"You see," he remarked, "you kin come awful closte to a thing in the water and not tech it. We ha'n't missed six foot nary time we passed thar. It may take right smart rowin' to do it yet. But when you miss a mark a-tryin' at it, you don't gain nothin' by shootin' wild. Now, watch out!"

And just at that moment the drag caught but did not hold. Gray noticed it, but neither man said a word. The Inhabitant turned the boat round and pulled slowly back over the same place. The drag caught, and Gray lifted his oars. The man with the rope, who had suddenly got a great reverence for Gray's skill, willingly allowed him to draw in the line. The Poet did so cautiously and tremblingly. When the body came above the water, he had all he could do to keep from fainting. He gently took hold of the arms and said to his companion, "Pull away now." And with his own wild, longing, desolate heart full of grief, Gray held to the little form and drew her through the water. Despite his grief, the Poet was glad to be the one who should bring her ashore. He held her now, if only her dead body, and his unselfish love found a melancholy recompense. Albert would have chosen him of all men for the office.

Poor little Kate! In that dread moment when she found herself sinking to her cold bed among the water-weeds, she had, failing all other support, clasped her left hand with her right and gone down to darkness. And as she went, so now came her lifeless body. The right hand clasped tightly the four little white fingers of the left.

Poor little Kate! How white as pearl her face was, turned up toward that Sabbath sky! There was not a spot upon it. The dreaded leeches had done their work.

She, whom everybody had called sweet, looked sweeter now than ever. Death had been kind to the child at the last, and had stroked away every trace of terror, and of the short anguish she had suffered when she felt herself cast off by the craven soul she trusted. What might the long anguish have been had she lived!



CHAPTER XXV.

AFTERWARDS.

The funeral was over, and there were two fresh graves—the only ones in the bit of prairie set apart for a graveyard. I have written enough in this melancholy strain. Why should I pause to describe in detail the solemn services held in the grove by the lake? It is enough that the land-shark forgot his illegal traffic in claims; the money-lender ceased for one day to talk of mortgages and per cent and foreclosure; the fat gentleman left his corner-lots. Plausaby's bland face was wet with tears of sincere grief, and Mr. Minorkey pressed his hand to his chest and coughed more despairingly than ever. The grove in which the meeting was held commanded a view of the lake at the very place where the accident occurred. The nine survivors sat upon the front seat of all; the friends of the deceased were all there, and, most pathetic sight of all, the two mute white faces of the drowned were exposed to view. The people wept before the tremulous voice of the minister had begun the service, and there was so much weeping that the preacher could say but little. Poor Mrs. Plausaby was nearly heart-broken. Nothing could have been more pathetic than her absurd mingling for two days of the sincerest grief and an anxious questioning about her mourning-dress. She would ask Isa's opinion concerning her veil, and then sit down and cry piteously the next minute. And now she was hopeless and utterly disconsolate at the loss of her little Katy, but wondering all the time whether Isa could not have fixed her bonnet so that it would not have looked quite so plain.

The old minister preached on "Remember now thy Creator in the days of thy youth." I am afraid he said some things which the liberalism of to-day would think unfit—we all have heresies nowadays; it is quite the style. But at least the old man reminded them that there were better investments than corner-lots, and that even mortgages with waivers in them will be brought into judgment. His solemn words could not have failed entirely of doing good.

But the solemn funeral services were over; the speculator in claims dried his eyes, and that very afternoon assigned a claim, to which he had no right, to a simple-minded immigrant for a hundred dollars. Minorkey was devoutly thankful that his own daughter had escaped, and that he could go on getting mortgages with waivers in them, and Plausaby turned his attention to contrivances for extricating himself from the embarrassments of his situation.

The funeral was over. That is the hardest time of all. You can bear up somehow, so long as the arrangements and cares and melancholy tributes of the obsequies last. But if one has occupied a large share of your thoughts, solicitudes, and affections, and there comes a time when the very last you can ever do for them, living or dead, is done, then for the first time you begin to take the full measure of your loss. Albert felt now that he was picking up the broken threads of another man's life. Between the past, which had been full of anxieties and plans for little Kate, and the future, into which no little Kate could ever come, there was a great chasm. There is nothing that love parts from so regretfully as its burdens.

Mrs. Ferret came to see Charlton, and smiled her old sudden puckered smile, and talked in her jerky complacent voice about the uses of sanctified affliction, and her trust that the sudden death of his sister in all the thoughtless vanity of youth would prove a solemn and impressive warning to him to repent in health before it should be with him everlastingly too late. Albert was very far from having that childlike spirit which enters the kingdom of heaven easily. Some natures, are softened by affliction, but they are not such as his. Charlton in his aggressiveness demanded to know the reason for everything. And in his sorrow his nature sent a defiant why back to the Power that had made Katy's fate so sad, and Mrs. Ferret's rasping way of talking about Katy's death as a divine judgment on him filled him with curses bitterer than Job's.

Miss Isa Marlay was an old-school Calvinist. She had been trained on the Assembly's Catechism, interpreted in good sound West Windsor fashion. In theory she never deviated one iota from the solid ground of the creed of her childhood. But while she held inflexibly to her creed in all its generalizations, she made all those sweet illogical exceptions which women of her kind are given to making. In general, she firmly believed that everybody who failed to have a saving faith in the vicarious atonement of Christ would be lost. In particular, she excepted many individual cases among her own acquaintance. And the inconsistency between her creed and her applications of it never troubled her. She spoke with so much confidence of the salvation of little Kate, that she comforted Albert somewhat, notwithstanding his entire antagonism to Isa's system of theology. If Albert had died, Miss Marlay would have fixed up a short and easy road to bliss for him also. So much, more generous is faith than logic! But it was not so much Isa's belief in the salvation of Katy that did Albert good, as it was her tender and delicate sympathy, expressed as much when she was silent as when she spoke, and when she spoke expressed more by the tones of her voice than by her words.

There was indeed one part of Isabel's theology that Charlton would have much liked to possess. He had accepted the idea of an Absolute God. A personal, sympathizing, benevolent Providence was in his opinion one of the illusions of the theologic stage of human development. Things happened by inexorable law, he said. And in the drowning of Katy he saw only the overloading of a boat and the inevitable action of water upon the vital organs of the human system. It seemed to him now an awful thing that such great and terrible forces should act irresistibly and blindly. He wished he could find some ground upon which to base a different opinion. He would like to have had Isabel's faith in the Paternity of God and in the immortality of the soul. But he was too honest with himself to suffer feeling to exert any influence on his opinions. He was in the logical stage of his development, and built up his system after the manner of the One-Hoss Shay. Logically he could not see sufficient ground to change, and he scorned the weakness that would change an opinion because of feeling. His soul might cry out in its depths for a Father in the universe. But what does Logic care for a Soul or its cry? After a while a wider experience brings in something better than Logic. This is Philosophy. And Philosophy knows what Logic can not learn, that reason is not the only faculty by which truth is apprehended—that the hungers and intuitions of the Soul are worth more than syllogisms.

Do what he would, Charlton could not conceal from himself that in sympathy Miss Minorkey was greatly deficient. She essayed to show feeling, but she had little to show. It was not her fault. Do you blame the dahlia for not having the fragrance of a tuberose? It is the most dangerous quality of enthusiastic young men and women that they are able to deceive themselves. Nine tenths of all conjugal disappointments come from the ability of people in love to see more in those they love than ever existed there. That love is blind is a fable. He has an affection of the eyes, but it is not blindness. Nobody else ever sees so much as he does. For here was Albert Charlton, bound by his vows to Helen Minorkey, with whom he had nothing in common, except in intellect, and already his sorrow was disclosing to him the shallowness of her nature, and the depth of his own; even now he found that she had no voice with which to answer his hungry cry for sympathy. Already his betrothal was becoming a fetter, and his great mistake was disclosing itself to him. The rude suspicion had knocked at his door before, but he had been able to bar it out. Now it stared at him in the night, and he could not rid himself of it. But he was still far enough from accepting the fact that the intellectual Helen Minorkey was destitute of all unselfish feeling. For Charlton was still in love with her. When one has fixed heart and hope and thought on a single person, love does not die with the first consciousness of disappointment. Love can subsist a long time on old associations. Besides, Miss Minorkey was not aggressively or obtrusively selfish—she never interfered with anybody else. But there is a cool-blooded indifference that can be moved by no consideration outside the Universal Ego. That was Helen.



CHAPTER XXVI.

THE MYSTERY.

I have before me, as one of the original sources of information for this history, a file of The Wheat County Weakly Windmill for 1856. It is not a large sheet, but certainly it is a very curious one. In its day this Windmill ground many grists, though its editorial columns were chiefly occupied with impartial gushing and expansive articles on the charms of scenery, fertility of soil, superiority of railroad prospects, admirableness of location, healthfulness, and general future rosiness of the various paper towns that paid tribute to its advertising columns. And the advertising columns! They abounded in business announcements of men who had "Money to Loan on Good Real Estate" at three, four, five, and six per cent a month, and of persons who called themselves "Attorneys-at-Law and Real Estate Agents," who stated that "All business relating to pre-emption and contested claims would be promptly attended to" at their offices in Perritaut. Even now, through the thin disguise of honest-seeming phrases, one can see the bait of the land-shark who speculated in imaginary titles to claims, or sold corner-lots in bubble-towns. And, as for the towns, it appears from these advertisements that there was one on almost every square mile, and that every one of them was on the line of an inevitable railroad, had a first-class hotel, a water-power, an academy, and an indefinite number of etcaeteras of the most delightful and remunerative kind. Each one of these villages was in the heart of the greatest grain-growing section of the State. Each, was the "natural outlet" to a large agricultural region. Each commanded the finest view. Each point was the healthiest in the county, and each village was "unrivaled." (When one looks at these town-site advertisements, one is tempted to think that member serious and wise who, about this time, offered a joint resolution in the Territorial Legislature, which read: "Resolved by the Senate and House of Representatives, That not more than two thirds of the area of this Territory should be laid out in town-sites and territorial roads, the remaining one third to be sacredly reserved for agricultural use.")

But I prize this old file of papers because it contains a graphic account of the next event in this narrative. And the young man who edited the Windmill at this time has told the story with so much sprightliness and vigor that I can not serve my reader a better turn than by clipping his account and pasting it just here in my manuscript. (I shall also rest myself a little, and do a favor to the patient printer, who will rejoice to get a little "reprint copy" in place of my perplexing manuscript.) For where else shall I find such a dictionariful command of the hights and depths—to say nothing of the lengths and breadths—of the good old English tongue? This young man must indeed have been a marvel of eloquent verbosity at that period of his career. The article in question has the very flavor of the golden age of Indian contracts, corner-lots, six per cent a month, and mortgages with waiver clauses. There, is also visible, I fear, a little of the prejudice which existed at that time in Perritaut against Metropolisville.



I wish that an obstinate scruple on the part of the printers and the limits of a duodecimo page did not forbid my reproducing here, in all their glory, the unique head-lines which precede the article in question. Any pageant introduced by music is impressive, says Madame de Stael. At least she says something of that sort, only it is in French, and I can not remember it exactly. And so any newspaper article is startling when introduced by the braying of head-lines. Fonts of type for displayed lines were not abundant in the office of the Windmill, but they were very stunning, and were used also for giving prominence to the euphonious names of the several towns, whose charms were set forth in the advertisements. Of course the first of these head-lines ran "Startling Disclosures!!!!" and then followed "Tremendous Excitement in Metropolisville!" "Official Rascality!" "Bold Mail Robbery!" "Arrest of the Postmaster!" "No Doubt of his Guilt!" "An Unexplained Mystery!" "Sequel to the Awful Drowning Affair of Last Week!" Having thus whetted the appetite of his reader, and economized in type-setting by nearly a column of such broad and soul-stirring typography, the editor proceeds:

"Metropolisville is again the red-hot crater of a boiling and seething excitement. Scarcely had the rascally and unscrupulous county-seat swindle begun to lose something of its terrific and exciting interest to the people of this county, when there came the awful and sad drowning of the two young ladies, Miss Jennie Downing and Miss Katy Charlton, the belles of the village, a full account of which will be found in the Windmill of last week, some copies of which we have still on hand, having issued an extra edition. Scarcely had the people of Metropolisville laid these two charming and much-lamented young ladies in their last, long resting-place, the quiet grave, when there comes like an earthquake out of a clear sky, the frightful and somewhat surprising and stunning intelligence that the postmaster of the village, a young man of a hitherto unexceptionable and blameless reputation, has been arrested for robbing the mails. It is supposed that his depredations have been very extensive and long continued, and that many citizens of our own village may have suffered from them. Farther investigations will doubtless bring all his nefarious and unscrupulous transactions to light. At present, however, he is under arrest on the single charge of stealing a land-warrant.

"The name of the rascally, villainous, and dishonest postmaster is Albert Charlton, and here comes in the wonderful and startling romance of this strange story. The carnival of excitement in Metropolisville and about Metropolisville has all had to do with one family. Our readers will remember how fully we have exposed the unscrupulous tricks of the old fox Plausaby, the contemptible land-shark who runs Metropolisville, and who now has temporary possession of the county-seat by means of a series of gigantic frauds, and of wholesale bribery and corruption and nefarious ballot-box stuffing. The fair Katy Charlton, who was drowned by the heart-rending calamity of last week, was his step-daughter, and now her brother, Albert Charlton, is arrested as a vile and dishonest mail-robber, and the victim whose land-warrant he stole was Miss Kate Charlton's betrothed lover, Mr. Smith Westcott. There was always hatred and animosity, however, between the lover and the brother, and it is hinted that the developments on the trial will prove that young Charlton had put a hired and ruthless assassin on the track of Westcott at the time of his sister's death. Mr. Westcott is well known and highly esteemed in Metropolisville and also here in Perritaut. He is the gentlemanly Agent in charge of the branch store of Jackson, Jones & Co., and we rejoice that he has made so narrow an escape from death at the hands of his relentless and unscrupulous foe.

"As for Albert Charlton, it is well for the community that he has been thus early and suddenly overtaken in the first incipiency of a black career of crime. His poor mother is said to be almost insane at this second grief, which follows so suddenly on her heart-rending bereavement of last week. We wish there were some hope that this young man, thus arrested with the suddenness of a thunderbolt by the majestic and firm hand of public justice, would reform; but we are told that he is utterly hard, and refuses to confess or deny his guilt, sitting in moody and gloomy silence in the room in which he is confined. We again call the attention of the proper authorities to the fact that Plausaby has not kept his agreement, and that Wheat County has no secure jail. We trust that the youthful villain Charlton will not be allowed to escape, but that he will receive the long term provided by the law for thieving postmasters. He will be removed to St. Paul immediately, but we seize the opportunity to demand in thunder-tones how long the citizens of this county are to be left without the accommodations of a secure jail, of which they stand in such immediate need? It is a matter in which we all feel a personal interest. We hope the courts will decide the county-seat question at once, and then we trust the commissioners will give us a jail of sufficient size and strength to accommodate a county of ten thousand people.

"We would not judge young Charlton before he has a fair trial. We hope he will have a fair trial, and it is not for us to express any opinions on the case in advance. If he shall be found guilty—and we do not for a moment doubt he will—we trust the court will give him the full penalty of the law without fear or favor, so that his case may prove a solemn and impressive warning that shall make a lasting impression on the minds of the thoughtless young men of this community in favor of honesty, and in regard to the sinfulness of stealing. We would not exult over the downfall of any man; but when the proud young Charlton gets his hair cropped, and finds himself clad in 'Stillwater gray,' and engaged in the intellectual employments of piling shingles and making vinegar-barrels, he will have plenty of time for meditation on that great moral truth, that honesty is generally the best policy."



CHAPTER XXVII.

THE ARREST.

The eloquent editor from whom I have just quoted told the truth when he said that Metropolisville was "the red-hot crater of a boiling and seething excitement." For everybody had believed in Charlton. He was not popular. People with vicarious consciences are not generally beloved unless they are tempered by much suavity. And Charlton was not. But everybody, except Mrs. Ferret, believed in his honesty and courage. Nobody had doubted his sincerity, though Smith Westcott had uttered many innuendoes. In truth, Westcott had had an uncomfortable time during the week that followed the drowning. There had been much shaking of the head about little Katy's death. People who are not at all heroic like to have other people do sublime things, and there were few who did not think that Westcott should have drowned with Katy, like the hero of a romance. People could not forgive him for spoiling a good story. So Smith got the cold shoulder, and might have left the Territory, but that his land-warrant had not come. He ceased to dance and to appear cheerful, and his he! he! took on a sneering inflection. He grew mysterious, and intimated to his friends that he'd give Metropolisville something else to talk about before long. By George! He! he! And when the deputy of the United States marshal swooped down upon the village and arrested the young post-master on a charge of abstracting Smith Westcott's land-warrant from the mail, the whole town was agog. "Told you so. By George!" said Westcott.

At first the villagers were divided in opinion about Albert. Plenty of people, like Mrs. Ferret, were ready to rejoice that he was not so good as he might be, you know. But many others said that he wouldn't steal. A fellow that had thrown away all his chances of making money wouldn't steal. To which it was rejoined that if Charlton did not care for money he was a good hater, and that what such a man would not do for money he might do for spite. And then, too, it was known that Albert had been very anxious to get away, and that he wanted to get away before Westcott did. And that everything depended on which should get a land-warrant first. What more natural than that Charlton should seize upon Smith Westcott's land-warrant, and thus help himself and retard his rival? This sort of reasoning staggered those who would have defended him on the ground of previous good character.

But that which shook the popular confidence in Albert most was his own behavior when arrested. He was perfectly collected until he inquired what evidence there was against him. The deputy marshal said that it was very clear evidence, indeed. "The land-warrant with which you pre-empted your claim bore a certain designating number. The prosecution can prove that that warrant was mailed at Red Owl on the 24th of August, directed to Smith Westcott, Metropolisville, and that he failed to receive it. The stolen property appearing in your hands, you must account for it in some way."

At this Charlton's countenance fell, and he refused to make any explanations or answer any questions. He was purposely kept over one day in Metropolisville in hope that something passing between him and his friends, who were permitted to have free access to him, might bring further evidence to light. But Charlton sat, pale and dejected, ready enough to converse about anything else, but declining to say one word in regard to his guilt or innocence of the crime charged. It is not strange that some of his best friends accepted the charge as true, and only tried to extenuate the offense on the ground that the circumstances made the temptation a very great one, and that the motive was not mercenary. Others stood out that it would yet be discovered that Plausaby had stolen the warrant, until half-a-dozen people remembered that Plausaby himself had been in Red Owl at that very time—he had spent a week there laying out a marshy shore in town lots down to the low-water mark, and also laying out the summit of a bluff three hundred and fifty feet high and sixty degrees steep. These sky and water lots were afterward sold to confiding Eastern speculators, and a year or two later the owner of the water privileges rowed all over his lots in a skiff. Whether the other purchaser used a balloon to reach his is not known. But the operation of staking out these ineligible "additions" to the city of Red Owl had attracted much attention, and consequently Plausaby's alibi was readily established. So that the two or three who still believed Albert innocent did so by "naked faith," and when questioned about it, shook their heads, and said that it was a great mystery. They could not understand it, but they did not believe him guilty. Isabel Marlay believed in Albert's innocence as she believed the hard passages in the catechism. She knew it, she believed it, she could not prove it, but she would not hear to anything else. She was sure of his innocence, and that was enough. For when a woman of that sort believes anything, she believes in spite of all her senses and all reason. What are the laws of evidence to her! She believes with the heart.

Poor Mrs. Plausaby, too, sat down in a dumb despair, and wept and complained and declared that she knew her Albert had notions and such things, but people with such notions wouldn't do anything naughty. Albert wouldn't, she knew. He hadn't done any harm, and they couldn't find out that he had. Katy was gone, and now Albert was in trouble, and she didn't know what to do. She thought Isa might do something, and not let all these troubles come on her in this way. For the poor woman had come to depend on Isa not only in weighty matters, such as dresses and bonnets, but also in all the other affairs of life. And it seemed to her a grievous wrong that Isabel, who had saved her from so many troubles, should not have kept Katy from drowning and Albert from prison.

The chief trouble in the mind of Albert was not the probability of imprisonment, nor the overthrow of his educational schemes—though all of these were cups of bitterness. But the first thought with him was to ask what would be the effect of his arrest on Miss Minorkey. He had felt some disappointment in not finding Helen the ideal woman he had pictured her, but, as I said a while ago, love does not die at the first disappointment. If it finds little to live on in the one who is loved, it will yet find enough in the memories, the hopes, and the ideals that dwell within the lover. Charlton, in the long night after his arrest, reviewed everything, but in thinking of Miss Minorkey, he did not once recur to her lack of deep sympathy with him in his sorrow for Katy. The Helen he thought of was the radiant Helen that sat by his beloved Katy in the boat on that glorious evening in which he rowed in the long northern twilight, the Helen that had relaxed her dignity enough to dip her palm in the water and dash spray into his face. He saw her like one looking back through clouds of blackness to catch a sight of a bit of sky and a single shining star. As the impossibility of his marrying Helen became more and more evident to him, she grew all the more glorious in her culture, her quietness, her thoughtfulness. That she would break her heart for him, he did not imagine, but he did hope—yes, hope—that she would suffer acutely on his account.

And when Isa Marlay bravely walked through the crowd that had gathered about the place of his confinement, and asked to see him, and he was told that a young lady wanted to be admitted, he hoped that it might be Helen Minorkey. When he saw that it was Isabel he was glad, partly because he would rather have seen her than anybody else, next to Helen, and partly because he could ask her to carry a message to Miss Minorkey. He asked her to take from his trunk, which had already been searched by the marshal's deputy, all the letters of Miss Minorkey, to tie them in a package, and to have the goodness to present them to that lady with his sincere regards.

"Shall I tell her that you are innocent?" asked Isabel, wishing to strengthen her own faith by a word of assurance from Albert.

"Tell her—" and Albert cast down his eyes a moment in painful reflection—"tell her that I will explain some day. Meantime, tell her to believe what you believe about me."

"I believe that you are innocent."

"Thank you, Miss Isabel," said Albert warmly, but then he stopped and grew red in the face. He did not give her one word of assurance. Even Isa's faith was staggered for a moment. But only for a moment. The faith of a woman like Isabel Marlay laughs at doubt.

I do not know how to describe the feelings with which Miss Marlay went out from Albert. Even in the message, full of love, which he had sent to his mother, he did not say one word about his guilt or innocence. And yet Isabel believed in her heart that he had not committed the crime. While he was strong and free from suspicion, Isa Marlay had admired him. He seemed to her, notwithstanding his eccentricities, a man of such truth, fervor, and earnestness of character, that she liked him better than she was willing to admit to herself. Now that he was an object of universal suspicion, her courageous and generous heart espoused his cause vehemently. She stood ready to do anything in the world for him. Anything but what he had asked her to do. Why she did not like to carry messages from him to Miss Minorkey she did not know. As soon as she became conscious of this jealous feeling in her heart, she took herself to task severely. Like the good girl she was, she set her sins out in the light of her own conscience. She did more than that. But if I should tell you truly what she did with this naughty feeling, how she dragged it out into the light and presence of the Holy One Himself, I should seem to be writing cant, and people would say that I was preaching. And yet I should only show you the source of Isa's high moral and religious culture. Can I write truly of a life in which the idea of God as Father, Monitor, and Friend is ever present and dominant, without showing you the springs of that life?

When Isabel Marlay, with subdued heart, sought Miss Minorkey, it was with her resolution fixed to keep the trust committed to her, and, as far as possible, to remove all suspicions from Miss Minorkey's mind. As for any feeling in her own heart—she had no right to have any feeling but a friendly one to Albert. She would despise a woman who could love a man that did not first declare his love for her. She said this to herself several times by way of learning the lesson well.

Isa found Miss Minorkey, with her baggage packed, ready for a move. Helen told Miss Marlay that her father found the air very bad for him, and meant to go to St. Anthony, where there was a mineral spring and a good hotel. For her part, she was glad of it, for a little place like Metropolisville was not pleasant. So full of gossip. And no newspapers or books. And very little cultivated society.

Miss Marlay said she had a package of something or other, which Mr. Charlton had sent with his regards. She said "something or other" from an instinctive delicacy.

"Oh! yes; something of mine that he borrowed, I suppose," said Helen. "Have you seen him? I'm really sorry for him. I found him a very pleasant companion, so full of reading and oddities. He's the last man I should have believed could rob the post-office."

"Oh! but he didn't," said Isa.

"Indeed! Well, I'm glad to hear it. I hope he'll be able to prove it. Is there any new evidence?"

Isa was obliged to confess that she had heard of none, and Miss Minorkey proceeded like a judge to explain to Miss Marlay how strong the evidence against him was. And then she said she thought the warrant had been taken, not from cupidity, but from a desire to serve Katy. It was a pity the law could not see it in that way. But all the time Isa protested with vehemence that she did not believe a word of it. Not one word. All the judges and juries and witnesses in the world could not convince her of Albert's guilt. Because she knew him, and she just knew that he couldn't do it, you see.

Miss Minorkey said it had made her father sick. "I've gone with Mr. Charlton so much, you know, that it has made talk," she said. "And father feels bad about it. And"—seeing the expression of Isa's countenance, she concluded that it would not do to be quite so secretive—"and, to tell you the truth, I did like him. But of course that is all over. Of course there couldn't be anything between us after this, even if he were innocent."

Isa grew indignant, and she no longer needed the support of religious faith and high moral principle to enable her to plead the cause of Albert Charlton with Miss Minorkey.

"But I thought you loved him," she said, with just a spice of bitterness. "The poor fellow believes that you love him."

Miss Minorkey winced a little. "Well, you know, some people are sentimental, and others are not. It is a good thing for me that I'm not one of those that pine away and die after anybody. I suppose I am not worthy of a high-toned man, such as he seemed to be. I have often told him so. I am sure I never could marry a man that had been in the penitentiary, if he were ever so innocent. Now, could you. Miss Marlay?"

Isabel blushed, and said she could if he were innocent. She thought a woman ought to stand by the man she loved to the death, if he were worthy. But Helen only sighed humbly, and said that she never was made for a heroine. She didn't even like to read about high-strung people in novels. She supposed it was her fault—people had to be what they were, she supposed. Miss Marlay must excuse her, though. She hadn't quite got her books packed, and the stage would be along in an hour. She would be glad if Isabel would tell Mr. Charlton privately, if she had a chance, how sorry she felt for him. But please not say anything that would compromise her, though.

And Isa Marlay went out of the hotel full of indignation at the cool-blooded Helen, and full of a fathomless pity for Albert, a pity that made her almost love him herself. She would have loved to atone for all Miss Minorkey's perfidy. And just alongside of her pity for Charlton thus deserted, crept in a secret joy. For there was now none to stand nearer friend to Albert than herself.

And yet Charlton did not want for friends. Whisky Jim had a lively sense of gratitude to him for his advocacy of Jim's right to the claim as against Westcott; and having also a lively antagonism to Westcott, he could see no good reason why a man should serve a long term in State's-prison for taking from a thief a land-warrant with which the thief meant to pre-empt another man's claim. And the Guardian Angel had transferred to the brother the devotion and care he once lavished on the sister. It was this unity of sentiment between the Jehu from the Green Mountains and the minstrel from the Indiana "Pocket" that gave Albert a chance for liberty.

The prisoner was handcuffed and confined in an upper room, the windows of which were securely boarded up on the outside. About three o'clock of the last night he spent in Metropolisville, the deputy marshal, who in the evening preceding had helped to empty two or three times the ample flask of Mr. Westcott, was sleeping very soundly. Albert, who was awake, heard the nails drawn from the boards. Presently the window was opened, and a familiar voice said in a dramatic tone:

"Mr. Charlton, git up and foller."

Albert arose and went to the window.

"Come right along, I 'low the coast's clear," said the Poet.

"No, I can not do that, Gray," said Charlton, though the prospect of liberty was very enticing.

"See here, mister, I calkilate es this is yer last chance fer fifteen year ur more," put in the driver, thrusting his head in alongside his Hoosier friend's.

"Come," added Gray, "you an' me'll jest put out together fer the Ingin kedentry ef you say so, and fetch up in Kansas under some fancy names, and take a hand in the wras'le that's agoin' on thar. Nobody'll ever track you. I've got a Yankton friend as'll help us through."

"My friends, I'm ever so thankful to you—"

"Blame take yer thanks! Come along," broke in the Superior Being. "It's now ur never."

"I'll be dogged ef it haint," said the Poet.

Charlton looked out wistfully over the wide prairies. He might escape and lead a wild, free life with Gray, and then turn up in some new Territory under an assumed name and work out his destiny. But the thought of being a fugitive from justice was very shocking to him.



"No! no! I can't. God bless you both. Good-by!" And he went back to his pallet on the floor. When the rescuers reached the ground the Superior Being delivered himself of some very sulphurous oaths, intended to express his abhorrence of "idees."

"There's that air blamed etarnal infarnal nateral born eejiot'll die in Stillwater penitensh'ry jest fer idees. Orter go to a 'sylum."

But the Poet went off dejectedly to his lone cabin on the prairie.

And there was a great row in the morning about the breaking open of the window and the attempted rescue. The deputy marshal told a famous story of his awaking in the night and driving off a rescuing party of eight with his revolver. And everybody wondered who they were. Was Charlton, then, a member of a gang?



CHAPTER XXVIII.

THE TEMPTER.

Albert was conveyed to St. Paul, but not until he had had one heart-breaking interview with his mother. The poor woman had spent nearly an hour dressing herself to go to him, for she was so shaken with agitation and blinded with weeping, that she could hardly tie a ribbon or see that her breast-pin was in the right place. This interview with her son shook her weak understanding to its foundations, and for days afterward Isa devoted her whole time to diverting her from the accumulation of troubled thoughts and memories that filled her with anguish—an anguish against the weight of which her feeble nature could offer no supports.

When Albert was brought before the commissioner, he waived examination, and was committed to await the session of the district court. Mr. Plausaby came up and offered to become his bail, but this Charlton vehemently refused, and was locked up in jail, where for the next two or three months he amused himself by reading the daily papers and such books as he could borrow, and writing on various subjects manuscripts which he never published.

The confinement chafed him. His mother's sorrow and feeble health oppressed him. And despite all he could do, his own humiliation bowed his head a little. But most of all, the utter neglect of Helen Minorkey hurt him sorely. Except that she had sent, through Isabel Marlay, that little smuggled message that she was sorry for him—like one who makes a great ado about sending you something which turns out to be nothing—except this mockery of pity, he had no word or sign from Helen. His mind dwelt on her as he remembered her in the moments when she had been carried out of herself by the contagion of his own enthusiasm, when she had seemed to love him devotedly. Especially did he think of her as she sat in quiet and thoughtful enjoyment in the row-boat by the side of Katy, playfully splashing the water and seeming to rejoice in his society. And now she had so easily accepted his guilt!

These thoughts robbed him of sleep, and the confinement and lack of exercise made him nervous. The energetic spirit, arrested at the very instant of beginning cherished enterprises, and shut out from hope of ever undertaking them, preyed upon itself, and Albert had a morbid longing for the State's prison, where he might weary himself with toil.

His counsel was Mr. Conger. Mr. Conger was not a great jurist. Of the philosophy of law he knew nothing. For the sublime principles of equity and the great historic developments that underlie the conventions which enter into the administration of public justice, Mr. Conger cared nothing. But there was one thing Mr. Conger did understand and care for, and that was success. He was a man of medium hight, burly, active, ever in motion. When he had ever been still long enough to read law, nobody knew. He said everything he had to say with a quick, vehement utterance, as though he grudged the time taken to speak fully about anything. He went along the street eagerly; he wrote with all his might. There were twenty men in the Territory, at that day, any one of whom knew five times as much law as he. Other members of the bar were accustomed to speak contemptuously of Conger's legal knowledge. But Conger won more cases and made more money than any of them. If he did not know law in the widest sense, he did know it in the narrowest. He always knew the law that served his turn. When he drew an assignment for a client, no man could break it. And when he undertook a case, he was sure to find his opponent's weak point. He would pick flaws in pleas; he would postpone; he would browbeat witnesses; he would take exceptions to the rulings of the court in order to excite the sympathy of the jury; he would object to testimony on the other side, and try to get in irrelevant testimony on his own; he would abuse the opposing counsel, crying out, "The counsel on the other side lies like thunder, and he knows it!" By shrewdness, by an unwearying perseverance, by throwing his whole weight into his work, Conger made himself the most successful lawyer of his time in the Territory. And preserved his social position at the same time, for though he was not at all scrupulous, he managed to keep on the respectable side of the line which divides the lawyer from the shyster.

Mr. Conger had been Mr. Plausaby's counsel in one or two cases, and Charlton, knowing no other lawyer, sent for him. Mr. Conger had, with his characteristic quickness of perception, picked up the leading features of the case from the newspapers. He sat down on the bed in Charlton's cell with his brisk professional air, and came at once to business in his jerky-polite tone.

"Bad business, this, Mr. Charlton, but let us hope we'll pull through. We generally do pull through. Been in a good many tight places in my time. But it is necessary, first of all, that you trust me. The boat is in a bad way—you hail a pilot—he comes aboard. Now—hands off the helm—you sit down and let the pilot steer her through. You understand?" And Mr. Conger looked as though he might have smiled at his own illustration if he could have spared the time. But he couldn't. As for Albert, he only looked more dejected.

"Now," he proceeded, "let's get to business. In the first place, you must trust me with everything. You must tell me whether you took the warrant or not." And Mr. Conger paused and scrutinized his client closely.

Charlton said nothing, but his face gave evidence of a struggle.

"Well, well, Mr. Charlton," said the brisk man with the air of one who has gotten through the first and most disagreeable part of his business, and who now proposes to proceed immediately to the next matter on the docket. "Well, well, Mr. Charlton, you needn't say anything if the question is an unpleasant one. An experienced lawyer knows what silence means, of course," and there was just a trifle of self-gratulation in his voice. As for Albert, he winced, and seemed to be trying to make up his mind to speak.

"Now," and with this now the lawyer brought his white fat hand down upon his knee in an emphatic way, as one who says "nextly." "Now—there are several courses open to us. I asked you whether you took the warrant or not, because the line of defense that presents itself first is to follow the track of your suspicions, and fix the guilt on some one else if we can. I understand, however, that that course is closed to us?"

Charlton nodded his head.

"We might try to throw suspicion—only suspicion, you know—on the stage-driver or somebody else. Eh? Just enough to confuse the jury?"

Albert shook his head a little impatiently.

"Well, well, that's so—not the best line. The warrant was in your hands. You used it for pre-emption. That is very ugly, very. I don't think much of that line, under the circumstances. It might excite feeling against us. It is a very bad case. But we will pull through, I hope. We generally do. Give the case wholly into my hands. We'll postpone, I think. I shall have to make an affidavit that there are important witnesses absent, or something of the sort. But we'll have the case postponed. There's some popular feeling against you, and juries go as the newspapers do. Now, I see but one way, and that is to postpone until the feeling dies down. Then we can manage the papers a little and get up some sympathy for you. And there's no knowing what may happen. There's nothing like delay in a bad case. Wait long enough, and something is sure to turn up."

"But I don't want the case postponed," said Charlton decidedly.

"Very natural that you shouldn't like to wait. This is not a pleasant room. But it is better to wait a year or even two years in this jail than to go to prison for fifteen or twenty. Fifteen or twenty years out of the life of a young man is about all there is worth the having."

Here Charlton shuddered, and Mr. Conger was pleased to see that his words took effect.

"You'd better make up your mind that the case is a bad one, and trust to my experience. When you're sick, trust the doctor. I think I can pull you through if you'll leave the matter to me."

"Mr. Conger," said Charlton, lifting up his pale face, twitching with nervousness, "I don't want to get free by playing tricks on a court of law. I know that fifteen or twenty years in prison would not leave me much worth living for, but I will not degrade myself by evading justice with delays and false affidavits. If you can do anything for me fairly and squarely, I should like to have it done."

"Scruples, eh?" asked Mr. Conger in surprise.

"Yes, scruples," said Albert Charlton, leaning his head on his hands with the air of one who has made a great exertion and has a feeling of exhaustion.

"Scruples, Mr. Charlton, are well enough when one is about to break the law. After one has been arrested, scruples are in the way."

"You have no right to presume that I have broken the law," said Charlton with something of his old fire.

"Well, Mr. Charlton, it will do no good for you to quarrel with your counsel. You have as good as confessed the crime yourself. I must insist that you leave the case in my hands, or I must throw it up. Take time to think about it. I'll send my partner over to get any suggestions from you about witnesses. The most we can do is to prove previous good character. That isn't worth anything where the evidence against the prisoner is so conclusive—as in your case. But it makes a show of doing something." And Mr. Conger was about leaving the cell when, as if a new thought had occurred to him, he turned back and sat down again and said: "There is one other course open to you. Perhaps it is the best, since you will not follow my plan. You can plead guilty, and trust to the clemency of the President. I think strong political influences could be brought to bear at Washington in favor of your pardon?"

Charlton shook his head, and the lawyer left him "to think the matter over," as he said. Then ensued the season of temptation. Why should he stand on a scruple? Why not get free? Here was a conscienceless attorney, ready to make any number of affidavits in regard to the absence of important witnesses; ready to fight the law by every technicality of the law. His imprisonment had already taught him how dear liberty was, and, within half an hour after Conger left him, a great change came over him. Why should he go to prison? What justice was there in his going to prison? Here he was, taking a long sentence to the penitentiary, while such men as Westcott and Conger were out. There could be no equity in such an arrangement. Whenever a man begins to seek equality of dispensation, he is in a fair way to debauch his conscience. And another line of thought influenced Charlton. The world needed his services. What advantage would there be in throwing away the chances of a lifetime on a punctilio? Why might he not let the serviceable lawyer do as he pleased? Conger was the keeper of his own conscience, and would not be either more or less honest at heart for what he did or did not do. All the kingdoms of the earth could not have tempted Charlton to serve himself by another man's perjury. But liberty on one hand and State's-prison on the other, was a dreadful alternative. And so, when the meek and studious man whom Conger used for a partner called on him, he answered all his questions, and offered no objection to the assumption of the quiet man that Mr. Conger would carry on the case in his own fashion.

Many a man is willing to be a martyr till he sees the stake and fagots.



CHAPTER XXIX.

THE TRIAL.

From the time that Charlton began to pettifog with his conscience, he began to lose peace of mind. His self-respect was impaired, and he became impatient, and chafed under his restraint. As the trial drew on, he was more than ever filled with questionings in regard to the course he should pursue. For conscience is like a pertinacious attorney. When a false decision is rendered, he is forever badgering the court with a bill of exceptions, with proposals to set aside, with motions for new trials, with applications for writs of appeal, with threats of a Higher Court, and even with contemptuous mutterings about impeachment. If Isa had not written to him, Albert might have regained his moral aplomb in some other way than he did—he might not. For human sympathy is Christ's own means of regenerating the earth. If you can not counsel, if you can not preach, if you can not get your timid lips to speak one word that will rebuke a man's sin, you can at least show the fellowship of your heart with his. There is a great moral tonic in human brotherhood. Worried, desperate, feeling forsaken of God and man, it is not strange that Charlton should shut his teeth together and defy his scruples. He would use any key he could to get out into the sunlight again. He quoted all those old, half-true, half-false adages about the lawlessness of necessity and so on. Then, weary of fencing with himself, he wished for strength to stand at peace again, as when he turned his back on the temptations of his rescuers in Metropolisville. But he had grown weak and nervous from confinement—prisons do not strengthen the moral power—and he had moreover given way to dreaming about liberty until he was like a homesick child, who aggravates his impatience by dwelling much on the delightfulness of the meeting with old friends, and by counting the slow-moving days that intervene.

But there came, just the day before the trial, a letter with the post-mark "Metropolisville" on it. That post-mark always excited a curious feeling in him. He remembered with what boyish pride he had taken possession of his office, and how he delighted to stamp the post-mark on the letters. The address of this letter was not in his mother's undecided penmanship—it was Isa Marlay's straightforward and yet graceful writing, and the very sight of it gave him comfort. The letter was simply a news letter, a vicarious letter from Isabel because Mrs. Plausaby did not feel well enough to write; this is what Isa said it was, and what she believed it to be, but Charlton knew that Isa's own friendly heart had planned it. And though it ran on about this and that unimportant matter of village intelligence, yet were its commonplace sentences about commonplace affairs like a fountain in the desert to the thirsty soul of the prisoner. I have read with fascination in an absurdly curious book that people of a very sensitive fiber can take a letter, the contents and writer of which are unknown, and by pressing it for a time against the forehead can see the writer and his surroundings. It took no spirit of divination in Charlton's case. The trim and graceful figure of Isa Marlay, in perfectly fitting calico frock, with her whole dress in that harmonious relation of parts for which she was so remarkable, came before him. He knew that by this time she must have some dried grasses in the vases, and some well-preserved autumn leaves around the picture-frames. The letter said nothing about his trial, but its tone gave him assurance of friendly sympathy, and of a faith in him that could not be shaken. Somehow, by some recalling of old associations, and by some subtle influence of human sympathy, it swept the fogs away from the soul of Charlton, and he began to see his duty and to feel an inspiration toward the right. I said that the letter did not mention the trial, but it did. For when Charlton had read it twice, he happened to turn it over, and found a postscript on the fourth page of the sheet. I wonder if the habit which most women have of reserving their very best for the postscript comes from the housekeeper's desire to have a good dessert. Here on the back Charlton read:

"P.8.—Mr. Gray, your Hoosier friend, called on me yesterday, and sent his regards. He told me how you refused to escape. I know you well enough to feel sure that you would not do anything mean or unmanly. I pray that God will sustain you on your trial, and make your innocence appear. I am sure you are innocent, though I can not understand it. Providence will overrule it all for good, I believe."

Something in the simple-hearted faith of Isabel did him a world of good. He was in the open hall of the jail when he read it, and he walked about the prison, feeling strong enough now to cope with temptation. That very morning he had received a New Testament from a colporteur, and now, out of regard to Isa Marlay's faith, maybe—out of some deeper feeling, possibly—he read the story of the trial and condemnation of Jesus. In his combative days he had read it for the sake of noting the disagreements between the Evangelists in some of the details. But now he was in no mood for small criticism. Which is the shallower, indeed, the criticism that harps on disagreements in such narratives, or the pettifogging that strives to reconcile them, one can hardly tell. In Charlton's mood, in any deeply earnest mood, one sees the smallness of all disputes about sixth and ninth hours. Albert saw the profound essential unity of the narratives, he felt the stirring of the deep sublimity of the story, he felt the inspiration of the sublimest character in human history. Did he believe? Not in any orthodox sense. But do you think that the influence of the Christ is limited to them who hold right opinions about Him? If a man's heart be simple, he can not see Jesus in any light without getting good from Him. Charlton, unbeliever that he was, wet the pages with tears, tears of sympathy with the high self-sacrifice of Jesus, and tears of penitence for his own moral weakness, which stood rebuked before the Great Example.

And then came the devil, in the person of Mr. Conger. His face was full of hopefulness as he sat down in Charlton's cell and smote his fat white hand upon his knee and said "Now!" and looked expectantly at his client. He waited a moment in hope of rousing Charlton's curiosity.

"We've got them!" he said presently. "I told you we should pull through. Leave the whole matter to me."

"I am willing to leave anything to you but my conscience," said Albert.

"The devil take your conscience, Mr. Charlton. If you are guilty, and so awfully conscientious, plead guilty at once. If you propose to cheat the government out of some years of penal servitude, why, well and good. But you must have a devilish queer conscience, to be sure. If you talk in that way, I shall enter a plea of insanity and get you off whether you will or not. But you might at least hear me through before you talk about conscience. Perhaps even your conscience would not take offense at my plan, unless you consider yourself foreordained to go to penitentiary."

"Let's hear your plan, Mr. Conger," said Charlton, hoping there might be some way found by which he could escape.

Mr. Conger became bland again, resumed his cheerful and hopeful look, brought down his fat white hand upon his knee, looked up over his client's head, while he let his countenance blossom with the promise of his coming communication. He then proceeded to say with a cheerful chuckle that there was a flaw in the form of the indictment—the grand jury had blundered. He had told Charlton that something would certainly happen. And it had. Then Mr. Conger smote his knee again, and said "Now!" once more, and proceeded to say that his plan was to get the trial set late in the term, so that the grand jury should finish their work and be discharged before the case came on. Then he would have the indictment quashed.

He said this with so innocent and plausible a face that at first it did not seem very objectionable to Charlton.

"What would we gain by quashing the indictment, Mr. Conger?"

"Well, if the indictment were quashed on the ground of a defect in its substance, then the case falls. But this is only defective in form. Another grand jury can indict you again. Now if the District Attorney should be a little easy—and I think that, considering your age, and my influence with him, he would be—a new commitment might not issue perhaps before you could get out of reach of it. If you were committed again, then we gain time. Time is everything in a bad case. You could not be tried until the next term. When the next term comes, we could then see what could be done. Meantime you could get bail."

If Charlton had not been entirely clear-headed, or entirely in a mood to deal honestly with himself, he would have been persuaded to take this course.

"Let me ask you a question, Mr. Conger. If the case were delayed, and I still had nothing to present against the strong circumstantial evidence of the prosecution—if, in other words, delay should still leave us in our present position—would there be any chance for me to escape by a fair, stand-up trial?"

"Well, you see, Mr. Charlton, this is precisely a case in which we will not accept a pitched battle, if we can help it. After a while, when the prosecuting parties feel less bitter toward you, we might get some of the evidence mislaid, out of the way, or get some friend on the jury, or—well, we might manage somehow to dodge trial on the case as it stands. Experience is worth a great deal in these things."

"There are, then, two possibilities for me," said Charlton very quietly. "I can run away, or we may juggle the evidence or the jury. Am I right?"

"Or, we can go to prison?" said Conger, smiling.

"I will take the latter alternative," said Charlton.

"Then you owe it to me to plead guilty, and relieve me from responsibility. If you plead guilty, we can get a recommendation of mercy from the court."

"I owe it to myself not to plead guilty," said Charlton, speaking still gently, for his old imperious and self-confident manner had left him.

"Very well," said Mr. Conger, rising, "if you take your fate into your own hands in that way, I owe it to myself to withdraw from the case."

"Very well, Mr. Conger."

"Good-morning, Mr. Charlton!"

"Good-morning, Mr. Conger."

And with Mr. Conger's disappearance went Albert's last hope of escape. The battle had been fought, and lost—or won, as you look at it. Let us say won, for no man's case is desperate till he parts with manliness.

Charlton had the good fortune to secure a young lawyer of little experience but of much principle, who was utterly bewildered by the mystery of the case, and the apparently paradoxical scruples of his client, but who worked diligently and hopelessly for him. He saw the flaw in the indictment and pointed it out to Charlton, but told him that as it was merely a technical point he would gain nothing but time. Charlton preferred that there should be no delay, except what was necessary to give his counsel time to understand the case. In truth, there was little enough to understand. The defense had nothing left to do.

When Albert came into court he was pale from his confinement. He looked eagerly round the crowded room to see if he could find the support of friendly faces. There were just two. The Hoosier Poet sat on one of the benches, and by him sat Isa Marlay. True, Mr. Plausaby sat next to Miss Marlay, but Albert did not account him anything in his inventory of friends.

Isabel wondered how he would plead. She hoped that he did not mean to plead guilty, but the withdrawal of Conger from the case filled her with fear, and she had been informed by Mr. Plausaby that he could refuse to plead altogether, and it would be considered a plea of not guilty. She believed him innocent, but she had not had one word of assurance to that effect from him, and even her faith had been shaken a little by the innuendoes and suspicions of Mr. Plausaby.

Everybody looked at the prisoner. Presently the District Attorney moved that Albert Charlton be arraigned.

The Court instructed the clerk, who said, "Albert Charlton, come forward."

Albert here rose to his feet, and raised his right hand in token of his identity.

The District Attorney said, "This prisoner I have indicted by the grand jury."

"Shall we waive the reading of the indictment?" asked Charlton's counsel.

"No," said Albert, "let it be read," and he listened intently while the clerk read it.

"Albert Charlton, you have heard the charge. What say you: Guilty, or, Not guilty?" Even the rattling and unmeaning voice in which the clerk was accustomed to go through with his perfunctory performances took on some solemnity.

There was dead silence for a moment. Isa Marlay's heart stopped beating, and the Poet from Posey County opened his mouth with eager anxiety. When Charlton spoke, it was in a full, solemn voice, with deliberation and emphasis.

"NOT GUILTY!"

"Thank God!" whispered Isa.

The Poet shut his mouth and heaved a sigh of relief.

The counsel for the defense was electrified. Up to that moment he had believed that his client was guilty. But there was so much of solemn truthfulness in the voice that he could not resist its influence.

As for the trial itself, which came off two days later, that was a dull enough affair. It was easy to prove that Albert had expressed all sorts of bitter feelings toward Mr. Westcott; that he was anxious to leave; that he had every motive for wishing to pre-empt before Westcott did; that the land-warrant numbered so-and-so—it is of no use being accurate here, they were accurate enough in court—had been posted in Red Owl on a certain day; that a gentleman who rode with the driver saw him receive the mail at Red Owl, and saw it delivered at Metropolisville; that Charlton pre-empted his claim—the S.E. qr. of the N.E. qr., and the N. 1/2 of the S.E. qr. of Section 32, T. so-and-so, R. such-and-such—with this identical land-warrant, as the records of the land-office showed beyond a doubt.

Against all this counsel for defense had nothing whatever to offer. Nothing but evidence of previous good character, nothing but to urge that there still remained perhaps the shadow of a doubt. No testimony to show from whom Charlton had received the warrant, not the first particle of rebutting evidence. The District Attorney only made a little perfunctory speech on the evils brought upon business by theft in the post-office. The exertions of Charlton's counsel amounted to nothing; the jury found him guilty without deliberation.

The judge sentenced him with much solemn admonition. It was a grievous thing for one so young to commit such a crime. He warned Albert that he must not regard any consideration as a justification for such an offense. He had betrayed his trust and been guilty of theft. The judge expressed his regret that the sentence was so severe. It was a sad thing to send a young man of education and refinement to be the companion of criminals for so many years. But the law recognized the difference between a theft by a sworn and trusted officer and an ordinary larceny. He hoped that Albert would profit by this terrible experience, and that he would so improve the time of his confinement with meditation, that what would remain to him of life when he should come out of the walls of his prison might be spent as an honorable and law-abiding citizen. He sentenced him to serve the shortest term permitted by the statute, namely, ten years.

The first deep snow of the winter was falling outside the court-house, and as Charlton stood in the prisoners' box, he could hear the jingling of sleigh-bells, the sounds that usher in the happy social life of winter in these northern latitudes. He heard the judge, and he listened to the sleigh-bells as a man who dreams—the world was so far off from him now—ten weary years, and the load of a great disgrace measured the gulf fixed between him and all human joy and sympathy. And when, a few minutes afterward, the jail-lock clicked behind him, it seemed to have shut out life. For burial alive is no fable. Many a man has heard the closing of the vault as Albert Charlton did.



CHAPTER XXX.

THE PENITENTIARY.

It was a cold morning. The snow had fallen heavily the day before, and the Stillwater stage was on runners. The four horses rushed round the street-corners with eagerness as the driver, at a little past five o'clock in the morning, moved about collecting passengers. From the up-town hotels he drove in the light of the gas-lamps to the jail where the deputy marshal, with his prisoner securely handcuffed, took his seat and wrapped the robes about them both. Then at the down-town hotels they took on other passengers. The Fuller House was the last call of all.

"Haven't you a back-seat?" The passenger partly spoke and partly coughed out his inquiry.

"The back-seat is occupied by ladies," said the agent, "you will have to take the front one."

"It will kill me to ride backwards," whined the desponding voice of Minorkey, but as there were only two vacant seats he had no choice. He put his daughter in the middle while he took the end of the seat and resigned himself to death by retrograde motion. Miss Helen Minorkey was thus placed exactly vis-a-vis with her old lover Albert Charlton, but in the darkness of six o'clock on a winter's morning in Minnesota, she could not know it. The gentleman who occupied the other end of the seat recognized Mr. Minorkey, and was by him introduced to his daughter. That lady could not wholly resist the exhilaration of such a stage-ride over snowy roads, only half-broken as yet, where there was imminent peril of upsetting at every turn. And so she and her new acquaintance talked of many things, while Charlton could not but recall his ride, a short half-year ago, on a front-seat, over the green prairies—had prairies ever been greener?—and under the blue sky, and in bright sunshine—had the sun ever shone so brightly?—with this same quiet-voiced, thoughtful Helen Minorkey. How soon had sunshine turned to darkness! How suddenly had the blossoming spring-time changed to dreariest winter!

It is really delightful, this riding through the snow and darkness in a covered coach on runners, this battling with difficulties. There is a spice of adventure in it quite pleasant if you don't happen to be the driver and have the battle to manage. To be a well-muffled passenger, responsible for nothing, not even for your own neck, is thoroughly delightful—provided always that you are not the passenger in handcuffs going to prison for ten years. To the passenger in handcuffs, whose good name has been destroyed, whose liberty is gone, whose future is to be made of weary days of monotonous drudgery and dreary nights in a damp cell, whose friends have deserted him, who is an outlaw to society—to the passenger in handcuffs this dashing and whirling toward a living entombment has no exhilaration. Charlton was glad of the darkness, but dreaded the dawn when there must come a recognition. In a whisper he begged the deputy marshal to pull his cap down over his eyes and to adjust his woolen comforter over his nose, not so much to avoid the cold wind as to escape the cold eyes of Helen Minorkey. Then he hid his handcuffs under the buffalo robes so that, if possible, he might escape recognition.

The gentleman alongside Miss Minorkey asked if she had read the account of the trial of young Charlton, the post-office robber.

"Part of it," said Miss Minorkey. "I don't read trials much."

"For my part," said the gentleman, "I think the court was very merciful. I should have given him the longest term known to the law. He ought to go for twenty-one years. We all of us have to risk money in the mails, and if thieves in the post-office are not punished severely, there is no security."

There spoke Commerce! Money is worth so much more than humanity, you know!

Miss Minorkey said that she knew something of the case. It was very curious, indeed. Young Charlton was disposed to be honest, but he was high-tempered. The taking of the warrant was an act of resentment, she thought. He had had two or three quarrels or fights, she believed, with the man from whom he took the warrant. He was a very talented young man, but very ungovernable in his feelings.

The gentleman said that that was the very reason why he should have gone for a longer time. A talented and self-conceited man of that sort was dangerous out of prison. As it was, he would learn all the roguery of the penitentiary, you know, and then we should none of us be safe from him.

There spoke the Spirit of the Law! Keep us safe, O Lord! whoever may go to the devil!

In reply to questions from her companion, Miss Minorkey told the story of Albert's conflict with Westcott—she stated the case with all the coolness of a dispassionate observer.

There was no sign—Albert listened for it—of the slightest sympathy for or against him in the matter. Then the story of little Katy was told as one might tell something that had happened a hundred years ago, without any personal sympathy. It was simply a curious story, an interesting adventure with which to beguile a weary hour of stage riding in the darkness. It would have gratified Albert to have been able to detect the vibration of a painful memory or a pitying emotion, but Helen did not suffer her placidity to be ruffled by disturbing emotion. The conversation drifted to other subjects presently through Mr. Minorkey's sudden recollection that the drowning excitement at Metropolisville had brought on a sudden attack of his complaint, he had been seized with a pain just under his ribs. It ran up to the point of the right shoulder, and he thought he should die, etc., etc., etc. Nothing saved him but putting his feet into hot water, etc., etc., etc.

The gray dawn came on, and Charlton was presently able to trace the lineaments of the well-known countenance. He was not able to recognize it again without a profound emotion, an emotion that he could not have analyzed. Her face was unchanged, there was not the varying of a line in the placid, healthy, thoughtful expression to indicate any deepening of her nature through suffering. Charlton's face had changed so that she would not have recognized him readily had it been less concealed. And by so much as his countenance had changed and hers remained fixed, had he drifted away from her. Albert felt this. However painful his emotion was, as he sat there casting furtive glances at Helen's face, there was no regret that all relation between them was broken forever. He was not sorry for the meeting. He needed such a meeting to measure the parallax of his progress and her stagnation. He needed this impression of Helen to obliterate the memory of the row-boat. She was no longer to remain in his mind associated with the blessed memory of little Kate. Hereafter he could think of Katy in the row-boat—the other figure was a dim unreality which might have come to mean something, but which never did mean anything to him.

I wonder who keeps the tavern at Cypher's Lake now? In those old days it was not a very reputable place; it was said that many a man had there been fleeced at poker. The stage did not reach it on this snowy morning until ten o'clock. The driver stopped to water, the hospitable landlord, whose familiar nickname was "Bun," having provided a pail and cut a hole through the ice of the lake for the accommodation of the drivers. Water for beasts—gentlemen could meantime find something less "beastly" than ice-water in the little low-ceiled bar-room on the other side of the road. The deputy-marshal wanted to stretch his legs a little, and so, trusting partly to his knowledge of Charlton's character, partly to handcuffs, and partly to his convenient revolver, he leaped out of the coach and stepped to the door of the bar-room just to straighten his legs, you know, and get a glass of whisky "straight" at the same time. In getting into the coach again he chanced to throw back the buffalo-robe and thus exposed Charlton's handcuffs. Helen glanced at them, and then at Albert's face. She shivered a little, and grew red. There was no alternative but to ride thus face to face with Charlton for six miles. She tried to feel herself an injured person, but something in the self-possessed face of Albert—his comforter had dropped down now—awed her, and she affected to be sick, leaning her head on her father's shoulder and surprising that gentleman beyond measure. Helen had never shown so much emotion of any sort in her life before, certainly never so much confusion and shame. And that in spite of her reasoning that it was not she but Albert who should be embarrassed. But the two seemed to have changed places. Charlton was as cold and immovable as Helen Minorkey ever had been; she trembled and shuddered, even with her eyes shut, to think that his eyes were on her—looking her through and through—measuring all the petty meanness and shallowness of her soul. She complained of the cold and wrapped her blanket shawl about her face and pretended to be asleep, but the shameful nakedness of her spirit seemed not a whit less visible to the cool, indifferent eyes that she felt must be still looking at her from under the shadow of that cap-front. What a relief it was at last to get into the warm parlor of the hotel! But still she shivered when she thought of her ride.

It is one thing to go into a warm parlor of a hotel, to order your room, your fire, your dinner, your bed. It is quite another to drive up under the high, rough limestone outer wall of a prison—a wall on which moss and creeper refuse to grow—to be led handcuffed into a little office, to have your credentials for ten years of servitude presented to the warden, to have your name, age, nativity, hight, complexion, weight, and distinguishing marks carefully booked, to have your hair cropped to half the length of a prize-fighter's, to lay aside the dress which you have chosen and which seems half your individuality, and put on a suit of cheerless penitentiary uniform—to cease to be a man with a place among men, and to become simply a convict. This is not nearly so agreeable as living at the hotel. Did Helen Minorkey ever think of the difference?

There is little to be told of the life in the penitentiary. It is very uniform. To eat prison fare without even the decency of a knife or fork—you might kill a guard or a fellow-rogue with a fork—to sleep in a narrow, rough cell on a hard bed, to have your cell unlocked and to be marched out under guard in the morning, to go in a row of prisoners to wash your face, to go in a procession to a frugal breakfast served on tin plates in a dining-room mustier than a cellar, to be marched to your work, to be watched by a guard while you work, to know that the guard has a loaded revolver and is ready to draw it on slight provocation, to march to meals under awe of the revolver, to march to bed while the man with the revolver walks behind you, to be locked in and barred in and double-locked in again, to have a piece of candle that will burn two hours, to burn it out and lie down in the darkness—to go through one such day and know that you have to endure three thousand six hundred and fifty-two days like it—that is about all. The life of a blind horse in a treadmill is varied and cheerful in comparison.

Oh! yes, there is Sunday. I forgot the Sunday. On Sundays you don't have to work in the shops. You have the blessed privilege of sitting alone in your bare cell all the day, except the hour of service. You can think about the outside world and wish you were out. You can read, if you can get anything interesting to read. You can count your term over, think of a broken life, of the friends of other days who feel disgraced at mention of your name, get into the dumps, and cry a little if you feel like it. Only crying doesn't seem to do much good. Such is the blessedness of the holy Sabbath in prison!

But Charlton did not let himself pine for liberty. He was busy with plans for reconstructing his life. What he would have had it, it could not be. You try to build a house, and it is shaken down about your ears by an earthquake. Your material is, much of it, broken. You can never make it what you would. But the brave heart, failing to do what it would, does what it can. Charlton, who had hated the law as a profession, was now enamored of it. He thought rightly that there is no calling that offers nobler opportunities to a man who has a moral fiber able to bear the strain. When he should have finished his term, he would be thirty-one, and would be precluded from marriage by his disgrace. He could live on a crust, if necessary, and be the champion of the oppressed. What pleasure he would have in beating Conger some day! So he arranged to borrow law-books, and faithfully used his two hours of candle in studying. He calculated that in ten years—if he should survive ten years of life in a cell—he could lay a foundation for eminence in legal learning. Thus he made vinegar-barrels all day, and read Coke on Littleton on Blackstone at night. His money received from the contractor for over-work, he used to buy law-books.

Sometimes he hoped for a pardon, but there was only one contingency that was likely to bring it about. And he could not wish for that. Unless, indeed, the prison-officers should seek a pardon for him. From the beginning they had held him in great favor. When he had been six months in prison, his character was so well established with the guards that no one ever thought of watching him or of inspecting his work.

He felt a great desire to have something done in a philanthropic way for the prisoners, but when the acting chaplain, Mr. White, preached to them, he always rebelled. Mr. White had been a steamboat captain, a sheriff, and divers other things, and was now a zealous missionary among the Stillwater lumbermen. The State could not afford to give more than three hundred dollars a year for religious and moral instruction at this time, and so the several pastors in the city served alternately, three months apiece. Mr. White was a man who delivered his exhortations with the same sort of vehemence that Captain White had used in giving orders to his deck-hands in a storm; he arrested souls much as Sheriff White had arrested criminals. To Albert's infidelity he gave no quarter. Charlton despised the chaplain's lack of learning until he came to admire his sincerity and wonder at his success. For the gracefulest and eruditest orator that ever held forth to genteelest congregation, could not have touched the prisoners by his highest flight of rhetoric as did the earnest, fiery Captain-Sheriff-Chaplain White, who moved aggressively on the wickedness of his felonious audience.

When Mr. White's three months had expired, there came another pastor, as different from him as possible. Mr. Lurton was as gentle as his predecessor had been boisterous. There was a strong substratum of manly courage and will, but the whole was overlaid with a sweetness wholly feminine and seraphic. His religion was the Twenty-third Psalm. His face showed no trace of conflict. He had accepted the creed which he had inherited without a question, and, finding in it abundant sources of happiness, of moral development, and spiritual consolation, he thence concluded it true. He had never doubted. It is a question whether his devout soul would not have found peace and edification in any set of opinions to which he had happened to be born. You have seen one or two such men in your life. Their presence is a benison. Albert felt more peaceful while Mr. Lurton stood without the grating of his cell, and Lurton seemed to leave a benediction behind him. He did not talk in pious cant, he did not display his piety, and he never addressed a sinner down an inclined plane. He was too humble for that. But the settled, the unruffled, the unruffleable peacefulness and trustfulness of his soul seemed to Charlton, whose life had been stormier within than without, nothing less than sublime. The inmates of the prison could not appreciate this delicate quality in the young minister. Lurton had never lived near enough to their life for them to understand him or for him to understand them. He considered them all, on general principles, as lost sinners, bad, like himself, by nature, who had superadded outward transgressions and the crime of rejecting Christ to their original guilt and corruption as members of the human family.

Charlton watched Lurton with intense interest, listened to all he had to say, responded to the influence of his fine quality, but found his own doubts yet unanswered and indeed untouched. The minister, on his part, took a lively interest in the remarkable young man, and often endeavored to remove his doubts by the well-knit logical arguments he had learned in the schools.

"Mr. Lurton," said Charlton impatiently one day, "were you ever troubled with doubt?"

"I do not remember that I ever seriously entertained a doubt in regard to religious truth in my life," said Lurton, after reflection.

"Then you know no more about my doubts than a blind man knows of your sense of sight." But after a pause, he added, laughing: "Nevertheless, I would give away my doubtativeness any day in exchange for your peacefulness." Charlton did not know, nor did Lurton, that the natures which have never been driven into the wilderness to be buffeted of the devil are not the deepest.

It was during Mr. Lurton's time as chaplain that Charlton began to receive presents of little ornamental articles, intended to make his cell more cheerful. These things were sent to him by the hands of the chaplain, and the latter was forbidden to tell the name of the giver. Books and pictures, and even little pots with flowers in them, came to him in the early spring. He fancied they might come from some unknown friend, who had only heard of him through the chaplain, and he was prone to resent the charity. He received the articles with thankful lips, but asked in his heart, "Is it not enough to be a convict, without being pitied as such?" Why anybody in Stillwater should send him such things, he did not know. The gifts were not expensive, but every one gave evidence of a refined taste.

At last there came one—a simple cross, cut in paper, intended to be hung up as a transparency before the window—that in some unaccountable way suggested old associations. Charlton had never seen anything of the kind, but he had the feeling of one who half-recognizes a handwriting. The pattern had a delicacy about it approaching to daintiness, an expression of taste and feeling which he seemed to have known, as when one sees a face that is familiar, but which one can not "place," as we say. Charlton could not place the memory excited by this transparency, but for a moment he felt sure that it must be from some one whom he knew. But who could there be near enough to him to send flower-pots and framed pictures without great expense? There was no one in Stillwater whom he had ever seen, unless indeed Helen Minorkey were there yet, and he had long since given up all expectation and all desire of receiving any attention at her hands. Besides, the associations excited by the transparency, the taste evinced in making it, the sentiment which it expressed, were not of Helen Minorkey. It was on Thursday that he hung it against the light of his window. It was not until Sunday evening, as he lay listlessly watching his scanty allowance of daylight grow dimmer, that he became sure of the hand that he had detected in the workmanship of the piece. He got up quickly and looked at it more closely and said: "It must be Isa Marlay!" And he lay down again, saying: "Well, it can never be quite dark in a man's life when he has one friend." And then, as the light grew more and more faint, he said: "Why did not I see it before? Good orthodox Isa wants to preach to me. She means to say that I should receive light through the cross."

And he lay awake far into the night, trying to divine how the flower-pots and pictures and all the rest could have been sent all the way from Metropolisville. It was not till long afterward that he discovered the alliance between Whisky Jim and Isabel, and how Jim had gotten a friend on the Stillwater route to help him get them through. But Charlton wrote Isa, and told her how he had detected her, and thanked her cordially, asking her why she concealed her hand. She replied kindly, but with little allusion to the gifts, and they came no more. When Isa had been discovered she could not bring herself to continue the presents. Save that now and then there came something from his mother, in which Isa's taste and skill were evident, he received nothing more from her, except an occasional friendly letter. He appreciated her delicacy too late, and regretted that he had written about the cross at all.

One Sunday, Mr. Lurton, going his round, found Charlton reading the New Testament.

"Mr. Lurton, what a sublime prayer the Pater-noster is!" exclaimed Charlton.

"Yes;" said Lurton, "it expresses so fully the only two feelings that can bring us to God—a sense of guilt and a sense of dependence."

"What I admired in the prayer was not that, but the unselfishness that puts God and the world first, and asks bread, forgiveness, and guidance last. It seems to me, Mr. Lurton, that all men are not brought to God by the same feelings. Don't you think that a man may be drawn toward God by self-sacrifice—that a brave, heroic act, in its very nature, brings us nearer to God? It seems to me that whatever the rule may be, there are exceptions; that God draws some men to Himself by a sense of sympathy; that He makes a sudden draft on their moral nature—not more than they can bear, but all they can bear—and that in doing right under difficulties the soul finds itself directed toward God—opened on the side on which God sits."

Mr. Lurton shook his head, and protested, in his gentle and earnest way, against this doctrine of man's ability to do anything good before conversion.

"But, Mr. Lurton," urged Albert, "I have known a man to make a great sacrifice, and to find himself drawn by that very sacrifice into a great admiring of Christ's sacrifice, into a great desire to call God his father, and into a seeking for the forgiveness and favor that would make him in some sense a child of God. Did you never know such a case?"

"Never. I do not think that genuine conversions come in that way. A sense of righteousness can not prepare a man for salvation—only a sense of sin—a believing that all our righteousness is filthy rags. Still, I wouldn't discourage you from studying the Bible in any way. You will come round right after a while, and then you will find that to be saved, a man must abhor every so-called good thing that he ever did."

"Yes," said Charlton, who had grown more modest in his trials, "I am sure there is some truth in the old doctrine as you state it. But is not a man better and more open to divine grace, for resisting a temptation to vice?"

Mr. Lurton hesitated. He remembered that he had read, in very sound writers, arguments to prove that there could be no such thing as good works before conversion, and Mr. Lurton was too humble to set his judgment against the great doctors'. Besides, he was not sure that Albert's questions might not force him into that dangerous heresy attributed to Arminius, that good works may be the impulsive cause by which God is moved to give His grace to the unconverted.

"Do you think that a man can really do good without God's help?" asked Mr. Lurton.

"I don't think man ever tries to do right in humility and sincerity without some help from God," answered Albert, whose mode of thinking about God was fast changing for the better. "I think God goes out a long, long way to meet the first motions of a good purpose in a man's heart. The parable of the Prodigal Son only half-tells it. The parable breaks down with a truth too great for human analogies. I don't know but that He acts in the beginning of the purpose. I am getting to be a Calvinist—in fact, on some points, I out-Calvin Calvin. Is not God's help in the good purposes of every man?"

Mr. Lurton shook his head with a gentle gravity, and changed the subject by saying, "I am going to Metropolisville next week to attend a meeting. Can I do anything for you?"

"Go and see my mother," said Charlton, with emotion. "She is sick, and will never get well, I fear. Tell her I am cheerful. And—Mr. Lurton—do you pray with her. I do not believe anything, except by fits and starts; but one of your prayers would do my mother good. If she could be half as peaceful as you are, I should be happy."

Lurton walked away down the gallery from Albert's cell, and descended the steps that led to the dining-room, and was let out of the locked and barred door into the vestibule, and out of that into the yard, and thence out through other locks into the free air of out-doors. Then he took a long breath, for the sight of prison doors and locks and bars and grates and gates and guards oppressed even his peaceful soul. And walking along the sandy road that led by the margin of Lake St. Croix toward the town, he recalled Charlton's last remark. And as he meditatively tossed out of the path with his boot the pieces of pine-bark which in this lumbering country lie about everywhere, he rejoiced that Charlton had learned to appreciate the value of Christian peace, and he offered a silent prayer that Albert might one day obtain the same serenity as himself. For nothing was further from the young minister's mind than the thought that any of his good qualities were natural. He considered himself a miracle of grace upon all sides. As if natural qualities were not also of God's grace!



CHAPTER XXXI.

MR. LURTON.

It was a warm Sunday in the early spring, one week after Mr. Lurton's conversation with Charlton, that the latter sat in his cell feeling the spring he could not see. His prison had never been so much a prison. To perceive this balminess creeping through the narrow, high window—a mere orifice through a thick wall—and making itself feebly felt as it fell athwart the damp chilliness of the cell, to perceive thus faintly the breath of spring, and not to be able to see the pregnant tree-buds bursting with the coming greenness of the summer, and not to be able to catch the sound of the first twittering of the returning sparrows and the hopeful chattering of the swallows, made Albert feel indeed that he and life had parted.

Mr. Lurton's three months as chaplain had expired, and there had come in his stead Mr. Canton, who wore a very stiff white neck-tie and a very straight-breasted long-tailed coat. Nothing is so great a bar to human sympathies as a clerical dress, and Mr. Canton had diligently fixed a great gulf between himself and his fellow-men. Charlton's old, bitter aggressiveness, which had well-nigh died out under the sweet influences of Lurton's peacefulness, came back now, and he mentally pronounced the new chaplain a clerical humbug and an ecclesiastical fop, and all such mild paradoxical epithets as he was capable of forming. The hour of service was ended, and Charlton was in his cell again, standing under the high window, trying to absorb some of the influences of the balmy air that reached him in such niggardly quantities. He was hungering for a sight of the woods, which he knew must be so vital at this season. He had only the geraniums and the moss-rose that Isa, had sent, and they were worse than nothing, for they pined in this twilight of the cell, and seemed to him smitten, like himself, with a living death. He almost stopped, his heart's beating in his effort to hear the voices of the birds, and at last he caught the harsh cawing of the crows for a moment, and then that died away, and he could hear no sound but the voice of the clergyman in long clothes talking perfunctorily to O'Neill, the wife-murderer, in the next cell. He knew that his turn would come next, and it did. He listened in silence and with much impatience to such a moral lecture as seemed to Mr. Canton befitting a criminal.

Mr. Canton then handed him a letter, and seeing that it was addressed in the friendly hand of Lurton, he took it to the window and opened it, and read:

"DEAR MR. CHARLTON:

"I should have come to see you and told you about my trip to Metropolisville, but I am obliged to go out of town again. I send this by Mr. Canton, and also a request to the warden to pass this and your answer without the customary inspection of contents. I saw your mother and your stepfather and your friend Miss Marlay. Your mother is failing very fast, and I do not think it would be a kindness for me to conceal from you my belief that she can not live many weeks. I talked with her and prayed with her as you requested, but she seems to have some intolerable mental burden. Miss Marlay is evidently a great comfort to her, and, indeed, I never saw a more faithful person than she in my life, or a more remarkable exemplification of the beauty of a Christian life. She takes every burden off your mother except that unseen load which seems to trouble her spirit, and she believes absolutely in your innocence. By the way, why did you never explain to her or to me or to any of your friends the real history of the case? There must at least have been extenuating circumstances, and we might be able to help you.

"But I am writing about everything except what I want to say, or rather to ask, for I tremble to ask it. Are you interested in any way other than as a friend in Miss Isabel Marlay? You will guess why I ask the question. Since I met her I have thought of her a great deal, and I may add to you that I have anxiously sought divine guidance in a matter likely to affect the usefulness of my whole life. I will not take a single step in the direction in which my heart has been so suddenly drawn, if you have any prior claim, or even the remotest hope of establishing one in some more favorable time. Far be it from me to add a straw to the heavy burden you have had to bear. I expect to be in Metropolisville again soon, and will see your mother once more. Please answer me with frankness, and believe me,

"Always your friend,

J.H. LURTON."

The intelligence regarding his mother's health was not new to Albert, for Isa had told him fully of her state. It would be difficult to describe the feeling of mingled pain and pleasure with which he read Lurton's confession of his sudden love for Isabel. Nothing since his imprisonment had so humbled Charlton as the recollection of the mistake he had made in his estimate of Helen Minorkey, and his preference for her over Isa. He had lain on his cot sometimes and dreamed of what might have been if he had escaped prison and had chosen Isabel instead of Helen. He had pictured to himself the content he might have had with such a woman for a wife. But then the thought of his disgrace—a disgrace he could not share with a wife—always dissipated the beautiful vision and made the hard reality of what was, seem tenfold harder for the ravishing beauty of what might have been.

And now the vision of the might-have-been came back to him more clearly than ever, and he sat a long while with his head leaning on his hand. Then the struggle passed, and he lighted his little ration of candle, and wrote:

"SUNDAY EVENING.

"REV. J.H. LURTON:

"DEAR SIR: You have acted very honorably in writing me as you have, and I admire you now more than ever. You fulfill my ideal of a Christian. I never had the slightest claim or the slightest purpose to establish any claim on Isabel Marlay, for I was so blinded by self-conceit, that I did not appreciate her until it was too late. And now! What have I to offer to any woman? The love of a convicted felon! A name tarnished forever! No! I shall never share that with Isa Marlay. She is, indeed, the best and most sensible of women. She is the only woman worthy of such a man as you. You are the only man I ever saw good enough for Isabel. I love you both. God bless you!

"Very respectfully and gratefully, CHARLTON."

Mr. Lurton had staid during the meeting of the ecclesiastical body—Presbytery, Consociation, Convention, Conference, or what not, it does not matter—at Squire Plausaby's Albert had written about him, and Isa, as soon as she heard that he was to attend, had prompted Plausaby to enter a request with the committee on the entertainment of delegates for the assignment of Mr. Lurton to him as guest. His peacefulness had not, as Albert and Isabel hoped, soothed the troubled spirit of Mrs. Plausaby, who was in a great terror at thought of death. The skillful surgeon probes before he tries to heal, and Mr. Lurton set himself to find the cause of all this irritation in the mind of this weak woman. Sometimes she seemed inclined to tell him all, but it always happened that when she was just ready to speak, the placid face of Plausaby glided in at the door. On the appearance of her husband, Mrs. Plausaby would cease speaking. It took Lurton a long time to discover that Plausaby was the cause of this restraint. He did discover it, however, and endeavored to get an interview when there was no one present but Isabel. In trying to do this, he made a fresh discovery—that Plausaby was standing guard over his wife, and that the restraint he exercised was intentional. The mystery of the thing fascinated him; and the impression that it had something to do with Charlton, and the yet stronger motive of a sense of duty to the afflicted woman, made him resolute in his determination to penetrate it. Not more so, however, than was Isabel, who endeavored in every way to secure an uninterrupted interview for Mr. Lurton, but endeavored in vain.