"Well," said Josephine, "suppose then that I had known something about these people for a long time, and that I had come up to West Falls not only to see my dear aunt and cousin, but to serve them in a way that they knew nothing about—would you and your mother keep the secret and help me?"

The wondering eyes looked at her more wonderingly still, but they seemed to see that the speaker was not jesting, and some of those country people have a faith in the abilities of people from the "big city," not always justified.

"Certainly I would," said Susy, "and I am sure that mother would do anything to serve Mary. But what is it all, Cousin Joe?"

"That is what I am just going to tell you, or at least a part of it," said Josephine. "In one word, all these stories about Richard Crawford are lies. He is a good, true-hearted young man, as can be found in the world. I know him very well, and visit him and his sister every day or two—sometimes, when I am very idle, every day. I love him as I would my own brother, if I had one."

"Not better than a brother, eh, cousin Josey?" asked the country girl, with a funny glance out of the corners of her eyes.

"Oh, no," said Joe, laughing. "Not better than a brother, or I should scarcely be trying to make matters right between him and Mary Crawford."

"No, I suppose you would not—I didn't think of that," said Susy. "And so you know them, and you know him, and he is a good man, is he? Why, cousin Josey, where did all these stories come from, then?"

"Humph!" said the city girl, "we may find all that out by-and-bye. It is enough to say that they are not true, and that I know them not to be true. If I find that I am right in my suspicions of their origin, I will tell you: if not, you will be the better for not knowing."

"And what are you going to do?" asked the proprietor of the unmanageable curls and the wondering eyes.

"I scarcely know yet, myself," said the schemer. "It seems certain that no time is to be lost. You say that old Mr. Crawford may die any day. Now, Susy, it is my belief that if he should die to-day, as matters are arranged Mary and all the property would go—well, I cannot tell you where, but where you would not like to see them."

"Indeed you frighten me, cousin!" said Susy.

"I suppose so," answered Josephine. "But now—see here! I think I ought to see Mary Crawford this very day, and without any one at the big house knowing that I am at West Falls or that she has any communication with this house. How can that be managed?"

"Indeed I do not see how it can be managed at all!" said the country girl, with a very hopeless look at her pleasant face.

"Indeed it must!" said Miss Josey, who was only confirmed in the determination by the supposed difficulty.

"I do not see how it can," repeated Susy. "You cannot go there, of course, without being seen, and I do not know of any way to get her here."

"But that is the thing," persisted Josephine. "She must be got here, in some way or another. Pshaw! I don't see how it is to be done, but it must be done. We might set fire to the house, and that would probably bring her over, but then it would bring all the other people from the house, and then your mother might have some objections."

"I should think very likely she would!" said Susy, with another wondering look around at the female torpedo who was thus exploding in West Falls.

"Stop! I have it!" cried the wild girl, a flash of triumph passing over her face. "Run into the house, Susy, and ask your mother to come out here. Your 'help' must not hear what is said."

Susy ran into the house on her errand, stopping once, as she turned the corner, to look around and satisfy herself whether Cousin Joe had not escaped from some lunatic asylum. While she was gone, Joe sat in the swing alone and did some energetic thinking; but twice, before the old lady came, she endorsed her plan with: "Yes, that will do. That must do!"

Directly Aunt Betsey came out to the swing, her arms floured to the elbows, having been interrupted in the midst of the divine mysteries of moulding cherry-dumplings, for the Sunday dinner. But she did not look the less amiable and good-natured for the interruption, as many good housewives might have done.

"Aunt," said Josephine, grasping her by the hand, in spite of the flour. "Aunt, I want you to do a good and benevolent action, at once."

"Well, I will try, my child!" said the good woman. "That is, if it is a good action that you want me to do. But you know, Josey, that you are a bit of a rattle-brain."

"Yes, well, I think that I may have heard that observation before," said Miss Josey. "However, I can live through it. Aunt, I will tell you why, by-and-bye when there is more time,—but I have a reason, that may be one of life and death, for what I ask. I want you to believe in the weight of my reasons at once, and to help me get Mary Crawford from the big house yonder, over here, immediately."

"Why, she does not come here now-a-days; and what can you want of her?" asked Aunt Betsey.

"There you go, Aunt!" said Joe. "You are not doing what I asked you to do. I tell you there are reasons why I must see Mary Crawford to-day, and with no one, outside of this house, knowing that I do so."

"She is right, mother," said Susan. "She has told me what she means, and she ought to see her at once. Do help her—pray do!" These dear little innocent people who are happy in their own love-affairs, have a marvellous faculty of falling into the needs of others, and God bless them for it!

"But how?" asked Aunt Betsey.

"Oh, I don't know," said Susan. "Cousin Josey knows."

"I only know one plan to get her here without suspicion," said Josephine. "To do that we must tell a falsehood, but only for an hour."

"Oh, I cannot tell a falsehood," said the conscientious matron.

"Yes you can, or you can let us tell it," said the incorrigible. "Susy tells me that when you were sick, two years ago, Mary Crawford came to see you very often."

"She did, and she was a very kind nurse—Heaven bless her, even if she does not come to see us any more!" said the old lady.

"If she thought you sick, she would come again, I think," said Josephine. "Once here, my word for it that she would not be angry, but thank you, when she heard all that I have to tell her."

"I do not like it, my child!" said the straight-forward woman.

But what can a kind-hearted old lady do, with two young ones and one a model of her sex, tugging at her apron-strings? In five minutes more, without at all understanding what was to be done or why it should be done, Aunt Betsey had given her consent to take part in what was probably one of the first falsehoods of her life. In ten minutes more, one of the boys who had already dressed himself for church, was on his way to the Crawford mansion, with a sealed note in the school-girl hand-writing of Susan, written under the dictation of Josephine, and reading as follows:

SUNDAY, July 6th, (morning).

Dear Miss Crawford:—

Please pardon the liberty I take. Mother is very ill, and we should be very grateful if you would say nothing to any one else about this note and come over to the house immediately.

Very respectfully your friend,

SUSAN HALSTEAD.

No call is so irresistible as that which appeals to the sympathy of a true woman; and no crime is so unpardonable as that which trifles with such sympathy. Less than half an hour had elapsed, and Aunt Betsey, a little ashamed and a good deal frightened at what had been done, had gone up-stairs to escape the possibility of first meeting the young girl if she should come,—when Josephine, looking impatiently out of the window at the road leading down from the hill towards the centre of the village, saw a young lady coming down the path at the side of the road and approaching the gate. The figure was short and rather slight, dressed in some light summer-material, wearing one of the light jockey hats of the time, and sheltered from the hot morning sun by a parasol of dimensions too large to be fashionable. There was no reason why some other young lady should not be walking the foot-path at that time, especially as church-hour was approaching; but Josephine Harris had an indefinite impression that it was Mary Crawford, and that a trial was approaching, more severe than any to which she had ever before subjected herself. Susy was close at her side, and as the figure approached, Josephine called her attention to it.

"Yes," said Susy, looking out of the window for only one instant, "that is Mary Crawford, and she is coming here."

To say that Josephine Harris's heart was beating quickly, and that there was such a confused rumbling in her head as that which forms part of the stage-fright to an actress or the first embarrassment to a public speaker before a large audience—would only be stating the simple truth. She had certainly been doing a bold act—even a rash one,—meddling in the business of another, with the best intentions, it was true, but under circumstances very liable to be misunderstood. If things should not be as she had understood them to be, at the Crawford mansion, or if she should fail in convincing Miss Crawford of the truth of the statements she was ready to make, nothing could be more painful than the position in which she would herself remain, and nothing more injurious than the predicament in which she would have placed her aunt and cousin. All this she realized, and for one moment she felt like running up-stairs with her aunt, and hiding herself between two of the thickest feather-beds, in spite of the heat of the season. But, courage once more, Joe Harris! The playing of detective en amateur is not always a sinecure or a pleasant labor; but if it succeeds—aye, if it succeeds—why then!

By the time these reflections had fairly passed through her mind, the figure of Miss Crawford had entered the gate and was coming up to the porch.

"Go into the back room, Susan," said the city girl. "You will not know how to receive her. I must do it."

Instantly Susan glided through the back door, and shut it, and Josephine Harris was alone in her singular position. At the same moment Miss Crawford tapped at the closed front door, and Josephine at once opened it to admit her.

Mary Crawford had been a charmingly-pretty country-girl—that Joe Harris saw at a glance, the moment her eye took in the whole contour; and she did not for a moment wonder that Richard should have been fond of her or that his cousin should have used all honorable means to supplant him. More of what she had been than what she was, the observer saw. No change, except age, could take away the charm from the rich chestnut auburn (is there not such a color?) of her hair; and her face could never be other than a pleasant and a good one. But the hazel eyes looked as if they had been more accustomed to filling with tears than any one knew besides the owner; the handsomely rounded cheeks looked almost as sallow as they might have done from long sickness; the full, girlish mouth had a pinched and pained expression; and though she was dressed richly and with excellent taste, for a mere call in the country, there was something about her small figure which showed that it had once been fuller and rounder, and that she had fallen into lassitude and comparative lifelessness.

"I had a note from Miss Halstead, saying that her mother was ill," said Miss Crawford, recognizing a stranger's face as the door was opened.

"Yes," said Josephine. "Miss Mary Crawford, I presume? Pray, come in."

"Where is Mrs. Halstead?" asked the visitor, perhaps a little surprised that she should not at least have been received by one of the family.

"Pray walk into this room a moment and lay off your bonnet," said Josephine, opening the door into the cool, shaded parlor which adjoined the sitting-room, drawing her in and shutting the door. Perhaps Miss Crawford saw something strange, too, in this or in the young girl's manner, for her eyes ranged around the room and then alighted upon her companion, with a little wonder expressed in them. Josephine Harris saw and marked the expression; and she was too much excited, herself, not to satisfy that wonder very quickly.

"Pray sit down, Miss Crawford," she said, drawing a large cushioned rocker near one of the windows.

"But Mrs. Halstead?" again asked the other. "Is she not very sick?"

"I have never had the pleasure of seeing you before this moment, Miss Crawford," said Josephine, her voice much thicker and huskier than she had ever before known it to be—"but I am going to ask you to do me a very great favor?"

"I do not understand you, Miss ——," said the visitor.

"Of course not," said the temporary hostess. "I am such an odd jumble that nobody understands me, at first. But let me hope that I may make myself fully understood directly."

"May I ask your name, Miss ——?" again said the young girl, inquiringly.

"Certainly, you have a perfect right to my name," said Josephine. "I am called Josephine Harris, and I am a niece of Mrs. Halstead."

"Oh," said Mary Crawford; but whether she uttered the word in recognition or in depreciation, the other had no means of guessing.

"I said that I was going to ask a great favor of you," said the city girl, going on. "It is that you will remain in this room while I say some very strange things to you, and that you will try not to be hurt or angry with me until I have done."

"This is certainly very strange," said Mary Crawford. "What can I think?"

"Think that you are in the house of true friends, who would neither see you harmed nor insulted," said Josephine.

"Oh, I am sure of that," answered her companion.

"Then listen to me," said Josephine, "and whatever surprise you may feel, pray do not say it until you have heard all. Mrs. Halstead is not sick, and the note sent to you was written at my request, as the only means within my knowledge of inducing you to visit this house immediately."

"Mrs. Halstead not sick? a falsehood—a cruel falsehood!" said the young girl, with some indignation, and rising from her chair as if to leave the room.

"Miss Mary Crawford, I implore you to resume your seat," said Josephine, her voice now broken and husky with her great agitation. "For the sake of your own happiness and the happiness of those dearer to you than your own life, I implore you to hear me out."

"This is all so strange I—what can you mean?" she uttered, but she sunk back, nevertheless, into the chair again.

"It is strange—it is all strange—it is of crime and suffering that I am about to tell you," answered Josephine. "To tell you for your own sake and no interest of my own."

"For my sake?" asked Mary Crawford, now visibly trembling, and with a look of startled wonder upon her face that was really pitiable to behold. "What can you know of me, and what interest can you take in me?"

"I know nearly everything of you, and I take the same interest in you that I would do in a dear sister," replied the city girl, striving to use the words that would most reassure and invite confidence. "Will you understand me when I say that two of the dearest friends I have in the world are your cousins Isabel and Richard Crawford?"

She purposely laid a peculiar stress on the latter name, and fixed her eyes keenly on the other as she did so. She saw the young girl flush to the very temples, then pale as suddenly, make another movement to rise from her chair, then sink back again as if from sheer exhaustion. Oh, it was not difficult to see how nearly that word touched with agony the very fountains of her life! She seemed trying to speak, but the words, if any were intended, died upon her lips, and her helpless agitation was really fearful to witness. Josephine Harris retained sufficient coolness to mark every indication, and though her young heart bled for the misery before her, after a moment's silence she repeated the names:

"Did you hear me, Miss Mary? I said that two of my dearest friends were Isabel and Richard Crawford."

This time the young girl did manage to stagger to her feet, by a mighty effort, her face white and her expression piteous. Her voice had broken almost to hoarse sobs, as she said, leaning one hand on the arm of the chair:

"I do not know why you have sent for me, or why you should torture me so cruelly! If you know anything of me and of the man you have named, you know that every word you speak is an unkindness, and that he is the last man in the world whose name should sound in my ears!"

"He is the first man in the world whose name should pass your lips, with a prayer for forgiveness of your own cruelty joined with it!" said his advocate, all her ardent spirit now thrown into her words.

"My cruelty? His forgiveness?" echoed Mary Crawford, as if really stunned.

"I said those words," repeated Josephine. "One of the best and noblest men that God ever made is lying on his sickbed, nearly dying. He loved you—he loves you still. You pretended to love him; and now you have allowed the words of falsehood to estrange your heart, if you have one! It is to save you from doing what you will repent to your dying day, that I have meddled in your affairs and placed myself in this false position."

"The words of falsehood?" again echoed the young girl. If she had heard the other words of the sentence, these were the ones which seemed to have fixed themselves most deeply on her attention. She had not again resumed her place in the chair, but stood with her hand on its arm, in the same attitude of trouble and indecision.

"Falsehood—the worst and blackest!" said Josephine Harris. "Come here a moment, will you?" She took the hand of the young girl in hers, and led her close to the window, where the warm light of the summer day streamed in more brightly and countenances could be better discerned. "Look in my face. What do you see there?—tell me frankly—truth or deception?"

It is doubtful whether Mary Crawford had yet closely scanned the face before her. Now the troubled eyes looked closely into those that were sometimes so radiant with mischief, but now so solemnly earnest. The look was very long and silent—an evident acceptance of the strange invitation given. Before it was ended, that subtle magnetism which truth and goodness radiate to the true, had done its work. She cast down her eyes.

"I believe you to be true and good!" she said.

"Thank heaven that you do!" spoke Josephine. "Now sit down in that chair once more, and do not rise again until I have spoken what I must speak and you must hear. Do not shrink, faint or shudder, though I may say a few terrible words!" She led the young girl back to her chair, pressed her down into it, and drew her own still closer. She did not release her hand when she had placed her in that position, and she fixed her eyes full upon those of the other, which made an effort to escape, and then surrendered to the influence.

"Let me show you that I know all," she said. "Yet stop—let me first assure you that neither Richard Crawford nor his sister knows of my presence in this place—that neither of them has the least suspicion that I know one word of your family relations."

Mary Crawford's eyes looked into hers with one instant of close question; then again they surrendered, and were gently reliant though still full of trouble.

"I said that I would prove to you that I knew all," Josephine went on. "I will do so. You loved Richard Crawford, I think, and he loved you with his whole heart. You were to be married, and the large property of your father would thus be kept in the family. A few months ago he ceased coming here any more, and you heard of him as plunged into riot and dissipation. Then you heard of him as sick, and that his sickness was the result of the foulest excesses, that had broken down his constitution and made him unfit for the society of any true woman. You began to answer his letters briefly and coldly, and then you ceased answering them at all. You heard those reports—you scarcely knew yourself how you heard them, but I do,—through another cousin, Egbert Crawford, who has taken the place of Richard."

The young girl's eyes stared, now, and she moved as if to rise, but the hand of Josephine on her arm held her gently down, and her words went on, that steady gaze still fixed upon her as before:

"Every one of those words was a lie, and Egbert Crawford was trying to break your heart and the heart of the man who truly loved you, that he might win you and your wealth!"

"How do you know this?—woman, how do you know this?" broke out the poor girl, her agony of doubt and suffering terrible to behold.

"I know it as if God had revealed it to me from heaven!" said Josephine Harris, casting up her eyes and lifting her hand momentarily, as if invoking that heaven for the truth she was uttering. "Not one word of these stories of Richard Crawford was true. He was pure and good. He is so, in spite of wrong and neglect. He loves you still, though he is almost broken-hearted."

"Oh, you cannot prove these things to me!" again spoke Mary Crawford, the trouble in her eyes still deeper than before, and still that trouble now strangely compounded of joy and fear.

"I can and I will!" said the strange mentor. "Your own heart is proving them to you at this moment. You see how blind you have been, but you do not yet know all."

"All? what more can there be, whether I am to believe you or not?" asked the young girl.

"More—much more!" said Josephine Harris, speaking now almost in a whisper. "Do not shriek or run away from me; but I tell you, before God, Mary Crawford, that for weeks past—perhaps for months, Egbert Crawford has been attempting to murder the relative he wished to rival, by poison."

"Poison? oh no, oh my God!" cried the young girl, now no longer to be restrained, and starting from her chair in uncontrollable agitation. "You are mad—mad—and you are trying to make me so!"

"I have seen him apply the poison," said the strange compound of womanly weakness and more than manly strength "seen him apply it, under the pretence of healing. I have seen the racking pains those fiendish practices have produced, and that no doctor's skill could combat. I have saved him—yes, I believe that I have saved him! You do not yet quite believe all the wickedness of this man! I see by your eyes that you do not! But you shall! See here!" and with the word she drew from the pocket of her dress the very bandage which she had exhibited in the office of Doctor LaTurque, and unrolled its dark loathsomeness—"here is the very poison that I saw him apply to Richard Crawford's heart, warning him not to let the doctors suspect it, because they would laugh at him for superstition. I have stolen this—yes, stolen it, from the spot where Richard Crawford had hidden it when he first began to be aware of the terrible truth; I have tested the powers of the unseen world to bear witness to his guilt; I have had this bandage examined by one of the ablest physicians in America, and it is poison—insidious, deadly poison. Egbert Crawford is not only a liar, but a murderer!"

"Help me! help me! oh, my God, what shall I do?" cried the poor girl, staggering as if about to fall, and only prevented by the quick arm of Josephine. "Do you know what you have been saying to me? My father is sinking fast—his will is made—Egbert Crawford, whom you call a murderer, is at this moment at my home—I am to marry him this very day!"

"You are to marry him, after this warning?" said Josephine Harris, looking at her with surprise not unmingled with horror. "Then you do not believe me, or you would marry a villain! You are not glad to know that the man you once loved, and who yet loves you so dearly, is true and loyal? I have indeed meddled where I was not wanted, and Richard Crawford—indeed—indeed she was not worthy of you!"

"Oh no, no! do not say so!" cried the young girl, changing so suddenly from the icy misery in which she had before stood, that Josephine Harris was literally bewildered. "I do love Richard Crawford. I have never known one happy day since I believed him unworthy to be my husband. I do believe you, dear, good girl, and I do thank you from my soul for all you have done to serve me! But oh, I am so miserable and so helpless! What shall I do? what shall I do?" Before she had ceased speaking, she had literally flung herself on her knees, embracing the bottom of Josephine's garment, clinging to her as if there was no dependence in the world beyond, and sobbing as if her heart would break.

Josephine Harris was melted in a moment, and nearly heart-broken herself, at the sight of the young girl's misery; but oh, what a gleam of joy underlay the sorrow! She was not misunderstood!—she had not been laboring in vain! Happy Joe—even in the midst of her pain and anxiety!

She raised the poor alarmed and sorrowing girl from her position of pleading and humiliation, took the chair that had just been vacated, and drew her down upon her own lap as if she had been a mother or an elder sister.

"What shall I do?" still repeated the troubled lips, through choking sobs. "I cannot escape now. It is too late. Poor Richard!—poor wronged Richard! I have deserved my fate, for being so untrue to him. What shall I do? What shall I do?"

"Do?" said Josephine Harris, smoothing down her hair and striving to comfort her at the same time that she braced up her nerves for what must follow. "Do? Why send Colonel Egbert Crawford packing—that is the first step."

"Oh, I cannot!" moaned the young girl. "It would kill my poor old father, to have any trouble in the house, now; and I must marry that man, though I have never loved him—and he, oh heavens!—a murderer!"

"Well, if you do marry him," said Joe, with something of her old manner, justifying the resumption of her pet name, "all that I can say, is, that I hope you will have a happy time of it!"

"Why do you speak so?" asked the poor girl. "Why do you speak so lightly when I am so wretched?"

"Because I do not mean that you shall remain wretched," was the answer. "Hold up your head, now, Mary—may I not call you Mary, dear Mary! Hold up your head, like a brave girl, and listen to me."

Her frightened companion made an effort to do so, and she went on:

"You believe that I have been right in what I have said, do you not? And that I am a true friend?"

"Yes, indeed I do!"

"Then obey me now!" she continued, rapidly shaping into words the thoughts that had been for a few moments assuming consistency in her brain. "Do precisely as I tell you, nothing less and nothing more, and this marriage will break itself, without one word from you."

"Oh, how can that be possible?" asked the trembler.

"Sit down in that chair for a few minutes, and don't mind me!" and in a moment she had transferred her burden to the chair. In another she had flung open one of the end shutters of the room, drawn a small table towards the window, opened upon it her portable writing-desk (an article of use without which she never travelled), and was hastily scribbling, though with a hand that shook a little at its own boldness—the following note:—

WEST FALLS, Sunday, July 6th (noon).

Col. Egbert Crawford:—

You will probably recognize the name at the bottom of this, as that of one you have often seen, but of whom you know very little. No one but myself knows anything of the contents. You are discovered—detected. I have watched you and overheard your conversation, for days past, at the house of Richard Crawford. What is more, I have the poisoned bandage in my pocket, after having had it analyzed by a chemist. If you leave at once, without attempting to consummate any more of your designs, you are safe from any exposure—I promise you so much, on the honor of a true woman. If you are not gone before to-morrow morning, without any further attempt at entangling Mary Crawford, I promise you, in the name of God who sees us both at this moment, that I will not only expose you before John Crawford and his family, but that I will do what I can to bring you to justice. Mary Crawford knows all your falsehood and crime, but she, like myself, will keep silence when you are gone.

JOSEPHINE HARRIS.

Mary Crawford had been sitting still in her chair, leaning her head upon her hand and not even looking up, while Josephine's pen was rapidly running over the paper. (The phrase is a proper one—Joseph's pen ran, always, when she attempted to write, and as a consequence her chirography was not the easiest in the world to be deciphered. No fear, however, but that what she wrote in this instance could be read!) When she had concluded and was rising from the desk, Mary first looked up, and there was such an expression of abject and almost hopeless helplessness upon her face, that had Josephine not pitied her before, she must now have done so. That look said so plainly: "Can you indeed help me? Is it possible that I can ever be lifted out of this pit of despair?"—that the city girl accepted it instead of words, and answered it.

"Yes, you need not look so doleful, my dear girl! I think you will find that this little epistle will do more than an ordinary volume could do. See—I have sealed it, as is best. I have said, within, that you knew nothing whatever of the contents, and at the same time I have said that you knew all his baseness and treachery."

"Oh, have you?" said the suffering girl. "How can I ever meet him, after that—when he knows that I have heard him spoken of in so terrible a manner?"

"You can even do that, a little better than you could lay your hand in his and promise to be his wife, I should think!" said the other, and there was even some sternness in her tone.

"Oh yes, yes, anything rather than become his beyond hope!" cried Mary, and there was such a shudder running over her frame for the instant, that her guide and mentor fully understood what must be the depth of the fear with which she had become inspired. "You have been so good to me—so kind and generous, that I can never thank you for what you have done. Command me, now—tell me what I must do, and I will obey you like a child—a poor, weak child as I am."

"I do believe that you thank and trust me," said Josephine, all her tender self again instantly, and grasping her warmly by the hand. "Many people think me a rattle-brain, I suppose, and my advice may sometimes seem very odd and rash; but I am sure that heaven has intended me for the instrument of foiling that man who would be your destroyer, and I know that I shall not fail. Please do precisely as I ask—give Egbert Crawford that letter without a word, and see if it does not produce the effect I have intended."

"I will do so, and trust that Heaven upon which you call, to save me from wrong and bring about the right!" answered Mary Crawford.

"The omens are all good," said Josephine, who really had in her nature a shade of impressibility, if not of superstition. "This is Sunday—a day for good deeds and not for evil ones. This night you were to have been married: I arrived just in time to put you on your guard. All will go well, and I shall see you free from a fetter so hateful and the wife of an honorable man whom I love as if he were my own brother."

"God bless you for all!" said Mary. "Kiss me before I go—my more than sister."

"Just what I was going to ask of you," said Joe Harris, who had great faith, and was not ashamed to own the fact, in the magnetism of the lips. The kiss was exchanged, with a warm embrace as an accompaniment, and then Mary Crawford said:

"I must go at once, before I am missed and too much wonder excited. I will try to obey all your directions. I shall see you again?—you will not leave West Falls until—until—"

"Until you are safe? No! Not if I stay a month!" was the reply. "If that letter fails, something else shall not! Good-bye, and let me hear from you to-morrow, or even to-day if anything occurs. But remember, no marriage to-night, if you have to run away here to escape it!"

"Oh, no! no! no! Good-bye!" and the young girl had passed out of the door and into the street, bearing the second letter which had that day left the little house for the great one on the hill, and bearing—oh, what a terrible change in knowledge and feeling since she had entered the door less than an hour before! Her brain throbbed almost to bursting, and every nerve in her body seemed to be strung to an unendurable tension, as she left the little gate and took her way homeward. She was wretched, in the knowledge of guilt and wrong which had been imparted to her, and in the fear of the future, which she could not shake away; but she confided, spite of herself, in the counsel which had been given her, and there was a happiness out-weighing all the misery, in the knowledge that the idol of her young heart was not a base and miserable counterfeit. The gulf between Richard Crawford and herself might have grown too wide to be over-leaped—she might have become, to him, only a name to be regretted and yet despised—but it was still something in life to know that he was true and worthy, even if he was to be nothing more to her; and the foot of the young girl trod more firmly upon the green sward of the pathway than it had done for many a long month, and half the languor was gone from eye and nerve, as she walked slowly homeward through the summer noon, to try that strange experiment upon which she felt that the happiness or misery of her whole future life might depend.

As for Josephine Harris, those who know the depressions which sometimes fall upon high nervous organizations after severe and continued effort, scarcely need be told that she was almost prostrated the moment she felt that her work was for the time concluded. She had been suffering with throbbing temples and a too-rapid motion about the heart, during a large part of her conversation with Mary Crawford; and when Aunt Betsey, seeing from the window the departure of Mary, and little Susan, recalled by the voice of her cousin, re-entered the sitting-room, they found Joe shedding tears like a great baby and sobbing a little, with a fair prospect of an afternoon and night in the company of that most unromantic of companions—sick-headache.

It is a matter of no consequence how much of the conversation which had just passed, Josephine narrated to her aunt and cousin. Enough to satisfy their proper curiosity and give them assurance that she had succeeded in her attempt at first alarming and then winning the confidence of the young girl, and nothing more. Neither asked more, for both felt, beyond a doubt, that there might have been confidences in that conversation, too sacred to be revealed to other ears.

The sick-headache did come, as it had promised; and Joe Harris, her temples bathed with cologne by the willing hands of little Susy, went up to an enforced siesta in her little bed-room. But she had the satisfaction, as the drowsy hum of the summer afternoon gradually lulled her into slumber, of saying to herself—the best of all auditors for those who have sound hearts and clear consciences:

"I thought I would do it—I meant to do it—and may I never play detective again if I don't believe that I have done it!"



CHAPTER XXIV.

JOHN CRAWFORD AND HIS NEPHEW—THE WRECK OF A WORKING MAN—THE EPISODE OF THE COCK—THE EFFECT OF JOSEPHINE HARRIS'S LETTER, AND AN EXODUS.

In order to demonstrate more clearly the state of affairs before existing at the house of John Crawford, and the effect really produced by the missive (it might almost as well have been called a missile) of Josephine Harris,—it will be necessary to change the point of view to the big house on the hill, at a little before noon on that pleasant Sunday of summer.

The back piazza of the house looked north and eastward over a slight depression which might almost be called a valley, and then at the range of hills rising behind and stretching downward on the other side almost to the Mohawk. Nearer, it looked out upon an extensive garden, carefully laid out and thriftily in growth with all the ground-fruits and vegetables natural to the climate, at that time in full luxuriance. Around the high board fences of the garden stood an almost endless variety of fruit-trees, the cherry-trees at that moment literally red, or black, or amber, as the case might be, with those delicious little globules of pulpy fruit-flesh which seem like drops of fragrant sweetness squeezed from the very heart of Nature. Among them stood apple and pear-trees, each loaded with the growing fruit of that wonderful fruit-season, in which the smile of God seemed resting broadly on the whole American continent in the wealth and variety of its productions, however his hand may have been smiting it with the desolations of personal strife and bloodshed.

Digressions have become so common during the course of this narration, that if the later ones are not excusable on the score of propriety, they at least have that excuse which is held to be so important by the lawyers and the statesmen—precedent. And having already sinned in that regard, beyond any hope of forgiveness and almost beyond any feeling of accountability for the erraticism of the pen—let us pause here, under the reminder of those hanging fruits in John Crawford's garden, to say that while perhaps no nation has ever before been so cursed with an extended civil war as this once free and happy republic during the past two years—yet no nation, plunged into any description of conflict, has ever been so favored of Heaven with the means for carrying it on and so delivered of Heaven from the dangers of famine and pestilence which so often accompany the other affliction.

At no period in the history of any nation in the world, could the statistics of that country exhibit the same amount of material wealth and power of production as those shown by the loyal States of the American Union at the moment of the breaking out of the Rebellion—the capabilities of the seceding States being left entirely out of the question. Private coffers and the vaults of our banks were alike full of gold, which had been for years flowing in and amassing from the mines of California and the favorable course of foreign exchanges. We had been feeding the world, and at the same time supplying ourselves and the world with more than half the precious metals yearly contributed to the hoards of the nations; and that the country should literally have become "full of money," was inevitable. But more especially did we hold power over the whole world in our capacities for fruit-growing and in our stores of breadstuffs already amassed. With proper management of our resources, the latter fact alone might have made the whole world tributary to us, and we could have dictated terms in war as well as in peace.

When a certain young Lieutenant in the British naval service, from the China fleet, crossed from Hong Kong to San Francisco on his way home on leave, in 1861, and then came by the overland route from San Francisco to New York, he fell into conversation in this city with a friend whom he had known in England; and as there were then rumors of trouble with Great Britain growing out of her expected help to the rebels, that conversation very naturally turned towards the relative wealth and power of the two countries.

"Well, I do hope," said the young English officer, "that there will not be any trouble between the two countries, because we don't want to fight you, you know!"

"And so do I," said his friend. "The people of America do not bear any ill will to the people or the government of England."

"But we should beat you if we did fight, you know," pursued the Englishman, with John Bull's tenacity of national pride.

"Think so?" asked the other, with the slightest suspicion of a sneer upon his lip.

"Oh, no, I don't think anything about it—I know it," said the Englishman. "Why, you haven't got any navy."

"The deuce we haven't!" observed the other. "I guess you have not seen our navy!"

"No!—nor has any one else seen an armament worthy of the name," said the Englishman, of course supposing that he referred to the dozen of old and worm-eaten wooden ships that then made up our whole preparation for contesting the empire of the seas. "Why any one of our half dozen fleets would eat up your whole navy in half an hour. If you had seen our Baltic fleet reviewed at Spithead, as I did just at the close of the Crimean war, you would know something of what the word 'navy' meant, and you would also have some idea, you know, of what a chance you would have at fighting England!"

"Humph! well, yes, you have a pretty long string of vessels, such as they are," said his American friend. "But I told you that you did not know anything about our navy, and you do not. You speak of the 'Baltic fleet.' Now what will you say when I tell you that at one point on the Mississippi we have a line of gun-boats that would knock not only your Baltic fleet but all the rest of your fleets into smithereens, without even firing a gun?"

"Why I should only say that you were crazy, as I think you are!" said the Englishman, really expecting that his friend would by-and-bye attempt to demonstrate that the easiest way of travelling was by walking on the head instead of the feet.

"Yes, I daresay you do," said the American. "And yet I am not crazy. The only thing is that you do not yet understand me. The line of gun-boats of which I speak, is a line of warehouses at Chicago, containing at this moment from six to ten millions of bushels of grain, constantly emptying and constantly being replenished. That is the line of gun-boats to fight the world, and we can conquer the world if we only use them correctly. We can live within ourselves, without buying one dollar's-worth of anything from any nation abroad, except possibly tea (for we can make our own coffee while we can grow peas and beans); and there is not another nation on the globe that can do the same. Not a nation of you all but must have our breadstuffs or go hungry; and the sailors of your 'Baltic fleet' would not fight well, I fancy, on empty stomachs."

"Humph!" said the Englishman. "That is an odd view to take of war." But he said no more, and was evidently thinking. He had grounds for thought, and so had the whole world. We had the element of success in our own hands, in the capacity of living within ourselves. Had our resources been properly managed, the importation of all foreign goods prohibited during the period of the war, and the exportation of gold and breadstuffs forbidden and guarded against by the closest watch and the most stringent penalties, with our people practicing the self-denial and economy of the men and women of the Revolution, setting their spinning-wheels and looms once more in motion and wearing home-spuns instead of imported broadcloths and satins,—had these steps been taken, as they should have been taken, starvation would have fallen upon half Europe, and the rebellion would long before this time[15] have perished from its own weakness or been crushed out, from sheer necessity, by the European powers whose very existence its continuance was perilling.

[Footnote 15: March 7th, 1863.]

The smile of God has not been withdrawn from our fields and orchards; we have been continued in national health and still supplied with all the luxuries of production and abundance; and yet what is the use which we have made of these immense advantages, and what thanks have we rendered to the Supreme Being in those two most acceptable of worships, labor and success, for the health and wealth thus given and continued?

But these reflections over, which have sprung from the fruit glistening on the trees in John Crawford's garden, the course of this narration reverts to two who occupied the back piazza of the mansion at that hour of Sunday noon. The piazza was a broad one, old-fashioned like the house, with pillars of locust, planed and cornered instead of being turned or fluted in the more modern fashion. Both the ends and the side for a considerable distance towards the centre, were enclosed by a low railing in pale; and the western end had lattice-work extending to the tops of the pillars, with the leaves and tendrils of a large grape-vine that had been planted many years before at the corner, running over, twisting and interlacing in the lattice, and making a pleasant flickering shade of the summer sunshine on the floor of the piazza. A few birds, not yet thoroughly exhausted by the noonday heat, were chirping in the thick branches of the fruit-trees near, and the drowsy hum and chirp of insect life made such a sleepy undertone as could not fail to bring rest and quiet to any mind not preternaturally active. A more charming place could not have been devised, for a half-dreamy and lazy student of either sex to sit down in an easy chair with a pleasant book, read and muse until the flickering of the sunshine and the shadows on the floor began to be blended with the type of the page, and then fall away to the lightest and happiest of slumbers.

There were two figures on the western end of the piazza, under the shade of the grape-vine. The first was that of an old man, sitting in a high-backed easy-chair, his feet upon a carpet-covered ottoman, leaning back, and if not in physical slumber, at least in that inertia of the mind which denotes failing physical faculties and marks a slumber more complete than that of shut eyes and stertorous breathing. Apparently he was very old, for his hair was thin and nearly white, as it showed from beneath the colored silk handkerchief thrown loosely over the back of his head; his skin had that shrivelled and wrinkled appearance, denoting that the life-fluids had been exhausted beneath it; his eyes, when opened, had that white opacity more melancholy than apparent blindness, because it shows a sight which after all takes in and recognizes nothing; and his thin lips had that constant tremulous motion which indicates a continual desire to speak, with scarcely the power of doing so and with little more than the remnants of a mind left to dictate what shall be uttered. John Crawford was, in short, a miserable human wreck, all its pride, beauty and power shorn and swept away, and drifting helplessly on to that lee-shore which is called death.

There was one peculiar feature of his situation which has not yet been named, and yet it was the most noticeable of all connected with him. From head to foot, sleeping or waking, at all times and under all circumstances, his nervous system was shaking and shivering, keeping the head in that continual quiver which is so melancholy to behold because it suggests involuntary labor that must exhaust and wear out the system, and making the weak hand so ungovernable that even the cup of tea put to his mouth required to be held and guided by others to prevent the contents being spilled and the vessel falling to the floor. Nothing could be more pitiable, when watched for a considerable time and when the impression forced itself upon the observer that at no single moment would that tremor ever grow still until the spoiler had completed his work, and the limbs should stiffen and straighten in the last chill of mortality.

And yet John Crawford was really by no means the very old man indicated by his white hairs, his dimmed eyes and his palsied shiverings. He was very little past sixty, and at an age when under ordinary circumstances several years of pleasant life might have been calculated upon. Nor was he the victim of constitutional disease, which had been fought and combatted until it had at last triumphed and brought down the torn banner of manhood trailing in the dust. And still less had a life of early indulgence and evil courses laid the mine for this after-destruction. He was not old to senility; he belonged to a family that had been noted for their long life, continued vigor and freedom from hereditary disease; and he had carefully avoided those errors in drink, food and personal indulgence which open the doors of life's citadel to the invader from beyond the dark valley. What, then, was the fatal secret? John Crawford was a suicide, and he had chosen a peculiarly American mode of self-immolation. Or perhaps it may with more propriety be said that he was a Faust in ordinary life, and that he had called upon a national demon to be his aid and his foe. He had worked himself to death—a phrase by many supposed to be hollow and unmeaning, but one too sadly illustrated every day in our modern life.

Born wealthy, he seemed to have imbibed with his earliest breath the impression that he was comparatively poor, and that only the most laborious drudgery of mind and body, to which the toil of the slave in the cotton-field is little more than play, could keep him from becoming still poorer. He had been a miser at once of his pennies and his hours, when a boy; and as he had grown older he had become a still worse miser in every opportunity for gain, and a reckless spendthrift of his own comfort and energy. No laborer on his farm had worked so many hours or so laboriously, the impression having seemed all the while to abide with him that if he did not labor he would have only eye-service, and nothing would be left him. When others had slept, and he had been debarred from laboring with his hands, he had still toiled with his brain, turning restlessly on his bed when he should have slept, and planning to make his fertile acres still more productive or to add to them others that lay in tempting proximity. When hours of relaxation had been demanded by the calls of friendship, and even by the inexorable demands of his own system, he had shut his ears and refused, as if putting behind his back some tempter of the soul. Friends had said to him: "John, you are killing yourself!" or "John, you are working too hard and too steadily! Some day you will pay for all this." And one day a blunt-spoken rustic neighbor, observing him at his toil early and late, had said: "John Crawford, you are a fool! You do too much work! You have a fine constitution, and think that you can take liberties with it; but some day it will pay you, mark my words! You will find yourself, one fine morning, doubled up like an old horse that has been over-driven; and that will be the end of you! But go on, if you like it!"

John Crawford had "gone on." He had married very late in life, principally on account of his belief that no man should marry until he had done his life-work and placed himself beyond anxiety on the score of property. When the day of his marriage came, after an engagement of nearly ten years, people had long been saying that the woman of his choice, his "Mary," had already worried away the best part of her life in anxiety for him and in fears for the final prevention of their union. Then, when the marriage was finally consummated and those who loved him best hoped that he would relax in his life-wearing toil, he had merely commenced to work the harder, because a married man needed to be better circumstanced than a single one! And when, five or six years after his marriage, and after giving birth to his one daughter and only child, Mary, his wife died, he had gone to work still harder, it seemed, as the only means of forgetting his bereavement! Rain or shine—early and late—year after year, he had labored on, enriching his lands and increasing his outbuildings, adding new acres and putting a few more thousands to those already out at interest on good bond-and-mortgage.

One day—some two years before the date of this story—the crash had come. The "old horse" had "doubled up." John Crawford had not come down to breakfast at his usual time, and those who went up to look after him had first discovered what ruin could do in a single night. The hale man of the night before had become a partial paralytic, helpless from that day forward—never again to lift hand in any employment, and scarcely permitted brain enough to realize all that he had won and all that he had lost. Gradually, afterwards, his mind had cleared and his speech returned, though feebly; but during all the two years his nervous prostration had been increasing and his bodily strength declining, until for weeks before that Sunday of July the physicians had pronounced him gradually dying and expected him to drop away at any moment.

Such was half the picture presented at the end of the piazza, the other half being made up of Colonel Egbert Crawford, his military coat changed to a blouse of brown linen and his boots replaced by a pair of embroidered slippers, but in all other regards quite as we have before seen him, and altogether the legitimate commander of the Two Hundredth Volunteers. During all his late visits to the farm, and especially since the defection and ostracism of Richard, he had made his "strong point" in paying great attention to the infirm old gentleman; and as personal attention is always pleasant and flattering, and more particularly so to the old, crippled, tedious and tiresome, he had succeeded in winning a place in the old man's regard, by this course, which he might have failed to secure by any other means.

On this particular morning he was rather well pleased than otherwise to see Mary throw on her flat and run out to make a call on some one of the neighbors, as this gave him an opportunity, on this his last day of probation, of making himself very devoted to his prospective father-in-law, without any serious drain upon his own personal comfort and energy. To wait upon the old man, after he had been got up and dressed for the morning and assisted out to the cool piazza, as in this instance—consisted of very little more than answering the few words which the invalid might happen to address him (and they were likely to be very few),—brushing away a troublesome fly when the old man sunk into a doze and the pest came too near his nose,—moving him a little if the sun happened to become troublesome through the vines,—or picking up and restoring a dropped handkerchief. The Colonel was rather well pleased to have something to employ him in this manner on this particular morning, especially when he could combine the employment with a book and a lounge with his feet upon the piazza-railing; for the house was a little ticklish for indiscriminate roaming about, owing to the arrangements which he knew to be in progress. The dare-devil Major Lally, of the French revolutionary time, is said to have laid his head upon the block with many doubts as to the grace of his position, and with an apology to the executioner if he should have happened to transgress any of the rules of mortuary good-breeding,—on the ground that "he never had had his head cut off before;" and Colonel Egbert Crawford, never having been married before, may be excused if he had some sort of indefinite impression that all the rooms in the house were full of awful preparations, liable to be run against at any moment, and altogether fatal to matrimonial prospects if accidentally disturbed. So the piazza and the old man furnished him with a means of killing time that was "devilish dull," and at the same time with a certainty of being kept in a place where he could not possibly "run foul of anything" or do any harm.

The old man had scarcely spoken for half an hour. He had been lulled by the drowsy sounds of the summer noon, and by the growing listlessness of his own nature, into a few moments of doze, in which the Colonel, closing his eyes to the pages of his book, seemed on the point of joining him. Suddenly a rooster, that had strolled around from the barnyard and flown up to a cool location on the top of the garden fence, and under the shade of one of the cherry-trees (at which elevation no doubt his numerous harem in the yard regarded him with the same reverent respect paid to the Prophet Brigham, when at a distance, by his fifty-six wives and a fraction)—suddenly this rooster, forgetting the proprieties of the place and the hour, lazily flapped his big wings and emitted a crow of such magnificent dimensions as might have startled the whole neighborhood. Colonel Egbert Crawford started and opened his eyes: the old man straightened up his shaking head and did likewise. The sound was like an icy sword-blade thrust into a slumbering and tepid fountain—startling all the water spirits from repose and propriety,—or like Christmas suddenly obtruded, keen and pure, into the sluggish rest of midsummer. Of what the old man mused as his waking thoughts recognized the sound, can never be known—possibly of the wealth which he had garnered and of the broad lands over which that sound went ringing—all his own, but his own in what miserable mockery! Of what Colonel Egbert Crawford thought when the sound smote his ears, is much more certain. The cock-crow and betrayal! He had been brought up in the country, and many a time, in his younger and better days, when intercourse with the world had not yet developed the evil germ in his character, he had read and pondered over the mysterious connection between the cock, Shakspeare's "bird of dawning," and the scenes which preceded the Crucifixion. Remembering that the cock had seemed to appear and speak as the accuser of Peter, he had insensibly come to connect those events with the blacker guilt of Iscariot, and to look upon the bird as the watcher and detecter. In olden days this had not troubled him: perhaps it would not have done so, only four or five months before, when his hands were so much nearer stainless than they could be called at that hour. Now, on the verge of his marriage, and when the double tree of murder that he had planted (murder of character and murder of person!) was about bearing welcome and triumphant fruit, the rooster's cry, so sharp, sudden and unexpected, came to him like the voice of an accusing spirit. It may be taken as a proof of his cowardice when we say that momentarily his cheek whitened and his limbs trembled; and perhaps every criminal is a coward, because he dares not do right and trust the event with the overruling providences. But Egbert Crawford was no physical coward, as we may have occasion to know before we have closed this relation. Yet he did whiten, and he did tremble. Was there something ominous in this sudden disturbance of the Sabbath quiet? Did it foreshadow another and a more startling disturbance, through which the dark, silent current of the river of guilt would be splashed into by the falling stones of the temple of error overhanging it? Was there in it an omen of the sudden flash of a bright and unendurable light through those black caverns, hitherto supposed to be impenetrable, where crawl the loathsome and slimy reptiles of deceit and treachery?

Pshaw! why should there be anything of this involved? Cocks had crowed before, even at noon-tide in summer, and the world had outlived the omen! Nevertheless the sound, especially so loud and grating a one, in which the bray of the donkey was so evenly mixed with the hideous scream of the peacock before rain, was an inopportune and impudent one; and the Colonel would have been very likely to wring chanticleer's neck if it had happened to come within the clutch of his fingers. As it was, he determined to cause an immediate abandonment of that stronghold, and sprung up to look for a club or a stone with which the enemy could be dislodged; when the rooster espying danger afar off, evacuated his Manassas before the enemy could reach him, and went back to his cackling harem. To them he no doubt related, in the appropriate language of the bipeds with feathers, what a couple of sleepy-heads he had seen upon the piazza, and how he had startled them both with a voluntary upon his private organ. Meanwhile the Colonel had dropped back into his seat.

But old John Crawford, fully awakened by the sound, did not seem likely to fall away into slumber again. As Egbert resumed his place in the chair, the old man said, feebly:

"Egbert."

Instantly the Colonel, never forgetting his cue of attention to the invalid, drew closer to his side.

"Yes, Uncle, what can I do for you?"

"Where is Mary?" asked the old man, who had probably before asked the question half a dozen times since she had left the house.

"Gone out for a walk, Uncle," said the expectant son-in-law. "I suppose she is calling upon some of the neighbors. It is her last day, you know, Uncle."

"Her last day?—yes, you are going to be married to-night. I know," whispered the old man, with the air of a child to whom the intelligence has been communicated as a great secret—not that of a father who had thus willed for the happiness of a dear child.

"Domine Rodgers is to come at six," said the Colonel. "And then I hope I shall have the pleasure of calling you by a dearer name than that of Uncle."

"Yes, yes—Mary is a good girl," said the old man. "Take good care of her, Egbert. I am afraid I shan't live long, myself—not many years"—(Poor old man!—no efforts had been sufficient to awake him to the fact that his remaining time on the earth was probably to be measured by days or hours instead of years!) "I am going to have my will made, Egbert, the moment you are married, and I am going to leave all my property to her—her—her and you. You will have it all. Don't waste it, and don't let it go out of the family—not out of the family, Egbert! You are a Crawford, and I want to keep the property in the family. Eh, Egbert?"

"I will try to do everything that you wish, Uncle!" said the Colonel; and no doubt that he really meant to obey that portion of his Uncle's injunctions—to keep the property in the family.

"And look here, Egbert," said the old man, who seemed to speak with less difficulty than was usual to him, though there were hindrances in his delivery very painful to the hearer and which we cannot caricature age and decrepitude by attempting to convey. "Look here—there is one thing more. Not a dollar to that scoundrel, Richard!—not a dollar, if he starves!"

"Not a dollar, Uncle; I promise you this, solemnly." And this promise, too, he meant to keep, beyond a question.

"And, Egbert, keep Mary away from him. Don't let him even see her if you can avoid it. They used to be together a great deal, and I don't know—I don't know!" What the old man did not know, must remain among the other mysteries not yet to be revealed. "Keep her away from him—don't let her go near him."

Though there were words in this last sentence of his Uncle's which did not entirely please the Colonel, yet there were others which did please him thoroughly. He made the third promise with the same alacrity. How easy the old man was making his path! To keep the property in the family (that meant, to keep it himself!) to give Richard no part of it under any circumstances (a thing not very likely)—and to keep his young wife from the presence of a man from whom he had only won her by the basest falsehood (a thing he was certain to do at all events)—these were the three injunctions: how easy to fulfil! The cup of the young man's content was at that moment brimming over, and the impudent chanticleer who only five minutes before had tortured him from the garden palings, was quite forgotten.

Just then there was a light foot-fall on the piazza behind the two speakers. The dulled senses of John Crawford were too dim to recognize it, but the keener faculties of the Colonel heard the beat of the little foot at once and knew it to be Mary's. He was just opening his mouth to say to his uncle, "Here is Mary, now!" when he caught a glimpse of her face; and then he remained gazing and said nothing. Mary had returned from her walk, had thrown off her bonnet, and stepped out to the piazza to look after the comfort of her father, and perhaps for some other purpose. She was at that moment just outside the door, and from the position of the Colonel, framed between the pillars at the other end of the piazza and against the dark green foliage of an arborvitae standing beyond. What was it that the quick eye of the Colonel saw, as he turned, that stopped the words upon his lips and made him look in silence on the young girl's face and figure? She had been absent from the house less than an hour—what could have occurred to her, within that space of time, to change their relative positions? And yet their relative positions were changed—he felt the truth in an instant. He had parted with her less than two hours before—he the successful deceiver and she the blind victim. They met again, and she had gone beyond his power and his knowledge. We have often before had occasion, in the course of this narration, to speak of sudden changes in the human face and demeanor, so marked as to be absolutely startling. None of those changes could have been more marked than that shown by the face and figure of this young girl, as glanced at by the practiced eye of this man of the world. She looked taller, straighter in form, and no longer drooping and inelastic. Her glorious auburn hair was partially shaken loose from its confinement, as it had become during the exciting interview with Josephine Harris; and while the negligence added to the charm of her appearance, the very fact that she had not displayed a woman's coquetry in smoothing it rapidly into order before the glass when she threw off her bonnet, betrayed that she was much more awake and excited than usual. Was this on account of the near approach of the hour of her marriage? Egbert Crawford scarcely thought so, for the eye was not that of an expectant bride. That soft, sweet hazel eye still looked sad and troubled, but there seemed to be a spark of something fiercer and sharper than love, amid the trouble. Once more, what was it? Never before had she seemed so handsome, but never so unapproachable; and if the unscrupulous man had really held a true sentiment of love for her, at the bottom of all his selfish and evil designs (and who shall say that he had not?) there came the sharpest and deepest pang of his life in the first awakening of the thought that she was slipping away from him even at the moment when he had apparently clutched her.

The Colonel, thoroughly mystified and a little alarmed, rose from his seat and was advancing towards the young girl, when she moved a pace towards him, her eyes first downcast and then even sternly raised to his face. She did not call him by name, nor wait until he had so addressed her, but held close to him, as if to avoid any possible observation, a small sealed note—and said, her voice trembling and husky:

"A private note for you. Please read it at once."

Passing by him without another word and without waiting for any reply, she advanced towards the end of the piazza where her father was sitting, and knelt down beside him. Colonel Egbert Crawford noted every feature of the movement, and saw that his fancy of the change in her appearance was not fancy alone. There was something threatening. Mechanically he had taken the note as she had handed it to him and passed by. He glanced at the superscription, and though his wonder was increased, his fears of a rupture with Mary were partially dissipated, for the hand was totally unknown to him. Ha! he had it! The hand-writing on the note was that of a woman—the note had come to the house for him—she had seen it and conceived a sudden spasm of jealousy on account of it! How easily he could dissipate that idea by showing her the note, which he was certain could not be from any illicit female correspondent who had brought him within her power. The note was almost certain to be from some lady on professional business, or from the wife, sister or mother of some recruit who had enlisted in the famous Two Hundredth, asking for his influence towards a discharge or a furlough. He would show her the note at once, after he had read it, and with some kind of laughing excuse for showing it which would not betray the fact that he knew of her having any interest in it; and then this sudden but not dangerous hurricane would be over.

He glanced round at the pair on the end of the piazza, a smile of triumph on his face, as he came to this conclusion. Mary was kneeling beside her father, her back towards himself, fondling the old man's poor withered face, and paying so little attention to the man so soon to be her husband, that the jealousy hypothesis might have seemed well supported. What was it that the little girl had said to Josephine Harris, not half an hour before?—that "she could never meet Egbert Crawford after such a revelation?" Something of the kind, certainly. And she had met him, and unconsciously and without calculation gone through the very-brief interview in a manner worthy of the most finished actress—say of La Heron, La Hoey or La Bateman, to name three of the most dissimilar but ablest representatives of dramatic character on the American stage. Oh, these little women, who make a boast of their weakness—there is very little that they cannot do when brought to the test!

Colonel Egbert Crawford tore open the note, walking towards the upper or eastern end of the piazza as he did so. His back was towards the two on the other end, and perhaps it was well that he should have been so positioned at that moment. Naturally, he glanced first at the bottom, and saw a name which he immediately recognized as that of one who had been in the way sometimes at the Crawfords. He had never liked her, or held any more intercourse with her than was unavoidable with a very frequent guest at the same house with himself. He had considered her a little loud in voice, rather rapid, and a fool. He had been satisfied that she told all that she knew, and he would not have been surprised to find that sometimes she told considerably more. He had considered her utterly incapable of keen research, and the very last person in the world to keep a secret, supposing that such a thing could come into her possession. What did he find here, and from her?

He read that note three times over, standing on the extreme east end of the piazza, leaning against the corner-board of the house, and with his face so averted from those at the other end that even if Mary Crawford once or twice threw a quick glance around, she could see nothing. Then he turned, shoving the letter into his vest-pocket as he did so, and walked slowly down the piazza to the hall-door, his face calm, to all distant appearance, and whistling "Strida la Vampa."

If Mary Crawford had not before been able to see his movements, she arose from her knees as he came down the piazza, and saw him then. She saw him as he passed in at the hall-door, heard him whistle without an apparent tremor in a note, and heard his slippered steps as he slowly lounged up the stair towards the room on the second floor which had been for some months kept as his. The young girl was disappointed—astonished—astounded! She had seen no agitation—had heard and seen the indications of the opposite! The blow had not been effectual—it had either been feebly struck or delivered from a false aim! He was not guilty, or he was beyond fear and knew himself to be beyond the reach of public exposure! She had hoped too soon—the bond she dreaded was not broken or even deferred; and God help her, after all!

Such were the impressions of the young girl, as the man within a few hours to be her husband disappeared into the hall. Were they well founded? Ah, young eyes!—you may be schooled to do your part, very early, but you cannot at once be schooled to read the eyes of others aright. Perhaps you never learn to read aright, until you lose the brightness of your own truth and beauty. Seventeen cannot well realize, to-night at Mrs. Pearl Dowlas's hop, when Mr. Pearl Dowlas, the eminent merchant, supposed to be worth a million, caresses his handsome side-whiskers with his faultless hand and interchanges pleasant nothings with the fashionable women who all admire him and all hate his wife,—that Mr. Pearl Dowlas is suffering, all the while, the intense agonies of ruin, and that he has the revolver already loaded and capped with which he intends to blow out his brains after the last carriage has rolled away. And Seventeen will be quite as slow to discover, unless Seventeen has lived too fast for her own self-respect and eventual happiness, that Lady Flora, patting her white-gloved hands to-night at the Opera, with the blonde Emperor by her side, apparently the happiest and the most truly envied woman in all that brilliant house, has such pangs of rage and jealousy tugging at her heart-strings, when she looks over at a much plainer woman in the opposite row of boxes, that could the terror of the law be removed, she would sacrifice self-respect, dignity, hope, everything, and bury a knife in the heart of that plainer woman as they brush by each other in the lobby. Seventeen will be slow to discover these things. Twenty-five may have a nearer appreciation of them, though yet dim as compared with the reality alas!—it needs Forty-five or Fifty, or a younger age made so old by sad experience—Forty-five or Fifty, with the bloom gone, the gray hair here and the wrinkles coming, to look beneath the surface and see the agony writhing at the bottom. Thank God that some agonies never can be discovered at all, until they break forth in uncontrollable madness: the world might be sadder if we could look in through transparent flesh into our neighbors' hearts, as we do through glass windows into their houses!

"Strida la Vampa" had been bravely whistled. Not braver the conduct of the poor cartman at the hospital a few months ago, when he looked calmly on without a groan or a wince, while the surgeon sawed off the ends of the bone of his fractured arm, drilled holes through them and screwed them together with a fastening of gold wire! That was physical bravery, or perhaps stolid exemption from pain: this was that moral bravery, in a bad cause, but none the less real, which could see wholesale and undeniable ruin fall without betraying one sign of agony to the observer most interested. Though he had read that letter three times to fix the words in his mind, he had understood it at the first reading. It told him all that needed to be known. Mary's changed look and her averted face were now accounted for—accounted for at once and forever. No word of explanation was necessary and none would be given or demanded. Some men might have hesitated, and questioned whether the blow could not be softened or averted. This was not Egbert Crawford. He had played, boldly, wickedly and recklessly, though apparently with all care. At the very moment when he seemed to have won all, he had lost all. At the bar he had always been known as contesting a case unscrupulously and to the bitter end, but as giving up gracefully and bearing a defeat without complaint, when defeated. A suspicion once aroused, and backed as was this suspicion, the wearer of the eyes he had just seen could never again be deceived. Had he been less of a resolute man he might have dared the other threats of the young girl, perhaps impotent. But the one great stake lost, in the hand and fortune of Mary Crawford, there was nothing left to play for, worth even hazarding exposure.

We will not say that in his own chamber, and while changing his slippers for boots and his linen-wrapper to a coat more fit for the street, he did not more than once gnash his teeth, utter an oath below his breath, and curse the whole race of meddling women. But if he did so, he said nothing aloud; and if his dark brows were darker than usual, no human eye saw them. He had writing materials upon the table in that room—that room, the best in the house, and into which, on the night to follow, he had expected to be accompanied by his bride. He sat down at the table but a moment, but in that moment he dashed off, with a hand wonderfully steady under the circumstances, the following note:

SUNDAY, 1 P.M.

Miss Harris:—

You have meddled successfully, and whether you are right or wrong in what you allege, I shall not be here to contest the question. If your husband, if you ever get one, keeps half as close a watch over you, he will probably see quite enough to satisfy him. Perhaps you will be kind enough to communicate this to Miss Mary Crawford, and thus finish the obligations under which I rest.

Yours, humbly,

EGBERT CRAWFORD.

In a moment more this note was sealed and directed to "Miss Josephine Harris—Care of Miss Crawford" and left lying on the table, with the superscription upward. Then Colonel Egbert Crawford put on his hat, walked deliberately down-stairs and out at the front of the house. No one seemed to observe him—not even a domestic, and probably nothing would have pleased him better at that moment. Walking down the lane to the road, he turned up the road to the left, went up to a little country tavern where he had sometimes hired a riding-horse on previous visits, and hired a horse and buggy, with a driver, to go at once to Utica. Ten minutes completed the negotiation, and ten more harnessed up the horse to the vehicle; so that before the call to dinner was made at the Crawford mansion, before old John Crawford was assisted in from the portico, or Mary thought of the arbiter of her destiny as elsewhere than in his own room,—he was bowling down the dusty road towards Utica. When the down-train from Suspension Bridge left Utica for Albany that afternoon, the detected and beaten gambler in reputations, lives and matrimonial ventures, was a passenger.



CHAPTER XXV.

AFFAIRS IN THE CRAWFORD FAMILY IN NEW YORK—THE TWO BROTHERS—MARION HOBART THE ENIGMA—NIAGARA BY WAY OF THE CENTRAL PARK.

It has been already said that John Crawford, wounded, and with the poor little Virginian orphan-girl in his company, reached New York on the evening of the Fourth of July—the same evening, it will be remembered, on which Tom Leslie and Josephine Harris left the city, the one for Niagara and the other for her matrimonial operations at West Falls. It is just possible that their not arriving earlier was a lucky event, as Joe Harris, had she once set eyes on the delicate and singular-looking Virginian girl, would have been almost certainly attracted towards her, and in that event her pet hobby for the time might have been neglected—her departure for the North might have been delayed for a day or two—and Mary Crawford might have been left to meet her fate in helplessness and ignorance.

And yet all this is an array of "mights" that have no real propriety, for events occur but once in the world, and they only occur in one mode. Human will is free, and human responsibility is never to be ignored; and still no human hand changes in any degree the inevitable. "Oh, if I had!" and "Oh, if I had not!" are very common exclamations, and those who have committed terrible errors or met with severe misfortunes will continue to make them until the whole course of human existence is run; and yet they are none the less follies. The events of yesterday were part of that general plan on which the world was first formed and on which it may have been conducted through all the hundreds of centuries which puzzle Agassiz and frighten the theologists. The downfall of an empire and the picking up of a basket of chips by a ragged child in a ship-yard, may each have equally formed part of it, and each been equally impossible to avert. Human will seemed to move each event, and human responsibility certainly attached to each; but the event itself, unknown until accomplished, moved in its appointed course and could no more be jarred from it than one of the planets from its orbit.

But all this by the way. Joe Harris had her own odd work to do, hundreds of miles away, and there was no hindrance in the way of her accomplishing it, from any new ties suddenly added to bind her to the city.

Of course that strange and unexpected arrival from the seat of war (for John Crawford had not even taken the precaution to telegraph from Fortress Monroe or Washington) created a sensation in the Crawford household. A mixed sensation—for while both the brothers were heartily glad to meet, each had a cause for sorrow on meeting the other. Richard was naturally sorry to see John, who had passed through so many fights without harm, wounded at last and disabled for an indefinite period; and John was correspondingly sorry to see Richard, whom he had left in such high health and spirits, a broken-down and house-ridden invalid. Not long before he had another cause for anxiety; for in the first half hour of private conference which ensued, on the very evening of their arrival, in response to a question from John, as to the health of the family at West Falls and the progress of his expected marriage with Mary, Richard revealed the unaccountable state of coldness which had sprung up, Mary's neglect to answer his late letters, and the fact that Egbert remained all the visiting-link between the city and country branches of the family.

"Egbert, eh?" asked John, whose service at looking out for skulking enemies when on picket-duty, might have made him more watchful and suspicious than he would have been under other circumstances. "Egbert, eh? Well, all I can say is that I don't like the link!"

Richard Crawford started, as he lay reclining upon the sofa. He was decidedly better than he had been a week before, and kept his little room less closely, though he was fearfully weak and the racking pain had not entirely left his system. "You never liked Egbert," he said.

"No," said John, "I never liked him, a bit more than Dean Swift liked Doctor Fell, though perhaps I could not tell why, any better than the Dean."

"No, I suppose not," said Richard, musingly. And here the conversation dropped, on that point. Whatever may have been Richard Crawford's suspicions of his cousin, forced on him by circumstances and by the young girl who had so strangely volunteered to disenchant him—he had no intention of communicating them even to his brother.

If there was a mixed feeling in the meeting of the brothers, there was one quite as complicated in that of Isabel Crawford and Marion Hobart—two total strangers so unexpectedly flung together. Bell Crawford was better fitted to receive and care for the orphan girl, than she would have been a month before, when the mysterious turning-point of her existence had not been reached; and there had been no time since she had become the mistress of her brother's mansion, when she would not have used every exertion to make one comfortable and happy who had been so strangely recommended to her sympathy. What she would before have lacked, was discipline and thoughtfulness. These she had attained to some degree, in a manner which she could not much more comprehend than those who surrounded her. But it was impossible that she could be able at once to supply the double want of sister and mother to one who had been so differently nurtured and educated as Marion Hobart; and the very desire to be even kinder than she would have cared to be to one who had more claims upon her, necessarily placed her in embarrassment which was very likely to produce the opposite effect. The young Virginian girl could not do otherwise than receive those attentions with gratitude, and yet her very desire not to be obtrusive and not to seem to demand more attention than was necessary, placed her in an equally anomalous position. The two girls consequently became much less intimately acquainted within the first few days, than they might have done if thrown together under different auspices.

Marion Hobart was, as her conversation and conduct on the night of her grandfather's death so plainly indicated, a most singular person, and one who might have been studied for years without being fully understood. She talked but little, and yet her silence seemed to be more the result of having nothing to say and no sympathy with the ordinary topics of conversation, than from dislike or inability to converse. When she did speak, the same childlike curtness and immobility were observable, that had been shown by the couch of her dying relative. She seemed to be repeating set words, that did not affect her heart or make any change in the expression of her face; even though she may have been deeply moved in reality. She received kindnesses with thankfulness, and yet that thankfulness was generally too set and formal in its phrase to create the impression of gushing warm from the heart, and to give that exquisite pleasure that a simple "Thank you!" will often convey when it seems to leap out unbidden.

Of course in the double disaster of the fire and the death, the poor girl found herself almost entirely unprovided with clothes. Isabel, with thoughtful care, the next day after her arrival, spoke of making arrangements for procuring the services of a dressmaker at once.

"Yes, thank you, I have no clothes. I shall want some," answered the young girl.

"Excuse my touching upon your grief," said Bell, "but I suppose that you will wish black? You will wear mourning?"

"No, if you please," was the reply. "My family never wear mourning. My grandmother never did. I have been told so. I do not remember my grandmother. I do not know why we never wear mourning. But if you please, I wish to do as grandmother did."

Here was the same peculiarity again, that had been shown at the bedside of the dying grandfather—the grandmother spoken of, but no mention of a mother. Bell Crawford noticed the fact, as her brother had not done; but she could no more have asked that strange girl for an explanation, and risked the possible opening of some family wound, than she could have gone to the stake.

Nothing more was said upon the subject of the mourning; and Bell Crawford made the necessary arrangements for procuring her clothing that suggested no remembrance of her recent loss.

John Crawford had not forgotten the words of the old man, as to money in his granddaughter's name, lying in one of the city banks. He suggested the matter to her, aware that she would be anxious to rid herself from any feeling of absolute dependence,—and she answered him at once. She knew the name of the bank, and nearly the amount that should be standing to her credit, which was, as her grandfather had said, quite enough to make her comfortable for an ordinary life, ranging closely upon fifty thousand dollars. He procured her some checks, and she filled up one in a hand of crow-quill lightness, which looked indescribably like herself, but with a readiness which showed that she must have been before familiar with banking business. He presented the check, and it was honored without enquiry, this fact proving that her signature was known; and thus all anxiety on the pecuniary question was set at rest.

The young girl had said, in that dreadful hour by the death-couch, when speaking of her grandfather's fervent Union sentiments, "I do not know anything about politics, myself!" The truth that she had no knowledge or no feeling on the subject of the struggle between the two sections, was made manifest before she had been twenty-four hours an inmate of Richard Crawford's house. John continued to fight, mentally, though wounded and absent from the army. Richard was an ardent loyalist, as we have seen. The brothers naturally ran into warm denunciations of rebellion, and confident prophecies of the success of the Union cause, in spite of all past disasters. Bell and Marion were both present when they launched into the first of these; but before the conversation had lasted many minutes, the young Virginian girl rose and left the room with a word of apology. Both the brothers noticed the act and her manner. It did not indicate anger or dissatisfaction—simply a total want of interest.