"This is my son-in-law!" cried Lethierry. "How he has struggled with the sea! He is all in rags. What shoulders! What hands! There's a splendid fellow!"

But Lethierry did not know Gilliatt. The poor broken creature escaped from the room. He himself made all the arrangements for the marriage of the priest and Derouchette; he placed the special license in their hands, secured a priest for the purpose, and secured passages for them in the ship waiting in the roads for England.

When he had done all this, he made his way to the seat in the cliff, and sat there waiting to see the ship appear round the bight and disappear on the horizon.

The ship appeared with the slowness of a phantom. Gilliatt watched it. Suddenly a touch and a sensation of cold caused him to look down. The sea had reached his feet.

He lowered his eyes, then raised them again. The ship was quite near. The rock in which the rains had hollowed out this giant's seat was so completely vertical, and there was so much water at its base, that in calm weather vessels were able to pass without danger within a few cables' length.

The ship was already abreast of the rock. Gilliatt could see the stir of life on the sunlit deck. The deck was as visible as if he had stood upon it. He saw bride and bridegroom sitting side by side, like two birds, warming themselves in the noonday sun. A celestial light was in those two faces formed by innocence. The silence was like the calm of heaven.

The vessel passed. He watched her till her masts and sails formed only a white obelisk, gradually decreasing against the horizon. He felt that the water had reached his waist. Sea-mews and cormorants flew about him restlessly, as if anxious to warn him of his danger.

The ship was rapidly growing less.

There was no foam around the rock where he sat; no wave beat against its granite sides. The water rose peacefully. It was nearly level with Gilliatt's shoulders.

The birds were hovering about him, uttering short cries. Only his head was now visible. The tide was nearly at the full. Evening was approaching.

Gilliatt's eyes continued fixed upon the vessel on the horizon. Their expression resembled nothing earthly. A strange lustre shone in their calm and tragic depths. There was in them the peace of vanished hopes, the calm but sorrowful acceptance of an end far different from his dreams. By degrees the dusk of heaven began to dawn in them, though gazing still upon the point in space. At the same moment the wide waters round the rock and the vast gathering twilight closed upon them.

At the moment when the vessel vanished on the horizon, the head of Gilliatt disappeared. Nothing now was visible but the sea.

* * * * *



The Man Who Laughs

"The Man Who Laughs" ("L'Homme qui Rit") was called by its author "A Romance of English History," and was written during the period Hugo spent in exile in Guernsey. Like "The Toilers of the Sea," its immediate predecessor, the main theme of the story is human heroism, confronted with the superhuman tyranny of blind chance. As a passionate cry on behalf of the tortured and deformed, and the despised and oppressed of the world, "The Man Who Laughs" is irresistible. Of it Hugo himself says in the preface: "The true title of this book should be 'Aristocracy'"—inasmuch as it was intended as an arraignment of the nobility for their vices, crimes, and selfishness. "The Man Who Laughs" was first published in 1869.

I.—The Child

Ursus and Homo were old friends. Ursus was a man, Homo a wolf. The two went about together from town to town, from country-side to country-side. Ursus lived in a small van upon wheels which Homo drew by day and guarded by night.

Ursus was a juggler, a ventriloquist, a doctor, and a misanthrope. He was also something of a poet. The wolf and he had grown old together.

One bitterly cold night in January 1690, when Ursus and his van were at Weymouth, a small vessel put off from Portland. It contained a dozen people, and it left behind on the rock, and alone, a small boy.

The people were called Comprachicos. They bought children, and understood how to mutilate and deform them, thus making them valuable for exhibition at fairs. But an act of parliament had just been passed to destroy the trade of the Comprachicos. Hence this flight from Portland, and the forsaking of the child.

The vessel was wrecked and all on board perished off the coast of France, but not before one of the passengers had inscribed on a piece of parchment the name of the child and the name of a certain English prisoner who could identify the child. This parchment was sealed in a bottle and left to the waves.

The child watched the disappearance of the boat. He was stupefied at finding himself alone; the men who had left him were the only people he had ever known, and they had failed him. He did not know where he was, but he knew that he must seek food and shelter. It was very cold and dark, and the boy was barefoot, but he made his way across Portland and the Chesil bank, and gained the mainland.

He found in the snow a footprint, and set out to follow it. Presently he heard a groan, and came to the end of the footprints. The woman, a beggar-woman who had lost her way, had uttered the groan. She had sunk down in the snow, and was dead when the boy found her. He heard a cry, and discovered a baby, wretched with cold, but still alive, clinging to its dead mother's breast.

The boy took the baby in his arms. Forsaken himself, he had heard the cry of distress, and wrapping the infant in his coat, he pursued his journey in the teeth of the freezing wind. Four hours had passed since the boat had sailed away; this baby was the first living person the boy had met.

Struggling along with his burden, the boy reached Weymouth, then a hamlet, and a suburb of the town and port of Melcombe Regis. He knocked at doors and windows; no one stirred. For one thing, everybody was asleep, and those who were awakened by the knock were afraid of opening a window, for fear of some sick vagabond being outside.

Suddenly the boy heard in the darkness a grinding of teeth and a growl. The silence was so dreadful that he was glad of the noise, and moved in the direction whence it came. He saw a carriage on wheels, with smoke coming out of the roof through a funnel, and a light within.

Something perceived his approach and growled furiously and tugged at its chain. At the same time a head was put out of a window in the van.

"Be quiet there!" said the head, and the noise ceased. "Is anyone there?" said the head again.

"Yes, I," said the child.

"You? Who are you?"

"I am very tired and cold and hungry," said the child.

"We can't all be as happy as a lord. Go away!" said the head, and the window was shut down.

The child turned away in despair. But no sooner was the window shut than the door at the top of the steps opened, and the same voice called out from within the van, "Well, why don't you come in? What sort of a fellow is this who is cold and hungry, and who stays outside?"

The boy climbed up the three steps with difficulty, carrying the baby, and hesitated for a moment at the door. On the ceiling was written in large letters:

URSUS, PHILOSOPHER

It was the house of Ursus the child had come to. Homo had been growling, Ursus speaking.

The child made out near the stove an elderly man, who, as he stood, reached the roof of the caravan.

"Come in! Put down your bundle!" said Ursus. "How wet you are, and half frozen! Take off those rags, you young villain!"

He tore off the boy's rags, clothed him in a man's shirt and a knitted jacket, rubbed the boy's limbs and feet with a woollen rag, found there was nothing frost-bitten, and gave him his own scanty supper to eat.

"I have worked all day and far into the night on an empty stomach," muttered Ursus, "and now this dreadful boy swallows up my food. However, it's all one. He shall have the bread, the potato, and the bacon, but I will have the milk."

Just then the infant began to wail. Ursus fed it with the milk by means of a small bottle, took off the tatters in which it was wrapped, and swathed it in a large piece of dry, clean linen.

When the boy had finished his supper, Ursus asked him who he was, but he could get no answer save that he had been abandoned that night.

"But you must have relations, since you have this baby sister."

"It is not my sister; it is a baby that I found."

Ursus listened to the boy's story. Then he brought out an old bearskin, laid it on a chest, placed the sleeping infant on this, and told the boy to lie down beside the baby. Ursus rolled the bearskin over the children, tucked it under their feet, and went out into the night to see if the woman could be saved.

He returned at dawn; his efforts had been fruitless. The boy had awakened at hearing Ursus, and for the first time the latter saw his face.

"What are you laughing at? You are frightful! Who did that to you?" said Ursus.

The boy answered, "I am not laughing. I have always been like this."

Ursus turned away, and muttered, "I thought that sort of work was out of date." He took down an old book, and read in Latin that, by slitting the mouth and performing other operations in childhood, the face would become a mask whose owner would be always laughing.

At that moment the infant awoke, and Ursus gave it what was left of the milk.

The baby girl was blind. Ursus had already decided that he and Homo would adopt the two children.

II.—Gwynplaine and Dea

Gwynplaine was a mountebank. As soon as he exhibited himself all who saw him laughed. His laugh created the laughter of others, though he did not laugh himself. It was his face only that laughed, and laughed always with an everlasting laugh.

Fifteen years had passed since the night when the boy came to the caravan at Weymouth, and Gwynplaine was now twenty-five. Ursus had kept the two children with him; the blind girl he called Dea. The boy said he had always been called Gwynplaine. Of course the two were in love.

Gwynplaine adored Dea, and Dea idolised Gwynplaine.

"You are beautiful," she would say to him. The crowd only saw his face; for Dea, Gwynplaine was the person who had saved her from the tomb, and who was always kind and good-tempered. "The blind see the invisible," said Ursus.

The old caravan had given way to a great van—called the Green Box—drawn by a pair of stout horses. Gwynplaine had become famous. In every fair-ground the crowd ran after him.

In 1705 the Green Box arrived in London and was established at Southwark, in the yard of the Tadcaster Inn. A placard was hung up with the following inscription, composed by Ursus:

"Here can be seen Gwynplaine, deserted, when he was ten years old, on January 29, 1690, on the coast of Portland, by the rascally Comprachicos. The boy now grown up is known as 'The Man who Laughs.'"

All Southwark came to see Gwynplaine, and soon people heard of him on the other side of London Bridge, and crowds came from the City to the Tadcaster Inn. It was not long before the fashionable world itself was drawn to the Laughing Man.

One morning a constable and an officer of the High Court summoned Gwynplaine to Southwark Gaol. Ursus watched him disappear behind the heavy door with a heavy heart.

Gwynplaine was taken down flights of stairs and dark passages till he reached the torture-chamber. A man's body lay on the ground on its back. Its four limbs, drawn to four columns by chains, were in the position of a St. Andrew's Cross. A plate of iron, with five or six large stones, was placed on the victim's chest. On a seat close by sat an old man—the sheriff of the county of Surrey.

"Come closer," said the sheriff to Gwynplaine. Then he addressed the wretched man on the floor, who for four days, in spite of torture, had kept silence.

"Speak, unhappy man. Have pity on yourself. Do what is required of you. Open your eyes, and see if you know this man."

The prisoner saw Gwynplaine. Raising his head he looked at him, and then cried out, "That's him! Yes—that's him!"

"Registrar, take down that statement," said the sheriff.

The cry of the prisoner overwhelmed Gwynplaine. He was terrified by a confession that was unintelligible to him, and began in his distress to stammer and protest his innocence. "Have pity on me, my lord. You have before you only a poor mountebank—"

"I have before me," said the sheriff, "Lord Fermain Clancharlie, Baron Clancharlie and Hunkerville, and a peer of England!"

Then the sheriff, rising, offered his seat with a bow to Gwynplaine, saying, "My lord, will you please to be seated?"

III.—The House of Lords

Before he left the prison the sheriff explained to Gwynplaine how it was he was Lord Clancharlie.

The bottle containing the documents which had been thrown into the sea in January 1690 had at last come to shore, and had been duly received at the Admiralty by a high official named Barkilphedro.

This document declared that the child abandoned by those on the sinking vessel was the only child of Lord Fermain Clancharlie, deceased. At the age of two it had been sold, disfigured, and put out of the way by order of King James II. Its parents were dead, and a man named Hardquanonne, now in prison at Chatham, had performed the mutilation, and would recognise the child, who was called Gwynplaine. Being about to die, the signatories to the document confessed their guilt in abducting the child, and could not, in the face of death, refrain from acknowledgment of their crime.

The prisoner Hardquanonne had been found at Chatham, and he had recognised Gwynplaine. Hardquanonne died of the tortures he had suffered, but just before his death he said, "I swore to keep the secret, and I have kept it as long as I could. We did it between us—the king and I. Silence is no longer any good. This is the man."

What was the reason for the hatred of James II. to the child?

This. Lord Clancharlie had taken the side of Cromwell against Charles I., and had gone into exile in Switzerland rather than acknowledge Charles II. as king. On the death of this nobleman James II. had declared his estates forfeit, and the title extinct, believing that the heir was lost beyond possible recovery. On David Dirry-Moir, an illegitimate son of Lord Clancharlie, were the peerage and estates conferred, on condition that he married a certain Duchess Josiana, an illegitimate daughter of James II.

How was it Gwynplaine was restored to his inheritance?

Anne was Queen of England when the bottle was taken to the Admiralty in 1705, and shared with the high official whose business it was to attend to all flotsam and jetsam, a cordial dislike of Duchess Josiana. It seemed to the Queen an excellent thing that Josiana should have to marry this frightful man, and as for David Dirry-Moir he could be made an admiral. Anne consulted the Lord Chancellor privately, and he strongly advised, without blaming James II., that Gwynplaine must be restored to the peerage.

Gwynplaine, without having time to return to the Green Box, was carried off by Barkilphedro to one of his country houses, near Windsor, and bidden the next day take his seat in the House of Lords. He had entered the terrible prison in Southwark expecting the iron collar of a felon, and he had placed on his head the coronet of a peer. Barkilphedro had told him that a man could not be made a peer without his own consent; that Gwynplaine, the mountebank, must make room for Lord Clancharlie, if the peerage was accepted; and he had made his decision.

On awakening the next morning he thought of Dea. Then came a royal summons to appear in the House of Lords, and Gwynplaine returned to London in a carriage provided by the queen. The secret of his face was still unknown when he entered the House of Lords, for the Lord Chancellor had not been informed of the nature of the deformation. The investiture took place on the threshold of the House, then very ill-lit, and two very old and half-blind noblemen acted as sponsors at the Lord Chancellor's request. The whole ceremony was enacted in a sort of twilight, for the Lord Chancellor was anxious to avoid any sensation.

In less than half an hour the sitting was full. Gossip was already at work about the new Lord Clancharlie. Several peers had seen the Laughing Man, and they now heard that he was already in the Upper House; but no one noticed him until he rose to speak.

His face was terrible, and the whole House looked with horror upon him.

"What does all this mean?" cried the Earl of Wharton, an old and much respected peer. "Who has brought this man into the House? Who are you? Where do you come from?"

Gwynplaine answered, "I come from the depths. I am misery. My lords, I have a message for you."

The House shuddered, but listened, and Gwynplaine continued.

"My lords, among you I am called Lord Fermain Clancharlie, but my real name is one of poverty—Gwynplaine. I have grown up in poverty; frozen by winter, and made wretched by hunger. Yesterday I was in the rags of a clown. Can you realise what misery means? Before it is too late try and understand that our system of society is a false one."

But the House rocked with uncontrollable laughter at the face of Gwynplaine. In vain he pleaded with those who sat around him not to laugh at misery.

They refused to listen, and the sitting broke up in confusion, the Lord Chancellor adjourning the House. Gwynplaine went out of the House alone.

IV.—Night and the Sea

Ursus waited for some time after seeing Gwynplaine disappear within Southwark Gaol, then he returned sadly to Tadcaster Inn. That very night the corpse of Hardquanonne was brought out from the gaol and buried in the cemetery hard by, and Ursus, who had returned to the prison gate, watched the procession, and saw the coffin carried to the grave.

"They have killed him! Gwynplaine, my son, is dead!" cried Ursus, and he burst into tears.

The following morning the sheriff's officer, accompanied by Barkliphedro, waited on Ursus, and told him he must leave Southwark, and leave England. The last hope in the soul of Ursus died when Barkilphedro said gravely that Gwynplaine was dead.

Ursus bent his head.

The sentence on Gwynplaine had been executed—death. His sentence was pronounced—exile. Nothing remained for Ursus but to obey. He felt as if in a dream.

Within two hours Ursus, Homo, and Dea were on board a Dutch vessel which was shortly to leave a wharf at London Bridge. The sheriff ordered the Tadcaster Inn to be shut up.

Gwynplaine found the vessel.

He had left the House of Lords in despair. He had made his effort, and the result was derision. The future was terrible. Dea was his wife, he had lost her, and he would be spurned by Josiana. He had lost Ursus, and gained nothing but insult. Let David take the peerage; he, Gwynplaine, would return to the Green Box. Why had he ever consented to be Lord Clancharlie?

He wandered from Westminster to Southwark, only to find the Tadcaster Inn shut up, and the yard empty. It seemed he had lost Ursus and Dea for ever. He turned and gazed into the deep waters by London Bridge. The river in its darkness offered a resting place where he might find peace.

He got ready to mount the masonry and spring over, when he felt a tongue licking his hands. He turned, and Homo was behind him. Gwynplaine uttered a cry. Homo wagged his tail. Then the wolf led the way down a narrow platform to the wharf, and Gwynplaine followed him. On the vessel alongside the wharf was the old wooden tenement, very worm-eaten and rotten now, in which Ursus lived when the boy first came to him at Weymouth. Gwynplaine listened. It was Ursus talking to Dea.

"Be calm, my child. All will come right. You do not understand what it is to rupture a blood-vessel. You must rest. To-morrow we shall be at Rotterdam."

"Father," Dea answered, "when two beings have always been together from infancy, and that state is disturbed, death must come. I am not ill, but I am going to die."

She raised herself on the mattress, crying in delirium, "He is no longer here, no longer here. How dark it is!" Gwynplaine came to her side, and Dea laid her hand on his head.

"Gwynplaine!" she cried.

And Gwynplaine received her in his arms.

"Yes, it is I, Gwynplaine. I am here. I hold you in my arms. Dea, we live. All our troubles are over. Nothing can separate us now. We will renew our old happy life. We are going to Holland. We will marry. There is nothing to fear."

"I don't understand it in the least," said Ursus. "I, who saw him carried to the grave. I am as great a fool as if I were in love myself. But, Gwynplaine, be careful with her."

The vessel started. They passed Chatham and the mouth of the Medway, and approached the sea.

Suddenly Dea got up.

"Something's the matter with me," she said. "What is wrong? You have brought life to me, my Gwynplaine, life and joy. And yet I feel as if my soul could not be contained in my body."

She flushed, then became very pale, and fell. They lifted her up, and Dea laid her head on Gwynplaine's shoulder. Then, with a sigh of inexpressible sadness, she said, "I know what this is. I am dying." Her voice grew weaker and weaker.

"An hour ago I wanted to die. Now I want to live. How happy we have been! You will remember the old Green Box, won't you, and poor blind Dea? I love you all, my father Ursus, and my brother Homo, very dearly. You are all so good. I do not understand what has happened these last two days, but now I am dying. Everything is fading away. Gwynplaine, you will think of me, won't you? Come to me as soon as you can. Do not leave me alone long. Oh! I cannot breathe! My beloved!"

Gwynplaine pressed his mouth to her beautiful icy hands. For a moment it seemed as if she had ceased to breathe. Then her voice rang out clearly.

"Light!" she cried. "I can see!"

With that Dea fell back stiff and motionless on the mattress.

"Dead!" said Ursus.

And the poor old philosopher, crushed by his despair, bowed his head, and buried his face in the folds of the gown which covered Dea's feet. He lay there unconscious.

Gwynplaine started up, stretched his hands on high, and said, "I come."

He strode across the deck, towards the side of the vessel, as if beckoned by a vision. A smile came upon his face, such as Dea had just worn. One step more.

"I am coming, Dea; I am coming," he said.

There was no bulwark, the abyss of waters was before him; he strode into it, and fell. The night was dark and heavy, the water deep. He disappeared calmly and silently. None saw nor heard him. The ship sailed on, and the river flowed out to the sea.

* * * * *



ELIZABETH INCHBALD

A Simple Story

The maiden name of Mrs. Inchbald, actress, novelist, dramatist, and society favourite, was Elizabeth Simpson, and she was the daughter of a farmer living near Bury St. Edmunds, where she was born on October 15, 1753. At the age of eighteen she ran away to London, under the influence of romantic expectations, which were realised by a sudden marriage with Joseph Inchbald, the actor. After seventeen years on the stage, without attaining conspicuous success, Mrs. Inchbald retired, and devoted herself to the writing of novels and plays and the collection of theatrical literature. Her first novel, written in 1791, was "A Simple Story." With "Nature and Art," a tale written later, it has kept a place among the fiction that is reprinted for successive generations. In later years Mrs. Inchbald lived quietly on her savings, retaining a flattering social position by her beauty and cleverness. She died on August 1, 1821.

I.—The Priest's Ward

Dorriforth, bred at St. Omer's in all the scholastic rigour of that college, was, by education and the solemn vows of his order, a Roman Catholic priest. He was about thirty, and refusing to shelter himself from the temptations of the layman by the walls of a cloister, but finding that shelter in his own prudence, justice, fortitude, and temperance, had lived in London near five years, when a gentleman with whom he had contracted a most sincere friendship died, and left him the sole guardian of his daughter, who was then eighteen.

It is in this place proper to remark that Mr. Milner was a member of the Church of Rome, but his daughter had been educated in her dead mother's religion at a boarding-school for Protestants, whence she had returned with her little heart employed in all the endless pursuits of personal accomplishments, and her mind left without one ornament, except such as nature gave.

She had been visiting at Bath when her father died. Therefore, Mr. Dorriforth, together with Miss Woodley, the middle-aged niece of the widow lady, Mrs. Horton, who kept his house, journeyed midway to meet her. But when the carriage stopped at the inn-gate, and her name was announced, he turned pale—something like a foreboding of disaster trembled at his heart—and Miss Woodley was obliged to be the first to welcome his lovely charge—lovely beyond description.

But the natural vivacity, the gaiety which report had given to Miss Milner, were softened by her recent sorrow to a meek sadness. The instant Dorriforth was introduced to her as her "guardian, and her deceased father's most beloved friend," she burst into tears, and kneeling before him, promised ever to obey him as a father. She told him artlessly she had expected him to be elderly and plain. He was somewhat embarrassed, but replied that she should find him a plain man in all his actions; and in the conversation which followed, in which she had somewhat lightly referred to his faith, begged that religion should not be named between them, for, as he had resolved never to persecute her, in pity she should be grateful, and not persecute him.

Among the many visitors who attended her levees during the following weeks was Lord Frederick Lawnly, whose intimacy with her Dorriforth beheld with alternate pain and pleasure. He wished to see his charge married, yet he trembled for her happiness under the care of a young nobleman immersed in all the vices of the town. His uneasiness made him desire her to forbid Lord Frederick's visits, who, alarmed, confounded, and provoked, remonstrated passionately.

"By heaven, I believe Mr. Dorriforth loves you himself, and it is jealousy which makes him treat me in this way!"

"For shame, my lord!" cried Miss Woodley, trembling with horror at the sacrilegious idea.

"Nay, shame to him if he is not in love!" answered his lordship. "For who but a savage could behold beauty like yours without owning its power? And surely when your guardian looks at you, his wishes———"

"Are never less pure," Miss Milner replied eagerly, "than those which dwell in the bosom of my celestial guardian."

At this moment Dorriforth entered the room.

"What's the matter?" cried he, looking with concern on his discomposure.

"A compliment paid by herself to you, sir," replied Lord Frederick, "has affected your ward in the manner you have seen." And then he changed the subject with an air of ridicule, while Miss Milner threw open the sash, and leaned her head from the window to conceal the embarrassment his implication had caused her.

Although Dorriforth was a good man, there was an obstinacy in his nature which sometimes degenerated into implacable stubbornness. The child of a sister once beloved, who married a young officer against her brother's consent, was left an orphan, destitute of all support but from his uncle's generosity; but, although Dorriforth maintained him, he would never see him. Miss Milner brought the boy to town once to present him to his uncle, but no sooner did he hear Harry Rushbrook's name than he set him off his knee, and, calling for his hat, walked instantly from the house, although dinner had just been served.

About this time Miss Milner had the humiliation of having Miss Fenton held up to her as a pattern for her to follow; but, instead of being inspired to emulation, she was provoked to envy. Young, beautiful, elegant, Miss Fenton was betrothed to Lord Elmwood, Mr. Dorriforth's cousin; and Dorriforth, whose heart was not formed—at least, not educated—for love, beheld in her the most perfect model for her sex.

Not to admire Miss Fenton was impossible. To find one fault with her was equally impossible, and yet to love her was unlikely. But Mr. Sandford, Dorriforth's old tutor, and rigid monitor and friend, adored her, and often, with a shake of his head and a sigh, would he say to Miss Milner, "No, I am not so hard upon you as your guardian. I only desire you to love Miss Fenton; to resemble her, I believe, is above your ability."

As a Jesuit, he was a man of learning, and knew the hearts of women as well as those of men. He saw Miss Milner's heart at the first view of her person, and beholding in that little circumference a weight of folly that he wished to eradicate, he began to toil in the vineyard, eagerly courting her detestation of him in the hope of also making her abominate herself. In the mortification of slights he was an expert, and humbled her in her own opinion more than a thousand sermons would have done. She would have been cured of all her pride had she not possessed a degree of spirit beyond the generality of her sex!

II.—The Priest Marries His Ward

Finding Dorriforth frequently perplexed by his guardianship, Mr. Sandford advised that a suitable match should immediately be sought for her; but she refused so many offers that, believing her affections were set upon Lord Frederick, he insisted that she should be taken into the country at once. Her ready compliance delighted Dorriforth, and for six weeks all around was the picture of tranquillity. Then Lord Frederick suddenly appeared at the door as she alighted from her coach, and seizing her hand, entreated her "not to desert him in compliance with the injunctions of monkish hypocrisy."

Dorriforth heard this, standing silently by, with a manly scorn upon his countenance; but on Miss Milner's struggling to release her hand, which Lord Frederick was devouring with kisses, with an instantaneous impulse he rushed forward and struck him a violent blow in the face. Then, leading her to her own chamber, covered with shame and confusion for what he had done, he fell on his knees before her, and earnestly "entreated her forgiveness for the indelicacy he had been guilty of in her presence."

To see her guardian at her feet struck her with a sense of impropriety as if she had seen a parent there. All agitation and emotion, she implored him to rise, and, with a thousand protestations, declared "that she thought the rashness of his action was the highest proof of his regard for her."

Finding that Lord Frederick had gone when he had resigned the care of his ward to Miss Woodley, Dorriforth returned to his own apartment with a bosom torn by excruciating sensations. He had departed from his sacred character, and the dignity of his profession and sentiments; he had treated with unpardonable insult a young nobleman whose only offence was love; he had offended and filled with horror a beautiful young woman whom it was his duty to protect from those brutal manners to which he himself had exposed her.

The outcome of this incident was a duel, to prevent which Miss Milner deceived him by confessing a passion for Lord Frederick, although to Miss Woodley she avowed the real truth, that it was Dorriforth she loved.

"Do you suppose I love Lord Frederick? Do you suppose I can love him? Oh, fly, and prevent my guardian from telling him this untruth! This duel is horrible even beyond anything else! Oh, Miss Woodley, pity the agonies of my heart, my heart by nature sincere, when such are the fatal propensities it cherishes that I must submit to the grossest falsehoods rather than reveal the truth! Are you so blind," she exclaimed, "as to believe I do not care for Mr. Dorriforth? Oh, Miss Woodley, I love him with all the passion of a woman, and with all the tenderness of a wife!"

"Silence!" cried Miss Woodley, struck with horror. Yet, amidst all her grief and abhorrence, pity was still predominant, and, seeing her friend's misery, she did all she could to comfort her. But she was resolved that she should leave home, and, on pain of revealing her secret to Mr. Dorriforth, induced her to pay a visit of indefinite length to her friends at Bath.

There, in the melancholy that possessed her, Miss Woodley's letters alone gave her consolation. In a short time her health became impaired; she was once in imminent danger, and during her delirium incessantly repeated her guardian's name. Miss Woodley journeyed to her at once, and so did Dorriforth, who, through the death of his cousin, Lord Elmwood, had acquired his title and estates. On this account he had received a dispensation from his vow of celibacy, and was enjoined to marry. His ward felt a pleasure so exquisite on hearing this that the agitation of mind and person brought with it the sensation of exquisite pain; but, to her cruel grief, she found that he was, on the advice of his friends, already paying his addresses to Miss Fenton.

As if a poniard had thrust her to the heart, she writhed under this unexpected stroke; she felt, and she expressed anguish. Lord Elmwood was alarmed and shocked. But later, when, in his perplexity concerning his ward's marriage, he induced Miss Woodley to tell him on whom Miss Milner's choice was fixed, his vehemence filled her with alarm.

"For God's sake, take care what you are doing! You are destroying my prospects of futurity, you are making this world too dear to me! I am transported by the tidings you have revealed—and yet, perhaps, I had better not have heard them!" he exclaimed. And then, to prevent further question, he hastened out of the room.

Within a few days he was her professed lover—she, the happiest of human beings—Miss Woodley partaking in the joy. Mr. Sandford alone lamented with the deepest concern that Miss Fenton had been supplanted—and supplanted by Miss Milner.

Yet Miss Fenton was perhaps affected least of any by the change; she received everything with the same insipid smile of approbation, and the same cold indifference.

III.—A Fatal Experiment

Lost in the maze of happiness that surrounded her, Miss Milner oftentimes asked her heart, "Are not my charms even more invincible than I ever believed them to be? Dorriforth, the grave, the pious, the anchorite Dorriforth, by their force is animated to all the ardour of the most impassioned lover; while the proud priest, the austere guardian, is humbled, if I but frown, into the veriest slave of love." She then asked: "Why did I not keep him longer in suspense? He could not have loved me more, I believe, but my power over him might have been greater still. I am the happiest of women in the affection he has proved to me, but I wonder if it would exist under ill-treatment? If it would not, he still does not love me as I wish to be loved; if it would, my triumph, my felicity, would be enhanced."

Thus the dear-bought experiment of being loved in spite of her faults—a glory proud women ever aspire to—was, at present, the ambition of Miss Milner. She, who, as Dorriforth's ward had ever been gentle, and always obedient, became as a mistress, sometimes haughty, always insolent. He was surprised, but the novelty pleased him. Miss Milner, whom he tenderly loved, could put on no change that did not seem to become her. But at last her attempt to rouse his jealousy by again encouraging Lord Frederick hurt him beyond measure. In a letter releasing her from her engagement to him, and announcing his immediate departure for a long Continental tour, he begged her for the short time they were to remain together not to insult him with an open preference for another. By complying with this request she would give him to believe that she thought he had, at least, faithfully discharged some part of his duty.

She was struck to despair. Pride alone kept her from revealing her anguish, though her death should be the immediate consequence! But Sandford, who had hitherto been most inimical to her, on the evening before Lord Elmwood's departure showed at last some kindness by entreating her to breakfast with them the following morning. There she sat silent, unable to eat, unable to speak, unable to move, until the moment for parting came. Then, unable to repress her tears as heretofore, as Elmwood took her hand in his, she suffered them to fall in torrents.

"What is all this?" cried Sandford, going up to them in anger.

They neither of them replied, or changed their situation.

"Separate this moment!" cried Sandford. "Or resolve to be separated only by—death! Lord Elmwood, do you love this woman?"

"More than my life!" he replied, with the most heartfelt accents.

He then turned to Miss Milner.

"Can you say the same by him?"

She spread her hands over her eyes, and exclaimed, "Oh, heavens!"

"I believe you can say so," returned Sandford. "And in the name of God, and your own happiness, since this is the state of you both, let me put it out of your power to part?"

On which he opened his book and—married them.

Nevertheless, on that joyful day which restored her lost lover to her hopes again, even on that very day after the ceremony was over, Miss Milner—with all the fears, the superstition of her sex—felt an excruciating shock when, looking on the ring Lord Elmwood had put upon her finger in haste, she perceived it was a mourning-ring.

IV.—Outcasts

Alas! in seventeen years the beautiful, beloved Miss Milner was no longer beautiful, no longer beloved, no longer virtuous.

Dorriforth, the pious, the good, the tender Dorriforth, was become a hard-hearted tyrant.

Miss Woodley had grown old, but less with years than grief.

The boy Harry Rushbrook had become a man and the apparent heir of Lord Elmwood's fortune, while his own daughter, his only child by his once-adored Miss Milner, he refused ever to see again, in vengeance to her mother's crime.

Sandford alone remained much as heretofore.

Lady Elmwood was a loved and loving bride seventeen years ago; now she lay on her death-bed. At thirty-five "her course was run." After four years of perfect happiness, Lord Elmwood was obliged to leave his wife and child while he went to visit his large estates in the West Indies. His voyage was tedious, his return delayed by serious illness, which a too cautious fear of her uneasiness prompted him to conceal. He was away three years.

It was no other than Lord Frederick Lawnly to whom Lady Elmwood sacrificed her own and her husband's future peace; she did not, however, elope with her paramour, but escaped to shelter herself in the most dreary retreat, where she partook of no comfort but the still unremitting friendship of Miss Woodley. Even her child she left behind, that she might be under her father's protection. Conceive, then, how sharp her agony was on beholding the child sent after her as the perpetual outcast of its father. Lord Elmwood's love to his wife had been extravagant—the effect of his hate was the same. Once more he met Lord Frederick in a duel, the effect of which was to leave his adversary so defaced with scars as never again to endanger the honour of a husband. He was himself dangerously wounded, yet nothing but the assurance that his opponent was slain could tear him from the field.

Now, after ten years of exile, the once gay, volatile Miss Milner lay dying with but one request to make—that her daughter should not suffer for her sin. Sandford was with her; by all the influence he ever had over Lord Elmwood, by his prayers, by his tears, he promised to implore him to own his child. She could only smile her thanks, but she was sufficiently sensible of his words to make a sign as if she wished to embrace him; but, finding life leaving her fast, with a struggle she clung to her child, and died in her arms.

V.—His Daughter's Happiness

Yet all that her mother's last appeal could obtain for the hapless Matilda, not as her child, but as the granddaughter of Mr. Milner, was the shelter of her father's roof on condition that she avoided his sight. When by accident or design he ever saw or heard from her, that moment his compliance with her mother's request ceased, and he abandoned her once more. Still, the joy of being, even in so remote a way, under her father's care, was extreme for her, though it was tempered with jealousy of Rushbrook—a feeling which even her noble heart could not completely quell—jealousy which was shared on her account by both Miss Woodley and Mr. Sandford, and frequently made them unjust to Harry, whom they regarded as an interloper.

But his passionate gratitude to Lady Elmwood, by whose entreaties he had been restored to his uncle's favour, had made him adore her daughter with an equal passion. He gazed with wonder at his uncle's insensibility to his own happiness, and would gladly have led him to the jewel he cast away, though even his own expulsion should be the fatal consequence.

At last, by accident, Lord Elmwood returned unexpectedly home when Matilda was descending the staircase, and, in her affright, she fell motionless into her father's arms. He caught her, as by the same impulse he would have caught anyone falling for want of aid. Yet, when he found her in his arms, he still held her there—gazed on her attentively—and pressed her to his bosom.

At length, trying to escape the snare into which he had been led, he was going to leave her on the spot where she fell, when her eyes opened, and she uttered, "Save me!" Her voice unmanned him. His long-restraining tears now burst forth, and, seeing her relapsing into the swoon, he called out eagerly to recall her. Her name did not, however, come to his recollection—nor any name but this—"Miss Milner, dear Miss Milner."

The sound did not awaken her; and now again he wished to leave her in this senseless state, that not remembering what had passed, she might escape the punishment.

But at this instant his steward passed, and into his hands he delivered his apparently dead child, his face agitated with shame, with pity, with anger, with paternal tenderness. On her recovery she was sent to a neighbouring farm, not more than thirty miles away, her father having given orders that it should be so.

Then a libertine lover of Lady Matilda's, finding her no longer under her father's protection, resolved to abduct her, and by raising an alarm of fire, caused all the inhabitants of the farmhouse to open the doors, when two men rushed in, and, with the plea of saving her from the flames, carried her away. News of this being taken to her father, he at once set out in pursuit, and reached her in her last agony of despair, folding her in his arms with the unrestrained fondness of a parent.

It was now the middle of November; and yet, as Matilda passed along, never to her did the sun shine so bright as upon this morning; never did her imagination comprehend that the human heart could feel happiness true and genuine as hers!

Rushbrook had been detained at Elmwood during all this time, more from the persuasions, nay, prayers, of Sandford than the commands of Lord Elmwood. His uncle's summons for him to join them in town was, therefore, received with delight. Yet his joy was tempered by finding that it was to propose a matrimonial alliance that his uncle had sent for him; after a thousand fears, much confusion, and embarrassment, he at length frankly confessed his "heart was engaged, and had been so, long before his uncle offered to direct his choice."

On hearing on whom he had set his affections, Lord Elmwood immediately left the room for the apartment where Sandford, Miss Woodley, and Matilda were sitting, and cried with an angry voice, and with his countenance disordered, "Rushbrook has offended me beyond pardon. Go, Sandford, and tell him this instant to quit my house, and never dare to return."

But Matilda impeded him, and throwing her arms about his neck, cried, "Dear Mr. Sandford, do not!"

"How?" exclaimed her father.

She saw the impending frown, and knelt at his feet.

"Do you know what he has asked of me?" he asked.

"No," she replied, with the utmost innocence, "but whatever it is, my lord, though you do not grant it, yet pardon him for asking."

"Perhaps you would grant him what he has requested?" said her father.

"Most willingly, were it in my gift."

"It is," replied he. "Go to him in the library, and hear what he has to say; for on your will his fate shall depend."

Like lightning she flew out of the room; while even the grave Sandford smiled at the idea of their meeting. And whether the heart of Matilda could sentence Rushbrook to misery the reader is left to surmise; and if he supposes that it could not he has every reason to suppose that their wedded life was—a life of happiness.

* * * * *



G.P.R. JAMES

Henry Masterton

The son of a physician, George Payne Rainsford James was born in London on August 9, 1799. He began to write early, and, according to his own account, the volume of short stories published under the title of "A String of Pearls" was written before he was seventeen. As a contributor to the magazines and newspapers, his name came under the notice of Washington Irving, who encouraged him to produce, in 1823, his "Life of Edward the Black Prince." "Richelieu," his first novel, brought him warm praises from Sir Walter Scott, and, thus fortified, James, who had had ambitions for a political life, determined to continue his career as a novelist. His output of fiction was amazing—he was the author of upwards of a hundred novels. Of all his works perhaps his most characteristic is "Henry Masterton," which appeared in 1832. More solid and less melodramatic than his other stories, it abounds in picturesque scenes, and has that pleasant spice of adventure that makes for good romance. He died on June 9, 1860.

I.—When Charles the First Was King

In the earlier years of the reign of King Charles I., when already there were signs of those disorders which were the prelude to the Great Rebellion, one of the most prominent gentlemen at his majesty's court was a certain Lord Langleigh.

Bold and rash in the extreme, Lord Langleigh, though no man could doubt his whole-hearted devotion to his majesty, fell under the suspicion of the king's councillors. These suspicions were given a form and direction by Lord Ashkirk, an impoverished nobleman, who secretly lodged certain charges of treason against Lord Langleigh, and obtained, as the price of this betrayal, the wealth and the estate of Penford-bourne, that had belonged to his victim.

Tried by his peers, and found guilty on false evidence, Lord Langleigh awaited his death upon the scaffold in the prison-house of the Tower. While expecting his fate, he sent for his great friend, Lord Masterton, of Masterton House, Devonshire, to settle with him such details as were necessary for the future welfare of his motherless daughter. Lord Masterton immediately hastened to London and exerted all his influence in an endeavour to secure a pardon for his friend. But his efforts were in vain. At a last interview, he promised to undertake the charge of Lord Landleigh's infant daughter, Emily, and voluntarily pledged himself to see her married to his eldest son.

Then, on the morning of the execution, Langleigh contrived to escape from the Tower.

In the company of the captain of the Tower guard he reached a ship bound for the continent. The vessel was beset by a storm, and the only one of its occupants that was able to tell the tale of the terrible disaster was the captain of the guard, who, after exonerating everyone from a share in his prisoner's escape, died from exhaustion.

Meanwhile, Lord Ashkirk had secured the price of his treason, and was in the full enjoyment of the estates of Penford-bourne. Not even certain domestic troubles that occurred regarding the marriage of his daughter, Lady Eleanor, disturbed the serenity of his content. Before his accession to the property of Lord Langleigh, Lord Ashkirk had betrothed his daughter to his nephew, Walter Dixon, the son of a wealthy attorney, who had married the peer's sister. The arrival of two Popish gentlemen, Sir Andrew Fleming and M. du Tillet, caused him to alter his decision. Sir Andrew fell in love with the wonderful beauty of Lady Eleanor and easily persuaded Lord Ashkirk, himself a Cavalier and a papist, to cancel the marriage with Walter Dixon, who had joined the Parliamentary party. Lady Eleanor was duly united to Sir Andrew, and Walter Dixon, deprived of his bride and the succession to the Penford-bourne estate, determined to be revenged.

He found a means ready to his hand. Lady Eleanor pretended no affection for her husband, and took a special delight in exciting his angry jealousy. She accepted Du Tillet as a lover, and when Dixon, wounded in a duel with her husband, was carried into the house, she nursed him with so much apparent affection and attention that her husband's wrath passed all bounds. A separation became necessary, and Sir Andrew Fleming consented to leave the woman whose love he could not win.

Walter Dixon, so far satisfied, was yet determined to exact his full tale of vengeance, and secure the rich lands and estates of Penford-bourne. The death of Lord Ashkirk and the successful growth of the Parliamentary party appeared to give him the opportunity he so eagerly desired.

II.—A Web of Intrigue

At Masterton House, in Devonshire, Lord Masterton remained in retirement, though the Parliamentary party carried all before them. He would doubtless have continued to refrain from drawing his sword on behalf of his king, who had wronged and insulted him, had not circumstances forced his hand.

His tenantry were secretly armed and drilled, and, under the command of Frank, were marched eastwards to Kent, to join Lord Norwich and Hales, who were preparing a rising to rescue the king.

Frank, before leaving Masterton House, bade farewell to Lady Emily with that cold reserve and studied formality which was part of his character. The fact that she was betrothed to him by the commands of his father had failed to arose any passion in his breast. He was prepared, however, to fulfil the commands of Lord Masterton, though his heart was untouched. But the parting between his brother and Lady Emily was of a different character. Though out of loyalty to his brother no word of love had ever passed his lips, Henry was passionately devoted to the beautiful girl who had grown up with him under his father's roof. And there was no doubt as to which of the brothers it was to whom Lady Emily had given her affections.

The arrival of the little force in Kent brought the two brothers into the web of intrigue which was being spun by Walter Dixon. It was Dixon's object to prevent the union of Frank's forces with Lord Norwich. He had been promised the estates of Penford-bourne, should he succeed in his object and prove Lady Eleanor a malignant. In pursuance of this plan, he allowed himself to be taken prisoner by Henry Masterton, to whom he declared that he was really a Royalist in disguise.

His next step was to obtain for the brothers an invitation from Lady Eleanor to quarter themselves at Penford-bourne. Once he had settled them there, he obtained, through Frank Masterton's valet, a puritanical knave called Gabriel Jones, complete information as to their plans, which he was thus able to thwart.

At Penford-bourne Frank came under the spell of Lady Eleanor's beauty; all his duties were forgotten, and he lingered on by the side of the woman he loved. In vain Henry protested against his dereliction of duty. Frank refused to move, and it was not until his brother came in touch with Lord Norwich that circumstances compelled him to act. Lord Norwich was furious at Frank's conduct.

"I will give your brother one chance," he said to Henry. "If he refuses that chance, I shall supersede him, and name you to the command. Here is the commission. If you succeed in persuading him to join me at once, you may burn it; if not, you must take the command, and march immediately."

Sadly, Henry returned to Penford-bourne. On the way, he overheard a conversation between Walter Dixon and Gabriel Jones, which made it clear that they were privy to a plot having for its object the ruin of Frank Masterton. He at once placed them both under arrest, and hastened to his brother's side. Frank obstinately determined not to move. Only the intervention of Lady Eleanor induced him to promise to set out the next day.

But on the morrow Frank had an affair of honour with a mysterious man in black, with whom he had quarrelled the night before.

Henry found him bleeding from two severe wounds, and then having issued instructions for him to be removed to the house, rejoined his regiment, and at once gave the order to march.

He reached Lord Norwich to find all his trouble in vain. Disaster had dissolved the forces of the Cavaliers, and Lord Norwich had reluctantly decided to abandon the attempt, and, disbanding his men, made the best of his way into Essex. In the excitement of these events Walter Dixon effected his escape.

On his way back to Penford-bourne, Henry learned that Lady Eleanor's husband was still alive. He at once used this information to induce Frank to leave the side of Lady Eleanor, and, in spite of his wounds, to accompany him back to Devonshire. As the lovers parted, Henry overheard their last words.

"Then I rely on you," said Frank, in a hasty voice. "You will not, surely you will not fail me?"

"By all I hold dear on earth and beyond the earth," she replied, in low, thrilling tones.

III.—Days of Gloom

To Lord Masterton Frank related the story of how he had been wounded in the early part of the campaign and had been compelled to hand over the command of his regiment to his brother. This piece of fiction set all awkward questions at rest, and the old lord, satisfied that his son and heir had covered himself with honour, hastened to arrange for his nuptials with Lady Emily.

Both to Henry and to the girl these were days of gloom, but Frank, on the other hand, was strangely happy and content. His passion for Lady Eleanor was still unabated, and though, to gratify his father, he had consented to marry Lady Emily, he had already taken such steps to prevent their union as would leave his share in the matter undiscovered.

Dixon, though he had carried out his part of the bargain, had been disgusted to discover that the Council of State, on some specious excuse, refused to grant him the estates of Penford-bourne.

The day of the wedding arrived. By some secret arrangement with the officiating clergyman, the service was unduly protracted. But at last those words were reached which, if uttered, would make Frank and Lady Emily one. Then, suddenly, armed men burst into the chapel and, reading their warrant, demanded the arrest of Frank Masterton, as a malignant lately in arms in Kent. The bridegroom offered no resistance. But it was different with Lord Masterton. He boldly called upon the guests present to draw their swords. A scuffle took place. Suddenly, from the gallery above, the voice of Gabriel Jones gave the order to fire. A volley rang out, and Lord Masterton fell dead at the feet of his son.

In the confusion, Henry seized Lady Emily, and shooting down Gabriel Jones, escaped through a secret passage into the grounds. There he lay hidden for some days, and then, when the coast was clear, secured a passage in a smuggling ship for himself and Lady Emily, and her aunt, Lady Margaret. Arrived in France, he placed the ladies in a convent at Dinan, and made his way to England again, under an assumed name as a commercial traveller for a French house, to learn the fate of his brother.

Arrived in London, he obtained some news of his brother from a goldsmith who had acted as the family banker for years past. Through the assistance of Lady Eleanor, Frank Masterton had been set at liberty and had taken his departure in the company of that lady to Paris. Thither, Henry determined to follow them.

Before setting out, he paid a business call at a merchant's house, where he found a man of distinguished appearance, whom he discovered to be General Ireton. Hearing that Henry was bound for France, Ireton asked him whether he would deliver a letter for him to General St. Maur. It was a most important communication, he declared, insomuch as it was the payment of a debt to a man to whom he owed much.

Warned by a footstep on the stairs, Ireton requested Henry to retire into the adjoining room, as he had some business to transact. Through the door, Henry heard the well-known voice of General Dixon. He was complaining bitterly that Ireton had not carried out his promise, and handed him over the estates of Penford-bourne.

"We have no excuse for sequestrating the estates," replied Ireton.

Walter Dixon was furious, declared that he had been made a tool of, and, threatening Ireton, announced his intention of going to France. As soon as he had taken his departure, Henry was summoned from the other room, and being bidden to hold his tongue if he had heard anything, was informed by Ireton that he would visit him that night with the package he had requested him to deliver to General St. Maur.

Some hours later, when it was dark, Henry received his visitor; but the unexpected arrival of the goldsmith, who addressed Henry by his real name, disclosed his identity. Finding, however, that he intended him no ill, Ireton questioned him closely as to what had brought him to London.

"To see whether I might not render some aid to my brother," Henry replied, "after having placed the Lady Emily in safety."

"She was never in danger," replied Ireton quietly. "I would take good care of that. I will still trust you with my commission. The time may come when you will thank me for so doing."

With that he turned and left the room.

IV.—The Mysterious Monk

Chance ordained it that Henry Masterton should cross the Channel on the same boat which was carrying General Dixon to France. The latter, with what General Ireton had called "his blunt hypocrisy," frankly related to Henry the motives that had influenced him in the part that he had played.

Arrived at Calais, the two men journeyed some part of the way together, and before they separated Henry discovered something of the real character of his companion by his familiarity with certain broken-down Cavaliers, who, having lost all right to the title of gentlemen in their own country, eked out a living by brigandage in France. After they had separated, Henry lost his way, and arriving at night, drenched through with the rain, at a certain chateau, begged its hospitality for a night.

He was led into the dining-room, and introduced to another guest who was there—a Benedictine monk.

That night, while Henry lay in bed, he was startled to see the monk standing by his side. He had come, he said, to ask him several questions. In particular he wished to know whether his brother Frank had married Lady Emily Langleigh. When Henry related how the marriage had been prevented, the Benedictine suddenly sprang to his feet in a fury of rage. When calmer, he asked Henry whether Frank had come to France alone; but on this subject the young man preserved a discreet silence, and after a few more questions, which proved the monk's extraordinary familiarity with all Walter Dixon's intrigues at Penford-bourne, he left the room.

The following day, Henry bade farewell to his courteous host, and made his way to Dinan. There he found that the convent in which he had left the two ladies had been burnt down; and he learnt that a strange gentleman had called before this disaster, and had taken Lady Emily and Lady Margaret away.

Bitterly disappointed, Henry made his way to Paris, where he found the city in the throes of a civil war. Becoming unintentionally mixed up in a petty skirmish between the court party and the Frondes, he was badly wounded, and narrowly escaped hanging as an enemy of the Frondeurs.

Meanwhile, Frank Masterton, or Lord Masterton as he now was, was living what he had fondly imagined would be the ideal life with the girl he loved; but already he found it an illusion. His loss of honour, his consciousness that his conduct was discreditable, plunged him into bitter fits of remorse, from which he vainly sought relief by a round of gaiety. Lady Eleanor saw these signs with terror and despair. Though she had accomplished her desire, her life was unbearable; daily she grew more miserable. At last she determined to end her earthly sufferings. In her chamber she swallowed the fatal dose of poison with which, against such a day, she had provided herself.

As she lay in the throes of death it chanced that Henry Masterton arrived, having at length found his brother's place of residence. Henry at once did everything possible to save Lady Eleanor's life, but, seeing that the dark shadow deepened every moment, he hastened to fetch a priest.

In the street he came upon the Benedictine, talking to Walter Dixon, and bidding him follow, led him to the bedside of Lady Eleanor, and left him alone with the dying woman.

Bending over her, the monk solemnly asked her if she had anything on her mind which she wished to confess.

He pressed a cup to her lips; and in a slow, gasping voice she laid bare the story of her life, and then went on to relate her feelings at her first meeting with Frank Masterton.

"When we parted, and I thought of the man to whom I was bound for life, what fearful feelings came across my bosom! Sir Andrew Fleming my husband! Was it possible? I called to remembrance his look, his harshness, his jealousy, and, oh, God! oh, God! how I did hate that man!"

"Woman, woman!" exclaimed the monk, rising up from his seat, and casting back the cowl from his head, "Oh, God! oh, God! how I did love you!"

Lady Eleanor's eyes fixed full upon his face. Before her stood, in the garb of a Benedictine monk, Sir Andrew Fleming, her husband. For a second she looked at him imploringly; then, with fearful strength, she rose from her recumbent position, and clasping her hands as if in the act of prayer, sank down upon her knees at his feet. A low moan escaped from her lips. She fell forward on the ground, and the spirit departed for ever from its clay.

The monk grasped his forehead with his hand, gazing at her with mingled feelings of love, anger, sorrow, and despair; then, raising the body in his arms, he placed it on the couch, and bending over it, three times printed a long kiss upon the pale lips. Then, with his right hand thrust into his robe, he rushed out of the room.

Outside in the hall there came towards him Lord Masterton, General Dixon, and Henry. A look of deadly, concentrated hate came into Sir Andrew Fleming's eyes. For a moment he paused; then, drawing a dagger from his bosom, he flung himself on Lord Masterton, and, with one blow, stretched him dead at his feet.

"Villain!" cried Walter Dixon. "Atrocious villain!"

With the rapidity of lightning he drew his sword, and at once passed it through the body of the assassin.

To Walter Dixon, this scene of carnage, which he had planned with elaborate care, seemed to ensure his long delayed possession of the Penford-bourne estates. Lady Eleanor was dead; her husband, Sir Andrew had fallen by his hand, and there were no lives now between him and his rightful possession of the property. But once more he was doomed to disappointment.

As soon as he had an opportunity Henry sought out General St. Maur, and handed him the package he had received from Ireton. The general pressed him to stay to dinner, and while the meal progressed, extracted from him something of his story. When the meal was nearly over, the door suddenly opened, and a dog rushed to him, barking joyously. It was his own dog—the dog he had brought with him from Masterton House, and left with Lady Emily! How had it come there? Amazed, he was about to ask for an explanation, when Lady Emily herself stood before him. In another moment the lovers were in one another's arms.

Henry, astonished as he was at these events, was still more surprised when he learnt that General St. Maur was really Lord Langleigh, the father of Emily. He had not, as all the world had thought, been drowned in his escape from the Tower. In the wreck, he had succeeded in saving not only his own life, but the life of a young man named Ireton. Ireton had never forgotten the debt, and now, in the package which Henry had brought over from England, had endeavoured to repay it. He had persuaded the Council that the estates of Penford-bourne had been improperly sequestrated by King Charles, and should be returned to their lawful owner, Lord Langleigh; and the letter contained a decree of the Council once more granting him his lands and title.

When Walter Dixon heard of these events, which again snatched the prize for which he had attempted so much from his lips, he determined on yet another effort to achieve his object. Bribing two men to assist him in the deed, he lured Lord Langleigh into an ambush. Only the prompt arrival of Henry Masterton prevented the success of this foul deed; and it was Dixon himself who fell a victim.

Lord Langleigh, too good a Cavalier, courteously refused the offers of the Council of State, and remained in France until the Restoration, when, with Henry, now Lord Masterton, and his wife, Lady Emily, he returned to Penford-bourne to spend the remainder of his days in his native land.

* * * * *



SAMUEL JOHNSON

Rasselas, Prince of Abyssinia

Samuel Johnson was born at Lichfield in Staffordshire, on September 18, 1709, and died in London, December 13, 1784. In Volume IX of THE WORLD'S GREATEST BOOKS appears an epitome of Boswell's famous "Life of Johnson." "The History of Rasselas, Prince of Abyssinia," was written by Dr. Johnson in order to meet the expenses incurred by his mother's illness and death. According to Boswell, the work was composed in the evenings of one week, and the sheets sent to the printers exactly as they left his hands, without even being read over by the author himself. It was published during the early part of 1759, Johnson receiving for it the sum of L100, and a further amount of L25 when it came to a second edition. Of all Johnson's works, "Rasselas" was apparently the most popular. By 1775 it reached its fifth edition, and has since been translated into many languages. The work is more of a satire on optimism and on human life in general than a novel, and perhaps is little more than a ponderous dissertation on Johnson's favourite theme, the "vanity of human wishes." As to its actual merits, Johnson's contemporaries differed widely, some proclaiming him a pompous pedant with a passion for words of six syllables and more, others delighting in those passages in which weighty meaning was illustrated with splendour and vigour.

I.—Life in the Happy Valley

Rasselas was the fourth son of the mighty emperor in whose dominions the father of waters begins his course, whose bounty pours down the streams of plenty, and scatters over the world the harvests of Egypt.

According to the custom which has descended from age to age among the monarchs of the torrid zone, the prince was confined in a private palace, with the other sons and daughters of Abyssinian royalty, till the order of succession should call him to the throne.

The place which the wisdom, or policy, of antiquity had designed for the residence of the princes was a spacious valley in the kingdom of Amhara, surrounded on every side by mountains of which the summits overhang the middle part. The only passage by which it could be entered was a cavern that passed under a rock, of which it had long been disputed whether it was the work of nature or of human industry. The outlet of the cavern was concealed by a thick wood, and the mouth, which opened into the valley, was closed with gates of iron, forged by the artificers of ancient days, so massive that no man, without the help of engines, could open or shut them.

From the mountains on every side rivulets descended that filled all the valley with verdure and fertility, and formed a lake in the middle, inhabited by fish of every species, and frequented by every fowl whom nature has taught to dip the wing in water.

The valley, wide and fruitful, supplied its inhabitants with all the necessaries of life, and all delights and superfluities were added at the annual visit which the emperor paid his children, when the iron gate was opened to the sound of music; and during eight days every one that resided in the valley was required to propose whatever might contribute to make seclusion pleasant, to fill up the vacancies of attention, and to lessen the tediousness of time. Every desire was immediately gratified. Such was the appearance of security and delight which this retirement afforded that they to whom it was new always desired that it might be perpetual; and as those on whom the iron gate had once closed were never suffered to return, the effect of longer experience could not be known.

Here the sons and daughters of Abyssinia lived only to know the soft vicissitudes of pleasure and repose. The sages who instructed them told them of nothing but the miseries of public life, and described all beyond the mountains as regions of calamity where discord was always raging, and where man preyed upon man. These methods were generally successful. Few of the princes had ever wished to enlarge their bounds; they rose in the morning and lay down at night, pleased with each other and with themselves. All but Rasselas, who, in the twenty-sixth year of his age, began to withdraw himself from the pastimes and assemblies, and to delight in solitary walks and silent meditation. His attendants observed the change, and endeavoured to renew his love of pleasure; but he neglected their officiousness and repulsed their invitations.

One day his old instructor began to lament the change which had been lately observed in him, and to inquire why he so often retired from the pleasures of the palace to loneliness and silence.

"I fly from pleasure," said the prince, "because pleasure has ceased to please. I am lonely because I am miserable, and am unwilling to cloud with my presence the happiness of others."

"You, sir," said the sage, "are the first who has complained of misery in the Happy Valley. I hope to convince you that your complaints have no real cause. Look round and tell me which of your wants is without supply. If you want nothing, how are you unhappy?"

"That I want nothing," said the prince, "or that I know not what I want, is the cause of my complaint. If I had only known a want, I should have a certain wish, and that wish would excite endeavour for its satisfaction. I have already enjoyed too much. Give me something to desire."

"Sir," said the old man, "if you had seen the miseries of the world, you would know how to value your present state."

"Now," said the prince, "you have given me something to desire. I shall long to see the miseries of the world, since the sight of them is necessary to happiness."

II.—The Escape Into the Outer World

The stimulus of this new desire—the desire of seeing the world—soon had its effect in making Rasselas no longer gloomy and unsociable. Considering himself as master of a secret stock of happiness, he affected to be busy in all the assemblies and schemes of diversion, because he supposed the frequency of his presence necessary to the success of his purposes. He retired gladly to privacy, because in picturing to himself that world which he had never seen he had now a subject of thought.

Thus passed twenty months of his life; he busied himself so intensely in visionary bustle that he forgot his real solitude. But one day the consciousness of his own folly and inaction pierced him deeply. He compared twenty months with the life of man. "The period of human existence," said he, "may be reasonably estimated at forty years, of which I have mused away the four-and-twentieth part."

These sorrowful meditations fastened upon his mind; he passed four months in resolving to lose no more time in idle resolves. Then, awakening to more vigorous exertion, he for a few hours regretted his regret, and from that time bent his whole mind upon the means of escaping from the Valley of Happiness.

He now found that it would be very difficult to effect that which it was very easy to suppose effected. He passed week after week in clambering the mountains, but found all the summits inaccessible by their prominence. The iron gate was not only secured with all the power of art, but was always watched by successive sentinels. In these fruitless researches he spent ten months. The time, however, passed cheerfully away, for he met a thousand amusements which beguiled his labour and diversified his thought.

A little while afterwards he began to cherish hopes of escaping from the valley by quite a different way. Among the artists allowed there, to labour for the accommodation and pleasure of its inhabitants, was a man eminent for his knowledge of the mechanic powers, who had contrived many engines both of use and recreation. He interested the prince in a project of flying, and undertook to construct a pair of wings, in which he would himself attempt an aerial flight. But, alas! when in a year's time the wings were ready, and their contriver waved them and leaped from the little promontory on which he had taken his stand, he merely dropped into the lake, his wings only serving to sustain him in the water.

The prince was not much afflicted by this disaster, and he soon forgot any disappointment he had felt in the society and conversation of a new artist—a poet called Imlac—who delighted him by the narrative of his travels and dealings with men in various parts of Africa and Asia.

"Hast thou here found happiness at last?" asked Rasselas. "Tell me, without reserve, art thou content with thy condition, or dost thou wish to be again wandering and inquiring? All the inhabitants of this valley celebrate their lot, and at the annual visit of the emperor invite others to partake of their felicity. Is this felicity genuine or feigned?"

"Great prince," said Imlac, "I shall speak the truth. I know not one of all your attendants who does not lament the hour when he entered this retreat. I am less unhappy than the rest, because I have a mind replete with images, which I can vary and combine at pleasure. The rest, whose minds have no impression but the present moment, are either corroded by malignant passions, or sit steeped in the gloom of perpetual vacancy."

"What passions can infect those," said the prince, "who have no rivals? We are in a place where impotence precludes malice, and where all envy is repressed by community of enjoyments."

"There may be community of material possessions," said Imlac, "but there can never be community of love or of esteem. It must happen that one will please more than another. He that knows himself despised will always be envious, and still more envious and malevolent if he is condemned to live in the presence of those who despise him. The invitations by which the inhabitants of the valley allure others to a state which they feel to be wretched proceed from the natural malignity of hopeless misery. I look with pity on the crowds who are annually soliciting admission to captivity, and wish that it were lawful for me to warn them of their danger."

Upon this hint, Rasselas opened his whole heart to Imlac, who, promising to assist him to escape, proposed the plan of piercing the mountain. A suitable cavern having been found, the two men worked arduously at their task, and within a few days had accomplished it. A few more days passed, and Rasselas and Imlac, with the prince's sister, Nekayah, had gone by ship to Suez, and thence to Cairo.

III.—The Search for Happiness

The prince and princess, who carried with them jewels sufficient to make them rich in any place of commerce, gradually succeeded in mixing in the society of the city; and for some time the former, who had been wont to ponder over what choice of life he should make, thought choice needless because all appeared to him really happy.

Imlac was unwilling to crush the hope of inexperience. Till one day, having sat awhile silent, "I know not," said Rasselas, "what can be the reason that I am more unhappy than any of my friends. I see them perpetually and unalterably cheerful, but feel my own mind restless and uneasy. I am unsatisfied with those pleasures which I seem most to court. I live in the crowds of jollity, not so much to enjoy company as to shun myself, and am only loud and merry to conceal my sadness."

"Every man," said Imlac, "may, by examining his own mind, guess what passes in the minds of others. When you feel that your own gaiety is counterfeit, it may justly lead you to suspect that of your companions not to be sincere. Envy is commonly reciprocal. We are long before we are convinced that happiness is never to be found, and each believes it to be possessed by others, to keep alive the hope of obtaining it for himself."

"This," said the prince, "may be true of others, since it is true of me; yet whatever be the general infelicity of man, one condition is more happy than another, and wisdom surely directs us to take the least evil in the choice of life."

"Very few," said the poet, "live by choice. Every man is placed in the present condition by causes which acted without his foresight, and with which he did not always willingly co-operate; and, therefore, you will rarely meet one who does not think the lot of his neighbour better than his own."

Rasselas resolved, however, to continue his experiments on life. As he was one day walking in the street, he saw a spacious building, which all were, by the open doors, invited to enter. He found it a hall of declamation, and listened to a sage who discoursed with great energy on the conquest of the passions, and displayed the happiness of those who had obtained this important victory, after which man is no longer the slave of fear, nor the fool of hope; is no more emaciated by envy, inflamed by anger, emasculated by tenderness, or depressed by grief. Receiving permission to visit this philosopher—having, indeed, purchased it by presenting him with a purse of gold—Rasselas returned home with joy to Imlac.

"I have found," said he, "a man who, from the unshaken throne of rational fortitude, looks down on the scenes of life changing beneath him. I will learn his doctrines and imitate his life."

"Be not too hasty," said Imlac, "to trust or to admire the teachers of morality; they discourse like angels, but they live like men."

Imlac's caution turned out to be wise, for when the prince paid his visit a few days afterwards, he found the philosopher weeping over the death of his only daughter, and refusing to be comforted by any of the consolations that truth and reason could afford.

Still eager upon the same inquiry, and resolving to discover whether that felicity which public life could not afford was to be found in solitude, Rasselas determined to visit a hermit who lived near the lowest cataract of the Nile and filled the whole country with the fame of his sanctity, Imlac and the princess agreeing to accompany him. On the third day they reached the cell of the holy man, who was desired to give his direction as to a choice of life.

"He will most certainly remove from evil," said the prince, "who shall devote himself to that solitude which you have recommended by your example."

"I have no desire that my example should gain any imitators," replied the hermit. "In my youth I professed arms, and was raised by degrees to the highest military rank. At last, being disgusted by the preferments of a younger officer, I resolved to close my life in peace, having found the world full of snares, discord, and misery. For some time after my retreat I rejoiced like a tempest-beaten sailor at his entrance into the harbour. When the pleasure of novelty went away, I employed my hours in examining the plants and minerals of the place. But that inquiry is now grown tasteless and irksome, and I have been for some time unsettled and distracted. I am sometimes ashamed to think that I could not secure myself from vice but by retiring from the exercise of virtue, and begin to suspect that I was rather impelled by resentment than led by devotion into solitude. I have been long comparing the evils with the advantages of society, and resolve to return into the world to-morrow."

They accompanied him back to the city, on which, as he approached it, he gazed with rapture.

A day or two later Rasselas was relating his interview with the hermit at an assembly of learned men, who met at stated intervals to compare their opinions.

"The way to be happy," said one of them, "is to live according to nature, in obedience to that universal and unalterable law with which every heart is originally impressed; which is not written on it by precept, but engraven by design, not instilled by education, but infused at our nativity."

When he had spoken, he looked round him with a placid air, and enjoyed the consciousness of his own beneficence.

"Sir," said the prince, with great modesty, "as I, like all the rest of mankind, am desirous of felicity, my closest attention has been fixed upon your discourse. I doubt not the truth of a position which so learned a man has so confidently advanced. Let me only know what it is to live according to nature."

"When I find young men so humble and so docile," said the philosopher, "I can deny them no information which my studies have enabled me to afford. To live according to nature is to act always with due regard to the fitness arising from the relations and qualities of causes and effects; to concur with the great and unchangeable scheme of universal felicity; to co-operate with the general disposition and tendency of the present system of things."

The prince soon found that this was a sage whom he should understand less as he heard him longer. He therefore bowed, and was silent; and the philosopher, supposing him satisfied, departed with the air of a man who had co-operated with the present system.

IV.—Happiness They Find Not

Rasselas returned home full of reflections, and finding that Imlac seemed to discourage a continuance of the search, began to discourse more freely with his sister, who had yet the same hope with himself.

"We will divide the task between us," said she. "You shall try what is to be found in the splendour of courts, and I will range the shades of humbler life."

Accordingly, the prince appeared next day, with a splendid retinue, at the court of the bassa. But he soon found that the lives of courtiers are a continual succession of plots and detections, stratagems and escapes, faction and treachery. Many of those who surrounded the bassa were sent only to watch him, and to report his conduct to the sultan. At last the letters of revocation arrived, the bassa was carried in chains to Constantinople, and in a short time the sultan that had deposed him was murdered by the Janissaries.

The princess, who, in the meantime, had insinuated herself into many private families, proved equally unsuccessful in her inquiries. She found not one house that was not haunted by some fury that destroyed its quiet.

"In families where there is or is not poverty," said she, "there is commonly discord. The love of parents and children seldom continues beyond the years of infancy; in a short time the children become rivals to their parents. Each child endeavours to appropriate the esteem or fondness of the parents, and the parents betray each other to their children. The opinions of children and parents, of the young and the old, are naturally opposite, by the contrary effects of hope and despondence, of expectation and experience. Age looks with anger on the temerity of youth; and youth with contempt on the scrupulosity of age."

"Surely," said the prince, "you must have been unfortunate in your choice of acquaintance. I am unwilling to believe that the most tender of all relations is thus impeded in its effects by natural necessity."

"Domestic discord," answered she, "is not inevitably necessary; but it is not easily avoided. We seldom see that a whole family is virtuous. The good and the evil cannot well agree; the evil can yet less agree with one another, and even the virtuous fall sometimes to variance when their virtues are of different kinds. As for those who live single, I never found that their prudence ought to raise envy. They dream away their time without friendship and without fondness, and are driven to rid themselves of the day, for which they have no use, by childish amusements and vicious delights. They act as beings under the constant sense of some known inferiority, that fills their minds with rancour, and their tongues with censure."

"I cannot forbear to flatter myself," said Rasselas, "that prudence and benevolence will make marriage happy. What can be expected but disappointment and repentance from a choice made in the immaturity of youth, in the ardour of desire, without judgment, without foresight, without inquiry after conformity of opinions, similarity of manners, rectitude of judgment, or purity of sentiment. From these early marriages proceed the rivalry of parents and children.

"The son is eager to enjoy the world before the father is willing to forsake it, and there is hardly room at once for two generations. The daughter begins to bloom before the mother can be content to fade, and neither can forbear to wish for the absence of the other. Surely all these evils may be avoided by that deliberation and delay which prudence prescribes to irrevocable choice."

"And yet," said Nekayah, "I have been told that late marriages are not eminently happy. It has generally been determined that it is dangerous for a man and woman to suspend their fate upon each other at a time when opinions are fixed and habits are established, when friendships have been contracted on both sides, and when life has been planned into method."

At this point Imlac entered, and having refused to talk upon the subject of their discourse, persuaded them to visit the great pyramid.

"I consider this mighty structure," said he, as they reposed in one of its chambers, "as a monument of the insufficiency of human enjoyments. A king, whose power is unlimited, and whose treasures surmount all real and imaginary wants, is compelled to solace, by the erection of a pyramid, the satiety of dominion and tastelessness of pleasures, and to amuse the tediousness of declining life by seeing thousands labouring without end, and one stone, for no purpose, laid upon another."

Soon afterwards the prince told Imlac that he intended to devote himself to science, and to pass the rest of his days in retirement.

"Before you make your final choice," answered Imlac, "you ought to examine its hazards, and to converse with some of those who are grown old in the company of themselves."

He then introduced him to a learned astronomer, who had meditated over his science and over visionary schemes for so long that he believed that he possessed the regulation of the weather, and the distribution of the seasons.

A visit made subsequently to the catacombs tended still further to give a grave and sombre direction to the thoughts of the party.

"How gloomy," said Rasselas, "would be these mansions of the dead to him who did not know that he should never die; that what now acts shall continue its agency, and what now thinks shall think on forever. Those that lie here stretched before us, the wise and the powerful of ancient times, warn us to remember the shortness of our present state; they were, perhaps, snatched away while they were busy, like us, in the choice of life."

"To me," said the princess, "the choice of life is become less important; I hope, hereafter, to think only on the choice of eternity."

It was now the time of the inundations of the Nile, and the searchers for happiness were, of necessity, confined to their house. Being, however, well supplied with materials for talk, they diverted themselves with comparisons of the different forms of life which they had observed, and with various schemes of happiness which each of them had formed— schemes which now they well knew would never be carried out.

They deliberated with Imlac what was to be done, and finally resolved, when the inundation should cease, to return to Abyssinia.

* * * * *



MAURUS JOKAI

Timar's Two Worlds

Maurus Jokai, by common consent the greatest Hungarian novelist of the nineteenth century, was born at Komarom on February 19, 1825. Trained for the law, as an advocate he achieved the distinction of winning his first case. The drudgery of a lawyer's office, however, proved uncongenial to him, and fired by the success of his first play, "The Jew Boy" ("Zsido fiu"), he went to Pest, where he devoted himself to journalism, in due course becoming editor of "Eletkepek," a leading Hungarian literary periodical. At the outbreak of the Revolution of 1848, he threw himself in with the supporters of the national cause. From that time until his death—which occurred on May 4, 1904—Jokai identified himself considerably with politics. Of all his novels perhaps, "Az arany ember" ("A Man of Gold"), translated into English under the title of "Timar's Two Worlds," takes the highest place. Its reputation has long since spread outside the boundaries of Hungary, and the story itself—a rare combination of descriptive power, humour, and pathos—has exercised no small influence upon European fiction of the romantic order.

I.—How Ali Saved his Daughter

A mountain-chain, pierced through from base to summit—a gorge four miles in length walled in by lofty precipices; and between these walls flows the Danube in its rocky bed.

At this time there were no steamers on the Danube, but a vessel, called the St. Barbara, approaches, drawn against the stream by thirty-two horses. The fate of the vessel lies in the hands of two men—the pilot and the captain.

The name of the captain is Michael Timar. He is a man of about thirty, with fair hair and dreary blue eyes.

At the door of the ship's cabin sits a man of fifty, smoking a Turkish chibouque. Euthemio Trikaliss is the name under which he is registered in the way-book, and he is the owner of the cargo. The ship itself belongs to a merchant of Komorn called Athanas Brazovics.

Out of one of the cabin windows looks the face of a young girl, Timea, the daughter of Euthemio, and the face is as white as marble. Timea and her father are the only passengers of the St. Barbara.

When the captain lays aside his speaking-trumpet he has time to chat with Timea, who understands only modern Greek, which the captain speaks fluently.

It is always a dangerous voyage, for the current is fierce and the rocks are death-traps. To-day, too, the St. Barbara was pursued by a Turkish gunboat. But the vessel makes its way safely, in spite of current and rocks, and the Turkish gunboat gives up the chase.

Three days later the St. Barbara has reached the island of Orsova; the plains of Hungary are to the north of the river, Servia to the south.

Provisions had run short, and Timar decided to go on shore. There were no signs of human habitation at first, but Timar's sharp eyes had discovered a faint smoke rising above the tops of the poplars. He worked his way in a small skiff through the reeds, reached dry land, pushed through hedges and bushes, and then stood transfixed with admiration.

A cultivated orchard of some five or six acres was before him, and beyond that a flower-garden, full of summer bloom.

Timar went up through the orchard and flower garden to a cottage, built partly in the rock, and covered with creepers. A huge, black Newfoundland dog was lying before the door.

A woman's voice answered Timar's "good-morning," and the dog raised no objection to the captain going indoors.

"It never hurts good people," said the woman.

Timar explained his mission. The wind had brought his vessel to a standstill; he was short of provisions, and he had two passengers who would be grateful for shelter on land for the night.

The woman promised him food and a room for his passengers in exchange for grain, and at her word the dog brought him by a better path to the river.

Presently Timar was back again with Euthemio and Timea, and now a young girl appeared, whom the housewife called Noemi.

Before supper was over, the growling of the dog announced a new arrival, and a man of youthful appearance, who introduced himself as Theodor Krisstyan, an old friend of the lady of the house, whom he called Madame Therese, entered and made himself quickly at home. It was plain that his hostess both feared and disliked Theodor, while Timar, who had met him before, regarded him as a spy in the pay of the Turkish government.

In the morning the wind had gone down, Theodor had vanished, and Timar and his passengers prepared to renew their journey.

Therese told Timar her story before he left; how she and her daughter Noemi had lived there for twelve years, and who the objectionable Theodor was. Then she added, in a whisper, "I fancy this man Krisstyan's visit was either on your account, or that of the other gentleman. Be on your guard if either of you dread the discovery of a secret."

Trikaliss looked very gloomy when he heard the stranger had left before sunrise, and the following night he called Timar to his cabin.

"I am dying," he said. "I want to die—I have taken poison. Timea will not wake till all is over. My true name is not Euthemio Trikaliss, but Ali Tschorbadschi. I was once governor of Candia, and then treasurer in Stamboul. You know there is a revolution proceeding in Turkey; my turn was coming. Not that I was a conspirator, but the treasury wanted my money and the seraglio my daughter. Death is easy for me, but I will not let my daughter go into the harem nor myself be made a beggar. Therefore I hired your vessel, and loaded it with grain. The owner, Athanas Brazovics, is a connection of mine; I have often shown him kindness, he can return it now. By a miracle we got safely through the rocks and whirlpools of the river, and eluded the pursuit of the Turkish brigantine, and now I stumble over a straw into my grave.

"That man who followed us last evening was a spy of the Turkish government. He recognised me, and sealed my fate. The government would not demand me from Austria as a political refugee, but as a thief. This is unjust, for what I took was my own. But I am pursued as a thief, and Austria gives up escaped thieves if Turkish spies can trace them. By dying I can save my daughter and her property. Swear to me by your faith and your honour you will carry out my instructions. Here in this casket is about a thousand ducats. Take Timea to Athanas Brazovics, and beg him to adopt my daughter. Give him the money, he must spend it on the education of the child, and give him also the cargo, and beg him to be present when the sacks are emptied. You understand?"

The dying man looked in Timar's face, and struggled for breath. "Yes—the Red Crescent!" he stammered. "The Red Crescent!" Then the death-throes closed his lips—one struggle, and he was a corpse.

II.—Timor Tempted and Fallen

When the St. Barbara had nearly reached Komorn it struck an uprooted tree, lying in ambush under water, and immediately began to sink. It is absolutely impossible to save a vessel wrecked in this way. The crew all left the sinking craft, and Timar rescued Timea, and with her the casket with the thousand ducats.