Kitobni o'qish: «The Twins of Table Mountain, and Other Stories», sahifa 5

Wild as this scheme appeared in theory, when put into practical operation there seemed to be some chance of success. Much, doubtless, was owing to her practical knowledge of hotel-keeping, but more to her rigid economy and untiring industry. The mistress of millions, she cooked, washed, waited on table, made the beds, and labored like a common menial. Visitors were attracted by this novel spectacle. The income of the house increased as their respect for the hostess lessened. No anecdote of her avarice was too extravagant for current belief. It was even alleged that she had been known to carry the luggage of guests to their rooms, that she might anticipate the usual porter’s gratuity. She denied herself the ordinary necessaries of life. She was poorly clad, she was ill-fed—but the hotel was making money.

A few hinted of insanity; others shook their heads, and said a curse was entailed on the property. It was believed, also, from her appearance, that she could not long survive this tax on her energies, and already there was discussion as to the probable final disposition of her property.

It was the particular fortune of Mr. Jack Hamlin to be able to set the world right on this and other questions regarding her.

A stormy December evening had set in when he chanced to be a guest of the Rockville Hotel. He had, during the past week, been engaged in the prosecution of his noble profession at Red Dog, and had, in the graphic language of a coadjutor, “cleared out the town, except his fare in the pockets of the stage-driver.” “The Red Dog Standard” had bewailed his departure in playful obituary verse, beginning, “Dearest Johnny, thou hast left us,” wherein the rhymes “bereft us” and “deplore” carried a vague allusion to “a thousand dollars more.” A quiet contentment naturally suffused his personality, and he was more than usually lazy and deliberate in his speech. At midnight, when he was about to retire, he was a little surprised, however, by a tap on his door, followed by the presence of Mistress Peg Moffat, heiress, and landlady of Rockville hotel.

Mr. Hamlin, despite his previous defence of Peg, had no liking for her. His fastidious taste rejected her uncomeliness; his habits of thought and life were all antagonistic to what he had heard of her niggardliness and greed. As she stood there, in a dirty calico wrapper, still redolent with the day’s cuisine, crimson with embarrassment and the recent heat of the kitchen range, she certainly was not an alluring apparition. Happily for the lateness of the hour, her loneliness, and the infelix reputation of the man before her, she was at least a safe one. And I fear the very consciousness of this scarcely relieved her embarrassment.

“I wanted to say a few words to ye alone, Mr. Hamlin,” she began, taking an unoffered seat on the end of his portmanteau, “or I shouldn’t hev intruded. But it’s the only time I can ketch you, or you me; for I’m down in the kitchen from sunup till now.”

She stopped awkwardly, as if to listen to the wind, which was rattling the windows, and spreading a film of rain against the opaque darkness without. Then, smoothing her wrapper over her knees, she remarked, as if opening a desultory conversation, “Thar’s a power of rain outside.”

Mr. Hamlin’s only response to this meteorological observation was a yawn, and a preliminary tug at his coat as he began to remove it.

“I thought ye couldn’t mind doin’ me a favor,” continued Peg, with a hard, awkward laugh, “partik’ly seein’ ez folks allowed you’d sorter bin a friend o’ mine, and hed stood up for me at times when you hedn’t any partikler call to do it. I hevn’t” she continued, looking down on her lap, and following with her finger and thumb a seam of her gown,—“I hevn’t so many friends ez slings a kind word for me these times that I disremember them.” Her under lip quivered a little here; and, after vainly hunting for a forgotten handkerchief, she finally lifted the hem of her gown, wiped her snub nose upon it, but left the tears still in her eyes as she raised them to the man, Mr. Hamlin, who had by this time divested himself of his coat, stopped unbuttoning his waistcoat, and looked at her.

“Like ez not thar’ll be high water on the North Fork, ef this rain keeps on,” said Peg, as if apologetically, looking toward the window.

The other rain having ceased, Mr. Hamlin began to unbutton his waistcoat again.

“I wanted to ask ye a favor about Mr.—about—Jack Folinsbee,” began Peg again hurriedly. “He’s ailin’ agin, and is mighty low. And he’s losin’ a heap o’ money here and thar, and mostly to YOU. You cleaned him out of two thousand dollars last night—all he had.”

“Well?” said the gambler coldly.

“Well, I thought ez you woz a friend o’ mine, I’d ask ye to let up a little on him,” said Peg, with an affected laugh. “You kin do it. Don’t let him play with ye.”

“Mistress Margaret Moffat,” said Jack, with lazy deliberation, taking off his watch, and beginning to wind it up, “ef you’re that much stuck after Jack Folinsbee, YOU kin keep him off of me much easier than I kin. You’re a rich woman. Give him enough money to break my bank, or break himself for good and all; but don’t keep him forlin’ round me in hopes to make a raise. It don’t pay, Mistress Moffat—it don’t pay!”

A finer nature than Peg’s would have misunderstood or resented the gambler’s slang, and the miserable truths that underlaid it. But she comprehended him instantly, and sat hopelessly silent.

“Ef you’ll take my advice,” continued Jack, placing his watch and chain under his pillow, and quietly unloosing his cravat, “you’ll quit this yer forlin’, marry that chap, and hand over to him the money and the money-makin’ that’s killin’ you. He’ll get rid of it soon enough. I don’t say this because I expect to git it; for, when he’s got that much of a raise, he’ll make a break for ‘Frisco, and lose it to some first-class sport THERE. I don’t say, neither, that you mayn’t be in luck enough to reform him. I don’t say, neither—and it’s a derned sight more likely!—that you mayn’t be luckier yet, and he’ll up and die afore he gits rid of your money. But I do say you’ll make him happy NOW; and, ez I reckon you’re about ez badly stuck after that chap ez I ever saw any woman, you won’t be hurtin’ your own feelin’s either.”

The blood left Peg’s face as she looked up. “But that’s WHY I can’t give him the money—and he won’t marry me without it.”

Mr. Hamlin’s hand dropped from the last button of his waistcoat. “Can’t—give—him—the—money?” he repeated slowly.

“No.”

“Why?”

“Because—because I LOVE him.”

Mr. Hamlin rebuttoned his waistcoat, and sat down patiently on the bed. Peg arose, and awkwardly drew the portmanteau a little nearer to him.

“When Jim Byways left me this yer property,” she began, looking cautiously around, “he left it to me on CONDITIONS; not conditions ez waz in his WRITTEN will, but conditions ez waz SPOKEN. A promise I made him in this very room, Mr. Hamlin,—this very room, and on that very bed you’re sittin’ on, in which he died.”

Like most gamblers, Mr. Hamlin was superstitious. He rose hastily from the bed, and took a chair beside the window. The wind shook it as if the discontented spirit of Mr. Byways were without, re-enforcing his last injunction.

“I don’t know if you remember him,” said Peg feverishly, “he was a man ez hed suffered. All that he loved—wife, fammerly, friends—had gone back on him. He tried to make light of it afore folks; but with me, being a poor gal, he let himself out. I never told anybody this. I don’t know why he told ME; I don’t know,” continued Peg, with a sniffle, “why he wanted to make me unhappy too. But he made me promise, that, if he left me his fortune, I’d NEVER, NEVER—so help me God!—never share it with any man or woman that I LOVED; I didn’t think it would be hard to keep that promise then, Mr. Hamlin; for I was very poor, and hedn’t a friend nor a living bein’ that was kind to me, but HIM.”

“But you’ve as good as broken your promise already,” said Hamlin. “You’ve given Jack money, as I know.”

“Only what I made myself. Listen to me, Mr. Hamlin. When Jack proposed to me, I offered him about what I kalkilated I could earn myself. When he went away, and was sick and in trouble, I came here and took this hotel. I knew that by hard work I could make it pay. Don’t laugh at me, please. I DID work hard, and DID make it pay—without takin’ one cent of the fortin’. And all I made, workin’ by night and day, I gave to him. I did, Mr. Hamlin. I ain’t so hard to him as you think, though I might be kinder, I know.”

Mr. Hamlin rose, deliberately resumed his coat, watch, hat, and overcoat. When he was completely dressed again, he turned to Peg. “Do you mean to say that you’ve been givin’ all the money you made here to this A 1 first-class cherubim?”

“Yes; but he didn’t know where I got it. O Mr. Hamlin! he didn’t know that.”

“Do I understand you, that he’s bin buckin agin Faro with the money that you raised on hash? And YOU makin’ the hash?”

“But he didn’t know that, he wouldn’t hev took it if I’d told him.”

“No, he’d hev died fust!” said Mr. Hamlin gravely. “Why, he’s that sensitive—is Jack Folinsbee—that it nearly kills him to take money even of ME. But where does this angel reside when he isn’t fightin’ the tiger, and is, so to speak, visible to the naked eye?”

“He—he—stops here,” said Peg, with an awkward blush.

“I see. Might I ask the number of his room—or should I be a—disturbing him in his meditations?” continued Jack Hamlin, with grave politeness.

“Oh! then you’ll promise? And you’ll talk to him, and make HIM promise?”

“Of course,” said Hamlin quietly.

“And you’ll remember he’s sick—very sick? His room’s No. 44, at the end of the hall. Perhaps I’d better go with you?”

“I’ll find it.”

“And you won’t be too hard on him?”

“I’ll be a father to him,” said Hamlin demurely, as he opened the door and stepped into the hall. But he hesitated a moment, and then turned, and gravely held out his hand. Peg took it timidly. He did not seem quite in earnest; and his black eyes, vainly questioned, indicated nothing. But he shook her hand warmly, and the next moment was gone.

He found the room with no difficulty. A faint cough from within, and a querulous protest, answered his knock. Mr. Hamlin entered without further ceremony. A sickening smell of drugs, a palpable flavor of stale dissipation, and the wasted figure of Jack Folinsbee, half-dressed, extended upon the bed, greeted him. Mr. Hamlin was for an instant startled. There were hollow circles round the sick man’s eyes; there was palsy in his trembling limbs; there was dissolution in his feverish breath.

“What’s up?” he asked huskily and nervously.

“I am, and I want YOU to get up too.”

“I can’t, Jack. I’m regularly done up.” He reached his shaking hand towards a glass half-filled with suspicious, pungent-smelling liquid; but Mr. Hamlin stayed it.

“Do you want to get back that two thousand dollars you lost?”

“Yes.”

“Well, get up, and marry that woman down stairs.”

Folinsbee laughed half hysterically, half sardonically.

“She won’t give it to me.”

“No; but I will.”

“YOU?”

“Yes.”

Folinsbee, with an attempt at a reckless laugh, rose, trembling and with difficulty, to his swollen feet. Hamlin eyed him narrowly, and then bade him lie down again. “To-morrow will do,” he said, “and then—”

“If I don’t—”

“If you don’t,” responded Hamlin, “why, I’ll just wade in and CUT YOU OUT!”

But on the morrow Mr. Hamlin was spared that possible act of disloyalty; for, in the night, the already hesitating spirit of Mr. Jack Folinsbee took flight on the wings of the south-east storm. When or how it happened, nobody knew. Whether this last excitement and the near prospect of matrimony, or whether an overdose of anodyne, had hastened his end, was never known. I only know, that, when they came to awaken him the next morning, the best that was left of him—a face still beautiful and boy-like—looked up coldly at the tearful eyes of Peg Moffat. “It serves me right, it’s a judgment,” she said in a low whisper to Jack Hamlin; “for God knew that I’d broken my word, and willed all my property to him.”

She did not long survive him. Whether Mr. Hamlin ever clothed with action the suggestion indicated in his speech to the lamented Jack that night, is not of record. He was always her friend, and on her demise became her executor. But the bulk of her property was left to a distant relation of handsome Jack Folinsbee, and so passed out of the control of Red Dog forever.

THE GREAT DEADWOOD MYSTERY

It was growing quite dark in the telegraph-office at Cottonwood, Tuolumne County, California. The office, a box-like enclosure, was separated from the public room of the Miners’ Hotel by a thin partition; and the operator, who was also news and express agent at Cottonwood, had closed his window, and was lounging by his news-stand preparatory to going home. Without, the first monotonous rain of the season was dripping from the porches of the hotel in the waning light of a December day. The operator, accustomed as he was to long intervals of idleness, was fast becoming bored.

The tread of mud-muffled boots on the veranda, and the entrance of two men, offered a momentary excitement. He recognized in the strangers two prominent citizens of Cottonwood; and their manner bespoke business. One of them proceeded to the desk, wrote a despatch, and handed it to the other interrogatively.

“That’s about the way the thing p’ints,” responded his companion assentingly.

“I reckoned it only squar to use his dientical words?”

“That’s so.”

The first speaker turned to the operator with the despatch.

“How soon can you shove her through?”

The operator glanced professionally over the address and the length of the despatch.

“Now,” he answered promptly.

“And she gets there?”

“To-night. But there’s no delivery until to-morrow.”

“Shove her through to-night, and say there’s an extra twenty left here for delivery.”

The operator, accustomed to all kinds of extravagant outlay for expedition, replied that he would lay this proposition with the despatch, before the San Francisco office. He then took it and read it—and re-read it. He preserved the usual professional apathy,—had doubtless sent many more enigmatical and mysterious messages,—but nevertheless, when he finished, he raised his eyes inquiringly to his customer. That gentleman, who enjoyed a reputation for equal spontaneity of temper and revolver, met his gaze a little impatiently. The operator had recourse to a trick. Under the pretence of misunderstanding the message, he obliged the sender to repeat it aloud for the sake of accuracy, and even suggested a few verbal alterations, ostensibly to insure correctness, but really to extract further information. Nevertheless, the man doggedly persisted in a literal transcript of his message. The operator went to his instrument hesitatingly.

“I suppose,” he added half-questioningly, “there ain’t no chance of a mistake. This address is Rightbody, that rich old Bostonian that everybody knows. There ain’t but one?”

“That’s the address,” responded the first speaker coolly.

“Didn’t know the old chap had investments out here,” suggested the operator, lingering at his instrument.

“No more did I,” was the insufficient reply.

For some few moments nothing was heard but the click of the instrument, as the operator worked the key, with the usual appearance of imparting confidence to a somewhat reluctant hearer who preferred to talk himself. The two men stood by, watching his motions with the usual awe of the unprofessional. When he had finished, they laid before him two gold-pieces. As the operator took them up, he could not help saying,—

“The old man went off kinder sudden, didn’t he? Had no time to write?”

“Not sudden for that kind o’ man,” was the exasperating reply.

But the speaker was not to be disconcerted. “If there is an answer—” he began.

“There ain’t any,” replied the first speaker quietly.

“Why?”

“Because the man ez sent the message is dead.”

“But it’s signed by you two.”

“On’y ez witnesses—eh?” appealed the first speaker to his comrade.

“On’y ez witnesses,” responded the other.

The operator shrugged his shoulders. The business concluded, the first speaker slightly relaxed. He nodded to the operator, and turned to the bar-room with a pleasing social impulse. When their glasses were set down empty, the first speaker, with a cheerful condemnation of the hard times and the weather, apparently dismissed all previous proceedings from his mind, and lounged out with his companion. At the corner of the street they stopped.

“Well, that job’s done,” said the first speaker, by way of relieving the slight social embarrassment of parting.

“Thet’s so,” responded his companion, and shook his hand.

They parted. A gust of wind swept through the pines, and struck a faint Aeolian cry from the wires above their heads; and the rain and the darkness again slowly settled upon Cottonwood.

The message lagged a little at San Francisco, laid over half an hour at Chicago, and fought longitude the whole way; so that it was past midnight when the “all night” operator took it from the wires at Boston. But it was freighted with a mandate from the San Francisco office; and a messenger was procured, who sped with it through dark snow-bound streets, between the high walls of close-shuttered rayless houses, to a certain formal square ghostly with snow-covered statues. Here he ascended the broad steps of a reserved and solid-looking mansion, and pulled a bronze bell-knob, that somewhere within those chaste recesses, after an apparent reflective pause, coldly communicated the fact that a stranger was waiting without—as he ought. Despite the lateness of the hour, there was a slight glow from the windows, clearly not enough to warm the messenger with indications of a festivity within, but yet bespeaking, as it were, some prolonged though subdued excitement. The sober servant who took the despatch, and receipted for it as gravely as if witnessing a last will and testament, respectfully paused before the entrance of the drawing-room. The sound of measured and rhetorical speech, through which the occasional catarrhal cough of the New-England coast struggled, as the only effort of nature not wholly repressed, came from its heavily-curtained recesses; for the occasion of the evening had been the reception and entertainment of various distinguished persons, and, as had been epigrammatically expressed by one of the guests, “the history of the country” was taking its leave in phrases more or less memorable and characteristic. Some of these valedictory axioms were clever, some witty, a few profound, but always left as a genteel contribution to the entertainer. Some had been already prepared, and, like a card, had served and identified the guest at other mansions.

The last guest departed, the last carriage rolled away, when the servant ventured to indicate the existence of the despatch to his master, who was standing on the hearth-rug in an attitude of wearied self-righteousness. He took it, opened it, read it, re-read it, and said,—

“There must be some mistake! It is not for me. Call the boy, Waters.”

Waters, who was perfectly aware that the boy had left, nevertheless obediently walked towards the hall-door, but was recalled by his master.

“No matter—at present!”

“It’s nothing serious, William?” asked Mrs. Rightbody, with languid wifely concern.

“No, nothing. Is there a light in my study?”

“Yes. But, before you go, can you give me a moment or two?”

Mr. Rightbody turned a little impatiently towards his wife. She had thrown herself languidly on the sofa; her hair was slightly disarranged, and part of a slippered foot was visible. She might have been a finely-formed woman; but even her careless deshabille left the general impression that she was severely flannelled throughout, and that any ostentation of womanly charm was under vigorous sanitary SURVEILLANCE.

“Mrs. Marvin told me to-night that her son made no secret of his serious attachment for our Alice, and that, if I was satisfied, Mr. Marvin would be glad to confer with you at once.”

The information did not seem to absorb Mr. Rightbody’s wandering attention, but rather increased his impatience. He said hastily, that he would speak of that to-morrow; and partly by way of reprisal, and partly to dismiss the subject, added—

“Positively James must pay some attention to the register and the thermometer. It was over 70 degrees to-night, and the ventilating draught was closed in the drawing-room.”

“That was because Professor Ammon sat near it, and the old gentleman’s tonsils are so sensitive.”

“He ought to know from Dr. Dyer Doit that systematic and regular exposure to draughts stimulates the mucous membrane; while fixed air over 60 degrees invariably—”

“I am afraid, William,” interrupted Mrs. Rightbody, with feminine adroitness, adopting her husband’s topic with a view of thereby directing him from it,—“I’m afraid that people do not yet appreciate the substitution of bouillon for punch and ices. I observed that Mr. Spondee declined it, and, I fancied, looked disappointed. The fibrine and wheat in liqueur-glasses passed quite unnoticed too.”

“And yet each half-drachm contained the half-digested substance of a pound of beef. I’m surprised at Spondee!” continued Mr. Rightbody aggrievedly. “Exhausting his brain and nerve force by the highest creative efforts of the Muse, he prefers perfumed and diluted alcohol flavored with carbonic acid gas. Even Mrs. Faringway admitted to me that the sudden lowering of the temperature of the stomach by the introduction of ice—”

“Yes; but she took a lemon ice at the last Dorothea Reception, and asked me if I had observed that the lower animals refused their food at a temperature over 60 degrees.”

Mr. Rightbody again moved impatiently towards the door. Mrs. Rightbody eyed him curiously.

“You will not write, I hope? Dr. Keppler told me to-night that your cerebral symptoms interdicted any prolonged mental strain.”

“I must consult a few papers,” responded Mr. Rightbody curtly, as he entered his library.

It was a richly-furnished apartment, morbidly severe in its decorations, which were symptomatic of a gloomy dyspepsia of art, then quite prevalent. A few curios, very ugly, but providentially equally rare, were scattered about. There were various bronzes, marbles, and casts, all requiring explanation, and so fulfilling their purpose of promoting conversation, and exhibiting the erudition of their owner. There were souvenirs of travel with a history, old bric-a-brac with a pedigree, but little or nothing that challenged attention for itself alone. In all cases the superiority of the owner to his possessions was admitted. As a natural result, nobody ever lingered there, the servants avoided the room, and no child was ever known to play in it.

Mr. Rightbody turned up the gas, and from a cabinet of drawers, precisely labelled, drew a package of letters. These he carefully examined. All were discolored, and made dignified by age; but some, in their original freshness, must have appeared trifling, and inconsistent with any correspondent of Mr. Rightbody. Nevertheless, that gentleman spent some moments in carefully perusing them, occasionally referring to the telegram in his hand. Suddenly there was a knock at the door. Mr. Rightbody started, made a half-unconscious movement to return the letters to the drawer, turned the telegram face downwards, and then, somewhat harshly, stammered,—

“Eh? Who’s there? Come in.”

“I beg your pardon, papa,” said a very pretty girl, entering, without, however, the slightest trace of apology or awe in her manner, and taking a chair with the self-possession and familiarity of an habitue of the room; “but I knew it was not your habit to write late, so I supposed you were not busy. I am on my way to bed.”

She was so very pretty, and withal so utterly unconscious of it, or perhaps so consciously superior to it, that one was provoked into a more critical examination of her face. But this only resulted in a reiteration of her beauty, and perhaps the added facts that her dark eyes were very womanly, her rich complexion eloquent, and her chiselled lips fell enough to be passionate or capricious, notwithstanding that their general effect suggested neither caprice, womanly weakness, nor passion.

With the instinct of an embarrassed man, Mr. Rightbody touched the topic he would have preferred to avoid.

“I suppose we must talk over to-morrow,” he hesitated, “this matter of yours and Mr. Marvin’s? Mrs. Marvin has formally spoken to your mother.”

Miss Alice lifted her bright eyes intelligently, but not joyfully; and the color of action, rather than embarrassment, rose to her round cheeks.

“Yes, HE said she would,” she answered simply.

“At present,” continued Mr. Rightbody still awkwardly, “I see no objection to the proposed arrangement.”

Miss Alice opened her round eyes at this.

“Why, papa, I thought it had been all settled long ago! Mamma knew it, you knew it. Last July, mamma and you talked it over.”

“Yes, yes,” returned her father, fumbling his papers; “that is—well, we will talk of it to-morrow.” In fact, Mr. Rightbody HAD intended to give the affair a proper attitude of seriousness and solemnity by due precision of speech, and some apposite reflections, when he should impart the news to his daughter, but felt himself unable to do it now. “I am glad, Alice,” he said at last, “that you have quite forgotten your previous whims and fancies. You see WE are right.”

“Oh! I dare say, papa, if I’m to be married at all, that Mr. Marvin is in every way suitable.”

Mr. Rightbody looked at his daughter narrowly. There was not the slightest impatience nor bitterness in her manner: it was as well regulated as the sentiment she expressed.

“Mr. Marvin is—” he began.

“I know what Mr. Marvin IS,” interrupted Miss Alice; “and he has promised me that I shall be allowed to go on with my studies the same as before. I shall graduate with my class; and, if I prefer to practise my profession, I can do so in two years after our marriage.”

“In two years?” queried Mr. Rightbody curiously.

“Yes. You see, in case we should have a child, that would give me time enough to wean it.”

Mr. Rightbody looked at this flesh of his flesh, pretty and palpable flesh as it was; but, being confronted as equally with the brain of his brain, all he could do was to say meekly,—

“Yes, certainly. We will see about all that to-morrow.”

Miss Alice rose. Something in the free, unfettered swing of her arms as she rested them lightly, after a half yawn, on her lithe hips, suggested his next speech, although still distrait and impatient.

“You continue your exercise with the health-lift yet, I see.”

“Yes, papa; but I had to give up the flannels. I don’t see how mamma could wear them. But my dresses are high-necked, and by bathing I toughen my skin. See!” she added, as, with a child-like unconsciousness, she unfastened two or three buttons of her gown, and exposed the white surface of her throat and neck to her father, “I can defy a chill.”

Mr. Rightbody, with something akin to a genuine playful, paternal laugh, leaned forward and kissed her forehead.

“It’s getting late, Ally,” he said parentally, but not dictatorially. “Go to bed.”

“I took a nap of three hours this afternoon,” said Miss Alice, with a dazzling smile, “to anticipate this dissipation. Good-night, papa. To-morrow, then.”

“To-morrow,” repeated Mr. Rightbody, with his eyes still fixed upon the girl vaguely. “Good-night.”

Miss Alice tripped from the room, possibly a trifle the more light-heartedly that she had parted from her father in one of his rare moments of illogical human weakness. And perhaps it was well for the poor girl that she kept this single remembrance of him, when, I fear, in after-years, his methods, his reasoning, and indeed all he had tried to impress upon her childhood, had faded from her memory.

For, when she had left, Mr. Rightbody fell again to the examination of his old letters. This was quite absorbing; so much so, that he did not notice the footsteps of Mrs. Rightbody, on the staircase as she passed to her chamber, nor that she had paused on the landing to look through the glass half-door on her husband, as he sat there with the letters beside him, and the telegram opened before him. Had she waited a moment later, she would have seen him rise, and walk to the sofa with a disturbed air and a slight confusion; so that, on reaching it, he seemed to hesitate to lie down, although pale and evidently faint. Had she still waited, she would have seen him rise again with an agonized effort, stagger to the table, fumblingly refold and replace the papers in the cabinet, and lock it, and, although now but half-conscious, hold the telegram over the gas-flame till it was consumed.

For, had she waited until this moment, she would have flown unhesitatingly to his aid, as, this act completed, he staggered again, reached his hand toward the bell, but vainly, and then fell prone upon the sofa.

But alas! no providential nor accidental hand was raised to save him, or anticipate the progress of this story. And when, half an hour later, Mrs. Rightbody, a little alarmed, and more indignant at his violation of the doctor’s rules, appeared upon the threshold, Mr. Rightbody lay upon the sofa, dead!

With bustle, with thronging feet, with the irruption of strangers, and a hurrying to and fro, but, more than all, with an impulse and emotion unknown to the mansion when its owner was in life, Mrs. Rightbody strove to call back the vanished life, but in vain. The highest medical intelligence, called from its bed at this strange hour, saw only the demonstration of its theories made a year before. Mr. Rightbody was dead—without doubt, without mystery, even as a correct man should die—logically, and indorsed by the highest medical authority.

But even in the confusion, Mrs. Rightbody managed to speed a messenger to the telegraph-office for a copy of the despatch received by Mr. Rightbody, but now missing.