Of all the superstitions prevalent amongst the natives of Ireland
at any period, past or present, there is none so grand or fanciful,
none which has been so universally assented to or so cordially
cherished, as the belief in the existence of the banshee. There
are very few, however remotely acquainted with Irish life or Irish
history, but must have heard or read of the Irish banshee; still,
as there are different stories and different opinions afloat respecting
this strange being, I think a little explanation concerning her
appearance, functions, and habits will not be unacceptable to my
readers.

The banshee, then, is said to be an immaterial and immortal being,
attached, time out of mind, to various respectable and ancient
families in Ireland, and is said always to appear to announce, by
cries and lamentations, the death of any member of that family to
which she belongs. She always comes at night, a short time previous to
the death of the fated one, and takes her stand outside, convenient
to the house, and there utters the most plaintive cries and
lamentations, generally in some unknown language, and in a tone
of voice resembling a human female. She continues her visits night
after night, unless vexed or annoyed, until the mourned object dies,
and sometimes she is said to continue about the house for several
nights after. Sometimes she is said to appear in the shape of a
most beautiful young damsel, and dressed in the most elegant and
fantastic garments; but her general appearance is in the likeness
of a very old woman, of small stature and bending and decrepit form,
enveloped in a winding-sheet or grave-dress, and her long, white,
hoary hair waving over her shoulders and descending to her feet.
At other times she is dressed in the costume of the middle ages–the
different articles of her clothing being of the richest material
and of a sable hue. She is very shy and easily irritated, and, when
once annoyed or vexed, she flies away, and never returns during the
same generation. When the death of the person whom she mourns is
contingent, or to occur by unforeseen accident, she is particularly
agitated and troubled in her appearance, and unusually loud
and mournful in her lamentations. Some would fain have it that
this strange being is actuated by a feeling quite inimical to the
interests of the family which she haunts, and that she comes with joy
and triumph to announce their misfortunes. This opinion, however,
is rejected by most people, who imagine her their most devoted friend,
and that she was, at some remote period, a member of the family,
and once existed on the earth in life and loveliness. It is not
every Irish family can claim the honour of an attendant banshee;
they must be respectably descended, and of ancient line, to have
any just pretensions to a warning spirit. However, she does not
appear to be influenced by the difference of creed or clime, provided
there be no other impediment, as several Protestant families of
Norman and Anglo-Saxon origin boast of their own banshee; and to
this hour several noble and distinguished families in the country
feel proud of the surveillance of that mysterious being. Neither
is she influenced by the circumstances of rank or fortune, as she
is oftener found frequenting the cabin of the peasant than the
baronial mansion of the lord of thousands. Even the humble family
to which the writer of this tale belongs has long claimed the
honourable appendage of a banshee; and it may, perhaps, excite an
additional interest in my readers when I inform them that my present
story is associated with her last visit to that family.

Some years ago there dwelt in the vicinity of Mountrath, in the
Queen’s County, a farmer, whose name for obvious reasons we shall
not at present disclose. He never was married, and his only domestics
were a servant-boy and an old woman, a housekeeper, who had long
been a follower or dependent of the family. He was born and educated
in the Roman Catholic Church, but on arriving at manhood, for
reasons best known to himself, he abjured the tenets of that creed
and conformed to the doctrines of Protestantism. However, in after
years he seemed to waver, and refused going to church, and by his
manner of living seemed to favour the dogmas of infidelity or atheism.
He was rather dark and reserved in his manner, and oftentimes sullen
and gloomy in his temper; and this, joined with his well-known
disregard of religion, served to render him somewhat unpopular
amongst his neighbours and acquaintances. However, he was in general
respected, and was never insulted or annoyed. He was considered
as an honest, inoffensive man, and as he was well supplied with
firearms and ammunition,–in the use of which he was well practised,
having, in his early days, served several years in a yeomanry
corps,–few liked to disturb him, even had they been so disposed.
He was well educated, and decidedly hostile to every species of
superstition, and was constantly jeering his old housekeeper, who
was extremely superstitious, and pretended to be entirely conversant
with every matter connected with witchcraft and the fairy world.
He seldom darkened a neighbour’s door, and scarcely ever asked any
one to enter his, but generally spent his leisure hours in reading,
of which he was extremely fond, or in furbishing his firearms, to
which he was still more attached, or in listening to and laughing
at the wild and blood-curdling stories of old Moya, with which her
memory abounded. Thus he spent his time until the period at which
our tale commences, when he was about fifty years of age, and old
Moya, the housekeeper, had become extremely feeble, stooped, and
of very ugly and forbidding exterior. One morning in the month of
November, A.D. 1818, this man arose before daylight, and on coming
out of the apartment where he slept he was surprised at finding old
Moya in the kitchen, sitting over the raked-up fire, and smoking
her tobacco-pipe in a very serious and meditative mood.

“Arrah, Moya,” said he, “what brings you out of your bed so early?”

“Och musha, I dunna,” replied the old woman; “I was so uneasy all
night that I could not sleep a wink, and I got up to smoke a blast,
thinkin’ that it might drive away the weight that’s on my heart.”

“And what ails you, Moya? Are you sick, or what came over you?”

“No, the Lord be praised! I am not sick, but my heart is sore, and
there’s a load on my spirits that would kill a hundred.”

“Maybe you were dreaming, or something that way,” said the man,
in a bantering tone, and suspecting, from the old woman’s grave
manner, that she was labouring under some mental delusion.

“Dreaming!” reechoed Moya, with a bitter sneer; “ay, dreaming.
Och, I wish to God I was only dreaming; but I am very much afraid
it is worse than that, and that there is trouble and misfortune
hanging over uz.”

“And what makes you think so, Moya?” asked he, with a half-suppressed
smile.

Moya, aware of his well-known hostility to every species of
superstition, remained silent, biting her lips and shaking her gray
head prophetically.

“Why don’t you answer me, Moya?” again asked the man.

“Och,” said Moya, “I am heart-scalded to have it to tell you, and I
know you will laugh at me; but, say what you will, there is something
bad over uz, for the banshee was about the house all night, and
she has me almost frightened out of my wits with her shouting and
bawling.”

The man was aware of the banshee’s having been long supposed to
haunt his family, but often scouted that supposition; yet, as it
was some years since he had last heard of her visiting the place,
he was not prepared for the freezing announcement of old Moya.
He turned as pale as a corpse, and trembled excessively; at last,
recollecting himself, he said, with a forced smile:

“And how do you know it was the banshee, Moya?”

“How do I know?” reiterated Moya, tauntingly. “Didn’t I see and
hear her several times during the night? and more than that, didn’t
I hear the dead-coach rattling round the house, and through the
yard, every night at midnight this week back, as if it would tear
the house out of the foundation?”

The man smiled faintly; he was frightened, yet was ashamed to appear
so. He again said:

“And did you ever see the banshee before, Moya?”

“Yes,” replied Moya, “often. Didn’t I see her when your mother
died? Didn’t I see her when your brother was drowned? and sure,
there wasn’t one of the family that went these sixty years that I
did not both see and hear her.”

“And where did you see her, and what way did she look to-night?”

“I saw her at the little window over my bed; a kind of reddish light
shone round the house; I looked up, and there I saw her old, pale
face and glassy eyes looking in, and she rocking herself to and
fro, and clapping her little, withered hands, and crying as if her
very heart would break.”

“Well, Moya, it’s all imagination; go, now, and prepare my breakfast,
as I want to go to Maryborough to-day, and I must be home early.”

Moya trembled; she looked at him imploringly and said: “For Heaven’s
sake, John, don’t go to-day; stay till some other day, and God
bless you; for if you go to-day I would give my oath there will
something cross you that’s bad.”

“Nonsense, woman!” said he; “make haste and get me my breakfast.”

Moya, with tears in her eyes, set about getting the breakfast
ready; and whilst she was so employed John was engaged in making
preparations for his journey.

Having now completed his other arrangements, he sat down to breakfast,
and, having concluded it, he arose to depart.

Moya ran to the door, crying loudly; she flung herself on her knees,
and said: “John, John, be advised. Don’t go to-day; take my advice;
I know more of the world than you do, and I see plainly that if
you go you will never enter this door again with your life.”

Ashamed to be influenced by the drivellings of an old cullough,
he pushed her away with his hand, and, going out to the stable,
mounted his horse and departed. Moya followed him with her eyes
whilst in sight; and when she could no longer see him, she sat down
at the fire and wept bitterly.

It was a bitter cold day, and the farmer, having finished his
business in town, feeling himself chilly, went into a public-house
to have a tumbler of punch and feed his horse; there he met an old
friend, who would not part with him until he would have another
glass with him and a little conversation, as it was many years since
they had met before. One glass brought another, and it was almost
duskish ere John thought of returning, and, having nearly ten miles
to travel, it would be dark night before he could get home. Still
his friend would not permit him to go, but called for more liquor,
and it was far advanced in the night before they parted. John,
however, had a good horse, and, having had him well fed, he did not
spare whip or spur, but dashed along at a rapid pace through the
gloom and silence of the winter’s night, and had already distanced
the town upward of five miles, when, on arriving at a very desolate
part of the road, a gunshot, fired from behind the bushes, put an
end to his mortal existence. Two strange men, who had been at the
same public-house in Maryborough drinking, observing that he had
money and learning the road that he was to travel, conspired to
rob and murder him, and waylaid him in this lonely spot for that
horrid purpose.

Poor Moya did not go to bed that night, but sat at the fire, every
moment impatiently expecting his return. Often did she listen at
the door to try if she could hear the tramp of the horse’s footsteps
approaching. But in vain; no sound met her ear except the sad
wail of the night wind, moaning fitfully through the tall bushes
which surrounded the ancient dwelling, or the sullen roar of a
little dark river, which wound its way through the lowlands at a
small distance from where she stood. Tired with watching, at length
she fell asleep on the hearth-stone; but that sleep was disturbed
and broken, and frightful and appalling dreams incessantly haunted
her imagination.

At length the darksome morning appeared struggling through the
wintry clouds, and Moya again opened the door to look out. But
what was her dismay when she found the horse standing at the stable
door without his rider, and the saddle all besmeared with clotted
blood. She raised the death-cry; the neighbours thronged round,
and it was at once declared that the hapless man was robbed and
murdered. A party on horseback immediately set forward to seek
him, and on arriving at the fatal spot he was found stretched on
his back in the ditch, his head perforated with shot and slugs,
and his body literally immersed in a pool of blood. On examining
him it was found that his money was gone, and a valuable gold
watch and appendages abstracted from his pocket. His remains were
conveyed home, and, after having been waked the customary time,
were committed to the grave of his ancestors in the little green
churchyard of the village.

Having no legitimate children, the nearest heir to his property
was a brother, a cabinet-maker, who resided in London. A letter
was accordingly despatched to the brother announcing the sad
catastrophe, and calling on him to come and take possession of the
property; and two men were appointed to guard the place until he
should arrive.

The two men delegated to act as guardians, or, as they are technically
termed, “keepers,” were old friends and comrades of the deceased,
and had served with him in the same yeomanry corps. Jack O’Malley
was a Roman Catholic–a square, stout-built, and handsome fellow,
with a pleasant word for every one, and full of that gaiety,
vivacity, and nonchalance for which the Roman Catholic peasantry
of Ireland are so particularly distinguished. He was now about
forty-five years of age, sternly attached to the dogmas of his
religion, and always remarkable for his revolutionary and anti-British
principles. He was brave as a lion, and never quailed before a man;
but, though caring so little for a living man, he was extremely
afraid of a dead one, and would go ten miles out of his road at
night to avoid passing a “rath,” or “haunted bush.” Harry Taylor,
on the other hand, was a staunch Protestant; a tall, genteel-looking
man, of proud and imperious aspect, and full of reserve and hauteur–the
natural consequence of a consciousness of political and religious
ascendency and superiority of intelligence and education, which so
conspicuously marked the demeanour of the Protestant peasantry of
those days. Harry, too, loved his glass as well as Jack, but was
of a more peaceful disposition, and as he was well educated and
intelligent, he was utterly opposed to superstition, and laughed
to scorn the mere idea of ghosts, goblins, and fairies. Thus Jack
and Harry were diametrically opposed to each other in every point
except their love of the cruiskeen, yet they never failed to seize
every opportunity of being together; and, although they often blackened
each other’s eyes in their political and religious disputes, yet
their quarrels were always amicably settled, and they never found
themselves happy but in each other’s society.

It was now the sixth or seventh night that Jack and Harry, as usual,
kept their lonely watch in the kitchen of the murdered man. A large
turf fire blazed brightly on the hearth, and on a bed of straw
in the ample chimney-corner was stretched old Moya in a profound
sleep. On the hearthstone, between the two friends, stood a small
oak table, on which was placed a large decanter of whisky, a jug
of boiled water, and a bowl of sugar; and, as if to add an idea of
security to that of comfort, on one end of the table were placed
in saltier a formidable-looking blunderbuss and a brace of large
brass pistols. Jack and his comrade perpetually renewed their
acquaintance with the whisky-bottle, and laughed and chatted and
recounted the adventures of their young days with as much hilarity as
if the house which now witnessed their mirth never echoed to the
cry of death or blood. In the course of conversation Jack mentioned
the incident of the strange appearance of the banshee, and expressed
a hope that she would not come that night to disturb their carouse.

“Banshee the devil!” shouted Harry; “how superstitious you papists
are! I would like to see the phiz of any man, dead or alive, who dare
make his appearance here to-night.” And, seizing the blunderbuss,
and looking wickedly at Jack, he vociferated, “By Hercules, I would
drive the contents of this through their sowls who dare annoy us.”

“Better for you to shoot your mother than fire at the banshee,
anyhow,” remarked Jack.

“Psha!” said Harry, looking contemptuously at his companion. “I
would think no more of riddling the old jade’s hide than I would
of throwing off this tumbler;” and, to suit the action to the word,
he drained off another bumper of whisky-punch.

“Jack,” says Harry, “now that we are in such prime humour, will
you give us a song?”

“With all the veins of my heart,” says Jack. “What will it be?”

“Anything you please; your will must be my pleasure,” answered
Harry.

Jack, after coughing and clearing his pipes, chanted forth, in a bold
and musical voice, a rude rigmarole called “The Royal Blackbird,”
which, although of no intrinsic merit, yet, as it expressed sentiments
hostile to British connection and British government and favourable
to the house of Stewart, was very popular amongst the Catholic
peasantry of Ireland, whilst, on the contrary, it was looked upon
by the Protestants as highly offensive and disloyal. Harry, however,
wished his companion too well to oppose the song, and he quietly
awaited its conclusion.

“Bravo, Jack,” said Harry, as soon as the song was ended; “that
you may never lose your wind.”

“In the king’s name now I board you for another song,” says Jack.

Harry, without hesitation, recognised his friend’s right to demand
a return, and he instantly trolled forth, in a deep, sweet, and
sonorous voice, the following:

SONG.

"Ho, boys, I have a song divine!
Come, let us now in concert join,
And toast the bonny banks of Boyne--The Boyne of 'Glorious Memory.'

"On Boyne's famed banks our fathers bled;
Boyne's surges with their blood ran red;
And from the Boyne our foemen fled--Intolerance, chains, and slavery.

"Dark superstition's blood-stained sons
Pressed on, but 'crack' went William's guns,
And soon the gloomy monster runs--Fell, hydra-headed bigotry.

"Then fill your glasses high and fair,
Let shouts of triumph rend the air,
Whilst Georgy fills the regal chair
We'll never bow to Popery."

Jack, whose countenance had, from the commencement of the song,
indicated his aversion to the sentiments it expressed, now lost
all patience at hearing his darling “Popery” impugned, and, seizing
one of the pistols which lay on the table and whirling it over his
comrade’s head, swore vehemently that he would “fracture his skull
if he did not instantly drop that blackguard Orange lampoon.”

“Aisy, avhic,” said Harry, quietly pushing away the upraised arm;
“I did not oppose your bit of treason awhile ago, and besides,
the latter end of my song is more calculated to please you than to
irritate your feelings.”

Jack seemed pacified, and Harry continued his strain.

"And fill a bumper to the brim--
A flowing one--and drink to him
Who, let the world go sink or swim,
Would arm for Britain's liberty.

"No matter what may be his hue,
Or black, or white, or green, or blue,
Or Papist, Paynim, or Hindoo,
We'll drink to him right cordially."

Jack was so pleased with the friendly turn which the latter part
of Harry’s song took that he joyfully stretched out his hand, and
even joined in chorus to the concluding stanza.

The fire had now decayed on the hearth, the whisky-bottle was almost
emptied, and the two sentinels, getting drowsy, put out the candle
and laid down their heads to slumber. The song and the laugh and
the jest were now hushed, and no sound was to be heard but the
incessant “click, click,” of the clock in the inner room and the
deep, heavy breathing of old Moya in the chimney-corner.

They had slept they knew not how long when the old hag awakened
with a wild shriek. She jumped out of bed, and crouched between
the men; they started up, and asked her what had happened.

“Oh!” she exclaimed; “the banshee, the banshee! Lord have mercy on
us! she is come again, and I never heard her so wild and outrageous
before.”

Jack O’Malley readily believed old Moya’s tale; so did Harry, but
he thought it might be some one who was committing some depredation
on the premises. They both listened attentively, but could hear
nothing; they opened the kitchen door, but all was still; they
looked abroad; it was a fine, calm night, and myriads of twinkling
stars were burning in the deep-blue heavens. They proceeded around
the yard and hay-yard; but all was calm and lonely, and no sound
saluted their ears but the shrill barking of some neighbouring
cur, or the sluggish murmuring of the little tortuous river in
the distance. Satisfied that “all was right,” they again went in,
replenished the expiring fire, and sat down to finish whatever
still remained in the whisky-bottle.

They had not sat many minutes when a wild, unearthly cry was heard
without.

“The banshee again,” said Moya, faintly. Jack O’Malley’s soul
sank within him; Harry started up and seized the blunderbuss; Jack
caught his arm. “No, no, Harry, you shall not; sit down; there’s
no fear–nothing will happen us.”

Harry sat down, but still gripped the blunderbuss, and Jack lit
his tobacco-pipe, whilst the old woman was on her knees, striking
her breast, and repeating her prayers with great vehemence.

The sad cry was again heard, louder and fiercer than before. It
now seemed to proceed from the window, and again it appeared as
if issuing from the door. At times it would seem as if coming from
afar, whilst again it would appear as if coming down the chimney
or springing from the ground beneath their feet. Sometimes the cry
resembled the low, plaintive wail of a female in distress, and in
a moment it was raised to a prolonged yell, loud and furious, and
as if coming from a thousand throats; now the sound resembled a low,
melancholy chant, and then was quickly changed to a loud, broken,
demoniac laugh. It continued thus, with little intermission, for
about a quarter of an hour, when it died away, and was succeeded
by a heavy, creaking sound, as if of some large waggon, amidst
which the loud tramp of horses’ footsteps might be distinguished,
accompanied with a strong, rushing wind. This strange noise
proceeded round and round the house two or three times, then went
down the lane which led to the road, and was heard no more. Jack
O’Malley stood aghast, and Harry Taylor, with all his philosophy
and scepticism, was astonished and frightened.

“A dreadful night this, Moya,” said Jack.

“Yes,” said she, “that is the dead-coach; I often heard it before,
and have sometimes seen it.”

“Seen, did you say?” said Harry; “pray describe it.”

“Why,” replied the old crone, “it’s like any other coach, but twice
as big, and hung over with black cloth, and a black coffin on the
top of it, and drawn by headless black horses.”

“Heaven protect us!” ejaculated Jack.

“It is very strange,” remarked Harry.

“But,” continued Moya, “it always comes before the death of a
person, and I wonder what brought it now, unless it came with the
banshee.”

“Maybe it’s coming for you,” said Harry, with an arch yet subdued
smile.

“No, no,” she said; “I am none of that family at all at all.”

A solemn silence now ensued for a few minutes, and they thought all
was vanished, when again the dreadful cry struck heavily on their
ears.

“Open the door, Jack,” said Harry, “and put out Hector.”

Hector was a large and very ferocious mastiff belonging to Jack
O’Malley, and always accompanied him wherever he went.

Jack opened the door and attempted to put out the dog, but the poor
animal refused to go, and, as his master attempted to force him,
howled in a loud and mournful tone.

“You must go,” said Harry, and he caught him in his arms and flung
him over the half-door. The poor dog was scarcely on the ground when
he was whirled aloft into the air by some invisible power, and he
fell again to earth lifeless, and the pavement was besmeared with
his entrails and blood.

Harry now lost all patience, and again seizing his blunderbuss, he
exclaimed: “Come, Jack, my boy, take your pistols and follow me;
I have but one life to lose, and I will venture it to have a crack
at this infernal demon.”

“I will follow you to death’s doors,” said Jack; “but I would not
fire at the banshee for a million of worlds.”

Moya seized Harry by the skirts. “Don’t go out,” she cried; “let
her alone while she lets you alone, for an hour’s luck never shone
on any one that ever molested the banshee.”

“Psha, woman!” said Harry, and he pushed away poor Moya contemptuously.

The two men now sallied forth; the wild cry still continued, and
it seemed to issue from amongst some stacks in the hay-yard behind
the house. They went round and paused; again they heard the cry,
and Harry elevated his blunderbuss.

“Don’t fire,” said Jack.

Harry replied not; he looked scornfully at Jack, then put his finger
on the trigger, and–bang–away it exploded with a thundering sound.
An extraordinary scream was now heard, ten times louder and more
terrific than they heard before. Their hair stood erect on their
heads, and huge, round drops of sweat ran down their faces in quick
succession. A glare of reddish-blue fight shone around the stacks;
the rumbling of the dead-coach was again heard coming; it drove up
to the house, drawn by six headless sable horses, and the figure
of a withered old hag, encircled with blue flame, was seen running
nimbly across the hay-yard. She entered the ominous carriage,
and it drove away with a horrible sound. It swept through the tall
bushes which surrounded the house; and as it disappeared the old
hag cast a thrilling scowl at the two men, and waved her fleshless
arms at them vengefully. It was soon lost to sight; but the
unearthly creaking of the wheels, the tramping of the horses, and
the appalling cries of the banshee continued to assail their ears
for a considerable time after all had vanished.

The brave fellows now returned to the house; they again made fast
the door, and reloaded their arms. Nothing, however, came to disturb
them that night, nor from that time forward; and the arrival of
the dead man’s brother from London, in a few days after, relieved
them from their irksome task.

Old Moya did not live long after; she declined from that remarkable
night, and her remains were decently interred in the churchyard
adjoining the last earthly tenement of the loved family to which
she had been so long and so faithfully attached.

The insulted banshee has never since returned; and although several
members of that family have since closed their mortal career,
still the warning cry was never given; and it is supposed that the
injured spirit will never visit her ancient haunts until every one
of the existing generation shall have “slept with their fathers.”

Jack O’Malley and his friend Harry lived some years after. Their
friendship still continued undiminished; like “Tam O’Shanter” and
“Souter Johnny,” they still continued to love each other like “a
very brither”; and like that jovial pair, also, our two comrades
were often “fou for weeks thegither,” and often over their cruiskeen
would they laugh at their strange adventure with the banshee. It
is now, however, all over with them too; their race is
run, and they are now “tenants of the tomb.”

I know more about it than anyone else in the world, its present
owner not excepted. I can give its whole history, from the
Cingalese who found it, the Spanish adventurer who stole it, the
cardinal who bought it, the Pope who graciously accepted it, the
favored son of the Church who received it, the gay and giddy
duchess who pawned it, down to the eminent prelate who now holds it
in trust as a family heirloom.

It will occupy a chapter to itself in my forthcoming work on
“Historic Stones,” where full details of its weight, size, color,
and value may be found. At present I am going to relate an
incident in its history which, for obvious reasons, will not be
published–which, in fact, I trust the reader will consider related
in strict confidence.

I had never seen the stone itself when I began to write about it,
and it was not till one evening last spring, while staying with my
nephew, Sir Thomas Acton, that I came within measurable distance of
it. A dinner party was impending, and, at my instigation, the
Bishop of Northchurch and Miss Panton, his daughter and heiress,
were among the invited guests.

The dinner was a particularly good one, I remember that distinctly.
In fact, I felt myself partly responsible for it, having engaged
the new cook–a talented young Italian, pupil of the admirable old
chef at my club. We had gone over the menu carefully together,
with a result refreshing in its novelty, but not so daring as to
disturb the minds of the innocent country guests who were bidden
thereto.

The first spoonful of soup was reassuring, and I looked to the end
of the table to exchange a congratulatory glance with Leta. What
was amiss? No response. Her pretty face was flushed, her smile
constrained, she was talking with quite unnecessary empressement to
her neighbor, Sir Harry Landor, though Leta is one of those few
women who understand the importance of letting a man settle down
tranquilly and with an undisturbed mind to the business of dining,
allowing no topic of serious interest to come on before the
releves, and reserving mere conversational brilliancy for the
entremets.

Guests all right? No disappointments? I had gone through the list
with her, selecting just the right people to be asked to meet the
Landors, our new neighbors. Not a mere cumbrous county gathering,
nor yet a showy imported party from town, but a skillful blending
of both. Had anything happened already? I had been late for
dinner and missed the arrivals in the drawing-room. It was Leta’s
fault. She has got into a way of coming into my room and putting
the last touches to my toilet. I let her, for I am doubtful of
myself nowadays after many years’ dependence on the best of valets.
Her taste is generally beyond dispute, but to-day she had indulged
in a feminine vagary that provoked me and made me late for dinner.

“Are you going to wear your sapphire, Uncle Paul!” she cried in a
tone of dismay. “Oh, why not the ruby?”

“You WOULD have your way about the table decorations,” I gently
reminded her. “with that service of Crown Derby repousse and
orchids, the ruby would look absolutely barbaric. Now if you would
have had the Limoges set, white candles, and a yellow silk center–”

“Oh, but–I’m SO disappointed–I wanted the bishop to see your
ruby–or one of your engraved gems–”

“My dear, it is on the bishop’s account I put this on. You know
his daughter is heiress of the great Valdez sapphire–”

“Of course she is, and when he has the charge of a stone three
times as big as yours, what’s the use of wearing it? The ruby,
dear Uncle Paul, PLEASE!”

She was desperately in earnest I could see, and considering the
obligations which I am supposed to be under to her and Tom, it was
but a little matter to yield, but it involved a good deal of extra
trouble. Studs, sleeve-links, watch-guard, all carefully selected
to go with the sapphire, had to be changed, the emerald which I
chose as a compromise requiring more florid accompaniments of a
deeper tone of gold; and the dinner hour struck as I replaced my
jewel case, the one relic left me of a once handsome fortune, in my
fireproof safe.

The emerald looked very well that evening, however. I kept my eyes
upon it for comfort when Miss Panton proved trying.

She was a lean, yellow, dictatorial young person with no
conversation. I spoke of her father’s celebrated sapphires. “MY
sapphires,” she amended sourly; “though I am legally debarred from
making any profitable use of them.” She furthermore informed me
that she viewed them as useless gauds, which ought to be disposed
of for the benefit of the heathen. I gave the subject up, and
while she discoursed of the work of the Blue Ribbon Army among the
Bosjesmans I tried to understand a certain dislocation in the
arrangement of the table. Surely we were more or less in number
than we should be? Opposite side all right. Who was extra on
ours? I leaned forward. Lady Landor on one side of Tom, on the
other who? I caught glimpses of plumes pink and green nodding over
a dinner plate, and beneath them a pink nose in a green visage with
a nutcracker chin altogether unknown to me. A sharp gray eye shot
a sideway glance down the table and caught me peeping, and I
retreated, having only marked in addition two clawlike hands, with
pointed ruffles and a mass of brilliant rings, making good play
with a knife and fork. Who was she? At intervals a high acid
voice could be heard addressing Tom, and a laugh that made me
shudder; it had the quality of the scream of a bird of prey or the
yell of a jackal. I had heard that sort of laugh before, and it
always made me feel like a defenseless rabbit.

Every time it sounded I saw Leta’s fan flutter more furiously and
her manner grow more nervously animated. Poor dear girl! I never
in all my recollection wished a dinner at an end so earnestly so as
to assure her of my support and sympathy, though without the
faintest conception why either should be required.

The ices at last. A menu card folded in two was laid beside me. I
read it unobserved. “Keep the B. from joining us in the drawing-
room.” The B.? The bishop, of course. With pleasure. But why?
And how? THAT’S the question, never mind “why.” Could I lure him
into the library–the billiard room–the conservatory? I doubted
it, and I doubted still more what I should do with him when I got
him there.

The bishop is a grand and stately ecclesiastic of the mediaeval
type, broad-chested, deep-voiced, martial of bearing. I could
picture him charging mace in hand at the head of his vassals, or
delivering over a dissenter of the period to the rack and
thumbscrew, but not pottering among rare editions, tall copies and
Grolier bindings, nor condescending to a quiet cigar among the tree
ferns and orchids. Leta must and should be obeyed, I swore,
nevertheless, even if I were driven to lock the door in the
fearless old fashion of a bygone day, and declare I’d shoot any man
who left while a drop remained in the bottles.

The ladies were rising. The lady at the head of the line smirked
and nodded her pink plumes coquettishly at Tom, while her hawk’s
eyes roved keen and predatory over us all. She stopped suddenly,
creating a block and confusion.

“Ah, the dear bishop! YOU there, and I never saw you! You must
come and have a nice long chat presently. By-by–!” She shook her
fan at him over my shoulder and tripped off. Leta, passing me
last, gave me a look of profound despair.

“Lady Carwitchet!” somebody exclaimed. “I couldn’t believe my
eyes.”

“Thought she was dead or in penal servitude. Never should have
expected to see her HERE,” said some one else behind me
confidentially.

“What Carwitchet? Not the mother of the Carwitchet who–”

“Just so. The Carwitchet who—” Tom assented with a shrug. “We
needn’t go farther, as she’s my guest. Just my luck. I met them
at Buxton, thought them uncommonly good company–in fact,
Carwitchet laid me under a great obligation about a horse I was
nearly let in for buying–and gave them a general invitation here,
as one does, you know. Never expected her to turn up with her
luggage this afternoon just before dinner, to stay a week, or a
fortnight if Carwitchet can join her.” A groan of sympathy ran
round the table. “It can’t be helped. I’ve told you this just to
show that I shouldn’t have asked you here to meet this sort of
people of my own free will; but, as it is, please say no more about
them.” The subject was not dropped by any means, and I took care
that it should not be. At our end of the table one story after
another went buzzing round–sotto voce, out of deference to Tom–
but perfectly audible.

“Carwitchet? Ah, yes. Mixed up in that Rawlings divorce case,
wasn’t he? A bad lot. Turned out of the Dragoon Guards for
cheating at cards, or picking pockets, or something–remember the
row at the Cerulean Club? Scandalous exposure–and that forged
letter business–oh, that was the mother–prosecution hushed up
somehow. Ought to be serving her fourteen years–and that business
of poor Farrars, the banker–got hold of some of his secrets and
blackmailed him till he blew his brains out–”

It was so exciting that I clean forgot the bishop, till a low gasp
at my elbow startled me. He was lying back in his chair, his
mighty shaven jowl a ghastly white, his fierce imperious eyebrows
drooping limp over his fishlike eyes, his splendid figure shrunk
and contracted. He was trying with a shaken hand to pour out wine.
The decanter clattered against the glass and the wine spilled on
the cloth.

“I’m afraid you find the room too warm. Shall we go into the
library?”

He rose hastily and followed me like a lamb.

He recovered himself once we got into the hall, and affably
rejected all my proffers of brandy and soda–medical advice–
everything else my limited experience could suggest. He only
demanded his carriage “directly” and that Miss Panton should be
summoned forthwith.

I made the best use I could of the time left me.

“I’m uncommonly sorry you do not feel equal to staying a little
longer, my lord. I counted on showing you my few trifles of
precious stones, the salvage from the wreck of my possessions.
Nothing in comparison with your own collection.”

The bishop clasped his hand over his heart. His breath came short
and quick.

“A return of that dizziness,” he explained with a faint smile.
“You are thinking of the Valdez sapphire, are you not? Some day,”
he went on with forced composure, “I may have the pleasure of
showing it to you. It is at my banker’s just now.”

Miss Panton’s steps were heard in the ball. “You are well known as
a connoisseur, Mr. Acton,” he went on hurriedly. “Is your
collection valuable? If so, keep it safe; don’t trust a ring off
your hand, or the key of your jewel case out of your pocket till
the house is clear again.” The words rushed from his lips in an
impetuous whisper, he gave me a meaning glance, and departed with
his daughter. I went back to the drawing-room, my head swimming
with bewilderment.

“What! The dear bishop gone!” screamed Lady Carwitchet from the
central ottoman where she sat, surrounded by most of the gentlemen,
all apparently well entertained by her conversation. “And I wanted
to talk over old times with him so badly. His poor wife was my
greatest friend. Mira Montanaro, daughter of the great banker, you
know. It’s not possible that that miserable little prig is my poor
Mira’s girl. The heiress of all the Montanaros in a black lace
gown worth twopence! When I think of her mother’s beauty and her
toilets! Does she ever wear the sapphires? Has anyone ever seen
her in them? Eleven large stones in a lovely antique setting, and
the great Valdez sapphire–worth thousands and thousands–for the
pendant.” No one replied. “I wanted to get a rise out of the
bishop to-night. It used to make him so mad when I wore this.”

She fumbled among the laces at her throat, and clawed out a pendant
that hung to a velvet band around her neck. I fairly gasped when
she removed her hand. A sapphire of irregular shape flashed out
its blue lightning on us. Such a stone! A true, rich, cornflower
blue even by that wretched artificial light, with soft velvety
depths of color and dazzling clearness of tint in its lights and
shades–a stone to remember! I stretched out my hand
involuntarily, but Lady Carwitchet drew back with a coquettish
squeal. “No! no! You mustn’t look any closer. Tell me what you
think of it now. Isn’t it pretty?”

“Superb!” was all I could ejaculate, staring at the azure splendor
of that miraculous jewel in a sort of trance.

She gave a shrill cackling laugh of mockery.

“The great Mr. Acton taken in by a bit of Palais Royal gimcrackery!
What an advertisement for Bogaerts et Cie! They are perfect
artists in frauds. Don’t you remember their stand at the first
Paris Exhibition? They had imitations there of every celebrated
stone; but I never expected anything made by man could delude Mr.
Acton, never!” And she went off into another mocking cackle, and
all the idiots round her haw-hawed knowingly, as if they had seen
the joke all along. I was too bewildered to reply, which was on
the whole lucky. “I suppose I mustn’t tell why I came to give
quite a big sum in francs for this?” she went on, tapping her
closed lips with her closed fan, and cocking her eye at us all like
a parrot wanting to be coaxed to talk. “It’s a queer story.”

I didn’t want to hear her anecdote, especially as I saw she wanted
to tell it. What I DID want was to see that pendant again. She
had thrust it back among her laces, only the loop which held it to
the velvet being visible. It was set with three small sapphires,
and even from a distance I clearly made them out to be imitations,
and poor ones. I felt a queer thrill of self-mistrust. Was the
large stone no better? Could I, even for an instant, have been
dazzled by a sham, and a sham of that quality? The events of the
evening had flurried and confused me. I wished to think them over
in quiet. I would go to bed.

My rooms at the Manor are the best in the house. Leta will have it
so. I must explain their position for a reason to be understood
later. My bedroom is in the southeast angle of the house; it opens
on one side into a sitting-room in the east corridor, the rest of
which is taken up by the suite of rooms occupied by Tom and Leta;
and on the other side into my bathroom, the first room in the south
corridor, where the principal guest chambers are, to one of which
it was originally the dressing-room. Passing this room I noticed a
couple of housemaids preparing it for the night, and discovered
with a shiver that Lady Carwitchet was to be my next-door neighbor.
It gave me a turn.

The bishop’s strange warning must have unnerved me. I was
perfectly safe from her ladyship. The disused door into her room
was locked, and the key safe on the housekeeper’s bunch. It was
also undiscoverable on her side, the recess in which it stood being
completely filled by a large wardrobe. On my side hung a thick
sound-proof portiere. Nevertheless, I resolved not to use that
room while she inhabited the next one. I removed my possessions,
fastened the door of communication with my bedroom, and dragged a
heavy ottoman across it.

Then I stowed away my emerald in my strong-box. It is built into
the wall of my sitting-room, and masked by the lower part of an old
carved oak bureau. I put away even the rings I wore habitually,
keeping out only an inferior cat’s-eye for workaday wear. I had
just made all safe when Leta tapped at the door and came in to wish
me good night. She looked flushed and harassed and ready to cry.
“Uncle Paul,” she began, “I want you to go up to town at once, and
stay away till I send for you.”

“My dear–!” I was too amazed to expostulate.

“We’ve got a–a pestilence among us,” she declared, her foot
tapping the ground angrily, “and the least we can do is to go into
quarantine. Oh, I’m so sorry and so ashamed! The poor bishop!
I’ll take good care that no one else shall meet that woman here.
You did your best for me, Uncle Paul, and managed admirably, but it
was all no use. I hoped against hope that what between the dusk of
the drawing-room before dinner, and being put at opposite ends of
the table, we might get through without a meeting–”

“But, my dear, explain. Why shouldn’t the bishop and Lady
Carwitchet meet? Why is it worse for him than anyone else?”

“Why? I thought everybody had heard of that dreadful wife of his
who nearly broke his heart. If he married her for her money it
served him right, but Lady Landor says she was very handsome and
really in love with him at first. Then Lady Carwitchet got hold of
her and led her into all sorts of mischief. She left her husband–
he was only a rector with a country living in those days–and went
to live in town, got into a horrid fast set, and made herself
notorious. You MUST have heard of her.”

“I heard of her sapphires, my dear. But I was in Brazil at the
time.”

“I wish you had been at home. You might have found her out. She
was furious because her husband refused to let her wear the great
Valdez sapphire. It had been in the Montanaro family for some
generations, and her father settled it first on her and then on her
little girl–the bishop being trustee. He felt obliged to take
away the little girl, and send her off to be brought up by some old
aunts in the country, and he locked up the sapphire. Lady
Carwitchet tells as a splendid joke how they got the copy made in
Paris, and it did just as well for the people to stare at. No
wonder the bishop hates the very name of the stone.”

“How long will she stay here?” I asked dismally.

“Till Lord Carwitchet can come and escort her to Paris to visit
some American friends. Goodness knows when that will be! Do go up
to town, Uncle Paul!”

I refused indignantly. The very least I could do was to stand by
my poor young relatives in their troubles and help them through. I
did so. I wore that inferior cat’s eye for six weeks!

It is a time I cannot think of even now without a shudder. The
more I saw of that terrible old woman the more I detested her, and
we saw a very great deal of her. Leta kept her word, and neither
accepted nor gave invitations all that time. We were cut off from
all society but that of old General Fairford, who would go anywhere
and meet anyone to get a rubber after dinner; the doctor, a
sporting widower; and the Duberlys, a giddy, rather rackety young
couple who had taken the Dower House for a year. Lady Carwitchet
seemed perfectly content. She reveled in the soft living and good
fare of the Manor House, the drives in Leta’s big barouche, and
Domenico’s dinners, as one to whom short commons were not unknown.
She had a hungry way of grabbing and grasping at everything she
could–the shillings she won at whist, the best fruit at dessert,
the postage stamps in the library inkstand–that was infinitely
suggestive. Sometimes I could have pitied her, she was so greedy,
so spiteful, so friendless. She always made me think of some
wicked old pirate putting into a peaceful port to provision and
repair his battered old hulk, obliged to live on friendly terms
with the natives, but his piratical old nostrils asniff for plunder
and his piratical old soul longing to be off marauding once more.
When would that be? Not till the arrival in Paris of her
distinguished American friends, of whom we heard a great deal.
“Charming people, the Bokums of Chicago, the American branch of the
English Beauchamps, you know!” They seemed to be taking an
unconscionable time to get there. She would have insisted on being
driven over to Northchurch to call at the palace, but that the
bishop was understood to be holding confirmations at the other end
of the diocese.

I was alone in the house one afternoon sitting by my window, toying
with the key of my safe, and wondering whether I dare treat myself
to a peep at my treasures, when a suspicious movement in the park
below caught my attention. A black figure certainly dodged from
behind one tree to the next, and then into the shadow of the park
paling instead of keeping to the footpath. It looked queer. I
caught up my field glass and marked him at one point where he was
bound to come into the open for a few steps. He crossed the strip
of turf with giant strides and got into cover again, but not quick
enough to prevent me recognizing him. It was–great heavens!–the
bishop! In a soft hat pulled over his forehead, with a long cloak
and a big stick, he looked like a poacher.

Guided by some mysterious instinct I hurried to meet him. I opened
the conservatory door, and in he rushed like a hunted rabbit.
Without explanation I led him up the wide staircase to my room,
where he dropped into a chair and wiped his face.

“You are astonished, Mr. Acton,” he panted. “I will explain
directly. Thanks.” He tossed off the glass of brandy I had poured
out without waiting for the qualifying soda, and looked better.

“I am in serious trouble. You can help me. I’ve had a shock to-
day–a grievous shock.” He stopped and tried to pull himself
together. “I must trust you implicitly, Mr. Acton, I have no
choice. Tell me what you think of this.” He drew a case from his
breast pocket and opened it. “I promised you should see the Valdez
sapphire. Look there!”

The Valdez sapphire! A great big shining lump of blue crystal–
flawless and of perfect color–that was all. I took it up,
breathed on it, drew out my magnifier, looked at it in one light
and another. What was wrong with it? I could not say. Nine
experts out of ten would undoubtedly have pronounced the stone
genuine. I, by virtue of some mysterious instinct that has
hitherto always guided me aright, was the unlucky tenth. I looked
at the bishop. His eyes met mine. There was no need of spoken
word between us.

“Has Lady Carwitchet shown you her sapphire?” was his most
unexpected question. “She has? Now, Mr. Acton, on your honor as a
connoisseur and a gentleman, which of the two is the Valdez?”

“Not this one.” I could say naught else.

“You were my last hope.” He broke off, and dropped his face on his
folded arms with a groan that shook the table on which he rested,
while I stood dismayed at myself for having let so hasty a judgment
escape me. He lifted a ghastly countenance to me. “She vowed she
would see me ruined and disgraced. I made her my enemy by crossing
some of her schemes once, and she never forgives. She will keep
her word. I shall appear before the world as a fraudulent trustee.
I can neither produce the valuable confided to my charge nor make
the loss good. I have only an incredible story to tell,” be
dropped his head and groaned again. “Who will believe me?”

“I will, for one.”

“Ah, you? Yes, you know her. She took my wife from me, Mr. Acton.
Heaven only knows what the hold was that she had over poor Mira.
She encouraged her to set me at defiance and eventually to leave
me. She was answerable for all the scandalous folly and
extravagance of poor Mira’s life in Paris–spare me the telling of
the story. She left her at last to die alone and uncared for. I
reached my wife to find her dying of a fever from which Lady
Carwitchet and her crew had fled. She was raving in delirium, and
died without recognizing me. Some trouble she had been in which I
must never know oppressed her. At the very last she roused from a
long stupor and spoke to the nurse. ‘Tell him to get the sapphire
back–she stole it. She has robbed my child.’ Those were her last
words. The nurse understood no English, and treated them as
wandering; but I heard them, and knew she was sane when she spoke.”

“What did you do?”

“What could I? I saw Lady Carwitchet, who laughed at me, and
defied me to make her confess or disgorge. I took the pendant to
more than one eminent jeweler on pretense of having the setting
seen to, and all have examined and admired without giving a hint of
there being anything wrong. I allowed a celebrated mineralogist to
see it; he gave no sign–”

“Perhaps they are right and we are wrong.”

“No, no. Listen. I heard of an old Dutchman celebrated for his
imitations. I went to him, and he told me at once that he had been
allowed by Montanaro to copy the Valdez–setting and all–for the
Paris Exhibition. I showed him this, and he claimed it for his own
work at once, and pointed out his private mark upon it. You must
take your magnifier to find it; a Greek Beta. He also told me that
he had sold it to Lady Carwitchet more than a year ago.

“It is a terrible position.”

“It is. My co-trustee died lately. I have never dared to have
another appointed. I am bound to hand over the sapphire to my
daughter on her marriage, if her husband consents to take the name
of Montanaro.”

The bishop’s face was ghastly pale, and the moisture started on his
brow. I racked my brain for some word of comfort.

“Miss Panton may never marry.”

“But she will!” he shouted. “That is the blow that has been dealt
me to-day. My chaplain–actually, my chaplain–tells me that he is
going out as a temperance missionary to equatorial Africa, and has
the assurance to add that he believes my daughter is not indisposed
to accompany him!” His consummating wrath acted as a momentary
stimulant. He sat upright, his eyes flashing and his brow
thunderous. I felt for that chaplain. Then he collapsed
miserably. “The sapphires will have to be produced, identified,
revalued. How shall I come out of it? Think of the disgrace, the
ripping up of old scandals! Even if I were to compound with Lady
Carwitchet, the sum she hinted at was too monstrous. She wants
more than my money. Help me, Mr. Acton! For the sake of your own
family interests, help me!”

“I beg your pardon–family interests? I don’t understand.”

“If my daughter is childless, her next of kin is poor Marmaduke
Panton, who is dying at Cannes, not married, or likely to marry;
and failing him, your nephew, Sir Thomas Acton, succeeds.”

My nephew Tom! Leta, or Leta’s baby, might come to be the possible
inheritor of the great Valdez sapphire! The blood rushed to my
head as I looked at the great shining swindle before me. “What
diabolic jugglery was at work when the exchange was made?” I
demanded fiercely.

“It must have been on the last occasion of her wearing the
sapphires in London. I ought never to have let her out of my
sight”

“You must put a stop to Miss Panton’s marriage in the first place,”
I pronounced as autocratically as he could have done himself.

“Not to be thought of,” he admitted helplessly. “Mira has my force
of character. She knows her rights, and she will have her jewels.
I want you to take charge of the–thing for me. If it’s in the
house she’ll make me produce it. She’ll inquire at the banker’s.
If YOU have it we can gain time, if but for a day or two.” He
broke off. Carriage wheels were crashing on the gravel outside.
We looked at one another in consternation. Flight was imperative.
I hurried him downstairs and out of the conservatory just as the
door bell rang. I think we both lost our heads in the confusion.
He shoved the case into my hands, and I pocketed it, without a
thought of the awful responsibility I was incurring, and saw him
disappear into the shelter of the friendly night.

When I think of what my feelings were that evening–of my murderous
hatred of that smirking, jesting Jezebel who sat opposite me at
dinner, my wrathful indignation at the thought of the poor little
expected heir defrauded ere his birth; of the crushing contempt I
felt for myself and the bishop as a pair of witless idiots unable
to see our way out of the dilemma; all this boiling and surging
through my soul, I can only wonder–Domenico having given himself a
holiday, and the kitchen maid doing her worst and wickedest–that
gout or jaundice did not put an end to this story at once.

“Uncle Paul!” Leta was looking her sweetest when she tripped into
my room next morning. “I’ve news for you. She,” pointing a
delicate forefinger in the direction of the corridor, “is going!
Her Bokums have reached Paris at last, and sent for her to join
them at the Grand Hotel.”

I was thunderstruck. The longed-for deliverance had but come to
remove hopelessly and forever out of my reach Lady Carwitchet and
the great Valdez sapphire.

“Why, aren’t you overjoyed? I am. We are going to celebrate the
event by a dinner party. Tom’s hospitable soul is vexed by the
lack of entertainment we had provided her. We must ask the
Brownleys some day or other, and they will be delighted to meet
anything in the way of a ladyship, or such smart folks as the
Duberly-Parkers. Then we may as well have the Blomfields, and air
that awful modern Sevres dessert service she gave us when we were
married.” I had no objection to make, and she went on, rubbing her
soft cheek against my shoulder like the purring little cat she was:
“Now I want you to do something to please me–and Mrs. Blomfield.
She has set her heart on seeing your rubies, and though I know you
hate her about as much as you do that Sevres china–”

“What! Wear my rubies with that! I won’t. I’ll tell you what I
will do, though. I’ve got some carbuncles as big as prize
gooseberries, a whole set. Then you have only to put those
Bohemian glass vases and candelabra on the table, and let your
gardener do his worst with his great forced, scentless, vulgar
blooms, and we shall all be in keeping.” Leta pouted. An idea
struck me. “Or I’ll do as you wish, on one condition. You get
Lady Carwitchet to wear her big sapphire, and don’t tell her I wish
it.”

I lived through the next few days as one in some evil dream. The
sapphires, like twin specters, haunted me day and night. Was ever
man so tantalized? To hold the shadow and see the substance
dangled temptingly within reach. The bishop made no sign of
ridding me of my unwelcome charge, and the thought of what might
happen in a case of burglary–fire–earthquake–made me start and
tremble at all sorts of inopportune moments.

I kept faith with Leta, and reluctantly produced my beautiful
rubies on the night of her dinner party. Emerging from my room I
came full upon Lady Carwitchet in the corridor. She was dressed
for dinner, and at her throat I caught the blue gleam of the great
sapphire. Leta had kept faith with me. I don’t know what I
stammered in reply to her ladyship’s remarks; my whole soul was
absorbed in the contemplation of the intoxicating loveliness of the
gem. THAT a Palais Royal deception! Incredible! My fingers
twitched, my breath came short and fierce with the lust of
possession. She must have seen the covetous glare in my eyes. A
look of gratified spiteful complacency overspread her features, as
she swept on ahead and descended the stairs before me. I followed
her to the drawing-room door. She stopped suddenly, and murmuring
something unintelligible hurried back again.

Everybody was assembled there that I expected to see, with an
addition. Not a welcome one by the look on Tom’s face. He stood
on the hearthrug conversing with a great hulking, high-shouldered
fellow, sallow-faced, with a heavy mustache and drooping eyelids,
from the corners of which flashed out a sudden suspicious look as I
approached, which lighted up into a greedy one as it rested on my
rubies, and seemed unaccountably familiar to me, till Lady
Carwitchet tripping past me exclaimed:

“He has come at last! My naughty, naughty boy! Mr. Acton, this is
my son, Lord Carwitchet!”

I broke off short in the midst of my polite acknowledgments to
stare blankly at her. The sapphire was gone! A great gilt cross,
with a Scotch pebble like an acid drop, was her sole decoration.

“I had to put my pendant away,” she explained confidentially; “the
clasp had got broken somehow.” I didn’t believe a word.

Lord Carwitchet contributed little to the general entertainment at
dinner, but fell into confidential talk with Mrs. Duberly-Parker.
I caught a few unintelligible remarks across the table. They
referred, I subsequently discovered, to the lady’s little book on
Northchurch races, and I recollected that the Spring Meeting was
on, and to-morrow “Cup Day.” After dinner there was great talk
about getting up a party to go on General Fairford’s drag. Lady
Carwitchet was in ecstasies and tried to coax me into joining.
Leta declined positively. Tom accepted sulkily.

The look in Lord Carwitchet’s eye returned to my mind as I locked
up my rubies that night. It made him look so like his mother! I
went round my fastenings with unusual care. Safe and closets and
desk and doors, I tried them all. Coming at last to the bathroom,
it opened at once. It was the housemaid’s doing. She had
evidently taken advantage of my having abandoned the room to give
it “a thorough spring cleaning,” and I anathematized her. The
furniture was all piled together and veiled with sheets, the carpet
and felt curtain were gone, there were new brooms about. As I
peered around, a voice close at my ear made me jump–Lady
Carwitchet’s!

“I tell you I have nothing, not a penny! I shall have to borrow my
train fare before I can leave this. They’ll be glad enough to lend
it.”

Not only had the portiere been removed, but the door behind it had
been unlocked and left open for convenience of dusting behind the
wardrobe. I might as well have been in the bedroom.

“Don’t tell me,” I recognized Carwitchet’s growl. “You’ve not been
here all this time for nothing. You’ve been collecting for a
Kilburn cot or getting subscriptions for the distressed Irish
landlords. I know you. Now I’m not going to see myself ruined for
the want of a paltry hundred or so. I tell you the colt is a dead
certainty. If I could have got a thousand or two on him last week,
we might have ended our dog days millionaires. Hand over what you
can. You’ve money’s worth, if not money. Where’s that sapphire
you stole?”

“I didn’t. I can show you the receipted bill. All I possess is
honestly come by. What could you do with it, even if I gave it
you? You couldn’t sell it as the Valdez, and you can’t get it cut
up as you might if it were real.”

“If it’s only bogus, why are you always in such a flutter about it?
I’ll do something with it, never fear. Hand over.”

“I can’t. I haven’t got it. I had to raise something on it before
I left town.”

“Will you swear it’s not in that wardrobe? I dare say you will. I
mean to see. Give me those keys.”

I heard a struggle and a jingle, then the wardrobe door must have
been flung open, for a streak of light struck through a crack in
the wood of the back. Creeping close and peeping through, I could
see an awful sight. Lady Carwitchet in a flannel wrapper, minus
hair, teeth, complexion, pointing a skinny forefinger that quivered
with rage at her son, who was out of the range of my vision.

“Stop that, and throw those keys down here directly, or I’ll rouse
the house. Sir Thomas is a magistrate, and will lock you up as
soon as look at you.” She clutched at the bell rope as she spoke.
“I’ll swear I’m in danger of my life from you and give you in
charge. Yes, and when you’re in prison I’ll keep you there till
you die. I’ve often thought I’d do it. How about the hotel
robberies last summer at Cowes, eh? Mightn’t the police be
grateful for a hint or two? And how about–”

The keys fell with a crash on the bed, accompanied by some bad
language in an apologetic tone, and the door slammed to. I crept
trembling to bed.

This new and horrible complication of the situation filled me with
dismay. Lord Carwitchet’s wolfish glance at my rubies took a new
meaning. They were safe enough, I believed–but the sapphire! If
he disbelieved his mother, how long would she be able to keep it
from his clutches? That she had some plot of her own of which the
bishop would eventually be the victim I did not doubt, or why had
she not made her bargain with him long ago? But supposing she took
fright, lost her head, allowed her son to wrest the jewel from her,
or gave consent to its being mutilated, divided! I lay in a cold
perspiration till morning.

My terrors haunted me all day. They were with me at breakfast time
when Lady Carwitchet, tripping in smiling, made a last attempt to
induce me to accompany her and keep her “bad, bad boy” from getting
among “those horrid betting men.”

They haunted me through the long peaceful day with Leta and the
tete-a-tete dinner, but they swarmed around and beset me sorest
when, sitting alone over my sitting-room fire, I listened for the
return of the drag party. I read my newspaper and brewed myself
some hot strong drink, but there comes a time of night when no fire
can warm and no drink can cheer. The bishop’s despairing face kept
me company, and his troubles and the wrongs of the future heir took
possession of me. Then the uncanny noises that make all old houses
ghostly during the small hours began to make themselves heard.
Muffled footsteps trod the corridor, stopping to listen at every
door, door latches gently clicked, boards creaked unreasonably,
sounds of stealthy movements came from the locked-up bathroom. The
welcome crash of wheels at last, and the sound of the front-door
bell. I could hear Lady Carwitchet making her shrill adieux to her
friends and her steps in the corridor. She was softly humming a
little song as she approached. I heard her unlock her bedroom door
before she entered–an odd thing to do. Tom came sleepily
stumbling to his room later. I put my head out. “Where is Lord
Carwitchet?”

“Haven’t you seen him? He left us hours ago. Not come home, eh?
Well, he’s welcome to stay away. I don’t want to see more of him.”
Tom’s brow was dark and his voice surly. “I gave him to understand
as much.” Whatever had happened, Tom was evidently too disgusted
to explain just then.

I went back to my fire unaccountably relieved, and brewed myself
another and a stronger brew. It warmed me this time, but excited
me foolishly. There must be some way out of the difficulty. I
felt now as if I could almost see it if I gave my mind to it. Why–
suppose–there might be no difficulty after all! The bishop was a
nervous old gentleman. He might have been mistaken all through,
Bogaerts might have been mistaken, I might–no. I could not have
been mistaken–or I thought not. I fidgeted and fumed and argued
with myself till I found I should have no peace of mind without a
look at the stone in my possession, and I actually went to the safe
and took the case out.

The sapphire certainly looked different by lamplight. I sat and
stared, and all but over-persuaded my better judgment into giving
it a verdict. Bogaerts’s mark–I suddenly remembered it. I took
my magnifier and held the pendant to the light. There, scratched
upon the stone, was the Greek Beta! There came a tap on my door,
and before I could answer, the handle turned softly and Lord
Carwitchet stood before me. I whipped the case into my dressing-
gown pocket and stared at him. He was not pleasant to look at,
especially at that time of night. He had a disheveled, desperate
air, his voice was hoarse, his red-rimmed eyes wild.

“I beg your pardon,” he began civilly enough. “I saw your light
burning, and thought, as we go by the early train to-morrow, you
might allow me to consult you now on a little business of my
mother’s.” His eyes roved about the room. Was he trying to find
the whereabouts of my safe? “You know a lot about precious stones,
don’t you?”

“So my friends are kind enough to say. Won’t you sit down? I have
unluckily little chance of indulging the taste on my own account,”
was my cautious reply.

“But you’ve written a book about them, and know them when you see
them, don’t you? Now my mother has given me something, and would
like you to give a guess at its value. Perhaps you can put me in
the way of disposing of it?”

“I certainly can do so if it is worth anything. Is that it?” I
was in a fever of excitement, for I guessed what was clutched in
his palm. He held out to me the Valdez sapphire.

How it shone and sparkled like a great blue star! I made myself a
deprecating smile as I took it from him, but how dare I call it
false to its face? As well accuse the sun in heaven of being a
cheap imitation. I faltered and prevaricated feebly. Where was my
moral courage, and where was the good, honest, thumping lie that
should have aided me? “I have the best authority for recognizing
this as a very good copy of a famous stone in the possession of the
Bishop of Northchurch.” His scowl grew so black that I saw he
believed me, and I went on more cheerily: “This was manufactured by
Johannes Bogaerts–I can give you his address, and you can make
inquiries yourself–by special permission of the then owner, the
late Leone Montanaro.”

“Hand it back!” he interrupted (his other remarks were outrageous,
but satisfactory to hear); but I waved him off. I couldn’t give it
up. It fascinated me. I toyed with it, I caressed it. I made it
display its different tones of color. I must see the two stones
together. I must see it outshine its paltry rival. It was a
whimsical frenzy that seized me–I can call it by no other name.

“Would you like to see the original? Curiously enough, I have it
here. The bishop has left it in my charge.”

The wolfish light flamed up in Carwitchet’s eyes as I drew forth
the case. He laid the Valdez down on a sheet of paper, and I
placed the other, still in its case, beside it. In that moment
they looked identical, except for the little loop of sham stones,
replaced by a plain gold band in the bishop’s jewel. Carwitchet
leaned across the table eagerly, the table gave a lurch, the lamp
tottered, crashed over, and we were left in semidarkness.

“Don’t stir!” Carwitchet shouted. “The paraffin is all over the
place!” He seized my sofa blanket, and flung it over the table
while I stood helpless. “There, that’s safe now. Have you candles
on the chimney-piece? I’ve got matches.”

He looked very white and excited as he lit up. “Might have been an
awkward job with all that burning paraffin running about,” he said
quite pleasantly. “I hope no real harm is done.” I was lifting
the rug with shaking hands. The two stones lay as I had placed
them. No! I nearly dropped it back again. It was the stone in
the case that had the loop with the three sham sapphires!

Carwitchet picked the other up hastily. “So you say this is
rubbish?” he asked, his eyes sparkling wickedly, and an attempt at
mortification in his tone.

“Utter rubbish!” I pronounced, with truth and decision, snapping up
the case and pocketing it. “Lady Carwitchet must have known it.”

“Ah, well, it’s disappointing, isn’t it? Good-by, we shall not
meet again.”

I shook hands with him most cordially. “Good-by, Lord Carwitchet.
SO glad to have met you and your mother. It has been a source of
the GREATEST pleasure, I assure you.”

I have never seen the Carwitchets since. The bishop drove over
next day in rather better spirits. Miss Panton had refused the
chaplain.

“It doesn’t matter, my lord,” I said to him heartily. “We’ve all
been under some strange misconception. The stone in your
possession is the veritable one. I could swear to that anywhere.
The sapphire Lady Carwitchet wears is only an excellent imitation,
and–I have seen it with my own eyes–is the one bearing Bogaerts’s
mark, the Greek Beta.”

I was but nineteen years of age when the incident occurred which
has thrown a shadow over my life; and, ah me! how many and many a
weary year has dragged by since then! Young, happy, and beloved I
was in those long-departed days. They said that I was beautiful.
The mirror now reflects a haggard old woman, with ashen lips and
face of deadly pallor. But do not fancy that you are listening to
a mere puling lament. It is not the flight of years that has
brought me to be this wreck of my former self: had it been so I
could have borne the loss cheerfully, patiently, as the common lot
of all; but it was no natural progress of decay which has robbed me
of bloom, of youth, of the hopes and joys that belong to youth,
snapped the link that bound my heart to another’s, and doomed me to
a lone old age. I try to be patient, but my cross has been heavy,
and my heart is empty and weary, and I long for the death that
comes so slowly to those who pray to die.

I will try and relate, exactly as it happened, the event which
blighted my life. Though it occurred many years ago, there is no
fear that I should have forgotten any of the minutest
circumstances: they were stamped on my brain too clearly and
burningly, like the brand of a red-hot iron. I see them written in
the wrinkles of my brow, in the dead whiteness of my hair, which
was a glossy brown once, and has known no gradual change from dark
to gray, from gray to white, as with those happy ones who were the
companions of my girlhood, and whose honored age is soothed by the
love of children and grandchildren. But I must not envy them. I
only meant to say that the difficulty of my task has no connection
with want of memory–I remember but too well. But as I take my pen
my hand trembles, my head swims, the old rushing faintness and
Horror comes over me again, and the well-remembered fear is upon
me. Yet I will go on.

This, briefly, is my story: I was a great heiress, I believe,
though I cared little for the fact; but so it was. My father had
great possessions, and no son to inherit after him. His three
daughters, of whom I was the youngest, were to share the broad
acres among them. I have said, and truly, that I cared little for
the circumstance; and, indeed, I was so rich then in health and
youth and love that I felt myself quite indifferent to all else.
The possession of all the treasures of earth could never have made
up for what I then had–and lost, as I am about to relate. Of
course, we girls knew that we were heiresses, but I do not think
Lucy and Minnie were any the prouder or the happier on that
account. I know I was not. Reginald did not court me for my
money. Of THAT I felt assured. He proved it, Heaven be praised!
when he shrank from my side after the change. Yes, in all my
lonely age, I can still be thankful that he did not keep his word,
as some would have done–did not clasp at the altar a hand he had
learned to loathe and shudder at, because it was full of gold–much
gold! At least he spared me that. And I know that I was loved,
and the knowledge has kept me from going mad through many a weary
day and restless night, when my hot eyeballs had not a tear to
shed, and even to weep was a luxury denied me.

Our house was an old Tudor mansion. My father was very particular
in keeping the smallest peculiarities of his home unaltered. Thus
the many peaks and gables, the numerous turrets, and the mullioned
windows with their quaint lozenge panes set in lead, remained very
nearly as they had been three centuries back. Over and above the
quaint melancholy of our dwelling, with the deep woods of its park
and the sullen waters of the mere, our neighborhood was thinly
peopled and primitive, and the people round us were ignorant, and
tenacious of ancient ideas and traditions. Thus it was a
superstitious atmosphere that we children were reared in, and we
heard, from our infancy, countless tales of horror, some mere
fables doubtless, others legends of dark deeds of the olden time,
exaggerated by credulity and the love of the marvelous. Our mother
had died when we were young, and our other parent being, though a
kind father, much absorbed in affairs of various kinds, as an
active magistrate and landlord, there was no one to check the
unwholesome stream of tradition with which our plastic minds were
inundated in the company of nurses and servants. As years went on,
however, the old ghostly tales partially lost their effects, and
our undisciplined minds were turned more towards balls, dress, and
partners, and other matters airy and trivial, more welcome to our
riper age. It was at a county assembly that Reginald and I first
met–met and loved. Yes, I am sure that he loved me with all his
heart. It was not as deep a heart as some, I have thought in my
grief and anger; but I never doubted its truth and honesty.
Reginald’s father and mine approved of our growing attachment; and
as for myself, I know I was so happy then, that I look back upon
those fleeting moments as on some delicious dream. I now come to
the change. I have lingered on my childish reminiscences, my
bright and happy youth, and now I must tell the rest–the blight
and the sorrow.

It was Christmas, always a joyful and a hospitable time in the
country, especially in such an old hall as our home, where quaint
customs and frolics were much clung to, as part and parcel of the
very dwelling itself. The hall was full of guests–so full,
indeed, that there was great difficulty in providing sleeping
accommodation for all. Several narrow and dark chambers in the
turrets–mere pigeon-holes, as we irreverently called what had been
thought good enough for the stately gentlemen of Elizabeth’s reign–
were now allotted to bachelor visitors, after having been empty
for a century. All the spare rooms in the body and wings of the
hall were occupied, of course; and the servants who had been
brought down were lodged at the farm and at the keeper’s, so great
was the demand for space. At last the unexpected arrival of an
elderly relative, who had been asked months before, but scarcely
expected, caused great commotion. My aunts went about wringing
their hands distractedly. Lady Speldhurst was a personage of some
consequence; she was a distant cousin, and had been for years on
cool terms with us all, on account of some fancied affront or
slight when she had paid her LAST visit, about the time of my
christening. She was seventy years old; she was infirm, rich, and
testy; moreover, she was my godmother, though I had forgotten the
fact; but it seems that though I had formed no expectations of a
legacy in my favor, my aunts had done so for me. Aunt Margaret was
especially eloquent on the subject. “There isn’t a room left,” she
said; “was ever anything so unfortunate! We cannot put Lady
Speldhurst into the turrets, and yet where IS she to sleep? And
Rosa’s godmother, too! Poor, dear child, how dreadful! After all
these years of estrangement, and with a hundred thousand in the
funds, and no comfortable, warm room at her own unlimited disposal–
and Christmas, of all times in the year!” What WAS to be done?
My aunts could not resign their own chambers to Lady Speldhurst,
because they had already given them up to some of the married
guests. My father was the most hospitable of men, but he was
rheumatic, gouty, and methodical. His sisters-in-law dared not
propose to shift his quarters; and, indeed, he would have far
sooner dined on prison fare than have been translated to a strange
bed. The matter ended in my giving up my room. I had a strange
reluctance to making the offer, which surprised myself. Was it a
boding of evil to come? I cannot say. We are strangely and
wonderfully made. It MAY have been. At any rate, I do not think
it was any selfish unwillingness to make an old and infirm lady
comfortable by a trifling sacrifice. I was perfectly healthy and
strong. The weather was not cold for the time of the year. It was
a dark, moist Yule–not a snowy one, though snow brooded overhead
in the darkling clouds. I DID make the offer, which became me, I
said with a laugh, as the youngest. My sisters laughed too, and
made a jest of my evident wish to propitiate my godmother. “She is
a fairy godmother, Rosa,” said Minnie; “and you know she was
affronted at your christening, and went away muttering vengeance.
Here she is coming back to see you; I hope she brings golden gifts
with her.”

I thought little of Lady Speldhurst and her possible golden gifts.
I cared nothing for the wonderful fortune in the funds that my
aunts whispered and nodded about so mysteriously. But since then I
have wondered whether, had I then showed myself peevish or
obstinate–had I refused to give up my room for the expected
kinswoman–it would not have altered the whole of my life? But
then Lucy or Minnie would have offered in my stead, and been
sacrificed–what do I say?–better that the blow should have fallen
as it did than on those dear ones.

The chamber to which I removed was a dim little triangular room in
the western wing, and was only to be reached by traversing the
picture-gallery, or by mounting a little flight of stone stairs
which led directly upward from the low-browed arch of a door that
opened into the garden. There was one more room on the same
landing-place, and this was a mere receptacle for broken furniture,
shattered toys, and all the lumber that WILL accumulate in a
country-house. The room I was to inhabit for a few nights was a
tapestry-hung apartment, with faded green curtains of some costly
stuff, contrasting oddly with a new carpet and the bright, fresh
hangings of the bed, which had been hurriedly erected. The
furniture was half old, half new; and on the dressing-table stood a
very quaint oval mirror, in a frame of black wood–unpolished
ebony, I think. I can remember the very pattern of the carpet, the
number of chairs, the situation of the bed, the figures on the
tapestry. Nay, I can recollect not only the color of the dress I
wore on that fated evening, but the arrangement of every scrap of
lace and ribbon, of every flower, every jewel, with a memory but
too perfect.

Scarcely had my maid finished spreading out my various articles of
attire for the evening (when there was to be a great dinner-party)
when the rumble of a carriage announced that Lady Speldhurst had
arrived. The short winter’s day drew to a close, and a large
number of guests were gathered together in the ample drawing-room,
around the blaze of the wood-fire, after dinner. My father, I
recollect, was not with us at first. There were some squires of
the old, hard-riding, hard-drinking stamp still lingering over
their port in the dining-room, and the host, of course, could not
leave them. But the ladies and all the younger gentlemen–both
those who slept under our roof, and those who would have a dozen
miles of fog and mire to encounter on their road home–were all
together. Need I say that Reginald was there? He sat near me–my
accepted lover, my plighted future husband. We were to be married
in the spring. My sisters were not far off; they, too, had found
eyes that sparkled and softened in meeting theirs, had found hearts
that beat responsive to their own. And, in their cases, no rude
frost nipped the blossom ere it became the fruit; there was no
canker in their flowerets of young hope, no cloud in their sky.
Innocent and loving, they were beloved by men worthy of their
esteem.

The room–a large and lofty one, with an arched roof–had somewhat
of a somber character, from being wainscoted and ceiled with
polished black oak of a great age. There were mirrors, and there
were pictures on the walls, and handsome furniture, and marble
chimney-pieces, and a gay Tournay carpet; but these merely appeared
as bright spots on the dark background of the Elizabethan woodwork.
Many lights were burning, but the blackness of the walls and roof
seemed absolutely to swallow up their rays, like the mouth of a
cavern. A hundred candles could not have given that apartment the
cheerful lightness of a modern drawing room. But the gloomy
richness of the panels matched well with the ruddy gleam from the
enormous wood-fire, in which, crackling and glowing, now lay the
mighty Yule log. Quite a blood-red luster poured forth from the
fire, and quivered on the walls and the groined roof. We had
gathered round the vast antique hearth in a wide circle. The
quivering light of the fire and candles fell upon us all, but not
equally, for some were in shadow. I remember still how tall and
manly and handsome Reginald looked that night, taller by the head
than any there, and full of high spirits and gayety. I, too, was
in the highest spirits; never had my bosom felt lighter, and I
believe it was my mirth that gradually gained the rest, for I
recollect what a blithe, joyous company we seemed. All save one.
Lady Speldhurst, dressed in gray silk and wearing a quaint head-
dress, sat in her armchair, facing the fire, very silent, with her
hands and her sharp chin propped on a sort of ivory-handled crutch
that she walked with (for she was lame), peering at me with half-
shut eyes. She was a little, spare old woman, with very keen,
delicate features of the French type. Her gray silk dress, her
spotless lace, old-fashioned jewels, and prim neatness of array,
were well suited to the intelligence of her face, with its thin
lips, and eyes of a piercing black, undimmed by age. Those eyes
made me uncomfortable, in spite of my gayety, as they followed my
every movement with curious scrutiny. Still I was very merry and
gay; my sisters even wondered at my ever-ready mirth, which was
almost wild in its excess. I have heard since then of the Scottish
belief that those doomed to some great calamity become fey, and are
never so disposed for merriment and laughter as just before the
blow falls. If ever mortal was fey, then I was so on that evening.
Still, though I strove to shake it off, the pertinacious
observation of old Lady Speldhurst’s eyes DID make an impression on
me of a vaguely disagreeable nature. Others, too, noticed her
scrutiny of me, but set it down as a mere eccentricity of a person
always reputed whimsical, to say the least of it.

However, this disagreeable sensation lasted but a few moments.
After a short pause my aunt took her part in the conversation, and
we found ourselves listening to a weird legend, which the old lady
told exceedingly well. One tale led to another. Everyone was
called on in turn to contribute to the public entertainment, and
story after story, always relating to demonology and witchcraft,
succeeded. It was Christmas, the season for such tales; and the
old room, with its dusky walls and pictures, and vaulted roof,
drinking up the light so greedily, seemed just fitted to give
effect to such legendary lore. The huge logs crackled and burned
with glowing warmth; the blood-red glare of the Yule log flashed on
the faces of the listeners and narrator, on the portraits, and the
holly wreathed about their frames, and the upright old dame, in her
antiquated dress and trinkets, like one of the originals of the
pictures, stepped from the canvas to join our circle. It threw a
shimmering luster of an ominously ruddy hue upon the oaken panels.
No wonder that the ghost and goblin stories had a new zest. No
wonder that the blood of the more timid grew chill and curdled,
that their flesh crept, that their hearts beat irregularly, and the
girls peeped fearfully over their shoulders, and huddled close
together like frightened sheep, and half fancied they beheld some
impish and malignant face gibbering at them from the darkling
corners of the old room. By degrees my high spirits died out, and
I felt the childish tremors, long latent, long forgotten, coming
over me. I followed each story with painful interest; I did not
ask myself if I believed the dismal tales. I listened, and fear
grew upon me–the blind, irrational fear of our nursery days. I am
sure most of the other ladies present, young or middle-aged, were
affected by the circumstances under which these traditions were
heard, no less than by the wild and fantastic character of them.
But with them the impression would die out next morning, when the
bright sun should shine on the frosted boughs, and the rime on the
grass, and the scarlet berries and green spikelets of the holly;
and with me–but, ah! what was to happen ere another day dawn?
Before we had made an end of this talk my father and the other
squires came in, and we ceased our ghost stories, ashamed to speak
of such matters before these new-comers–hard-headed, unimaginative
men, who had no sympathy with idle legends. There was now a stir
and bustle.

Servants were handing round tea and coffee, and other refreshments.
Then there was a little music and singing. I sang a duet with
Reginald, who had a fine voice and good musical skill. I remember
that my singing was much praised, and indeed I was surprised at the
power and pathos of my own voice, doubtless due to my excited
nerves and mind. Then I heard someone say to another that I was by
far the cleverest of the Squire’s daughters, as well as the
prettiest. It did not make me vain. I had no rivalry with Lucy
and Minnie. But Reginald whispered some soft, fond words in my ear
a little before he mounted his horse to set off homeward, which DID
make me happy and proud. And to think that the next time we met–
but I forgave him long ago. Poor Reginald! And now shawls and
cloaks were in request, and carriages rolled up to the porch, and
the guests gradually departed. At last no one was left but those
visitors staying in the house. Then my father, who had been called
out to speak with the bailiff of the estate, came back with a look
of annoyance on his face.

“A strange story I have just been told,” said he; “here has been my
bailiff to inform me of the loss of four of the choicest ewes out
of that little flock of Southdowns I set such store by, and which
arrived in the north but two months since. And the poor creatures
have been destroyed in so strange a manner, for their carcasses are
horribly mangled.”

Most of us uttered some expression of pity or surprise, and some
suggested that a vicious dog was probably the culprit.

“It would seem so,” said my father; “it certainly seems the work of
a dog; and yet all the men agree that no dog of such habits exists
near us, where, indeed, dogs are scarce, excepting the shepherds’
collies and the sporting dogs secured in yards. Yet the sheep are
gnawed and bitten, for they show the marks of teeth. Something has
done this, and has torn their bodies wolfishly; but apparently it
has been only to suck the blood, for little or no flesh is gone.”

“How strange!” cried several voices. Then some of the gentlemen
remembered to have heard of cases when dogs addicted to sheep-
killing had destroyed whole flocks, as if in sheer wantonness,
scarcely deigning to taste a morsel of each slain wether.

My father shook his head. “I have heard of such cases, too,” he
said; “but in this instance I am tempted to think the malice of
some unknown enemy has been at work. The teeth of a dog have been
busy, no doubt, but the poor sheep have been mutilated in a
fantastic manner, as strange as horrible; their hearts, in
especial, have been torn out, and left at some paces off, half-
gnawed. Also, the men persist that they found the print of a naked
human foot in the soft mud of the ditch, and near it–this.” And
he held up what seemed a broken link of a rusted iron chain.

Many were the ejaculations of wonder and alarm, and many and shrewd
the conjectures, but none seemed exactly to suit the bearings of
the case. And when my father went on to say that two lambs of the
same valuable breed had perished in the same singular manner three
days previously, and that they also were found mangled and gore-
stained, the amazement reached a higher pitch. Old Lady Speldhurst
listened with calm, intelligent attention, but joined in none of
our exclamations. At length she said to my father, “Try and
recollect–have you no enemy among your neighbors?” My father
started, and knit his brows. “Not one that I know of,” he replied;
and indeed he was a popular man and a kind landlord. “The more
lucky you,” said the old dame, with one of her grim smiles. It was
now late, and we retired to rest before long. One by one the
guests dropped off. I was the member of the family selected to
escort old Lady Speldhurst to her room–the room I had vacated in
her favor. I did not much like the office. I felt a remarkable
repugnance to my godmother, but my worthy aunts insisted so much
that I should ingratiate myself with one who had so much to leave
that I could not but comply. The visitor hobbled up the broad
oaken stairs actively enough, propped on my arm and her ivory
crutch. The room never had looked more genial and pretty, with its
brisk fire, modern furniture, and the gay French paper on the
walls. “A nice room, my dear, and I ought to be much obliged to
you for it, since my maid tells me it is yours,” said her ladyship;
“but I am pretty sure you repent your generosity to me, after all
those ghost stories, and tremble to think of a strange bed and
chamber, eh?” I made some commonplace reply. The old lady arched
her eyebrows. “Where have they put you, child?” she asked; “in
some cock-loft of the turrets, eh? or in a lumber-room–a regular
ghost-trap? I can hear your heart beating with fear this moment.
You are not fit to be alone.” I tried to call up my pride, and
laugh off the accusation against my courage, all the more, perhaps,
because I felt its truth. “Do you want anything more that I can
get you, Lady Speldhurst?” I asked, trying to feign a yawn of
sleepiness. The old dame’s keen eyes were upon me. “I rather like
you, my dear,” she said, “and I liked your mamma well enough before
she treated me so shamefully about the christening dinner. Now, I
know you are frightened and fearful, and if an owl should but flap
your window to-night, it might drive you into fits. There is a
nice little sofa-bed in this dressing closet–call your maid to
arrange it for you, and you can sleep there snugly, under the old
witch’s protection, and then no goblin dare harm you, and nobody
will be a bit the wiser, or quiz you for being afraid.” How little
I knew what hung in the balance of my refusal or acceptance of that
trivial proffer! Had the veil of the future been lifted for one
instant! but that veil is impenetrable to our gaze.

I left her door. As I crossed the landing a bright gleam came from
another room, whose door was left ajar; it (the light) fell like a
bar of golden sheen across my path. As I approached the door
opened and my sister Lucy, who had been watching for me, came out.
She was already in a white cashmere wrapper, over which her
loosened hair hung darkly and heavily, like tangles of silk.
“Rosa, love,” she whispered, “Minnie and I can’t bear the idea of
your sleeping out there, all alone, in that solitary room–the very
room too Nurse Sherrard used to talk about! So, as you know Minnie
has given up her room, and come to sleep in mine, still we should
so wish you to stop with us to-night at any rate, and I could make
up a bed on the sofa for myself or you–and–” I stopped Lucy’s
mouth with a kiss. I declined her offer. I would not listen to
it. In fact, my pride was up in arms, and I felt I would rather
pass the night in the churchyard itself than accept a proposal
dictated, I felt sure, by the notion that my nerves were shaken by
the ghostly lore we had been raking up, that I was a weak,
superstitious creature, unable to pass a night in a strange
chamber. So I would not listen to Lucy, but kissed her, bade her
good-night, and went on my way laughing, to show my light heart.
Yet, as I looked back in the dark corridor, and saw the friendly
door still ajar, the yellow bar of light still crossing from wall
to wall, the sweet, kind face still peering after me from amidst
its clustering curls, I felt a thrill of sympathy, a wish to
return, a yearning after human love and companionship. False shame
was strongest, and conquered. I waved a gay adieu. I turned the
corner, and peeping over my shoulder, I saw the door close; the bar
of yellow light was there no longer in the darkness of the passage.
I thought at that instant that I heard a heavy sigh. I looked
sharply round. No one was there. No door was open, yet I fancied,
and fancied with a wonderful vividness, that I did hear an actual
sigh breathed not far off, and plainly distinguishable from the
groan of the sycamore branches as the wind tossed them to and fro
in the outer blackness. If ever a mortal’s good angel had cause to
sigh for sorrow, not sin, mine had cause to mourn that night. But
imagination plays us strange tricks and my nervous system was not
over-composed or very fitted for judicial analysis. I had to go
through the picture-gallery. I had never entered this apartment by
candle-light before and I was struck by the gloomy array of the
tall portraits, gazing moodily from the canvas on the lozenge-paned
or painted windows, which rattled to the blast as it swept howling
by. Many of the faces looked stern, and very different from their
daylight expression. In others a furtive, flickering smile seemed
to mock me as my candle illumined them; and in all, the eyes, as
usual with artistic portraits, seemed to follow my motions with a
scrutiny and an interest the more marked for the apathetic
immovability of the other features. I felt ill at ease under this
stony gaze, though conscious how absurd were my apprehensions; and
I called up a smile and an air of mirth, more as if acting a part
under the eyes of human beings than of their mere shadows on the
wall. I even laughed as I confronted them. No echo had my short-
lived laughter but from the hollow armor and arching roof, and I
continued on my way in silence.

By a sudden and not uncommon revulsion of feeling I shook off my
aimless terrors, blushed at my weakness, and sought my chamber only
too glad that I had been the only witness of my late tremors. As I
entered my chamber I thought I heard something stir in the
neglected lumber-room, which was the only neighboring apartment.
But I was determined to have no more panics, and resolutely shut my
eyes to this slight and transient noise, which had nothing
unnatural in it; for surely, between rats and wind, an old manor-
house on a stormy night needs no sprites to disturb it. So I
entered my room, and rang for my maid. As I did so I looked around
me, and a most unaccountable repugnance to my temporary abode came
over me, in spite of my efforts. It was no more to be shaken off
than a chill is to be shaken off when we enter some damp cave.
And, rely upon it, the feeling of dislike and apprehension with
which we regard, at first sight, certain places and people, was not
implanted in us without some wholesome purpose. I grant it is
irrational–mere animal instinct–but is not instinct God’s gift,
and is it for us to despise it? It is by instinct that children
know their friends from their enemies–that they distinguish with
such unerring accuracy between those who like them and those who
only flatter and hate them. Dogs do the same; they will fawn on
one person, they slink snarling from another. Show me a man whom
children and dogs shrink from, and I will show you a false, bad
man–lies on his lips, and murder at his heart. No; let none
despise the heaven-sent gift of innate antipathy, which makes the
horse quail when the lion crouches in the thicket–which makes the
cattle scent the shambles from afar, and low in terror and disgust
as their nostrils snuff the blood-polluted air. I felt this
antipathy strongly as I looked around me in my new sleeping-room,
and yet I could find no reasonable pretext for my dislike. A very
good room it was, after all, now that the green damask curtains
were drawn, the fire burning bright and clear, candles burning on
the mantel-piece, and the various familiar articles of toilet
arranged as usual. The bed, too, looked peaceful and inviting–a
pretty little white bed, not at all the gaunt funereal sort of
couch which haunted apartments generally contain.

My maid entered, and assisted me to lay aside the dress and
ornaments I had worn, and arranged my hair, as usual, prattling the
while, in Abigail fashion. I seldom cared to converse with
servants; but on that night a sort of dread of being left alone–a
longing to keep some human being near me possessed me–and I
encouraged the girl to gossip, so that her duties took her half an
hour longer to get through than usual. At last, however, she had
done all that could be done, and all my questions were answered,
and my orders for the morrow reiterated and vowed obedience to, and
the clock on the turret struck one. Then Mary, yawning a little,
asked if I wanted anything more, and I was obliged to answer no,
for very shame’s sake; and she went. The shutting of the door,
gently as it was closed, affected me unpleasantly. I took a
dislike to the curtains, the tapestry, the dingy pictures–
everything. I hated the room. I felt a temptation to put on a
cloak, run, half-dressed, to my sisters’ chamber, and say I had
changed my mind and come for shelter. But they must be asleep, I
thought, and I could not be so unkind as to wake them. I said my
prayers with unusual earnestness and a heavy heart. I extinguished
the candles, and was just about to lay my head on my pillow, when
the idea seized me that I would fasten the door. The candles were
extinguished, but the firelight was amply sufficient to guide me.
I gained the door. There was a lock, but it was rusty or hampered;
my utmost strength could not turn the key. The bolt was broken and
worthless. Balked of my intention, I consoled myself by
remembering that I had never had need of fastenings yet, and
returned to my bed. I lay awake for a good while, watching the red
glow of the burning coals in the grate. I was quiet now, and more
composed. Even the light gossip of the maid, full of petty human
cares and joys, had done me good–diverted my thoughts from
brooding. I was on the point of dropping asleep, when I was twice
disturbed. Once, by an owl, hooting in the ivy outside–no
unaccustomed sound, but harsh and melancholy; once, by a long and
mournful howling set up by the mastiff, chained in the yard beyond
the wing I occupied. A long-drawn, lugubrious howling was this
latter, and much such a note as the vulgar declare to herald a
death in the family. This was a fancy I had never shared; but yet
I could not help feeling that the dog’s mournful moans were sad,
and expressive of terror, not at all like his fierce, honest bark
of anger, but rather as if something evil and unwonted were abroad.
But soon I fell asleep.

How long I slept I never knew. I awoke at once with that abrupt
start which we all know well, and which carries us in a second from
utter unconsciousness to the full use of our faculties. The fire
was still burning, but was very low, and half the room or more was
in deep shadow. I knew, I felt, that some person or thing was in
the room, although nothing unusual was to be seen by the feeble
light. Yet it was a sense of danger that had aroused me from
slumber. I experienced, while yet asleep, the chill and shock of
sudden alarm, and I knew, even in the act of throwing off sleep
like a mantle, WHY I awoke, and that some intruder was present.
Yet, though I listened intently, no sound was audible, except the
faint murmur of the fire–the dropping of a cinder from the bars–
the loud, irregular beatings of my own heart. Notwithstanding this
silence, by some intuition I knew that I had not been deceived by a
dream, and felt certain that I was not alone. I waited. My heart
beat on; quicker, more sudden grew its pulsations, as a bird in a
cage might flutter in presence of the hawk. And then I heard a
sound, faint, but quite distinct, the clank of iron, the rattling
of a chain! I ventured to lift my head from the pillow. Dim and
uncertain as the light was, I saw the curtains of my bed shake, and
caught a glimpse of something beyond, a darker spot in the
darkness. This confirmation of my fears did not surprise me so
much as it shocked me. I strove to cry aloud, but could not utter
a word. The chain rattled again, and this time the noise was
louder and clearer. But though I strained my eyes, they could not
penetrate the obscurity that shrouded the other end of the chamber
whence came the sullen clanking. In a moment several distinct
trains of thought, like many-colored strands of thread twining into
one, became palpable to my mental vision. Was it a robber? Could
it be a supernatural visitant? Or was I the victim of a cruel
trick, such as I had heard of, and which some thoughtless persons
love to practice on the timid, reckless of its dangerous results?
And then a new idea, with some ray of comfort in it, suggested
itself. There was a fine young dog of the Newfoundland breed, a
favorite of my father’s, which was usually chained by night in an
outhouse. Neptune might have broken loose, found his way to my
room, and, finding the door imperfectly closed, have pushed it open
and entered. I breathed more freely as this harmless
interpretation of the noise forced itself upon me. It was–it must
be–the dog, and I was distressing myself uselessly. I resolved to
call to him; I strove to utter his name–”Neptune, Neptune,” but a
secret apprehension restrained me, and I was mute.

Then the chain clanked nearer and nearer to the bed, and presently
I saw a dusky, shapeless mass appear between the curtains on the
opposite side to where I was lying. How I longed to hear the whine
of the poor animal that I hoped might be the cause of my alarm.
But no; I heard no sound save the rustle of the curtains and the
clash of the iron chains. Just then the dying flame of the fire
leaped up, and with one sweeping, hurried glance I saw that the
door was shut, and, horror! it is not the dog! it is the semblance
of a human form that now throws itself heavily on the bed, outside
the clothes, and lies there, huge and swart, in the red gleam that
treacherously died away after showing so much to affright, and
sinks into dull darkness. There was now no light left, though the
red cinders yet glowed with a ruddy gleam like the eyes of wild
beasts. The chain rattled no more. I tried to speak, to scream
wildly for help; my mouth was parched, my tongue refused to obey.
I could not utter a cry, and, indeed, who could have heard me,
alone as I was in that solitary chamber, with no living neighbor,
and the picture-gallery between me and any aid that even the
loudest, most piercing shriek could summon. And the storm that
howled without would have drowned my voice, even if help had been
at hand. To call aloud–to demand who was there–alas! how
useless, how perilous! If the intruder were a robber, my outcries
would but goad him to fury; but what robber would act thus? As for
a trick, that seemed impossible. And yet, WHAT lay by my side, now
wholly unseen? I strove to pray aloud as there rushed on my memory
a flood of weird legends–the dreaded yet fascinating lore of my
childhood. I had heard and read of the spirits of the wicked men
forced to revisit the scenes of their earthly crimes–of demons
that lurked in certain accursed spots–of the ghoul and vampire of
the east, stealing amidst the graves they rifled for their ghostly
banquets; and then I shuddered as I gazed on the blank darkness
where I knew it lay. It stirred–it moaned hoarsely; and again I
heard the chain clank close beside me–so close that it must almost
have touched me. I drew myself from it, shrinking away in loathing
and terror of the evil thing–what, I knew not, but felt that
something malignant was near.

And yet, in the extremity of my fear, I dared not speak; I was
strangely cautious to be silent, even in moving farther off; for I
had a wild hope that it–the phantom, the creature, whichever it
was–had not discovered my presence in the room. And then I
remembered all the events of the night–Lady Speldhurst’s ill-
omened vaticinations, her half-warnings, her singular look as we
parted, my sister’s persuasions, my terror in the gallery, the
remark that “this was the room nurse Sherrard used to talk of.”
And then memory, stimulated by fear, recalled the long-forgotten
past, the ill-repute of this disused chamber, the sins it had
witnessed, the blood spilled, the poison administered by unnatural
hate within its walls, and the tradition which called it haunted.
The green room–I remembered now how fearfully the servants avoided
it–how it was mentioned rarely, and in whispers, when we were
children, and how we had regarded it as a mysterious region, unfit
for mortal habitation. Was It–the dark form with the chain–a
creature of this world, or a specter? And again–more dreadful
still–could it be that the corpses of wicked men were forced to
rise and haunt in the body the places where they had wrought their
evil deeds? And was such as these my grisly neighbor? The chain
faintly rattled. My hair bristled; my eyeballs seemed starting
from their sockets; the damps of a great anguish were on my brow.
My heart labored as if I were crushed beneath some vast weight.
Sometimes it appeared to stop its frenzied beatings, sometimes its
pulsations were fierce and hurried; my breath came short and with
extreme difficulty, and I shivered as if with cold; yet I feared to
stir. IT moved, it moaned, its fetters clanked dismally, the couch
creaked and shook. This was no phantom, then–no air-drawn
specter. But its very solidity, its palpable presence, were a
thousand times more terrible. I felt that I was in the very grasp
of what could not only affright but harm; of something whose
contact sickened the soul with deathly fear. I made a desperate
resolve: I glided from the bed, I seized a warm wrapper, threw it
around me, and tried to grope, with extended hands, my way to the
door. My heart beat high at the hope of escape. But I had
scarcely taken one step before the moaning was renewed–it changed
into a threatening growl that would have suited a wolf’s throat,
and a hand clutched at my sleeve. I stood motionless. The
muttering growl sank to a moan again, the chain sounded no more,
but still the hand held its gripe of my garment, and I feared to
move. It knew of my presence, then. My brain reeled, the blood
boiled in my ears, and my knees lost all strength, while my heart
panted like that of a deer in the wolf’s jaws. I sank back, and
the benumbing influence of excessive terror reduced me to a state
of stupor.

When my full consciousness returned I was sitting on the edge of
the bed, shivering with cold, and barefooted. All was silent, but
I felt that my sleeve was still clutched by my unearthly visitant.
The silence lasted a long time. Then followed a chuckling laugh
that froze my very marrow, and the gnashing of teeth as in demoniac
frenzy; and then a wailing moan, and this was succeeded by silence.
Hours may have passed–nay, though the tumult of my own heart
prevented my hearing the clock strike, must have passed–but they
seemed ages to me. And how were they passed? Hideous visions
passed before the aching eyes that I dared not close, but which
gazed ever into the dumb darkness where It lay–my dread companion
through the watches of the night. I pictured It in every abhorrent
form which an excited fancy could summon up: now as a skeleton;
with hollow eye-holes and grinning, fleshless jaws; now as a
vampire, with livid face and bloated form, and dripping mouth wet
with blood. Would it never be light! And yet, when day should
dawn I should be forced to see It face to face. I had heard that
specter and fiend were compelled to fade as morning brightened, but
this creature was too real, too foul a thing of earth, to vanish at
cock-crow. No! I should see it–the Horror–face to face! And
then the cold prevailed, and my teeth chattered, and shiverings ran
through me, and yet there was the damp of agony on my bursting
brow. Some instinct made me snatch at a shawl or cloak that lay on
a chair within reach, and wrap it round me. The moan was renewed,
and the chain just stirred. Then I sank into apathy, like an
Indian at the stake, in the intervals of torture. Hours fled by,
and I remained like a statue of ice, rigid and mute. I even slept,
for I remember that I started to find the cold gray light of an
early winter’s day was on my face, and stealing around the room
from between the heavy curtains of the window.

Shuddering, but urged by the impulse that rivets the gaze of the
bird upon the snake, I turned to see the Horror of the night. Yes,
it was no fevered dream, no hallucination of sickness, no airy
phantom unable to face the dawn. In the sickly light I saw it
lying on the bed, with its grim head on the pillow. A man? Or a
corpse arisen from its unhallowed grave, and awaiting the demon
that animated it? There it lay–a gaunt, gigantic form, wasted to
a skeleton, half-clad, foul with dust and clotted gore, its huge
limbs flung upon the couch as if at random, its shaggy hair
streaming over the pillows like a lion’s mane. His face was toward
me. Oh, the wild hideousness of that face, even in sleep! In
features it was human, even through its horrid mask of mud and
half-dried bloody gouts, but the expression was brutish and
savagely fierce; the white teeth were visible between the parted
lips, in a malignant grin; the tangled hair and beard were mixed in
leonine confusion, and there were scars disfiguring the brow.
Round the creature’s waist was a ring of iron, to which was
attached a heavy but broken chain–the chain I had heard clanking.
With a second glance I noted that part of the chain was wrapped in
straw to prevent its galling the wearer. The creature–I cannot
call it a man–had the marks of fetters on its wrists, the bony arm
that protruded through one tattered sleeve was scarred and bruised;
the feet were bare, and lacerated by pebbles and briers, and one of
them was wounded, and wrapped in a morsel of rag. And the lean
hands, one of which held my sleeve, were armed with talons like an
eagle’s. In an instant the horrid truth flashed upon me–I was in
the grasp of a madman. Better the phantom that scares the sight
than the wild beast that rends and tears the quivering flesh–the
pitiless human brute that has no heart to be softened, no reason at
whose bar to plead, no compassion, naught of man save the form and
the cunning. I gasped in terror. Ah! the mystery of those
ensanguined fingers, those gory, wolfish jaws! that face, all
besmeared with blackening blood, is revealed!

The slain sheep, so mangled and rent–the fantastic butchery–the
print of the naked foot–all, all were explained; and the chain,
the broken link of which was found near the slaughtered animals–it
came from his broken chain–the chain he had snapped, doubtless, in
his escape from the asylum where his raging frenzy had been
fettered and bound, in vain! in vain! Ah me! how had this grisly
Samson broken manacles and prison bars–how had he eluded guardian
and keeper and a hostile world, and come hither on his wild way,
hunted like a beast of prey, and snatching his hideous banquet like
a beast of prey, too! Yes, through the tatters of his mean and
ragged garb I could see the marks of the seventies, cruel and
foolish, with which men in that time tried to tame the might of
madness. The scourge–its marks were there; and the scars of the
hard iron fetters, and many a cicatrice and welt, that told a
dismal tale of hard usage. But now he was loose, free to play the
brute–the baited, tortured brute that they had made him–now
without the cage, and ready to gloat over the victims his strength
should overpower. Horror! horror! I was the prey–the victim–
already in the tiger’s clutch; and a deadly sickness came over me,
and the iron entered into my soul, and I longed to scream, and was
dumb! I died a thousand deaths as that morning wore on. I DARED
NOT faint. But words cannot paint what I suffered as I waited–
waited till the moment when he should open his eyes and be aware of
my presence; for I was assured he knew it not. He had entered the
chamber as a lair, when weary and gorged with his horrid orgy; and
he had flung himself down to sleep without a suspicion that he was
not alone. Even his grasping my sleeve was doubtless an act done
betwixt sleeping and waking, like his unconscious moans and
laughter, in some frightful dream.

Hours went on; then I trembled as I thought that soon the house
would be astir, that my maid would come to call me as usual, and
awake that ghastly sleeper. And might he not have time to tear me,
as he tore the sheep, before any aid could arrive? At last what I
dreaded came to pass–a light footstep on the landing–there is a
tap at the door. A pause succeeds, and then the tapping is
renewed, and this time more loudly. Then the madman stretched his
limbs, and uttered his moaning cry, and his eyes slowly opened–
very slowly opened and met mine. The girl waited a while ere she
knocked for the third time. I trembled lest she should open the
door unbidden–see that grim thing, and bring about the worst.

I saw the wondering surprise in his haggard, bloodshot eyes; I saw
him stare at me half vacantly, then with a crafty yet wondering
look; and then I saw the devil of murder begin to peep forth from
those hideous eyes, and the lips to part as in a sneer, and the
wolfish teeth to bare themselves. But I was not what I had been.
Fear gave me a new and a desperate composure–a courage foreign to
my nature. I had heard of the best method of managing the insane;
I could but try; I DID try. Calmly, wondering at my own feigned
calm, I fronted the glare of those terrible eyes. Steady and
undaunted was my gaze–motionless my attitude. I marveled at
myself, but in that agony of sickening terror I was OUTWARDLY firm.
They sink, they quail, abashed, those dreadful eyes, before the
gaze of a helpless girl; and the shame that is never absent from
insanity bears down the pride of strength, the bloody cravings of
the wild beast. The lunatic moaned and drooped his shaggy head
between his gaunt, squalid hands.

I lost not an instant. I rose, and with one spring reached the
door, tore it open, and, with a shriek, rushed through, caught the
wondering girl by the arm, and crying to her to run for her life,
rushed like the wind along the gallery, down the corridor, down the
stairs. Mary’s screams filled the house as she fled beside me. I
heard a long-drawn, raging cry, the roar of a wild animal mocked of
its prey, and I knew what was behind me. I never turned my head–I
flew rather than ran. I was in the hall already; there was a rush
of many feet, an outcry of many voices, a sound of scuffling feet,
and brutal yells, and oaths, and heavy blows, and I fell to the
ground crying, “Save me!” and lay in a swoon. I awoke from a
delirious trance. Kind faces were around my bed, loving looks were
bent on me by all, by my dear father and dear sisters; but I
scarcely saw them before I swooned again.

When I recovered from that long illness, through which I had been
nursed so tenderly, the pitying looks I met made me tremble. I
asked for a looking-glass. It was long denied me, but my
importunity prevailed at last–a mirror was brought. My youth was
gone at one fell swoop. The glass showed me a livid and haggard
face, blanched and bloodless as of one who sees a specter; and in
the ashen lips, and wrinkled brow, and dim eyes, I could trace
nothing of my old self. The hair, too, jetty and rich before, was
now as white as snow; and in one night the ravages of half a
century had passed over my face. Nor have my nerves ever recovered
their tone after that dire shock. Can you wonder that my life was
blighted, that my lover shrank from me, so sad a wreck was I?

I am old now–old and alone. My sisters would have had me to live
with them, but I chose not to sadden their genial homes with my
phantom face and dead eyes. Reginald married another. He has been
dead many years. I never ceased to pray for him, though he left me
when I was bereft of all. The sad weird is nearly over now. I am
old, and near the end, and wishful for it. I have not been bitter
or hard, but I cannot bear to see many people, and am best alone.
I try to do what good I can with the worthless wealth Lady
Speldhurst left me, for, at my wish, my portion was shared between
my sisters. What need had I of inheritance?–I, the shattered
wreck made by that one night of horror!

I

“Has the duchess returned?”

“No, your grace.”

Knowles came farther into the room. He had a letter on a salver.
When the duke had taken it, Knowles still lingered. The duke
glanced at him.

“Is an answer required?”

“No, your grace.” Still Knowles lingered. “Something a little
singular has happened. The carriage has returned without the
duchess, and the men say that they thought her grace was in it.”

“What do you mean?”

“I hardly understand myself, your grace. Perhaps you would like to
see Barnes.”

Barnes was the coachman.

“Send him up.” When Knowles had gone, and he was alone, his grace
showed signs of being slightly annoyed. He looked at his watch.
“I told her she’d better be in by four. She says that she’s not
feeling well, and yet one would think that she was not aware of the
fatigue entailed in having the prince come to dinner, and a mob of
people to follow. I particularly wished her to lie down for a
couple of hours.”

Knowles ushered in not only Barnes, the coachman, but Moysey, the
footman, too. Both these persons seemed to be ill at ease. The
duke glanced at them sharply. In his voice there was a suggestion
of impatience.

“What is the matter?”

Barnes explained as best he could.

“If you please, your grace, we waited for the duchess outside Cane
and Wilson’s, the drapers. The duchess came out, got into the
carriage, and Moysey shut the door, and her grace said, ‘Home!’ and
yet when we got home she wasn’t there.”

“She wasn’t where?”

“Her grace wasn’t in the carriage, your grace.”

“What on earth do you mean?”

“Her grace did get into the carriage; you shut the door, didn’t
you?”

Barnes turned to Moysey. Moysey brought his hand up to his brow in
a sort of military salute–he had been a soldier in the regiment in
which, once upon a time, the duke had been a subaltern.

“She did. The duchess came out of the shop. She seemed rather in
a hurry, I thought. She got into the carriage, and she said,
‘Home, Moysey!’ I shut the door, and Barnes drove straight home.
We never stopped anywhere, and we never noticed nothing happen on
the way; and yet when we got home the carriage was empty.”

The duke started.

“Do you mean to tell me that the duchess got out of the carriage
while you were driving full pelt through the streets without saying
anything to you, and without you noticing it?”

“The carriage was empty when we got home, your grace.”

“Was either of the doors open?”

“No, your grace.”

“You fellows have been up to some infernal mischief. You have made
a mess of it. You never picked up the duchess, and you’re trying
to palm this tale off on me to save yourselves.”

Barnes was moved to adjuration:

“I’ll take my Bible oath, your grace, that the duchess got into the
carriage outside Cane and Wilson’s.”

Moysey seconded his colleague.

“I will swear to that, your grace. She got into that carriage, and
I shut the door, and she said, ‘Home, Moysey!’”

The duke looked as if he did not know what to make of the story and
its tellers.

“What carriage did you have?”

“Her grace’s brougham, your grace.”

Knowles interposed:

“The brougham was ordered because I understood that the duchess was
not feeling very well, and there’s rather a high wind, your grace.”

The duke snapped at him:

“What has that to do with it? Are you suggesting that the duchess
was more likely to jump out of a brougham while it was dashing
through the streets than out of any other kind of vehicle?”

The duke’s glance fell on the letter which Knowles had brought him
when he first had entered. He had placed it on his writing table.
Now he took it up. It was, addressed:

“To His Grace the Duke of Datchet.

Private!

VERY PRESSING! ! !”

The name was written in a fine, clear, almost feminine hand. The
words in the left-hand corner of the envelope were written in a
different hand. They were large and bold; almost as though they
had been painted with the end of the penholder instead of being
written with the pen. The envelope itself was of an unusual size,
and bulged out as though it contained something else besides a
letter.

The duke tore the envelope open. As he did so something fell out
of it on to the writing table. It looked as though it was a lock
of a woman’s hair. As he glanced at it the duke seemed to be a
trifle startled. The duke read the letter:

“Your grace will be so good as to bring five hundred pounds in gold
to the Piccadilly end of the Burlington Arcade within an hour of
the receipt of this. The Duchess of Datchet has been kidnaped. An
imitation duchess got into the carriage, which was waiting outside
Cane and Wilson’s, and she alighted on the road. Unless your grace
does as you are requested, the Duchess of Datchet’s left-hand
little finger will be at once cut off, and sent home in time to
receive the prince to dinner. Other portions of her grace will
follow. A lock of her grace’s hair is inclosed with this as an
earnest of our good intentions.

“BEFORE 5:30 P.M. your grace is requested to be at the Piccadilly
end of the Burlington Arcade with five hundred pounds in gold. You
will there be accosted by an individual in a white top hat, and
with a gardenia in his buttonhole. You will be entirely at liberty
to give him into custody, or to have him followed by the police, in
which case the duchess’s left arm, cut off at the shoulder, will be
sent home for dinner–not to mention other extremely possible
contingencies. But you are ADVISED to give the individual in
question the five hundred pounds in gold, because in that case the
duchess herself will he home in time to receive the prince to
dinner, and with one of the best stories with which to entertain
your distinguished guests they ever heard.

“Remember! NOT LATER THAN 5:30, unless you wish to receive her
grace’s little finger.”

The duke stared at this amazing epistle when he had read it as
though he found it difficult to believe the evidence of his eyes.
He was not a demonstrative person, as a rule, but this little
communication astonished even him. He read it again. Then his
hands dropped to his sides, and he swore.

He took up the lock of hair which had fallen out of the envelope.
Was it possible that it could be his wife’s, the duchess? Was it
possible that a Duchess of Datchet could be kidnaped, in broad
daylight, in the heart of London, and be sent home, as it were, in
pieces? Had sacrilegious hands already been playing pranks with
that great lady’s hair? Certainly, THAT hair was so like HER hair
that the mere resemblance made his grace’s blood run cold. He
turned on Messrs. Barnes and Moysey as though he would have liked
to rend them.

“You scoundrels!”

He moved forward as though the intention had entered his ducal
heart to knock his servants down. But, if that were so, he did not
act quite up to his intention. Instead, he stretched out his arm,
pointing at them as if he were an accusing spirit:

“Will you swear that it was the duchess who got into the carriage
outside Cane and Wilson’s?”

Barnes began to stammer:

“I’ll swear, your grace, that I–I thought–”

The duke stormed an interruption:

“I don’t ask what you thought. I ask you, will you swear it was?”

The duke’s anger was more than Barnes could face. He was silent.
Moysey showed a larger courage.

“I could have sworn that it was at the time, your grace. But now
it seems to me that it’s a rummy go.”

“A rummy go!” The peculiarity of the phrase did not seem to strike
the duke just then–at least, he echoed it as if it didn’t. “You
call it a rummy go! Do you know that I am told in this letter that
the woman who entered the carriage was not the duchess? What you
were thinking about, or what case you will be able to make out for
yourselves, you know better than I; but I can tell you this–that
in an hour you will leave my service, and you may esteem yourselves
fortunate if, to-night, you are not both of you sleeping in jail.”

One might almost have suspected that the words were spoken in
irony. But before they could answer, another servant entered, who
also brought a letter for the duke. When his grace’s glance fell
on it he uttered an exclamation. The writing on the envelope was
the same writing that had been on the envelope which had contained
the very singular communication–like it in all respects, down to
the broomstick-end thickness of the “Private!” and “Very
pressing!!!” in the corner.

“Who brought this?” stormed the duke.

The servant appeared to be a little startled by the violence of his
grace’s manner.

“A lady–or, at least, your grace, she seemed to be a lady.”

“Where is she?”

“She came in a hansom, your grace. She gave me that letter, and
said, ‘Give that to the Duke of Datchet at once–without a moment’s
delay!’ Then she got into the hansom again, and drove away.”

“Why didn’t you stop her?”

“Your grace!”

The man seemed surprised, as though the idea of stopping chance
visitors to the ducal mansion vi et armis had not, until that
moment, entered into his philosophy. The duke continued to regard
the man as if he could say a good deal, if he chose. Then he
pointed to the door. His lips said nothing, but his gesture much.
The servant vanished.

“Another hoax!” the duke said grimly, as he tore the envelope open.

This time the envelope contained a sheet of paper, and in the sheet
of paper another envelope. The duke unfolded the sheet of paper.
On it some words were written. These:

“The duchess appears so particularly anxious to drop you a line,
that one really hasn’t the heart to refuse her.

“Her grace’s communication–written amidst blinding tears!–you
will find inclosed with this.”

“Knowles,” said the duke, in a voice which actually trembled,
“Knowles, hoax or no hoax, I will be even with the gentleman who
wrote that.”

Handing the sheet of paper to Mr. Knowles, his grace turned his
attention to the envelope which had been inclosed. It was a small,
square envelope, of the finest quality, and it reeked with perfume.
The duke’s countenance assumed an added frown–he had no fondness
for envelopes which were scented. In the center of the envelope
were the words, “To the Duke of Datchet,” written in the big, bold,
sprawling hand which he knew so well.

“Mabel’s writing,” he said, half to himself, as, with shaking
fingers, he tore the envelope open.

The sheet of paper which he took out was almost as stiff as
cardboard. It, too, emitted what his grace deemed the nauseous
odors of the perfumer’s shop. On it was written this letter:

“MY DEAR HEREWARD–For Heaven’s sake do what these people require!
I don’t know what has happened or where I am, but I am nearly
distracted! They have already cut off some of my hair, and they
tell me that, if you don’t let them have five hundred pounds in
gold by half-past five, they will cut off my little finger too. I
would sooner die than lose my little finger–and–I don’t know what
else besides.

“By the token which I send you, and which has never, until now,
been off my breast, I conjure you to help me.

“Hereward–HELP ME!”

When he read that letter the duke turned white–very white, as
white as the paper on which it was written. He passed the epistle
on to Knowles.

“I suppose that also is a hoax?”

Mr. Knowles was silent. He still yielded to his constitutional
disrelish to commit himself. At last he asked:

“What is it that your grace proposes to do?”

The duke spoke with a bitterness which almost suggested a personal
animosity toward the inoffensive Mr. Knowles.

“I propose, with your permission, to release the duchess from the
custody of my estimable correspondent. I propose–always with your
permission–to comply with his modest request, and to take him his
five hundred pounds in gold.” He paused, then continued in a tone
which, coming from him, meant volumes: “Afterwards, I propose to
cry quits with the concocter of this pretty little hoax, even if it
costs me every penny I possess. He shall pay more for that five
hundred pounds than he supposes.”

II

The Duke of Datchet, coming out of the bank, lingered for a moment
on the steps. In one hand he carried a canvas bag which seemed
well weighted. On his countenance there was an expression which to
a casual observer might have suggested that his grace was not
completely at his ease. That casual observer happened to come
strolling by. It took the form of Ivor Dacre.

Mr. Dacre looked the Duke of Datchet up and down in that languid
way he has. He perceived the canvas bag. Then he remarked,
possibly intending to be facetious:

“Been robbing the bank? Shall I call a cart?”

Nobody minds what Ivor Dacre says. Besides, he is the duke’s own
cousin. Perhaps a little removed; still, there it is. So the duke
smiled a sickly smile, as if Mr. Dacre’s delicate wit had given him
a passing touch of indigestion.

Mr. Dacre noticed that the duke looked sallow, so he gave his
pretty sense of humor another airing.

“Kitchen boiler burst? When I saw the duchess just now I wondered
if it had.”

His grace distinctly started. He almost dropped the canvas bag.

“You saw the duchess just now, Ivor! When?”

The duke was evidently moved. Mr. Dacre was stirred to languid
curiosity. “I can’t say I clocked it. Perhaps half an hour ago;
perhaps a little more.”

“Half an hour ago! Are you sure? Where did you see her?”

Mr. Dacre wondered. The Duchess of Datchet could scarcely have
been eloping in broad daylight. Moreover, she had not yet been
married a year. Everyone knew that she and the duke were still as
fond of each other as if they were not man and wife. So, although
the duke, for some cause or other, was evidently in an odd state of
agitation, Mr. Dacre saw no reason why he should not make a clean
breast of all he knew.

“She was going like blazes in a hansom cab.”

“In a hansom cab? Where?”

“Down Waterloo Place.”

“Was she alone?”

Mr. Dacre reflected. He glanced at the duke out of the corners of
his eyes. His languid utterance became a positive drawl.

“I rather fancy that she wasn’t.”

“Who was with her?”

“My dear fellow, if you were to offer me the bank I couldn’t tell
you.”

“Was it a man?”

Mr. Dacre’s drawl became still more pronounced.

“I rather fancy that it was.”

Mr. Dacre expected something. The duke was so excited. But he by
no means expected what actually came.

“Ivor, she’s been kidnaped!”

Mr. Dacre did what he had never been known to do before within the
memory of man–he dropped his eyeglass.

“Datchet!”

“She has! Some scoundrel has decoyed her away, and trapped her.
He’s already sent me a lock of her hair, and he tells me that if I
don’t let him have five hundred pounds in gold by half-past five
he’ll let me have her little finger.”

Mr. Dacre did not know what to make of his grace at all. He was a
sober man–it COULDN’T be that! Mr. Dacre felt really concerned.

“I’ll call a cab, old man, and you’d better let me see you home.”

Mr. Dacre half raised his stick to hail a passing hansom. The duke
caught him by the arm.

“You ass! What do you mean? I am telling you the simple truth.
My wife’s been kidnaped.”

Mr. Dacre’s countenance was a thing to be seen–and remembered.

“Oh! I hadn’t heard that there was much of that sort of thing about
just now. They talk of poodles being kidnaped, but as for
duchesses– You’d really better let me call that cab.”

“Ivor, do you want me to kick you? Don’t you see that to me it’s a
question of life and death? I’ve been in there to get the money.”
His grace motioned toward the bank. “I’m going to take it to the
scoundrel who has my darling at his mercy. Let me but have her
hand in mine again, and he shall continue to pay for every
sovereign with tears of blood until he dies.”

“Look here, Datchet, I don’t know if you’re having a joke with me,
or if you’re not well–”

The duke stepped impatiently into the roadway.

“Ivor, you’re a fool! Can’t you tell jest from earnest, health
from disease? I’m off! Are you coming with me? It would be as
well that I should have a witness.”

“Where are you off to?”

“To the other end of the Arcade.”

“Who is the gentleman you expect to have the pleasure of meeting
there?”

“How should I know?” The duke took a letter from his pocket–it
was the letter which had just arrived. “The fellow is to wear a
white top hat, and a gardenia in his buttonhole.”

“What is it you have there?”

“It’s the letter which brought the news–look for yourself and see;
but, for God’s sake, make haste!” His grace glanced at his watch.
“It’s already twenty after five.”

“And do you mean to say that on the strength of a letter such as
this you are going to hand over five hundred pounds to–”

The duke cut Mr. Dacre short.

“What are five hundred pounds to me? Besides, you don’t know all.
There is another letter. And I have heard from Mabel. But I will
tell you all about it later. If you are coming, come!”

Folding up the letter, Mr. Dacre returned it to the duke.

“As you say, what are five hundred pounds to you? It’s as well
they are not as much to you as they are to me, or I’m afraid–”

“Hang it, Ivor, do prose afterwards!”

The duke hurried across the road. Mr. Dacre hastened after him.
As they entered the Arcade they passed a constable. Mr. Dacre
touched his companion’s arm.

“Don’t you think we’d better ask our friend in blue to walk behind
us? His neighborhood might be handy.”

“Nonsense!” The duke stopped short. “Ivor, this is my affair, not
yours. If you are not content to play the part of silent witness,
be so good as to leave me.”

“My dear Datchet, I’m entirely at your service. I can be every
whit as insane as you, I do assure you.”

Side by side they moved rapidly down the Burlington Arcade. The
duke was obviously in a state of the extremest nervous tension.
Mr. Dacre was equally obviously in a state of the most supreme
enjoyment. People stared as they rushed past. The duke saw
nothing. Mr. Dacre saw everything, and smiled.

When they reached the Piccadilly end of the Arcade the duke pulled
up. He looked about him. Mr. Dacre also looked about him.

“I see nothing of your white-hatted and gardenia-buttonholed
friend,” said Ivor.

The duke referred to his watch.

“It’s not yet half-past five. I’m up to time.”

Mr. Dacre held his stick in front of him and leaned on it. He
indulged himself with a beatific smile.

“It strikes me, my dear Datchet, that you’ve been the victim of one
of the finest things in hoaxes–”

“I hope I haven’t kept you waiting.”

The voice which interrupted Mr. Dacre came from the rear. While
they were looking in front of them some one approached them from
behind, apparently coming out of the shop which was at their backs.

The speaker looked a gentleman. He sounded like one, too.
Costume, appearance, manner, were beyond reproach–even beyond the
criticism of two such keen critics as were these. The glorious
attire of a London dandy was surmounted with a beautiful white top
hat. In his buttonhole was a magnificent gardenia.

In age the stranger was scarcely more than a boy, and a sunny-
faced, handsome boy at that. His cheeks were hairless, his eyes
were blue. His smile was not only innocent, it was bland. Never
was there a more conspicuous illustration of that repose which
stamps the caste of Vere de Vere.

The duke looked at him and glowered. Mr. Dacre looked at him and
smiled.

“Who are you?” asked the duke.

“Ah–that is the question!” The newcomer’s refined and musical
voice breathed the very soul of affability. “I am an individual
who is so unfortunate as to be in want of five hundred pounds.”

“Are you the scoundrel who sent me that infamous letter?”

The charming stranger never turned a hair.

“I am the scoundrel mentioned in that infamous letter who wants to
accost you at the Piccadilly end of the Burlington Arcade before
half-past five–as witness my white hat and my gardenia.”

“Where’s my wife?”

The stranger gently swung his stick in front of him with his two
hands. He regarded the duke as a merry-hearted son might regard
his father. The thing was beautiful!

“Her grace will be home almost as soon as you are–when you have
given me the money which I perceive you have all ready for me in
that scarcely elegant-looking canvas bag.” He shrugged his
shoulders quite gracefully. “Unfortunately, in these matters one
has no choice–one is forced to ask for gold.”

“And suppose, instead of giving you what is in this canvas bag, I
take you by the throat and choke the life right out of you?”

“Or suppose,” amended Mr. Dacre, “that you do better, and commend
this gentleman to the tender mercies of the first policeman we
encounter.”

The stranger turned to Mr. Dacre. He condescended to become
conscious of his presence.

“Is this gentleman your grace’s friend? Ah–Mr. Dacre, I perceive!
I have the honor of knowing Mr. Dacre, though, possibly, I am
unknown to him.”

“You were–until this moment.”

With an airy little laugh the stranger returned to the duke. He
brushed an invisible speck of dust off the sleeve of his coat.

“As has been intimated in that infamous letter, his grace is at
perfect liberty to give me into custody–why not? Only”–he said
it with his boyish smile–”if a particular communication is not
received from me in certain quarters within a certain time the
Duchess of Datchet’s beautiful white arm will be hacked off at the
shoulder.”

“You hound!”

The duke would have taken the stranger by the throat, and have done
his best to choke the life right out of him then and there, if Mr.
Dacre had not intervened.

“Steady, old man!” Mr. Dacre turned to the stranger. “You appear
to be a pretty sort of a scoundrel.”

The stranger gave his shoulders that almost imperceptible shrug.

“Oh, my dear Dacre, I am in want of money! I believe that you
sometimes are in want of money, too.”

Everybody knows that nobody knows where Ivor Dacre gets his money
from, so the allusion must have tickled him immensely.

“You’re a cool hand,” he said.

“Some men are born that way.”

“So I should imagine. Men like you must be born, not made.”

“Precisely–as you say!” The stranger turned, with his graceful
smile, to the duke: “But are we not wasting precious time? I can
assure your grace that, in this particular matter, moments are of
value.”

Mr. Dacre interposed before the duke could answer.

“If you take my strongly urged advice, Datchet, you will summon
this constable who is now coming down the Arcade, and hand this
gentleman over to his keeping. I do not think that you need fear
that the duchess will lose her arm, or even her little finger.
Scoundrels of this one’s kidney are most amenable to reason when
they have handcuffs on their wrists.”

The duke plainly hesitated. He would–and he would not. The
stranger, as he eyed him, seemed much amused.

“My dear duke, by all means act on Mr. Dacre’s valuable suggestion.
As I said before, why not? It would at least be interesting to see
if the duchess does or does not lose her arm–almost as interesting
to you as to Mr. Dacre. Those blackmailing, kidnaping scoundrels
do use such empty menaces. Besides, you would have the pleasure of
seeing me locked up. My imprisonment for life would recompense you
even for the loss of her grace’s arm. And five hundred pounds is
such a sum to have to pay–merely for a wife! Why not, therefore,
act on Mr. Dacre’s suggestion? Here comes the constable.” The
constable referred to was advancing toward them–he was not a dozen
yards away. “Let me beckon to him–I will with pleasure.” He took
out his watch–a gold chronograph repeater. “There are scarcely
ten minutes left during which it will be possible for me to send
the communication which I spoke of, so that it may arrive in time.
As it will then be too late, and the instruments are already
prepared for the little operation which her grace is eagerly
anticipating, it would, perhaps, be as well, after all, that you
should give me into charge. You would have saved your five hundred
pounds, and you would, at any rate, have something in exchange for
her grace’s mutilated limb. Ah, here is the constable! Officer!”

The stranger spoke with such a pleasant little air of easy
geniality that it was impossible to tell if he were in jest or in
earnest. This fact impressed the duke much more than if he had
gone in for a liberal indulgence of the–under the circumstances–
orthodox melodramatic scowling. And, indeed, in the face of his
own common sense, it impressed Mr. Ivor Dacre too.

This well-bred, well-groomed youth was just the being to realize–
aux bouts des ongles–a modern type of the devil, the type which
depicts him as a perfect gentleman, who keeps smiling all the time.

The constable whom this audacious rogue had signaled approached the
little group. He addressed the stranger:

“Do you want me, sir?”

“No, I do not want you. I think it is the Duke of Datchet.”

The constable, who knew the duke very well by sight, saluted him as
he turned to receive instructions.

The duke looked white, even savage. There was not a pleasant look
in his eyes and about his lips. He appeared to be endeavoring to
put a great restraint upon himself. There was a momentary silence.
Mr. Dacre made a movement as if to interpose. The duke caught him
by the arm.

He spoke: “No, constable, I do not want you. This person is
mistaken.”

The constable looked as if he could not quite make out how such a
mistake could have arisen, hesitated, then, with another salute, he
moved away.

The stranger was still holding his watch in his hand.

“Only eight minutes,” he said.

The duke seemed to experience some difficulty in giving utterance
to what he had to say.

“If I give you this five hundred pounds, you–you–”

As the duke paused, as if at a loss for language which was strong
enough to convey his meaning, the stranger laughed.

“Let us take the adjectives for granted. Besides, it is only boys
who call each other names–men do things. If you give me the five
hundred sovereigns, which you have in that bag, at once–in five
minutes it will be too late–I will promise–I will not swear; if
you do not credit my simple promise, you will not believe my solemn
affirmation–I will promise that, possibly within an hour,
certainly within an hour and a half, the Duchess of Datchet shall
return to you absolutely uninjured–except, of course, as you are
already aware, with regard to a few of the hairs of her head. I
will promise this on the understanding that you do not yourself
attempt to see where I go, and that you will allow no one else to
do so.” This with a glance at Ivor Dacre. “I shall know at once
if I am followed. If you entertain such intentions, you had
better, on all accounts, remain in possession of your five hundred
pounds.”

The duke eyed him very grimly.

“I entertain no such intentions–until the duchess returns.”

Again the stranger indulged in that musical laugh of his.

“Ah, until the duchess returns! Of course, then the bargain’s at
an end. When you are once more in the enjoyment of her grace’s
society, you will be at liberty to set all the dogs in Europe at my
heels. I assure you I fully expect that you will do so–why not?”
The duke raised the canvas bag. “My dear duke, ten thousand
thanks! You shall see her grace at Datchet House, ‘pon my honor,
probably within the hour.”

“Well,” commented Ivor Dacre, when the stranger had vanished, with
the bag, into Piccadilly, and as the duke and himself moved toward
Burlington Gardens, “if a gentleman is to be robbed, it is as well
that he should have another gentleman rob him.”

III

Mr. Dacre eyed his companion covertly as they progressed. His
Grace of Datchet appeared to have some fresh cause for uneasiness.
All at once he gave it utterance, in a tone of voice which was
extremely somber:

“Ivor, do you think that scoundrel will dare to play me false?”

“I think,” murmured Mr. Dacre, “that he has dared to play you
pretty false already.”

“I don’t mean that. But I mean how am I to know, now that he has
his money, that he will still not keep Mabel in his clutches?”

There came an echo from Mr. Dacre.

“Just so–how are you to know?”

“I believe that something of this sort has been done in the
States.”

“I thought that there they were content to kidnap them after they
were dead. I was not aware that they had, as yet, got quite so far
as the living.”

“I believe that I have heard of something just like this.”

“Possibly; they are giants over there.”

“And in that case the scoundrels, when their demands were met,
refused to keep to the letter of their bargain and asked for more.”

The duke stood still. He clinched his fists, and swore:

“Ivor, if that —- villain doesn’t keep his word, and Mabel isn’t
home within the hour, by —- I shall go mad!”

“My dear Datchet”–Mr. Dacre loved strong language as little as he
loved a scene–”let us trust to time and, a little, to your white-
hatted and gardenia-buttonholed friend’s word of honor. You should
have thought of possible eventualities before you showed your
confidence–really. Suppose, instead of going mad, we first of all
go home?”

A hansom stood waiting for a fare at the end of the Arcade. Mr.
Dacre had handed the duke into it before his grace had quite
realized that the vehicle was there.

“Tell the fellow to drive faster.” That was what the duke said
when the cab had started.

“My dear Datchet, the man’s already driving his geerage off its
legs. If a bobby catches sight of him he’ll take his number.”

A moment later, a murmur from the duke:

“I don’t know if you’re aware that the prince is coming to dinner?”

“I am perfectly aware of it.”

“You take it uncommonly cool. How easy it is to bear our brother’s
burdens! Ivor, if Mabel doesn’t turn up I shall feel like murder.”

“I sympathize with you, Datchet, with all my heart, though, I may
observe, parenthetically, that I very far from realize the
situation even yet. Take my advice. If the duchess does not show
quite as soon as we both of us desire, don’t make a scene; just let
me see what I can do.”

Judging from the expression of his countenance, the duke was
conscious of no overwhelming desire to witness an exhibition of Mr.
Dacre’s prowess.

When the cab reached Datchet House his grace dashed up the steps
three at a time. The door flew open.

“Has the duchess returned?”

“Hereward!”

A voice floated downward from above. Some one came running down
the stairs. It was her Grace of Datchet.

“Mabel!”

She actually rushed into the duke’s extended arms. And he kissed
her, and she kissed him–before the servants.

“So you’re not quite dead?” she cried.

“I am almost,” he said.

She drew herself a little away from him.

“Hereward, were you seriously hurt?”

“Do you suppose that I could have been otherwise than seriously
hurt?”

“My darling! Was it a Pickford’s van?”

The duke stared.

“A Pickford’s van? I don’t understand. But come in here. Come
along, Ivor. Mabel, you don’t see Ivor.”

“How do you do, Mr. Dacre?”

Then the trio withdrew into a little anteroom; it was really time.
Even then the pair conducted themselves as if Mr. Dacre had been
nothing and no one. The duke took the lady’s two hands in his. He
eyed her fondly.

“So you are uninjured, with the exception of that lock of hair.
Where did the villain take it from?”

The lady looked a little puzzled.

“What lock of hair?”

From an envelope which he took from his pocket the duke produced a
shining tress. It was the lock of hair which had arrived in the
first communication. “I will have it framed.”

“You will have what framed?” The duchess glanced at what the duke
was so tenderly caressing, almost, as it seemed, a little
dubiously. “Whatever is it you have there?”

“It is the lock of hair which that scoundrel sent me.” Something
in the lady’s face caused him to ask a question:

“Didn’t he tell you he had sent it to me?”

“Hereward!”

“Did the brute tell you that he meant to cut off your little
finger?”

A very curious look came into the lady’s face. She glanced at the
duke as if she, all at once, was half afraid of him. She cast at
Mr. Dacre what really seemed to be a look of inquiry. Her voice
was tremulously anxious.

“Hereward, did–did the accident affect you mentally?”

“How could it not have affected me mentally? Do you think that my
mental organization is of steel?”

“But you look so well.”

“Of course I look well, now that I have you back again. Tell me,
darling, did that hound actually threaten you with cutting off your
arm? If he did, I shall feel half inclined to kill him yet.”

The duchess seemed positively to shrink from her better half’s near
neighborhood.

“Hereward, was it a Pickford’s van?”

The duke seemed puzzled. Well he might be.

“Was what a Pickford’s van?”

The lady turned to Mr. Dacre. In her voice there was a ring of
anguish.

“Mr. Dacre, tell me, was it a Pickford’s van?” Ivor could only
imitate his relative’s repetition of her inquiry.

“I don’t quite catch you–was what a Pickford’s van?”

The duchess clasped her hands in front of her.

“What is it you are keeping from me? What is it you are trying to
hide? I implore you to tell me the worst, whatever it may be! Do
not keep me any longer in suspense; you do not know what I already
have endured. Mr. Dacre, is my husband mad?”

One need scarcely observe that the lady’s amazing appeal to Mr.
Dacre as to her husband’s sanity was received with something like
surprise. As the duke continued to stare at her, a dreadful fear
began to loom in his brain.

“My darling, your brain is unhinged!”

He advanced to take her two hands again in his; but, to his
unmistakable distress, she shrank away from him.

“Hereward–don’t touch me. How is it that I missed you? Why did
you not wait until I came?”

“Wait until you came?”

The duke’s bewilderment increased.

“Surely, if your injuries turned out, after all, to be slight, that
was all the more reason why you should have waited, after sending
for me like that.”

“I sent for you–I?” The duke’s tone was grave. “My darling,
perhaps you had better come upstairs.”

“Not until we have had an explanation. You must have known that I
should come. Why did you not wait for me after you had sent me
that?”

The duchess held out something to the duke. He took it. It was a
card–his own visiting card. Something was written on the back of
it. He read aloud what was written.

“‘Mabel, come to me at once with the bearer. They tell me that
they cannot take me home.’ It looks like my own writing.”

“Looks like it! It IS your writing.”

“It looks like it–and written with a shaky pen.”

“My dear child, one’s hand would shake at such a moment as that.”

“Mabel, where did you get this?”

“It was brought to me in Cane and Wilson’s.”

“Who brought it?”

“Who brought it? Why, the man you sent.”

“The man I sent!” A light burst upon the duke’s brain. He fell
back a pace. “It’s the decoy!”

Her grace echoed the words:

“The decoy?”

“The scoundrel! To set a trap with such a bait! My poor innocent
darling, did you think it came from me? Tell me, Mabel, where did
he cut off your hair?”

“Cut off my hair?”

Her grace put her hand to her head as if to make sure that her hair
was there.

“Where did he take you to?”

“He took me to Draper’s Buildings.”

“Draper’s Buildings?”

“I have never been in the City before, but he told me it was
Draper’s Buildings. Isn’t that near the Stock Exchange?”

“Near the Stock Exchange?”

It seemed rather a curious place to which to take a kidnaped
victim. The man’s audacity!

“He told me that you were coming out of the Stock Exchange when a
van knocked you over. He said that he thought it was a Pickford’s
van–was it a Pickford’s van?”

“No, it was not a Pickford’s van. Mabel, were you in Draper’s
Buildings when you wrote that letter?”

“Wrote what letter?”

“Have you forgotten it already? I do not believe that there is a
word in it which will not be branded on my brain until I die.”

“Hereward! What do you mean?”

“Surely you cannot have written me such a letter as that, and then
have forgotten it already?”

He handed her the letter which had arrived in the second
communication. She glanced at it, askance. Then she took it with
a little gasp.

“Hereward, if you don’t mind, I think I’ll take a chair.” She took
a chair. “Whatever–whatever’s this?” As she read the letter the
varying expressions which passed across her face were, in
themselves, a study in psychology. “Is it possible that you can
imagine that, under any conceivable circumstances, I could have
written such a letter as this?”

“Mabel!”

She rose to her feet with emphasis.

“Hereward, don’t say that you thought this came from me!”

“Not from you?” He remembered Knowles’s diplomatic reception of
the epistle on its first appearance. “I suppose that you will say
next that this is not a lock of your hair?”

“My dear child, what bee have you got in your bonnet? This a lock
of my hair! Why, it’s not in the least bit like my hair!”

Which was certainly inaccurate. As far as color was concerned it
was an almost perfect match. The duke turned to Mr. Dacre.

“Ivor, I’ve had to go through a good deal this afternoon. If I
have to go through much more, something will crack!” He touched
his forehead. “I think it’s my turn to take a chair.” Not the one
which the duchess had vacated, but one which faced it. He
stretched out his legs in front of him; he thrust his hands into
his trousers pockets; he said, in a tone which was not gloomy but
absolutely grewsome:

“Might I ask, Mabel, if you have been kidnaped?”

“Kidnaped?”

“The word I used was ‘kidnaped.’ But I will spell it if you like.
Or I will get a dictionary, that you may see its meaning.”

The duchess looked as if she was beginning to be not quite sure if
she was awake or sleeping. She turned to Ivor.

“Mr. Dacre, has the accident affected Hereward’s brain?”

The duke took the words out of his cousin’s mouth.

“On that point, my dear, let me ease your mind. I don’t know if
you are under the impression that I should be the same shape after
a Pickford’s van had run over me as I was before; but, in any case,
I have not been run over by a Pickford’s van. So far as I am
concerned there has been no accident. Dismiss that delusion from
your mind.”

“Oh!”

“You appear surprised. One might even think that you were sorry.
But may I now ask what you did when you arrived at Draper’s
Buildings?”

“Did! I looked for you!”

“Indeed! And when you had looked in vain, what was the next item
in your programme?”

The lady shrank still farther from him.

“Hereward, have you been having a jest at my expense? Can you have
been so cruel?” Tears stood in her eyes.

Rising, the duke laid his hand upon her arm.

“Mabel, tell me–what did you do when you had looked for me in
vain?”

“I looked for you upstairs and downstairs and everywhere. It was
quite a large place, it took me ever such a time. I thought that I
should go distracted. Nobody seemed to know anything about you, or
even that there had been an accident at all–it was all offices. I
couldn’t make it out in the least, and the people didn’t seem to be
able to make me out either. So when I couldn’t find you anywhere I
came straight home again.”

The duke was silent for a moment. Then with funereal gravity he
turned to Mr. Dacre. He put to him this question:

“Ivor, what are you laughing at?”

Mr. Dacre drew his hand across his mouth with rather a suspicious
gesture.

“My dear fellow, only a smile!”

The duchess looked from one to the other.

“What have you two been doing? What is the joke?”

With an air of preternatural solemnity the duke took two letters
from the breast pocket of his coat.

“Mabel, you have already seen your letter. You have already seen
the lock of your hair. Just look at this–and that.”

He gave her the two very singular communications which had arrived
in such a mysterious manner, and so quickly one after the other.
She read them with wide-open eyes.

“Hereward! Wherever did these come from?”

The duke was standing with his legs apart, and his hands in his
trousers pockets. “I would give–I would give another five hundred
pounds to know. Shall I tell you, madam, what I have been doing?
I have been presenting five hundred golden sovereigns to a perfect
stranger, with a top hat, and a gardenia in his buttonhole.”

“Whatever for?”

“If you have perused those documents which you have in your hand,
you will have some faint idea. Ivor, when it’s your funeral, I’LL
smile. Mabel, Duchess of Datchet, it is beginning to dawn upon the
vacuum which represents my brain that I’ve been the victim of one
of the prettiest things in practical jokes that ever yet was
planned. When that fellow brought you that card at Cane and
Wilson’s–which, I need scarcely tell you, never came from me–some
one walked out of the front entrance who was so exactly like you
that both Barnes and Moysey took her for you. Moysey showed her
into the carriage, and Barnes drove her home. But when the
carriage reached home it was empty. Your double had got out upon
the road.”

The duchess uttered a sound which was half gasp, half sigh.

“Hereward!”

“Barnes and Moysey, with beautiful and childlike innocence, when
they found that they had brought the thing home empty, came
straightway and told me that YOU had jumped out of the brougham
while it had been driving full pelt through the streets. While I
was digesting that piece of information there came the first
epistle, with the lock of your hair. Before I had time to digest
that there came the second epistle, with yours inside.”

“It seems incredible!”

“It sounds incredible; but unfathomable is the folly of man,
especially of a man who loves his wife.” The duke crossed to Mr.
Dacre. “I don’t want, Ivor, to suggest anything in the way of
bribery and corruption, but if you could keep this matter to
yourself, and not mention it to your friends, our white-hatted and
gardenia-buttonholed acquaintance is welcome to his five hundred
pounds, and–Mabel, what on earth are you laughing at?”

The duchess appeared, all at once, to be seized with
inextinguishable laughter.

“Hereward,” she cried, “just think how that man must be laughing at
you!”

And the Duke of Datchet thought of it.

“Nine carets ef it’s a blessed one.”

“Scale ‘im, an’ ye’ll find he’s a half better. Clear es a bottle o’
gin, an’ flawless es the pope! Tommy Dartmoor, ye’re in luck, s’ welp
me never ef ye ain’t, an’ that’s a brilliant yer can show the polis
an’ not get time fer.”

Tommy Dartmoor, who owed his surname to a crown establishment within
the restraining walls of which he had once enjoyed a temporary
residence, growled out a recommendation to “stow that,” and then
added, “Boys, we’ll wet this. Trek to Werstein’s.”

Forthwith a crowd of dirty, tanned diggers turned their heads in the
direction of Gustav Werstein’s American Bar, and walked toward it as
briskly as the heat and their weariness would admit of. The Israelite
saw them coming, straightened himself out of the half-doze in which he
had passed the baking afternoon, stopped down the tobacco in the
porcelain bowl of his long-stemmed pipe with stumpy forefinger, and,
twisting a cork off his corkscrew, stood in readiness.

“Name yer pizons, boys, an’ get outside ‘em, wishin’ all good luck to
R’yal Straight; R’yal Straight bein’ the name o’ this yer stone given
by Thomas D. Hesquire, original diskiverer an’ present perprietor.”

The orders were given,–bass at five shillings a bottle, champagne
(nee gooseberry) at five pounds, Cape smoke at two shillings per two
fingers,–and, at a given signal, there was an inarticulate roar from
dusty throats, an inversion of tumblers over thirsty mouths, and a
second inversion over the ground to show that all the contents had
disappeared.

Satan, the one cat and only domestic pet of the camp, saw that there
was a general treat going on, and bustling up for his drink took a can
of condensed milk at six shillings. Other diggers came trooping in as
the news spread, and Tommy Dartmoor, who was rapidly becoming mellow,
for he drank half a tumbler of raw whisky with every one who nodded to
him, stood them refreshments galore, while the greasy Jew began to see
visions of his adopted fatherland in the near distance.

So the Kaffirs, except those who had supplies of their own, kept sober
and peaceful, while the higher order of the human race at Big Stone
Hole, after the manner of their kind, began to squabble. It was
natural for them to do so, perhaps, for the weather was so hot, and
the liquors, for the most part, more so; and under these circumstances
men do not always cast about them long for a casus belli. One or two
minor brawls opened the ball, and Herr Gustav, scenting battle in the
air, drew from a locker a card, which he balanced against the bottles
on a shelf above his head. It read thus:

GENTS IS REKESTED TO SHOOT
CLEAR OF THE BARR-KEP.
BROKIN GLAS MAY BE PADE FOR
AT COST PRISE.

and had been written for the German by a gentleman who had had some
experience in Forty Rod Gulch, Nevada. The action elicited a
contemptuous laugh from one or two of the new hands, but the oldsters
began shifting sundry articles which depended from their belts into
positions from which they might be handled at the shortest notice; and
the black cat, more wise than any of them, having drunk his fill,
stalked solemnly out into the security of the darkness.

The sun went down,–went out with a click, some one declared,–and, as
no twilight interposed between daylight and darkness in the country
which Big Stone Hole ornamented, Herr Gustav lit his two paraffin-
lamps. Neither boasted more than a one-inch wick, and, as their
glasses were extremely smoky, the illumination was not brilliant; but
it sufficed to show the flushed, angry faces of a couple of men
standing in the centre of the room, with all the others clustered
round, watching eagerly. One was the Scholar. The other was a burly
giant, whose missing left little finger caused him to be nicknamed the
Cripple. About what they had originally fallen out was not clear to
any one, to themselves least of all. As the case stood when the second
lamp was lit, Scholar had called Cripple a something-or-other liar,
and Cripple, who was not inventive, had retorted by stigmatising
Scholar as another. Further recriminations followed, and their pistols
were drawn; but as the audience had a strong objection to
indiscriminate shooting, by which it was not likely to benefit, the
belligerents were seized. No one was unsportsmanlike enough to wish to
stop the fight, and Jockey Bill, giving voice to the general wish of
the meeting, proposed that the gents be fixed up agin’ a couple o’
posts outside, where they might let daylight into each other without
lead-poisoning casual spectators.

The motion was acted on, and after rectifying a slight omission on the
Cripple’s part–he had forgotten to put caps on the nipples of his
revolver–the pair of them were seated upon upturned barrels some ten
yards apart, each with a lamp at his feet, and told to begin when they
saw fit to do so. The swarthy, bearded diggers grouped themselves on
either side, and the cat, emerging from his retreat, scrambled on to
the shoulder of one of them, fully as curious as the rest to “see the
shootin’.” It was a weird sight,–dust, scorched grass, empty tins,
rude hovels, piles of debris, African moonlight,–yet, except,
perhaps, in the eyes of the newest comers, there was nothing strange
in it. The others were too wrapped up in what was going to take place
to see anything quaint in their every-day surroundings. There was no
theatre in the camp. The little impromptu drama riveted all attention.

But before the duel commenced, a galloping horse, which had approached
over the grassy veldt unnoticed during the excitement, drew up with a
crash between the two combatants, and its rider, raising his hand to
command attention, cried:

“Boys, there’s a white woman comin’!”

“A white woman!” was chorused in various tones of disbelief. “What,
here? White woman comin’ here, Dan?”

And then some one inquired if she was a Boer.

“Boer–no,” replied Dan; “English–English as I am; leastways
Englisher, bein’ Amurrican-born myself. Overtook her et Hottentot
Drift. Thort I’d spur on an’ tell yer. We’d do wi’ a clean-up, some on
us.”

Dan spoke indistinctly, as a bullet had lately disarranged some of his
teeth; but his words had a wonderful effect.

Each man began instinctively to tidy himself. The would-be duellists,
forgetting their quarrel, stuck the revolvers in their belts and
followed the general example. The Cripple hied him to the store, and
after breaking down the door abstracted the only blacking-brush in the
camp,–putting down a sovereign on the counter in exchange for it,–
and set to polishing his high boots as if a fortune depended on their
brightness. The Scholar bought Herr Gustav’s white shirt for a fiver,
threatening to murder its owner if he did not render it up. And
Partridge, a good man from Norfolk, with a regrettable weakness for
shooting other people’s game, induced a friend to denude him of his
flowing locks by means of a clasp-knife and a hunk of wood, as no
scissors were procurable.

The wardrobes of Big Stone Hole were stocked more with a view to
strict utility than variety or ornamentation, and the slender
resources of the store utterly gave out under the sudden strain that
was put upon them. In every direction grimy, unkempt men might be seen
attempting to beautify themselves. Here was one enduring agonies from
a razor that would scarcely whittle a stick; here another recalling
the feel of a cake of soap; there a great fellow pulling faces as he
struggled to get the teeth of a comb into his shock of hair; there
another brushing the clay from his moleskin trousers with a tuft of
stiff grass.

It seemed to these men ages since they had last seen a woman in the
flesh,–Kaffir women don’t count; they are not women, merely Kaffirs,
–and, with the natural instinct of males of every species, they set
about pluming their feathers.

These operations, though speedy as might be, were necessarily
prolonged, for most of the men required several buckets of water over
the head before they felt fit for such unaccustomed exercises, and
they were scarcely finished before the creaking of wheels and the
cries of the voorlooper as he urged his oxen announced that the wagon
was within earshot. Up it came, the great tilt gleaming white in the
moonlight, and every eye was fixed expectantly on the dark chasm
within. The driver, puffed up with his own importance, cracked his
long whip and deigned not to notice the men whom he usually greeted
with a friendly hail, and the Hottentot boy ahead, imitating his
master, vouchsafed no explanation. With more deathly slowness than
usual did the lumbering vehicle crawl along until the tired cattle
pulled up before the door of the American Bar. Then there was a rush
and a bit of a scuffle for the honour of handing the woman out. The
Cripple was the fortunate man, and, after assisting her to the ground,
waved his tattered hat toward the gleaming open doorway. But he did
not speak. Words were beyond him. Indeed, the diggers, who were none
of them particularly remarkable for taciturnity as a general thing,
seemed, with one exception, to be stricken dumb. But the Scholar
proved himself equal to the occasion, and with courtly phrase bade the
new-comer welcome to the camp. He had always been a popular man among
women in his palmier days, though openly holding rather a poor opinion
of them; and as the one before him now was neat of speech and comely
of form, he was not at all averse to enjoying her society and
conversation.

“I should be much obliged if you would direct me to a hotel,” she
said, after taking a look around the cheap gaudiness of the saloon.

“I’m sorry to say that we have no hotel here as yet, Miss–er–?”

“Musgrave. Miss Mary Musgrave”–with a little bow. “But I heard that a
German had started a hotel here.”

“No; there is nothing but this. That”–pointing to Herr Gustave, who
was regarding the newcomer with an evil eye–”that is the German.”

Miss Musgrave appeared distressed.

“Then where can I go?” she asked. “Are there any lodgings to be had?”

“The lady may have my place,” chorused three eager voices, and every
man in the room repeated the offer.

She thanked them with a pretty smile and one comprehensive bow, and
looked up at the Scholar for help.

“I would offer you my hut if it were not such a wretched one. But, as
it is, I should advise you to take this man’s”–and he pointed to
Tommy Dartmoor.

“Why, mine’s twenty carats better than hisn!” exclaimed the Cripple.

“And mine better ‘n either,” growled Dan.

“Mine’s the best of the lot.”

“No, it isn’t; mine is,” yelled others, till there was a general roar,
which caused Miss Musgrave to look frightened and shrink nearer to the
Scholar, and that gentleman to raise his hand for silence.

“Look here,” said he, “we’ll pick out the twelve best, and their
owners can cut with one another from a pack of cards.”

After some discussion twelve were settled upon, but the number was
immediately raised to thirteen to prevent Jockey Bill disgracing the
camp by shooting before a lady. A pack of cards was placed on the bar,
and each man chose one, holding his selection face downward till all
were ready. Then the Scholar said, “Turn,” and there were exhibited
five aces, two kings, a queen, three knaves, and two smaller cards.
This was awkward, to say the least of it, and, while sarcastic
laughter rippled among the spectators, there was an instinctive
movement of right hands toward the back of the belt on the part of
each of the thirteen.

But the Scholar’s voice, full of remonstrance, said, “Boys, you’re
being looked at,” and there was a regretful sigh or two, but no
bloodshed.

Miss Musgrave gazed inquiringly from one to another, and the Scholar,
laying his hand on her arm, whispered something in her ear. She
smiled, whispered back, and was answered, and then, stripping off a
pair of well-fitting fawn gloves, she took the cards in a pretty
little white hand, and dealt out one to each of the competitors with
charming clumsiness.

“Ain’t touched a keard afore, bless her,” whispered Euchre Buck,
giving his neighbor Dan a nudge in the ribs to call attention to this
wonderful piece of girlish innocence. “Square a deal es George
Washington mought ha’ made.” Then, as the greasy pasteboards were
turned up, and his neighbour was handed the ace of clubs, he raised
his voice and yelled out, “Bully for you, Dan! Cut away an’ clar yer
cabin out.”

Away scampered Dan out into the darkness, with the rest of the crew at
his heels. Their home comforts were very small, poor fellows; but each
gave of his best, though the gifts were often incongruous enough. In
half an hour the cabin was fitted out with a small cracked looking-
glass, two combs, an old hair-brush,–still wet from the wash,–a
pail, a frying-pan, three kettles, two three-legged stools, and so
many blankets that some were requisitioned to carpet the floor. The
whole crowd accompanied Miss Musgrave to her door and gave her a cheer
by way of good-night. She bowed to them, smiling her thanks, and
looking, as they thought, entrancingly lovely as she stood there, with
the pale moonbeams falling full on her.

Then she turned to go in, but as Euchre Buck stepped forward with an
admonishing cough, she waited and looked round at him.

“Miss,” said he, holding out a big revolver in his hard fist, “you
take this yer gun, an’ ef any one whistles, or otherwise disturbs you,
let a hole into him straight away, an’ we’ll see him buried decent.”

But Miss Musgrave courteously, and with profuse thanks, refused the
offer, and, saying that she had perfect confidence in all who were
around her, gave Euchre Buck a bewitching smile, went inside, and
closed the door after he.

Then the diggers returned to Gustav Werstein’s American Bar and
discussed the new arrival.

“I known Noomarket an’ Hascot an’ Hepson, an’ all the places where
swells goes in England,” said Jockey Bill, enthusiastically; “but
never one come there as pretty as she, stop my license if ther’ did.”

“Grand eyes, hain’t she?” said Tommy Dartmoor. “Regular fust-water
‘uns. Here’s to ‘em!”

“And-a-hoof! See it peep below her gownd. S’ welp me ef it wer’ es big
as my ‘bacca-box!”

“An’ ‘er close, gentlemen! Made to measure, every thread on ‘em, I
allow.”

“She’s a lady, boys,” exclaimed he who had offered to see after a
funeral, “a reg’lar slap-up, high-toned, blow-yer-eyes-don’t-touch-me
lady; an’ as she sees fit to do the civil to this fellar”–striking
himself on the chest–”he’s just going to drop his professional name,
an’ arsk yer to call him Mister Samuel K. Gregson, Esquire. Play on
that.”

Next morning the inhabitants of Big Stone Hole were startled by
reading this announcement outside the cabin which Dan had resigned to
Miss Musgrave:

SINGING AND MUSIC TAUGHT.
LITERARY WORK DONE.

It was printed on a card, which was affixed to the door by means of a
drawing-pin, and from within came the sound of a contralto voice
singing to a guitar accompaniment. One by one the male residents of
Big Stone Hole drew near to that iron-roofed hut and stopped to
listen; but after commenting on the innovation in gleeful whispers–
for guitar had never twanged in that part of Africa before–they moved
on to their work. No consideration could cause them to neglect that.
They might fritter away the dull, rough gems when they had found them,
but the lust of handling diamonds once was the strongest passion they
knew. And so the day’s toil was not curtailed; but at the conclusion
Miss Musgrave had an application for instruction in music from every
man in the camp, with one exception. This one defaulter was Euchre
Buck. He owned to having no ear for music–thereby exhibiting more
honesty than many of the others–and confessed to knowing only two
tunes, one of which was “Hail Columbia,” and the other–wasn’t; and so
he said he wanted some “literary work done.” He proposed to Miss
Musgrave that she should write a history of his life at half a guinea
a page, thereby–cute Yankee that he was–thinking to appropriate the
whole of her time.

But embarrassed by all these calls upon her, and obviously unable to
satisfy each of them, Miss Musgrave turned for help to the Scholar,
whom she appeared to regard as her special adviser; and he, promising
a solution of the difficulty in half an hour, drew off the whole crowd
to the American Bar, where the question was thrashed out in all its
points.

It was clearly evident that Miss Musgrave could not surrender to each
individual the whole of her evening, even if any one had been willing
to let his neighbor monopolise it, which no one was; and therefore it
was necessary to formulate some scheme by which her talents might be
distributed over a larger area. But what the scheme should be was not
settled all in a minute. One man wanted to hear her sing, another to
hear her talk, another was willing to give five pounds an hour for the
privilege of talking to her. After a lengthened discussion, which was
excited throughout, and at times verged on the warlike, it was decided
to effect a compromise–subject, of course, to Miss Musgrave’s
inclinations; and a deputation was sent to learn her views on the
subject.

There was no assembly-room in the place, excepting Werstein’s saloon,
–which, of course, was not available for such a purpose,–and so it
was proposed to her, with much humility, that she should take up her
position in the evenings on a chair outside her hut, and there
discourse such vocal and instrumental music as she saw fit,
interlarding the same with friendly conversation. What was she to talk
about? Anything–absolutely anything. They didn’t mind what it was, so
long as they heard her voice. Five shillings, the committee had
decided, was to be paid by every man who came within earshot. And any
one who wanted a free list was requested to argue the matter out with
Euchre Buck.

This call upon her powers seemed to take Miss Musgrave aback.

“I have never sung in public,” she pleaded, rather nervously. “Indeed,
my voice is not good enough for it; really it isn’t. Only I thought I
could teach a little perhaps, and that is why I came here. You see,
mother, is an invalid, and we were so very poor that–”

“Miss,” broke in Jockey Bill, “call it ten bob a ‘ead, an’ just ‘um to
us.”

“Oh no, Mr. William, it was not the money that I thought about;
indeed, five shillings would be far too much. But if you think that I
should be able to amuse you at all, I would do my very best–believe
me, I would.”

“Miss,” growled Dan, with a clumsy endeavour to chase away her
diffidence, “all we asks is fer you to sit near us fer a spell. Ef you
sings or plays, we’d be proud; ef you just looks an’ talks, we’d be
pleased.”

So in the end Miss Musgrave yielded to the wishes of the community,
and the nightly conclave in the American Bar became so much a thing of
the past that Gustav Werstein was heard to threaten another
emigration. The songs were to the diggers new, and yet not new. There
was nothing of the music-hall type about them; they were nearly all
old-fashioned ditties. She sang to them of “Barbara Allen” and “Sally
in our Alley”; she gave them “Cheer, Boys, Cheer,” and called for a
chorus; she sang “The Message,” “The Arrow and the Song”; and she
brought back memories of other days when Africa was to them a mere
geographical expression–of days when that something had not happened
which had sent them away from home.

Sunday came, the fifth day after her arrival, and it differed from the
usual Sabbath of Big Stone Hole. Sunday had been observed before by
the biggest drinking bout of the week, and a summary settlement of the
previous six days’ disputes. Now, to the huge surprise of the Kaffirs,
and to the still greater surprise of themselves, these diamond-diggers
sang hymns at intervals during the day, and refrained from indulging
in the orthodox carouse till after Miss Musgrave had retired for the
night. It was a wonderful change.

During the next week a fall of earth took place in Tommy Dartmoor’s
claim. Two Kaffirs were killed; and when the proprietor himself was
extricated from the debris of blue clay which held him down, he was
found to have a broken arm, besides other serious injuries.

“Don’t let on to her,” he managed to gasp out to his rescuers, wishing
to spare Miss Musgrave’s nerves a shock.

But she saw the men bearing him to his hut, joined them, and insisted
on being installed as sole nurse forthwith.

Twenty other men would willingly have broken an arm for such a reward;
and the recklessness displayed during the next few days was something
awful. But she saw that too,–little escaped those big blue eyes,–
and, ascribing it to drink, gave a pretty strong lecture on the
bibulous habits of Big Stone Hole, at her next concert.

There was an earnest meeting in the American Bar that night, at which
the following motion was put and carried unanimously: “On and after
this date, any drunken man is liable to be shot at sight, unless his
friends can prove that he has dug over three carats of diamonds during
the day.” And then, like other reformers, they went on to more
sweeping measures: “Only knife-fighting to take place in the camp. All
disputes with pistols, unless of a very pressing nature, to be settled
out of earshot of Dan’s house.” There were even some hints of
appointing a closing-time for the saloon–”it would make the place so
much more like home.” But the promoter eventually withdrew his
suggestion, as it was justly felt that such a motion would interfere
with the liberty of the subject too much. But a storm of cheers burst
forth when it was proposed to transfer the diamond-safe from
Werstein’s keeping to a corner of the new goddess’s shrine.

Even Satan, the cat, joined in the general adoration, and, more
favoured than the rest, enjoyed at times a chaste salute from Miss
Musgrave’s ripe-red lips.

Never, in so short a space of time, had a community been more changed
for the better than was that of Big Stone Hole. Never had woman’s
humanising influence made itself more clearly felt. The azure cloud of
blasphemy that hung over the workings and the rest of the camp was
replaced again by the normal dust. Each man tried to beautify the
inside of his shanty to the best of his means and ideas, for there was
no knowing when the only “she” would take it into her pretty,
capricious head to pay a call. In this latter line the Scholar had a
decided pull. Education had taught him taste; necessity, handiness;
and by aid of the two he transformed his rude dwelling into something
approaching the rooms in which he used to dawdle away the happy hours,
time ago. It was partly drawing-room, partly curiosity-shop. Cups,
saucers, and spoons appeared as if by magicians’ call, and one blazing
afternoon the news flashed round the diamond-pits that Miss Musgrave
was “taking afternoon tea with the Scholar.” But when the Scholar saw
the dismay his simple act had spread around him, he dissipated it with
a kindly laugh and a few reassuring words.

“Don’t mind me, boys. I was only doing the civil in a purely platonic
manner. Miss Musgrave is nothing to me, nor am I anything to her.
Heaven forbid! I’m too hard a bargain for any girl. If any one of you
marries her I’ll act as his best man if he asks me to, and wish him
every felicity without a thought of regret.”

“Bully for the Scholar!” yelled the delighted crowd; and Miss
Musgrave’s smiles were more sought after than ever.

So things went on day after day, week after week, till Miss Musgrave
became little short of an autocratic empress. But still she showed no
signs of taking unto herself a consort; she kept all men at a cousinly
distance, and those who felt intimate enough to address her as “Miss
Mary” accounted themselves uncommonly fortunate. Thus the little
machine of state worked perfectly harmoniously, and Big Stone Hole was
as steady and prosperous a settlement as need be.

Had these diggers refreshed their minds by looking back for historical
parallels, they might have been prepared in some degree for Miss
Musgrave’s exit from among them, but as none of them indulged in such
retrospections the manner of it took the camp somewhat by surprise.

It was first discovered in this wise. Work was over for the day. The
Kaffirs had been searched and had returned to their kraal. Pipes were
being lit after the evening meal, and a picturesque assembly was
grouping itself in an expectant semicircle on the sun-baked turf in
front of Miss Musgrave’s dwelling. She was usually outside to welcome
the first comers, and her absence naturally formed the staple topic of
conversation. Digger after digger arrived, threw himself down, and
joined in the general wonderment as to why Miss Mary wasn’t there, and
at last some one hazarded a suggestion that she “must be asleep.”
There was a general epidemic of noisy coughing for a full minute, and
then silence for another, but no sound from within the hut.

“Perhaps she’s ill,” was the next surmise.

After the etiquette to be followed had been strictly discussed, and a
rigid course of procedure set down, the Scholar got up and knocked at
the door. He received no answer, and so knocked again–knocked several
times, in fact, and then rattled the handle vigorously, but without
result.

“Better open it,” said a voice.

And he did so; and after looking inside, announced:

“She’s not there.”

At this moment Dan came up.

“My ole mar’ ’s gone,” he said; “an’ she ain’t stampeded, neither, but
was stole. Tote-rope’s been untied, an’ saddle an’ bridle took as
well.”

There was uncomfortable silence, which the Scholar broke by a low,
long-drawn whistle.

“Boys,” said he, “let’s look inside the safe.”

The three men who held the keys brought them up, the bolts were shot,
and the massive door swung back. There was every man’s little sack
with his name on it; but somehow or other the sacks looked limper than
of yore. Each one was eagerly clutched and examined, and many a groan
and not a few curses went up on the still night air as it was found
that every sack save Dan’s had been relieved of the more valuable part
of its contents.

So much heart-breaking labour under the burning sun thrown away for
nothing; the dreary work to commence afresh, almost from the
beginning! Had the thief been any ordinary one, the denunciation would
have been unbounded; but no one lifted his tongue very loudly against
Mary Musgrave. Yet mounted men were despatched on the three trails to
bring back the booty if possible, and the rest moved dejectedly toward
their old club. The greasy Jew did not attempt to conceal his
exultation. He served his customers with his wicked old face glowing
with smiles, and when a moment’s breathing-time came he observed:

“We all ‘az hour lettle surbrizes in dis wairld, an’ I most confaiss I
am asdonished myself to lairn that Mess Mosgrave is a thief–” But
here a crashing among the glassware announced that Tommy Dartmoor had
begun shooting with his left hand, and Herr Gustave sputtered out from
behind the fingers he held before his face, “Ach Gott! I say nozzing
more!”

It was Monday, and in the afternoon, as I was walking along the
High Street of Marchbury, I was met by a distinguished-looking
person whom I had observed at the services in the cathedral on the
previous day. Now it chanced on that Sunday that I was singing the
service. Properly speaking, it was not my turn; but, as my brother
minor canons were either away from Marchbury or ill in bed, I was
the only one left to perform the necessary duty. The
distinguished-looking person was a tall, big man with a round fat
face and small features. His eyes, his hair and mustache (his face
was bare but for a small mustache) were quite black, and he had a
very pleasant and genial expression. He wore a tall hat, set
rather jauntily on his head, and he was dressed in black with a
long frock coat buttoned across the chest and fitting him close to
the body. As he came, with a half saunter, half swagger, along the
street, I knew him again at once by his appearance; and, as he came
nearer, I saw from his manner that he was intending to stop and
speak to me, for he slightly raised his hat and in a soft,
melodious voice with a colonial “twang” which was far from being
disagreeable, and which, indeed, to my ear gave a certain
additional interest to his remarks, he saluted me with “Good day,
sir!”

“Good day,” I answered, with just a little reserve in my tone.

“I hope, sir,” he began, “you will excuse my stopping you in the
street, but I wish to tell you how very much I enjoyed the music at
your cathedral yesterday. I am an Australian, sir, and we have no
such music in my country.”

“I suppose not,” I said.

“No, sir,” he went on, “nothing nearly so fine. I am very fond of
music, and as my business brought me in this direction, I thought I
would stop at your city and take the opportunity of paying a visit
to your grand cathedral. And I am delighted I came; so pleased,
indeed, that I should like to leave some memorial of my visit
behind me. I should like, sir, to do something for your choir.”

“I am sure it is very kind of you,” I replied.

“Yes, I should certainly be glad if you could suggest to me
something I might do in this way. As regards money, I may say that
I have plenty of it. I am the owner of a most valuable property.
My business relations extend throughout the world, and if I am as
fortunate in the projects of the future as I have been in the past,
I shall probably one day achieve the proud position of being the
richest man in the world.”

I did not like to undertake myself the responsibility of advising
or suggesting, so I simply said:

“I cannot venture to say, offhand, what would be the most
acceptable way of showing your great kindness and generosity, but I
should certainly recommend you to put yourself in communication
with the dean.”

“Thank you, sir,” said my Australian friend, “I will do so. And
now, sir,” he continued, “let me say how much I admire your voice.
It is, without exception, the very finest and clearest voice I have
ever heard.”

“Really,” I answered, quite overcome with such unqualified praise,
“really it is very good of you to say so.”

“Ah, but I feel it, my dear sir. I have been round the world, from
Sydney to Frisco, across the continent of America” (he called it
Amerrker) “to New York City, then on to England, and to-morrow I
shall leave your city to continue my travels. But in all my
experience I have never heard so grand a voice as your own.”

This and a great deal more he said in the same strain, which
modesty forbids me to reproduce.

Now I am not without some knowledge of the world outside the close
of Marchbury Cathedral, and I could not listen to such a
“flattering tale” without having my suspicions aroused. Who and
what is this man? thought I. I looked at him narrowly. At first
the thought flashed across me that he might be a “swell mobsman.”
But no, his face was too good for that; besides, no man with that
huge frame, that personality so marked and so easily recognizable,
could be a swindler; he could not escape detection a single hour.
I dismissed the ungenerous thought. Perhaps he is rich, as he
says. We do hear of munificent donations by benevolent
millionaires now and then. What if this Australian, attracted by
the glories of the old cathedral, should now appear as a deus ex
machina to reendow the choir, or to found a musical professoriate
in connection with the choir, appointing me the first occupant of
the professorial chair?

These thoughts flashed across my mind in the momentary pause of his
fluent tongue.

“As for yourself, sir,” he began again, “I have something to
propose which I trust may not prove unwelcome. But the public
street is hardly a suitable place to discuss my proposal. May I
call upon you this evening at your house in the close? I know
which it is, for I happened to see you go into it yesterday after
the morning service.”

“I shall be very pleased to see you,” I replied. “We are going out
to dinner this evening, but I shall be at home and disengaged till
about seven.”

“Thank you very much. Then I shall do myself the pleasure of
calling upon you about six o’clock. Till then, farewell!” A
graceful wave of the hand, and my unknown friend had disappeared
round the corner of the street.

Now at last, I thought, something is going to happen in my
uneventful life–something to break the monotony of existence. Of
course, he must have inquired my name–he could get that from any
of the cathedral vergers–and, as he said, he had observed
whereabouts in the close I lived. What is he coming to see me for?
I wondered. I spent the rest of the afternoon in making the
wildest surmises. I was castle-building in Spain at a furious
rate. At one time I imagined that this faithful son of the church–
as he appeared to me–was going to build and endow a grand
cathedral in Australia on condition that I should be appointed dean
at a yearly stipend of, say, ten thousand pounds. Or perhaps, I
said to myself, he will beg me to accept a sum of money–I never
thought of it as less than a thousand pounds–as a slight
recognition of and tribute to my remarkable vocal ability.

I took a long, lonely walk into the country to correct these
ridiculous fancies and to steady my mind, and when I reached home
and had refreshed myself with a quiet cup of afternoon tea, I felt
I was morally and physically prepared for my interview with the
opulent stranger.

Punctually as the cathedral clock struck six there was a ring at
the visitor’s bell. In a moment or two my unknown friend was shown
into the drawing-room, which he entered with the easy air of a man
of the world. I noticed he was carrying a small black bag.

“How do you do again, Mr. Dale?” he said as though we were old
acquaintances; “you see I have come sharp to my time.”

“Yes,” I answered, “and I am pleased to see you; do sit down.” He
sank into my best armchair, and placed his bag on the floor beside
him.

“Since we met in the afternoon,” he said, “I have written a letter
to your dean, expressing the great pleasure I felt in listening to
your choir, and at the same time I inclosed a five-pound note,
which I begged him to divide among the choir boys and men, from
Alexander Poulter, Esq., of Poulter’s Pills. You have of course
heard of the world-renowned Poulter’s Pills. I am Poulter!”

Poulter of Poulter’s Pills! My heart sank within me! A five-pound
note! My airy castles were tottering!

“I also sent him a couple of hundred of my pamphlets, which I said
I trusted he would be so kind as to distribute in the close.”

I was aghast!

“And now, with regard to the special object of my call, Mr. Dale.
If you will allow me to say so, you are not making the most of that
grand voice of yours; you are hidden under an ecclesiastical bushel
here–lost to the world. You are wasting your vocal strength and
sweetness on the desert air, so to speak. Why, if I may hazard a
guess, I don’t suppose you make five hundred a year here, at the
outside?

I could say nothing.

“Well, now, I can put you into the way of making at least three or
four times as much as that. Listen! I am Alexander Poulter, of
Poulter’s Pills. I have a proposal to make to you. The scheme is
bound to succeed, but I want your help. Accept my proposal and
your fortune’s made. Did you ever hear Moody and Sankey?” he asked
abruptly.

The man is an idiot, thought I; he is now fairly carried away with
his particular mania. Will it last long? Shall I ring?

“Novelty, my dear sir,” he went on, “is the rule of the day; and
there must be novelty in advertising, as in everything else, to
catch the public interest. So I intend to go on a tour, lecturing
on the merits of Poulter’s Pills in all the principal halls of all
the principal towns all over the world. But I have been delayed in
carrying out my idea till I could associate myself with a gentleman
such as yourself. Will you join me? I should be the Moody of the
tour; you would be its Sankey. I would speak my patter, and you
would intersperse my orations with melodious ballads bearing upon
the virtues of Poulter’s Pills. The ballads are all ready!”

So saying, he opened that bag and drew forth from its recesses
nothing more alarming than a thick roll of manuscript music.

“The verses are my own,” he said, with a little touch of pride;
“and as for the music, I thought it better to make use of popular
melodies, so as to enable an audience to join in the chorus. See,
here is one of the ballads: ‘Darling, I am better now.’ It
describes the woes of a fond lover, or rather his physical
ailments, until he went through a course of Poulter. Here’s
another: ‘I’m ninety-five! I’m ninety-five!’ You catch the drift
of that, of course–a healthy old age, secured by taking Poulter’s
Pills. Ah! what’s this? ‘Little sister’s last request.’ I fancy
the idea of that is to beg the family never to be without Poulter’s
Pills. Here again: ‘Then you’ll remember me!’ I’m afraid that
title is not original; never mind, the song is. And here is–but
there are many more, and I won’t detain you with them now.” He
saw, perhaps, I was getting impatient. Thank Heaven, however, he
was no escaped lunatic. I was safe!

“Mr. Poulter,” said I, “I took you this afternoon for a
disinterested and philanthropic millionaire; you take me for–for–
something different from what I am. We have both made mistakes.
In a word, it is impossible for me to accept your offer!”

“Is that final?” asked Poulter.

“Certainly,” said I.

Poulter gathered his manuscripts together and replaced them in the
bag, and got up to leave the room.

“Good evening, Mr. Dale,” he said mournfully, as I opened the door
of the room. “Good evening”–he kept on talking till he was fairly
out of the house–”mark my words, you’ll be sorry–very sorry–one
day that you did not fall in with my scheme. Offers like mine
don’t come every day, and you will one day regret having refused
it.”

With these words he left the house.

I had little appetite for my dinner that evening.

“Sail, ho!”

Never, surely, did the cry fall upon more welcome ears, save and
except those of men becalmed in a boat upon the open sea. For
twelve weary days and nights had we, the officers and men of H.M.S.
Petrel (six guns, Commander B. R. Neville), been cooped up in our
iron prison, patrolling one of the hottest sections of the terrestrial
globe, on the lookout for slavers. From latitude 4 deg. north to
latitude 4 deg. south was our beat, and we dared not venture beyond
these limits. Our instructions were to keep out of sight of land
and try to intercept some of the larger vessels, which, it was
suspected, carried cargoes of slaves from the —- coast. The ship,
the sea, the cloudless sky–there was nothing else to see, nothing
else to think of. Work, study, play even, were alike impossible in
that fierce, scorching heat. If you touched a bit of iron on deck
it almost burned your hand. If you lay down between-decks covered
with a sheet, you awoke in a bath of perspiration.

“Sail, ho!”

The man, in his excitement, repeated the shout before he could be
hailed from the deck.

“Where away?” sang out the captain.

“Two points on the weather-bow, sir,” was the reply.

That phrase about the “weather-bow” was a nautical fiction, for
there was no wind to speak of, and what there was was nearly dead
astern.

“Keep her away two points,” said Commander Neville; and the order
was promptly obeyed.

In a few seconds the news had spread through the ship, and the men
clustered on the bulwarks, straining their eyes to get a glimpse of
the stranger. Even the stokers, poor fellows, showed their sooty
faces at the engine-room hatchway. Of course the stranger might
be, and probably was, an innocent trader; but then she might be a
slaver; and golden visions of prize-money floated before the eyes
of every man and boy on board the Petrel.

We did not steam very fast, as of course our supply of coal was
limited; and it was about two hours before sundown when we fairly
sighted the stranger. She was a long three-masted schooner, with
tall raking masts, lying very low in the water. All her canvas was
set; and as a little wind had sprung up, she was slipping through
the water at a fair pace.

“She looks for all the world like a slaver, sir,” remarked Mr.
Brabazon, the first lieutenant, to the commander.

Neville said nothing, but his lips were firmly compressed, and a
gleam of excitement was in his eyes.

“Fire a blank cartridge, Mr. O’Riley,” said he to the second
lieutenant; “and signal her to ask her nationality and her code
number.”

This was done; and in answer to the signal the schooner slowly
hoisted the American colours.

“She has eased away her sheets, and luffed a point or two, sir,”
said the quartermaster, touching his cap.

The captain merely answered this by a nod.

“Put a shot in your gun, Mr. O’Riley,” said he. “Lower your hoist
and make a fresh hoist demanding her name.”

This was done, but the American took no notice.

“Fire a shot, Mr. O’Riley–wide, of course,” said the commander.

Again the deafening report of the big gun sounded in our ears; and
we could see the splash of the shot as it struck the water about
fifty yards from the schooner. Immediately a flag was run up, then
another and another; and we saw that she was not giving us her
code number, but was spelling out her name, letter by letter–The
Black Swan.

“Just look that up in the United States Merchant Registry,” said
the captain to the first lieutenant. And in half a minute he
had reported–”No such name, sir.” This was something more than
suspicious. And the wind was rising.

“Hoist the signal for her to heave to!” cried Commander Neville.
“Take a boat and half a dozen hands, Mr. O’Riley,” he continued;
“board her, inspect her papers, and come back to report. If her
papers are not in order,” added he, “you may search for slaves;
but if they are you had better do nothing further. You know it is
clearly set down in the Protocol that we are not entitled to search
the hold if the papers are in order; and there have been complaints
lately against some over-zealous officers, who have got into trouble
in consequence. So be careful. But keep your eyes open. Note any
suspicious circumstances, and come back and report.”

Before Lieutenant O’Riley reached the ship he saw that everything
about her had been sacrificed to speed. Her spars, especially, were
unusually heavy for a craft of her size.

The British officer was received by a little, thin, elderly man
wearing a Panama hat and speaking with a strong Yankee accent.

“Produce your papers, if you please,” said O’Riley. They were handed
out at once, and seemed to be perfectly regular.

“What have you got on board?” was the next question.

“General cargo–dry goods, and so on.”

“Why isn’t your name on the register?”

“Ain’t it now? Well, I guess it must be because this is a new ship.
We can’t put our name on by telegraph, mister.”

“Just tell your men to knock off the hatches. I want to have a look
at your cargo.”

The skipper shook his head.

“I’ve been delayed long enough,” said he, “and have lost a great
part of the only wind we’ve had in this darned latitude for a week.”

“I’ll do it myself, then!” cried O’Riley.

“Not now, sir; not with six men while I have fifteen. You have no
right to search the hold of a respectable merchantman and disturb
her cargo. Do you take me for a slaver, or what? Ef you must have
the hatches up, send back to your man-of-war for a larger crew, so
as to overpower me, you understand, and you may do it with pleasure.
Bet I guess there’ll be a complaint lodged at Washington, and you
folks in London will have to pay for it. That’s all, mister. I only
want things fair and square, within my treaty rights.”

And having delivered himself of this long speech, the Yankee skipper
turned on his heel.

Of course O’Riley could only return to the Petrel and report all
this to his commander. “I’m convinced she is a slaver, sir,” said
he in conclusion.

“But you have no evidence of it; and you say the papers were all
in order.”

“Apparently they were, sir.”

“Then I’m afraid I can do nothing,” said the commander. And to the
deep disgust of the whole ship’s crew, the order was given for the
Petrel to return to her course.

All that night, however, Commander Neville was haunted by a doubt
whether he had not better have run the risk of a complaint and a
reprimand, rather than forego the overhauling of so suspicious-looking
a craft; and in the morning a rumour reached his ears that the
cockswain, who had accompanied Mr. O’Riley to The Black Swan, had
noticed something about her of a doubtful nature. The man was sent
for and questioned; and he said that, while the lieutenant was on
board, the boat of which he was in charge had dropped a little way
astern; and that he had then noticed that the name of the vessel
had been recently painted out, but that the last two letters were
distinctly visible. And these letters were LE, not AN.

“The scoundrel said she was a new ship!” cried the commander. “‘Bout
ship!”

“We can’t possibly catch her up, sir,” said the first lieutenant,
drily.

“I don’t know that, Mr. Brabazon,” answered Neville. “There has
been hardly any wind, and we know the course she was steering. She
could not expect to see us again; so in all probability she has
kept to that course. By making allowances, we may intercept her;
I am convinced of it.”

The hope of again encountering The Black Swan, faint as it was,
caused quite a commotion in our little world. The day passed without
our sighting a single sail; but when the morning dawned Lieutenant
Brabazon was forced to own that the commander’s judgment had
proved better than his own. By the greatest good luck we had hit
upon the right track. There, right in front of us, was the American
schooner, her sails lazily flapping against her masts.

“Full speed ahead, and stand by!” shouted the captain down the
engine-room tube.

“Signal to her to heave to, and if she does not obey, fire a shot
right across her bows, Mr. O’Riley,” continued the commander.
“Mr. Brabazon, you take a boat and thirty men well armed. Board
her, and have her hatches off at once. You’ll stand no nonsense,
I know.”

“All right, sir,” cried the lieutenant, an active, somewhat imperious
officer, of the Civis Romanus sum type. He had been unusually
disgusted at his commander’s decision to leave The Black Swan without
searching her; and he was delighted that a more active policy had
been begun.

“I say, Brabazon,” whispered the commander to him, as he was going
over the side, “you know I’m stepping a bit beyond bounds, and
I’m just a little anxious. If she turns out to be a slaver, as
we suspect, step to the taffrail and wave your handkerchief, will
you?”

“I will, sir; I’m certain it will be all right,” cheerfully responded
the first lieutenant.

A tall, slim, youngish man, in white linen, received the British
officer as he set foot on the deck of The Black Swan.

“I am at present in command of this craft, sir,” said the young
American. “The skipper is not fit just at present. We had a visit
from you two days ago, I think. Can I do anything for you?”

“Yes; I want you to take off your hatches,” said the lieutenant,
sharply.

“Well, sir,” began the Yankee, “I guess your demand is beyond your
treaty powers.”

“I know all about that. I must have the hatches off.”

“And you are detaining me and overhauling my cargo on no grounds
whatever–”

“Will you do it at once?” broke in the British officer.

“I repeat–on no grounds whatever; will cause an in–ter–na–tional
difficulty, and may bring re–markably unpleasant con–sequences
to your captain. Now–”

“Off with your hatches!” cried the lieutenant.

“Sir!”

“If you don’t, by George, I will!”

“You know clearly what you’re doing, sir?”

“I do.”

“And you know the risk you run?”

“I do. No more palaver. Off with them at once, or I’ll break them
open.”

Further resistance was useless. The thing was done; and the moment
the first hatch was raised the sickening effluvium that issued from
the hold proclaimed the truth. Nearly three hundred slaves were
packed between-decks, many of the poor creatures standing so close
that they could not lie down.

With a look of speechless contempt at the young mate of the
schooner, the lieutenant walked to the side of the ship and waved
his handkerchief. That instant a loud British cheer rang over the
water, given by the blue-jackets, who could be seen clustering in
the rigging like bees.

“I told our skipper judgment would overtake us,” said the Yankee.
“Say, mister,” he added, in another tone, “seeing that the game’s
up, suppose we have a glass of iced champagne downstairs?”

The lieutenant hesitated. To drink with the mate of a slaver!
But–iced champagne!

Slowly he moved toward the companionway. “I don’t mind if I do,”
he said, at length; “and you may as well bring up your papers with
the drinks, for I shall carry them on board the Petrel. Of course
you understand that you are my prize.”

And having set a guard at the hatchways, the lieutenant descended
the cabin stairs.

The iced champagne was duly forthcoming, and under its genial
influence Lieutenant Brabazon began to feel something like pity
for the young mate who had been so early seduced into the paths of
crime. Probably he had a mother or a sweetheart somewhere in the
States who imagined that he was already on his way home, whereas
now his character was ruined, even if he escaped a long term of
imprisonment.

This feeling was strengthened as he saw that his companion was
gazing mournfully at his glass without speaking a word. At length
the young man lifted his head.

“Say, mister, what’ll they do to me, do you think?”

“I can’t tell. Of course you know that what you have been engaged
in is a kind of piracy?”

“No!”

“I believe so. Cargo and crew are confiscated, of course. What
they will do with you I can’t tell.”

“They won’t hang me, will they?”

“Probably not,” said the lieutenant; “but let this be a warning
to you. You see what it is to wander off the straight course and
hanker after forbidden gains. Lead an honest life in future, when
you are released from custody. Avoid vicious companions–But what’s
this?” he cried, as his eye fell on an empty scabbard hanging on the
wall. It looked very like a United States service sword scabbard,
and immediately the thought darted through his mind that this
hypocritical young Yankee (who had been pretending to wipe away a
tear as he listened to the lieutenant’s good advice) had been doing
something worse, or at least more heavily punished, than running
cargoes of slaves.

The British officer looked round the cabin. A United States navy
cap was lying on a plush-covered bench.

“Ah! you’ve been having a brush with an American man-of-war!” cried
Lieutenant Brabazon. “You will have to tell my superior officer
how you came into possession of these articles. I most place you
under arrest!” And, bitterly regretting that he had sat down to
table with the fellow, the British officer rushed on deck.

“Quartermaster,” he cried, “bring up a guard of four men, and take
this man,” pointing to the Yankee, who had followed him on deck,
“to the Petrel. If he tries to escape, shoot him at once!”

The quartermaster advanced to seize the prisoner; but before
he reached him he involuntarily stopped short. A roar of laughter
sounded in his ears. The American mate and his companions were
shrieking and staggering about the deck; even the crew of the
slaver were, every man Jack of them, grinning from ear to ear. The
lieutenant was dumfounded.

“Excuse me, sir; but the joke was too good,” said the Yankee, coming
forward and holding out his hand. “I am the first lieutenant of the
United States war-ship Georgia, in command of a prize crew on board
this vessel, taking her to —- to have her condemned. We seized
her yesterday. Hearing that you had been on a visit to her the
day before, and had gone away without doing anything, I couldn’t
resist the temptation of taking you in. Hope you don’t bear malice?
Let’s finish that magnum of champagne.”

It was evidently the best thing to be done; but the lieutenant was
not a first-rate companion on that occasion.

“Give my respects to your commander,” called out the United States
officer, as his guest went down into his boat, “and advise him
from me not to be so jolly particular another time. And I’ll try
to take your kind advice and sail a straight course in future!” he
cried, as her Majesty’s boat shot away for the last time from the
side of The Black Swan.

“RANDOLPH CRESCENT, N. W.

MY DEAR PUGH–I hope you will like the pipe which I send with this.
It is rather a curious example of a certain school of Indian
carving. And is a present from

“Yours truly, JOSEPH TRESS.”

It was really very handsome of Tress–very handsome! The more
especially as I was aware that to give presents was not exactly in
Tress’s line. The truth is that when I saw what manner of pipe it
was I was amazed. It was contained in a sandalwood box, which was
itself illustrated with some remarkable specimens of carving. I
use the word “remarkable” advisedly, because, although the
workmanship was undoubtedly, in its way, artistic, the result could
not be described as beautiful. The carver had thought proper to
ornament the box with some of the ugliest figures I remember to
have seen. They appeared to me to be devils. Or perhaps they were
intended to represent deities appertaining to some mythological
system with which, thank goodness, I am unacquainted. The pipe
itself was worthy of the case in which it was contained. It was of
meerschaum, with an amber mouthpiece. It was rather too large for
ordinary smoking. But then, of course, one doesn’t smoke a pipe
like that. There are pipes in my collection which I should as soon
think of smoking as I should of eating. Ask a china maniac to let
you have afternoon tea out of his Old Chelsea, and you will learn
some home truths as to the durability of human friendships. The
glory of the pipe, as Tress had suggested, lay in its carving. Not
that I claim that it was beautiful, any more than I make such a
claim for the carving on the box, but, as Tress said in his note,
it was curious.

The stem and the bowl were quite plain, but on the edge of the bowl
was perched some kind of lizard. I told myself it was an octopus
when I first saw it, but I have since had reason to believe that it
was some almost unique member of the lizard tribe. The creature
was represented as climbing over the edge of the bowl down toward
the stem, and its legs, or feelers, or tentacula, or whatever the
things are called, were, if I may use a vulgarism, sprawling about
“all over the place.” For instance, two or three of them were
twined about the bowl, two or three of them were twisted round the
stem, and one, a particularly horrible one, was uplifted in the
air, so that if you put the pipe in your mouth the thing was
pointing straight at your nose.

Not the least agreeable feature about the creature was that it was
hideously lifelike. It appeared to have been carved in amber, but
some coloring matter must have been introduced, for inside the
amber the creature was of a peculiarly ghastly green. The more I
examined the pipe the more amazed I was at Tress’s generosity. He
and I are rival collectors. I am not going to say, in so many
words, that his collection of pipes contains nothing but rubbish,
because, as a matter of fact, he has two or three rather decent
specimens. But to compare his collection to mine would be absurd.
Tress is conscious of this, and he resents it. He resents it to
such an extent that he has been known, at least on one occasion, to
declare that one single pipe of his–I believe he alluded to the
Brummagem relic preposterously attributed to Sir Walter Raleigh–
was worth the whole of my collection put together. Although I have
forgotten this, as I hope I always shall forgive remarks made when
envious passions get the better of our nobler nature, even of a
Joseph Tress, it is not to be supposed that I have forgotten it.
He was, therefore, not at all the sort of person from whom I
expected to receive a present. And such a present! I do not
believe that he himself had a finer pipe in his collection. And to
have given it to me! I had misjudged the man. I wondered where he
had got it from. I had seen his pipes; I knew them off by heart–
and some nice trumpery he has among them, too! but I had never seen
THAT pipe before. The more I looked at it, the more my amazement
grew. The beast perched upon the edge of the bowl was so lifelike.
Its two bead-like eyes seemed to gleam at me with positively human
intelligence. The pipe fascinated me to such an extent that I
actually resolved to–smoke it!

I filled it with Perique. Ordinarily I use Birdseye, but on those
very rare occasions on which I use a specimen I smoke Perique. I
lit up with quite a small sensation of excitement. As I did so I
kept my eyes perforce fixed upon the beast. The beast pointed its
upraised tentacle directly at me. As I inhaled the pungent tobacco
that tentacle impressed me with a feeling of actual uncanniness.
It was broad daylight, and I was smoking in front of the window,
yet to such an extent was I affected that it seemed to me that the
tentacle was not only vibrating, which, owing to the peculiarity of
its position, was quite within the range of probability, but
actually moving, elongating–stretching forward, that is, farther
toward me, and toward the tip of my nose. So impressed was I by
this idea that I took the pipe out of my mouth and minutely
examined the beast. Really, the delusion was excusable. So
cunningly had the artist wrought that he succeeded in producing a
creature which, such was its uncanniness, I could only hope had no
original in nature.

Replacing the pipe between my lips I took several whiffs. Never
had smoking had such an effect on me before. Either the pipe, or
the creature on it, exercised some singular fascination. I seemed,
without an instant’s warning, to be passing into some land of
dreams. I saw the beast, which was perched upon the bowl, writhe
and twist. I saw it lift itself bodily from the meerschaum.

II

“Feeling better now?”

I looked up. Joseph Tress was speaking.

“What’s the matter? Have I been ill?”

“You appear to have been in some kind of swoon.” Tress’s tone was
peculiar, even a little dry.

“Swoon! I never was guilty of such a thing in my life.”

“Nor was I, until I smoked that pipe.”

I sat up. The act of sitting up made me conscious of the fact that
I had been lying down. Conscious, too, that I was feeling more
than a little dazed. It seemed as though I was waking out of some
strange, lethargic sleep–a kind of feeling which I have read of
and heard about, but never before experienced.

“Where am I?”

“You’re on the couch in your own room. You WERE on the floor; but
I thought it would be better to pick you up and place you on the
couch–though no one performed the same kind office to me when I
was on the floor.”

Again Tress’s tone was distinctly dry.

“How came YOU here?”

“Ah, that’s the question.” He rubbed his chin–a habit of his
which has annoyed me more than once before. “Do you think you’re
sufficiently recovered to enable you to understand a little simple
explanation?” I stared at him, amazed. He went on stroking his
chin. “The truth is that when I sent you the pipe I made a slight
omission.”

“An omission?”

“I omitted to advise you not to smoke it.”

“And why?”

“Because–well, I’ve reason to believe the thing is drugged.”

“Drugged!”

“Or poisoned.”

“Poisoned!” I was wide awake enough then. I jumped off the couch
with a celerity which proved it.

“It is this way. I became its owner in rather a singular manner.”
He paused, as if for me to make a remark; but I was silent. “It is
not often that I smoke a specimen, but, for some reason, I did
smoke this. I commenced to smoke it, that is. How long I
continued to smoke it is more than I can say. It had on me the
same peculiar effect which it appears to have had on you. When I
recovered consciousness I was lying on the floor.”

“On the floor?”

“On the floor. In about as uncomfortable a position as you can
easily conceive. I was lying face downward, with my legs bent
under me. I was never so surprised in my life as I was when I
found myself WHERE I was. At first I supposed that I had had a
stroke. But by degrees it dawned upon me that I didn’t FEEL as
though I had had a stroke.” Tress, by the way, has been an army
surgeon. “I was conscious of distinct nausea. Looking about, I
saw the pipe. With me it had fallen on to the floor. I took it
for granted, considering the delicacy of the carving, that the fall
had broken it. But when I picked it up I found it quite uninjured.
While I was examining it a thought flashed to my brain. Might it
not be answerable for what had happened to me? Suppose, for
instance, it was drugged? I had heard of such things. Besides, in
my case were present all the symptoms of drug poisoning, though
what drug had been used I couldn’t in the least conceive. I
resolved that I would give the pipe another trial.”

“On yourself? or on another party, meaning me?”

“On myself, my dear Pugh–on myself! At that point of my
investigations I had not begun to think of you. I lit up and had
another smoke.”

“With what result?”

“Well, that depends on the standpoint from which you regard the
thing. From one point of view the result was wholly satisfactory–
I proved that the thing was drugged, and more.”

“Did you have another fall?”

“I did. And something else besides.”

“On that account, I presume, you resolved to pass the treasure on
to me?”

“Partly on that account, and partly on another.”

“On my word, I appreciate your generosity. You might have labeled
the thing as poison.”

“Exactly. But then you must remember how often you have told me
that you NEVER smoke your specimens.”

“That was no reason why you shouldn’t have given me a hint that the
thing was more dangerous than dynamite.”

“That did occur to me afterwards. Therefore I called to supply the
slight omission.”

“SLIGHT omission, you call it! I wonder what you would have called
it if you had found me dead.”

“If I had known that you INTENDED smoking it I should not have been
at all surprised if I had.”

“Really, Tress, I appreciate your kindness more and more! And
where is this example of your splendid benevolence? Have you
pocketed it, regretting your lapse into the unaccustomed paths of
generosity? Or is it smashed to atoms?”

“Neither the one nor the other. You will find the pipe upon the
table. I neither desire its restoration nor is it in any way
injured. It is merely an expression of personal opinion when I say
that I don’t believe that it COULD be injured. Of course, having
discovered its deleterious properties, you will not want to smoke
it again. You will therefore be able to enjoy the consciousness of
being the possessor of what I honestly believe to be the most
remarkable pipe in existence. Good day, Pugh.”

He was gone before I could say a word. I immediately concluded,
from the precipitancy of his flight, that the pipe WAS injured.
But when I subjected it to close examination I could discover no
signs of damage. While I was still eying it with jealous scrutiny
the door reopened, and Tress came in again.

“By the way, Pugh, there is one thing I might mention, especially
as I know it won’t make any difference to you.”

“That depends on what it is. If you have changed your mind, and
want the pipe back again, I tell you frankly that it won’t. In my
opinion, a thing once given is given for good.”

“Quite so; I don’t want it back again. You may make your mind easy
on that point. I merely wanted to tell you WHY I gave it you.”

“You have told me that already.”

“Only partly, my dear Pugh–only partly. You don’t suppose I
should have given you such a pipe as that merely because it
happened to be drugged? Scarcely! I gave it you because I
discovered from indisputable evidence, and to my cost, that it was
haunted.”

“Haunted?”

“Yes, haunted. Good day.”

He was gone again. I ran out of the room, and shouted after him
down the stairs. He was already at the bottom of the flight.

“Tress! Come back! What do you mean by talking such nonsense?”

“Of course it’s only nonsense. We know that that sort of thing
always is nonsense. But if you should have reason to suppose that
there is something in it besides nonsense, you may think it worth
your while to make inquiries of me, But I won’t have that pipe back
again in my possession on any terms–mind that!”

The bang of the front door told me that he had gone out into the
street. I let him go. I laughed to myself as I reentered the
room. Haunted! That was not a bad idea of his. I saw the whole
position at a glance. The truth of the matter was that he did
regret his generosity, and he was ready to go any lengths if he
could only succeed in cajoling me into restoring his gift. He was
aware that I have views upon certain matters which are not wholly
in accordance with those which are popularly supposed to be the
views of the day, and particularly that on the question of what are
commonly called supernatural visitations I have a standpoint of my
own. Therefore, it was not a bad move on his part to try to make
me believe that about the pipe on which he knew I had set my heart
there was something which could not be accounted for by ordinary
laws. Yet, as his own sense would have told him it would do, if he
had only allowed himself to reflect for a moment, the move failed.
Because I am not yet so far gone as to suppose that a pipe, a thing
of meerschaum and of amber, in the sense in which I understand the
word, COULD be haunted–a pipe, a mere pipe.

“Hollo! I thought the creature’s legs were twined right round the
bowl!”

I was holding the pipe in my hand, regarding it with the
affectionate eyes with which a connoisseur does regard a curio,
when I was induced to make this exclamation. I was certainly under
the impression that, when I first took the pipe out of the box,
two, if not three of the feelers had been twined about the bowl–
twined TIGHTLY, so that you could not see daylight between them and
it. Now they were almost entirely detached, only the tips touching
the meerschaum, and those particular feelers were gathered up as
though the creature were in the act of taking a spring. Of course
I was under a misapprehension: the feelers COULDN’T have been
twined; a moment before I should have been ready to bet a thousand
to one that they were. Still, one does make mistakes, and very
egregious mistakes, at times. At the same time, I confess that
when I saw that dreadful-looking animal poised on the extreme edge
of the bowl, for all the world as though it were just going to
spring at me, I was a little startled. I remembered that when I
was smoking the pipe I did think I saw the uplifted tentacle
moving, as though it were reaching out to me. And I had a clear
recollection that just as I had been sinking into that strange
state of unconsciousness, I had been under the impression that the
creature was writhing and twisting, as though it had suddenly
become instinct with life. Under the circumstances, these
reflections were not pleasant. I wished Tress had not talked that
nonsense about the thing being haunted. It was surely sufficient
to know that it was drugged and poisonous, without anything else.

I replaced it in the sandalwood box. I locked the box in a
cabinet. Quite apart from the question as to whether that pipe was
or was not haunted, I know it haunted me. It was with me in a
figurative–which was worse than actual–sense all the day. Still
worse, it was with me all the night. It was with me in my dreams.
Such dreams! Possibly I had not yet wholly recovered from the
effects of that insidious drug, but, whether or no, it was very
wrong of Tress to set my thoughts into such a channel. He knows
that I am of a highly imaginative temperament, and that it is
easier to get morbid thoughts into my mind than to get them out
again. Before that night was through I wished very heartily that I
had never seen the pipe! I woke from one nightmare to fall into
another. One dreadful dream was with me all the time–of a
hideous, green reptile which advanced toward me out of some awful
darkness, slowly, inch by inch, until it clutched me round the
neck, and, gluing its lips to mine, sucked the life’s blood out of
my veins as it embraced me with a slimy kiss. Such dreams are not
restful. I woke anything but refreshed when the morning came. And
when I got up and dressed I felt that, on the whole, it would
perhaps have been better if I never had gone to bed. My nerves
were unstrung, and I had that generally tremulous feeling which is,
I believe, an inseparable companion of the more advanced stages of
dipsomania. I ate no breakfast. I am no breakfast eater as a
rule, but that morning I ate absolutely nothing.

“If this sort of thing is to continue, I will let Tress have his
pipe again. He may have the laugh of me, but anything is better
than this.”

It was with almost funereal forebodings that I went to the cabinet
in which I had placed the sandalwood box. But when I opened it my
feelings of gloom partially vanished. Of what phantasies had I
been guilty! It must have been an entire delusion on my part to
have supposed that those tentacula had ever been twined about the
bowl. The creature was in exactly the same position in which I had
left it the day before–as, of course, I knew it would be–poised,
as if about to spring. I was telling myself how foolish I had been
to allow myself to dwell for a moment on Tress’s words, when Martin
Brasher was shown in.

Brasher is an old friend of mine. We have a common ground–ghosts.
Only we approach them from different points of view. He takes the
scientific–psychological–inquiry side. He is always anxious to
hear of a ghost, so that he may have an opportunity of “showing it
up.”

“I’ve something in your line here,” I observed, as he came in.

“In my line? How so? I’M not pipe mad.”

“No; but you’re ghost mad. And this is a haunted pipe.”

“A haunted pipe! I think you’re rather more mad about ghosts, my
dear Pugh, than I am.”

Then I told him all about it. He was deeply interested, especially
when I told him that the pipe was drugged. But when I repeated
Tress’s words about its being haunted, and mentioned my own
delusion about the creature moving, he took a more serious view of
the case than I had expected he would do.

“I propose that we act on Tress’s suggestion, and go and make
inquiries of him.”

“But you don’t really think that there is anything in it?”

“On these subjects I never allow myself to think at all. There are
Tress’s words, and there is your story. It is agreed on all hands
that the pipe has peculiar properties. It seems to me that there
is a sufficient case here to merit inquiry.”

He persuaded me. I went with him. The pipe, in the sandalwood
box, went too. Tress received us with a grin–a grin which was
accentuated when I placed the sandalwood box on the table.

“You understand,” he said, “that a gift is a gift. On no terms
will I consent to receive that pipe back in my possession.”

I was rather nettled by his tone.

“You need be under no alarm. I have no intention of suggesting
anything of the kind.”

“Our business here,” began Brasher–I must own that his manner is a
little ponderous–”is of a scientific, I may say also, and at the
same time, of a judicial nature. Our object is the Pursuit of
Truth and the Advancement of Inquiry.”

“Have you been trying another smoke?” inquired Tress, nodding his
head toward me.

Before I had time to answer, Brasher went droning on:

“Our friend here tells me that you say this pipe is haunted.”

“I say it is haunted because it IS haunted.”

I looked at Tress. I half suspected that he was poking fun at us.
But he appeared to be serious enough.

“In these matters,” remarked Brasher, as though he were giving
utterance to a new and important truth, “there is a scientific and
nonscientific method of inquiry. The scientific method is to begin
at the beginning. May I ask how this pipe came into your
possession?”

Tress paused before he answered.

“You may ask.” He paused again. “Oh, you certainly may ask. But
it doesn’t follow that I shall tell you.”

“Surely your object, like ours, can be but the Spreading About of
the Truth?”

“I don’t see it at all. It is possible to imagine a case in which
the spreading about of the truth might make me look a little
awkward.”

“Indeed!” Brasher pursed up his lips. “Your words would almost
lead one to suppose that there was something about your method of
acquiring the pipe which you have good and weighty reasons for
concealing.”

“I don’t know why I should conceal the thing from you. I don’t
suppose either of you is any better than I am. I don’t mind
telling you how I got the pipe. I stole it.”

“Stole it!”

Brasher seemed both amazed and shocked. But I, who had previous
experience of Tress’s methods of adding to his collection, was not
at all surprised. Some of the pipes which he calls his, if only
the whole truth about them were publicly known, would send him to
jail.

“That’s nothing!” he continued. “All collectors steal! The eighth
commandment was not intended to apply to them. Why, Pugh there has
‘conveyed’ three fourths of the pipes which he flatters himself are
his.”

I was so dumfoundered by the charge that it took my breath away. I
sat in astounded silence. Tress went raving on:

“I was so shy of this particular pipe when I had obtained it, that
I put it away for quite three months. When I took it out to have a
look at it something about the thing so tickled me that I resolved
to smoke it. Owing to peculiar circumstances attending the manner
in which the thing came into my possession, and on which I need not
dwell–you don’t like to dwell on those sort of things, do you,
Pugh?–I knew really nothing about the pipe. As was the case with
Pugh, one peculiarity I learned from actual experience. It was
also from actual experience that I learned that the thing was–
well, I said haunted, but you may use any other word you like.”

“Tell us, as briefly as possible, what it was you really did
discover.”

“Take the pipe out of the box!” Brasher took the pipe out of the
box and held it in his hand. “You see that creature on it. Well,
when I first had it it was underneath the pipe.”

“How do you mean that it was underneath the pipe?”

“It was bunched together underneath the stem, just at the end of
the mouthpiece, in the same way in which a fly might be suspended
from the ceiling. When I began to smoke the pipe I saw the
creature move.”

“But I thought that unconsciousness immediately followed.”

“It did follow, but not before I saw that the thing was moving. It
was because I thought that I had been, in a way, a victim of
delirium that I tried the second smoke. Suspecting that the thing
was drugged I swallowed what I believed would prove a powerful
antidote. It enabled me to resist the influence of the narcotic
much longer than before, and while I still retained my senses I saw
the creature crawl along under the stem and over the bowl. It was
that sight, I believe, as much as anything else, which sent me
silly. When I came to I then and there decided to present the pipe
to Pugh. There is one more thing I would remark. When the pipe
left me the creature’s legs were twined about the bowl. Now they
are withdrawn. Possibly you, Pugh, are able to cap my story with a
little one which is all your own.”

“I certainly did imagine that I saw the creature move. But I
supposed that while I was under the influence of the drug
imagination had played me a trick.”

“Not a bit of it! Depend upon it, the beast is bewitched. Even to
my eye it looks as though it were, and to a trained eye like yours,
Pugh! You’ve been looking for the devil a long time, and you’ve
got him at last.”

“I–I wish you wouldn’t make those remarks, Tress. They jar on
me.”

“I confess,” interpolated Brasher–I noticed that he had put the
pipe down on the table as though he were tired of holding it–
“that, to MY thinking, such remarks are not appropriate. At the
same time what you have told us is, I am bound to allow, a little
curious. But of course what I require is ocular demonstration. I
haven’t seen the movement myself.”

“No, but you very soon will do if you care to have a pull at the
pipe on your own account. Do, Brasher, to oblige me! There’s a
dear!”

“It appears, then, that the movement is only observable when the
pipe is smoked. We have at least arrived at step No. 1.”

“Here’s a match, Brasher! Light up, and we shall have arrived at
step No. 2.”

Tress lit a match and held it out to Brasher. Brasher retreated
from its neighborhood.

“Thank you, Mr. Tress, I am no smoker, as you are aware. And I
have no desire to acquire the art of smoking by means of a poisoned
pipe.”

Tress laughed. He blew out the match and threw it into the grate.

“Then I tell you what I’ll do–I’ll have up Bob.”

“Bob–why Bob?”

“Bob”–whose real name was Robert Haines, though I should think he
must have forgotten the fact, so seldom was he addressed by it–was
Tress’s servant. He had been an old soldier, and had accompanied
his master when he left the service. He was as depraved a
character as Tress himself. I am not sure even that he was not
worse than his master. I shall never forget how he once behaved
toward myself. He actually had the assurance to accuse me of
attempting to steal the Wardour Street relic which Tress fondly
deludes himself was once the property of Sir Walter Raleigh. The
truth is that I had slipped it with my handkerchief into my pocket
in a fit of absence of mind. A man who could accuse ME of such a
thing would be guilty of anything. I was therefore quite at one
with Brasher when he asked what Bob could possibly be wanted for.
Tress explained.

“I’ll get him to smoke the pipe,” he said.

Brasher and I exchanged glances, but we refrained from speech.

“It won’t do him any harm,” said Tress.

“What–not a poisoned pipe?” asked Brasher.

“It’s not poisoned–it’s only drugged.”

“ONLY drugged!”

“Nothing hurts Bob. He is like an ostrich. He has digestive
organs which are peculiarly his own. It will only serve him as it
served me–and Pugh–it will knock him over. It is all done in the
Pursuit of Truth and for the Advancement of Inquiry.”

I could see that Brasher did not altogether like the tone in which
Tress repeated his words. As for me, it was not to be supposed
that I should put myself out in a matter which in no way concerned
me. If Tress chose to poison the man, it was his affair, not mine.
He went to the door and shouted:

“Bob! Come here, you scoundrel!”

That is the way in which he speaks to him. No really decent
servant would stand it. I shouldn’t care to address Nalder, my
servant, in such a way. He would give me notice on the spot. Bob
came in. He is a great hulking fellow who is always on the grin.
Tress had a decanter of brandy in his hand. He filled a tumbler
with the neat spirit.

“Bob, what would you say to a glassful of brandy–the real thing–
my boy?”

“Thank you, sir.”

“And what would you say to a pull at a pipe when the brandy is
drunk!”

“A pipe?” The fellow is sharp enough when he likes. I saw him
look at the pipe upon the table, and then at us, and then a gleam
of intelligence came into his eyes. “I’d do it for a dollar, sir.”

“A dollar, you thief?”

“I meant ten shillings, sir.”

“Ten shillings, you brazen vagabond?”

“I should have said a pound.”

“A pound! Was ever the like of that! Do I understand you to ask a
pound for taking a pull at your master’s pipe?”

“I’m thinking that I’ll have to make it two.”

“The deuce you are! Here, Pugh, lend me a pound.”

“I’m afraid I’ve left my purse behind.”

“Then lend me ten shillings–Ananias!”

“I doubt if I have more than five.”

“Then give me the five. And, Brasher, lend me the other fifteen.”

Brasher lent him the fifteen. I doubt if we shall either of us
ever see our money again. He handed the pound to Bob.

“Here’s the brandy–drink it up!” Bob drank it without a word,
draining the glass of every drop. “And here’s the pipe.”

“Is it poisoned, sir?”

“Poisoned, you villain! What do you mean?”

“It isn’t the first time I’ve seen your tricks, sir–is it now?
And you’re not the one to give a pound for nothing at all. If it
kills me you’ll send my body to my mother–she’d like to know that
I was dead.”

“Send your body to your grandmother! You idiot, sit down and
smoke!”

Bob sat down. Tress had filled the pipe, and handed it, with a
lighted match, to Bob. The fellow declined the match. He handled
the pipe very gingerly, turning it over and over, eying it with all
his eyes.

“Thank you, sir–I’ll light up myself if it’s the same to you. I
carry matches of my own. It’s a beautiful pipe, entirely. I never
see the like of it for ugliness. And what’s the slimy-looking
varmint that looks as though it would like to have my life? Is it
living, or is it dead?”

“Come, we don’t want to sit here all day, my man!”

“Well, sir, the look of this here pipe has quite upset my stomach.
I’d like another drop of liquor, if it’s the same to you.”

“Another drop! Why, you’ve had a tumblerful already! Here’s
another tumblerful to put on top of that. You won’t want the pipe
to kill you–you’ll be killed before you get to it.”

“And isn’t it better to die a natural death?”

Bob emptied the second tumbler of brandy as though it were water.
I believe he would empty a hogshead without turning a hair! Then
he gave another look at the pipe. Then, taking a match from his
waistcoat pocket, he drew a long breath, as though he were
resigning himself to fate. Striking the match on the seat of his
trousers, while, shaded by his hand, the flame was gathering
strength, he looked at each of us in turn. When he looked at Tress
I distinctly saw him wink his eye. What my feelings would have
been if a servant of mine had winked his eye at me I am unable to
imagine! The match was applied to the tobacco, a puff of smoke
came through his lips–the pipe was alight!

During this process of lighting the pipe we had sat–I do not wish
to use exaggerated language, but we had sat and watched that
alcoholic scamp’s proceedings as though we were witnessing an
action which would leave its mark upon the age. When we saw the
pipe was lighted we gave a simultaneous start. Brasher put his
hands under his coat tails and gave a kind of hop. I raised myself
a good six inches from my chair, and Tress rubbed his palms
together with a chuckle. Bob alone was calm.

“Now,” cried Tress, “you’ll see the devil moving.”

Bob took the pipe from between his lips.

“See what?” he said.

“Bob, you rascal, put that pipe back into your mouth, and smoke it
for your life!”

Bob was eying the pipe askance.

“I dare say, but what I want to know is whether this here varmint’s
dead or whether he isn’t. I don’t want to have him flying at my
nose–and he looks vicious enough for anything.”

“Give me back that pound, you thief, and get out of my house, and
bundle.”

“I ain’t going to give you back no pound.”

“Then smoke that pipe!”

“I am smoking it, ain’t I?”

With the utmost deliberation Bob returned the pipe to his mouth.
He emitted another whiff or two of smoke.

“Now–now!” cried Tress, all excitement, and wagging his hand in
the air.

We gathered round. As we did so Bob again withdrew the pipe.

“What is the meaning of all this here? I ain’t going to have you
playing none of your larks on me. I know there’s something up, but
I ain’t going to throw my life away for twenty shillings–not quite
I ain’t.”

Tress, whose temper is not at any time one of the best, was seized
with quite a spasm of rage.

“As I live, my lad, if you try to cheat me by taking that pipe from
between your lips until I tell you, you leave this room that
instant, never again to be a servant of mine.”

I presume the fellow knew from long experience when his master
meant what he said, and when he didn’t. Without an attempt at
remonstrance he replaced the pipe. He continued stolidly to puff
away. Tress caught me by the arm.

“What did I tell you? There–there! That tentacle is moving.”

The uplifted tentacle WAS moving. It was doing what I had seen it
do, as I supposed, in my distorted imagination–it was reaching
forward. Undoubtedly Bob saw what it was doing; but, whether in
obedience to his master’s commands, or whether because the drug was
already beginning to take effect, he made no movement to withdraw
the pipe. He watched the slowly advancing tentacle, coming closer
and closer toward his nose, with an expression of such intense
horror on his countenance that it became quite shocking. Farther
and farther the creature reached forward, until on a sudden, with a
sort of jerk, the movement assumed a downward direction, and the
tentacle was slowly lowered until the tip rested on the stem of the
pipe. For a moment the creature remained motionless. I was
quieting my nerves with the reflection that this thing was but some
trick of the carver’s art, and that what we had seen we had seen in
a sort of nightmare, when the whole hideous reptile was seized with
what seemed to be a fit of convulsive shuddering. It seemed to be
in agony. It trembled so violently that I expected to see it
loosen its hold of the stem and fall to the ground. I was
sufficiently master of myself to steal a glance at Bob. We had had
an inkling of what might happen. He was wholly unprepared. As he
saw that dreadful, human-looking creature, coming to life, as it
seemed, within an inch or two of his nose, his eyes dilated to
twice their usual size. I hoped, for his sake, that
unconsciousness would supervene, through the action of the drug,
before through sheer fright his senses left him. Perhaps
mechanically he puffed steadily on.

The creature’s shuddering became more violent. It appeared to
swell before our eyes. Then, just as suddenly as it began, the
shuddering ceased. There was another instant of quiescence. Then
the creature began to crawl along the stem of the pipe! It moved
with marvelous caution, the merest fraction of an inch at a time.
But still it moved! Our eyes were riveted on it with a fascination
which was absolutely nauseous. I am unpleasantly affected even as
I think of it now. My dreams of the night before had been nothing
to this.

Slowly, slowly, it went, nearer and nearer to the smoker’s nose.
Its mode of progression was in the highest degree unsightly. It
glided, never, so far as I could see, removing its tentacles from
the stem of the pipe. It slipped its hindmost feelers onward until
they came up to those which were in advance. Then, in their turn,
it advanced those which were in front. It seemed, too, to move
with the utmost labor, shuddering as though it were in pain.

We were all, for our parts, speechless. I was momentarily hoping
that the drug would take effect on Bob. Either his constitution
enabled him to offer a strong resistance to narcotics, or else the
large quantity of neat spirit which he had drunk acted–as Tress
had malevolently intended that it should–as an antidote. It
seemed to me that he would NEVER succumb. On went the creature–
on, and on, in its infinitesimal progression. I was spellbound. I
would have given the world to scream, to have been able to utter a
sound. I could do nothing else but watch.

The creature had reached the end of the stem. It had gained the
amber mouthpiece. It was within an inch of the smoker’s nose.
Still on it went. It seemed to move with greater freedom on the
amber. It increased its rate of progress. It was actually
touching the foremost feature on the smoker’s countenance. I
expected to see it grip the wretched Bob, when it began to
oscillate from side to side. Its oscillations increased in
violence. It fell to the floor. That same instant the narcotic
prevailed. Bob slipped sideways from the chair, the pipe still
held tightly between his rigid jaws.

We were silent. There lay Bob. Close beside him lay the creature.
A few more inches to the left, and he would have fallen on and
squashed it flat. It had fallen on its back. Its feelers were
extended upward. They were writhing and twisting and turning in
the air.

Tress was the first to speak.

“I think a little brandy won’t be amiss.” Emptying the remainder
of the brandy into a glass, he swallowed it at a draught. “Now for
a closer examination of our friend.” Taking a pair of tongs from
the grate he nipped the creature between them. He deposited it
upon the table. “I rather fancy that this is a case for
dissection.”

He took a penknife from his waistcoat pocket. Opening the large
blade, he thrust its point into the object on the table. Little or
no resistance seemed to be offered to the passage of the blade, but
as it was inserted the tentacula simultaneously began to writhe and
twist. Tress withdrew the knife.

“I thought so!” He held the blade out for our inspection. The
point was covered with some viscid-looking matter. “That’s blood!
The thing’s alive!”

“Alive!”

“Alive! That’s the secret of the whole performance!”

“But–”

“But me no buts, my Pugh! The mystery’s exploded! One more ghost
is lost to the world! The person from whom I OBTAINED that pipe
was an Indian juggler–up to many tricks of the trade. He, or some
one for him, got hold of this sweet thing in reptiles–and a
sweeter thing would, I imagine, be hard to find–and covered it
with some preparation of, possibly, gum arabic. He allowed this to
harden. Then he stuck the thing–still living, for those sort of
gentry are hard to kill–to the pipe. The consequence was that
when anyone lit up, the warmth was communicated to the adhesive
agent–again some preparation of gum, no doubt–it moistened it,
and the creature, with infinite difficulty, was able to move. But
I am open to lay odds with any gentleman of sporting tastes that
THIS time the creature’s traveling days ARE done. It has given me
rather a larger taste of the horrors than is good for my
digestion.”

With the aid of the tongs he removed the creature from the table.
He placed it on the hearth. Before Brasher or I had a notion of
what it was he intended to do he covered it with a heavy marble
paper weight. Then he stood upon the weight, and between the
marble and the hearth he ground the creature flat.

While the execution was still proceeding, Bob sat up upon the
floor.

“Hollo!” he asked, “what’s happened?”

“We’ve emptied the bottle, Bob,” said Tress. “But there’s another
where that came from. Perhaps you could drink another tumblerful,
my boy?”

Bob drank it!

FOOTNOTE

“Those gentry are hard to kill.” Here is fact, not fantasy.
Lizard yarns no less sensational than this Mystery Story can be
found between the covers of solemn, zoological textbooks.

Reptiles, indeed, are far from finicky in the matters of air,
space, and especially warmth. Frogs and other such sluggish-
blooded creatures have lived after being frozen fast in ice. Their
blood is little warmer than air or water, enjoying no extra casing
of fur or feathers.

Air and food seem held in light esteem by lizards. Their blood
need not be highly oxygenated; it nourishes just as well when
impure. In temperate climes lizards lie torpid and buried all
winter; some species of the tropic deserts sleep peacefully all
summer. Their anatomy includes no means for the continuous
introduction and expulsion of air; reptilian lungs are little more
than closed sacs, without cell structure.

If any further zoological fact were needed to verify the denouement
of “The Pipe,” it might be the general statement that lizards are
abnormal brutes anyhow. Consider the chameleons of unsettled hue.
And what is one to think of an animal which, when captured by the
tail, is able to make its escape by willfully shuffling off that
appendage?–EDITOR.

I

Pugh came into my room holding something wrapped in a piece of
brown paper.

“Tress, I have brought you something on which you may exercise your
ingenuity.” He began, with exasperating deliberation, to untie the
string which bound his parcel; he is one of those persons who would
not cut a knot to save their lives. The process occupied him the
better part of a quarter of an hour. Then he held out the contents
of the paper.

“What do you think of that?” he asked. I thought nothing of it,
and I told him so. “I was prepared for that confession. I have
noticed, Tress, that you generally do think nothing of an article
which really deserves the attention of a truly thoughtful mind.
Possibly, as you think so little of it, you will be able to solve
the puzzle.”

I took what he held out to me. It was an oblong box, perhaps seven
inches long by three inches broad.

“Where’s the puzzle?” I asked.

“If you will examine the lid of the box, you will see.” I turned
it over and over; it was difficult to see which was the lid. Then
I perceived that on one side were printed these words:

“PUZZLE: TO OPEN THE BOX”

The words were so faintly printed that it was not surprising that I
had not noticed them at first. Pugh explained.

“I observed that box on a tray outside a second-hand furniture
shop. It struck my eye. I took it up. I examined it. I inquired
of the proprietor of the shop in what the puzzle lay. He replied
that that was more than he could tell me. He himself had made
several attempts to open the box, and all of them had failed. I
purchased it. I took it home. I have tried, and I have failed. I
am aware, Tress, of how you pride yourself upon your ingenuity. I
cannot doubt that, if you try, you will not fail.”

While Pugh was prosing, I was examining the box. It was at least
well made. It weighed certainly under two ounces. I struck it
with my knuckles; it sounded hollow. There was no hinge; nothing
of any kind to show that it ever had been opened, or, for the
matter of that, that it ever could be opened. The more I examined
the thing, the more it whetted my curiosity. That it could be
opened, and in some ingenious manner, I made no doubt–but how?

The box was not a new one. At a rough guess I should say that it
had been a box for a good half century; there were certain signs of
age about it which could not escape a practiced eye. Had it
remained unopened all that time? When opened, what would be found
inside? It SOUNDED hollow; probably nothing at all–who could
tell?

It was formed of small pieces of inlaid wood. Several woods had
been used; some of them were strange to me. They were of different
colors; it was pretty obvious that they must all of them have been
hard woods. The pieces were of various shapes–hexagonal,
octagonal, triangular, square, oblong, and even circular. The
process of inlaying them had been beautifully done. So nicely had
the parts been joined that the lines of meeting were difficult to
discover with the naked eye; they had been joined solid, so to
speak. It was an excellent example of marquetry. I had been over-
hasty in my deprecation; I owed as much to Pugh.

“This box of yours is better worth looking at than I first
supposed. Is it to be sold?”

“No, it is not to be sold. Nor”–he “fixed” me with his
spectacles–”is it to be given away. I have brought it to you for
the simple purpose of ascertaining if you have ingenuity enough to
open it.”

“I will engage to open it in two seconds–with a hammer.”

“I dare say. I will open it with a hammer. The thing is to open
it without.”

“Let me see.” I began, with the aid of a microscope, to examine
the box more closely. “I will give you one piece of information,
Pugh. Unless I am mistaken, the secret lies in one of these little
pieces of inlaid wood. You push it, or you press it, or something,
and the whole affair flies open.”

“Such was my own first conviction. I am not so sure of it now. I
have pressed every separate piece of wood; I have tried to move
each piece in every direction. No result has followed. My theory
was a hidden spring.”

“But there must be a hidden spring of some sort, unless you are to
open it by a mere exercise of force. I suppose the box is empty.”

“I thought it was at first, but now I am not so sure of that
either. It all depends on the position in which you hold it. Hold
it in this position–like this–close to your ear. Have you a
small hammer?” I took a small hammer. “Tap it softly, with the
hammer. Don’t you notice a sort of reverberation within?”

Pugh was right, there certainly was something within; something
which seemed to echo back my tapping, almost as if it were a living
thing. I mentioned this, to Pugh.

“But you don’t think that there is something alive inside the box?
There can’t be. The box must be airtight, probably as much air-
tight as an exhausted receiver.”

“How do we know that? How can we tell that no minute interstices
have been left for the express purpose of ventilation?” I
continued tapping with the hammer. I noticed one peculiarity, that
it was only when I held the box in a particular position, and
tapped at a certain spot, there came the answering taps from
within. “I tell you what it is, Pugh, what I hear is the
reverberation of some machinery.”

“Do you think so?”

“I’m sure of it.”

“Give the box to me.” Pugh put the box to his ear. He tapped.
“It sounds to me like the echoing tick, tick of some great beetle;
like the sort of noise which a deathwatch makes, you know.”

Trust Pugh to find a remarkable explanation for a simple fact; if
the explanation leans toward the supernatural, so much the more
satisfactory to Pugh. I knew better.

“The sound which you hear is merely the throbbing or the trembling
of the mechanism with which it is intended that the box should be
opened. The mechanism is placed just where you are tapping it with
the hammer. Every tap causes it to jar.”

“It sounds to me like the ticking of a deathwatch. However, on
such subjects, Tress, I know what you are.”

“My dear Pugh, give it an extra hard tap, and you will see.”

He gave it an extra hard tap. The moment he had done so, he
started.

“I’ve done it now.”

“What have you done?”

“Broken something, I fancy.” He listened intently, with his ear to
the box. “No–it seems all right. And yet I could have sworn I
had damaged something; I heard it smash.”

“Give me the box.” He gave it me. In my turn, I listened. I
shook the box. Pugh must have been mistaken. Nothing rattled;
there was not a sound; the box was as empty as before. I gave a
smart tap with the hammer, as Pugh had done. Then there certainly
was a curious sound. To my ear, it sounded like the smashing of
glass. “I wonder if there is anything fragile inside your precious
puzzle, Pugh, and, if so, if we are shivering it by degrees?”

II

“What IS that noise?”

I lay in bed in that curious condition which is between sleep and
waking. When, at last, I KNEW that I was awake, I asked myself
what it was that had woke me. Suddenly I became conscious that
something was making itself audible in the silence of the night.
For some seconds I lay and listened. Then I sat up in bed.

“What IS that noise?”

It was like the tick, tick of some large and unusually clear-toned
clock. It might have been a clock, had it not been that the sound
was varied, every half dozen ticks or so, by a sort of stifled
screech, such as might have been uttered by some small creature in
an extremity of anguish. I got out of bed; it was ridiculous to
think of sleep during the continuation of that uncanny shrieking.
I struck a light. The sound seemed to come from the neighborhood
of my dressing-table. I went to the dressing-table, the lighted
match in my hand, and, as I did so, my eyes fell on Pugh’s
mysterious box. That same instant there issued, from the bowels of
the box, a more uncomfortable screech than any I had previously
heard. It took me so completely by surprise that I let the match
fall from my hand to the floor. The room was in darkness. I
stood, I will not say trembling, listening–considering their
volume–to the EERIEST shrieks I ever heard. All at once they
ceased. Then came the tick, tick, tick again. I struck another
match and lit the gas.

Pugh had left his puzzle box behind him. We had done all we could,
together, to solve the puzzle. He had left it behind to see what I
could do with it alone. So much had it engrossed my attention that
I had even brought it into my bedroom, in order that I might,
before retiring to rest, make a final attempt at the solution of
the mystery. NOW what possessed the thing?

As I stood, and looked, and listened, one thing began to be clear
to me, that some sort of machinery had been set in motion inside
the box. How it had been set in motion was another matter. But
the box had been subjected to so much handling, to such pressing
and such hammering, that it was not strange if, after all, Pugh or
I had unconsciously hit upon the spring which set the whole thing
going. Possibly the mechanism had got so rusty that it had refused
to act at once. It had hung fire, and only after some hours had
something or other set the imprisoned motive power free.

But what about the screeching? Could there be some living creature
concealed within the box? Was I listening to the cries of some
small animal in agony? Momentary reflection suggested that the
explanation of the one thing was the explanation of the other.
Rust!–there was the mystery. The same rust which had prevented
the mechanism from acting at once was causing the screeching now.
The uncanny sounds were caused by nothing more nor less than the
want of a drop or two of oil. Such an explanation would not have
satisfied Pugh, it satisfied me.

Picking up the box, I placed it to my ear.

“I wonder how long this little performance is going to continue.
And what is going to happen when it is good enough to cease? I
hope”–an uncomfortable thought occurred to me–”I hope Pugh hasn’t
picked up some pleasant little novelty in the way of an infernal
machine. It would be a first-rate joke if he and I had been
endeavoring to solve the puzzle of how to set it going.”

I don’t mind owning that as this reflection crossed my mind I
replaced Pugh’s puzzle on the dressing-table. The idea did not
commend itself to me at all. The box evidently contained some
curious mechanism. It might be more curious than comfortable.
Possibly some agreeable little device in clockwork. The tick,
tick, tick suggested clockwork which had been planned to go a
certain time, and then–then, for all I knew, ignite an explosive,
and–blow up. It would be a charming solution to the puzzle if it
were to explode while I stood there, in my nightshirt, looking on.
It is true that the box weighed very little. Probably, as I have
said, the whole affair would not have turned the scale at a couple
of ounces. But then its very lightness might have been part of the
ingenious inventor’s little game. There are explosives with which
one can work a very satisfactory amount of damage with considerably
less than a couple of ounces.

While I was hesitating–I own it!–whether I had not better immerse
Pugh’s puzzle in a can of water, or throw it out of the window, or
call down Bob with a request to at once remove it to his apartment,
both the tick, tick, tick, and the screeching ceased, and all
within the box was still. If it WAS going to explode, it was now
or never. Instinctively I moved in the direction of the door.

I waited with a certain sense of anxiety. I waited in vain.
Nothing happened, not even a renewal of the sound.

“I wish Pugh had kept his precious puzzle at home. This sort of
thing tries one’s nerves.”

When I thought that I perceived that nothing seemed likely to
happen, I returned to the neighborhood of the table. I looked at
the box askance. I took it up gingerly. Something might go off at
any moment for all I knew. It would be too much of a joke if
Pugh’s precious puzzle exploded in my hand. I shook it doubtfully;
nothing rattled. I held it to my ear. There was not a sound.
What had taken place? Had the clockwork run down, and was the
machine arranged with such a diabolical ingenuity that a certain
interval was required, after the clockwork had run down, before an
explosion could occur? Or had rust caused the mechanism to again
hang fire?

“After making all that commotion the thing might at least come
open.” I banged the box viciously against the corner of the table.
I felt that I would almost rather that an explosion should take
place than that nothing should occur. One does not care to be
disturbed from one’s sound slumber in the small hours of the
morning for a trifle.

“I’ve half a mind to get a hammer, and try, as they say in the
cookery books, another way.”

Unfortunately I had promised Pugh to abstain from using force. I
might have shivered the box open with my hammer, and then explained
that it had fallen, or got trod upon, or sat upon, or something,
and so got shattered, only I was afraid that Pugh would not believe
me. The man is himself such an untruthful man that he is in a
chronic state of suspicion about the truthfulness of others.

“Well, if you’re not going to blow up, or open, or something, I’ll
say good night.”

I gave the box a final rap with my knuckles and a final shake,
replaced it on the table, put out the gas, and returned to bed.

I was just sinking again into slumber, when that box began again.
It was true that Pugh had purchased the puzzle, but it was evident
that the whole enjoyment of the purchase was destined to be mine.
It was useless to think of sleep while that performance was going
on. I sat up in bed once more.

“It strikes me that the puzzle consists in finding out how it is
possible to go to sleep with Pugh’s purchase in your bedroom. This
is far better than the old-fashioned prescription of cats on the
tiles.”

It struck me the noise was distinctly louder than before; this
applied both to the tick, tick, tick, and the screeching.

“Possibly,” I told myself, as I relighted the gas, “the explosion
is to come off this time.”

I turned to look at the box. There could be no doubt about it; the
noise was louder. And, if I could trust my eyes, the box was
moving–giving a series of little jumps. This might have been an
optical delusion, but it seemed to me that at each tick the box
gave a little bound. During the screeches–which sounded more like
the cries of an animal in an agony of pain even than before–if it
did not tilt itself first on one end, and then on another, I shall
never be willing to trust the evidence of my own eyes again. And
surely the box had increased in size; I could have sworn not only
that it had increased, but that it was increasing, even as I stood
there looking on. It had grown, and still was growing, both
broader, and longer, and deeper. Pugh, of course, would have
attributed it to supernatural agency; there never was a man with
such a nose for a ghost. I could picture him occupying my
position, shivering in his nightshirt, as he beheld that miracle
taking place before his eyes. The solution which at once suggested
itself to me–and which would NEVER have suggested itself to Pugh!–
was that the box was fashioned, as it were, in layers, and that
the ingenious mechanism it contained was forcing the sides at once
both upward and outward. I took it in my hand. I could feel
something striking against the bottom of the box, like the tap,
tap, tapping of a tiny hammer.

“This is a pretty puzzle of Pugh’s. He would say that that is the
tapping of a deathwatch. For my part I have not much faith in
deathwatches, et hoc genus omne, but it certainly is a curious
tapping; I wonder what is going to happen next?”

Apparently nothing, except a continuation of those mysterious
sounds. That the box had increased in size I had, and have, no
doubt whatever. I should say that it had increased a good inch in
every direction, at least half an inch while I had been looking on.
But while I stood looking its growth was suddenly and perceptibly
stayed; it ceased to move. Only the noise continued.

“I wonder how long it will be before anything worth happening does
happen! I suppose something is going to happen; there can’t be all
this to-do for nothing. If it is anything in the infernal machine
line, and there is going to be an explosion, I might as well be
here to see it. I think I’ll have a pipe.”

I put on my dressing-gown. I lit my pipe. I sat and stared at the
box. I dare say I sat there for quite twenty minutes when, as
before, without any sort of warning, the sound was stilled. Its
sudden cessation rather startled me.

“Has the mechanism again hung fire? Or, this time, is the
explosion coming off?” It did not come off; nothing came off.
“Isn’t the box even going to open?”

It did not open. There was simply silence all at once, and that
was all. I sat there in expectation for some moments longer. But
I sat for nothing. I rose. I took the box in my hand. I shook
it.

“This puzzle IS a puzzle.” I held the box first to one ear, then
to the other. I gave it several sharp raps with my knuckles.
There was not an answering sound, not even the sort of
reverberation which Pugh and I had noticed at first. It seemed
hollower than ever. It was as though the soul of the box was dead.
“I suppose if I put you down, and extinguish the gas and return to
bed, in about half an hour or so, just as I am dropping off to
sleep, the performance will be recommenced. Perhaps the third time
will be lucky.”

But I was mistaken–there was no third time. When I returned to
bed that time I returned to sleep, and I was allowed to sleep;
there was no continuation of the performance, at least so far as I
know. For no sooner was I once more between the sheets than I was
seized with an irresistible drowsiness, a drowsiness which so
mastered me that I–I imagine it must have been instantly–sank
into slumber which lasted till long after day had dawned. Whether
or not any more mysterious sounds issued from the bowels of Pugh’s
puzzle is more than I can tell. If they did, they did not succeed
in rousing me.

And yet, when at last I did awake, I had a sort of consciousness
that my waking had been caused by something strange. What it was I
could not surmise. My own impression was that I had been awakened
by the touch of a person’s hand. But that impression must have
been a mistaken one, because, as I could easily see by looking
round the room, there was no one in the room to touch me.

It was broad daylight. I looked at my watch; it was nearly eleven
o’clock. I am a pretty late sleeper as a rule, but I do not
usually sleep as late as that. That scoundrel Bob would let me
sleep all day without thinking it necessary to call me. I was just
about to spring out of bed with the intention of ringing the bell
so that I might give Bob a piece of my mind for allowing me to
sleep so late, when my glance fell on the dressing-table on which,
the night before, I had placed Pugh’s puzzle. It had gone!

Its absence so took me by surprise that I ran to the table. It HAD
gone. But it had not gone far; it had gone to pieces! There were
the pieces lying where the box had been. The puzzle had solved
itself. The box was open, open with a vengeance, one might say.
Like that unfortunate Humpty Dumpty, who, so the chroniclers tell
us, sat on a wall, surely “all the king’s horses and all the king’s
men” never could put Pugh’s puzzle together again!

The marquetry had resolved itself into its component parts. How
those parts had ever been joined was a mystery. They had been laid
upon no foundation, as is the case with ordinary inlaid work. The
several pieces of wood were not only of different shapes and sizes,
but they were as thin as the thinnest veneer; yet the box had been
formed by simply joining them together. The man who made that box
must have been possessed of ingenuity worthy of a better cause.

I perceived how the puzzle had been worked. The box had contained
an arrangement of springs, which, on being released, had expanded
themselves in different directions until their mere expansion had
rent the box to pieces. There were the springs, lying amid the
ruin they had caused.

There was something else amid that ruin besides those springs;
there was a small piece of writing paper. I took it up. On the
reverse side of it was written in a minute, crabbed hand: “A
Present For You.” What was a present for me? I looked, and, not
for the first time since I had caught sight of Pugh’s precious
puzzle, could scarcely believe my eyes.

There, poised between two upright wires, the bent ends of which
held it aloft in the air, was either a piece of glass or–a
crystal. The scrap of writing paper had exactly covered it. I
understood what it was, when Pugh and I had tapped with the hammer,
had caused the answering taps to proceed from within. Our taps
caused the wires to oscillate, and in these oscillations the
crystal, which they held suspended, had touched the side of the
box.

I looked again at the piece of paper. “A Present For You.” Was
THIS the present–this crystal? I regarded it intently.

“It CAN’T be a diamond.”

The idea was ridiculous, absurd. No man in his senses would place
a diamond inside a twopenny-halfpenny puzzle box. The thing was as
big as a walnut! And yet–I am a pretty good judge of precious
stones–if it was not an uncut diamond it was the best imitation I
had seen. I took it up. I examined it closely. The more closely
I examined it, the more my wonder grew.

“It IS a diamond!”

And yet the idea was too preposterous for credence. Who would
present a diamond as big as a walnut with a trumpery puzzle?
Besides, all the diamonds which the world contains of that size are
almost as well known as the Koh-i-noor.

“If it is a diamond, it is worth–it is worth–Heaven only knows
what it isn’t worth if it’s a diamond.”

I regarded it through a strong pocket lens. As I did so I could
not restrain an exclamation.

“The world to a China orange, it IS a diamond!”

The words had scarcely escaped my lips than there came a tapping at
the door.

“Come in!” I cried, supposing it was Bob. It was not Bob, it was
Pugh. Instinctively I put the lens and the crystal behind my back.
At sight of me in my nightshirt Pugh began to shake his head.

“What hours, Tress, what hours! Why, my dear Tress, I’ve
breakfasted, read the papers and my letters, came all the way from
my house here, and you’re not up!”

“Don’t I look as though I were up?”

“Ah, Tress! Tress!” He approached the dressing-table. His eye
fell upon the ruins. “What’s this?”

“That’s the solution to the puzzle.”

“Have you–have you solved it fairly, Tress?”

“It has solved itself. Our handling, and tapping, and hammering
must have freed the springs which the box contained, and during the
night, while I slept, they have caused it to come open.”

“While you slept? Dear me! How strange! And–what are these?”

He had discovered the two upright wires on which the crystal had
been poised.

“I suppose they’re part of the puzzle.”

“And was there anything in the box? What’s this?” he picked up the
scrap of paper; I had left it on the table. He read what was
written on it: “‘A Present For You.’ What’s it mean? Tress, was
this in the box?”

“It was.”

“What’s it mean about a present? Was there anything in the box
besides?”

“Pugh, if you will leave the room I shall be able to dress; I am
not in the habit of receiving quite such early calls, or I should
have been prepared to receive you. If you will wait in the next
room, I will be with you as soon as I’m dressed. There is a little
subject in connection with the box which I wish to discuss with
you.”

“A subject in connection with the box? What is the subject?”

“I will tell you, Pugh, when I have performed my toilet.”

“Why can’t you tell me now?”

“Do you propose, then, that I should stand here shivering in my
shirt while you are prosing at your ease? Thank you; I am obliged,
but I decline. May I ask you once more, Pugh, to wait for me in
the adjoining apartment?”

He moved toward the door. When he had taken a couple of steps, he
halted.

“I–I hope, Tress, that you’re–you’re going to play no tricks on
me?”

“Tricks on you! Is it likely that I am going to play tricks upon
my oldest friend?”

When he had gone–he vanished, it seemed to me, with a somewhat
doubtful visage–I took the crystal to the window. I drew the
blind. I let the sunshine fall on it. I examined it again,
closely and minutely, with the aid of my pocket lens. It WAS a
diamond; there could not be a doubt of it. If, with my knowledge
of stones, I was deceived, then I was deceived as never man had
been deceived before. My heart beat faster as I recognized the
fact that I was holding in my hand what was, in all probability, a
fortune for a man of moderate desires. Of course, Pugh knew
nothing of what I had discovered, and there was no reason why he
should know. Not the least! The only difficulty was that if I
kept my own counsel, and sold the stone and utilized the proceeds
of the sale, I should have to invent a story which would account
for my sudden accession to fortune. Pugh knows almost as much of
my affairs as I do myself. That is the worst of these old friends!

When I joined Pugh I found him dancing up and down the floor like a
bear upon hot plates. He scarcely allowed me to put my nose inside
the door before attacking me.

“Tress, give me what was in the box.”

“My dear Pugh, how do you know that there was something in the box
to give you?”

“I know there was!”

“Indeed! If you know that there was something in the box, perhaps
you will tell me what that something was.”

He eyed me doubtfully. Then, advancing, he laid upon my arm a hand
which positively trembled.

“Tress, you–you wouldn’t play tricks on an old friend.”

“You are right, Pugh, I wouldn’t, though I believe there have been
occasions on which you have had doubts upon the subject. By the
way, Pugh, I believe that I am the oldest friend you have.”

“I–I don’t know about that. There’s–there’s Brasher.”

“Brasher! Who’s Brasher? You wouldn’t compare my friendship to
the friendship of such a man as Brasher? Think of the tastes we
have in common, you and I. We’re both collectors.”

“Ye-es, we’re both collectors.”

“I make my interests yours, and you make your interests mine.
Isn’t that so, Pugh?”

“Tress, what–what was in the box?”

“I will be frank with you, Pugh. If there had been something in
the box, would you have been willing to go halves with me in my
discovery?”

“Go halves! In your discovery, Tress! Give me what is mine!”

“With pleasure, Pugh, if you will tell me what is yours.”

“If–if you don’t give me what was in the box I’ll–I’ll send for
the police.”

“Do! Then I shall be able to hand to them what was in the box in
order that it may be restored to its proper owner.”

“Its proper owner! I’m its proper owner!”

“Excuse me, but I don’t understand how that can be; at least, until
the police have made inquiries. I should say that the proper owner
was the person from whom you purchased the box, or, more probably,
the person from whom he purchased it, and by whom, doubtless, it
was sold in ignorance, or by mistake. Thus, Pugh, if you will only
send for the police, we shall earn the gratitude of a person of
whom we never heard in our lives–I for discovering the contents of
the box, and you for returning them.”

As I said this, Pugh’s face was a study. He gasped for breath. He
actually took out his handkerchief to wipe his brow.

“Tress, I–I don’t think you need to use a tone like that to me.
It isn’t friendly. What–what was in the box?”

“Let us understand each other, Pugh. If you don’t hand over what
was in the box to the police, I go halves.”

Pugh began to dance about the floor.

“What a fool I was to trust you with the box! I knew I couldn’t
trust you.” I said nothing. I turned and rang the bell. “What’s
that for?”

“That, my dear Pugh, is for breakfast, and, if you desire it, for
the police. You know, although you have breakfasted, I haven’t.
Perhaps while I am breaking my fast, you would like to summon the
representatives of law and order.” Bob came in. I ordered
breakfast. Then I turned to Pugh. “Is there anything you would
like?”

“No, I–I’ve breakfasted.”

“It wasn’t of breakfast I was thinking. It was of–something else.
Bob is at your service, if, for instance, you wish to send him on
an errand.”

“No, I want nothing. Bob can go.” Bob went. Directly he was
gone, Pugh turned to me. “You shall have half. What was in the
box?”

“I shall have half?”

“You shall!”

“I don’t think it is necessary that the terms of our little
understanding should be expressly embodied in black and white. I
fancy that, under the circumstance, I can trust you, Pugh. I
believe that I am capable of seeing that, in this matter, you don’t
do me. That was in the box.”

I held out the crystal between my finger and thumb.

“What is it?”

“That is what I desire to learn.”

“Let me look at it.”

“You are welcome to look at it where it is. Look at it as long as
you like, and as closely.”

Pugh leaned over my hand. His eyes began to gleam. He is himself
not a bad judge of precious stones, is Pugh.

“It’s–it’s–Tress!–is it a diamond?”

“That question I have already asked myself.”

“Let me look at it! It will be safe with me! It’s mine!”

I immediately put the thing behind my back.

“Pardon me, it belongs neither to you nor to me. It belongs, in
all probability, to the person who sold that puzzle to the man from
whom you bought it–perhaps some weeping widow, Pugh, or hopeless
orphan–think of it. Let us have no further misunderstanding upon
that point, my dear old friend. Still, because you are my dear old
friend, I am willing to trust you with this discovery of mine, on
condition that you don’t attempt to remove it from my sight, and
that you return it to me the moment I require you.”

“You’re–you’re very hard on me.” I made a movement toward my
waistcoat pocket. “I’ll return it to you!”

I handed him the crystal, and with it I handed him my pocket lens.

“With the aid of that glass I imagine that you will be able to
subject it to a more acute examination, Pugh.”

He began to examine it through the lens. Directly he did so, he
gave an exclamation. In a few moments he looked up at me. His
eyes were glistening behind his spectacles. I could see he
trembled.

“Tress, it’s–it’s a diamond, a Brazil diamond. It’s worth a
fortune!”

“I’m glad you think so.”

“Glad I think so! Don’t you think that it’s a diamond?”

“It appears to be a diamond. Under ordinary conditions I should
say, without hesitation, that it was a diamond. But when I
consider the circumstances of its discovery, I am driven to doubts.
How much did you give for that puzzle, Pugh?”

“Ninepence; the fellow wanted a shilling, but I gave him ninepence.
He seemed content.”

“Ninepence! Does it seem reasonable that we should find a diamond,
which, if it is a diamond, is the finest stone I ever saw and
handled, in a ninepenny puzzle? It is not as though it had got
into the thing by accident, it had evidently been placed there to
be found, and, apparently, by anyone who chanced to solve the
puzzle; witness the writing on the scrap of paper.”

Pugh re-examined the crystal.

“It is a diamond! I’ll stake my life that it’s a diamond!”

“Still, though it be a diamond, I smell a rat!”

“What do you mean?”

“I strongly suspect that the person who placed that diamond inside
that puzzle intended to have a joke at the expense of the person
who discovered it. What was to be the nature of the joke is more
than I can say at present, but I should like to have a bet with you
that the man who compounded that puzzle was an ingenious practical
joker. I may be wrong, Pugh; we shall see. But, until I have
proved the contrary, I don’t believe that the maddest man that ever
lived would throw away a diamond worth, apparently, shall we say a
thousand pounds?”

“A thousand pounds! This diamond is worth a good deal more than a
thousand pounds.”

“Well, that only makes my case the stronger; I don’t believe that
the maddest man that ever lived would throw away a diamond worth
more than a thousand pounds with such utter wantonness as seems to
have characterized the action of the original owner of the stone
which I found in your ninepenny puzzle, Pugh.”

“There have been some eccentric characters in the world, some very
eccentric characters. However, as you say, we shall see. I fancy
that I know somebody who would be quite willing to have such a
diamond as this, and who, moreover, would be willing to pay a fair
price for its possession; I will take it to him and see what he
says.”

“Pugh, hand me back that diamond.”

“My dear Tress, I was only going–”

Bob came in with the breakfast tray.

“Pugh, you will either hand me that at once, or Bob shall summon
the representatives of law and order.”

He handed me the diamond. I sat down to breakfast with a hearty
appetite. Pugh stood and scowled at me.

“Joseph Tress, it is my solemn conviction, and I have no hesitation
in saying so in plain English, that you’re a thief.”

“My dear Pugh, it seems to me that we show every promise of
becoming a couple of thieves.”

“Don’t bracket me with you!”

“Not at all, you are worse than I. It is you who decline to return
the contents of the box to its proper owner. Put it to yourself,
you have SOME common sense, my dear old friend I–do you suppose
that a diamond worth more than a thousand pounds is to be HONESTLY
bought for ninepence?”

He resumed his old trick of dancing about the room.

“I was a fool ever to let you have the box! I ought to have known
better than to have trusted you; goodness knows you have given me
sufficient cause to mistrust you! Over and over again! Your
character is only too notorious! You have plundered friend and foe
alike–friend and foe alike! As for the rubbish which you call
your collection, nine tenths of it, I know as a positive fact, you
have stolen out and out.”

“Who stole my Sir Walter Raleigh pipe? Wasn’t it a man named
Pugh?”

“Look here, Joseph Tress!”

“I’m looking.”

“Oh, it’s no good talking to you, not the least! You’re–you’re
dead to all the promptings of conscience! May I inquire, Mr.
Tress, what it is you propose to do?”

“I PROPOSE to do nothing, except summon the representatives of law
and order. Failing that, my dear Pugh, I had some faint, vague,
very vague idea of taking the contents of your ninepenny puzzle to
a certain firm in Hatton Garden, who are dealers in precious
stones, and to learn from them if they are disposed to give
anything for it, and if so, what.”

“I shall come with you.”

“With pleasure, on condition that you pay the cab.”

“I pay the cab! I will pay half.”

“Not at all. You will either pay the whole fare, or else I will
have one cab and you shall have another. It is a three-shilling
cab fare from here to Hatton Garden. If you propose to share my
cab, you will be so good as to hand over that three shillings
before we start.”

He gasped, but he handed over the three shillings. There are few
things I enjoy so much as getting money out of Pugh!

On the road to Hatton Garden we wrangled nearly all the way. I own
that I feel a certain satisfaction in irritating Pugh, he is such
an irritable man. He wanted to know what I thought we should get
for the diamond.

“You can’t expect to get much for the contents of a ninepenny
puzzle, not even the price of a cab fare, Pugh.”

He eyed me, but for some minutes he was silent. Then he began
again.

“Tress, I don’t think we ought to let it go for less than–than
five thousand pounds.”

“Seriously, Pugh, I doubt whether, when the whole affair is ended,
we shall get five thousand pence for it, or, for the matter of
that, five thousand farthings.”

“But why not? Why not? It’s a magnificent stone–magnificent!
I’ll stake my life on it.”

I tapped my breast with the tips of my fingers.

“There’s a warning voice within my breast that ought to be in
yours, Pugh! Something tells me, perhaps it is the unusually
strong vein of common sense which I possess, that the contents of
your ninepenny puzzle will be found to be a magnificent do–an
ingenious practical joke, my friend.”

“I don’t believe it.”

But I think he did; at any rate, I had unsettled the foundations of
his faith.

We entered the Hatton Garden office side by side; in his anxiety
not to let me get before him, Pugh actually clung to my arm. The
office was divided into two parts by a counter which ran from wall
to wall. I advanced to a man who stood on the other side of this
counter.

“I want to sell you a diamond.”

“WE want to sell you a diamond,” interpolated Pugh.

I turned to Pugh. I “fixed” him with my glance.

“I want to sell you a diamond. Here it is. What will you give me
for it?”

Taking the crystal from my waistcoat pocket I handed it to the man
on the other side of the counter. Directly he got it between his
fingers, and saw that it was that he had got, I noticed a sudden
gleam come into his eyes.

“This is–this is rather a fine stone.”

Pugh nudged my arm.

“I told you so.” I paid no attention to Pugh. “What will you give
me for it?”

“Do you mean, what will I give you for it cash down upon the nail?”

“Just so–what will you give me for it cash down upon the nail?”

The man turned the crystal over and over in his fingers. “Well,
that’s rather a large order. We don’t often get a chance of buying
such a stone as this across the counter. What do you say to–well–
to ten thousand pounds?”

Ten thousand pounds! It was beyond my wildest imaginings. Pugh
gasped. He lurched against the counter.

“Ten thousand pounds!” he echoed.

The man on the other side glanced at him, I thought, a little
curiously.

“If you can give me references, or satisfy me in any way as to your
bona fides, I am prepared to give you for this diamond an open
check for ten thousand pounds, or if you prefer it, the cash
instead.”

I stared; I was not accustomed to see business transacted on quite
such lines as those.

“We’ll take it,” murmured Pugh; I believe he was too much overcome
by his feelings to do more than murmur. I interposed.

“My dear sir, you will excuse my saying that you arrive very
rapidly at your conclusions. In the first place, how can you make
sure that it is a diamond?”

The man behind the counter smiled.

“I should be very ill-fitted for the position which I hold if I
could not tell a diamond directly I get a sight of it, especially
such a stone as this.”

“But have you no tests you can apply?”

“We have tests which we apply in cases in which doubt exists, but
in this case there is no doubt whatever. I am as sure that this is
a diamond as I am sure that it is air I breathe. However, here is
a test.”

There was a wheel close by the speaker. It was worked by a
treadle. It was more like a superior sort of traveling-tinker’s
grindstone than anything else. The man behind the counter put his
foot upon the treadle. The wheel began to revolve. He brought the
crystal into contact with the swiftly revolving wheel. There was a
s–s–sh! And, in an instant, his hand was empty; the crystal had
vanished into air.

“Good heavens!” he gasped. I never saw such a look of amazement on
a human countenance before. “It’s splintered!”

POSTSCRIPT

It WAS a diamond, although it HAD splintered. In that fact lay the
point of the joke. The man behind the counter had not been wrong;
examination of such dust as could be collected proved that fact
beyond a doubt. It was declared by experts that the diamond, at
some period of its history, had been subjected to intense and
continuing heat. The result had been to make it as brittle as
glass.

There could be no doubt that its original owner had been an expert
too. He knew where he got it from, and he probably knew what it
had endured. He was aware that, from a mercantile point of view,
it was worthless; it could never have been cut. So, having a turn
for humor of a peculiar kind, he had devoted days, and weeks, and
possibly months, to the construction of that puzzle. He had placed
the diamond inside, and he had enjoyed, in anticipation and in
imagination, the Alnaschar visions of the lucky finder.

Pugh blamed me for the catastrophe. He said, and still says, that
if I had not, in a measure, and quite gratuitously, insisted on a
test, the man behind the counter would have been satisfied with the
evidence of his organs of vision, and we should have been richer by
ten thousand pounds. But I satisfy my conscience with the
reflection that what I did at any rate was honest, though, at the
same time, I am perfectly well aware that such a reflection gives
Pugh no sort of satisfaction.

The screw steamer Jenny Jones was lying alongside a coal-hulk at
Gibraltar one October afternoon. By three o’clock her bunkers were
nearly filled, and the captain was getting ready for casting off,
when one of the natives came on board. Captain Hindhaugh looked
about for something to throw at the visitor, and only the difficulty
of selecting an efficient missile from a large and varied assortment
prevented him from letting fly at once.

The “Scorpion” said, “Ah, no, no, Capeetan! No been throw nothin’
at myself. Beesiness! I’se been com’ for beesiness. Big thing,
Capeetan!”

The last phrase was spoken with such a profound wink that
Hindhaugh held his hand, and, addressing the man as one would an
ill-conditioned dog, said, “Don’t keep bowing and scraping there,
you tastrel! Get it out sharp!”

The Scorpion whispered, “No been talk up here. Keep ship one hour,
two hour, three hour. You’se been com’ with me, and I speak you
somethin’ myself.”

Like many of his tribe, this interesting native spoke a kind
of English which is not heard anywhere else on the Mediterranean
shore. A few of the people on the Rock learn to talk very well to
our men, but most of those who come about the ships use a picturesque
lingo in which “myself” the place of quite a variety of parts of
speech.

Hindhaugh invited the man below, and asked him to explain himself.
The fellow leaned over the table and chattered on, throwing quick
side glances at every few words.

“This been big thing, Capeetan. You get away a little; drop your
anchor a little. Then three felucca com’ alongside, and you’se been
hoist bales. Then you ’se go where agent say you. Very big thing.
Five thousand sovereign.”

“What is it? tobacco?”

“That been it.”

“Where for?”

“Huelva.”

“I’m not going out of Portuguese waters at no price.”

“Ah, no, no, Cheesu, Capeetan–no! Five mile. We have felucca there
ready. I ’se been see him myself.”

“What’s the figure? what’s the money?”

“You com’ ’shore and see agent with myself.”

Hindhaugh put a revolver in his pocket and went on deck; the
Scorpion got ashore, and hung about with an air of innocence. The
captain was about to follow when the man in charge of the hulk
called out, “Do you intend to keep bumping us like this all night?
Why don’t you cast off? You’re knocking us all to flinders.”

Hindhaugh beckoned. “Look here, my good chap, it won’t matter to
you for a couple of hours. Let us lie till dusk, and then I’ll
get away. I’ve got important business ashore.”

“That’s very well, Captain. But look here; if there’s anything on,
I’m in it. You understand –I’m in it.”

“You understand that, do you? Well then, I’ll tell you to keep
your mouth shut just now, or never another ton of coal will you
put aboard of us as long as I run here.”

“All right, Captain. No need to be nasty. You’ll do the square
thing, I bet.”

Then Hindhaugh went ashore, and the Scorpion walked on ahead,
gazing on architectural beauties with easy interest. Presently the
two men came to a narrow stairway, and the Englishman gripped his
revolver. A dark-eyed Spaniard was waiting on a landing, and held
up two fingers when the guide passed. The Scorpion knocked at
a greasy door, and an ugly fellow, with a cowl on, looked out and
nodded. Hindhaugh stepped into a room that reeked with garlic and
decay. Two men sat in the steamy dusk at the far side. An oily
gentleman rose and bowed. “I’m the interpreter, Captain. You and
this merchant must do your business through me. What’ll you take
to drink?”

“Get through your business, mister. I’m not wanting any drink.”

In brief, jerky sentences the interpreter explained what was wanted.

“You steam slowly till you’re near the Fleet. Then put all your
men on and get the stuff up. This man goes with you, and he’ll
tell you where to go. Lie five miles off Huelva.”

“I sha’n't go except to Portuguese waters.”

“Good. Then the lighters will come and the men will discharge
you.”

“And now,” said the captain, “what about me? How much?”

“One hundred and twenty pounds.”

“Can’t be done. Make it two hundred and fifty.”

After some haggling, a bargain was made for two hundred and twenty.
Then Hindhaugh went further: “I want one hundred and ten down before
we start, and the balance before you take an ounce of tobacco out
of us.”

This was settled; the merchant bowed, and the skipper went away,
still keeping his hand on the revolver. Every cranny in the walls
seemed fit to hide a murderer–seemed made for nothing else; and
Hindhaugh thought what a fool he must have been to venture under
that foul arch.

On getting aboard, the captain sent for his brother, who sailed
as mate with him. He said, “Now, Jack, I’m going to run some risk.
You take this pistol, and get her oiled and put right. When you see
three feluccas coming alongside, get all the chaps on deck–the Dora’s
crew as well as ours.” (Hindhaugh was taking home a ship-wrecked
crew, and he was very grateful just then for that accession of
force.) “Whack on everything you know, and get the bales up sharp.
Tell the engineers to stand by for driving her, and leave the rest
to me. If we’re nailed we’ll be detained, and I don’t know what
may happen; so you’ll have to look slippy.”

Jack replied, “All right, sir!” Quarter-deck manners were punctiliously
observed by one of the brothers.

The shadows fell low, and the crown of the Rock grew dim.
The creeping wind stole over the Pearl Rock, and set the sinister
ripples dancing; the bugles sang mysteriously through the gloom,
and the mystery of the night was in the air. The Jenny Jones stole
quietly toward the broad sheet of water where the vessels of the
Fleet heaved up their shadowy bulk above the lapping flood. All the
English sailors were stripped to the shirt, and a low hum of excited
talk came from amidships. Suddenly the raking yard of a felucca
started out from amid the haze; then came another, and another.
A sailor slipped a cork fender over the side, and there was a
muffled bump and a slight scrape. Jack, the mate, whispered, “Now,
you cripples!” and a brief scene of wild hurry and violent labour
ensued. Bale after bale was whisked aboard; the Englishmen worked
as only English sailors can, and the Scorpions excelled themselves
under the influence of fear and black wine. When the last bale was
up, Hindhaugh said to the man who first boarded him, “Who’s got
the money?”

“Me, Capeetan. All right. Honest man myself. You’se been have
every dollar.”

“Well then, it’s neck or nothing. We have half an hour to clear
out into the Gut. Come below, and shell out.”

The Scorpion counted out one hundred pounds in gold, and then asked,
“That be enough? Other money all right other end.”

“Deuce a bit! Down with the other ten or I sliver you.”

The Scorpion did not know what “sliver” meant, but the gleam of
the skipper’s cold eye was enough for him. He paid up and went on
deck.

Hindhaugh had just said to the engineer, “Now, rive the soul out
of her,” when a low, panting sound was heard, and a white shape
appeared gliding over the water. The captain had let the feluccas
go, and the Jenny Jones was moving. He waved for the mate. “It’s
all up. Here’s a mess. You must go home overland; suppose you swim
ashore. Steady the men down.”

Jack performed one or two steps of a dance, and placed his finger
against his nose. He rather enjoyed a scrape, did this frivolous
chief officer. The white shape came nearer, and a sharp whistle
sounded. Hindhaugh had known well enough that it was a steam-launch
that made the panting noise, and he got ready for the worst. The
launch drew right across the bows of the steamer, and then the
throbbing of the little engines ceased. Again the whistle sounded;
the launch gave a bound forward; then she struck away into the
darkness, and Hindhaugh drew a long breath.

In an instant every possible ounce of steam was put on, and the
Jenny Jones went away at eleven knots toward the Gut. All night
long the firemen were kept hard at it, and before morning the Rock
was far astern of the driving steamboat.

Three of the Scorpions had stayed aboard, and Captain Hindhaugh
noticed that they earned their knives. He noticed, too, that the
cringing manner which the fellows had shown before the Rock was
cleared had given place to a sort of subdued swagger.

About noon the engines were slowed down almost to nothing, and
the Jenny Jones crept gently on toward the shore. By four o’clock
the vessel was well into Portuguese waters, and Hindhaugh was
prepared to defy any quantity of Spanish coast-guards. When the
sun had dipped low the Scorpion-in-chief came aft, and pointed
mysteriously to the northeast.

“You’se been look where I point myself. Feluccas! You’se follow
them in and drop anchor.”

Hindhaugh smiled. “Do you think you’re talking to a fool? Come you
below there, and let me have that other money sharp.”

“Ah, Capeetan, wait till agent’s man come with felucca. I’se been
have no money myself.”

Hindhaugh was not a person to be trifled with. He quietly took
out his revolver. “Now, do you see that pretty thing? First shot
for you. Look at that block forrad, and see how much chance you’ll
have if I fire at you.” The pop of the revolver sounded, and then
Hindhaugh went forward, pulling the Scorpion with him. “Do you see
that hole, you image? How would you like if that was your gizzard?
Now, no games, my joker.”

The Scorpion begged for time, and Hindhaugh was so sure of his
man that he made no further objection. He had another conference
with Jack, and, to that worthy man’s great delight, he expressed
certain forebodings.

“We’re going to have a fight over this job,” said the skipper. “I’m
dead sure of it. Go down and load the two muskets, and give them
to the safest men. When the lighters do come, borrow the fireman’s
iron rods. I’ve lent the steward my bowie that I got at Charleston,
and you can try and hold that old bulldog straight. We mustn’t show
the least sign of funking.”

Then Hindhaugh and his brother called for tea, and fed solidly.

The Scorpion whispered down the companion, “They’se been com’,” and
the captain went on deck. Two large felucca-rigged lighters hove
up slowly through the dusk, and the chief Scorpion’s signal was
answered. Hindhaugh saw both lighters draw near, he felt the usual
scraping bump, and then he heard a sudden thunder of many feet.
The second mate sung out, “Here’s half a hundred of these devils,
sir. They’re all armed to the teeth.” And sure enough, a set of
ferocious-looking rapscallions had boarded the steamer. They looked
like low-class Irishmen browned with walnut-juice. Each man had
a heavy array of pistols in his sash, and all of them carried ugly
knives. The Scorpion waved to the gang, and they arranged themselves
around the pile of bales that stuck out through the after-hatch.
Hindhaugh had fully discounted all the chances, and had made up
his mind to one thing: he wouldn’t be “done.”

The Scorpion imperiously observed, “Come below, Capeetan,” and
Hindhaugh went. Then the defiant native of the Rock put his back
against the cabin door, heaved out his chest in a manly way, and
said, “Now, Capeetan, you no have more money. You speak much, and
I’se been get your throat cut myself.”

“You’ve got no money?”

“No; not a damn dollar.”

“You won’t keep to your bargain?”

“No; you come ’shore for your money if you want him.”

Hindhaugh made up his mind in a flash. In spite of his habit of
wearing a frock-coat and tall hat, he was more than half a pirate,
and he would have ruffled it, like his red-bearded ancestors, had
fighting been still the usual employment of Norsemen. He marked his
man’s throat, and saw that the insolent hands could not get at a
knife quickly. Then he sprang at the Scorpion, gripped him by the
windpipe, and swung him down. The fellow gurgled, but he couldn’t
cry out. Hindhaugh called the steward, and that functionary came
out of his den with the long bowie. “Sit on him,” said the captain.
“If he stirs cut his throat. Now, you, if you move a finger you’re
done.” The steward straddled across the Scorpion, and held the
knife up in a sarcastic way.

Hindhaugh went swiftly on deck, and stepped right among the jabbering
Spaniards. He smiled as though nothing had happened, but when he
saw one man lay hold of a bale he pulled him back. “Tell them I’ll
shoot the first man that tries to lift a bale till I’m ready.”

This message brought on a torrent of talk, which gave the captain
time. He whispered to Jack, “Sneak you round through the engine-room.
That lighter’s made fast forrad; the second one’s fast here. Get
a hatchet from the carpenter, and set him alongside of the second
rope. When I whistle twice, both of you nick the ropes, and we’ll
jink these swindling swine.” The engineer also received orders to
go full speed ahead on the instant that the whistle sounded.

Hindhaugh kept up his air of good-humour, although the full sense
of the risk he ran was in his mind. His threat of shooting had made
the Spaniards suspicious, although they were used to big talk of
the kind. One peep into the cabin would have brought on a collision,
and although the Englishmen might have fought, there was nothing
to gain by a fight. Everything depended on swiftness of action, and
Hindhaugh determined grimly that if rapidity could do anything he
would teach the “furriners” a lesson for trying to swindle him.

He said, very politely, “We’re all ready now. You get your men
aboard the lighters, and we’ll soon rash your cargo over the side.”
This was transmitted to the smugglers, and immediately they swarmed
aboard their own boats. They had rather expected a quarrel, and
this pacific solution pleased them. As Jack afterward said, “They
blethered like a lot o’ wild geese.”

All the foreigners were gone but three. Hindhaugh stepped quietly
up to the interpreter, and said, very low, “I’m covering you with
my revolver from inside my pocket. Don’t you stir. Is that other
money going to be paid?”

The interpreter had been innocent of all knowledge of the wild
work in the cabin. He stammered, “I thought by your way it was all
right. Where’s our man?”

“I’ve got him safe enough. Ask those fellows in the lighters if any
of them can pay the freight for the job. If you tell them to fire
they may miss me, and I can’t miss you.”

No one, not even the consignee’s man, had any money; the smugglers
meant to trick the Revenue, and the English captain as well.
Hindhaugh whistled, and then roared out, “Lie down, all of you! Ram
her ahead!” The hatchets went crack, crack; the steamer shuddered
and plunged forward; and the lighters bumped swiftly astern.

“Over the side, you animals, or I’ll take you out to sea and drown
you.”

The three Spaniards rushed to the side, and took flying leaps into
the lighters. Hindhaugh stooped low and ran to the companion. “Let
that beggar up,” he shouted. The Scorpion scuttled on deck. “Now,
mister, I’ll let you see if you’ll take me in. Over you go. Over
the stern with you, and mind the propeller doesn’t carve you.” Two
shots were fired, but they went wild. The Scorpion saw the whole
situation; he poised for a second on the rail, and then jumped
for it, and Hindhaugh laughed loudly as his enemy came up blowing.
Jack performed a triumphal war-dance on the steamer’s bridge, and
the Jenny Jones was soon far out of pistol range.

All that night Captain Hindhaugh did not sleep a wink. He was quite
persuaded that he had acted the part of an exemplary Briton. What
is the use of belonging to the ruling race if a mere foreigner is
to do as he likes with you? But the adventurous skipper had landed
himself in a pretty mess, and the full extent of his entanglement
grew on him every minute. At twelve o’clock, when the watch was
relieved, Jack came aft in a state of exultation that words cannot
describe. He chuckled out, “Well, sir, we’ve made our fortunes
this time.” Hindhaugh damped his spirits by saying, slowly, “Not
too fast; that ‘baccy’s got to go overboard, my boy.” Jack’s mental
processes became confused. He had been measuring the cubic contents
of the smuggled goods, and the thought of wasting such a gift of
the gods fairly stunned him. Had it been cotton, his imagination
would not have been touched. But ‘baccy! and overboard! It was
too much, and he groaned. He was ready with expedients at once.

“Why not run it to Holland?”

“Can’t be done; where’s our bill of lading?”

“Make up one yourself; you have plenty of forms.”

“And suppose the luck goes the wrong way. What’s to happen to
me–and to you too for that matter?”

“Run to a tobacco port, and warehouse the stuff in your own name.”

“We’re not bound for a tobacco port. What’s to be done about the
cargo of ore that we are carrying? No, John; the whole five thousand
pounds must go over the side.”

Next morning broke joyously. The sea looked merry with miles of
brisk foam, and the little Portuguese schooners flew like butterflies
hither and thither. Every cloud of spray plucked from the dancing
crests flashed like white fire under the clear sun. It was one of
the mornings when one cannot speak for gladness. But Hindhaugh’s
thoughts were fixed on material things. The rich bales lay there,
and their presence affected him like a sarcasm. The men were called
aft, and the shovels used for trimming grain were brought up. Then
the captain said, “Now each of you take a pound or two of this
tobacco, and then break the bales and shovel the rest overboard.”
The precious packages were burst, and the sight of the beautiful
leaf, the richness of the tender aroma, affected the sailors with
remorse. It was like offering up a sacrifice. But the captain’s
orders were definite; so until near noon the shovels were plied
smartly, and one hundredweight after another of admirable tobacco
drifted away on the careless sea.

Hindhaugh watched grimly until at last his emotions overcame him.
He growled, “Confound it, I can’t do it! Belay there, men; I’ll have
another think over this job.” And think he did, with businesslike
solemnity, all day long. He saw that he might make a small fortune
by risking his liberty, and the curious morality of the British
sailor prevented him from seeing shades of right or wrong where
contraband business was concerned. Had you told him that the
tobacco was stolen, he would have pitched you overboard; he felt
his morality to be unimpeachable; it was only the question of
expediency that troubled him. For three days it was almost unsafe
to go near him, so intently did he ponder and plan. On the fifth
day he had worked his way through his perplexities, and was ready
with a plan. A pilot cutter came in sight, and Hindhaugh signalled
her. The pilot’s boat was rowed alongside, and the bronzed and
dignified chief swaggered up to the captain with much cordiality.
No one is so cordial as a pilot who has secured a good ship. The
two men exchanged news, and gradually slid into desultory talk.
Suddenly Hindhaugh said, “Are you game for a bit of work? Do you
ever do anything?”

The pilot was virtuously agitated. He drew himself up, and, taking
care that the mate should hear, answered, “Me! Not for the wurrrld,
Cap’n. I’ve got a wife and children, sir.”

“All right, Pilot, never mind; come down and have some tea.”

Then Hindhaugh gradually drew his man out, until the pilot
was absolutely confidential. The captain knew by the very excess
of purity expressed in the pilot’s first answer that he was not
dealing with a simpleton; but he carefully kept away from the main
subject which was in his (and the pilot’s) mind. At last the man
leaned over and gave a masonic sign. “What was that job you was
speaking about, Cap’n? We’re near home now, you know. Better not
go too near.”

Hindhaugh played a large card. He smiled carelessly. “Fact is, I’ve
just told the fellows to shy the stuff overboard; I shall risk no
more.”

“Mercy me, Cap’n! You’re mad. How did I know who you were? I see
all about it now, but I did not know what game you might have on
with me. I’m in it, you know, if the dimes is right!”

“How?”

“Why, if the job’s big enough. You stand off for a day; go down to
the Sleeve, and hang round, and I’ll find you a customer.”

“If you do, I pay you three hundred pound as soon as his money’s
down.”

“Done, then. My boat’s not gone far. Whistle her, and I’ll go slap
for Bristol. Never you mind for a day or two. How’s your coals?”

“They’re all right. You scoot now, and fetch your man over this
way. I’ll go half-speed to the sou’west for twelve hours, another
twelve hours half-speed back. You’ll find us.”

In thirty-six hours the pilot cutter came back, and a Hebrew
gentleman boarded the Jenny Jones from her. After a long inspection,
the visitor said, “Now look here, I must have a hundred per cent.
margin out of this. What’s your figure?”

“Two thousand five hundred.”

“Won’t do. Say two thousand, and you pay the jackal out of that.”

“Done. And how do you manage?”

“I’ll split the lot up among three trawlers. You wait off, and
give the jackal an extra fifty for bringing the boats down. I risk
the rest.”

Another night passed, and the dawn was breaking coldly when the
dirty sails of the trawlers came in sight. Ship after ship had
hailed Hindhaugh, and offered to tow him if anything had happened
to his engines. He knew he would be reported as lying off apparently
disabled, and he was in a feverish state of excitement. The Hebrew
speculator watched the last bale down the side, and then handed over
the money, had a glass of brandy with the pilot, and departed–whither
Hindhaugh neither knew nor cared. The Jenny Jones ran for her
port. She had just slowed down, and the great waves of smoke from
the town were pouring over her, when two large boats, heavily
laden with men, came off to her. The men swarmed up the side, and
the officer in command shouted, “Bring up the pickaxes, and go to
work!” The hatches were pulled off before the steamer had taken up
her moorings, and the men went violently to work among the ore.
Hindhaugh looked innocent, and inquired, “What’s all this about,
officer?”

“Fact is, Captain, we’ve got a telegram from Gibraltar to say you
have contraband on board. You may save all trouble if you make a
clean breast.”

“Contraband! Who told you that?”

“Oh, we should have known without the wire. That gentleman on the
quay there came overland, and he put us up to you.”

Hindhaugh looked ashore, and saw a dark face that he knew well. He
whistled and smiled. Then he said to the officer, “You may just
as well stop those poor beggars from blistering their hands. You
won’t find anything here except what the men have in the forecastle.
You’re done this journey fairly. Come away down and liquor, and
I’ll tell you all about it.” Then Hindhaugh gave an artistic account
of the whole transaction, and put the matter in such a light that
the custom-house officer cordially congratulated him on having
escaped without a slit weasand.

The Jenny Jones went back to Gibraltar, and Captain Hindhaugh was
very careful never to go ashore without a companion. One day he
was passing a chandler’s shop when a sunken glitter of dark eyes
met him. His old acquaintance, the chief Scorpion, was looking
stilettos and poison at him. But Hindhaugh went by in his big,
burly way, and contented himself with setting on three watchmen
every night during his stay. To this day he is pleased with himself
for having given the foreigners a lesson in the elements of morality,
and he does not fear their knives one whit.