the earth. The chill that the watery vapor experiences up there is so great that the vapor collects into little liquid beads, and it is, of course, these liquid beads, associated in countless myriads, which form the clouds we know so well.

We can now understand what happens as the buoyant carbon vapors soar upwards through the sun's atmosphere. They attain at last to an elevation where the fearful intensity of the solar heat has so far abated that, though nearly all other elements may still remain entirely gaseous, yet the exceptionally refractory carbon begins to return to the liquid state. At the first stage in this return, the carbon vapor conducts itself just as does the ascending watery vapor from the earth when about to be transformed into a visible cloud. Under the influence of a chill the carbon vapor collects into a myriad host of little beads of liquid. Each of these drops of liquid carbon in the glorious solar clouds has a temperature and a corresponding radiance vastly exceeding that with which the filament glows in the incandescent electric lamp. When we remember further that the entire surface of our luminary is coated with these clouds, every particle of which is thus intensely luminous, we need no longer wonder at that dazzling brilliance which, even across the awful gulf of ninety-three millions of miles, produces for us the indescribable glory of daylight.

Sir Robert Ball will contribute a series of articles on "The Marvels of the Universe." Six or eight of these articles may be expected during the coming year.



CHAPTERS FROM A LIFE.

BY ELIZABETH STUART PHELPS,

AUTHOR OF "THE GATES AJAR," "THE MADONNA OF THE TUBS," ETC.

LIFE IN ANDOVER BEFORE THE WAR.

Andover is—or Andover was—like the lady to whom Steele gave immortality in the finest and most famous epigram ever offered to woman.

To have loved Andover; to have been born in Andover—I am brought up short, in these notes, by the sudden recollection that I was not born in Andover. It has always been so difficult to believe it, that I am liable any day to forget it; but the facts compel me to infer that I was born within a mile of the State House. I must have become a citizen of Andover at the age of three, when my father resigned his Boston pulpit for the professorship of Rhetoric in Andover Seminary. I remember distinctly our arrival at the white mansion with the large, handsome grounds, the distant and mysterious grove, the rotund horse-chestnut trees, venerable and solemn, nearly a century old—to this day a horse-chestnut always seems to me like a theological trustee—and the sweep of playground so vast, so soft, so green, so fragrant, so clean, that the baby cockney ran imperiously to her father and demanded that he go build her a brick sidewalk to play upon.

What, I wonder, may be the earliest act of memory on record? Mine is not at all unusual—dating only to two and a half years; at which time I clearly remember being knocked down by my dog, in my father's area in Boston, and being crowed over by a rooster of abnormal proportions who towered between me and the sky, a dragon in size and capabilities.

My father always maintained that he distinctly remembered hearing the death of Napoleon announced in his presence when he was one year and a half old.

Is the humiliating difference between the instinctive selection of Napoleon and that of the rooster, one of temperament or sex? In either case, it is significant enough to lead one to drop the subject.

Next to having been born in a university town, comes the advantage—if it be an advantage—of having spent one's youth there. Mr. Howells says that he must be a dull fellow who does not, at some time or other, hate his native village; and I must confess that I have not, at all stages of my life, held my present opinion of Andover. There have been times when her gentle indifference to the preoccupations of the world has stung me, as all serenity stings restlessness. There have been times when the inevitable limitations of her horizon have seemed as familiar as the coffin-lid to the dead.



There was an epoch when her theology—But, nevertheless, I certainly look back upon Andover Hill with a very gentle pleasure and heartfelt sense of debt.

It has been particularly asked of me to give some form to my recollections of a phase of local life which is now so obviously passing away that it has a certain historical interest.

That Andover remains upon the map of Massachusetts yet, one does not dispute; but the Andover of New England theology—the Andover of a peculiar people, the Andover that held herself apart from the world and all that was therein—will soon become an interesting wraith.

The life of a professor's daughter in a university town is always a little different from the lives of other girls; but the difference seems to me—unless she be by nature entirely alien to it—in favor of the girl. Were I to sum in one word my impressions of the influences of Andover life upon a robust young mind and heart, I should call them gentle.

As soon as we began to think, we saw a community engaged in studying thought. As soon as we began to feel, we were aware of a neighborhood that did not feel superficially; at least, in certain higher directions. When we began to ask the "questions of life," which all intelligent young people ask sooner or later, we found ourselves in a village of three institutions and their dependencies committed to the pursuit of an ideal of education for which no amount of later, or what we call broader, training ever gives us any better word than Christian.

Such things tell. Andover girls did not waltz, or suffer summer engagements at Bar Harbor, a new one every year; neither did they read Ibsen, or yellow novels; nor did they handle the French stories that are hidden from parents; though they were excellent French scholars in their day.

I do not even know that one can call them more "serious" than their city sisters—for we were a merry lot; at least, my lot were. But they were, I believe, especially open-hearted, gentle-minded girls.

If they were "out of the world" to a certain extent, they were, to another, out of the evil of it. As I look back upon the little drama between twelve and twenty—I might rather say, between two and twenty—Andover young people seem to me to have been as truly and naturally innocent as one may meet anywhere in the world. Some of these private records of girl-history were so white, so clear, so sweet, that to read them would be like watching a morning-glory open. The world is full, thank Heaven, of lovely girls; but though other forms or phases of gentle society claim their full quota, I never saw a lovelier than those I knew on Andover Hill.

One terrible tragedy, indeed, befell our little "set;" for we had our sets in Andover, as well as they of Newport or New York.

A high-bred girl of exceptional beauty was furtively kissed one evening by a daring boy (not a native of Andover, I hasten to explain), and the furore which followed this unprecedented enormity it would be impossible to describe to a member of more complicated circles of society. Fancy the reception given such a commonplace at any of our fashionable summer resorts to-day!

On Andover Hill the event was a moral cataclysm. Andover girls were country girls, but not of rustic (any more than of metropolitan) social training. Which of them would have suffered an Academy boy, walking home with her from a lecture or a prayer-meeting, any little privilege which he might not have taken in her father's house, and with her mother's knowledge? I never knew one. The case of which I speak was historic, and as far as I ever knew, unique, and was that of a victim, not an offender.

The little beauty to whom this atrocity happened cried all night and all the next day; she was reported not to have stopped crying for twenty-six hours. Her pretty face grew wan and haggard. She was too ill to go to her lessons.

The teachers—to whom she had promptly related the circumstance—condoled with her; the entire school vowed to avenge her; we were a score of as disturbed and indignant girls as ever wept over woman's wrongs, or scorned a man's depravity.

Yet, for aught I know to the contrary, this abandoned young man may have grown up to become a virtuous member of society; possibly even an exemplary husband and father. I have never been able to trace his history; probably the moral repulsion was too great.

Yet they were no prigs, for their innocence! Andover girls, in the best and brightest sense of the word, led a gay life.

The preponderance of young men on the Hill gave more than ample opportunity for well-mannered good times; and we made the most of them.



Legends of the feminine triumphs of past generations were handed breathlessly down to us, and cherished with awe. A lady of the village, said to have been once very handsome, was credibly reported to have refused nineteen offers of marriage. Another, still plainly beautiful, was known to have received and declined the suits of nine theologues in one winter. Neither of these ladies married. We watched their whitening hairs and serene faces with a certain pride of sex, not easily to be understood by a man. When we began to think how many times they might have married, the subject assumed sensational proportions. In fact, the maiden ladies of Andover always, I fancied, regarded each other with a peculiar sense of peace. Each knew—and knew that the rest knew—that it was (to use the Andover phraseology) not of predestination or foreordination, but of free will absolute, that an Andover girl passed through life alone. This little social fact, which is undoubtedly true of most, if not all, university towns, had mingled effects upon impressionable girls. For the proportion of masculine society was almost Western in its munificence.

Perhaps it is my duty to say just here that, if honestly put to the question, I should admit that this proportion was almost too munificent for the methods of education then—and still to an extent now—in vogue.

A large Academy for boys, and a flourishing Seminary for young men, set across the village streets from two lively girls' schools, gave to one observer of this little scholastic world her first argument for co-education.

I am confident that if the boys who serenaded (right manfully) under the windows of Abbott Academy or of "The Nunnery," or who tied their lady's colors to the bouquets that they tossed on balconies of professors' houses, had been put, class to class, in competition with us, they would have wasted less time upon us; and I could not deny that if the girls who cut little holes in their fans through which one could look, undetected and unreproved, at one's favorite Academy boy, on some public occasion, had been preparing to meet or pass that boy at Euclid or Xenophon recitation next morning, he would have occupied less of their fancy. Intellectual competition is simpler, severer, and more wholesome than the unmitigated social plane; and a mingling of the two may be found calculated to produce the happiest results.

"Poor souls!" said a Boston lady once to me, upon my alluding to a certain literary club which was at that time occupying the enthusiasm of the Hill. "Poor souls! I suppose they are so starved for society!" We can fancy the amusement with which this comment would have been received if it had been repeated—but it never was repeated till this moment—in Andover.

For Andover had her social life, and knew no better, for the most part, than to enjoy it. It is true that many of her diversions took on that religious or academic character natural to the place. Of village parish life we knew nothing, for our chapel was, like others of its kind, rather an exclusive little place of worship. We were ignorant of pastoral visits, deacons, parochial gossip, church fairs, and what Professor Park used to call "the doughnut business;" and, though we cultivated a weekly prayer-meeting in the lecture-room, I think its chief influence was as a training-school for theological students whose early efforts at public exhortation (poor fellows!) quaveringly besought their Professors to grow in grace, and admonished the families of the Faculty circle to repent.

But we had our lectures and our concerts—quite distinct, as orthodox circles will understand, from those missionary festivals which went, I never discovered why, by the name of Monthly Concerts—and our Porter Rhets. I believe this cipher stood for Porter Rhetorical; and research, if pushed far enough, would develop the fact that Porter indicated a dead professor who once founded a chair and a debating society for young men. Then we had our anniversaries and our exhibitions, when we got ourselves into our organdie muslins or best coats, and listened to the boys spouting Greek and Latin orations in the old, red brick Academy, and heard the theological students—but here this reporter is forced to pause. I suppose I ought to be ashamed of it, but the fact is, that I never attended an anniversary exercise of the Seminary in my life. It would be difficult to say why. I think my reluctance consisted in an abnormal objection to Trustees. So far as I know, they were an innocent set of men, of good reputations and quite harmless. But I certainly acquired, at a very early age, an antipathy to this class of Americans from which I have never recovered.

Our anniversaries occurred, according to the barbaric custom of the times, in the hottest heat of August; and if there be a hotter place in Massachusetts than Andover was, I have yet to simmer in it. Our houses were, of course, thrown open, and crowded to the shingles.

I remember once sharing my tiny room with a little guest who would not have the window open, though the thermometer had stood above ninety, day and night, for a week; and because she was a trustee's daughter, I must not complain. Perhaps this experience emphasized a natural lack of sympathy with her father.

At all events, I cherished a hidden antagonism to these excellent and useful men, of which I make this late and public confession. It seemed to me that everybody in Andover was afraid of them. I "took it out" in the cordial defiance of a born rebel.

Then we had our tea-parties—theological, of course—when the students came to tea in alphabetical order; and the Professor told his best stories; and the ladies of the family were expected to keep more or less quiet while the gentlemen talked. But this, I should say, was of the earlier time.

And, of course, we had the occasional supply; and as for the clerical guest, in some shape he was always with us.

I remember the shocked expression on the face of a not very eminent minister, because I joined in the conversation when, in the absence of my father's wife, the new mother, it fell to me to take the head of the table. It was truly a stimulating conversation, intellectual, and, like all clerical conversations, vivaciously amusing; and it swept me in, unconsciously. I think this occurred after I had written "The Gates Ajar."

This good man has since become an earnest anti-suffragist and opposer of the movement for the higher education of women. I can only hope he does not owe his dismal convictions to the moral jar received on that occasion; and I regret to learn that his daughter has been forbidden to go to college.



We had, too, our levees—that was the word; by it one meant what is now called a reception. I have been told that my mother, who was a woman of marked social tastes and gifts, oppressed by the lack of variety in Andover life, originated this innocent form of dissipation.

These festivities, like others in academic towns, were democratic to a degree amusing or inspiring, according to the temperament of the spectator.

The professors' brilliantly-lighted drawing-rooms were thrown open to the students and families of the Hill. Distinguished men jostled the Academy boy who built the furnace fire to pay for his education, and who might be found on the faculty some day, in his turn, or might himself acquire an enviable and well-earned celebrity.

Eminent guests from out of town stood elbow to elbow with poor theologues destined to the missionary field, and pathetically observing the Andover levee as one of the last occasions of civilized gayety in which it might be theirs to share. Ladies from Beacon Street or from New York might be seen chatting with some gentle figure in black, one of those widowed and brave women whose struggles to sustain life and educate their children by boarding students form so large a part of the pathos of academic towns.

One such I knew who met on one of these occasions a member of the club for which she provided. The lady was charming, well-dressed, well-mannered.

The young man, innocent of linen, had appeared at the levee in a gray flannel shirt. Introductions passed. The lady bowed.

"I am happy," stammered the poor fellow, "I am happy to meet the woman who cooks our victuals."

If it be asked, Why educate a man like that for the Christian ministry?—but it was not asked. Like all monstrosities, he grew without permission.

Let us hasten to call him the exception that he was to what, on the whole, was (in those days) a fair, wholesome rule of theological selection. The Professor's eyes flashed when he heard the story.

"I have never approved," I think he said, "of the Special Course."

For the Professor believed in no short-cut to the pulpit; but pleaded for all the education, all the opportunity, all the culture, all the gifts, all the graces, possible to a man's privilege or energy, whereby to fit him to preach the Christian religion. But, like other professors, he could not always have his way.

It ought to be said, perhaps, that, beside the self-made or self-making man, there always sat upon the old benches in the lecture-room a certain proportion of gentlemen born and bred to ease and affluence, who had chosen their life's work from motives which were, at least, as much to be respected as the struggles of the converted newsboy or the penitent expressman.

Take her at her dullest, I think we were very fond of Andover; and though we dutifully improved our opportunities to present ourselves in other circles of society, yet, like fisher-folk or mountain-folk, we were always uneasy away from home. I remember on my first visit to New York or Boston—and this although my father was with me—quietly crying my eyes out behind the tall, embroidered screen which the hostess moved before the grate, because the fire-light made me so homesick. Who forgets his first attack of nostalgia? Alas! so far as this recorder is concerned, the first was too far from the last. For I am cursed (or blessed) with a love of home so inevitable and so passionate as to be nothing less than ridiculous to my day and generation—a day of rovers, a generation of shawl-straps and valises.

"Do you never want to stay?" I once asked a distinguished author whose domestic uprootings were so frequent as to cause remark even in America.

"I am the most homesick man who ever lived," he responded sadly. "If I only pass a night in a sleeping-car, I hate to leave my berth."

"You must have cultivated society in Andover," an eminent Cambridge writer once said to me, with more sincerity of tone than was to be expected of the Cambridge accent as addressed to the Andover fact. I was young then, and I remember to have answered, honestly enough, but with what must have struck this superior man as unpardonable flippancy:

"Oh, but one gets tired of seeing only cultivated people!"

I have thought of it sometimes since, when, in other surroundings, the memory of that peaceful, scholarly life has returned poignantly to me.

When one can "run in" any day to homes like those on that quiet and conscientious Hill, one may not do it; but when one cannot, one appreciates their high and gentle influence.

One of the historic figures of my day in Andover was Professor Park. Equally eminent both as a preacher and as a theologian, his fame was great in Zion; and "the world" itself had knowledge of him, and did him honor.

He was a striking figure in the days which were the best of Andover. He was unquestionably a genius; the fact that it was a kind of genius for which the temper of our times is soon likely to find declining uses gives some especial interest to his name.

The appearances are that he will be the last of his type, once so powerful and still so venerable in New England history. He wears (for he is yet living) the dignity of a closing cycle; there is something sad and grand about his individualism, as there is about the last great chief of a tribe, or the last king of a dynasty.

In his youth he was the progressive of Evangelical theology. In his age he stands the proud and reticent conservative, the now silent representative of a departed glory, a departed severity—and, we must admit, of a departed strength—from which the theology of our times has melted away. Like other men in such positions, he has had battles to fight, and he has fought them; enemies to make, and he has made them. How can he keep them? He is growing old so gently and so kindly! Ardent friends and worshipping admirers he has always had, and kept, and deserved.

A lady well known among the writers of our day, herself a professor's daughter from a New England college town, happened once to be talking with me in a lonely hour and in a mood of confidence.

"Oh," she cried, "it seems some of these desolate nights as if I must go home and sit watching for my father to come back from faculty meeting!"

But the tears smote her face, and she turned away. I knew that she had been her dead father's idol, and he hers.

To her listener what a panorama in those two words: "Faculty meeting!"

Every professor's daughter, every woman from a university family, can see it all. The whole scholastic and domestic, studious and tender life comes back. Faculty meeting! We wait for the tired professor who had the latest difference to settle with his colleagues, or the newest breach to soothe, or the favorite move to push; how late he is! He comes in softly, haggard and spent, closing the door so quietly that no one shall be wakened by this midnight dissipation. The woman who loves him most anxiously—be it wife or be it daughter—is waiting for him. Perhaps there is a little whispered sympathy for the trouble in the faculty which he does not tell. Perhaps there is a little expedition to the pantry for a midnight lunch.

My first recollections of Professor Park give me his tall, gaunt, but well-proportioned figure striding up and down the gravel walks in front of the house, two hours before time for faculty meeting, in solemn conclave with my father. The two were friends—barring those interludes common to all faculties, when professional differences are in the foreground—and the pacing of their united feet might have worn Andover Hill through to the central fires. For years I cultivated an objection to Professor Park as being the chief visible reason why we had to wait for supper.

I remember his celebrated sermons quite well. The chapel was always thronged, and—as there were no particular fire-laws in those days on Andover Hill—the aisles brimmed over when it was known that Professor Park or Professor Phelps was to preach. I think I usually began with a little jealous counting of the audience, lest it should prove bigger than my father's; but even a child could not long listen to Professor Park and not forget her small affairs, and all affairs except the eloquence of the man.

Great, I believe it was. Certain distinguished sermons had their popular names, as "The Judas Sermon," or "The Peter Sermon," and drew their admirers accordingly. He was a man of marked emotional nature, which he often found it hard to control. A skeptical critic might have wondered whether the tears welled, or the face broke, or the voice trembled, always just at the right moment, from pure spontaneity. But those who knew the preacher personally never doubted the genuineness of the feeling that swept and carried orator and hearers down. We do not hear such sermons now.

Professor Park has always been a man of social ease and wit. The last time I saw him, at the age of eighty-five, in his house in Andover, I thought, one need not say, "has been;" and to recall his brilliant talk that day gives me hesitation over the past tense of this reminiscence. On the whole, with the exception of Doctor Holmes, I think I should call Professor Park the best converser—at least among eminent men—whom I have ever met.

He has always been a man very sensitive to the intellectual values of life, and fully inclined perhaps to approach the spiritual through those. It is easy to misunderstand a religious teacher of this temperament, and his admiring students may have sometimes done so.

One in particular I remember to have heard of who neglected the lecture-room to cultivate upon his own responsibility the misson work of what was known as Abbott Village. To the Christian socialism of our day, the misery of factory life might seem as important for the future clergyman as the system of theology regnant in his particular seminary—but that was not the fashion of the time; at all events, the man was a student under the Professor's orders, and the orders were: keep to the curriculum; and I can but think that the Professor was right when he caustically said:

"That —— is wasting his seminary course in what he calls doing good!"

Sometimes, too, the students used to beg off to go on book-agencies, or to prosecute other forms of money-making; and of one such Professor Park was heard to say that he "sacrificed his education to get the means of paying for it."

I am indebted to Professor Park for this: "Professor Stuart and myself were reluctant to release them from their studies. Professor Stuart remarked of one student that he got excused every Saturday for the purpose of going home for a week, and always stayed a fortnight."

The last time that I saw Professor Park he told me a good story. It concerned the days of his prime, when he had been preaching somewhere—in Boston or New York, I think—and after the audience was dismissed a man lingered and approached him.

"Sir," said the stranger, "I am under great obligations to you. Your discourse has moved me greatly. I can truly say that I believe I shall owe the salvation of my soul to you. I wish to offer, sir, to the seminary with which you are connected, a slight tribute of my admiration for and indebtedness to you." The gentleman drew out his purse.

"I waited, breathless," said Professor Park, with his own tremendous solemnity of manner; "I awaited the tribute of that grateful man. At what price did he value his soul? I anticipated a contribution for the seminary which it would be a privilege to offer. At what rate did my converted hearer price his soul?—Hundreds? Thousands? Tens of thousands? With indescribable dignity the man handed to me—a five-dollar bill!"



THE WAGER OF THE MARQUIS DE MEROSAILLES.

BY ANTHONY HOPE,

AUTHOR OF "THE PRISONER OF ZENDA," "THE DOLLY DIALOGUES," ETC.

In the year 1634, as spring came, there arrived at Strelsau a French nobleman, of high rank and great possessions, and endowed with many accomplishments. He came to visit Prince Rudolf, whose acquaintance he had made while the prince was at Paris in the course of his travels. King Henry received Monsieur de Merosailles—for such was his name—most graciously, and sent a guard of honor to conduct him to the Castle of Zenda, where the prince was then staying in company with his sister Osra. There the marquis on his arrival was greeted with much joy by Prince Rudolf, who found his sojourn in the country somewhat irksome, and was glad of the society of a friend with whom he could talk and sport and play at cards. All these things he did with Monsieur de Merosailles, and a great friendship arose between the young men, so that they spoke very freely to one another at all times, and most of all when they had drunk their wine and sat together in the evening in Prince Rudolf's chamber that looked across the moat toward the gardens; for the new chateau that now stands on the site of these gardens was not then built. And one night Monsieur de Merosailles made bold to ask the prince how it fell out that his sister the princess, a lady of such great beauty, seemed sad, and showed no pleasure in the society of any gentleman, but treated all alike with coldness and disdain. Prince Rudolf, laughing, answered that girls were strange creatures, and that he had ceased to trouble his head about them—of his heart he said nothing—and he finished by exclaiming, "On my honor, I doubt if she so much as knows you are here, for she has not looked at you once since your arrival!" And he smiled maliciously, for he knew that the marquis was not accustomed to be neglected by ladies, and would take it ill that even a princess should be unconscious of his presence. In this he calculated rightly, for Monsieur de Merosailles was greatly vexed, and, twisting his glass in his fingers, he said:

"If she were not a princess, and your sister, sir, I would engage to make her look at me."

"I am not hurt by her looking at you," rejoined the prince; for that evening he was very merry. "A look is no great thing."

And the marquis being also very merry, and knowing that Rudolf had less regard for his dignity than a prince should have, threw out carelessly:

"A kiss is more, sir."

"It is a great deal more," laughed the prince, tugging his mustache.

"Are you ready for a wager, sir?" asked Monsieur de Merosailles, leaning across the table toward him.

"I'll lay you a thousand crowns to a hundred that you do not gain a kiss, using what means you will, save force."

"I'll take the wager, sir," cried the marquis; "but it shall be three, not one."

"Have a care," said the prince. "Don't go too near the flame, my lord. There are some wings in Strelsau singed at that candle."

"Indeed, the light is very bright," assented the marquis, courteously. "That risk I must run, though, if I am to win my wager. It is to be three, then, and by what means I will, save force?"

"Even so," said Rudolf, and he laughed again. For he thought the wager harmless, since by no means could Monsieur de Merosailles win so much as one kiss from the Princess Osra, and the wager stood at three. But he did not think how he wronged his sister by using her name lightly, being in all such matters a man of careless mind.

But the marquis, having made his wager, set himself steadily to win it; for he brought forth the choicest clothes from his wardrobe, and ornaments and perfumes; and he laid fine presents at the princess's feet; and he waylaid her wherever she went, and was profuse of glances, sighs, and hints; and he wrote sonnets, as fine gentlemen used in those days, and lyrics and pastorals, wherein she figured under charming names. These he bribed the princess's waiting-women to leave in their mistress's chamber. Moreover, he looked now sorrowful, now passionate, and he ate nothing at dinner, but drank his wine in wild gulps as though he sought to banish sadness. So that, in a word, there was no device in Cupid's armory that the Marquis de Merosailles did not practise in the endeavor to win a look from the Princess Osra. But no look came, and he got nothing from her but cold civility. Yet she had looked at him when he looked not—for princesses are much like other maidens—and thought him a very pretty gentleman, and was highly amused by his extravagance. Yet she did not believe it to witness any true devotion to her, but thought it mere gallantry.



Then one day Monsieur de Merosailles, having tried all else that he could think of, took to his bed. He sent for a physician, and paid him a high fee to find the seeds of a rapid and fatal disease in him; and he made his body-servant whiten his face and darken the room; and he groaned very pitifully, saying that he was sick, and that he was glad of it, for death would be better far than the continued disdain of the Princess Osra. And all this, being told by the marquis's servants to the princess's waiting-women, reached Osra's ears, and caused her much perturbation. For she now perceived that the passion, of the marquis was real and deep, and she became very sorry for him; and the longer the face of the rascally physician grew, the more sad the princess became; and she walked up and down, bewailing the terrible effects of her beauty, wishing that she were not so fair, and mourning very tenderly for the sad plight of the unhappy marquis. Through all Prince Rudolf looked on, but was bound by his wager not to undeceive her; moreover, he found much entertainment in the matter, and swore that it was worth three times a thousand crowns.

At last the marquis sent, by the mouth of the physician, a very humble and pitiful message to the princess, in which he spoke of himself as near to death, hinted at the cruel cause of his condition, and prayed her of her compassion to visit him in his chamber and speak a word of comfort, or at least let him look on her face; for the brightness of her eyes, he said, might cure even what it had caused.

Deceived by this appeal, Princess Osra agreed to go. Moved by some strange impulse, she put on her loveliest gown, dressed her hair most splendidly, and came into his chamber looking like a goddess. There lay the marquis, white as a ghost and languid, on his pillows; and they were left, as they thought, alone. Then Osra sat down, and began to talk very gently and kindly to him, glancing only at the madness which brought him to his sad state, and imploring him to summon his resolution and conquer his sickness for his friends' sake at home in France, and for the sake of her brother, who loved him.

"There is nobody who loves me," said the marquis, petulantly; and when Osra cried out at this, he went on: "For the love of those whom I do not love is nothing to me, and the only soul alive I love—" There he stopped, but his eyes, fixed on Osra's face, ended the sentence for him. And she blushed, and looked away. Then, thinking the moment had come, he burst suddenly into a flood of protestations and self-reproach, cursing himself for a fool and a presumptuous madman, pitifully craving her pardon, and declaring that he did not deserve her kindness, and yet that he could not live without it, and that anyhow he would be dead soon and thus cease to trouble her. But she, being thus passionately assailed, showed such sweet tenderness and compassion and pity that Monsieur de Merosailles came very near to forgetting that he was playing a comedy, and threw himself into his part with eagerness, redoubling his vehemence, and feeling now full half of what he said. For the princess was to his eyes far more beautiful in her softer mood. Yet he remembered his wager, and at last, when she was nearly in tears, and ready, as it seemed, to do anything to give him comfort, he cried desperately:

"Ah, leave me, leave me! Leave me to die alone! Yet for pity's sake, before you go, and before I die, give me your forgiveness, and let your lips touch my forehead in token of it! And then I shall die in peace."

At that the princess blushed still more, and her eyes were dim and shone; for she was very deeply touched at his misery and at the sad prospect of the death of so gallant a gentleman for love. Thus she could scarcely speak for emotion; and the marquis, seeing her emotion, was himself much affected; and she rose from her chair and bent over him, and whispered comfort to him. Then she leant down, and very lightly touched his forehead with her lips; and he felt her eyelashes, that were wet with her tears, brush the skin of his forehead; and then she sobbed, and covered her face with her hands. Indeed, his state seemed to her most pitiful.

Thus Monsieur de Merosailles had won one of his three kisses; yet, strange to tell, there was no triumph in him, but he now perceived the baseness of his device; and the sweet kindness of the princess, working together with the great beauty of her softened manner, so affected him that he thought no more of his wager, and could not endure to carry on his deception. And nothing would serve his turn but to confess to the princess what he had done, and humble himself in the dust before her, and entreat her to pardon him and let him find forgiveness. Therefore, impelled by these feelings, after he had lain still a few moments listening to the princess's weeping, he leapt suddenly out of the bed, showing himself fully clothed under the bedgown which he now eagerly tore off, and he rubbed all the white he could from his cheeks; and then he fell on his knees before the princess, crying to her that he had played the meanest trick on her, and that he was a scoundrel and no gentleman, and yet that, unless she forgave him, he should in very truth die. Nay, he would not consent to live, unless he could win from her pardon for his deceit. And in all this he was now most absolutely in earnest, wondering only how he had not been as passionately enamoured of her from the first as he had feigned himself to be. For a man in love can never conceive himself out of it; nor he that is out of it, in it: for, if he can, he is halfway to the one or the other, however little he may know it.

At first the princess sat as though she were turned to stone. But when he had finished his confession, and she understood the trick that had been played upon her, and how not only her kiss but also her tears had been won from her by fraud; and when she thought, as she did, that the marquis was playing another trick upon her, and that there was no more truth nor honesty in his present protestations than in those which went before—she fell into great shame and into a great rage; and her eyes flashed like the eyes of her father himself, as she rose to her feet and looked down on Monsieur de Merosailles as he knelt imploring her. Now her face turned pale from red, and she set her lips, and she drew her gown close round her lest his touch should defile it (so the unhappy gentleman understood the gesture), and she daintily picked her steps round him lest by chance she should happen to come in contact with so foul a thing. Thus she walked toward the door, and, having reached it, she turned and said to him:

"Your death may blot out the insult—nothing less;" and with her head held high, and her whole air full of scorn, she swept out of the room, leaving the marquis on his knees. Then he started up to follow her, but dared not; and he flung himself on the bed in a paroxysm of shame and vexation, and now of love, and he cried out loud:

"Then my death shall blot it out, since nothing else will serve!"

For he was in a very desperate mood. For a long while he lay there, and then, having risen, dressed himself in a sombre suit of black, and buckled his sword by his side, and put on his riding-boots, and, summoning his servant, bade him saddle his horse. "For," said he to himself, "I will ride into the forest, and there kill myself; and perhaps when I am dead, the princess will forgive, and will believe in my love, and grieve a little for me."

Now, as he went from his chamber to cross the moat by the drawbridge, he encountered Prince Rudolf returning from hawking. They met full in the centre of the bridge, and the prince, seeing Monsieur de Merosailles dressed all in black from the feather in his cap to his boots, called out mockingly, "Who is to be buried to-day, my lord, and whither do you ride to the funeral? It cannot be yourself, for I see that you are marvellously recovered of your sickness."

"But it is myself," answered the marquis, coming near and speaking low that the servants and the falconers might not overhear. "And I ride, sir, to my own funeral."

"The jest is still afoot, then?" asked the prince. "Yet I do not see my sister at the window to watch you go, and I warrant you have made no way with your wager yet."

"A thousand curses on my wager!" cried the marquis. "Yes, I have made way with the accursed thing, and that is why I now go to my death."

"What, has she kissed you?" cried the prince, with a merry, astonished laugh.

"Yes, sir, she has kissed me once, and therefore I go to die."

"I have heard many a better reason, then," answered the prince.

By now the prince had dismounted, and he stood by Monsieur de Merosailles in the middle of the bridge, and heard from him how the trick had prospered. At this he was much tickled; and, alas! he was even more diverted when the penitence of the marquis was revealed to him, and was most of all moved to merriment when it appeared that the marquis, having gone too near the candle, had been caught by its flame, and was so terribly singed and scorched that he could not bear to live. And while they talked on the bridge, the princess looked out on them from a lofty narrow window, but neither of them saw her. Now, when the prince had done laughing, he put his arm through his friend's, and bade him not be a fool, but come in and toast the princess's kiss in a draught of wine. "For," he said, "though you will never get the other two, yet it is a brave exploit to have got one."

But the marquis shook his head, and his air was so resolute and so full of sorrow that not only was Rudolf alarmed for his reason, but Princess Osra also, at the window, wondered what ailed him and why he wore such a long face; and she now noticed, that he was dressed all in black, and that his horse waited for him across the bridge.

"Not," said she, "that I care what becomes of the impudent rogue!" Yet she did not leave the window, but watched very intently to see what Monsieur de Merosailles would do.

For a long while he talked with Rudolf on the bridge, Rudolf seeming more serious than he was wont to be; and at last the marquis bent to kiss the prince's hand, and the prince raised him and kissed him on either cheek; and then the marquis went and mounted his horse and rode off, slowly and unattended, into the glades of the forest of Zenda. But the prince, with a shrug of his shoulders and a frown on his brow, entered under the portcullis, and disappeared from his sister's view.

Upon this the princess, assuming an air of great carelessness, walked down from the room where she was, and found her brother, sitting still in his boots, and drinking wine; and she said:

"Monsieur de Merosailles has taken his leave, then?"

"Even so, madam," rejoined Rudolf.

Then she broke into a fierce attack on the marquis, and on her brother also; for a man, said she, is known by his friends, and what a man must Rudolf be to have a friend like the Marquis de Merosailles!

"Most brothers," she said, in fiery temper, "would make him answer for what he has done with his life. But you laugh—nay, I dare say you had a hand in it."

As to this last charge the prince had the discretion to say nothing; he chose rather to answer the first part of what she said, and, shrugging his shoulders again, rejoined, "The fool saves me the trouble, for he has gone off to kill himself."

"To kill himself?" she said, half-incredulous, but also half-believing, because of the marquis's gloomy looks and black clothes.

"To kill himself," repeated Rudolf. "For, in the first place, you are angry, so he cannot live; and in the second, he has behaved like a rogue, so he cannot live; and in the third place, you are so lovely, sister, that he cannot live; and in the first, second, and third places, he is a fool, so he cannot live." And the prince finished his flagon of wine with every sign of ill-humor in his manner.

"He is well dead," she cried.

"Oh, as you please!" said he. "He is not the first brave man who has died on your account;" and he rose and strode out of the room very surlily, for he had a great friendship for Monsieur de Merosailles, and had no patience with men who let love make dead bones of them.

The Princess Osra, being thus left alone, sat for a little while in deep thought. There rose before her mind the picture of Monsieur de Merosailles riding mournfully through the gloom of the forest to his death; and although his conduct had been all, and more than all, that she had called it, yet it seemed hard that he should die for it. Moreover, if he now in truth felt what he had before feigned, the present truth was an atonement for the past treachery; and she said to herself that she could not sleep quietly that night if the marquis killed himself in the forest. Presently she wandered slowly up to her chamber, and looked in the mirror, and murmured low, "Poor fellow!" And then with sudden speed she attired herself for riding, and commanded her horse to be saddled, and darted down the stairs and across the bridge, and mounted, and, forbidding any one to accompany her, rode away into the forest, following the tracks of the hoofs of Monsieur de Merosailles's horse. It was then late afternoon, and the slanting rays of the sun, striking through the tree-trunks, reddened her face as she rode along, spurring her horse and following hard on the track of the forlorn gentleman. But what she intended to do if she came up with him, she did not think.

When she had ridden an hour or more, she saw his horse tethered to a trunk; and there was a ring of trees and bushes near, encircling an open grassy spot. Herself dismounting and fastening her horse by the marquis's horse, she stole up, and saw Monsieur de Merosailles sitting on the ground, his drawn sword lying beside him; and his back was towards her. She held her breath, and waited for a few moments. Then he took up the sword, and felt the point and also the edge of it, and sighed deeply; and the princess thought that this sorrowful mood became him better than any she had seen him in before. Then he rose to his feet, and took his sword by the blade beneath the hilt, and turned the point of it towards his heart. And Osra, fearing that the deed would be done immediately, called out eagerly, "My lord, my lord!" and Monsieur de Merosailles turned round with a great start. When he saw her, he stood in astonishment, his hand still holding the blade of the sword. And, standing just on the other side of the trees, she said:

"Is your offence against me to be cured by adding an offence against Heaven and the Church?" And she looked on him with great severity; yet her cheek was flushed, and after a while she did not meet his glance.

"How came you here, madam?" he asked in wonder.

"I heard," she said, "that you meditated this great sin, and I rode after you to forbid it."

"Can you forbid what you cause?" he asked.

"I am not the cause of it," she said, "but your own trickery."

"It is true. I am not worthy to live," cried the marquis, smiting the hilt of his sword to the ground. "I pray you, madam, leave me alone to die, for I cannot tear myself from the world so long as I see your face." And as he spoke he knelt on one knee, as though he were doing homage to her.

The princess caught at a bough of the tree under which she stood, and pulled the bough down so that its leaves half hid her face, and the marquis saw little more than her eyes from among the foliage. And, thus being better able to speak to him, she said, softly:

"And dare you die, unforgiven?"

"I had prayed for forgiveness before you found me, madam," said he.

"Of Heaven, my lord?"

"Of Heaven, madam. For of Heaven I dare to ask it."



The bough swayed up and down; and now Osra's gleaming hair, and now her cheek, and always her eyes, were seen through the leaves. And presently the marquis heard a voice asking:

"Does Heaven forgive unasked?"

"Indeed, no," said he, wondering.

"And," said she, "are we poor mortals kinder than Heaven?"

The marquis rose, and took a step or two towards where the bough swayed up and down, and then knelt again.

"A great sinner," said he, "cannot believe himself forgiven."

"Then he wrongs the power of whom he seeks forgiveness; for forgiveness is divine."

"Then I will ask it, and, if I obtain it, I shall die happy."

Again the bough swayed, and Osra said:

"Nay, if you will die, you may die unforgiven."

Monsieur de Merosailles, hearing these words, sprang to his feet, and came towards the bough until he was so close that he touched the green leaves; and through them the eyes of Osra gleamed; and the sun's rays struck on her eyes, and they danced in the sun, and her cheeks were reddened by the same or some other cause. And the evening was very still, and there seemed no sounds in the forest.

"I cannot believe that you forgive. The crime is so great," said he.

"It was great; yet I forgive."

"I cannot believe it," said he again, and he looked at the point of his sword, and then he looked through the leaves at the princess.

"I can do no more than say that if you will live, I will forgive. And we will forget."

"By Heaven, no!" he whispered. "If I must forget to be forgiven, then I will remember and be unforgiven."

The faintest laugh reached him from among the foliage.

"Then I will forget, and you shall be forgiven," said she.

The marquis put up his hand and held a leaf aside, and he said again:

"I cannot believe myself forgiven. Is there no other token of forgiveness?"

"Pray, my lord, do not put the leaves aside."

"I still must die, unless I have sure warrant of forgiveness."

"Ah, you try to make me think that!"

"By Heavens, it is true!" and again he pointed his sword at his heart, and he swore on his honor that unless she gave him a token he would still kill himself.

"Oh," said the princess, with great petulance, "I wish I had not come!"

"Then I should have been dead by now—dead, unforgiven!"

"But you will still die!"

"Yes, I must still die, unless—"

"Sheath your sword, my lord. The sun strikes it, and it dazzles my eyes."

"That cannot be; for your eyes are brighter than sun and sword together."

"Then I must shade them with the leaves."

"Yes, shade them with the leaves," he whispered. "Madam, is there no token of forgiveness?"

An absolute silence followed for a little while. Then Osra said:

"Why did you swear on your honor?"

"Because it is an oath that I cannot break."

"Indeed, I wish that I had not come," sighed Princess Osra.

Again came silence. The bough was pressed down for an instant; then it swayed swiftly up again; and its leaves brushed the cheek of Monsieur de Merosailles. And he laughed loud and joyfully.

"Something touched my cheek," said he.

"It must have been a leaf," said Princess Osra.

"Ah, a leaf!"

"I think so," said Princess Osra.

"Then it was a leaf of the Tree of Life," said Monsieur de Merosailles.

"I wish some one would set me on my horse," said Osra.

"That you may ride back to the castle—alone?"

"Yes, unless you would relieve my brother's anxiety."

"It would be courteous to do that much," said the Marquis.

So they mounted, and rode back through the forest. In an hour the Princess had come, and in the space of something over two hours they returned; yet during all this time they spoke hardly a word; and although the sun was now set, yet the glow remained on the face and in the eyes of Princess Osra; while Monsieur de Merosailles, being forgiven, rode with a smile on his lips.

But when they came to the castle, Prince Rudolf ran out to meet them, and he cried almost before he reached them.

"Hasten, hasten! There is not a moment, to lose, if the marquis values life or liberty!" And when he came to them, he told them that a waiting-woman had been false to Monsieur de Merosailles, and, after taking his money, had hid herself in his chamber, and seen the first kiss that the princess gave him, and having made some pretext to gain a holiday, had gone to the king, who was hunting near, and betrayed the whole matter to him.

"And one of my gentlemen," he continued, "has ridden here to tell me. In an hour the guards will be here, and if the king catches you, my lord, you will hang, as sure as I live."

The princess turned very pale, but Monsieur de Merosailles said, haughtily, "I ask your pardon, sir, but the king dares not hang me, for I am a gentleman and a subject of the king of France."

"Man, man!" cried Rudolf. "The Lion will hang you first and think of all that afterward! Come, now, it is dusk. You shall dress yourself as my groom, and I will ride to the frontier, and you shall ride behind me, and thus you may get safe away. I cannot have you hanged over such a trifle."

"I would have given my life willingly for what you call a trifle, sir," said the marquis, with a bow to Osra.

"Then have the trifle and life, too," said Rudolf, decisively. "Come in with me, and I will give you your livery."

When the prince and Monsieur de Merosailles came out again on the drawbridge, the evening had fallen, and it was dark; and their horses stood at the end of the bridge, and by the horses stood the princess.

"Quick!" said she. "For a peasant who came in, bringing a load of wood, saw a troop of men coming over the crown of the hill, and he says they are the king's guard."

"Mount, man!" cried the prince to Monsieur de Merosailles, who was now dressed as a groom. "Perhaps we can get clear, or perhaps they will not dare to stop me."

But the marquis hesitated a little, for he did not like to run away; and the princess ran a little way forward, and, shading her eyes with her hand, cried, "See there; I see the gleam of steel in the dark. They have reached the top of the hill, and are riding down."

Then Prince Rudolf sprang on his horse, calling again to Monsieur de Merosailles: "Quick! quick! Your life hangs on it!"

Then at last the marquis, though he was most reluctant to depart, was about to spring on his horse, when the princess turned and glided back swiftly to them. And—let it be remembered that evening had fallen thick and black—she came to her brother, and put out her hand, and grasped his hand, and said:

"My lord, I forgive your wrong, and I thank you for your courtesy, and I wish you farewell."

Prince Rudolf, astonished, gazed at her without speaking. But she, moving very quickly in spite of the darkness, ran to where Monsieur de Merosailles was about to spring on his horse, and she flung one arm lightly about his neck, and she said:

"Farewell, dear brother—God preserve you! See that no harm comes to my good friend Monsieur de Merosailles." And she kissed him lightly on the cheek. Then she suddenly gave a loud cry of dismay, exclaiming, "Alas, what have I done? Ah, what have I done?" And she hid her face in her two hands.

Prince Rudolf burst into a loud, short laugh, yet he said nothing to his sister, but again urged the marquis to mount his horse. And the marquis, who was in a sad tumult of triumph and of woe, leaped up, and they rode out, and, turning their faces towards the forest, set spurs to their horses, and vanished at breakneck speed into the glades. And no sooner were they gone than the troopers of the king's guard clattered at a canter up to the end of the bridge, where the Princess Osra stood. But when their captain saw the princess, he drew rein.

"What is your errand, sir?" she asked, most coldly and haughtily.

"Madam," said the captain, "we are ordered to bring the Marquis de Merosailles alive or dead into the king's presence, and we have information that he is in the castle, unless indeed he were one of the horsemen who rode away just now."

"The horsemen you saw were my brother the prince and his groom," said Osra. "But if you think that Monsieur de Merosailles is in the castle, pray search the castle from keep to cellar; and if you find him, carry him to my father, according to your orders."

Then the troopers dismounted in great haste, and ransacked the castle from keep to cellar; and they found the clothes of the marquis and the white powder with which he had whitened his face, but the marquis they did not find. And the captain came again to the princess, who still stood at the end of the bridge, and said:

"Madam, he is not in the castle."

"Is he not?" said she, and she turned away and, walking to the middle of the bridge, looked down into the water of the moat.

"Was it in truth the prince's groom who rode with him, madam?" asked the captain, following her.

"In truth, sir, it was so dark," answered the princess, "that I could not myself clearly distinguish the man's face."

"One was the prince, for I saw you embrace him, madam."

"You do well to conclude that that was my brother," said Osra, smiling a little.

"And to the other, madam, you gave your hand."

"And now I give it to you," said she, with haughty insolence. "And if to my father's servant, why not to my brother's?"

And she held out her hand that he might kiss it, and turned away from him, and looked down into the water again.

"But we found Monsieur de Merosailles's clothes in the castle!" persisted the captain.

"He may well have left something of his in the castle," said the princess.

"I will ride after them!" cried the captain.

"I doubt if you will catch them," smiled the princess; for by now the pair had been gone half an hour, and the frontier was but ten miles from the castle, and they could not be overtaken. Yet the captain rode off with his men, and pursued till he met Prince Rudolf returning alone, having seen Monsieur de Merosailles safe on his way. And Rudolf had paid the sum of a thousand crowns to the marquis, so that the fugitive was well provided for his journey, and, travelling with many relays of horses, made good his escape from the clutches of King Henry.

But the Princess Osra stayed a long time looking down at the water in the moat. And sometimes she sighed, and then again she frowned, and, although nobody was there, and it was very dark into the bargain, more than once she blushed. And at last she turned to go in to the castle. And, as she went, she murmured softly to herself:

"Why I kissed him the first time I know—it was in pity; and why I kissed him the second time I know—it was in forgiveness. But why I kissed him the third time, or what that kiss meant," said Osra, "Heaven knows."

And she went in with a smile on her lips.



MISS TARBELL'S LIFE OF LINCOLN.

The response to our New Life of Lincoln is so extraordinary as to demand something more than mere acknowledgment from us.

Within ten days of the publication of the magazine no less than forty thousand new buyers were added to our list, and at this writing (November 25th) the increase has reached one hundred thousand, making a clear increase of one hundred thousand in three months, and bringing the total edition for the present number up to a quarter of a million.

But even more gratifying have been the strong expressions of approval from many whose intimate knowledge of Lincoln's life enables them to distinguish what is new in this life.

As Mr. Medill says in an editorial in the Chicago "Tribune," "It is not only full of new things, but is so distinct and clear in local color that an interest attaches to it which is not found in other biographies."

And Mr. R.W. Diller, of Springfield, Illinois, who knew Mr. Lincoln intimately for nearly twenty years before his election to the Presidency, writes to us about Miss Tarbell's article: "As far as read she goes to rock-bottom evidence and will beat her Napoleon out of sight."

There are certainly few men more familiar with all that has been written about Lincoln than William H. Lambert, Esq., of Philadelphia, whose collection includes practically every book, pamphlet, or printed document about Lincoln, and who has one of the finest collections of Lincolniana in the world. He writes:

"I have read your first article with intense interest, and I am confident that you will make a most important addition to our knowledge of Lincoln."

But perhaps it is better to print some of the letters we have received commenting on the first article and on the early portrait and other portraits and illustrations.

John T. Morse, Jr., author of the lives of Abraham Lincoln, John Quincy Adams, Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, and Benjamin Franklin, published by Houghton, Mifflin & Co. in their "American Statesmen Series," and editor of this series, writes as follows about the early portrait:

6 FAIRCHILD STREET, BOSTON,

November 2, 1895.

S.S. MCCLURE, ESQ.—Dear Sir: I thank you very much for the artist's proof of the engraving of the earliest picture of Abraham Lincoln.

I have studied this portrait with very great interest. All the portraits with which we are familiar show us the man as made; this shows us the man in the making; and I think every one will admit that the making of Abraham Lincoln presents a more singular, puzzling, interesting study than the making of any other man known in human history.