"It seems a pity to take advantage of such weakness in our fellow men," said David, whose heart began to suffer qualms as he contemplated this rascality and his own connection with it.

"Fellow men! They are no fellows of mine. They are nuts for me to c-c-crack. They are oysters for me to open!" responded the quack, as he drove gaily into the public square and checked the horses, who stood with their proud necks arched, champing their bits and looking around at the crowd as if they shared their master's contempt.

Pepeeta descended from the carriage and made her way hastily into the tent which had already been pitched for her. The doctor lighted his torch and set his stock of goods in order while David, obeying his directions, began to move among the people to study their habits. Elbowing his way here and there, he contemplated the crowd in the light of the quack's philosophy, and as he did so received a series of painful mental shocks.

"The first principle in the art of painting a picture is to know where to sit down;" in other words, everything depends upon the point of view. Now that David began to look for evidences of the weaknesses and follies of his fellow men, he saw them everywhere. For the first time in his life he observed that startling prevalence of animal types which always communicates such a shock to the mind of him who has never discovered it before. Every countenance suddenly seemed to be the face of a beast, but thinly and imperfectly veiled. There were foxes and tigers and wolves, there were bulldogs and monkeys and swine. He had always seen, or thought he saw, upon the foreheads of his fellow men some evidence of that divinity which had been communicated to them when God breathed into the great first father the breath of life; but now he shuddered at the sight of those thick lips and drooping jaws, those dull or crafty eyes, those sullen, sodden, gargoyle features, as men do at beholding monstrosities.

A few weeks ago he would have felt a profound pity at this discovery, but so rapid and radical had been the alteration in his feelings that he was now seized by a sudden revulsion and contempt. "Are these creatures really men?" he asked himself. He stood there among them taller, straighter, keener, handsomer than them all, and the old feelings that have made men aristocrats and tyrants in every age of the world, surged in his heart and hardened it against them.

By this time the quack had finished his few simple preparations, and, standing erect before his audience, began the business of the evening.

Having observed the habits of the game, David now chose a favorable position to study those of the hunter. He watched with an almost breathless interest every expression upon that sinister face and listened with a boundless interest to every word that fell from those treacherous lips.

He was not long in justifying the quack's honest criticism of his own oratory. His voice lacked the vibrant tones of a musical instrument and his rhetoric that fluency, without which the highest effects of eloquence can never be attained. By speaking very slowly and deliberately he avoided stammering, but this always acted like a dragging anchor upon the movement of his thought. These were radical defects, but in every other respect he was a consummate artist. He arrested the attention of his hearers with an inimitable skill and held it with an irresistible power.

His piercing eye noted every expression on the faces of his hearers, and seemed to read the inmost secrets of their hearts. He perceived the slightest inclination to purchase, and was as keen to see a hand steal towards a pocket-book as a cat to see a mouse steal out of its hole.

He coaxed, he wheedled, he bantered, he abused,—he even threatened. He fulfilled his promise to the letter, "to make the well men think that they were sick," and many a stalwart frontiersman whose body was as sound as an ox, began to be conscious of racking pains.

Nor were those legitimate arts of oratory the only ones which this arch-knave practiced.

"I gave you two dollars, and you only gave me change for one," cried a thin-faced, stoop-shouldered, helpless-looking fellow, who had just purchased a bottle of the "Balm of the Blessed Islands."

With lightning-like legerdemain the quack had shuffled this bill to the bottom of his pile, and lifting up the one that lay on top, exposed it to the view of his audience.

"That's a lie!" he said, in his slow, impressive manner. "There is always such a man as this in every crowd. Some one is always trying to take advantage of those who, like myself, are living for the public good. Gentlemen, you saw me lay the b-b-bill he gave me down upon the top! Here it is; judge for yourselves. That is a bad man! Beware of him!"

The bold effrontery of the quack silenced the timid customer, who could only blush and look confused. His blushes and confusion condemned him and the crowd hustled him away from the wagon. They believed him guilty and he half believed it of himself.

David, who had seen the bill and knew the victim's innocence but not the doctor's fraud, pressed forward to defend him. The quack stopped and silenced him with an inimitable wink, and then instantly and with consummate art diverted his auditors with a series of droll stories which he always reserved for emergencies like this. They were old and thread-bare, but this was the reason he chose them. He had one for every circumstance and occasion.

There was a man standing in an outer circle of the crowd around whose forehead was a bandage. "Come here, my friend," said the quack. "How did you get this wound? Don't want to tell? Oh! well, that is natural. A horse kicked him, no doubt; never got it in a row! No! No! Couldn't any one hit him! Reminds me of the man who saw a big black-and-blue spot on his boy's forehead. 'My son,' said he, 'I thought I told you not to fight? How did you get this wound?' 'I bit it, father,' replied the boy.

"'Bit it!' exclaimed the old man in astonishment, 'how could you bite yourself upon the forehead?'

"'I climbed onto a chair,' says he.

"And have you been climbing on a chair to bite your forehead, too, my friend?" he asked with humorous gravity, while a loud guffaw went up from the crowd.

"Well," he continued soothingly, "whether you did it or not, just let me rub a little of this b-b-balm upon it, and by to-morrow morning it will be well. There! that's right. One dollar is all it costs. You don't want it? What the d-d-deuce did you let me open the b-b-bottle for? I'll leave it to the crowd if that is fair? There, that is right. Pay for it like a man. It's worth double its price. Thank you. By to-morrow noon you will b-b-be sending me a testimonial to its value. Do you want to hear some of my testimonials, gentlemen?"

The crowd shuffled and stood over on its other foot. The doctor, putting an enormous pair of spectacles upon his nose, took up a piece of paper and pretended to read slowly and carefully to avoid stammering:

"'Dr. Aesculapius.

"'Dear Sir: I was wounded in the Mexican war. I have been unable to walk without crutches for many years; but after using your liniment, I ran for office!' Think of it, gentlemen, the day of miracles has not passed. 'I lost my eyesight four years ago, but used a bottle of your "wash" and saw wood.' Saw wood, gentlemen, what do you think of that? He saw wood! 'Some time ago I lost the use of both arms; but a kind friend furnished me with a box of your pills, and the next day I struck a man for ten dollars.' There is a triumph of the medical art, my friends. And yet even this is surpassed by the following: 'I had been deaf for many years, stone deaf; but after using your ointment, I heard that my aunt had died and left me ten thousand dollars.' Think of it, gentlemen, ten thousand dollars! And a written guarantee goes with every bottle, that the first thing a stone-deaf man will hear after using this medicine will be that his aunt has died and left him ten thousand dollars."

During all these varied operations, David had never taken his eyes from the face of the quack. Even his quick wit had often been baffled by the almost superhuman adroitness of this past grandmaster of his art.

The novelty of the scene, the skill of the principal actor, the rapid growth of the piles of coin and bills, the frantic desire of the people to be gulled, all served to obscure those elements which were calculated to appeal to the Quaker's conscience. He felt like one awakened from a dream. While he was still in the half dazed condition of such an awakening, the quack gave him a sign that this part of his lesson was ended, and following the direction of the thumb which he threw over his shoulder towards Pepeeta's tent, he eagerly took his way thither.

Before the door stood several groups of young men and maidens, talking under their breath as if in the presence of some august deity. Now and then a couple disentangled itself from the crowd, and with visible trepidation entered. As they reappeared, their friends gathered about them and besought them to disclose the secrets they had discovered.

Some of them giggled and simpered, others laughed boisterously and skeptically, while others still, looked scared and anxious. It was evident that even those who tried to make light of what they had seen and heard were moved by something awe-inspiring.

David listened to their silly talk, observed their bold demeanor and their vulgar manners, while the impression of weakness, of stupidity, of the lowness and beastiality of humanity made upon his mind by the aged and the mature, was intensified by his observation of the young and callow.

He did not anywhere see a spark of true nobility. He did not hear a word of wisdom. Everything was moving on a low, material and animal plane. He felt that manhood and womanhood was not what he had believed it to be.

From the outside of the gypsy's tent, he could make but few discoveries of her method; and he waited impatiently until the last curious couple had departed. When they had disappeared, he entered.

At the opposite side of the tent and reclining upon a low divan was the gypsy. Above her head a tallow candle was burning dimly. Before her was a rough table covered with a shawl, upon which were scattered cups of tea with floating grounds, ivory dice, cards, coins and other implements of the "Black Art."

Pepeeta sprang to her feet when she saw who her visitor was, and exhibited the clearest signs of agitation. David's own emotions were not less violent, for although the gypsy's surroundings were poor and mean, they served rather to enhance than to diminish her exquisite beauty. Her shoulders and arms were bare, and on her wrists were gold bracelets of writhing serpents in whose eyes gleamed diamonds. On her fingers and in her ears were other costly stones. Her dress was silk, and rustled when she moved, with soft and sibilant sounds.

"The doctor has sent me here to study the methods by which you do your work," said David approaching the table and gazing at her with undisguised admiration.

"You should have come before. How can you study my methods when I am not practicing them? And any way, you have no faith in them. Have you? I always had until I heard your sermon in the little meeting house."

"And have you lost it now?"

"It has been sadly shaken."

"You can at least show me how you practice the art, even if you have lost your faith in it. I too have lost a faith; but we must live. What are these cards for?"

"If you wish me to show you, you may shuffle and cut them, but I would rather tell your fortune by your hand, for I have more faith in palmistry than in cards."

He extended his hand; she took it, and with her right forefinger began to trace the lines. Her gaze had that intensity with which a little child peers into the mechanism of a watch or an astronomer into the depths of space.

A thrill of emotion shot through the frame of the Quaker at the touch of those delicate and beautiful fingers.

The contrast between his own hands and hers was marked enough to be almost ridiculous. Hers were tiny, soft and white. His were large, brown and calloused. He thought to himself, "It is as if two little white mice were playing about an enormous trap which in a moment may seize them."

Neither of them, spoke. The delicate finger of the gypsy moved over the lines of the palm like that of a little school-girl over the pages of a primer. They did not realize how dangerous was that proximity, nor how fatal that touch. Through those two poles of Nature's most powerful battery, the magnetic and mysterious current of love was passing.

"What do you see?" said David, at last.

"Shall I tell you?" she asked, lifting her eyes to his.

"If you please," he said.

"I will do so if you wish; but if the story of your life is really written in the palm of your hands, it is sad indeed, and you would be happier if you knew it not."

"But it is not written there. I do not believe it, nor do you."

"Let us hope that it is not," she answered, and began the following monologue in a low musical monotone:

"Marked as it is with the signs of toil, this hand has still retained all those characteristics that an artist would choose as a model. It is perfect in its form. The palm is of medium size, the fingers without knots, the third phalanges are all long and pointed, and the thumb is beautifully shaped. Whoever possesses a hand like this must be guided by ideals. He is a worshiper of the sublime and beautiful. He disdains small achievements, embarks enthusiastically upon forlorn hopes, and is spurred to victory by the fervor of his desires.

"See this thumb! How finely it is pointed. The first phalanx is short, and indicates that above all other things he is a man of heart and will be dominated by his affections. He will yield to temptations, perhaps; but the second phalanx is long and reveals a power of reason and logic which will probably triumph at last."

Not a single word of all this had David heard. Her voice sounded to him like the low droning of bees in a meadow, and he had been watching the movements of her fingers, as he used to watch the dartings of the minnows in the pools of the brook which ran through his farm.

"How smooth the fingers are! And how they taper to the cone," continued Pepeeta. "Here is this one of Jupiter, for example. How plainly it tells of religiousness and perhaps of fanaticism! The Sun finger is not long. Nay, it is not long enough. There is too little love of glory here. And the Saturnian finger is too long. The life is too much under the dominion of Fate or Destiny. The Mercurial finger is short. He will be firm in his friendships. The moons all correspond. They, also, are too large. The Mount of Venus, here at the base of the thumb, is excessively developed, and indicates capacity for gentleness, for chivalry, for tenderness and love. The Mount of the Moon is small. That is good. There will be no disturbance of the brain, no propensity towards lunacy. Mars is not excessive, but it is strong, and he will be bold and courageous, but not quarrelsome."

The pleasant murmur of the voice, the gentle pressure of her hand, her nearness and her beauty, had rendered the Quaker absolutely oblivious to her words.

"Let me now examine the lines," she continued. "Here is the line of the heart. It passes clear across the palm. It is well marked at every point and is most pronounced upon the upper side. The love will not be a sensual passion, but look! it is joined to the head below the finger of Saturn. It is the sign of a violent death! Heavens!"

As she uttered this exclamation, she pressed the hand convulsively between her own, and looked up into his face.

The involuntary and sudden action recalled him to his consciousness. "What did you say?" he asked.

"Have you not been listening?" she replied, repressing both her anxiety and her annoyance.

"No; was it a good story or a bad one which you were reading?"

"It was both."

"Well—it is no matter, those accidental marks can have no significance."

"Do you think so?"

"I am sure."

"You do not believe in any signs?"

"None."

"You know that the traveler on the desert told the Bedouin that he did not, and yet from the foot prints of the camels the Bedouin deciphered the whole history of a caravan."

Astonished at her reply, David did not answer.

"And then, you know," she continued, "there are the weather signs."

"Yes—that is so."

"And what are the letters of a book but signs?"

"You are right again."

"And is not hardness a sign of something in a stone, and heat of something in fire? And are not deeds the sign of some quality in a man's soul, and the expressions of his face signs of emotions of his heart?"

"They are."

"So that by his gait and gestures each man says: 'I am a farmer—a quack—a Quaker—a soldier—a priest'?"

"This, too, is true."

"Why, then, should not the character and destiny of the man disclose itself in signs and marks upon his hands?"

David was too much astonished by these words to answer. They revealed a mental power which he had not even suspected her of possessing. He discovered that while she was as ignorant as a child in the realms of thought to which she had been unaccustomed, in her sphere of experience and reflection she was both shrewd and deep.

"You have thought much about this matter," he said.

"Too much, perhaps."

"It is deeper than I knew."

"And so is everything deeper than we know. Tell me, if you can, why it is that having met you I have lost faith in my art, and having met me you have lost faith in your religion."

"It is strange."

"Something must be true. Do you not think so?"

"I have begun to doubt it."

"I believe that what you said is true."

As they stood thus confronting each other, they would have presented a study of equal interest to the artist or to the philosopher. There was both a poem and a picture in their attitude. Grace and beauty revealed themselves on every feature and in every movement. They had arrived at one of those dramatic points in their life-journey, where all the tragic elements of existence seem to converge. Agitated by incomprehensible and delicious emotions, confronting insoluble problems, longing, hoping, fearing, they hovered over the ocean of life like two tiny sparrows swept out to sea by a tempest.

The familiar objects and landmarks had all vanished. As children rise in the morning to find the chalk lines, inside of which they had played their game of "hop-scotch," washed out by the rain, they had awakened to find that the well known pathways and barriers over which and within which they had been accustomed to move had all been obliterated. They had nothing to guide them and nothing to restrain them except what was written in their hearts, and this mysterious hieroglyph they had not yet learned to decipher.

They were awakened from their reveries by the footsteps of the quack, and by his raucous voice summoning them back into the world of realities from which they had withdrawn so completely.

"Well, little wife," he said, "how is b-b-business?"

"Fair," she said, gathering up a double hand-full of change and passing it over to him indifferently.

The question fell upon the ears of the Quaker like a thunder bolt. It was to him the first intimation that Pepeeta was not the daughter of the quack. "His wife!" The heart of the youth sank in his bosom. Here was a new and unexpected complication. What should he do? It was too late to turn back now. The die had been cast, and he must go forward.

The doctor rattled on with an unceasing flow of talk, while the mind of the Quaker plunged into a series of violent efforts to adjust itself to this new situation. He tried to force himself to be glad that he had been mistaken. He for the first time fully admitted the significance of the qualms which he felt at permitting himself to regard this strolling gypsy with such feelings as had been in his heart.

"But now," he said to himself, "I can go forward with less compunction. I can gratify my desire for excitement and adventure with perfect safety. I will stay with them for a while, and when I am tired can leave them without any entanglements." When the situation had been regarded for a little while from this point of view, he felt happier and more care-free than for weeks. He solaced his disappointment with the reflection that he should still be near Pepeeta, but no longer in any danger.

At this profound reflection of the young moth hovering about the flame, let the satirist dip his pen in acid, and the pessimist in gall! There is enough folly and stupidity in the operations of the human mind to provoke the one to contempt and the other to despair.

The cuttle-fish throws out an inky substance to conceal itself from its enemies; but the soul ejects an opaque vapor in which to hide from itself! In this mist of hallucination which rises and envelopes us, the whole appearance of life alters. Passion and desire repress the judgment and pervert the conscience. Conclusions that are illogical, expectations that are irrational and confidences that are groundless to the most final and fatal absurdity seem as natural and reasonable as intuitions.

It is not in human nature to escape this perversion of thought and feeling under the stress of temptation. One may as well try to prevent the rise of temperature in the blood in the rage of fever. There are times when even the upright in heart must withdraw to the safe covert of the inner sanctuary and there fervently put up the master prayer of the soul, "Lord, lead me not into temptation!" But if necessity or duty calls them out into the midst of life's dangers, let them remember that what they feel in the calm retreat, is not what will surge through their disordered intellects and their bounding pulses when they come within the reach of those fearful fascinations!

It was such a prayer that David had need of when he gave his hand to the gypsy.



CHAPTER XIII.

FOUND WANTING

"How oft the sight of means to do ill deeds makes ill deeds done!"—King John.

The spring and summer had passed, autumn had attained the fullness of its golden beauty, and the inevitable had happened. David and Pepeeta had passed swiftly though not unresistingly through all the intervening stages between a chance acquaintance and an impassioned love.

Any other husband than the quack would have foreseen this catastrophe; but there is one thing blinder than love, and that is egotism such as his. His colossal vanity had not even suspected that a woman who possessed him for her husband could for a single instant bestow a thought of interest on any other man.

Astute student of men, penetrating judge of motive and conduct that he was, he daily beheld the evolution of a tragedy in which he was the victim, with all the indifference of a lamb observing the preparations for its slaughter. Because of this ignorance and indifference, the fellowship of these two young people had been as intimate as that of brother and sister in a home, and this new life had wrought an extraordinary transformation in the habits and character of both.

David had abandoned the Quaker idiom for the speech of ordinary men, and discarded his former habiliments for the most conventional and stylish clothes. Contact with the world had sharpened his native wit, and given him a freedom among men and women, that was fast descending into abandon. Success had stimulated his self-confidence and made him prize those gifts by which he had once aroused the devotion of adoring worshipers in the Quaker meeting house; he soon found that they could be used to victimize the crowds which gathered around the flare of the torch in the public square.

That which his friends had once dignified by the name of spiritual power had deteriorated into something but little above animal magnetism. He had learned to cherish a profound contempt for men and morals, and the shrewd maxims which the quack had instilled into his mind became the governing principles of his conduct. Those qualities which he had inherited from his dissolute father, and which had been so long submerged, were upheaved, while all that he had received from his mother by birth and education sank out of sight and memory. Three elemental passions assumed complete possession of his soul—the love of admiration, of gambling and of the gypsy.

A transformation of an exactly opposite character had been taking place in Pepeeta. Under the sunshine of David's love, and the dew of those spiritual conceptions which had fallen upon her thirsty spirit, the seeds of a beautiful nature, implanted at her birth, germinated and developed with astonishing rapidity. Walking steadily in such light as fell upon her pathway and ever looking for more, her spiritual vision became clearer and clearer every day; and while this affection for God purified her soul, her love for David expanded and transformed her heart. Her unbounded admiration for him blinded her to that process of deterioration in his character which even the quack perceived. To her partial eye a halo still surrounded the head of the young apostate. But while these two new affections wrought this sudden transformation in the gypsy and filled her with a new and exquisite happiness, the circumstances of her life were such that this illumination could not but be attended with pain, for it brought ever new revelations of those ethical inconsistencies in which she discovered herself to be deeply if not hopelessly involved.

There was, in the first place, the inevitable conflict between her new sense of duty, and the life of deception which she was leading. The practice of her art of fortune-telling was daily becoming a source of unendurable pain as she saw more and more clearly the duty of leaving the future to God and living her daily life in humble, child-like faith. And in the second place, she was slowly awaking to the terrifying consciousness that her affection for David was producing a violent and ungovernable disgust for her husband.

By the flood of sorrows which poured from these two discoveries, she seemed to be completely overwhelmed and if, like a diver, she rose to the sunlight now and then, it was only to seize a few breaths of air by which she might be able to endure her existence in the depths to which she was compelled to return.

No wonder that life became a mystery to this poor child. It seemed as if its difficulties increased in a direct ratio with her wish to discharge its duties; as if the darkness gained upon the light, and the burden grew heavy, faster than her shoulders grew strong.

The discovery of the nature of that affection which she felt for David had been slow and unwelcome, coming to her even before David's protestations of his love; yet one day the passionate feelings of their hearts found expression in wild and startling confessions. They were terrified at what they told each other; but it became necessary therefore to seek the comfort of still other confessions and confidences.

Their interviews had steadily become more ardent and more dangerous; and the doctor's negligence giving them the utmost freedom, they often spent hours together in wandering about the cities they visited, or the fields and woods lying near.

On one of these tramps, their relationship reached a critical stage. It was the early morning of a beautiful autumn day that they strolled up Broadway in the city of Cincinnati, turned into the Reading road, and sauntered slowly out into the country.

"In which direction shall we go?" asked David.

"Let us wander without thought or purpose, like those beautiful clouds," Pepeeta answered, pointing upward.

David watched them silently for a moment and then said, "Pepeeta, men and women are like those clouds. They either drift apart forever, or meet and mingle into one. It must be so with us."

She walked silently by his side, sobered by the seriousness of his voice and words.

"Perhaps," he continued, "it makes but little difference what becomes of us, for our lives are like the clouds, a morning mist, a momentary exhalation. And yet, how filled with joy or woe is this moment of parting or commingling! Pepeeta, I have decided that this day must terminate my suspense. I cannot endure it any longer. I must know before night whether our lives are to be united or divided. You have told me that you love me, and yet you will not give yourself to me. What am I to think of this?"

"My friend," she cried with an infinite pain in her voice, "how can you force me to such a decision when you know all the difficulties of my life? How can you thus forget that I have a husband?"

"I do not forget it," he answered bitterly, "I cannot forget it. It is an eternal demonstration of the madness of faith in any kind of Providence. It makes me hate an order which unites a lion to a lamb, and marries a dove to a hawk! You say that you loathe this man! Then leave him and come with me! The world lies before us. We are as free as those clouds!"

"We are not free, and neither are they," she answered. "Something binds them to their pathway, as it binds me to mine. I cannot leave it. I must tread it even though I have to tread it alone."

"You can leave it if you will; but if you will not, I must know the reason why."

"Oh! why will you not see? I have tried so hard to show you! I have told you that there is a voice which speaks within my soul, that to it I must listen and that the inward light of which you told me shines upon the path and I must follow it."

"I could curse that inward light! Must I be always confronted by the ravings of my youth? All my life long must the words of my credulous childhood hang about my neck like a millstone? There is no inward light. You are living a delusion. You are restrained by the conventionalities of life and are the slave of the customs of society. Because the miserable herd of mankind is willing to submit to that galling yoke of marriage, does it follow that you must? By what right can society demand that men and women who abhor each other should be doomed to pass their lives in hopeless agony? Against such laws I protest! I defy those customs. The path of life is short. We go this way but once! Who is to refuse us all the joy that we can find? There will be sorrow enough, any way!"

"Oh! my friend, do not talk so! Do not break my heart! Have pity on me. I know that it is hard for you; but it is I who have to suffer most. It is I who must continually exert this terrible resistance which alone keeps us from being swept away. Have mercy, David! Spare me a little longer. Spare me this one day at least. If any troubled heart had ever need of the rest and peace of such a day as this, it is mine! Let us give ourselves up to these soothing influences. Let us wander. Let us dream and let us love."

"Love! This accursed Platonic affection is not love," he answered savagely.

"David," she said with an enforced calmness, "you must not speak so. It will do no good. There is something in me stronger than this passion. From the bottom of my soul there has come a sense of duty to a power higher than myself and I will be true to it. I believe that it is God who speaks. You may appeal to my mind, and I cannot answer you, but my heart has reasons of its own higher than the reason itself. It was you who told me this! You told me when you were so beautiful, so good, so true that I know you were right, and I shall never doubt it. I am not what I was. I am, oh! so different. I cannot understand; but I am different."

There was in this delicate and ethereal girl who spoke so fearlessly something which held the man, strong in his physical might, in an inexplicable and irresistible awe. Before a mountain, beside the sea, beneath the stars and in the presence of a virtuous woman, emotions of wonder and reverence possess the souls of men.

Subdued by this influence, David said, with more gentleness: "But what are we to do? We cannot live in this way. We have been forced into a situation from which we must escape, even if we have to act against our consciences."

"I do not think that this is so! I do not believe that any one can be placed against his will in a situation that is opposed to his conscience! There must be some other way to do. A door will open. Let us wait and hope a little longer. Let us have another happy day at least," Pepeeta said.

Heaving a sigh and shrugging his shoulders as if to throw off a burden, David answered, "Well, let it be as you wish. I have had to suffer so much that perhaps I can endure it a little longer. I do not want to make you unhappy. I will try."

"Oh! thank you, thank you a thousand times; that is like yourself!" Pepeeta said, her face aglow with gratitude.

It was a light from the soul itself that shone through the thin transparency of that face, pale with thought and suffering, and gave it its new radiance.

The world around them was steeped in autumn beauty. A gigantic smile was on the face of Nature. Fleecy, fleeting clouds were chasing each other across the blue dome of the heavens. The hazy atmosphere of the Indian summer softened the landscape and lent it a mystical and unearthly charm. The forests were resplendent with those brilliant colors which appear like a last flush of life upon the dying face of summer, as she sinks into her wintry grave. The autumn birds were singing; the autumn flowers were blooming; yellow golden rod and scarlet sumach glowed in the corners of the fences; locusts chirped in treetops; grasshoppers stridulated in the meadows, one or two of them making more noise than a whole drove of cattle lying peacefully chewing their cud beneath an umbrageous elm and lifting up their great, tranquil, blinking eyes to the morning sun. Here and there boys and girls could be seen in the vineyards and orchards gathering grapes and apples. Farmers were cutting their grain and stacking it in great brown shocks, digging potatoes, or plowing the fertile soil. Now and then a traveler met or passed them, clucking to his horses and hurrying to the city with his produce. Amid these gracious influences, life gradually lost its stern reality and took on the characteristics of a pleasant dream. The fever and unrest abated, burdens weighed less heavily, sorrow became less poignant; the finer joys of both the waking and sleeping hours of existence were mysteriously blended.

Sharp and irritating as the encounter had been between the two lovers, the momentary antipathy passed away as they moved along. They drew nearer together; they lifted their eyes furtively; their glances met; they smiled; they spoke; their sympathies flowed back into the old channel; their hopes and affections mingled. They gave themselves up to joy with the abandon of youth, falling into that mood in which everything pleases and delights. Nature did not need to tell them her secrets aloud, for they comprehended her whispers and grasped her meaning from sly hints. They melted into her moods.

What joys were theirs! To be young; to be drawn together by an affinity which produced a mysterious and ineffable happiness; to wander aimlessly over the earth; to yield to every passing fancy; to dream; to hope; to love. It was the culminating hour of their lives.

Passing through the little village since called Avondale, they turned down what is now the Clinton Springs road, climbed a hill, descended its other slope, and came upon an old spring house where, as they paused to drink, David scratched their names with his penknife on one of the stones of the walls, where they may be read to-day.

Leaving the turnpike, they entered a grove through which flowed a noisy stream; cast themselves upon a bank, bathed their faces, ate their lunch and rested. There for a few moments, in the tranquil and uplifting influence of the silence and the solitude, all that was best in their natures came to the surface. Pepeeta nestled down among the roots of a great beech tree, her hat flung upon the ground by her side, her arms folded across her bosom, her face upturned like a flower drinking in the sunshine or the rain. At her feet her lover reclined, his head upon his arms and his gaze fixed upon the canopy of leaves which spread above them and through which as the branches swayed in the breeze he caught glimpses of the sky.

Pepeeta broke the silence. "I could stay here forever," she said. "I nestle here in the roots of this great tree like a little child in the arms of its mother. I feel that everything around me is my friend. I feel, not as if I were different from other things, but as if I were a part of them. Do you comprehend? Do you feel that way?"

"More than at any time since leaving home," he said. "That was the way I always felt in the old days—how far away they seem! I could then sit for hours beside a brook like this, and thoughts of God would flow over my soul like water over the stones; and now I do not think of Him at all! It was by a brook like this that we first met. Do you remember, Pepeeta?"

"I shall never forget."

"Are you sure?"

"As certain as that I live."

"Sure—certain! Of what are we sure but the present moment? Into it we ought to crowd all the joys of existence."

Her feminine instinct discovered the return of his thoughts into the old dangerous channel, and her quick wit diverted them.

"Tell me more about your home, and how you felt when you used to sit like this and think."

He determined to yield himself for a little while longer to her will, and said: "In those days Nature possessed for me an irresistible fascination; but the spell is broken now. I then thought that I was face to face with the eternal spirit of the universe. How far I have drifted away from the world in which I then existed! I could never return to it. I am like a bird which has broken its shell and which can never be put back again. I have found another face into which I now look with still deeper wonder than into that of Nature, and which exerts a still deeper fascination. It is the face of a woman, in whom all the beauties of nature seem to be mirrored. She is everything to me; she is the entire universe embodied in a gentle heart."

He gazed at her with a look that made her pulses beat; but she was determined not to permit him to drift back into that dangerous mood from which she had drawn him with such difficulty.

"One time you told me," she said, "that the birds and squirrels were such good friends to you, that if you called them they would come to you like your dog. I should love to see that. Look! There is a squirrel sitting on the limb of this very tree! How saucy he looks! How shy! Bring him to me! I command you! You have said that I am your mistress; go, slave!"

Rising to her feet she pointed to the squirrel. Her lithe form was outlined against the green background of the forest in a pose of exquisite grace and beauty, her eyes glowed with animation, and her lips smiled with the consciousness of power. It was impossible to resist her.

He rose, looked in the direction toward which she pointed, and saw the squirrel cheeping among the branches. Imitating its cries, he began to move slowly toward it. The little creature pricked up its ears, cocked its head on one side, flirted its bushy tail and watched the approaching figure suspiciously. As it drew nearer and nearer, he began to creep down the branches. Stopping now and then to reconnoiter, he started forward again; paused; retreated; returned, and still continued to advance, until he was within a foot or two of David's hand, which he examined first with one eye and then the other and made a motion as if to spring upon it. Suddenly the spell was broken. With a wild flirt of his tail and a loud outcry, he sprang up the tree and disappeared in the foliage.

David watched him until he had vanished, and then turned toward Pepeeta with a look of disappointment and chagrin.

"It is too bad," she cried, hastening toward him sympathetically, "but see, there is a redbird on the top of that old birch tree. Try again! You will have better success this time, I am sure you will."

He determined to make another experiment. The brilliant songster was pouring out his heart in that fine cry of strength and hope which he sends resounding over hill and vale. Suddenly hearing his own voice repeated to him in an echo sweet and pure as his own song, he fluttered his wings, peered this way and that, and sang again. Once more the answering call resounded, true as an image in a mirror.

David now began to move with greater caution than before toward the little creature, who looked at him with curious glances. Back and forth resounded the sweet antiphonal, and the bird hopped down a branch or two. Neither of the actors in this woodland drama removed his eyes from the other, and the spectator watched them both with breathless interest.

Presently David lifted his hands—the palms closed together in the form of a cup or nest. The songster bent farther forward on the twig, and suddenly with a downward plunge shot straight toward them; but just as his tiny feet touched the fingers, turned as the squirrel had done, and uttering a loud cry of terror flew away. David dropped his hands and his eyes.

"I have lost my power," he said sadly.

"You are out of practice, you must exercise it oftener. It will all come back," Pepeeta responded cheerfully.

They walked slowly and silently back to the place where they had been sitting, and David began tossing pebbles into the brook.

"Three times to-day," he said, pausing and turning toward Pepeeta, "I have opened my hands and my heart, and each time the object whose love I sought has fluttered away from me in terror or repugnance."

"Oh! no, not in terror and repugnance," she said eagerly.

"Am I then incapable of exciting love?" he asked.

"You will break my heart if you speak so. I love you more than I love my own life."

"I do not believe it. Can I believe that the squirrel and the redbird love me, when they flee from me? If they had loved me, they would have come to me and nestled to my heart. And so would you. I have come back to the old subject. I cannot refrain any longer. Will you go with me, or will you not?"

"Oh! David," she cried, wringing her hands, "why, why will you break my heart? Why can you not permit me to finish this day in peace? Wait until some other time. Why can you not enjoy this present moment? I could wish it to last forever, if you were only kind. If the flight of time could be stopped, if we could be forever what we are just now, I could not ask for any other thing. See how beautiful the world is. See how happy we are. See how everything hangs just like a balance! Do not speak, do not move; one unkind word would jar and spoil it all."

"It is impossible," he cried roughly, "you must leave your husband and come with me. You cannot put me off any longer. I am desperate."

He was looking at her with eyes no longer full of pleading, but of determination and command.

"What will you do?" he asked.

"Oh!" she answered, trembling, "why will you compel me to act? Let something happen! Wait! It is not necessary always to act! Sometimes it is better to sit still! We are in God's hands. Let us trust Him. Has He not awakened this love in our hearts? He has not made us love and long for each other only to thwart us!"

"Thwart us! Who coaxes the flowers from the ground, only that the frost may nip them? Who opens the bud only to permit it to be devoured by the worm? Who places the babe in its mother's arms only to let it be snatched away by the hand of death? You cannot appeal to me in that way," he retorted, bitterly.

"Do not speak so," she exclaimed with genuine terror. "It is wicked to say such things in this quiet and holy place. Oh! why have you lost that faith you once possessed? What has blinded your eyes to the light that you taught me to see? I see it now! All will be well! Something says to me in my heart, 'All will be well,' if we only follow the light!"

Nothing could have given stronger proof that inspiration and intuition are as natural and legitimate functions of the spiritual nature as sensation and sense perception are of the physical, than her words and looks. They would have convinced and mastered him, except for the self-denial which they demanded of his love! But he was now far past all reason.

"Pepeeta," he cried, approaching her, "you must be mine and mine alone! I can no longer endure the thought of your being the wife of another man. You must come with me. I will not take 'no' for an answer. I command you to leave this man and go with me. It is a worse crime for you to live with him when you hate him than to leave him! Come, let us go! I have money! There are horses to be had. He does not know where we are. Let us fly!"

It was evident that he had brooked her refusal as long as he could. The man was mad. He seized her by the arm.

In a single instant this gentle creature passed through an incredible transformation. She wrenched her arm from his hand and stood before him fearless, resolute, magnificent! Her gypsy training stood her in good stead now. Young as she was when a pupil in that hard school, she had learned from her wild teachers the cardinal principle of their code—loyalty to her marriage vows. They had taught her to believe that this breach was the one unpardonable sin.

She drew a little stiletto from the folds of her dress, placed its point upon her heart and said: "It is not necessary that a gypsy should live; but it is necessary that she should be virtuous!"

Her resplendent beauty, her fearless courage, her invincible determination quenched the wild impulses of the reckless youth in a single instant. All the manhood, all the chivalry of his better nature rose within him and did homage. He threw himself on his knees and frantically besought her pardon.

In an instant the fierce light died from her eyes. She stooped down, laid her hand on his arm, and with an all-forgiving charity lifted him to his feet. They stood regarding each other in silence. All that their souls could reveal had been manifested in actions. The brief scene was terminated by a common impulse. They turned their faces toward the city and walked quietly, each reflecting silently upon the struggle that had been enacted and the denouement which was yet to come.

In her ignorance and inexperience, Pepeeta hoped that a scene so dreadful would quench the madness in her lover's soul; but this revelation of the grandeur of her nature only inflamed his desires the more. The momentary feeling of shame and penitence passed away. His determination to possess her became more fixed than ever and during the homeward walk assumed a definite form.

For a long time a sinister purpose had been rolling about in his soul. That purpose now crystallized into resolution. He determined to commit a crime if need be in order to gain his end.

Nothing can be more astonishing than the rapidity and ease with which the mind becomes habituated to the presence of a criminal intention. The higher faculties are at first disturbed, but they soon become accustomed to the danger, and permit themselves to be destroyed one after another, with only feeble protestations.



CHAPTER XIV.

TURNED TEMPTER

"All men have their price." —Walpole.

The plan which David had chosen to compel Pepeeta to abandon her husband was not a new one. For its execution he had already made a partial preparation in an engagement to meet the justice of the peace who had performed her marriage ceremony. The engagement was conditioned upon his failure to persuade the gypsy to accompany him of her own free will.

Immediately after supper he took his way to the place appointed for the meeting. This civil officer had been a companion of the quack's for many years. His natural capacity, which was of the highest order, had secured him one place of honor after another; but he had lost them through the practice of many vices, and had at last sunk to that depth of degradation in which he was willing to barter his honor for almost any price.

The place at which he had agreed to meet David was a low saloon in one of the most disreputable parts of the city, and to this spot the infatuated youth made his way. Now that he was alone with his thoughts, he could not contemplate his purpose without a feeling of dread, and yet he did not pause nor seriously consider its abandonment. His movements, as he elbowed his way among the outcasts who infested this degraded region, were those of a man totally oblivious to his surroundings.

"Curse him," he muttered in an undertone, and did not know that he had spoken.

To talk to one's self is so often a premonitory symptom of either insanity or crime, that a policeman standing on the corner eyed him closely and followed him down the street.

Having reached the door of the saloon, David cast a glance about him, as if ashamed of being observed, and entered. It was a fitting place to hatch an evil deed. The floor was covered with filthy sawdust; the air was rank with the fumes of sour beer and adulterated whisky; the lamps were not yet lighted, and his eyes blinked as he entered the dirty dusk of the interior. Against the wall were rude shelves strewn with bottles, decanters, jugs and glasses. The landlord was leaning against the inside of the bar glaring about him like an octopus. The habitues of the place, looking more like scarecrows than men, stood opposite him with their blear eyes uplifted in ecstasy, draining into their insatiable throats the last precious drops from their upturned glasses.

At a table four human shapes which seemed to be operated by some kind of clumsy mechanical motors rather than animated by sentient spirits were playing a game of chance and slapping the greasy cards down upon the table to the accompaniment of coarse laughter and hideous profanity.

The Quaker, who was not yet thoroughly enough corrupted to witness this spectacle without horror, hurried through the room like a man who has suddenly found himself in a pest-house. The door which he pushed open admitted him to a parlor scarcely less dirty and disgusting that the saloon itself, at the opposite end of which, wreathed in a cloud of tobacco smoke, he beheld the object of his search.

"Well, I see you are here," he said, drawing a chair to the table.

"And waiting," a deep and rich but melancholy voice replied.

"Can't we have a couple of candles? These shadows seem to crawl up my legs and take me by the throat. I feel as if some one were blindfolding and gagging me," said David, looking uneasily about.

The judge ordered the candles, and while they were waiting observed: "You had better accustom yourself to shadows, young man, for you will find plenty of them on the road you are traveling. They deepen with the passing years, along every pathway; but the one on which you are about to set your feet leads into the hopeless dark."

These unexpected words agitated the soul of the young plotter, but while he was still shuddering the barkeeper entered with the candles and set them down on the table between the two men, who found themselves vis-a-vis in the flickering gleams.

They leaned on their elbows and looked into each other's faces. The contrast was remarkable. The countenance of the judge had unquestionably once been noble, and perhaps also beautiful; but the massive features were now coarsened by dissipation. A permanent curl of scorn had wreathed itself around the mouth. A look of ennui brooded over his features. One would as soon expect to see a flower in the crater of a volcano as a smile on the lips of this extinct man.

David's face was young and beautiful. The features were still those of a saint, even if the aureole had for a time been eclipsed by a cloud. These two human beings gazed incredulously at each other for a moment.

"I was once like this youth," the judge was saying to himself with a sigh.

"I shall never be like this beast," thought David with a shudder of repulsion and disgust.

The "Justice" (grotesque parody) broke the silence.

"Did you succeed?" he asked.

"No," said David, sullenly.

"She would not yield, then?"

"No more than adamant or steel."

"You should have pressed her harder."

"I used my utmost skill."

"You are a novitiate, perhaps. An adept would have succeeded."

"Not with her."

"Ah! who ever caught a trout at the first cast? What you need is experience."

"What I want is help."

"And so you have appealed to me? You wish me to go to this woman and tell her that her marriage was a fraud?"

"I do."

"There have been pleasanter tasks."

"Will you do it, or will you not?"

"Suppose she will not believe me?"

"You must compel her."

"Young man, have you no compunctions about this business?" said the judge, leaning forward and looking earnestly into the blue eyes.

"Compunctions?" said David, in a dry echo of the question.

"Yes, compunctions," replied the judge, repeating the word again.

"Oh! some. But for every compunction I have a thousand desperate determinations. Were you ever in love, Judge?"

"Yes, I have been in love, such love as yours, and that is why I am what I am now."

As he uttered these words, he lifted the glass which his hand had been toying with, drained it to the dregs, fixed his eyes on David once more, and after regarding him a moment with a look of pity, said slowly and solemnly: "Young man, I am about to give you good advice. You smile? No wonder! But I beg you to listen to me. Sometimes a shipwrecked sailor makes the best captain, for he knows the force of the tempest. I have no conscience for myself, but some unaccountable emotion impels me to bid you abandon this project. Somehow, as I look at you, I cannot bear to have you become what I am. You seem so young and innocent that I would like to have you stay as you are. I wish to save you. How strange it is. When I look at you, I seem to behold myself as I was at your age."

As he spoke these words the whole expression of his countenance altered, and faint traces of an almost extinguished manhood appeared. It was as if beauty, sunk below the horizon, had been thrown up in a mirage.

So tender an appeal would have broken a heart like David's, except for the madness of illicit love.

"Judge!" he cried, striking the table with his fist, "I did not come here for advice, I came for help. I am determined to have this woman. She is mine by virtue of my desire and my capacity to acquire her! I must have her! I will have her, by fair means or foul. And, Judge, in this case, the foulest means are fair. What seems an act of injustice is in reality an act of mercy. You know her husband, and you know as well as I do that her life with him will be her ruin. You know that the complacency with which she once regarded him has already turned to disgust, and that it is only a single step from disgust to hate and another from hate to murder. She will kill him some day! She cannot help it. It is human nature and if she doesn't I will! Come now, Judge, you will help me, won't you?"

A cynical smile wreathed itself around the mouth of the old roue. In his debauched nature, the oil of sympathy had long ago been exhausted. This was a last despairing flicker. A wick cannot burn alone.

"Help you?" he said languidly. "Oh, yes, I will help you. There is no use trying to save you. You are only another moth! You want the fire, and you will have it! You will burn your wings off as millions have done before you and as millions will do after you. What then? Wings are made to be burned! I burned mine. Probably if I had another pair I would burn them also. It is as useless to moralize to a lover as to a tiger. I am a fool to waste my breath on you. Let us get down to business. You say that she loves you, and that she will be glad to learn that she is free?"

"I do! her heart is on our side. She will believe you, easily!"

"Yes, she will believe me easily! She will believe me too easily! For six thousand years desire has been a synonym for credulity. All men believe what they want to, except myself. I believe everything that I do not want to, and nothing that I do! But no matter. How much am I to get for this job?"

They haggled a while over the price, struck a bargain and shook hands—the same symbol being used among men to seal a compact of love or hate, virtue or vice.

"Be at the Spencer House at eleven o'clock," said David, rising. "You will find us on the balcony. The doctor is to spend the night in a revel with the captain of the Mary Ann, and we shall be uninterrupted. Be an actor. Be a great actor, Judge. You are to deal with a soul which possesses unusual powers of penetration."

"Do not fear! She will be no match for me, for she is innocent—and when was virtue ever a match for vice? She is predestined to her doom! Farewell! Fare-ill, I mean," he muttered under his breath, as David passed from the room.

He gazed after him with his basilisk eyes, drank another glass of whisky and relapsed into reveries.

The mind of the lover was full of tumultuous emotions. On the thin ice of his momentary joy, he hovered like an inexperienced skater over the great deeps of sin which were waiting to engulf him.

There was still an hour before the time when he would have to take his part in the business of the evening. He determined to walk off his excitement, and chose the way along the edge of the river.

It was now quite dark. The stars were shining in the sky and lamps were twinkling in the windows. The streets were almost deserted; the citizens, wearied with the toils of the day, were eating their evening meal, or resting on the balconies and porches. Here and there on the surface of the swift-flowing river a huge steamer swept past, or little ferry-boats shot back and forth like shuttles. His thoughts composed a strangely blended web of good and evil. At the same moment in which he reiterated his resolve to prosecute this deed he consecrated himself to a life of tenderness and devotion to the woman whom he loved with all the energy of his nature! Of such inconsistencies is the soul capable!

It seemed an easy matter to him to control the august forces which he was letting loose! He was like a little child who wanders through a laboratory uncorking bottles and mixing explosives.

Having regained his calmness by a long walk, he hurried back and reached the open space along the river front where peddlers, mountebanks and street venders plied their crafts, just in time to meet the doctor as he drove up with his horses.



CHAPTER XV.

THE SNARE OF THE FOWLER

"Thinks thou there are no serpents in the world But those who slide along the grassy sod And sting the luckless foot that presses them? There are those who in the path of social life Do bask their skins in Fortune's sun And sting the soul." —Joanna Baillie.

That evening's business was one of unprecedented success. Never had the young orator been so brilliant. All the faculties of his mind seemed wrought up to their highest pitch and all its resources under perfect control. The boisterous crowd laughed itself hoarse at his humor, wept itself silly at his pathos, and laid its shekels at his feet.

It is no wonder that such scenes and others like them have generated both satirists and saviors, and that while men like Savonarola have been ready to die for the redemption of such creatures other men, like Juvenal, have sneered.

The three companions returned to the hotel and counted their ill-gotten gains. Pepeeta was sober, David exultant and the doctor hilarious. He pulled out the ends of his long black mustache to their utmost limit, twisted them into ropes, rubbed his hands together, slapped his great thigh and laughed long and loud.

"David, my son," he exclaimed, "you have the touch of Midas; g-g-give us a few years more and we will outrank the fabled Croesus. We shall yet be masters of the world. We shall ride upon its neck as if it w-w-were an ass! How about the old farm life now? Do you want to return to the p-p-plow-tail? Would you rather milk the b-b-brindle cow than the b-b-bedeviled people? This has been a g-g-great night, and I must go and finish it in the c-c-cabin of the Mary Ann with the captain, his mate and the judge. They will know how to appreciate it! Such a t-t-triumph must not be allowed to p-p-pass without a celebration."

He bustled about the room a few moments, kissed his wife, shook hands with David and hastened away.

After he had vanished, David and Pepeeta passed down the long corridor and out upon the balcony of the old Spencer House, to the place appointed for the interview of the judge. The night was bright; a refreshing breeze was blowing up from the river and the frequent intermissions in the gusts of wind that swept over the sleeping city gave the impression that Nature was holding her breath to listen to the tales of love that were being told on city balconies and in country lanes. Under the mysterious influence of the full moon, and of the silence, for the noises of the city had died away, their imaginations were aroused, their emotions quickened, their sensibilities stirred. It seemed impossible that life could be seriously real. Their conceptions of duty and responsibility were sublimated into vague and misty dreams, and the enjoyment of the moment's fleeting pleasures seemed the only reality and end of life.

The two lovers placed their chairs close to the railing and leaning over it looked down into the deserted street or off toward the distant hills swimming like islands on a sea of light, or up to the infinite sky in the immensity of which their individual being seemed to be swallowed up, or down into each other's eyes, in the depths of which they discovered realities which they had never before perceived, and lost sight of those in which they had always believed. For a long time they sat in silence. Afterwards, there came a few whispered interchanges of feeling, as the stillness of a grove is broken by gentle agitations among the leaves, and finally David said,

"Pepeeta, you have long promised to tell me all you knew of your early life; will you do it now?"

"Of what possible interest can it be to you?" she asked.

"It seems to me," he replied, "that I could linger forever over the slightest detail. It is not enough to know what you are. I wish to know how you came to be what you are."

"You must reconcile yourself to ignorance; the origin of my existence is lost in night."

"Did not the doctor discover anything at all from the people in whose possession he found you?"

"Nothing. They kept silence like the grave. He heard from a gypsy in another camp that my parents belonged to a noble family in Spain, and has often said that when he becomes very rich he will go with me to my native land and find them. But I believe, myself, that the veil will never be lifted from the past. I must be content!"

"But you can tell me something of that part of your childhood that you do remember?"

"It is too sad! I do not want to think of anything that happened before I met you. My life began from that moment. Before, I had only dreamed."

He was intoxicated with her beauty and her love; but he carried himself carefully, for he was playing a desperate game and must keep himself under control.

"And do you think," he said, "that having awakened from this dream you can ever fall asleep again?"

"Can the bird ever go back into the shell or the butterfly into the chrysalis? No, no, it is impossible."

"But would you, if you could?"

"Perhaps I ought to want to; but I cannot."

"And do you think that we can drift on forever as we are going?"

"I do not know. I do not dare to think. I only live from day to day."

"And you still refuse to take your future into your own hands?"

"It is not mine. I must accept what has been appointed."

"And you still believe that some door will be opened through which we may escape?"

"With all my heart."

"I wish I could share your faith."

They ceased to speak, and sat silently gazing into each other's faces, the heart of the woman rent with a conflict between desire and duty, that of the man by a tempest of evil passions. At that moment, a slow and heavy step was heard in the hallway. They looked toward the door, and in the shadows saw a man who contemplated them silently for a moment and then advanced.

David rose to meet him.

"I beg your pardon," he said, feigning embarrassment, "I had an errand with the lady, and hoped I should find her alone."

"You may speak, for the gentleman is the friend of my husband and myself," Pepeeta said.

"I will begin, then," he responded, "by asking if you recognize me?" And at that he stepped out into the moonlight.

Pepeeta gave him a searching glance and exclaimed in surprise, "You are the judge who married me."

He let his head fall upon his breast with well-assumed humility, remained a moment in silence, looked up mournfully and said, "I would to God that I had really married you, for then I should not have been bearing this accursed load of guilt that has been crushing me for months."

At these words, Pepeeta sprang from her seat and stood before him with her hands clasped upon her breast.

"Be quick! go on!" she cried, when she had waited in vain for him to proceed.

"Prepare yourself for a revelation of treachery and dishonor. I can conceal my crime no longer. If I hold my peace the very stones in the street will cry out against me."

"Make haste!" Pepeeta exclaimed, imperatively.

"Madam," continued the strange man, "I have betrayed you."

"You have betrayed me?"

"Yes, I have betrayed you. Do you understand? You are not married to your husband. I deceived you as I was bribed to do. I was not a justice. I had no right to perform that ceremony. It was a solemn farce. Your false lover desired to possess the privileges without assuming the responsibilities of marriage."

These words, spoken slowly, solemnly, and with a simulation of candor which would have deceived her even if she had not desired to believe them, produced the most profound impression upon the mind of Pepeeta. She approached the judge and cried: "Sir, I beg you in the name of heaven not to trifle with me! Is what you have told me true?"

"Alas, too true."

"If it is true, you will say it before the God in heaven? Raise your right hand!"

Before an appeal so solemn and a soul so pure a man less corrupt would have faltered; but without a moment's hesitation this depraved, remorseless creature did as she commanded.

"I swear it," he said.

"Oh! sir," she cried, "you cannot understand; but this is the happiest moment of my life!"

"Madam?" he exclaimed, interrogatively and with consummate art.

"It is not necessary for you to know why," she answered; "but on my knees I thank you."

He lifted her up. "What can it mean? I implore you to tell me," he said.

"Do not ask me!" she replied. "I cannot tell you now! My heart is too full."

"But does this mean that I have nothing to regret and that you have forgiven me?"

"It does. For it is against God only you have sinned! As for myself, I bless you from the bottom of my heart!"

She gave him her hand. He took it in his own and held it, looking first at her and then at David with an expression of such surprise as to deceive his accomplice scarcely less than his victim. Young, inexperienced, innocent in this sin at least, she stood between them—helpless.

It is one thing for a woman deliberately to renounce her marriage vows to taste the sweets of forbidden pleasure, but quite another for a heart so loyal to duty, to be betrayed into crime by an ingenuity worthy of devils.

Child of misfortune that she was, victim of a series of untoward and fatal circumstances, she had reason all her life to regret her credulity; but never to reproach herself for wrong intentions. Her heart often betrayed her; but her soul was never corrupted. She ought to have been more careful—alas, yes, she ought—but she meant no sin.

Now that the confidence of Pepeeta had been secured, David's part in this drama became comparatively easy.

He listened to the brief conversation in which by a well-constructed chain of fictitious reasonings the judge riveted upon the too eager mind of the child-wife the conclusion that she was free. When this arch villain had concluded his arguments every suspicion had vanished from her soul, and as he rose to depart she took him by the hand and bade him a kindly and almost affectionate farewell. "Do not afflict yourself with this painful memory," she said gently.

"I shall not need to afflict myself," he replied; "my memory will afflict me, for I am as guilty as if the result had been what I expected; and if in the coming years you find a moment now and then in which you can lift up a prayer for a man who has forfeited his claim to mercy, I beg you to devote it to him who from the depths of his heart wishes you joy. Good-bye."

With many assurances of her pardon, Pepeeta followed him to the door and bade him farewell.

When she returned to David her face was luminous with happiness, and although he had begun already to experience a reaction and to suffer remorse for his successful infamy, it was only like a drop of poison in the ocean of his joy.

"Did I not tell you that all would be well?" she cried, approaching him and extending both her hands. "But how sudden and how strange it is. It is too good to be true. I cannot realize that I am free. I am like a little bird that hops about its cage, peeps through the door which its mistress' hand has opened, and knows not what to think. It wishes to go; but it is frightened. What shall it do, David? Tell it! Shall it fly?"

"I also am too bewildered to act and almost too bewildered to think," he said with unaffected excitement and anxiety, for now that the time and opportunity for him to take so momentous a step had come, his heart failed him. It was only with the most violent effort and under a most pressing necessity that he pulled himself together and continued,

"The little bird must fly, and its mate must fly with it. There are too few hours before daylight and we must not lose a single one. But are you sure that you are quite ready? Is your mind made up? Will you go with me trustfully? Will you accept whatever the future has in store?"

She took him in her strong young arms, printed her first kiss upon his lips, and said: "I will go with you to the ends of the earth! I will go with you through water and through fire! The future cannot bring me anything from which I shall shrink, if it lets us meet it hand in hand!"

Silently and swiftly they gathered together the few necessities of a sudden journey, stole out of the quiet building and hurried away to a livery stable. In a few moments they were rattling down the rough cobble-stone pavement to the river. The ferryman, who had been retained for this very purpose, pretended to be asleep. They aroused him, drove onto the platform of his primitive craft and floated out upon the stream. As the boat swung clear of the shore they heard music issuing from the cabin windows of a steamer under whose stern they were passing. It was the "Mary Ann." They listened. The music ceased for a moment and a deep voice called out "B-b-bravo! Another song!"

They recognized it instantly, and Pepeeta pressed close to the side of her lover.

"You hear it for the last time," he whispered.

"Thank God," she said.

That name uttered in the darkness of the night startled him. The idea that he had cast a shuttle of crime into the great loom upon which the fabric of his life was being woven, took complete possession of his mind. With unerring prescience, he saw that it began to be entangled in the mysterious meshes. A consciousness that he was no longer the master but the victim of his destiny seized him and he shuddered. Pepeeta perceived the shudder through the arm which embraced her.

"You are cold, my love," she said.

"My joy has made me tremble," he replied.

She pressed the hand which was holding hers and looked up into his face with ineffable love.

The swift current seized the boat, twisting it hither and thither till it seemed to the now trembling fugitive a symbol of the stream of tendencies upon which he had launched the frail bark containing their united lives.

"I wonder if I am strong enough to stem it?" he asked himself.

Pepeeta continued to press his hand and that gentle sign of love revived his drooping courage. Perhaps there is no other act so full of reassuring power as the pressure of a human hand. Neither a glance from the eye nor a word from the lips can equal it. The fainting pilgrim, the departing friend, the discouraged toiler, the returning prodigal welcome it beyond all other symbols of helpfulness or love, and the dying saint who leans the hardest on the "rod and the staff of God" as he goes down into the dark valley finds a comfort scarcely less sweet in the warm clasp of a human hand. Just as the courage of this daring navigator of the sea of crime had been restored by this signal of his loved one's trust, the boat grated on the beach.

"Can we find a minister who will marry us at this time of night?" David said to the ferryman, although he had been careful to ask this question before.

"Two blocks south and three east, second door on the right hand side," he answered laconically, as he received the fare.

Such adventurers passed often through his hands and their ways were nothing new.

The fugitives drove hurriedly to the designated house, knocked at the door, were admitted and in a few moments the final act which sealed their fate had been performed.



CHAPTER XVI.

THE DERELICTS

"Born but to banquet and to drain the bowl."

—Homer.

The "Mary Ann" had just returned from a trip to New Orleans, and while waiting for her cargo lay moored at the foot of Broadway. As the quack ascended her gang-plank the captain and mate rose to greet him. There was not on the entire river, where so many extraordinary characters have been evolved, a more remarkable pair.

The captain was five feet four inches in height, round, ruddy, mellow and jocund. A complete absence or suppression of moral sense, together with health as perfect as an animal's, had rendered him insensible to all the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune. He had never shed a tear save in excessive laughter, and sorrow had never yet struck a dart through the armor of fat in which he was sheathed.

The mate was his counterpart and foil. Six feet and three inches tall, he was long-legged, lantern-jawed and goggle-eyed. Bilious in his constitution, he was melancholic in his temperament, had been crossed in love and soured at twenty, betrayed and bankrupted at thirty, and at forty had turned his back upon the world, forswearing all its amusements but those of the table, which his poor digestion made more painful than pleasurable, all of its ambitions but those of getting money And all friendships but those of the captain, to whom he was attached like a limpet to a rock.

Such were the leading characteristics of the two worthies who rose from their deck-stools to meet the doctor as he rolled up the gangway.

"Howdy, doctor?" said the mate, in the peculiar drawling vernacular of the poor whites of the south, extending a hand as cold and hard as an anchor.

"Welcome, prince of quacks! For a man who has made so many others walk the plank with poison drugs, you do it but poorly yourself," cried the captain, merrily.

"You will d-d-draw your last breath with a joke, as a d-d-drunkard sips his last drop with a sigh," responded the doctor.

"The captain was born with the corners of his mouth turned up like a dead man's toes," drawled the lugubrious mate.

"Where is the judge?" asked the doctor, hitting the captain a hearty slap on the back.

"He will be here a little later," the host replied.

The three boon companions seated themselves by the gunwale of the vessel, basking in the mellow light of the moon and quaffing the liquor which a negro brought them.

While they were drinking and recalling the many revels which they had held together, an hour passed by, and at its close a form was seen coming leisurely down the sloping bank of the river. It was the justice of the peace, come to make merry with the husband of the woman he had just betrayed. Upon that cynical countenance a close observer might have noted even in the pale light of the moon an expression of sardonic pleasure when he returned the hearty greetings with which his coming was hailed.

"I am sorry to have kept you waiting," he said.

"We have all the b-b-better appetite," responded the doctor.

"If, as the old saw says, the time to eat is when the stomach rings the bell, I am ready!" the captain piped, in his high-pitched voice.

"Diogenes being asked what time a man ought to eat, responded, 'The rich, when he is hungry, and the poor, when he has food,'" said the judge, whose mind threw up old scraps of classical knowledge as the ocean throws up shells.

"As for hunger, my appetite is sharper than a scythe; but my indigestion is duller than a whetstone," said the mate, to whom a feast was always prophetic of subsequent fasting.

"Good digestion waits on appetite; but waits too long, eh?" the judge replied.

The captain led the way to the cabin. It was a low, dingy room, but ruddy with the light of a dozen tallow candles. On the table was spread a feast that would have tempted the palates of the epicures who gathered about the festive board of the immortal Lucullus. There was neither art nor display in the accompaniments of the food, but every luxury that an ample market could supply had been prepared by a cook who could have won immortality in a Paris restaurant, and the finest whisky that could be distilled in old Kentucky, the rarest wines that could be imported from the Rhine or from sunny Italian slopes, were ready to flow.

Four slaves received the banqueters and then took their places behind the chairs at the table. The captain's face was shining like a full moon; the doctor's was swarthy, sinister and piratical; the judge's possessed the dignity of a splendid ruin; the mate's was haunted by an expression of unsatisfied and insatiable desire. Observing it and calling the attention of the others, the justice remarked, "Like the old Romans, we have a skeleton at our table to remind us of death."

"You would look like death yourself if you had to sit staring at these bounties like a muzzled dog in a market," snarled the mate.

"Be like the dyspeptic who was about to be hanged," said the doctor. "The sheriff asked him to make his last request. 'I will have a dozen hot waffles well b-b-buttered; and let there be a full dozen, for I shall not suffer from the cramps t-t-this time,' says he."

The first few courses of the feast were eaten in almost uninterrupted silence; but as the keen edge of their appetites became a little dulled, the tongues of the banqueters were unloosed and a torrent of talk began to flow, interlarded with oaths and stories of a more than questionable character. Corks popped from bottles with loud explosions, the darkies greeted the sallies of wit with boisterous laughter and surreptitiously emptied the glasses.

The fun grew fast and furious, the thoughts of the revelers flowing in the usual channels of such feasts. At a certain pitch of this wild frenzy, a desire for music invariably recurs and so at a signal from the captain the slaves who performed the functions of deck-hands, waiters or musicians as the exigencies of the occasion demanded, brought in their musical instruments and the rafters were soon ringing with their simple melodies to the accompaniment of banjos and guitars. The deep rich voices blended harmoniously with the tingle of the stringed instruments and the clicking of the bones. Plantation songs were followed by revival hymns, and these by coarse and licentious ditties. At a second stage of every orgie, desire for the dance is kindled by music, and so, at the command of their master, two of the slaves began to execute a "double shuffle."

The clatter and the beating of negro feet to the accompaniment of the banjo and the bones, and the shouting of the spectators gave vent to the boisterous emotions of the revelers. Even the melancholy mate caught the enthusiasm, and for a time at least forgot his misery. Of them all, the judge alone preserved his gravity. He sat looking unmoved at these wild antics, and murmured to himself:

"If music be the food of love, play on. Give me excess of it, that, surfeiting, The appetite may sicken and so die. That strain again! It had a dying fall. O, it came o'er my ear like the sweet sound That breathes upon a bank of violets Stealing and giving odor."

Nothing could be more horrible than the sight of this gifted man herding with these beasts. It was like a lion devouring carrion with wolves. Aside from the pleasure of the palate, his enjoyment of the scene was derived from the cynical contempt with which he regarded it. Having descended to the lowest depths of human degradation, he had arrived at a point where he drew his keenest relish from the inconsistencies, the absurdities and the sufferings of his fellow-men. In order that he might behold a scene in which all the elements of the horribly grotesque were combined, he determined to provoke the egotism and complacency of the quack to the very highest activity at this moment when his fortunes and his hopes were being undermined.

After the excitement of the dance had abated, the concluding phase of all such orgies came in its inevitable sequence, and they began to drink great bumpers to each other's health. After all had been pledged, the judge proposed a toast to the "gypsy bride."

The tongue of the quack was loosened in an instant and he poured forth an extravagant eulogy of her beauty and her devotion.

"If she were mine, I should be on the ragged edge with jealousy every hour of the day and night," said the judge, as they set their glasses down.

"Y-y-you'd have reason to! B-b-but I'm a horse of a different c-c-color, old boy! W-w-women have p-p-preferences," the doctor replied, pulling out the ends of his mustache and winking at the captain and his mate, who stupidly nodded their appreciation of the hit.

"When honeysuckles close their petals to hummingbirds, Venus will shut the door on Adonis," responded the judge, draining his glass and smiling into its depths.

The quack was too far gone in his cups to comprehend or even to be curious as to the significance of this sneer and went on sounding his own virtues and Pepeeta's beauty while the judge provoked him to the fullest exhibition of his colossal vanity. He took a sinister delight in drawing him out. It was the pleasure of a cat playing with the mouse, which it is about to devour, or of savages mocking the man who is about to run the gauntlet. He exulted in the contrast of this proud man's present confidence, and the humiliation which awaited him within the next few hours.

The quack was an easy victim. His career of prosperity had met with but a single serious interruption and he had so entirely forgotten his dangerous sickness in his perfect health that he was seldom troubled by foreboding as to the future. Never had he possessed more confidence of life than at the very moment when all his hopes, all his confidence, all his faith, were about to be shattered.

Our misfortunes draw a train of shadows behind them; but they often project a glowing light before them. Sickness is often preceded by the most bounding health, failure by unexampled success, misery by irrepressible emotions of exultation. Too bright a sunshine as well as too dark a shadow is often the herald of a storm upon the sea of life.

But ebullitions of happiness and confidence did not excite the apprehension of the quack. Each bumper of wine was followed by a new outburst of vanity. The captain and the mate had already succumbed to the potent influence of the liquors which they had been drinking, and amidst his maudlin speeches the quack's tongue was becoming hopelessly tangled.

The judge was as sober as at the beginning of the feast and with a smile upon his lips in which cynicism was incarnate, waited until the doctor had just begun to snore and then aroused him by another question.

"Who is this paragon of virtue to whom you so confidently trust the chastity of your wife?"

"This w-w-what?"

"This paragon of virtue—this ice-cold Adonis?"

"Say whatcher mean."

"Who is this pure young man with whom the beautiful Pepeeta is so safe? What is it you call him, David Crocker?"

"'Tain't his real name."

"What is his real name?"

"D'n I ever t-t-tell you?"

"No."

"Real name's C-C-Corson—David Corson."

"What?" cried the judge, springing to his feet.

"C-C-Corson—I tell you," stuttered the quack, too drunk to notice the peculiar effect of his announcement.

"What do you know about him?" the judge asked with ill-suppressed excitement.

"Keep still—wan' go sleep."

"Wake up and tell me what you know about him, I say."

"He' Squaker."

"A Quaker?"

"Yes, Squaker."

"Great heavens!" speaking under his breath and trembling visibly. "What else do you know?"

"Illegitimate child."

"What?" passing around the table, seizing him by the collar and shaking him. "Say that again."

"'S true—s' help me! What you c-c-care?"

"How do you know he is an illegitimate child—I say?"

"I know—that's nuf! Sh'tup and lemme g-g-go sleep."

"Tell me, curse you!" shaking him until his teeth rattled.

He was too far gone to answer and fell under the table. The judge kicked him, and with a muttered curse took up a glass of whisky, and tossing it down his throat, hurriedly left the cabin, and began to pace the deck in violent agitation.

This man who had so ruthlessly set a pitfall for his neighbor had suddenly tumbled into one which retributive justice had dug deep for himself!

"It must be true," he was saying. "It accounts for the strange feeling I had toward him when he asked me to help him do that infernal deed. I could not understand it then, but it is plain enough now. He is my son! And I have not only transmitted a tainted life to him, but helped to damn him in its possession! God! what irony! Of course the quack never knew that I, too, am living under a false name! I wonder if it is too late to stop him? Yes—it's done, and he is miles away! It's almost daybreak now! Whewwwh! It's horrible!"

He dashed his clenched fist on the railing of the vessel. While he stood there, his mind ran back into the past. He lived over again those passionate days when he had won and betrayed a young, beautiful, impressionable girl. His heart beat with a swifter stroke as he remembered the excitement of their hurried flight from her parents, and the wild joy of their adventurous lives, and then sank again to its steady, hopeless throb as he recalled her penitence and misery after the birth of the boy, his consenting to marry her, the ceremony, the respite from self-reproach, the few happy months, the relapse into old bad habits, the sobered mother becoming a devout and faithful member of a Quaker church, his disgust at this, his quarrels with her and finally his desertion of her. And then the whole subsequent series of adventures and disasters passed before him—a moving panorama of dishonor and crime! He paced the deck again; then he paused and leaned over the gunwale, listening to the water lapping the sides of the vessel. Nothing could have been more astonishing to him than the sudden activity of his conscience. It had been so long since he had experienced remorse that he believed himself incapable of it. But suddenly a fierce and unendurable pang seized him. To a man who had been long accustomed to feeling nothing in the contemplation of his deeds, but a dull consciousness of unworthiness, this sharp and terrible attack of shame and guilt was startling indeed. He could not understand it. The pain seemed disproportionate to the sin; but he could not resist the repugnance and horror with which it filled him! And this is an element in the moral life with which bad men forget to deal! Because conscience ceases to remonstrate and remorse to torment, they think the exemption permanent. They do not know that at any moment, in some unforeseen emergency—this abused faculty of the soul may spring into renewed life. This elemental power, this primal endowment, can no more be permanently dissociated from the soul than heat from fire! It may smoulder unobserved, but a breath will fan it into flame! Without it, the soul would cease to be a soul; its permanent eradication would be equivalent to annihilation! If conscience can be eliminated, man has nothing to brag of over a tadpole! We are no more safe from it than from memory! Who can be sure that what he has forgotten has ceased to survive? The sweet perfume of a violet may revive a bitter memory dormant for fifty years! At a word, a look, a glance, conscience—abused, suppressed, despised, inoperative—may rise in all her majesty and fill the heart with torment and despair!

This corrupted judge, this faithless lover, this dishonorable parent, had become accustomed to dull misery; but this fierce onslaught of an avenging sense of personal unworthiness and dread of divine justice was more than he could bear. Life had long since lost its charms and he had more than once seriously contemplated suicide.

"There seems to be no use in trying to beat nature in any other way, and so I will try the dernier resort," he said aloud. Opening his pocket knife, he cut a piece of rope from the flagstaff, looked around, found a heavy bar of iron, and fastened rope and weight together. In one end of the rope he made a noose, slipped it over his neck, approached the railing and leaned upon it to reflect. His mind now went back into the still more remote past; he was a boy again, and at his mother's knee. Half audibly and half unconsciously, he began murmuring, "Now I lay me down to sleep, I pray—no—I'll be consistent," he added, with a sigh. "I have lived without the mummery of prayer, and I will die without it."

And then by one of those strange freaks of the mind that make people do the most absurd things at the most sacred times—mourners laugh at funerals, and soldiers in the thick of battles long for puddings—he began to say over that old doggerel which he used to repeat when shivering on the spring-board over the cold waters of the Hudson river:

"One, two, three, the bumble bee, The rooster crows and away she goes!"

The absurdity of so trivial a memory at such a serious moment excited his sense of humor, and he smiled.

By this time the violence of his remorse had begun to subside and proved to be only a fitful, fleeting protest of that abused and neglected moral sense. Something more terrible than even this discovery of the wrong done to his own son would have to come. There was plenty of time! Nature was in no haste! This was only a warning, a little danger signal.

By a short, swift revulsion, his feelings changed from horror to indifference. "After all, why should I care?" he said. "The boy is nothing to me, and at any rate he would have gained his end in some other way. Let him have his fling; I have had mine. If he didn't break that old impostor's heart, he would probably break a better one! And as for the gypsy—it's only a question of who and when. What a fool I have made of myself! Who would believe that such a trifle could give me such a shock? There is something to live for yet. I must see what sort of a face the quack makes when he takes his medicine to-morrow."

He threw the iron weight into the water, entered the cabin, took another drink, smiled contemptuously at the drunken wretches under the table, crossed the deck, descended the gang-plank and climbed the steep path to the city.

Against his inheritance from such a nature as this, the young mystic had to make his life struggle.



CHAPTER XVII.

THE SHADOW OF DEATH

"There are moral as well as physical assassinations."—Voltaire.

When he awoke the next morning, the poor bedeviled doctor crawled back to the hotel as best he could, his head throbbing with pain, his wits dull and his temper wild. Stumbling up the long flight of stairs which seemed to him to reach the sky, he burst open his door and entered the room. It was empty. The bed had not been occupied. Pepeeta was nowhere to be seen.

It took him some moments to comprehend that he did not comprehend. Then he called, "Pepeeta! Pepeeta!"

The silence at first bewildered, then aroused hims and crossing the corridor he entered David's room. It, too, was empty. He was now thoroughly astonished and awake. Recrossing the hall he once more entered his room and began in earnest to seek an explanation of this mystery. It did not take him long, for on the table were lying the jewels in which he had invested his profits and which he had confided to Pepeeta—and beside them a piece of paper on which he slowly spelled out these startling words:

"I have discovered your treachery and fled."

"PEPEETA."

He drew his hand across his eyes, took a piece of his cheek between his thumb and first finger and pinched it to see if he were awake, then read the words again, this time aloud: "I have discovered your treachery and fled. Pepeeta." "Treachery?" he said. "What t-t-treachery? Whose t-t-treachery? Fled? Fled with whom, fled where? I wonder if I am still d-d-drunk?"

Laying the paper down, he went to the wash-stand, filled the bowl with water, plunged his head into it and expected to find that he had been suffering some sort of hallucination. But when he returned to the table and again took up the missive, the same words stared him in the face.

At last, and almost with the rapidity of a stroke of lightning, the whole mystery solved itself. It flashed upon his mind that Pepeeta had abandoned him, and in company with the man he had so implicitly trusted. The serpent he had nourished in his bosom had at last stung him! Tearing the paper into shreds, and stamping upon the floor, he cursed and raved.

"I see it all," he cried. "Fool, ass, bat, mole! Curse me! Yes, curse me! But curse them also! Oh! G-G-God, help me to avenge this wrong!"

As soon as a God is necessary to the atheist he invents one, and in a single instant this hopeless skeptic had become a firm believer in the Deity. It seemed for a few moments as if his passions would destroy him by their internal violence; but their first ebullition was soon expended and he began to grow calm. The electric fires of his anger were no longer permitted to play at random, but were gathered up into a thunderbolt to be hurled at his foe; this half-crazed man suddenly became as cool and calculating as he was desperate and determined.

A purpose shaped itself instantly in his mind, and he began its execution without delay. He made no confidant, took no advice; but having smoothed his ruffled clothing and combed his disheveled hair so as to excite no comment and provoke no question, he passed through the hotel corridor and office, greeting his acquaintances with his accustomed ease, and made his way to the livery stable. He went at once to the stalls where his famous team was accustomed to stand, and to his astonishment and delight found his horses both there.

"Tom," he said to the hostler, "did you hire a horse and b-b-buggy to a young couple last night?"

"I did not," answered the surly groom.

"Tell me the truth," said the doctor in a voice that made every word sound like the crack of a rifle.

"What do you take me for?" asked the stableman, trying to appear indignant and innocent.

"You're a l-l-liar, and I am in no mood for trifling. Out with it, you scoundrel!" he cried, seizing him by the throat.

With a sign of terror the groom indicated his readiness to come to terms, and the doctor relaxed his grip.

Still trembling, he told the truth.

"Do you know which road they took?"

He waved his hand toward Kentucky.

"Put a saddle on Hamlet—no, on Romeo," he ordered, tersely.

The groom entered a box stall and led out the black beauty. The doctor glanced him over and smiled. And well he might, for every muscle, every motion betokened speed, intelligence, endurance.

The pursuer made a single stop on his way to the river and that was at a gun store, from which he emerged carrying a pair of saddle bags on his arm. In the holsters were two loaded pistols.

He smiled as he mounted, having already consummated vengeance in his heart. Once across the river and safe upon the Louisville pike, he loosened the reins. The horse, whose sympathetic heart had already been imbued with the spirit of his rider, shook his long black mane, plunged forward and pounded along the hard turnpike. His hoof-beats—sharp, sonorous, rhythmical—seemed to be crying for vengeance; for hoof-beats have a language, and always utter the thoughts of a rider.

Now that he was well on his way the outraged husband had time to reflect, and the past few months rose vividly before him. He saw his own folly and did not spare himself in his condemnation; but this folly did not for an instant modify the guilt of the two fugitives. Every moment his injuries seemed more colossal, more unpardonable, more unendurable. He had been wounded in his affections and also in his vanity, which was far more dreadful, and an agonizing thirst for vengeance overpowered him.

The great veins began to swell in his neck. He would have choked, had he not violently torn off his collar and cravat and flung them into the dust.

His thirst for blood outstripped his fleet horse, who seemed to him, in his impetuous haste, to be creeping like a snail. He drove his spurs deep into the sides of the frightened animal, which almost leaped through his girth. A less expert horseman would have been unseated; but an earthquake could not have thrown this Centaur out of his saddle.

The forests, hills and houses flowed past him like a river. Occasionally he halted an instant to inquire of some lonely traveler if he had seen a horse and buggy passing that way, but he was cunning enough to conceal his anxiety and to hide his joy as every answer made him more certain that he was on the trail of the fugitives.

The road was perfectly familiar. He had traversed it a hundred times, and not having to inquire the way he had only to remember and to reflect. An undercurrent of speculation had been flowing through his mind as to where he should overtake the fugitives.

"They will have arrived almost at the edge of the great forest and I will let them enter," he said to himself.

Having reached the foot of a long hill, he dismounted, led his horse to a little brook and permitted him to drink. When the noble animal had quenched his thirst, the quack patted his neck, picked him a little wisp of grass and talked to him as if he were a man.