New York: Its Upper Ten and Lower Million

by George Lippard

CHAPTER I.

BLOODHOUND AND THE UNKNOWN.

Two persons were sitting at a table, in the Refectory beneath Lovejoy's Hotel. One of these drank brandy and the other drank water. The brandy drinker was our friend Bloodhound, and the drinker of water was a singular personage, whose forehead was shaded by a broad-brimmed hat, while the lower part of his face was covered by a blue kerchief, which was tied over his throat and mouth.

Seated at a table in the center of the place, these two conversed in low tones, while all around was uproar and confusion.

"You found these persons?" said the gentleman with the broad-brimmed hat and blue neckerchief.

"I didn't do anything else," replied the Hound—"I met you here, at Lovejoy's, about dusk. You were a tee-total stranger to me. You says, says you, that you'd like to do a good turn to Harry Royalton, and at the same time fix this white nigger and his sister—you know who I mean?"

"Randolph and Esther—"

"Well, we closed our bargain. You gave me a note to Randolph and one to his sister. I hunted 'em out and delivered your notes, and here I am."

Bloodhound smiled one of his most frightful smiles, and consoled himself with a glass of brandy.

"Where did you find these persons?" asked Blue Kerchief.

"At a tip-top boardin' house up town, accordin' to your directions. I fust saw the boy and delivered your note, and arter he was gone I saw the gal and did the same. Now, old boss, do you think they'll come?"

"You saw the contents of those notes?"

"I did. I saw you write 'em and read 'em afore you sealed 'em up. The one to Randolph requested him to be at a sartin place on the Five Points about twelve o'clock. An' the one to Esther requested her to be at the Temple about the same hour. Now do you think they'll come?"

"You have seen Godlike and Royalton?" said the unknown, speaking thickly through the neckerchief which enveloped his mouth.

"Godlike will be at the Temple as the clock strikes twelve, and Harry and me will be at Five Points, at the identical spot—you know—at the very same identical hour."

"That is sufficient. Here is the sum I promised you," and the stranger laid two broad gold pieces on the table: "we must now part. Should I ever need you, we will meet again. Good night."

And the stranger rose, and left the refectory, Bloodhound turning his head over his shoulder as he watched his retreating figure with dumb amazement.

"Cool! I call it cool!" he soliloquised; "Waiter, see here; another glass of brandy. Yet this is good gold; has the right ring, hey? Judas Iscariot! Somehow or 'nother, everything I touch turns to gold. Wonder what the chap in the blue handkercher has agin the white nigger and his sister? Who keers? At twelve to-night Godlike will have the gal, and Harry and I will have the nigger. Ju-das Iscariot!" Here let us leave the Bloodhound for awhile, to his solemn meditations and his glass of brandy.

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[CHAPTER II.]

THE CANAL STREET SHIRT STORE.

"Do you call them stitches? S-a-y? How d'ye expect a man to git a livin' if he's robbed in that way? Do you call that a shirt—s-a-y?"

"Indeed I did my best—"

"Did your best? I should like to know what you take me for? D'ye think I'm a fool? Did not I give you the stuff for five shirts, and fust of all, I exacted a pledge of five dollars from you, to be forfeited if you spoilt the stuff—"

"And you know I was to receive two shillings for each shirt. I'll thank you to pay me my money, and restore my five dollars and let me go—"

"Not a copper. This shirt is spoilt. And if those you have in your arms are no better, why they are spoilt too—"

"They're made as well as the one you hold—no better."

"Then I can't sell 'em for old rags. Just give 'em to me, and clear out—"

"At least give me back my five dollars—"

"Not a copper. Had you finished these shirts in the right style, they'd a-sold for fifteen dollars. As it is, the money is forfeited,—I mean the five dollars which you left with me as a pledge. I can't employ you any more. Just give me the other four shirts, and clear out."

The storekeeper and the poor girl were separated by a counter, on which was placed a showy case. She was dressed in a faded calico gown, and a shawl as worn and faded, hung about her shoulders. She wore a straw bonnet, although it was a night in mid-winter; and beneath her poverty-stricken dress, her shoes were visible: old and worn into shreds they scarcely clung to her feet. Her entire appearance indicated extreme poverty.

The storekeeper, who stood beneath the gas-light, was a well preserved and portly man of forty years, or more, with a bald head, a wide mouth and a snub nose. Rings glistered on his fat fingers. His black velvet vest was crossed by a gold chain. His spotless shirt bosom was decorated by a flashy breastpin. He spoke sharp and quick, and with a proper sense of his dignity as the Proprietor of the "only universal shirt store, No. ——, Canal St., New York."

Between him and the girl was a glass case, in which were displayed shirts of the most elegant patterns and elaborate workmanship. Behind him were shelves, lined with boxes, also filled with shirts, whose prices were labeled on the outside of each box. At his right-hand, was the shop-window,—a small room in itself—flaring with gas, and crowded with shirts of all imaginable shapes—shirts with high collars, Byron collars, and shirts without any collars at all;—shirts with plaits large, small and infinitesimal—shirts with ruffles, shirts with stripes and shirts with spots;—in fact, looking into the window, you would have imagined that Mr. Screw Grabb was a very Apostle of clean linen, with a mission to clothe a benighted world, with shirts; and that his Temple, "the Only Universal Shirt Store," was the most important place on the face of the globe. There, too, appeared eloquent appeals to passers-by. These were printed on cards, in immense capitals,—"Shirts for the Million! The Great Shirt Emporium! Who would be without a shirt, when Screw Grab sells them for only $1? This IS the ONLY Shirt Store,"—and so on to the end of the chapter.

The conversation which we have recorded, took place in this store, soon after 'gas-light' on the evening of Dec. 23d, 1844, between Mr. Screw Grabb and the Poor Girl, who stood before him, holding a small bundle in her arms.

"You surely do not mean to retain my money?" said the girl—and she laid one hand against the counter, and attentively surveyed the face of Mr. Grabb—"You find fault with my work—"

"Never saw wuss stitchin' in my life," said Grabb.

"But that is no reason why you should refuse to return the money which I placed in your hands. Consider, Sir, you will distress me very much. I really cannot afford to lose that five dollars,—indeed—"

She turned toward him a face which, impressed as it was with a look of extreme distress, was also invested with the light of a clear, calm, almost holy beauty. It was the face of a girl of sixteen, whom thought and anxiety had ripened into grave and serious womanhood. Her brown hair was gathered neatly under her faded straw bonnet, displaying a forehead which bore traces of a corroding care; there was light and life in her large eyes, light and life without much of hope; there was youth on her cheeks and lips; youth fresh and virgin, and unstained by the touch of sin.

"Will you give me them four shirts,—s-a-y?" was the answer of Grabb,—"them as you has in your bundle there?"

The girl for a moment seemed buried in reflection. May be the thought of a dreary winter night and a desolate home was busy at her heart. When she raised her head she fixed her eyes full upon the face of Mr. Grabb, and said distinctly:

"I will not give you these shirts until you return my money."

"What's that you say? You won't give 'em back—won't you?" and Mr. Grabb darted around the counter, yardstick in hand. "We'll see,—we'll see. Now just hand 'em over!"

He placed himself between her and the door, and raised the yardstick over her head.

The girl retreated step by step, Mr. Grabb advancing as she retreated, with the yardstick in his fat hand.

"Give 'em up,—" he seized her arm, and attempted to tear the bundle from her grasp. "Give 'em up you ——" he applied an epithet which he had heard used by a manager of a theater to the unfortunate girls in his employment.

At the word, the young woman retreated into a corner behind the counter, her face flushed and her eyes flashing with an almost savage light—

"You cowardly villain!" she said, "to insult me because I will not permit you to rob me. O, you despicable coward—for shame!"

The look of her eye and curl of her lip by no means pleased the corpulent Grabb. He grew red with rage. When he spoke again it was in a loud voice and with an emphatic sweep of the yardstick.

"If you don't give 'em up, I'll—I'll break every bone in your body. You hussy! You ——! What do you think of yourself—to attempt to rob a poor man of his property?"

These words attracted the attention of the passers-by; and in a moment, the doorway was occupied by a throng of curious spectators. The poor girl, looking over Grabb's shoulders, saw that she was the object of the gaze of some dozen pairs of eyes.

"Gentlemen, this hussy has attempted to rob me of my property! I gave her stuff sufficient to make five shirts, and she's spoilt 'em so I can't sell 'em for old rags, and—and she won't give 'em up."

"If they ain't good for nothing, what d'ye want with 'em?" remarked the foremost of the spectators.

But Grabb was determined to bring matters to a crisis.

"Now, look here," he said, holding the yardstick in front of the girl, and thus imprisoning her in the corner; "if you don't give 'em up, I'll strip the clothes from your back."

The girl turned scarlet in the face; her arms sank slowly to her side; the bundle fell from her hands; she burst into tears.

"Shame! shame!" cried one of the spectators.

"It's the way he does business," added a voice in the background. "He won't give out any work unless the girl, who applies for it, places some money in his hands as a pledge. When the work is brought into the store, he pretends that it's spoilt, and keeps the money. That's the way he raises capital!"

"What's that you say?" cried Grabb, turning fiercely on the crowd, who had advanced some one or two paces into the store. "Who said that?"

A man in a coarse, brown bang-up advanced from the crowd—

"I said it, and I'll stand to it! Ain't you a purty specimen of a bald-headed Christian, to try and cheat the poor girl out of her hard-airned money?"

"I'll call the police," cried Grabb.

"What a pattern! what a beauty!" continued the man in the brown bang-up; "why rotten eggs 'ud be wasted on such a carcass as that!"

"Police! Police!" screamed Grabb,—"Gentlemen, I'd like to know if there is any law in this land?"

While this altercation was in progress the poor girl—thoroughly ashamed to find herself the center of a public broil—covered her face with her hands and wept as if her heart would break.

"Take my arm," said a voice at her side; "there will be a fight. Quick, my dear Miss, you must get out of this as quick as possible."

The speaker was a short and slender man, wrapped in a Spanish mantle, and his hat was drawn low over his forehead.

The girl seized his arm, and while the crowd formed a circle around Grabb and the brown bang-up, they contrived to pass unobserved from the store. Presently the poor girl was hurrying along Canal street, her hand still clasping the arm of the stranger in the cloak.

"Bad business! Bad business!" he said in a quick, abrupt tone. "That Grabb's a scoundrel. Here's Broadway, my dear, and I must bid you good-night. Good-night,—good-night."

And he left the poor girl at the corner of Broadway and Canal street. He was lost in the crowd ere she was aware of his departure. She was left alone, on the street corner, in the midst of that torrent of life; and it was not until some moments had elapsed that she could fully comprehend her desolate condition.

"It was the last five dollars I had in the world! What can I do! In the name of God, what can I do!"

She looked up Broadway—it extended there, one glittering track of light.

"Not a friend, and not a dollar in the world!"

She looked down Broadway—far into the distance it extended, its million lights over-arched by a dull December sky.

"Not a friend and not a dollar!"

She turned down Broadway with languid and leaden steps. A miserably clad and heart-broken girl, she glided among the crowds, which lined the street, like a specter through the mazes of a banquet.

Poor girl! Down Broadway, until the Park is passed, and the huge Astor House glares out upon the darkness from its hundred windows. Down Broadway, until you reach the unfinished pile of Trinity Church, where heaps of lumber and rubbish appear among white tombstones. Turn from Broadway and stride this narrow street which leads to the dark river: your home is there.

Back of Trinity Church, in Greenwich street, we believe, there stands on this December night a four storied edifice, tenanted, only a few years ago, by a wealthy family. Then it was the palace of a man who counted his wealth by hundreds of thousands. Now it is a palace of a different sort; look at it, as from garret to cellar it flashes with light in every window.

The cellar is the home of ten families.

The first floor is occupied as a beer "saloon;" you can hear men getting drunk in three or four languages, if you will only stand by the window for a moment.

Twenty persons live on the second floor.

Fifteen make their home on the third floor.

The fourth floor is tenanted by nineteen human beings.

The garret is divided into four apartments; one of these has a garret-window to itself, and this is the home of the poor girl.

She ascended the marble staircase which led from the first to the fourth floor. At every step her ear was assailed with curses, drunken shouts, the cries of children, and a thousand other sounds, which, night and day resounded through that palace of rags and wretchedness. Feeble and heart-sick she arrived at length in front of the garret door, which opened into her home.

She listened in the darkness; all was still within.

"He sleeps," she murmured, "thank God!" and opened the door. All was dark within, but presently, with the aid of a match, she lighted a candle, and the details of the place were visible. It was a nook of the original garret, fenced off by a partition of rough boards. The slope of the roof formed its ceiling. The garret window occupied nearly an entire side of the place. There was a mattress on the floor, in one corner; a small pine table stood beside the partition; and the recess of the garret-window was occupied by an old arm-chair.

This chair was occupied by a man whose body, incased in a faded wrapper, reminded you of a skeleton placed in a sitting posture. His emaciated hands rested on the arms, and his head rested helplessly against the back of the chair. His hair was white as snow; it was scattered in flakes about his forehead. His face, furrowed in deep wrinkles, was lividly pale; it resembled nothing save the face of a corpse. His eyes, wide open and fixed as if the hand of death had touched him, were centered upon the flame of the candle, while a meaningless smile played about his colorless lips.

The girl kissed him on the lips and forehead, but he gave no sign of recognition save a faint laugh, which died on the air ere it was uttered.

For the poor man, prematurely old and reduced to a mere skeleton, was an idiot.

"Oh, my God, and I have not bread to feed him!" No words can describe the tone and look with which the poor girl uttered these words.

She flung aside her bonnet and shawl.

Then it might be seen that, in spite of her faded dress, she was a very beautiful young woman; not only beautiful in regularity of features, but in the whiteness of her shoulders, the fullness of her bust, the proportions of her tall and rounded form. Her hair, escaping from the ribbon which bound it, streamed freely over her shoulders, and caught the rays of the light on every glossy wave.

She leaned her forehead upon her head, and—thought.

Hard she had tried to keep a home for the poor Idiot, who sat in the chair—very hard. She had tried her pencil, and gained bread for awhile, thus; but her drawings ceased to command a price at the picture store, and this means of subsistence failed her. She had taught music, and had been a miserable dependent upon the rich; been insulted by their daughters, and been made the object of the insulting offers of their sons. And forced at length by the condition of her Idiot Father, to remain with him, in their own home—to be constantly near him, day and night—she had sought work at the shirt store on Canal street, and been robbed of the treasure which she had accumulated through the summer; an immense treasure—Five Dollars.

She had not a penny; there was no bread in the closet; there was no fire in the sheet iron stove which stood in one corner; her Idiot Father, her iron fate were before her—harsh and bitter realities.

She was thinking.

Apply to those rich relations, who had known her father in days of prosperity? No. Better death than that.

She was thinking. Her forehead on her hand, her hair streaming over her shoulders, her bosom which had never known even the thought of pollution, heaving and swelling within her calico gown—she was thinking.

And as she thought, and thought her hair began to burn, and her blood to bound rapidly in her veins.

Her face is shaded by her hand, and a portion of her hair falls over that hand; therefore you cannot tell her thoughts by the changes of her countenance.

I would not like to know her thoughts.

For there is a point of misery, at which but two doors of escape open to the gaze of a beautiful woman, who struggles with the last extreme of poverty: one door has the grave behind it, and the other,——

Yes, there are some thoughts which it is not good to write on paper. It was in the midst of this current of dark and bitter thoughts, that the eye of the young woman wandered absently to the faded shawl which she had thrown across the table.

"What is this? A letter! Pinned to my shawl—by whom?"

It was indeed a letter, addressed to her, and pinned to her shawl by an unknown hand.

She seized it eagerly, and opened it, and read.

Her face, her neck, and the glimpse of her bosom, opening above her dress, all became scarlet with the same blush. Still her eyes grew brighter as she read the letter, and incoherent ejaculations passed from her lips.

The letter was written—so it said—by the man who had taken her from the store on Canal street. Its contents we may not guess, save from the broken words of the agitated girl.

"'At twelve o'clock, at "the Temple," whose street and number you will find on the inclosed card.'"

And a card dropped from the letter upon the table. She seized it eagerly and clasped it as though it was so much gold.

"'The Temple,'" she murmured again, and her eyes instinctively wandered to the face of her father.

Then she burst into a flood of tears.

For three hours, while the candle burned toward its socket, she meditated upon the contents of that letter.

At last she rose, and took from a closet near the door, a mantilla of black velvet, the only garment which the pawnbroker had spared. It was old and faded; it was the only relic of better days. She resumed her bonnet and wound the mantilla about her shoulders and kissed her Idiot Father on the lips and brow. He had fallen into a dull, dreamless sleep, and looked like a dead man with his fallen lip and half-shut eyes.

"'The Temple!'" she exclaimed and attentively perused the card.

Then extinguishing the candle, she wound a coverlet about her father's form and left him there alone in the garret. She passed the threshold and went down the marble stairs. God pity her.

Yes, God pity her!

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[CHAPTER III.]

"DO THEY ROAR?"

At nine o'clock, on the night of December 23d, 1844,——

"Do they roar?" said Israel Yorke, passing his hand through his gray whiskers, as he sat at the head of a large table covered with green baize.

It was in a large square room, on the second story of his Banking House—if Israel's place of business can be designated by that name. The gas-light disclosed the floor covered with matting, and the high walls, overspread with lithographs of unknown cities and imaginary copper-mines. There were also three lithographs of the towns in which Israel's principal Banks were situated. There was Chow Bank and Muddy Run, and there in all its glory was Terrapin Hollow. In each of these distant towns, located somewhere in New Jersey or Pennsylvania—or Heaven only knows where—Israel owned a Bank, a live Bank, chartered by a State Legislature, and provided with a convenient President and Cashier. Israel was a host of stockholders in himself. He had an office in New York for the redemption of the notes of the three Banks; it is in the room above this office that we now behold him.

"Do they roar?" he asked, and arranged his spectacles on his turn up nose, and grinned to himself until his little black eyes shone again.

"Do they roar?" answered the voice of Israel's man of business, who sat at the lower end of the green baize table—"Just go to the window and hear 'em! Hark! There it goes again. It sounds like fourth of July."

Truth to say, a strange ominous murmur came from the street—a murmur composed of about an equal quantity of curses and groans.

"There's six thousand of 'em," said the man of business; "The street is black with 'em. And all sorts o' nasty little boys go about with placards on which such words are inscribed: 'Here's an orphan—one o' them that was cheated by Israel Yorke and his Three Banks.' Hark! There it goes again!"

The man of business was a phlegmatic individual of about forty years; a dull heavy face adorned with green spectacles, and propped by a huge black stock and a pair of immense shirt collars. Mr. Fetch was indeed Israel's Man; he in some measure supplied the place of the late lamented Jedediah Buggles, Esq., 'whose dignity of character and strict integrity,' etc., etc., (for the rest, see obituaries on Buggles in the daily papers).

"Fetch, they do roar," responded Israel. "Was there notice of the failure in the afternoon papers?"

"Had it put in myself. Dilated upon the robbery which was committed on you last night, in the cars; and spoke of your disposition to redeem the notes of Chow Bank, Muddy Run and Terrapin Hollow, as soon as—you could make it convenient."

"Yes, Fetch, in about a week these notes can be bought for ten cents on the dollar," calmly remarked Yorke, "they're mostly in the hands of market people, mechanics, day-laborers, servant-maids, and those kind of people, who can't afford to wait. Well, Fetch, what were they sellin' at to-day?"

"Three shillings on the dollar. You know we only failed this mornin'," answered Fetch.

"Yes, yes, about a week will do it"—Israel drew forth a gold pencil, and made a calculation on a card,—"In about a week they'll be down to ten cents on the dollar. We must buy 'em in quietly at that rate; our friends on Wall street will help us, you know. Well, let's see how the profit will stand—there are in circulation $300,000 of Chow Bank notes—"

"And $150,000 of Muddy Run," interrupted Fetch.

"And $200,000 of Terrapin Hollow," continued Yorke,—"Now supposin' that there are altogether $500,000—a half million of these notes now in circulation—we can buy 'em in quietly you know, at ten cents on the dollar, for some—some—yes, $50,000 will do it. That will leave a clear profit of $450,000. Not so bad,—eh, Fetch?"

"But you forget how much it cost you to get the charters of these banks—" interrupted Fetch. "The amount of champagne that I myself forwarded to Trenton and to Harrisburg, would float a small brig. Then there was some ready money that you loaned to Members of Legislature—put that down Mr. Yorke."

"We'll say $5000 for champagne, and $25,000 loaned to Members of Legislature (though they don't bring anything near that now), why we have a total of $25,000 for expenses incurred in procuring charters. Deduct that from $450,000 and you still have $425,000. A neat sum, Fetch."

"Yes, but you must look to your character. You must come out of it with flyin' colors. After nearly all the notes have been bought in, by ourselves or our agents, we must announce that having recovered from our late reverses, we are now prepared to redeem all our notes, dollar for dollar."

"And Fetch, if we manage it right, there'll be only $10,000 worth left in circulation, at the time we make the announcement. That will take $10,000 from our total of $425,000, leavin' us still the sum of $415,000. A pretty sum, Fetch."

"You may as well strike off that $15,000 for extra expenses,—paragraphs in some of the newspapers,—grand juries, and other little incidents of that kind. O, you'll come out of it with character."

"Ghoul of the Blerze will assail me, eh?" said Israel, fidgeting in his chair: "He'll talk o' nothin' else than Chow Bank, Muddy Run and Terrapin Hollow, for months to come,—eh, Fetch?"

"For years, for years," responded Fetch, "It will be nuts for Ghoul."

"And that cursed affair last night!" continued Yorke, as though thinking aloud, "Seventy-one thousand gone at one slap."

Fetch looked funnily at his principal from beneath his gold spectacles: "No? It was real then? I thought—"

Mr. Yorke abruptly consigned the thoughts of Mr. Fetch to a personage who shall be nameless, and then continued:

"It was real,—a bona fide robbery. Seventy-one thousand at a slap! By-the-bye, Fetch, has Blossom been here to-night—Blossom the police officer?"

"Couldn't get in; too much of a crowd in the street."

"I did not intend him to come by the front door. He was to come up the back way,—about this hour—he gave me some hope this afternoon. That was an unfortunate affair last night!"

"How they roar! Listen!" said Fetch, bending himself into a listening attitude.

And again that ominous sound came from the street without,—the combined groans and curses of six thousand human beings.

"Like buffaloes!" quietly remarked Mr. Yorke.

"Like demons!" added Mr. Fetch. "Hear 'em."

"Was there much fuss to-day, when we suspended, Fetch?"

"Quantities of market people, mechanics, widows and servant maids," said the man of business. "I should think you'd stood a pretty good chance of being torn to pieces, if you'd been visible. Had this happened south, you'd have been tarred and feathered. Here you'd only be tore to pieces."

A step was heard in the back part of the room, and in a moment Blossom, in his pictorial face and bear-skin over-coat, appeared upon the scene.

"What is the matter with your head?" asked Mr. Fetch,—"Is that a handkerchief or a towel?" He pointed to something like a turban, which Poke-Berry Blossom wore under his glossy hat.

Blossom sunk sullenly into a chair, without a word.

"What's the matter?" exclaimed Yorke, "Have you—"

"Suppose you had sixteen inches taken out of yer skull," responded Blossom in a sullen tone, "You'd know what was the matter. Thunder!" he added, "this is a rum world!"

"Did you—" again began Yorke, brushing his gray whiskers and fidgeting in his chair.

"Yes I did. I tracked 'em to a groggery up town airly this evenin'. I had 'em all alone, to myself, up stairs. I caught the young 'un examinin' the valise—I seed the dimes with my own eyes. I—"

"You arrested them?" gasped Yorke.

"How could I, when I ain't a real police, and hadn't any warrant? I did grapple with 'em; but the young 'un got out on the roof with the valise, and I was left to manage the old 'un as best I could. I tried to make him b'lieve that I had a detachment down stairs, but he gi'n me a lick over the top-knot that made me see Fourth of July, I tell you. There I laid, I don't know how long. When I got my senses, they was gone."

"But you pursued them?" asked Yorke, with a nervous start.

"With a hole in my head big enough to put a market-basket in?" responded Blossom, with a pitying smile, "what do you think I'm made of? Do you think I'm a Japan mermaid or an Egyptian mummy?"

It will be perceived that Mr. Blossom said nothing about the house which stood next to the Yellow Mug; he did not even mention the latter place by name. Nor did he relate how he pursued Nameless into this house, and how after an unsuccessful pursuit, he returned into the garret of the Mug, where Ninety-One, (who for a moment or two had been hiding upon the roof,) grappled with him, and laid him senseless by a well planted blow. Upon these topics Mr. Blossom maintained a mysterious silence. His reasons for this course may hereafter appear.

"And so you've given up the affair?" said Yorke, sinking back into his chair.

Now the truth is, that Blossom, chafed by his inquiries and mortified at his defeat, was cogitating an important matter to himself—"Can I make anything by givin' Israel into the hands of the mob? I might lead 'em up the back stairs. Lord! how they'd make the fur fly! But who'd pay me?" The italicized query troubled Blossom and made him thoughtful.

"And so the seventy thousand's clean gone," exclaimed Fetch, in a mournful tone: "It makes one melancholy to think of it."

"Pardon me, Mr. Yorke, for this intrusion," said a bland voice, "but I have followed Mr. Blossom to this room. I caught sight of him a few moments ago as he left Broadway, and tried to speak to him as he pushed through the crowd in front of your door, but in vain. So being exceedingly anxious to see him, I was forced to follow him up stairs, into your room."

"Colonel Tarleton!" ejaculated Yorke.

"The handsom' Curnel!" chorused Blossom.

It was indeed the handsome Colonel, who with his white coat buttoned tightly over his chest and around his waist, stood smiling and bowing behind the chair of Berry Blossom.

"You did not tell any one of the back door," cried Yorke,—"If you did—"

"Why then, (you were about to remark I believe,) we should have a great many more persons in the room, than it would be pleasant for you to see, just now."

The Colonel made one of his most elegant bows as he made this remark. Mr. Yorke bit his nails but made no reply.

"Mr. Blossom, a word with you." The Colonel took the police officer by the arm and led him far back into that part of the room most remote from the table.

"What's up, Mister?" asked Blossom, arranging his turban.

As they stood there, in the gloom which pervaded that part of the room, the Colonel answered him with a low and significant whisper:

"Do you remember that old ruffian who was charged last night in the cars with—"

"You mean old Ninety-One, as he calls hisself," interrupted Blossom—"Well, I guess I do."

"Very good," continued the Colonel.—"Now suppose this ruffian had concealed himself in the house of a wealthy man, with the purpose of committing a robbery this very night!"

Blossom was all ears.

"Well, well,—drive ahead. Suppose,—suppose,"—he said impatiently.

"Not so fast. Suppose, further, that a gentleman who had overheard this villain plotting this purposed crime, was to give you full information in regard to the affair, could you,—could you,—when called upon to give evidence before the court, forget the name of this gentleman?"

"I'd know no more of him than an unborn baby," eagerly whispered Blossom.

"Hold a moment. This gentleman overhears the plot, in the room of a certain house, not used as a church, precisely. The gentleman does not wish to be known as a visitor to that house,—you comprehend? But in that house, he happens to hear the ruffian and his young comrade planning this robbery. Himself unseen, he hears their whole conversation. He finds out that they intend to enter the house where the robbery is to take place, by a false key and a back stairway. Now—"

"You want to know, in straight-for'ard talk," interrupted Blossom, "whether, when the case comes to trial, I could remember having overheard the convict and the young 'un mesself? There's my hand on it, Curnel. Just set me on the track, and you'll find that I'll never say one word about you. Beside, I was arter these two covies this very night,—I seed 'em with my own eyes, in the garret of the Yellow Mug."

"You did!" cried the Colonel, with an accent of undisguised satisfaction. "Then possibly you may remember that you overheard them planning this burglary, as you listened behind the garret door?"

"Of course I can," replied Blossom, "I remember it quite plain. Jist tell me the number of the house that is to be robbed, and I'll show you fireworks."

The Colonel's face was agitated by a smile of infernal delight. Leaving Blossom for a moment, he paced the floor, with his finger to his lip.

"Pop and Pill will leave town to-morrow," he muttered to himself, "and they'll keep out of the way until the storm blows over. This fellow will go to the house of Sowers, inform him of the robbery, a search will be made, and Ninety-One discovered in one room, and the corpse of Evelyn in the other. Just at that hour I'll happen to be passing by, and in the confusion I'll try to secure this youthful secretary of Old Sowers. I shall want him for the twenty-fifth of December. As for the other, why, Frank must take care of him. Shall Ninety-One come to a hint of the murder?"—the Colonel paused and struck his forehead. "Head, you have never failed me, and will not fail me now!"

He turned to Blossom, and in low whispers the twain arranged all the details of the affair. They conversed together there in the gloom until they perfectly understood each other, Blossom turning now and then to indulge in a quiet laugh, and the Colonel's dark eyes flashing with earnestness, and may be, with the hope of gratified revenge. At length they shook hands, and the Colonel approached the table:

"Mr. Yorke, I have the honor to wish you a very good evening," said the Colonel, and after a polite bow, he departed.

"I leave him with his serenaders," he muttered as he disappeared. "This murder off my hands, and the private secretary in my power, I think I will hold the trump card on the Twenty-fifth of December!"

With this muttered exclamation he went down the back stairway.

"Yorke, my genius!" cried Blossom, clapping the financier on the back, "if I don't have them $71,000 dollars before twenty-four hours, you may call me—you may call me,—most anything you please. By-the-bye, did you hear that howl? Good-night, Yorke." And he went down the back stairway.

The financier, coughing for breath, (for the hand of Blossom had been somewhat emphatic), fixed his gold specs, and brushed his gray whiskers, and turning to Mr. Fetch, said gayly,

"He looks as if he was on the right track; don't he, Fetch?"

Fetch said he did; and presently he also retired down the back stairway, promising to see his Principal at an early hour on the morrow. "How they do roar!" he ejaculated, as he disappeared.

Yorke was alone. He shifted and twisted uneasily in his chair. His little black eyes shone with peculiar luster. He sat for a long time buried in thought, and at last gave utterance to these words:

"I think I'd better retire until the storm blows over, leaving Fetch to bring in my notes, and manage affairs. To what part of the world shall I go? Well,—w-e-ll!—Havana, yes, that's the word, Havana! But first I must see the result of this Van Huyden matter on the Twenty-fifth, and provide myself with a companion—a pleasant companion to cheer me in my loneliness at Havana. Ah!" the man of money actually breathed an amorous sigh,—"twelve to-night,—the Temple!—that's the word."

And in the street without, black with heads, there were at least three thousand people who would have cut the throat of Israel, had they once laid hands upon him.

"The Temple!" he again ejaculated, and sinking back in his chair, he inserted his thumbs in the arm-holes of his vest, and resigned himself to a pleasant dream.

---

Leaving Israel Yorke for a little while, we will trace the movements, and listen to the words of a personage of far different character.

---

[CHAPTER IV.]

THE SEVEN VAULTS.

About the hour of nine o'clock, on the 23d of December, a gentleman, wrapped in the folds of a Spanish mantle, passed along Broadway, on his way to the Astor House. Through the glare and glitter, the uproar and the motion of that thronged pathway, he passed rapidly along, his entire appearance and manner distinguishing him from the crowd. As he came into the glare of the brilliantly-lighted windows, his face and features, disclosed but for an instant, beneath his broad sombrero, made an impression upon those who beheld them, which they did not soon forget. That face, unnaturally pale, was lighted by eyes that shone with incessant luster; and its almost death-like pallor was in strong contrast with his moustache, his beard and hair, all of intense blackness. His dark hair, tossed by the winter winds, fell in wavy tresses to the collar of his cloak. His movements were quick and impetuous, and his stealthy gait, in some respects, reminded you of the Indian. Altogether, in a crowd of a thousand you would have singled him out as a remarkable man,—one of those whose faces confront you at rare intervals, in the church, the street, in the railroad-car, on ship-board, and who at first sight elicit the involuntary ejaculation, "That man's history I would like to know!"

Arrived at the Astor House he registered his name, Gaspar Manuel, Havana.

He had just landed from the Havana steamer.

As he wrote his name on the Hotel book, he uncovered his head, and—by the gas light which shone fully on him,—it might be seen that his dark hair, which fell to his shoulders, was streaked with threads of silver. The vivid brightness of his eyes, the death-like pallor of his face, became more perceptible in the strong light; and when he threw his cloak aside, you beheld a slender frame, slightly bent in the shoulders, clad in a dark frock coat, which, single breasted, and with a strait collar, reached to the knees.

His face seemed to indicate the traveler who has journeyed in many lands, seen all phases of life, thought much, suffered deeply, and at times grown sick of all that life can inflict or bestow; his attire indicated a member of some religious organization, perchance a member of that society founded by Loyola, which has sometimes honored, but oftener blasphemed, the name of Jesus. Directing his trunks,—there were some three or four, huge in size, and strangely strapped and banded—to be sent to his room, Gaspar Manuel resumed his cloak and sombrero, and left the hall of the hotel.

It was an hour before he appeared again. As he emerged from one of the corridors into the light of the hall, you would have scarcely recognized the man. In place of his Jesuit-like attire, he wore a fashionably made black dress coat, a snow-white vest, black pants and neatly-fitting boots. There was a diamond in the center of his black scarf, and a massy gold chain across his vest. And a diamond even more dazzling than that which shone upon his scarf, sparkled from the little finger of his left-hand.

But the change in his attire only made that face, framed in hair and beard, black as jet, seem more lividly pale. It was a strange faded face,—you would have given the world to have known the meaning of that thought which imparted its incessant fire to his eyes.

Winding his cloak about his slender frame, and placing his sombrero upon his dark hair, he left the hotel. Passing with his quick active step along Broadway, he turned to the East river, and soon entered a silent and deserted neighboring house. Silent and deserted, because it stands in the center of a haunt of trade, which in the day-time, mad with the fever of traffic, was at night as silent and deserted as a desert or a tomb.

He paused before an ancient dwelling-house, which, wedged in between huge warehouses, looked strangely out of place, in that domain of mammon. Twenty-one years before, that dwelling-house had stood in the very center of the fashionable quarter of the city. Now the aristocratic mansions which once lined the street had disappeared; and it was left alone, amid the lofty walls and closed windows of the warehouses which bounded it on either hand, and gloomily confronted it from the opposite side of the narrow street.

It was a double mansion—the hall door in the center—ranges of apartments on either side. Its brick front, varied by marble over the windows, bore the marks of time. And the wide marble steps, which led from the pavement to the hall door—marble steps once white as snow—could scarcely be distinguished from the brown sandstone of the pavement. In place of a bell, there was an unsightly-looking knocker, in the center of the massive door; and its roof, crowned with old fashioned dormer-windows, and heavy along the edges with cumbrous woodwork, presented a strange contrast to the monotonous flat roofs of the warehouses on either side.

Altogether, that old-fashioned dwelling looked as much out of place in that silent street of trade, as a person attired in the costume of the Revolution,—powdered wig, ruffled shirt, wide skirted coat, breeches and knee-buckles,—would look, surrounded by gentlemen attired in the business-like and practical costume of the present day. And while the monotonous edifices on either side, only spoke of Trade—the Rate of Exchange—the price of Dry Goods,—the old dwelling-house had something about it which breathed of the associations of Home. There had been marriages in that house, and deaths: children had first seen the light within its walls, and coffins, containing the remains of the fondly loved, had emerged from its wide hall door: dramas of every-day life had been enacted there: and there, perchance, had also been enacted one of those tragedies of every-day life which differ so widely from the tragedies of fiction, in their horrible truth.

There was a story about the old dwelling which, as you passed it in the day-time, when it stood silent and deserted, while all around was deafening uproar, made your heart dilate with involuntary curiosity to know the history of the ancient fabric, and the history of those who had lived and died within its walls.

Gaspar Manuel ascended the marble steps, and with the knocker sounded an alarm, which echoing sullenly through the lofty hall, was shortly answered by the opening of the door.

In the light which flashed upon the pallid visage of Gaspar Manuel, appeared an aged servant, clad in gray livery faced with black velvet.

"Take these letters to your master, and tell him that I am come," said Gaspar in a prompt and decided tone, marked, although but slightly, with a foreign accent. He handed a package to the servant as he spoke.

"But how do you know that my master is at home?"—The servant shaded his eyes with his withered hand, and gazed hesitatingly into that strange countenance, so lividly pale, with eyes unnaturally bright and masses of waving hair, black as jet.

"Ezekiel Bogart lives here, does he not?"

"That is my master's name."

"Take these letters to him then at once, and tell him I am waiting."

Perchance the soft and musical intonations of the stranger's voice had its effect upon the servant, for he replied, "Come in, sir," and led the way into the spacious hall, which was dimly lighted by a hanging lamp of an antique pattern.

"Step in there, sir, and presently I will bring you an answer."

The aged servant opened a door on the left side of the hall and Gaspar Manuel entered a square apartment, which had evidently formed a part of a larger room. The walls were panneled with oak; a cheerful wood fire burned in the old-fashioned arch; an oaken table, without covering of any sort, stood in the center; and oaken benches were placed along the walls. Taking the old chair,—it stood by the table,—Gaspar Manuel, by the light of the wax candle on the table, discovered that the room was already occupied by some twenty or thirty persons, who sat upon the oak benches, as silent as though they had been carved there. Persons of all classes, ages, and with every variety of visage and almost every contrast of apparel. There was the sleek dandy of Broadway; there the narrow-faced vulture of Wall street; there some whose decayed attire reminded you either of poets out of favor with the Magazines, or of police officers out of office: one whose half Jesuit attire brought to mind a Puseyite clergyman; and one or two whose self-complacent visages reminded one of a third-rate lawyer, who had just received his first fee; in a word, types of the varied and contrasted life which creeps or throbs within the confines of the large city. Among the crowd, were several whose rotund corporations and evident disposition to shake hands with themselves, indicated the staid man of business, whose capital is firm in its foundation, and duly recognized in the solemn archives of the Bank. A man of gray hairs, clad in rags, sat in a corner by himself; there was a woman with a vail over her face; a boy with half developed form, and lip innocent of hair: it was, altogether, a singular gathering.

The dead silence which prevailed was most remarkable. Not a word was said. Not one of those persons seemed to be aware of the existence of the others. As motionless as the oak benches on which they sat, they were waiting to see Ezekiel Bogart, and this at the unusual hour of ten at night.

Who was Ezekiel Bogart? This was a question often asked, but which the denizens of Wall street found hard to answer. He was not a merchant, nor a banker, nor a lawyer, nor a gentleman of leisure, although in some respects he seemed a combination of all.

He occupied the old-fashioned dwelling; was seen at all sorts of places at all hours; and was visited by all sorts of people at seasons most unusual. Thus much at least was certain. But what he was precisely, what he exactly followed, what the sum of his wealth, and who were his relations,—these were questions shadowed in a great deal more mystery than the reasons which induce a Washington Minister of State to sanction a worn-out claim, of which he is at once the judge, lawyer and (under the rose) sole proprietor.

The transactions of Ezekiel Bogart were quite extensive: they involved much money and ramified through all the arteries of the great social world of New York. But the exact nature of these transactions? All was doubt,—no one could tell.

So much did the mystery of Mr. Bogart's career puzzle the knowing ones of Wall street, that one gentleman of the Green Board went quite crazy on the subject,—after the fourth bottle of champagne—and offered to bet Erie Rail-road stock against New Jersey copper stock, that no one could prove that Bogart had ever been born.

"Who is Ezekiel Bogart?"

No doubt every one of the persons here assembled, in the oak panneled room, can return some sort of answer to this question; but will not their answers contradict each other, and render Ezekiel more mythical than ever?

"Sir, this way," said the aged servant, opening the door and beckoning to Gaspar Manuel.

Gaspar followed the old man, and leaving the room, ascended the oaken staircase, whose banisters were fashioned of solid mahogany.

On the second floor he opened a door,—"In there, sir," and crossing the threshold, Gaspar Manuel found himself in the presence of Ezekiel Bogart.

It was a square apartment, lined with shelves from the ceiling to the floor, and illumined by a lamp, which hanging from the ceiling, shed but a faint and mysterious light through the place. In the center was a large square table, whose green baize surface was half concealed by folded packages, opened letters, and huge volumes, bound in dingy buff. Without windows, and warmed by heated air, this room was completely fire-proof—for the contents of those shelves were too precious to be exposed to the slightest chance of destruction.

In an arm-chair, covered with red morocco, and placed directly beneath the light, sat Ezekiel Bogart; a man whom we may as well examine attentively, for we shall not soon see his like again. His form bent in the shoulders, yet displaying marks of muscular power, was clad in a loose wrapper of dark cloth, with wide sleeves, lined with red. A dark skull-cap covered the crown of his head; and a huge green shade, evidently worn to protect his eyes from the light, completely concealed his eyes and nose, and threw its shadow over his mouth and chin. A white cravat, wound about his throat in voluminous folds, half concealed his chin; and his right hand—sinewy, yet colorless as the hand of a corpse—which was relieved by the crimson lining of the large sleeve—was laid upon an open letter.

Gaspar Manuel seated himself in a chair opposite this singular figure, and observed him attentively without uttering a word. And Ezekiel Bogart, whose eyes were protected by the huge green shade, seemed for a moment to study with some earnestness, the pallid face of Gaspar Manuel.

"My name is Ezekiel Bogart," he spoke in a voice so low as to be scarcely audible,—"and I am the General Agent of Martin Fulmer."

He paused as if awaiting a reply from Gaspar Manuel, but Gaspar Manuel did not utter a word.

"You come highly recommended by Mr. John Grubb, who is Mr. Fulmer's agent on the Pacific coast," continued Ezekiel. "He especially commends you to my kindness and attention, in the letter which I hold in my hand. He desires me to procure you an early interview with my principal, Dr. Martin Fulmer. He also states that you have important information in your possession, in regard to certain lands in the vicinity of the Jesuit Mission of San Luis, near the Pacific coast,—lands purchased some years ago, from the Mexican government, by Dr. Martin Fulmer. Now, in the absence of the Doctor, I will be most happy to converse with you on the subject"—

"And I will be happy to converse on the subject," exclaimed Gaspar, in his low voice and with a slight but significant smile, "but first I must see Dr. Martin Fulmer."

Ezekiel gave a slight start—

"But you may not be able to see Dr. Martin Fulmer for some days," he said. "His movements are uncertain; it is at times very difficult to procure an interview with him."

"I must see him," replied Gaspar Manuel in a decided voice, "and before the Twenty-Fifth of December."

Again Ezekiel started:

"Soh! He knows of the Twenty-Fifth!" he muttered. After a moment's hesitation he said aloud: "This land which the Doctor bought from the Mexican government, and which he sent John Grubb to overlook, is fertile, is it not?"

Gaspar Manuel answered in a low voice, whose faintest tones were marked with a clear and impressive emphasis:

"The deserted mission house of San Luis stands in the center of a pleasant valley, encircled by fertile hills. Its walls of intermingled wood and stone are almost buried from view by the ever-green foliage of the massive trees which surround it. Once merry with the hum of busy labor, and echoing with the voice of prayer and praise, it is now silent as a tomb. Its vineyards and its orchards are gone to decay,—orchards rich with the olive and the apple, the pomegranate and the orange, stand neglected and forsaken, under an atmosphere as calm, a climate as delicious as southern Italy. And the hills and fields, which once produced the plantain and banana, cocoanut, indigo and sugar-cane—which once resounded with the voices of hundreds of Indian laborers, who yielded to the rule of the Jesuit Fathers—are now as sad and silent as a desert. And yet a happier sight you cannot conceive than the valley of the San Luis, in the lap of which stands the deserted mission-house. It is watered by two rivulets, which, flowing from the gorges of distant hills, join near the mission-house, into a broad and tranquil river, whose shores are always bright with the verdure of spring. The valley is surrounded, as I have said, by a range of rolling hills, which formerly yielded, by their inexhaustible fertility, abundant wealth to the Fathers. Behind these, higher and abrupt hills arise, clad with ever-green forests. In the far distance, rise the white summits of the Sierra Nevada."

"This mission was one of the many established between the Sierra Nevada and the Pacific coast," interrupted Ezekiel, "by zealous missionaries of the Papal Church. If I mistake not, having obtained large grants of land from the Mexican government, they gathered the Indians into missions, reared huge mission-houses, and employed the Indians in the cultivation of the soil."

"Not only in California, on the west side of Sierra Nevada, but also far to the east of that range of 'Snow Mountains' abounded these missions, ruled by the Fathers and supported by the labor of the submissive Indians. But now, for hundreds and hundreds of miles, you will find the mission-houses silent and deserted. The rule of the Fathers passed away in 1836—in one of the thousand revolutions of Mexico—the missions passed into the hands of private individuals, and in some cases the Indians were transferred with the land."

"But the mission-house of San Luis?"

"Is claimed by powerful members of the Society of Jesus, who residing in the city of Mexico, have managed to keep a quiet hold upon the various governments, which have of late years abounded in that unhappy republic. They claim the mission-house and the lands, originally granted sixty years ago, to Brothers of their order by the Government, and they claim certain lands, not named in the original grant."

He paused, but Ezekiel Bogart completed the sentence:

"Lands purchased some years since, from the Government by Dr. Martin Fulmer? Is their claim likely to be granted?"

"That is a question upon which I will be most happy to converse with Dr. Martin Fulmer," was the bland reply of Gaspar Manuel.

"These lands are fertile—that is, as fertile as the lands immediately attached to the mission?"

"Barren, barren as Zahara," replied Gaspar. "A thousand acres in all, they are bounded by desolate hills, desolate of foliage, and broken into ravines and gorges, by mountain streams. You stand upon one of the hills, and survey the waste which constitutes Martin Fulmer's lands, and you contrast them with the mission lands, and feel as though Zahara and Eden stood side by side before you. A gloomier sight cannot be imagined."

"And yet," said Ezekiel, "these lands are situated but a few leagues from the mission-house. It is strange that the Jesuit Brothers should desire to possess such a miserable desert. Do you imagine their motives?"

"It is about their motives that I desire to speak with Dr. Martin Fulmer," and Gaspar shaded his eyes with the white hand which blazed with the diamond ring.

There was a pause, and beneath his uplifted hand, Gaspar Manuel attentively surveyed Ezekiel Bogart, while Ezekiel Bogart, as earnestly surveyed Gaspar Manuel, under the protection of the green shade which concealed his eyes.

"You seem to have a great many visitors to-night," said Gaspar, resting his arm on the table and his forehead on his hand; "allow me to ask, is it usual to transact business, at such a late hour, in this country?"

"The business transacted by Dr. Martin Fulmer, differs widely from the business of Wall street," replied Ezekiel, dryly.

"The property of Gulian Van Huyden, has by this time doubled itself?" asked Gaspar, still keeping his eyes on the table. Ezekiel started, but Gaspar continued, as though thinking aloud—"Let me see: at the time of his death, the estate was estimated at two millions of dollars. Of this $1,251,000 was invested in real estate in the city of New York; $100,000 in bank and other kinds of stock; $50,000 in lands in the Western country; $1,000 in a tract of one thousand acres in Pennsylvania; and $458,000 in bank notes and gold. Then the Van Huyden mansion and grounds were valued at $150,000. Are my figures correct, sir?"

As though altogether amazed by the minute knowledge which Gaspar Manuel, seemed to possess, in regard to the Van Huyden estate, Ezekiel did not reply.

"By this time this great estate has no doubt doubled, perhaps trebled itself."

Ezekiel raised his hand to his mouth, and preserved a statue-like silence.

"This room, which is no doubt vaulted and fire-proof, contains I presume, all the important records, title-deeds and other papers relating to the estate."

Ezekiel rose from his chair, and slowly lighted a wax candle which stood upon the table. Gathering the dark wrapper, lined with scarlet, about his tall form which seemed bent with age, he took the silver candlestick in his right hand, and swept aside a curtain which concealed the shelves behind his chair. A narrow doorway was disclosed.

"Will you step this way, for a few moments, sir?" he said, pointing to the doorway, as he held the light above his head, thus throwing the shadow of the green shade completely over his face.

Gaspar Manuel without a word, rose and followed him. They entered a room or rather vault, resembling in the general features the one which they had left. It was racked and shelved; the floor was brick and the shelves groaned under the weight of carefully arranged papers.

"This room or vault, without windows as you see, and rendered secure, beyond a doubt, from all danger of robbery or of fire, is one of seven," said Ezekiel. "In this room are kept all title deeds and papers, which relate to the Thousand acres in Pennsylvania."

"The Thousand acres in Pennsylvania!" echoed Gaspar, "surely all these documents and papers, do not relate to that tract, which Van Huyden originally purchased for one thousand dollars?"

"Twenty-one years ago, they could have been purchased for a thousand dollars," answered Ezekiel: "twenty-one years, to a country like this, is the same as five hundred to Europe. Those lands could not now be purchased for twenty millions."

"Twenty millions!"

"They comprise inexhaustible mines of coal and iron—the richest in the state," answered Ezekiel, quietly, and drawing a curtain, he led the way into a second vault.

"Here," he said, holding the light above his head, so that its rays fell full upon the pallid face of Gaspar, while his own was buried in shadow; "here are kept all papers and title-deeds, which relate to the lands in the western country—lands purchased for fifty thousand dollars, at a time when Ohio was a thinly settled colony and all the region further west a wilderness—but lands which now are distributed through five states, and which, dotted with villages, rich in mines and tenanted by thousands, return an annual rent of,——"

He paused.

"Of I do not care to say how many dollars. Enough, perhaps, to buy a German prince or two. This way, sir."

Passing through a narrow doorway, they entered a third vault, arched and shelved like the other.

"This place is devoted to the Van Huyden mansion," said Ezekiel, pointing to the well-filled shelves. "It was worth $150,000 twenty-one years ago, but now a flourishing town has sprung up in the center of its lands; mills and manufactories arise in its valleys; a population of five thousand souls exists, where twenty-one years ago there were not two hundred souls, all told. And these five thousand are laboring night and day, not so much for themselves as to increase the wealth of the Van Huyden estate."

"And all this is estimated at,——," began Gaspar.

"We will not say," quietly responded Ezekiel. "Here are the title-deeds of the town, of the mansion, of manufactory and mill, all belong to the estate; not one of the five thousand souls owns one inch of the ground on which they toil, or one shingle of the roof beneath which they sleep."

They entered the fourth vault.

"This is dedicated to the 'Real Estate in the city of New York,'" said Ezekiel—"worth $1,521,000, twenty-one years ago, and now—well, well—New York twenty-one years ago was the presumptuous rival of Philadelphia. She is now the city of the Continent. And this real estate is located in the most thriving portions of the city—among the haunts of trade near the Battery, and in the region of splendid mansions up town."

"And you would not like to name the usual revenue?"—a smile crossed the pale visage of Gaspar Manuel.

Ezekiel led the way into the fifth vault.

"Matters in regard to Banks and bank stock are kept here," he said, showing the light of the candle upon the well laden shelves—"Rather an uncertain kind of property. The United States' Bank made a sad onslaught upon these shelves. But let us go into the next room."

And they went into the sixth room.

"This is our bank," said Ezekiel; "that is to say, the Treasury of the Van Huyden estate, in which we keep our specie basis. You perceive the huge iron safe which occupies nearly one-half of the apartment? Dr. Martin Fulmer carries the Key of course, and with that Key he can perchance, at any moment, command the destinies of the commercial world. A golden foundation is a solid foundation, as the world goes."

As though for the moment paralyzed, by the revelation of the immense wealth of the Van Huyden estate, Gaspar Manuel stood motionless as a statue, resting one arm upon the huge safe and at the same time resting his forehead in his hand.

"We will now pass into the seventh apartment," said Ezekiel, and in a moment they stood in the last vault of the seven. "It is arched and shelved, you perceive, like the others; and the shelves are burdened with carefully-arranged papers——"

"Title-deeds, I presume, title-deeds and mortgages?" interrupted Gaspar Manuel.

"No," answered Ezekiel, suffering the rays of the candle to fall upon the crowded shelves. "Those shelves contain briefs of the personal history of permanent persons of this city, of many parts of the Union, I may say, of many parts of the globe. Sketches of the personal history of prominent persons, and of persons utterly obscure: records of remarkable facts, in the history of particular families: brief but interesting portraitures of incidents, societies, governments and men; the contents of those shelves, sir, is knowledge, and knowledge that, in the grasp of a determined man, would be a fearful Power. For," he turned and fixed his gaze on Gaspar Manuel; "for you stand in the Secret Police Department of the Van Huyden estate."

These last words, pronounced with an emphasis of deep significance, evidently aroused an intense curiosity in the breast of Gaspar Manuel.

"Secret Police Department!" he echoed, his dark eyes flashing with renewed luster.

"Even so," dryly responded Ezekiel, "for the Van Huyden estate is not a secret society like the Jesuits, nor a corporation like Trinity Church, nor a government like the United States or Great Britain, but it is a Government based upon Money and controlled by the Iron Will of One Man. A Government based, I repeat it, upon incredible wealth, and absolutely in the control of one man, who for twenty-one years, has devoted his whole soul to the administration of the singular and awful Power intrusted to him. Such a Government needs a Secret Police, ramifying through all the arteries of the social world—and you now stand in the office of that wide-spread and almost ubiquitous Police."

"A secret society may be disturbed by internal dissensions," said Gaspar Manuel, as though thinking aloud; "a government may be crippled by party jealousies, but this Government of the Van Huyden Estate, based upon money, is simply controlled by one man, who knows his mind, who sees his way clear, whose will is deepened by a conviction—perhaps a fanaticism—as unrelenting as death itself. Ah! the influence of such a Government is fearful, nay horrible, to contemplate!"

"It is, it is indeed," said Ezekiel, in a low and mournful voice; "and the responsibility of Dr. Martin Fulmer, most solemn and terrible."

"But what would become of this Government, were Dr. Martin Fulmer to die before the 25th of December?" asked Gaspar Manuel.

"But Dr. Martin Fulmer will not die before the 25th of December," responded Ezekiel, in a tone of singular emphasis.

"And this immense power will drop from his grasp on the 10th of December," continued Gaspar Manuel. "Who will succeed him? Into whose hands will it fall—this incredible power?"

"Your question will be answered on the 25th of December," slowly responded Ezekiel, and motioning to Gaspar, he retraced his steps through the six vaults or apartments, and presently stood in the first of the seven vaults, where we first beheld him.

He seated himself in the huge arm-chair, while Gaspar Manuel, resuming his cloak and sombrero, stood ready to depart.

"Now that I have given you some revelation of the immense resources of the Van Huyden Estate," said Ezekiel, as he attentively surveyed that cloaked and motionless figure; "you will, I presume, have no objection to converse with me in regard to the lands on the Pacific, as freely and as fully, as though you stood face to face with Dr. Martin Fulmer?"

"Pardon," said Gaspar Manuel with a low brow, "the facts in my possession are for the ear of Dr. Martin Fulmer, and for his ear alone."

"Very well, sir," replied Ezekiel, in a tone of impatience, "as you please. Call here to-morrow at—" he named the hour—"and you shall see Dr. Martin Fulmer."

"I will be here at the hour," and bidding good-night! to Ezekiel, Gaspar bowed and moved to the door. He paused for a moment on the threshold——

"Pardon me, sir, but I would like to ask you a single question."

"Well, sir."

"I am curious to know what has induced you, to disclose to me—almost an entire stranger—the secrets and resources of the Van Huyden Estate?"

"Sir," responded Ezekiel Bogart, in a voice which deep and stern, was imbued with the consciousness of Power; "you will excuse me from giving you a direct reply. But you would not have crossed the threshold of any one of the seven apartments, had I not been conscious, that it is utterly out of your power, to abuse the knowledge which you have obtained."

Again Gaspar Manuel bowed, and without a word, left the room.

Ezekiel Bogart was alone.

He folded his arms and bowed his head upon his breast. Strange and tumultuous thoughts, stamped their deep lines upon his massive brow. The dimly-lighted room was silent as the grave, and the light fell faintly upon that singular figure, buried in the folds of the dark robe lined with scarlet, the head covered with an unsightly skullcap, the eyes vailed by a green shade, the chin and mouth concealed by the cumbrous cravat. Lower drooped the head of Ezekiel, but still the light fell upon his bared forehead, and showed the tumultuous thoughts that were working there. The very soul of Ezekiel, retired within itself and absent from all external things, was buried in a maze of profound, of overwhelming thought.

The aged servant entered with a noiseless step, "Here is a letter, sir," he said. But Ezekiel did not hear. "Sir, a letter from Philadelphia, by a messenger who has just arrived." But Ezekiel, profoundly absorbed, was unconscious of his presence.

The aged servant advanced, and placed the letter on the table, directly before his absent-minded master. He touched Ezekiel respectfully on the shoulder and repeated in a louder voice—"A letter, sir, an important letter from Philadelphia, by a messenger who has just arrived."

Ezekiel started in his chair, like one suddenly awakened from a sound slumber. At a glance he read the superscription of the letter: "To Ezekiel Bogart, Esq.—Important."

"The handwriting of the Agent whom I yesterday sent to Philadelphia!" he ejaculated, and opened the letter. These were its contents:

Philadelphia, Dec. 23, 1844.

Sir:—I have just returned to the city, from the Asylum—returned in time to dispatch this letter by an especial messenger, who will go to New York, in the five o'clock train. At your request, and in accordance with your instructions, I visited the Asylum for the Insane, this morning, expecting to bring away with me the Patient whom you named. He escaped some days ago—so the manager informed me. And since his escape no intelligence has been had of his movements. I have not time to add more, but desire your instructions in the premises.

Yours truly, H. H.

To Ezekiel Bogart, Esq.

No sooner had Ezekiel scanned the contents of this epistle, than he was seized with powerful agitation.

"Escaped! The child of Gulian escaped!" he cried, and started from the chair—"to-morrow he was to be here, in this house, in readiness for the Day. Escaped! Why did not the manager at once send me word? Ah, woe, woe!" He turned to the aged servant, and continued, "Bring the person who brought this letter, to me, at once, quick! Not an instant is to be lost."

And as the aged servant left the room, Ezekiel sank back in his chair, like one who is overpowered by a sudden and unexpected calamity.

---

[CHAPTER V.]

THE LEGATE OF THE POPE.

As Gaspar Manuel left the house of Ezekiel Bogart, he wrapped his cloak closely about his form, and drew his sombrero low upon his face. His head drooped upon his breast as he hurried along, with a quick and impetuous step. Soon he was in Broadway again, amid its glare and uproar, but he did not raise his head, nor turn his gaze to the right or left. Head drooped upon his breast and arms gathered tightly over his chest, he threaded his way through the mazes of the crowd, as absent from the scene around him, as a man walking in his sleep.

Arrived at the Astor House, he hurried to his room and changed his dress. Divesting himself of his fashionable attire—black dress-coat, scarf, white-vest—he clad himself in a single-breasted frock-coat, buttoned to the throat and reaching below the knees. Above its straight collar, a glimpse of his white cravat was perceptible. And over the dark surface of his coat, was wound a massy gold chain, to which was appended, a Golden Seal and a Golden Cross. Over this costume, which in its severe simplicity, displayed his slender frame to great advantage, he threw his cloak, and once more hurried from the Hotel.

Pausing on the sidewalk in front of the Astor, he engaged a hackney-coach—

"Do you know where, —— ——, resides?" he asked of the driver; a huge individual, in a white overcoat, and oil-skin hat.

"Sure and I does jist that," was the answer. "It's meself that knows the residence of his Riv'rence as well as the nose on my face."

"Drive me there, at once," said Gaspar Manuel.

And presently the carriage was rolling up Broadway, bearing Gaspar Manuel to the residence of a prominent dignitary of the Roman Catholic Church.

As the little clock on the mantle struck the hour of eleven, the Prelate was sitting in an easy chair, in front of a bright wood fire. It was in a spacious apartment, connected with his library by a narrow door. Two tall wax candles, placed upon the table by his side, shed their light over the softly carpeted floor, the neatly papered walls, and over the person of the Prelate, who was seated at his ease, in the center of the scene.

The Prelate was a man of some forty-five years, with boldly marked features, and sharp fiery eyes, indicating an incessantly active mind. The light fell mildly on his tonsured crown, encircled by brown hair, streaked with gray, and his bold forehead and compressed lip. His form broad in the shoulders, muscular in the chest, and slightly inclined to corpulence, was clad in a long robe of dark purple, reaching from his throat to his feet. There was a cross on his right breast and a diamond ring on the little finger of his left-hand.

Thus alone, in his most private room—the labors of the day accomplished and the world shut out—the Prelate was absorbed in the mazes of a delightful reverie.

He fixed his eyes upon a picture which hung over the mantle, on the left. It was a portrait of Cardinal Dubois, who in the days of the Regency, trailed his Red Hat in the mire of nameless debaucheries.

"Fool!" muttered the Prelate, "he had not even sense to hide his vices, under the thinnest vail of decency."

He turned his eyes to a portrait which hung over the mantle on the right. "There was a man!" he muttered, and a smile shot over his face. The portrait was that of Cardinal Richelieu who butchered the Huguenots in France, while he was supplying armies to aid the Protestants of Germany. Richelieu, one of those Politicians who seem to regard the Church simply as a machine for the advancement of their personal ambition,—the cross as a glittering bauble, only designed to dazzle the eyes of the masses,—the seamless Cloak of the Redeemer, as a cloak intended to cover outrages the most atrocious, which are done in the name of God.

"He was a man!" repeated the Prelate. "He moulded the men and events of his time, and,——" he stopped. He smiled. "Why cannot I mould to my own purposes, the men and events of my time, using the Church as a convenient engine?" Some thought like this seemed to flit over his mind.

Having attentively turned his gaze from Cardinal Dubois to Cardinal Richelieu, the Prelate at length fixed his eyes upon a marble bust, which stood in the center of the mantle. And his lips moved, and his eyes flashed, and his right hand waved slowly to and fro, before his face, as though he saw a glorious future, drawn in the air, by a prophetic pencil.

The marble bust upon which he gazed, was the bust of one, who from the very lowest walk in life had risen to be Pope: and one of the strongest, sternest Popes that ever held the scepter of the Vatican.

"It can be won," ejaculated the Prelate, "and the means lie here," he placed his hand upon a Map which lay on the table. It was a map of the American Continent.

"I came up stairs without ceremony," said a calm even voice; "your Grace's servant informed me, that you expected me."

"I am heartily glad to see you, my Lord," said the Prelate, turning abruptly and confronting his visitor: "it is now two years since I met your Lordship in Rome. It was, you remember, just before you departed to Mexico, as the Legate of His Holiness. How has it been with you since I saw you last?"

"I have encountered many adventures," answered "His Lordship," the Legate, "and none more interesting than those connected with the Mission of San Luis and its lands—"

Thus saying the Legate—in obedience to a courteous gesture from the Prelate—flung aside his hat and cloak, and took a seat by the table.

The Legate was none other than our friend Gaspar Manuel.

They were in singular contrast, the Legate and the Prelate. The muscular form and hard practical face of the Prelate, was certainly, in strong contrast with the slender frame, and pale—almost corpse-like—face of the Legate, with its waving hair and beard of inky blackness. Conscious that their conversation might one day have its issue, in events or in disclosures of vital importance, they for a few moments surveyed each other in silence. When the Prelate spoke, there was an air of deference in his manner, which showed that he addressed one far superior to himself in position, in rank and power.

We will omit the Lordships and Graces with which these gentlemen, interlarded their conversation. Lordships and Graces and Eminences, are matters with which we simple folks of the American Union, are but poorly acquainted.

"You are last from Havana?" asked the Prelate.

"Yes," answered the Legate: "and a month ago I was in the city of Mexico; two months since in California, at the mission of San Luis."

"And the Fathers are likely to regain possession of the deserted mission? You intimated so much in the letter which you were kind enough to write me from Havana."

"They are likely to regain possession," said the Legate.

"But the mission will be worth nothing without the thousand acres of barren land," continued the Prelate: "Will the barren land go with the mission?"

"In regard to that point I will inform you fully before we part. For the present let me remind you, that it was an important part of my mission, to the New World, to ascertain the prospects of the Church in that section of the Continent, known as the United States. Allow me to solicit from you, a brief exposition of the condition and prospects of our Church in this part of the globe."

The Prelate laid his hand upon the American Continent:

"The north, that is the Republic of the United States, will finally absorb and rule over all the nations of the Continent. By war, by peace, in one way or another the thing is certain—"

He paused: the Legate made a gesture of assent.

"It is our true policy, then, to absorb and rule over the Republic of the North. To make our Church the secret spring of its Government; to gradually and without exciting suspicion, mould every one of its institutions to our own purposes; to control the education of its people, and bend the elective franchise to our will. Is not this our object?"

Again the Legate signified assent.

"And this must be done, by making New York the center of our system. New York is in reality, the metropolis of the Continent; from New York as from a common center, therefore all our efforts must radiate. From New York we will control the Republic, shape it year by year to our purposes; as it adds nation after nation to its Union, we will make our grasp of its secret springs of action, the more certain and secure; and at last the hour will come, when this Continent apparently one united republic, will in fact, be the richest altar, the strongest abiding-place, the most valuable property of the Church. Yes, the hour will come, when the flimsy scaffolding of Republicanism will fall, and as it falls, our Church will stand revealed, her foundation in the heart of the American Republic; her shadow upon every hill and valley of the Continent. For you know," and his eye flashed, "that our battle against what is called Democracy and Progress, is to be fought not in the Old World, where everything is on our side, but in the New World, where these damnable heresies do most abound."

"True," interrupted the Legate, thoughtfully; "the New World is the battle-field of opinions. Here the fight must take place."

"You ask how our work is to begin? Here in New York we will commence it. Hundreds of thousands of foreigners of our faith arrive in this city every year. Be it our task to plant an eternal barrier between these men, and those who are American citizens by birth. To prevent them from mingling with the American People, from learning the traditions of American history, which give the dogma of Democracy its strongest hold upon the heart, to isolate them, in the midst of the American nation. In a word, the first step of our work is, to array at the zealous Foreign party, an opposition to an envenomed Native American party."

"This you have commenced already," said the Legate,—"it was in Mexico, that I heard of Philadelphia last summer—of Philadelphia on the verge of civil war with Protestants and Catholics flooding the gutters with their blood, while the flames of burning churches lit up the midnight sky."

"The outbreak was rather premature," calmly continued the Prelate, "but it has done us good. It has invested us with the light of martyrdom, the glory of persecution. It has drawn to us the sympathies of tens of thousands of Protestants, who, honestly disliking the assaults of the mere 'No-Popery' lecturers upon our church, as honestly entertain the amusing notion, that the Rulers of our church, look upon 'Toleration, Liberty of Conscience,' and so forth, with any feeling, but profound contempt."

"Ah!" ejaculated the Legate, and a smile crossed his face, "deriving strength from the illimitable bitterness of the Native American and Foreign political parties, we already hold in many portions of the Union, the ballot box in our grasp. We can dictate terms to both political parties. Their leaders court us. Editors who know that we rooted Protestantism out of Spain, by the red hand of the Inquisition,—that for our faith we made the Netherlands rich in gibbets and graves,—that we gave the word, which started from its scabbard the dagger of St. Bartholomew,—grave editors, who know all this and more, talk of us as the friends of Liberty and Toleration—"

"But there was Calvert, the founder of Maryland, and Carroll the signer of the Declaration of Independence, these were Catholics, were they not, Catholics and friends of Liberty?"

"They were laymen, not rulers, you will remember," said the Prelate, significantly: "at best they belonged to a sort of Catholics, which, in the Old World, we have done our best to root out of the church. But here, however, we can use their names and their memories, as a cloak for our purposes of ultimate dominion. But to resume: both political parties court us. Their leaders, who loathe us, are forced to kneel to us. Things we can do freely and without blame, which damn any Protestant sect but to utter. The very 'No-Popery' lecturers aid us: they attack doctrinal points in our church, which are no more assailable than the doctrinal points of any one of their ten thousand sects: they would be dangerous, indeed, were they to confine their assaults to the simple fact, that ours is not so much a church as an EMPIRE, having for its object, the temporal dominion of the whole human race, to be accomplished under the vail of spiritualism. An EMPIRE built upon the very sepulcher of Jesus Christ,—an empire which holds Religion, the Cross, the Bible, as valuable just so far as they aid its efforts for the temporal subjection of the world,—an empire which, using all means and holding all means alike lawful, for the spread of its dominion, has chosen the American Continent as the scene of its loftiest triumph, the theater of its final and most glorious victories!"

As he spoke the Atheist Prelate started from his chair.

Far different from those loving Apostles, who through long ages, have in the Catholic Church, repeated in their deeds, the fullness of Love, which filled the breast of the Apostle John,—far different from the Fenelons and Paschals of the church,—this Prelate was a cold-blooded and practical Atheist. Love of women, love of wine, swayed him not. Lust of power was his spring of action—his soul. He may have at times, assented to Religion, but that he believed in it as an awful verity, as a Truth worth all the physical power and physical enjoyment in the universe,—the Prelate never had a thought like this. An ambitious atheist, a Borgia without his lust, a Richelieu with all of Richelieu's cunning, and not half of Richelieu's intellect, a cold-blooded, practical schemer for his own elevation at any cost,—such was the Prelate. Talk to him of Christ as a consoler, as a link between crippled humanity and a better world, as of a friend who meets you on the dark highway of life, and takes you from sleet and cold, into the light of a dear, holy home,—talk to him of the love which imbues and makes alive every word from the lips of Christ,—ha! ha! Your atheistical Prelate would laugh at the thought. He was a worldling. Risen from the very depths of poverty, he despised the poor from whom he sprung. For years a loud and even brawling advocate of justice for Ireland,—an ecclesiastical stump orator; a gatherer of the pennies earned by the hard hand of Irish labor,—he was the man to blaspheme her cause and vilify its honest advocates, when her dawn of Revolution darkened into night again. He was the pugilist of the Pulpit, the gladiator of controversy, always itching for a fight, never so happy as when he set honest men to clutching each other by the throat. Secure in his worldly possessions, rich from the princely revenues derived from the poor—the hard working poor of his church,—a tyrant to the parish priests who were so unfortunate as to be subjected to his sway, by turns the Demagogue of Irish freedom and the Mouchard of Austrian despotism, he was a vain, bad, cunning, but practical man, this Atheist Prelate of the Roman Church.

"Now, what think you of our plans and our prospects?" said the Prelate, triumphantly—"can we not, using New York as the center of our operations, the Ballot Box, social dissension and sectarian warfare as the means, can we not, mould the New World to our views, and make it Rome, Rome, in every inch of its soil?"

The Legate responded quietly:

"I see but one obstacle—"

"Only one; that is well—"

"And that obstacle is not so much the memory of the American Past, which some of these foolish Americans still consider holy—not so much the memory of Penn the Quaker; Calvert the Catholic, who planted their silly dogma of Brotherly love on the Delaware and St. Mary's, in the early dawn of this country,—not so much the Declaration of Independence, nor the blood-marks which wrote its principles, on the soil from Bunker Hill to Savannah, from Brandywine to Yorktown,—not so much the history of the sixty-eight years, which in the American Republic, have shown a growth, an enterprise, a development never witnessed on God's earth before,—not so much all this, as the single obstacle which I now lay on the table before you."

And from the breast of his coat he drew forth a small, thin volume, which he laid upon the table:

"This!" cried the Prelate, as though a bomb-shell had burst beneath his chair; "This! Why this is the four Gospels according to Matthew, Mark, Luke and John!"

"Precisely. And Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, those simple fellows are the very ones whom we have most to fear."

"But I have driven this book from the Common Schools!" cried the Prelate, rather testily.

"Have you driven it from the home?" quietly asked the Legate.

The Prelate absently toyed with his cross, but did not answer.

"Can you drive it from the home?" asked the Legate.

The Prelate gazed at the portrait of Cardinal Dubois, and then at Richelieu's, but did not reply.

"Do you not see the difficulty?" continued the Legate, "so long as Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, sit down by the firesides of the people, making themselves a part and parcel of the dearest memories of every household,—so long we may chop logic, weave plots, traffic in casuistry, but in vain!"

"True, that book is capable of much mischief," said the Prelate; "it has caused more revolutions than you could count in a year."

"In Spain, where this book is scarcely known, in Italy, where to read it is imprisonment and chains, we can get along well enough, but here, in the United States, where this book is a fireside book in every home, the first book that the child looks into, and the last that the dying old man listens to, as his ear is growing deaf with death,—here what shall we do? You know that it is a Democratic book?"

"Yes."

"That it is so simple in its enunciations of brotherly love, equality, and the love of God for all mankind, so simple and yet so strong, that it has required eighteen centuries of scholastic casuistry and whole tons of volumes, devoted to theological special pleading, to darken its simple meaning?"

"Yes, yes."

"That in its portraitures of Christ, there is something that stirs the hearts of the humblest, and sets them on fire with the thought, 'I too, am not a beast, but a child of God, destined to have a home here and an immortality hereafter?' That its profound contempt of riches and of mere worldly power,—its injunctions to the rich, 'sell all thou hast and give to the poor;' its pictures of Christ, coming from the workman's bench, and speaking, acting, doing and dying, so that the masses might no longer be the sport of priest or king, but the recreated men and women of a recreated social world; that in all this, it has caused more revolutions, given rise to more insurrections, leveled more deadly blows at absolute authority, than all other books that have been written since the world began?"

"Yes—y-e-s—y-e-s," said the Prelate. "True, true, a mischievous book. But how would you remedy the evil?"

"That's the question," said the Legate, dryly.

After a long pause they began to talk concerning the mission of San Luis in California—its fertile hills and valleys, rich in the olive, fig, grape, orange and pomegranate,—and of the thousand acres of barren land, claimed alike by the Jesuits and Dr. Martin Fulmer.

"The claim of the Fathers, to the mission-house and lands of San Luis, is established then?" said the Prelate.

"It has been acknowledged by the Mexican Government," was the reply of the Legate.

"And the claim to the thousand barren acres?"

"It rests in my hands," replied the Legate: "by a train of circumstances altogether natural, although to some they may appear singular, it is in my power to decide, whether these thousand barren acres shall belong to our Church or to Dr. Martin Fulmer."

"And it is not difficult to see which way your verdict wall fall;" the Prelate's eyes sparkled and a smile lit up his harsh features.

"These acres are barren, barren so far as the fig, the orange, the vine, the pomegranate are concerned, barren even of the slightest portion of shrubbery or verdure, but rich—"

"Rich in gold!" ejaculated the Prelate, folding his arms and fixing his eyes musingly upon the fire,—"gold sufficient to pave my way from this chair to the Papal throne;" he muttered to himself. "In Rome," he said aloud, "I had an opportunity to examine the records of the various missions, established by our Church in California; and they all contain traditions of incredible stores of gold, hidden under the rocks and sands of California. Does your experience confirm those traditions?"

"I have traversed that land from the Sierra Nevada to the Pacific, and from North to South," replied the Legate, "and it is my opinion, based on facts, that California is destined to exercise an influence upon the course of civilization and the fate of nations, such as has not been felt for a thousand years."

He paused, as if collecting in his mind, in one focus, a panorama of the varied scenery, climate, productions, of the region between the snows of the Sierra Nevada and the Pacific. Then, while his pale face flushed with excitement, and his bright eyes grew even yet more vivid in their luster, he continued:

"The bowels of the land are rich in gold," he said, in that low-toned but musical voice. "It is woven in the seams of her rocks. It impregnates her soil. It gleams in the sand of her rivers. Gold, gold, gold,—such as Banker never counted, nor the fancy of a Poet, ever dreamed of. Deep in her caverns the ore is shining; upon her mountain sides it flings back the rays of the sun; her forest trees are rooted in gold. Could you fathom her secrets, you would behold gold enough to set the world mad. Men would leave their homes, and all that makes life dear, and journey over land and sea, by hundreds of thousands, in pilgrimage to this golden land. The ships of the crusaders would whiten every sea, their caravans would belt every desert. The whole world, stirred into avaricious lust, would gravitate to this rock of gold."

Turning to the Prelate, he said abruptly:

"Did you ever attempt to unravel the superstition of Gold?"

"The superstition of Gold?" echoed the Prelate.

"Yes, superstition of gold. For that wide-spread opinion in regard to the value of gold, is one of the most incredible superstitions that ever damned the soul of man. It obtains in all ages and on every shore. In the days of the Patriarchs, and in the days of the Bankers,—among the sleekly-attired people of civilized races, and among savage hordes, naked as the beasts,—everywhere and in all ages, this superstition has obtained, and crushed mankind, not with an iron, but with a golden rod. (There are exceptions, I grant, as in the case of the North American Indians, and other savage tribes, but it cannot be denied, that this superstition which fixes a certain value on gold, has overspread the earth, in all ages, as universal as the very air.) What religion has ruled so absolutely and reigned so long, as this deep-implanted golden superstition,—this Catholic religion of the yellow ore?"

"But gold is valuable in itself," interrupted the Prelate—"it is something more than the representative of labor; in a thousand respects it surpasses all other metals. It is an article of merchandise, a part of commerce; even were it not money, it would always bring more money than any other metal."

"This is often said, and is plausible. Admit all you assert, and the question occurs, 'Why should it be so?' When you say that gold is the most precious of all metals, an article of value in itself, as well as the representative of labor, you assert a fact, but you do not explain that fact. Far, far from it. But why should it be so? What use has it been to man, that it should receive this high distinction? Iron, lead, copper—all of these are a million fold more useful than gold—No—reflect a little while. Bend all your thought to the subject. Track the yellow ore through all ages, and at last, you must come to the conclusion, that the value placed upon gold is a superstition, as vast as it is wicked,—a superstition which has crushed more hearts and damned more souls, than all the (so called) Religious superstitions that smear the page of history with blood. That such a superstition exists, would alone convince me of the existence of an embodied Devil, who, perpetually at war with God, does with a direct interference, derange his laws, and crush the hopes of his children."

For a moment, he shaded his eyes with his hand, while the Prelate gazed upon him, with something of surprise in his look.

"Can you estimate the evils which have flowed from this superstition? No. The reason falters, the imagination shudders: at the very thought you are bewildered,—dumb. But think of it as you will,—entangle yourself among the sophistries which attempt to explain, but in reality only darken it,—view it as a political economist, a banker, a merchant, or a worker in precious metals,—and you only plunge the deeper into the abyss of doubt and bewilderment. You cannot explain this superstition, unless you mount higher, and grasp that great law of God, which says, forever, 'It is wicked for one man to clothe himself with luxury, at the expense of the sweat and blood of another man, who is his Brother.' Grasp this truth firmly; understand it in all its bearings,—and you discern the source of the Golden superstition; for it had its source, in that depraved idleness which seeks luxury at the expense of human suffering,—which coins enjoyment for a few men, on the immeasurable wretchedness of entire races of mankind. The first man who sought to rob his Brother of the fruits of his labor, and of his place on the earth, was doubtless the inventor of the golden superstition; for turn and twist it as you will, gold is only valuable because it represents labor. All its value springs from that cause. It represents labor already done, and it represents labor that is to be done, and therefore,—therefore only,—is it valuable. And it is the most convenient engine by which the idlers of the World can enslave the laborers—therefore it has always retained its value. Backed by the delusion which fixes upon it a certain value, and makes it more precious than the blood of hearts, or the salvation of the entire human race, gold will continue to be the great engine for the destruction of that race—for its moral and physical damnation—just as long as the few continue to live upon the wretchedness of the many. Once destroy this superstition,—take away from gold its certain value—make that value vague, uncertain, and subject to as many changes as a bank note,—and you will have wrested the lash from the hand of the oppressor all over the world."

These words made a deep impression upon the Prelate, an impression which he dared not trust himself to frame in words. Suppressing an exclamation that started to his lips, he asked in a calm conversational tone—

"Will the discovery of the golden land have this effect?"

It was in a saddened tone, and with a downcast eye, that the Legate replied:

"Ah, that is, indeed, a fearful question. A question that may well make one shudder. One of two things must happen. From the rocks and sands of the golden land, the oppressors of the world will derive new means of oppression, or from those rocks and sands, will come the instrument, which is to lift up the masses and shake the oppressors to the dust. What shall be the result? Shall new and more damning chains, for human hearts, be forged upon the gold of these sands and rocks? Or, tottering among these rocks and sands, shall poor humanity at last discover the instrument of her redemption? God alone can tell."

The Prelate was silent. Folding his hands he surveyed the pallid visage of the Legate, with a look hard to define.

"The first wind that blows intelligence from this land of gold, will convulse the world. A few years hence, and these sands, now sparkling with ore, will be white with human skeletons. Thousands and hundreds of thousands will rush to seek the glittering ore, and find a grave, in the mud by the rivers' banks; hundreds of thousands will lie unburied in the depths of trackless deserts, or in the darkness of trackless ravines; the dog and the wolf will feed well upon human hearts."

Suppressing the emotion aroused, by a portion of the Legate's remarks, the Prelate asked:

"And the thousand barren acres contain incredible stores of gold?"

"Gold sufficient to affect the destiny of one-half the globe," replied the Legate: "gold, that employed in a good cause, would bless and elevate millions of the oppressed, or devoted to purposes of evil, might curse the dearest rights of half the human race."

"And it is in your power to establish the right of our Church to these lands?"

"It is. A word from me, and the thing is done."

"Pardon me," said the Prelate, slowly, and measuring every word,—"some portions of your remarks excite my curiosity. You speak of the oppressed, and of the oppressors. Now,—now,—from any lips but yours, these words, and the manner in which you use them, would sound like the doctrines of the French Socialists. What do you precisely mean by 'oppressed,'—and who, in your estimation, are the 'oppressors?'"

The Legate rose from his seat, and fixed his eyes upon the Prelate's face:

"There are many kinds of oppressors, but the most infamous, are those who use the Church of God, as the engine of their atrocious crimes."

This remark fell like a thunderbolt.

The Prelate slowly rose from his chair, his face flushed and his chest heaving.

"Sir!" he cried in a voice of thunder.

"Nay—you need not raise your voice,—much less confront me with that frowning brow. You know me and know the position which I hold. You know that I am above your reach,—that, perchance, a word from me, uttered in the proper place, might stop your career, even at the threshold. I know you, and know that you belong to the party, which, for ages, has made our church the instrument of the most infernal wrongs—"

"Sir!" again ejaculated the Prelate.

"A party, whose noblest monument is made of the skeletons, the racks and thumbscrews of the Inquisition, and whose history can only be clearly read, save by the torchlight of St. Bartholomew—"

"This from you, sir,—"

"A party whose avowed atheism produced the French Revolution, and whose cloaked atheism is even now sowing the seeds of social hell-fire, in this country and in Europe—"

"I swear, sir—"

"Hear me, sir, for I am only here to read you a plain lesson. You, and men like you, may possibly convert the Church once more into the instrument of ferocious absolutism and the engine of colossal murder, but remember—"

He flung his coat around him, and stood erect, his face even more deathly pale than usual, his eyes shining with clear and intense light. There was a grandeur in his attitude and look.

"Remember, even in the moments of your bloodiest triumphs, that even within the Church of Rome, swayed by such as you, there is another Church of Rome, composed of men, who, when the hour strikes, will sacrifice everything to the cause of humanity and God."

These words were pronounced slowly and deliberately, with an emphasis which drove the color from the Prelate's cheek.

"Think of it, within Rome, a higher, mightier Rome,—within the order of Jesuits, a higher and mightier order of Jesuits—and whenever you, and such as you, turn, you will be met by men, who have sworn to use the Church, as the instrument of human progress, or to drive forward the movement over its ruins."

He moved to the door, but lingered for a moment on the threshold:

"It is a great way," he said, "from the turnpike to the Vatican."

This he said, and disappeared. (The Prelate had risen from the position of breaker of stone on the public road, only to use all his efforts to crush and damn the masses from whom he sprung.)

And the Prelate was now left alone, to pick up the thunderbolt which had fallen at his feet.

Half an hour after this scene, the Legate once more ascended the steps of the Astor House, his cloak wound tightly about his slender form, his face,—and perchance the emotions written there,—cast into shadow by his broad sombrero. He was crossing the hall, flaring with gas-lights, when he was aroused from his reverie by these words,—

"My lord,—"

The speaker was a man of some forty-five years, with a hard, unmeaning face, and vague gray eyes. His ungainly form,—for he was round-shouldered, knock-kneed and clumsily footed,—was clad in black, varied only by a strip of dirty white about his bull-like neck. As he stood obsequiously, hat in hand, his bald crown, scantily encircled by a few hairs of no particular color, was revealed; and also his low, broad forehead. He looked very much like an ecclesiastic, whom habits of passive obedience have converted into a human fossil.

"My lord,—"

"Pshaw, Michael, none of that nonsense here. Have you obeyed the directions which I gave you before I left the steamer to-night?"

"I have, my—" 'lord,' he was about to say, but he substituted 'your excellence!'—"Your country seat, near the city, is in good order. Everything has been prepared in anticipation of your arrival. I have just returned from it,—Maryvale, I think you call it?"

"Maryvale," replied the Legate, "Did you tell Felix to have my carriage ready for me, after midnight, at the place and the hour which I named?"

"Yes, my lord,"—and Michael bowed low.

"No more of that nonsense, I repeat it.—This is not the country for it. How did you dispose of Cain?"

"I left Cain at the country seat."

"It is well," said the Legate, and having spoken further words to Michael, in a lower tone, he dismissed him, and went silently to his chamber.

And Cain of whom they spoke. We shall see Cain after a while.

---

[CHAPTER VI.]

"JOANNA."

At the hour of eleven o'clock, on the night of December 23d, 1844, ——. A gentleman of immense wealth, who occupied his own mansion, in the upper part of New York, came from his library, and descended the broad staircase, which led to the first floor of his mansion. His slight frame was wrapped in a traveling cloak and a gay traveling cap shaded his features. He held a carpet-bag in his hand. Arrived on the first floor, he entered a magnificent range of apartments communicating with each other by folding-doors, and lighted by an elegant chandelier. Around him, wherever he turned, was everything in the form of luxury, that the eye could desire or the power of wealth procure. Thick carpets, massive mirrors, lofty ceiling, walls broken here and there with a niche in which a marble statue was placed—these and other signs of wealth, met his gaze at every step.

He was a young man of fine personal appearance, and refined tastes. Without a profession, he employed his immense wealth in ministering to his taste for the arts. The only son of a man of fortune, educated to the habit of spending money without earning it, he had married about two years before, an exceedingly beautiful woman, the only daughter of a wealthy and aristocratic family.

And far back in a nook of this imposing suite of apartments, where the light of the chandelier is softened by the shadows of statue and marble pillar, sits this wife, a woman in the prime of early womanhood.—Her shape, at the same time tall, rounded, and commanding, is enveloped in a loose wrapper, which seems rather to float about her form, than to gird it closely. Her face is bathed in tears. As her husband approaches she rises and confronts him with a blonde countenance, fair blue eyes and golden hair. That face, beaming with young loveliness, is shadowed with grief.

"Must you go, indeed, my husband?"—and clad in that flowing robe, she rests her hands upon his shoulder, and looks tearfully into his face.

His cloak falls and discloses his slight and graceful form. He removes his traveling cap, and his wife may freely gaze upon that dark-complexioned face, whose regular features, remind you of an Apollo cast in bronze. His dark eyes flash with clear light as she raises one hand, and places it upon his forehead, and twines her fingers among the curls of his jet-black hair.

Take it all in all, it is an interesting picture, centered in that splendid room, where everything breathes luxury and wealth—the slender form of the young husband clad in black, contrasted with the imposing figure of the young wife, enveloped in drapery of flowing white.

"I must go, wife. Kiss me."—She bent back his head and gazing upon him long and earnestly, suffered her lips to join his,—"I'll be back before Christmas."

"You are sure that you must go?" she exclaimed, toying with the curls of his dark hair.

"You saw the letter which I received from Boston. My poor brother lies at the point of death. I must see him, Joanna,—you know how it pains me to be absent from you, only for a day,—but I must go. I'll be back by Christmas morning."

"Will you; indeed, though, Eugene?"—she wound her arms about his neck—"You know how drearily the time passes without you. O, how I shall count the hours until you return!" And at every word she smoothed his forehead with her hand, and touched his mouth with those lips which bloomed with the ripeness and purity of perfect womanhood.

"I must go, Joanna,"—and convulsed at the thought of leaving this young wife, even for a day, the husband gathered her to his breast, and then seizing his cloak and carpet-bag, hurried from the room. His steps were heard in the hall without, and presently the sound of the closing door reached the ears of the young wife.

An expression of intense sorrow passed over her face, and she remained in the center of the room, her hand clasped over her noble bust, and her head bowed in an attitude of deep melancholy.

"He is gone," she murmured, and passing through the spacious apartment, she traversed the hall, and ascended the broad stairway.

At the head of the stairway was a large and roomy apartment, warmed (like every room in the mansion) from an invisible source, which gave a delightful temperature to the atmosphere. There was a small workstand in the midst of the apartment, on which stood a lighted candle. A servant maid was sleeping with her head upon the table, and one hand resting upon a cradle at her side. In that cradle, above the verge of a silken coverlet, appeared the face of a cherub boy, fast asleep, with a rose on his cheek, and ringlets of auburn hair, tangled about his forehead, white as alabaster.

This room the young mother entered, and treading on tiptoe, she approached the cradle and bent over it, until her lips touched the forehead of the sleeping boy. And when she rose again there was a tear upon his cheek,—it had fallen from the blue eye of the mother.

Retiring noiselessly, she sought her own chamber, where a taper was dimly burning before a mirror. By that faint light you might trace the luxurious appointment of the place,—a white bed, half shadowed in an alcove—a vase of alabaster filled with fragrant flowers—and curtains falling like snow-flakes along the lofty windows. The idea of wifely purity was associated with every object in that chamber.

"I shall not want you to-night, Eliza; I will undress myself," exclaimed Joanna to a female servant, who stood waiting near the mirror. "You may retire."

The servant retired, and the young wife was alone. She extinguished the taper, and all was still throughout the mansion. But she did not retire to her bed. Advancing in the darkness, she opened a door behind the bed, and entered the bath-room, where she lighted a lamp by the aid of a perfumed match which she found, despite the gloom. The bath-room was oval in shape, with an arched ceiling. The walls, the ceiling and the floor were of white marble. In the center was the bath, resembling an immense shell, sunk into the marble floor. This place, without ornament or decoration of any kind, save the pure white of the walls and floor, was pervaded by luxurious warmth. The water which filled the shell or hollow in the center of the floor, emitted a faint but pungent perfume.

She disrobed herself and descended into the bath, suffering her golden hair to float freely about her shoulders.

After the lapse of a quarter of an hour, this beautiful woman took the light and passed into the bed chamber. She cast a glance toward her bed, which had been consecrated by her marriage, and by the birth of her first and only child. Then advancing toward a wardrobe of rosewood, which stood in a recess opposite the bed, she took from thence a dress, with which she proceeded to encase her form. A white robe, loose and flowing, with a hood resembling the cowl of a nun. This robe was of the softest satin. She enveloped her form in its folds, threw the hood over her head, and looking in the mirror, surveyed her beautiful face, which, glowing with warmth, was framed in her golden hair, and in the folds of the satin cowl.

She drew slippers of delicate satin, white as her robe, upon her naked feet.

Then, taking from the wardrobe a heavy cloak, lined throughout with fur, as soft as the satin which clad her shape, she wound it about her from head to foot, and stood completely buried in its voluminous folds.

Once more she listened: all was still throughout that mansion, the home of aristocratic wealth. Thus clad in the silken robe and cowl, covered in its turn by the shapeless black cloak, this young wife, whose limbs were glowing with the warmth of the bath, whose person was invested with a delicate perfume, turned once more and gazed upon her marriage bed, and a deep sigh swelled her bosom. She next extinguished the light, and passing from the chamber, descended the marble staircase. All was dark. She entered the suite of apartments on the first floor, which, adorned with pillars, communicated with each other by folding-doors. The chandelier had been extinguished, and the scene was wrapt in impenetrable darkness.

Standing in the darkness,—her only apparel the silken robe, and the thick, warm cloak which covered it,—the young wife trembled like a leaf.

She attempted to utter a word, but her voice failed her.

"Joanna!" breathed a voice, speaking near her.

"Beverly!" answered the young wife, breathing the name in a whisper.

A faint sound like a step, whose echo is muffled by thick carpets, and the hand of a man, clasps the hand of Joanna.

"How long have you been here?" she whispered.

"I just entered," was the answer.

"How?"

"By the front door, and the key which you gave me."

"O, I tremble so,—I am afraid—"

An arm encircled the cloak which covered her, and girded it tightly about her form.

"Has he gone, Joanna?"

"Yes, Beverly,—half an hour ago."

"Come, then, let us go. The carriage is waiting at the next corner; and the street-lamp near the front door is extinguished. All is dark without; no one can see us."

"Are you sure, Beverly—I tremble so."

"Come, Joanna," and through the thick darkness he led her toward the hall, supporting her form upon his arm.

"O, whither are you leading me," she whispered in a broken voice.

"Can you ask? Don't you remember my note of to-day? To the Temple, Joanna."

Their steps echo faintly from the entry.

Then the faint sound produced by the careful closing of the street door is heard.

A pause of one or two minutes.

Hark! The rolling of carriage wheels.

All is still as death throughout the mansion and the street on which it fronts.

Hours pass away, and once more the street door is unclosed, and carefully closed again. A step echoes faintly through the hall,—very faintly,—and yet it can be heard distinctly, so profound is the stillness which reigns throughout the mansion. It ascends the marble staircase, and is presently heard crossing the threshold of the bed-chamber. A pause ensues, and the taper in front of the mirror is lighted again, and a faint ray steals through the chamber.

Eugene Livingstone stands in front of the mirror. He flings his cloak on a chair, dashes his cap from his brow, and wipes the sweat from his forehead,—although he has just left the air of a winter night, his forehead is bathed in moisture. His slender frame shakes as with an ague-chill. His eyes are unnaturally dilated; the white of the eyeball may be plainly traced around the pupil of each eye. His lips are pressed together, and yet they quiver, as if with deathly cold.

He does not utter a single ejaculation.

A letter is in his right hand, neatly folded and scented with pachouli. It bears the name "Joanna," as a superscription. He opens it and reads its contents, traced in a delicate hand—

Joanna—

To-night,—at Twelve.—The Temple.

Beverly.

Having read the brief letter, the husband draws another from a side-pocket: "There may be a mistake about the handwriting," he murmurs, "let us compare them."

The second letter is addressed to "Eugene Livingstone, Esq.," and its contents, which the husband traces by the light of the taper, are as follows:

New York, Dec. 23, 1844.

Dear Eugene:—Sorry to hear that you have such sad news from Boston. Must you go to-night? Send me word and I'll try to go with you. Thine, ever,

Beverly Barron.

Long and intently, the husband compared these two letters. His countenance underwent many changes. But there could be no doubt of it—both letters were written by the same hand.

"He wrote to me early this morning, and to my wife about an hour afterward,—as soon as he received my answer. I found the letter to her upon the floor of this chamber, only two hours ago."

He replaced both letters in his vest pocket.

Then taking the taper, he bent his steps toward the room at the head of the marble staircase. The young nurse was fast asleep on the couch, near the cradle.

Eugene bent over the cradle. Resting its rosy cheek on its bent arm, the child was sleeping there, its auburn hair still tangled about its forehead. He could not help pressing his lips to that forehead, and a tear—the only tear that he shed—fell from his hot eye-ball, and sparkled like a pearl upon the baby's cheek.

Then Eugene returned to the bedchamber, and sat down beside the bed, still holding the taper in his grasp. The light fell softly over the unruffled coverlet.

"I remember the night when she first crossed yonder threshold, and slept in this bed."

There were traces of womanish weakness upon his bronzed face, but he banished them in a moment, and the expression of his eye and lip became fixed and resolute.

He sat for five minutes with his elbow on his knee, and his forehead in his hand.

Then rising, he opened his carpet-bag, and took from thence a black robe, with wide sleeves, and a cowl. It took but a moment to assume his robe, and draw the cowl over his dark locks. He caught a glance at his face, thus framed in the velvet cowl, and started as he beheld the contrast between its ashy hues and the dark folds which concealed it.

"'The Temple!'" he muttered, and pressed his hand against his forehead,—"I believe I remember the pass word."

He took a pair of pistols, and a long slender dagger, sheathed in silver, from the carpet-bag, and regarded them for a moment.

"No, no," he exclaimed, "these will not avail for a night like this."

Gathering his cloak about him, he extinguished the taper, and crossed the threshold of his bed-chamber. His steps were heard on the stairs, and soon the faint jar of the shut door was heard.

And as he left the house, the child in the cradle awoke from its slumber and stretched forth its little head, and in its baby voice called the name of the young mother.

Our story now turns to Randolph and Esther.

---

[CHAPTER VII.]

THE WHITE SLAVE AND HIS SISTER.

As the night set in—the night of December 23d, 1844—two persons were seated in the recess of a lofty window, which commanded a view of Broadway. It was the window of a drawing-room, on the second floor of a four storied edifice, built of brick, with doors and window-frames of marble.—By the dim light which prevailed, it might be seen that the drawing-room was spacious and elegantly furnished. Mirrors, pictures and statues broke softly through the twilight.

Seated amid the silken curtains of the window, these persons sat in silence—the man with his arms folded, and his head sunk upon his breast, the woman with her hands clasped over her bosom, and her eyes fixed upon the face of her companion. The woman was very beautiful; one of those who are called 'queenly' by persons who have never seen a live queen, and who are ignorant of the philosophical truth, that one beautiful woman is worth all the queens in the universe. The man was dark-haired, and of a complexion singularly pale and colorless; there was thought upon his forehead, and something of an unpleasant memory, written in his knit brows and compressed lips.

The silence which had prevailed for half an hour, was broken by a whisper from the lips of the woman—

"Of what are you thinking, Randolph?"

"Of the strange man whom we met at the house half way between New York and Philadelphia. His name and his personality are wrapt in impenetrable mystery."

"Had it not been for him—"

"Ay, had it not been for him, we should have been lost. You would have become the prey of the—the master, Esther, who owns you, and I,—I—well, no matter, I would have been dead."

"After the scene in the house, Randolph, he came on with us, and by his directions we took rooms at the City Hotel. From the moment of our arrival, only a few hours ago, we did not see him, until—"

"Until an hour ago. Then he came into our room at the hotel. 'Here is a key,' said he, 'and your home is No. ——, Broadway. Go there at once, and await patiently the coming of the twenty-fifth of December.—You will find servants to wait upon you, you will find money to supply your wants,—it is in the drawer of the desk which you will discover in your bedroom—and most of all, you will there be safe from the attempts of your persecutor.' These were his words. We came at once, and find ourselves—the servants excepted—the sole tenants of this splendid mansion."

"But don't you remember his last words, as we left the hotel? 'At the hour of six,' said he, this singular unknown, 'you will be waited on by a much treasured friend.'—Who can it be that is to come and see us at that hour?"

"Friend," Randolph echoed bitterly, "what 'friend' have we, save this personage, whose very name is unknown to us? Our father is dead. When I say that I say at once that we are utterly alone in the world."

"And yet there is a career before you, Randolph," faltered Esther.

"A splendid career, ha, ha, Esther, yes a splendid career for the White Slave! You forget, good girl, that we have negro blood in our veins. How much wealth do you think it would require to blot out the memory of the past? Suppose we are successful on the twenty-fifth of December,—suppose the mysterious trustee of the Van Huyden estate recognizes us as the children of one of the Seven,—suppose that we receive a share of this immense wealth—well, Esther, what will it avail us? Wherever we turn, the whisper will ring in our ears, 'They have negro blood in their veins. Their mother was descended from the black race. True, they look whiter than the palest of the Caucasian race, but—but'—(do you hear it, Esther?) 'but they have negro blood in their veins.'"

He started from his chair, and his sister saw, even by the dim light which came through the half-drawn window-curtains, that his chest heaved, and his face was distorted by a painful emotion.

She also arose.

"Randolph," she whispered, and laid her hand gently on his arm, "Randolph, my brother, I say it again, come wealth or poverty, you have a career before you. In Europe we may find a home,—"

"Europe!" he echoed, "And must we go to Europe, in order to be permitted to live? No, Esther, no! I am an American, yes,"—and his voice, low and deep, echoed proudly through the stillness of the dimly-lighted room,—"yes, I am a Carolinian, ay, a South Carolinian; South Carolina is my home; while I live, I will not cease to assert my right to a place, ay, and no dishonorable place—on my native soil."

He passed his sister's arm through his own, and led her gently over the carpet, which, soft as down, returned no echo to their tread. The lofty ceiling stretched above them, in the vague twilight; and on either hand were the walls adorned with paintings and statues. The mirror, which but dimly reflected their forms, flashed gently through the gloom.

"And Esther, there is one reason why I will not become an exile, which I have never spoken to mortal ears—not even to yours, my sister. It was communicated to me by my father, before I left for Europe: he placed proofs in my possession which do not admit of denial. Sister, my epistle!—Here, in the dimly-lighted room, to which we have been guided by an unknown friend,—here, surrounded by mystery, and with the marks of wealth all about us,—here, as the crisis of our fate draws near, let me breathe the secret in your ears."

He paused in the center of the room. His sister felt his arm tremble as he drew her to his side. His voice betrayed, in its earnest yet faltering tones, an unfathomable emotion. And Esther clinging to his side, and looking up into his face—which she could scarcely discern through the gloom—felt her bosom swell, and her breath come painfully in gasps, as she was made, involuntarily, a sharer of her brother's agitation.

"Randolph," she said, "what can be the secret, which you have kept ever from me, your sister?"

"I will not leave this country, in the first place, because I am of its soil," he answered, "and because, first and last, it is no common right, which binds me to my native land. Come, Esther, to the window, where the light will help my words; you shall know all—"

He led her to the window, and drew from beneath his vest, a miniature, which he held toward the fading light.

"Do you trace the features?" he whispered.

"I do. It is beautifully painted, and the likeness resembles a thousand others, that I have seen of the same man. But what has this portrait in miniature to do with us?"

"What has it to do with us? Regard it again, and closely, my sister. Do you not trace a resemblance?"

"Resemblance to whom?" Esther echoed. "Why it is the portrait of —— ——."

She repeated a name familiar to the civilized world.

"It is his portrait. No one can deny it. But Esther, again I ask you,—" his voice sunk low and lower.—"Do you not trace a resemblance?"

"Resemblance to whom?" she answered, her tone indicating bewildered amazement.

"To the picture of our Mother, which you have seen at Hill Royal," was Randolph's answer.

Utterly bewildered, Esther once more examined the miniature; and an idea, so strange, so wild that she deemed it but the idle fancy of a dream, began to take shape in her brain.

"I am in the dark, I know not what you mean. True, true, the face portrayed in miniature does, somewhat, resemble our mother's portrait, but—"

"That miniature, Esther, is the portrait of the Head of our Family. That man,—" again he pronounced the name,—"was the father of our mother. We are his grandchildren, my sister."

Esther suffered the miniature to fall from her hand. She sank back into a chair.

For a few moments, there was a death-like pause, unbroken by a single word.

"The grandchildren of —— ——!" echoed Esther, at length. "You cannot mean it, Randolph?"

Randolph bent his head until his lips well-nigh touched his sister's ear. At the same moment he clasped her hard with a painful pressure. The words which he then uttered were uttered in a whisper, but every word penetrated the soul of the listener.

"Esther, we are the grandchildren of that man whose name is on the lips of the civilized world. Our mother was his child. His blood flows in our veins. We are of his race; his features may be traced in your countenance and in mine. Now let them cut and hack and maim us: let them lash us at the whipping-post, or sell us in the slave mart. At every blow of the lash, we can exclaim, 'Lash on! lash on! But remember, you are inflicting this torture upon no common slaves; for your whip at every blow is stained with the blood of —— ——. These slaves whom you lash are his grandchildren!'"

He paused, overcome by the violence of his emotion. In a moment he resumed:

"And it is because I am his grandson, that I will not exile myself from this land, which was his birthplace as it is mine. Yes, I cannot exile myself, for the reason that my grandfather left to my hands the fulfillment of an awful trust—of a work which, well fulfilled, will secure the happiness of all the races who people the American continent. I may become a suicide, but an exile,—never!"

"But our mother, was the daughter of Colonel Rawden. So the rumor ran, and so you stated before the Court of Ten Millions."

"In that statement I simply followed the popular rumor, for the time for the entire truth had not yet come. But our mother was not the child of Colonel Rawden. Her mother was indeed Rawden's slave, but not one drop of Rawden's blood flows in our veins. Colonel Rawden was aware of the truth; well he knew that Herodia, whom he sold to our father, was the child of —— ——."

There was a pause: and it was not broken until Esther spoke:

"You would not like to return to Europe, then?"

"For one reason, and one only, I would like to visit Europe."

"And that reason?"

"Know, Esther, that at Florence, in the course of a hurried tour through Italy, I met a gentleman named Bernard Lynn. His native country I never ascertained; he was near fifty years of age; gentlemanly in his exterior, of reputed wealth, and accompanied by an only daughter, Eleanor Lynn. At Florence,—it matters not how,—I saved his daughter's life—ay, more than life, her honor. All his existence was wrapt up in her; you may, therefore, imagine the extent of his gratitude to the young American who saved the life of this idolized child."

"Was the girl grateful, as well as the father?"

"I remained but a week in their company, and then separated, to see them no more forever. That week was sufficient to assure me that I loved her better than my life,—that my passion was returned; and could I but forget the negro blood which mingles in my veins, I might boldly claim her as my own. Her father had but one prominent hatred: mild and gentlemanly on all other subjects, he was ferocious at the sight or mention of a negro. He regarded the African race as a libel upon mankind; a link between the monkey and the man; a caricature of the human race; the work of Nature, in one of her unlucky moods. Conscious that there was negro blood in my veins, I left him abruptly. With this consciousness I could not press my suit for the hand of his daughter."

"But you would like to see her again?"

"Could I meet her as an equal, yes! But never can I look upon her face again. Don't you see, Esther, how at every turn of life, I am met by the fatal whisper, 'There is negro blood in your veins!'"

"She was beautiful?"

"One of the fairest types of the Caucasian race, that ever eye beheld. Tall in stature, her form cast in a mould of enticing loveliness, her complexion like snow, yet blushing with roses on the lip and cheek; her hair, brown in the sunlight, and dark in the shade; her eyes of a shade between brown and black, and always full of the light of all-abounding youth and hope.—Yes, she was beautiful, transcendently beautiful! She had the intellect of an affectionate but proud and ambitious woman."

"You saved her life?"

"I saved her honor."

"Her honor?"

"So beautiful, so young, so gifted, she attracted the attention of an Italian nobleman, who sued in vain for her hand. Foiled in his efforts to obtain her in honorable marriage, he determined to possess her at all hazards. One night, as herself and her father were returning to Florence, after a visit to Valambrosa, the carriage was attacked by a band of armed ruffians. The father was stretched insensible, by a blow upon the temple, from the hilt of a sword. When he recovered his senses, he was alone, and faint with the loss of blood. His daughter had disappeared. He made out, at length, to get back to Florence, and instituted a search for his child. His efforts were fruitless. Suspicion rested upon the rejected lover, but he appeared before the father, and to the father's satisfaction established his innocence. At this period, when the father had relinquished all hope, I assumed the disguise of a traveling student, armed myself and departed from Florence. I bent my steps to the Apennines. A servant of the nobleman, impelled at once by a bribe, and by revenge for ill-treatment, had imparted certain intelligence to me; upon this information I shaped my course. In an obscure nook of the Apennines, separated from the main road by a wilderness frequented by banditti, I found the daughter of Bernard Lynn. She was a prisoner in a miserable inn, which was kept by a poor knave, in the pay of the robbers. I entered the room in which she was imprisoned, in time to rescue her from the nobleman, who had reached the inn before me, and who was about to carry his threats into force. Had I been a moment later, her honor would have been sacrificed. A combat ensued: Eleanor saw me peril my life for her; and saw the villain laid insensible at her feet. She fainted in my arms. It matters not to tell how I bore her back to her father, who confessed that I had done a deed, which could never be suitably rewarded, although he might sacrifice his fortune and his life, in the effort to display his gratitude."

"By what name did they know you?"

"As Randolph Royalton, the son of a gentleman of South Carolina. From this I am afraid the father built false impressions of my social position and my wealth. Afraid to tell Eleanor the truth, I left them without one word of farewell."

At this moment, a door was opened, and the light of a wax candle, held in the hand of a servant who occupied the doorway, flashed over the details of the drawing-room, lighting up the scene with a sudden splendor. The servant was a man of middle age and of a calm, sober look. He was clad in a suit of gray, faced with black velvet.

The light revealed the brother and sister as they stood in the center of the scene; Esther, clad in the green habit which fitted closely to her beautiful shape, and Randolph attired in a black coat, vest and cravat, which presented a strong contrast to his pallid visage.

The servant bowed formally upon the threshold, and advanced, holding a salver of silver in one hand and the candle in the other. As soon as he had traversed the space between Randolph and the door, he bowed again, and extended the salver, upon which appeared a card, inscribed with a name—

"Master, a gentleman desires to see you. He is in his carriage at the door. He gave me this card for you."

Randolph exchanged glances with Esther, as much as to say "our expected visitor," and then took the card, and read these words:

"An old friend desires to see Randolph Royalton and his sister."

Randolph started as he beheld the handwriting, and the blood rushed to his cheek:

"Show the gentleman up stairs," he said quietly.

The servant disappeared, taking with him the light, and the room was wrapt in twilight once more.

"Have you any idea who is this visitor?" whispered Esther.

"Hush! Do not speak! Surrounded by mystery as we are, this new wonder throws all others completely into shade. I can scarcely believe it; and yet, it was his handwriting! I cannot be mistaken."

In vain did Esther ask, "Whose handwriting?" Trembling with anxiety and delight, Randolph listened intently for the sound of footsteps on the stairs.

Presently there came a sound, as of footsteps ascending a stairway, covered with thick carpet; and then the door opened and the servant stood on the threshold, light in hand:

"This way, sir, this way," he exclaimed, and entered: while Randolph and Esther's gaze was centered on the doorway; the servant in gray rapidly lighted the wax candles, which stood on the marble mantle, and the spacious room was flooded with radiance.

"Ah, ha, my dear boy, have I caught you at last?" cried a harsh but a cheerful voice, and an elderly man, wrapped in a cloak, crossed the threshold, and approached Randolph with rapid steps.

"Mr. Lynn!" ejaculated Randolph, utterly astonished.

"Yes, your old friend, whom you so abruptly left at Florence, without so much as a word of good-bye! How are you, my dear fellow? Give me a shake of your hand. Miss Royalton, I presume?"

By no means recovered from his bewilderment, Randolph managed to present Mr. Bernard Lynn to his sister, whom he called "Miss Esther Royalton."

The visitor gave his hat and cloak to the servant, and flung himself into an arm-chair. He was a gentleman of some fifty years, dark complexion, and with masses of snow-white hair. His somewhat portly form was attired in a blue frock coat, beneath which the collar of a buff waistcoat and a black stock were discernible.

"Come, come, Randolph, my boy, let me chat with Miss Esther, while you attend to your servant, who, if I may judge by his telegraphic signs, has something to say to you in regard to your household affairs."

Randolph turned and was confronted by the servant, Mr. Hicks, who bowed low, and said in a tone which was audible through the room—

"At what hour will you have dinner served?" and then added in a whisper, "I wish to speak with you alone."

"At seven, as I directed you, when I first arrived," replied Randolph, and followed the servant from the drawing-room.

Mr. Hicks led the way, down the broad staircase, to the spacious hall on the lower floor, which was now illuminated by a large globe lamp.

"Pardon me, Mr. Royalton," said Mr. Hicks, "for troubling you about the dinner hour. That, if you will excuse me for saying so, was only a pretext. Your Agent, who arrived before you, to-day, and engaged myself and the other domestics, gave me especial directions, to prepare dinner to-night, at seven precisely. It was not about the hour of dinner, therefore, that I wished to see you, for we all know our duty, and you may rely upon it, that all the appointments of this mansion, are in good hands."

"Right, Mr. Hicks, right, may I ask whether my Agent, who was here to-day, wore an odd dress which he sometimes wears, a,—a—"

"A blue surtout, with a great many capes? Yes, sir. The fashion in the south, I presume."

"It was then my unknown friend of the half-way-house," thought Randolph: presently, he said, "Why did you call me from the drawing-room?"

Mr. Hicks bowed his formal bow, and pointed to a door of dark mahogany:

"If you will have the kindness to enter that room, you will know why I called you."

And Mr. Hicks bowed again, and retreated slowly from the scene.

Placing his hand upon the door, Randolph felt his heart beat tumultuously against his breast.

"Yesterday, a hunted slave," the thought rushed over him, "and to-day, the master of a mansion, and with a train of servants to obey my nod! So, my unknown friend in the surtout, with blue capes, was here to-day, acting the part of my 'Agent.' What new wonder awaits me, beyond this door?"

He opened the door, and he trembled, although he was anything but a coward. The room into which he entered, was about half as large as the drawing-room above. A lamp standing in the center of the carpet, shed a soft luxurious luster over the walls, which, white as snow, were adorned with one mirror, and three or four pictures, set in frames of black and gold. At a glance, in one of these frames, Randolph recognized the portrait of his father. The windows, opening on the street, were vailed with damask curtains. A piano stood in one corner, a sofa opposite, and elegant chairs of dark wood, were disposed around the room. It was at once a neat, singular, and somewhat luxurious apartment.

And on the sofa, was seated the figure of a woman, closely vailed. Her dark attire was in strong contrast with the scarlet cushions on which she rested, and the snow-white wall behind her.

Randolph stopped suddenly; he was stricken dumb, by a sensation of utter bewilderment. The unknown did not remove the vail from her face; she did not even move.

"You wish to see me, Madam?" he said, at length.

She drew the vail aside—he beheld her face,—and the next moment she had bounded from the sofa and was resting in his arms.

"Eleanor!" he cried, as the vail removed, he beheld her face.

"Randolph!" she exclaimed, as he pressed her to his breast.

---

[CHAPTER VIII.]

ELEANOR LYNN.

In a few moments they were seated side by side on the sofa, and while she spoke, in a low musical voice, Randolph devoured her with his eyes.

"We arrived from Europe, only the day before yesterday. Father determined to visit New York, on our way to Havana, where we intend to spend the winter. And to-day, by a strange chance at our hotel, he encountered your Agent—the superintendent of your southern plantation,—an eccentric person, who wears an old-fashioned surtout, with I know not how many capes. From this gentleman, father learned that you had just arrived from the south, and at once determined to give you a surprise. We came together, but to tell you the truth, I wanted to see you alone, and, therefore, lingered behind, while father went up stairs to prepare you for my presence."

She smiled, and Randolph, like a man in a delicious dream, feared to move or speak, lest the vision which he beheld might vanish into the air.

Words are but poor things, with which to paint a beautiful woman.

There was youth and health in every line of her face: her form, incased in a dark dress, which enveloped her bust and fitted around her neck, was moulded in the warm loveliness of womanhood, at once mature and virgin. Her bonnet thrown aside, her face was disclosed in full light. A brow, denoting by its outline, a bold, yet refined intellect; an eye, large, lustrous, and looking black by night; a lip that had as much of pride as of love in its expression—such were the prominent characteristics of her face.

"Why did you leave us so abruptly at Florence?" she exclaimed,—"Ah, I know the secret—"

"You know the secret?" echoed Randolph, his heart mounting to his throat.

"One of your friends in Florence—a young artist named Waters, betrayed you," she said, and laid her gloved hand on his arm, a sunny smile playing over her noble countenance. "At least after your departure he told your secrets to father."

Randolph started from the sofa, as though a chasm had opened at his feet.

"He betrayed me—he! And yet you do not scorn me?"

"Scorn you? Grave matter to create scorn! You have a quarrel with your father, and leave home on a run-a-way tour for Europe. There, in Europe,—we will say at Florence—you make friends, and run away from them, because you are afraid they will think less of you, when they are aware that your father may disinherit you. Fie! Randolph, 'twas a sorry thing, for you to think so meanly of your friends!"

These words filled Randolph with overwhelming agony.

When she first spoke, he was assured that the secret of his life, was known to her. He was aghast at the thought, but at the same time, overjoyed to know, that the taint of his blood, was not regarded by Eleanor as a crime.

But her concluding words revealed the truth. She was not aware of the fact. She was utterly mistaken, as to his motive, for his abrupt departure from Florence. Instead of the real cause, she assigned one which was comparatively frivolous.

"Shall I tell her all?" the thought crossed his mind, as he gazed upon her, and he shuddered at the idea.

"And so you thought that our opinion of you, was measured by your wealth, or by your want of wealth? For shame Randolph! You are now the sole heir of your father, but were it otherwise, Randolph, our friendship for you would remain unchanged."

"The sole heir of my father's estate!" Randolph muttered to himself,—"I dare not, dare not, tell her the real truth."

But the fascination of that woman's loveliness was upon him. The sound of her voice vibrated through every fiber of his being. When he gazed into her eyes, he forgot the darkness of his destiny, the taint of his blood, the gloom of his heart, and the hopes and fears of his future. He lived in the present moment, in the smile, the voice, the glance of the woman who sat by him,—her presence was world, home, heaven to him—all else was blank nothingness.

"Don't you think that I'm a very strange woman?" she said with a smile, and a look of undefinable fascination. "Remember, from my childhood, Randolph, I have been deprived of the care and counsel of a mother. Without country and without home, I have been hurried with my father from place to place, and seen much of the world, and may be learned to battle with it. I am not much of a 'woman of society,' Randolph. The artificial life led by woman in that conventional world, called the 'fashionable,' never had much charm for me. My books, my pencil, the society of a friend, the excitement of a journey, the freedom to-speak my thoughts without fear of the world's frown,—these, Randolph, suit me much better than the life of woman, as she appears in the fashionable world. And whenever I transgress the 'decorums' and 'proprieties,' you will be pleased to remember that I am but a sort of a wild woman—a very barbarian in the midst of a civilized world."

Randolph did not say that she was an angel, but he thought that she was very beautiful for a wild woman.

She rose.

"Come, let us join father," she said,—"and I am dying to see this sister of yours, friend Randolph."

Taking her bonnet in one hand, she left her cloak on the sofa, and led the way to the door. At a glance Randolph surveyed her tall and magnificent figure. As leaving him, silent and bewildered, on the sofa, she turned her face over her shoulder, and looked back upon him, Randolph muttered to himself the thought of his soul, in one word, "negro!" So much beauty, purity and truth before him, embodied in a woman's form, and between that woman and himself an eternal barrier! The blood of an accursed race in his veins, the mark of bondage stamped upon the inmost fiber of his existence—it was a bitter thought. "You are absent, Randolph," she said, and came back to him, "shall I guess your thoughts?" She laid her hand upon his shoulder, and bent down until he felt her breath upon his forehead.

"You are thinking of the night in the Apennines?" she whispered. Randolph uttered an incoherent cry of rapture, and reached forth his arms, and drew her to his breast.—Their lips met—"You have not forgotten it?" he whispered.

She drew back her head as she was girdled by his arms, in order to gaze more freely upon his face. Blushing from the throat to the forehead, not with shame, but with a passion as warm and as pure as ever lighted a woman's bosom, she answered in a whisper:

"Randolph, I love you!"

"Love me! Ah, my God, could I but hope," he gasped.

She laid her hand upon his mouth.

"Hush, I am my father's child. We happen to think alike on subjects of importance. If you have not changed since the night in the Apennines, why—why, then Randolph, you will find that I am the same. As for my father, he always loved you."

When a woman like Eleanor Lynn gives herself away, thus freely and without reserve, you may be sure that the passion which she cherishes is not of an hour, a day, or a year, but of a lifetime.

Randolph could not reply in coherent words. There was a wild ejaculation, a frenzied embrace, a kiss which joined together these souls, burning with the fire of a first and stainless love, but there was no reply in words.

And all the while, behind the form of Eleanor, Randolph saw a phantom shape, which stood between him and his dearest hope. A hideous phantom, which said, "Thou art young, and thy face is pale as the palest of the race who are born to rule, but the blood of the negro is in thy veins."

At length Randolph rose, and taking her by the hand, led her from the room.

"You will see my sister, and love her," said Randolph, as he crossed the threshold. A hand was laid gently on his arm, and turning he beheld Mr. Hicks, who slipped a letter in his hand, whispering,—

"Pardon me, sir. This was left half an hour ago."

Randolph had no time to read a letter at that moment, so placing it in his coat pocket, he led Eleanor up-stairs. They entered the drawing-room, and were received by her father with a laugh, and the exclamation,—

"So, my boy, you have found this wild girl of mine a second time! Confess that we have given you one of the oddest surprises you ever encountered!"

Presently Esther and Eleanor stood face to face, and took each other by the hand.—Both noble-looking women, of contrasted types of loveliness, they stood before the father and Randolph, who gazed upon them with a look of silent admiration.

"So, you are Esther!" whispered the daughter of Bernard Lynn.

"And you are Eleanor!" returned the sister of Randolph.

"We shall love each other very much," said Eleanor,—"Come, let us talk a little."

They went hand in hand to a recess near the window, and sat down together, leaving Randolph and Mr. Lynn alone, near the center of the drawing-room.

"Do you know, my boy, that I have a notion to make your house our home, while we remain in New York? I hate the noise of a hotel, and so using a traveler's privilege, of bluntness, I'll invite myself and Eleanor to be your guests. I have letters to the 'first people' of the city, but these 'first people,' as they are called, are pretty much the same everywhere—cut out of the same piece of cloth, all over the world—they tire one dreadfully. If you have no objection, my friend, we'll stay with you for a few days at least."

"Of course," Randolph replied to Mr. Lynn in the warmest and most courteous manner, concluding with the words, "Esther and myself will be too happy to have you for our guests. Make our house your home while you remain in New York, and—" he was about to add "forever!"

Mr. Lynn took him warmly by the hand.

"And in a few days, he must learn that I am not the legitimate son of my father, but his slave," the thought crossed him as he shook the hand of Eleanor's father. "This Aladdin's palace will crumble into ashes, and this gentleman who now respects me, will turn away in derision from Randolph, the slave."

It was a horrible thought.

At this moment Mr. Hicks entered, and announced that dinner was ready. They left the room, Randolph with Eleanor on his arm, and Mr. Lynn with Esther, and bent their steps toward the dining-room. On the threshold Mr. Hicks slipped a letter in the hand of Esther, "It was left for you, Miss, half an hour ago," he said, and made one of his mechanical bows. Esther took the letter and placed it in her bosom, and Mr. Hicks threw open the door of the dining-room.

Randolph could scarce repress an ejaculation of wonder, as (for the first time) he beheld this apartment.

It was a spacious room, oval in shape, and with a lofty ceiling, which was slightly arched. The walls were covered with pale lilac hangings, and fine statues of white marble stood at equal distances around the place. In the center stood the table, loaded with viands, and adorned with an alabaster vase, filled with freshly-gathered flowers.—Wax candles shed a mild light over the scene, and the air was imbued at once with a pleasant warmth and with the breath of flowers. The service of plate which loaded the table was of massive gold. Everything breathed luxury and wealth.

"You planters know how to live!" whispered Bernard Lynn: "By George, friend Randolph, you are something of a republican, but it is after the Roman school!"

In accordance with Randolph's request, Mr. Lynn took the head of the table, with Esther and Eleanor on either hand. Randolph took his seat opposite the father of Eleanor, and gazed around with a look of vague astonishment. A servant clad in gray livery, fringed with black velvet, stood behind each chair, and Mr. Hicks, the imperturbable, retired somewhat in the background, presided in silence over the progress of the banquet.

"We are not exactly dressed for dinner," laughed Mr. Lynn,—"but you will excuse our breach of that most solemn code, profounder than Blackstone or Vattel, and called Etiquette."

Randolph gazed first at his dark hair, which betrayed some of the traces of hazel, and at the costume of Esther, which although it displayed her form to the best advantage, was not precisely suited for the dinner-table.

"Ah, we southrons care little for etiquette," he replied,—"only to-day arrived from the south, Esther and I have had little time to attend to the niceties of costume. By-the-bye, friend Lynn, yourself and daughter are in the same predicament." And then he muttered to himself, "Still the dress is better than the costume of a negro slave."

The dinner passed pleasantly, with but little conversation, and that of a light and chatty character. The servants, stationed behind each chair, obeyed the wishes of the guests before they were framed in words; and Mr. Hicks in the background, managed their movements by signs, somewhat after the fashion of an orchestra leader. It was near eight o'clock when Esther and Eleanor retired, leaving Randolph and Mr. Lynn alone at the table.

"Dismiss these folks," said Bernard Lynn, pointing toward Mr. Hicks and the other servants, "and let us have a chat together." At a sign from Randolph, Mr. Hicks and the servants left the room.

"Draw your chair near me,—there,—let us look into each other's faces. By George! friend Randolph, your wine cellar must be worthy of a prince or a bishop! I have just sipped your Tokay, and tasted your Champagne,—both are superb. But as I am a traveler, I drink brandy. So pass the bottle."

As Mr. Lynn, seated at his ease, filled a capacious goblet with brandy from a bottle labeled "1796," Randolph surveyed attentively his face and form.

---

[CHAPTER IX.]

BERNARD LYNN.

Bernard Lynn was a tall and muscular man, somewhat inclined to corpulence. His dark complexion was contrasted with the masses of snow-white hair, which surrounded his forehead, and the eyebrows, also white, which gave additional luster to his dark eyes. His features were regular, and there were deep furrows upon his forehead and around his mouth. Despite the good-humored smile which played about his lips, and the cheerful light which flowed from his eyes, there was at times, a haggard look upon his face. One moment all cheerfulness and animation, the next instant his face would wear a faded look; the corners of his mouth would fall; and his eye become vacant and lusterless.

He emptied the goblet of brandy without once taking it from his lips, and the effect was directly seen in his glowing countenance and sparkling eyes.

"Ah! that is good brandy," he cried, smacking his lips, and sinking back in his chair. "You think I am a deep drinker?" he remarked, after a moment's pause.—"Do not wonder at it. There are times in a man's life when he is forced to choose between the brandy bottle and the knife of the suicide."

At the word, his head sunk and his countenance became clouded and sullen.

Before Randolph could reply, he raised his head and exclaimed gayly:

"Do you know, my boy, that I have been a great traveler? Three times I have encircled the globe. I have seen most of what is to be seen under the canopy of heaven. I have been near freezing to death in Greenland, and have been burned almost to a cinder by the broiling sun of India. To-day, in the saloons of Paris; a month after in the midst of an Arabian desert; and the third month, a wanderer among the ruins of ancient Mexico and Yucatan. I have tried all climates, lived with all sorts of people, and seen sights that would make the Arabian Nights seem but poor and tame by contrast. And now, my boy, I'm tired."

And the wan, haggard look came over his face, as he uttered the word "tired."

"Your daughter has not accompanied you in these pilgrimages?"

"No. From childhood she was left under careful guardianship, in the bosom of an English family, who lived in Florence. Poor child! I have often wondered what she has thought of me! To-day I have been with her in Florence, and within two months she has received a letter from me, from the opposite side of the globe. But as I said before, I am tired. Were it not for one thing I would like to settle down in your country. A fine country,—a glorious country,—only one fault, and that very likely will eat you all up."

"Before I ask the nature of the fault, pardon me for an impertinent question. Of what country are you? You speak of the English as a foreign people; of the Americans in the same manner; yet you speak the language without the slightest accent."

The countenance of Mr. Lynn became clouded and sullen.

"I am of no country," he said harshly. "I ceased to have a country, about the time Eleanor was born. But another time," his tone became milder, "I may tell you all about it."

"And the fault of our country?" said Randolph, anxious to divert the thoughts of his friend from some painful memory, which evidently absorbed his mind, "what is it?"

Mr. Lynn once more filled and slowly drained his goblet.

"You are the last person to whom I may speak of this fault,—"

"How so?"

"You are a planter. You have been reared under peculiar influences. Your mind from childhood has been imperceptibly moulded into a certain form, and that form it is impossible to change. You cannot see, as I can; for I am a spectator, and you are in the center of the conflagration, which I observe from a distance. No, no, Randolph, I can't speak of it to you. But you planters will be wakened some day—you will. God help you in your awakening—hem!"

Randolph's face became pale as death.

"You speak, my friend, of the question of negro slavery. You surely don't consider it an evil. You—you—hate the very mention of the race."

Shading his eyes with his uplifted hand, Bernard Lynn said, with slow and measured distinctness:

"Do I hate the race? Yes, if you could read my heart, you would find hatred to the African race written on its every fiber. The very name of negro fills me with loathing." He uttered an oath, and continued in a lower tone: "By what horrible fatality was that accursed race ever planted upon the soil of the New World!"

Randolph felt his blood boil in his veins; his face was flashed; he breathed in gasps.

"And then it is not sympathy for the negro, that makes you look with aversion upon the institution of American slavery?"

"Sympathy for a libel upon the race—a hybrid composed of the monkey and the man? The idea is laughable. Were the negro in Africa—his own country—I might tolerate him. But his presence in any shape, as a dweller among people of the white race, is a curse to that race, more horrible than the plagues of Egypt or the fires of Gomorrah."

"It is, then, the influence of negro slavery upon the white race, which concerns you?" faltered Randolph.

"It is the influence of negro slavery upon the white race which concerns me," echoed Lynn, with bitter emphasis: "But you are a planter. I cannot talk to you. To mention the subject to one of you, is to set you in a blaze. By George! how the devils must laugh when they see us poor mortals, so eager in the pursuit of our own ruin,—so merry as we play with hot coals in the midst of a powder magazine!"

"You may speak to me upon this subject," said Randolph, drawing a long breath, "and speak freely."

"It won't do. You are all blind. There, for instance, is the greatest man among you; his picture hangs at your back—"

Randolph turned and beheld, for the first time, a portrait which hung against the wall behind. It was a sad, stern face, with snow-white hair, and a look of intellect, moulded by an iron Destiny. It was the likeness of John C. Calhoun,—Calhoun, the John Calvin of Political Economy.

"I knew him when he was a young man," continued Lynn, "I have met and conversed with him. Mind, I do not say that we were intimate friends! A braver man, a truer heart, a finer intellect, never lived beneath the sun. Then he felt the evils of this horrible system, and felt that the only remedy, was the removal of the entire race to Africa. Yes, he felt that the black man could only exist beside the white, to the utter degradation of the latter. Now, ha! ha! he has grown into the belief, that Slavery,—in other words, the presence of the black race in the midst of the white,—is a blessing. To that belief he surrenders everything, intellect, heart, soul, the hope of power, and the approbation of posterity. When Calhoun is blind, how can you planters be expected to see?"

Randolph was silent. "There is in my veins, the blood of this accused race," he muttered to himself.

"In order to look up some of the results of this system," continued Bernard Lynn, "let us look at some of the characteristics of the American people. The north is a trader; it traffics; it buys; it sells; it meets every question with the words, 'Will it pay?' (As a gallant southron once said to me; 'When the north choose a patron saint, a new name will be added to the calendar, "Saint Picayune"'). The South is frank, generous, hospitable; there are the virtues of ideal chivalry among the southern people. And yet, the north prospers in every sense, while the south,—what is the future of the South? The west, noble, generous, and free from the traits which mark a nation of mere traffickers, is just what the south would be, were it free from the Black Race. Think of that, friend Randolph! You may glean a bit of solid truth from the disconnected remarks of an old traveler."

"But you have not yet instanced a single evil of our institution," interrupted Randolph.

"Are you from the south, and yet, ask me to give you instances of the evils of slavery? Pshaw! I tell you man, the evil of slavery consists in the presence of the black race in the midst of the whites. That is the sum of the matter. You cannot elevate that race save at the expense of the whites—not the expense of money, mark you,—but at the expense of the physical and mental features of the white race. Don't I speak plain enough? The two races cannot live together and not mingle. You know it to be impossible. And do you pretend to say, that the mixture of black and white, can produce anything but an accursed progeny, destitute of the good qualities of each race, and by their very origin, at war with both African and Caucasian? Nay, you need not hold your head in your hands. It is blunt truth, but it is truth."

The bolt had struck home. Randolph had buried his face in his hands,—"I am one of these hybrids," he muttered in agony; "at war at the same time, with the race of my father and my mother."

"But, how would you remedy this evil?" he asked, without raising his head.

"Remove the whole race to Africa," responded Lynn.

"How can this be done?"

"By one effort of southern will. Instead of attempting to defend the system, let the southern people resolve at once, that the presence of the black race, is the greatest curse that can befall America. This resolution made, the means will soon follow. One-fourth the expenses of a five years' war would transport the negroes to Africa. One-twentieth part of the sum, which will be expended in the next ten years (I say nothing of the past) in the quarrel of north and south, about this matter, would do the work and do it well. And then, free from the black race, the south would go to work and mount to her destiny."

"But, what will become of the race, when they are transported to Africa?"

"If they are really of the human family, they will show it, by the civilization of Africa. They will establish a Nationality for the Negro, and plant the arts on seashore and desert. Apart from the white race, they can rise into their destiny."

"And if nothing is done?" interrupted Randolph.

"If the south continues to defend, and the north to quarrel about slavery,—if instead of making one earnest effort to do something with the evil, they break down national good-feeling, and waste millions of money in mutual threats,—why, in that case, it needs no prophet to foretell the future of the south. That future will realize one of two conditions—"

He paused, and after a moment, repeated with singular emphasis, "St. Domingo!—St. Domingo!"

"And the other condition," said Randolph.

"The whole race will be stript of all its noble qualities, and swallowed up in a race, composed of black and white, and cursing the very earth they tread. In the south, the white race will in time be annihilated. That garden of the world, composed, I know not of how many states,—extending from the middle states to the gulf, and from the Atlantic to the Mississippi,—will repeat on a colossal scale, the horrible farce, which the world has seen, in the case of St. Domingo."

Bernard Lynn again filled his goblet, and slowly sipped the brandy, while the fire faded from his eyes, the corners of his mouth fell,—his face became faded and haggard again.

Randolph, seated near him, his elbow on his knee, and his forehead supported by his hand, was buried in thought. His face was averted from the light: the varied emotions which convulsed it in every lineament, were concealed from the observation of Bernard Lynn.

Thus they remained for a long time, each buried in his own peculiar thoughts.

"Randolph," said Bernard Lynn,—and there was something so changed and singular in his tone, that Randolph started—"draw near to me. I wish to speak with you."

Randolph looked up, and was astonished by the change which had passed over the face of the traveler. His eyes flashed wildly, his features were one moment fixed and rigid and the next, tremulous and quivering with strong emotion; the veins were swollen on his broad forehead.

"Randolph," he said, in a low, agitated voice, "I am a Carolinian."

"A Carolinian?" echoed Randolph.

"The name of Bernard Lynn is not my real name. It is an assumed name, Randolph. Assumed, do you hear me?" his eyes flashed more wildly, and he seized Randolph's hand, and unconsciously wrung it with an almost frenzied clutch—"Assumed some seventeen years ago, when I forsook my home, my native soil, and became a miserable wanderer on the face of the earth. Do you know why I assumed that name,—do you know?—"

He paused as if suffocated by his emotions. After a moment he resumed in a lower, deeper voice,—

"Did you ever hear the name of —— ——?"

"It is the name of one of the first and oldest families of Carolina," responded Randolph. "A name renowned in her history, but now extinct, I believe."

"That is my name, my real name, which I have forsaken forever, for the one which I now bear," resumed Bernard Lynn. "I am the last male representative of the family. Seventeen years ago my name disappeared from Carolina. I left home—my native land—all the associations that make life dear, and became a miserable exile. And why?"

He uttered an oath, which came sharp and hissing through his clenched teeth.

Profoundly interested, Randolph, as if fascinated, gazed silently into the flashing eyes of Bernard Lynn.

"I was young,—rich,—the inheritor of an honored name," continued Bernard Lynn, in hurried tones,—"and I was married, Randolph, married to a woman of whom Eleanor is the living picture,—a woman as noble in soul, and beautiful in form as ever trod God's earth. One year after our marriage, when Eleanor was a babe,—nearer to me, Randolph,—I left my plantation in the evening, and went on a short visit to Charleston. I came home the next day, and where I had left my wife living and beautiful, I found only a mangled and dishonored corpse."

His head fell upon his breast,—he could not proceed.

"This is too horrible!" ejaculated Randolph,—"too horrible to be real."

Bernard raised his head, and clutching Randolph's hands—

"The sun was setting, and his beams shone warmly through the western windows as I entered the bedchamber. Oh! I can see it yet,—I can see it now,—the babe sleeping on the bed, while the mother is stretched upon the floor, lifeless and weltering in her blood. Murdered and dishonored—murdered and dishonored—"

As though those words, "murdered and dishonored," had choked his utterance, he paused, and uttered a groan, and once more his head fell on his breast.

At this moment, even as Randolph, absorbed by the revelation, sits silent and pale, gazing upon the bended head of the old man,—at this moment look yonder, and behold the form of a woman, who with finger on her lip, stands motionless near the threshold.

Randolph is not aware of her presence—the old man cannot see her, for there is agony like death in his heart, and his head is bowed upon his breast; but there she stands, motionless as though stricken into stone, by the broken words which she has heard.

It is Eleanor Lynn.

On the very threshold she was arrested by the deep tones of her father's voice,—she listened,—and for the first time heard the story of her mother's death.

And now, stepping backward, her eye riveted on her father's form, she seeks to leave the room unobserved,—she reaches the threshold, when her father's voice is heard once more:—

"Ask me not for details, ask me not," he cried in broken tones, as once more he raised his convulsed countenance to the light "The author of this outrage was not a man, but a negro,—a demon in a demon's shape; and"—he smiled, but there was no merriment in his smile,—"and now you know why I left home, native land, all the associations which make life dear, seventeen years ago. Now you know why I hate the accursed race."

As he spoke, Eleanor Lynn glided from the room.

---

[CHAPTER X.]

"YES, YOU WILL MEET HIM."

As midnight drew near, Randolph was alone in his bedchamber,—a spacious chamber, magnificently furnished, and illumined by a single candle, which stood upon a rosewood table near the lofty bed. Seated in a chair, with his cloak thrown over his shoulders, and an opened letter in his hand, Randolph's eyes were glassy with profound thought. His face was very pale; a slight trembling of the lip, an occasional heaving of the chest, alone made him appear less motionless than a statue.

The letter which he held was the one which Mr. Hicks had given him, some three hours before, but he did not seem to be occupied with its contents.

"It look like a bridal chamber," he muttered, as his eye roved round the spacious apartment, "and this white couch like a bridal bed,"—a bitter smile crossed his face. "Think of it—the bridal bed of Eleanor Lynn and—the white slave!"

And he relapsed into his reverie; or rather, into a train of thought, which had occupied him for two hours at least, while he sat silent and motionless in his chamber.

Oh, dark and bitter thoughts—filling every vein with fire, and swelling every avenue of the brain with the hot pulsations of madness! The image of Eleanor, the story told two hours ago by Bernard Lynn, and the taint that corrupted the life-blood in his veins,—all these mingled in his thoughts, and almost drove him mad.

"And from this labyrinth, what way of escape? Will Eleanor be mine, when she learns that I am of the accursed race of the wretch who first dishonored and then outraged her mother? And the father,—ah!"

He passed his hand over his brow, as if to banish these thoughts, and then perused the letter which he held in his hand,—

"It is signed by my 'unknown friend of the half-way house,' and desires me, for certain reasons, to be at a particular locality, in the Five Points, at ten minutes past twelve. It is now,"—he took his gold watch from his pocket,—"half past eleven. I must be moving. A singular request, and a mysterious letter; but I will obey."

On the table lay a leather belt, in which were inserted two bowie-knives and a revolving pistol. Randolph wound it about his waist, and then drew a cap over his brow, and gathered his cloak more closely to his form.

He next extinguished the candle, and stole softly from the room. As he descended the stairway, all was still throughout the mansion. The servants had retired, and Eleanor, Esther, and the old man, no doubt, were sound asleep. Randolph passed along the hall, and opening the front door, crossed its threshold.

"Now for the adventure," he ejaculated, and hurried down Broadway. After nearly half an hour's walk, he turned into one of those streets which lead from the light and uproar of Broadway, toward the region of the Tombs.

Darkness was upon the narrow street, and his footsteps alone broke the dead stillness, as he hurried along.

As he reached a solitary lamp, which gave light to a portion of the street, his ear caught the echo of footsteps behind: and impelled by an impulse which he could not himself comprehend, Randolph paused, and concealed his form in the shadow of a deep doorway. From where he stood, by the light of the lamp, (which was not five paces distant,) he could command a view of any wayfarer who might chance to pass along the deserted street.

The footsteps drew nearer, and presently two persons came in sight. They halted beneath the lamp. Randolph could not see their faces, but he remarked that one was short and thick-set in form, while the other was tall and commanding. The tall one wore a cloak, and the other an overcoat.

And Randolph heard their voices—

"Are we near the hound? My back hurts like the devil, and I don't wish to go any farther than is necessary."

"Only a block or two, to go," replied the other. "Judas Iscariot! Just think that we're sure to find him there, Royalton, and your back won't hurt a bit."

"Oh, by ——! let me but find him, and stand face to face with him, and I'll take care of the rest."

These words, accompanied by an oath, and uttered with the emphasis of a mortal hatred, were all that Randolph heard.

The twain proceeded on their way.

It was not until the sound of their footsteps had died away, that Randolph emerged from his hiding-place—

"Yes, you will meet him, and stand face to face with him, and—the rest is yet to be known."

He felt for his knives and pistols,—they were safe in the belt about his waist; and then, conscious that the crisis of his fate was near at hand, he silently pursued his way.

Return for a moment to the house in Broadway.

Esther is there, alone in her chamber, standing before a mirror, with a light in her hand. The mirror reaches from the ceiling to the floor; and never did mirror image forth before, a face and form so perfectly beautiful.

She has changed her attire. The green habit no longer incloses her form. A dress or robe of spotless white, leaves her neck and shoulders bare, rests in easy folds upon her proud bust, and is girdled gently to her waist by a sash of bright scarlet. The sleeves are wide, the folds loose and flowing, and the sleeves and the hem of the skirt are bordered by a line of crimson. The only ornament which she wears is not a diamond, brooch or bracelet, not even a ring upon her delicate hand, but a single lily, freshly gathered, which gleams pure and white from the blackness of her hair.

And what need she of ornament? A very beautiful woman, with a noble form, a voluptuous bust; a face pale as marble, ripening into vivid bloom on the lip and cheek, relieved by jet-black hair, and illumined by eyes that, flashing from their deep fringes, burn with wild, with maddening light. A very beautiful woman, who, as she surveys herself in the mirror, knows that she is beautiful, and feels her pulse swell, her bosom heave slowly into light, her blood bound with the fullness of life in every vein.

One hand holds the light above her dark hair—the other the letter which, three hours and more ago, she received from Mr. Hicks.

"It requested me to attire myself in the dress which I would find in my chamber, the costume of Lucretia Borgia. And I have obeyed. And then to enter the carriage, which at a quarter past twelve, will await me at the next corner, and bear me to the Temple. I will obey."

She smiled—a smile that disclosed the ivory of her teeth, the ripeness of her lips—lit up her eyes with new light, and was responded to by the swell of her proud bosom.

Take care Esther! You wear the dress of Lucretia Borgia, and you are even more madly beautiful than that accursed child of the Demon-Pope; but have a care. You are yet spotless and pure. But the blood is warm in your veins, and perchance there is ambition as well as passion in the fire which burns in your eyes. Have a care! The future is yet to come, Esther, and who can tell what it will bring forth for you?

"I will meet Godlike there," she said, and an inexplicable smile animated her face.

She placed a small poniard in the folds of her sash, and threw a heavy cloak, to which was attached a hood, over her form. She drew the hood over her face, and stood ready to depart.

The light was extinguished. She glided from the room, and down the stairs, and passed unobserved from the silent house. At the corner of the next street the carriage waited with the driver on the box.

"Who are you?" she said in a low voice.

"The Temple," answered the driver, and descended from the box, and opened the carriage door.

Esther entered, the door was closed, the carriage whirled away.

"What will be the result of the adventures of this night?" she thought, and her bosom heaved with mad agitation.

And as she was thus borne to the Temple, there was a woman watching by the bedside of an old man, in one of the chambers of the Broadway mansion,—Eleanor watching while her father slept.

Her night-dress hung in loose folds about her noble form, as she arose and held the dim light nearer to his gray hairs. There was agony stamped upon his face, even as he slept—an agony which was reflected in the pallid face and tremulous lips of his daughter.

"He sleeps!" she exclaimed in a low voice: "Little does he fancy that I know the fearful history which this night fell from his lips. And this night, before he retired to rest, he clasped me to his bosom, and said—" she blushed in neck and cheek and brow,—"that it was the dearest wish of his heart, that I should be united to Randolph."

She kissed him gently on the brow, and crept noiselessly to her own room, and soon was asleep, the image of Randolph prominent in her dreams.

Poor Eleanor!

Leaving Randolph, his sister, and those connected with their fate, our history now turns to other characters.

Let us enter the house of the merchant prince.

---

[CHAPTER XI.]

IN THE HOUSE OF THE MERCHANT PRINCE.

It was near eleven o'clock, on the night of December 23d, 1844, when Evelyn Somers, Sen., sitting in his library by the light of the shaded candle, was startled by the ringing of the bell.

"The front door-bell!" he ejaculated, looking up from his labors, until the candle shone full upon his thin features and low forehead. "Can it be Evelyn? Oh! I forgot. He returned only this evening. One of the servants, I suppose—been out late—must look to this in the morning."

He resumed his pen, and again, surrounded by title-deeds and mortgages, bent down to his labors.

So deeply was he absorbed that he did not hear the opening of the front door, followed by a footstep in the hall. Nor did he hear the stealthy opening of the door of the library; much less did he see the burly figure which advanced on tiptoe to his table.

"Be calm!" said a gruff voice, and a hand was laid on his shoulder.

"Hey! What? Who,—who—are—you?" The merchant prince started in his chair, and beheld a burly form enveloped in a bear-skin overcoat and full-moon face, spotted with carbuncles.

"Be calm!" said the owner of the face, in a hoarse voice. "There's no occasion to alarm yourself. These things will happen."

The merchant prince was thoroughly amazed.

Opening his small eyes, half concealed by heavy lids, to their fullest extent, he cried: "What do you mean? Who are you?—I don't know you? What—what—"

"I'm Blossom, I am," returned the full-moon face, "Lay low! Keep dark! I'm Blossom, one of the secret police. Lay low!"

"My God! Is Evelyn in another scrape?" ejaculated the merchant prince; "I will pay for no more of his misdeeds. There's no use of talking about it. I'll not go his bail, if he rots in the Tombs. I'll—" Mr. Somers doggedly folded his arms, and sat bolt upright in his chair.

With his contracted features, spare form and formal white cravat, he looked the very picture of an unrelenting father.

"Come, hoss, there's no use of that."

"Hoss! Do you apply such words to me," indignantly echoed the merchant prince.

"Be calm," soothingly remarked Blossom. "Lay low. Keep dark. Jist answer me one question: Has your son Evelyn a soot o' rooms in the upper part o' this house?"

"What do you ask such a question for?" and Mr. Somers opened his eyes again. "He has all the rooms on the third floor, in the body of the mansion—there are four in all."

"Very good. Now, is Evelyn at home?" asked Blossom.

"Don't come so near. The smell of brandy is offensive to me. Faugh!"

"You'll smell brimstone, if you don't take keer!" exclaimed the indignant Blossom. "To think o' sich ingratitude from an old cock like you, when I've come to keep that throat o' yourn from bein' cut by robbers."

"Robbers!" and this time Mr. Somers fairly started from his seat.

"When I've come to purtect your jugular,—yes, you needn't wink,—your jugular! Oh, it was not for nothing that a Roman consul once remarked that republics is ungrateful."

"Robbers? Robbers! What d'ye mean? Speak—speak—"

Blossom laid his hand upon the merchant's shoulder.

"If you'll promise to keep a secret, and not make a fuss. I'll tell you all. If you go for raisin' a hellabaloo, I'll walk out and leave your jugular to take care of itself."

"I promise, I promise," ejaculated the merchant.

"Then, while you are sittin' in that ere identical chair, there's two crackmen—burglars, you know,—hid up-stairs in your son's room. They're a-waitin' until you put out the lights, and go to sleep, and then,—your cash-box and jugulars the word?—Why, I wouldn't insure your throat for all your fortin."

The merchant prince was seized with a fit of trembling.

"Robbers! in my house! Astounding, a-s-t-o-u-n-d-i-n-g! How did they get in?"

"By your son's night-key, and the front door. You see I was arter these crackmen to-night, and found 'em in a garret of the Yaller Mug. You never patronize the Yaller Mug, do you?"

Mr. Somers nodded "No," with a spasmodic shake of the head.

"Jist afore I pitched into 'em, I listened outside of the garret door, and overheard their plot to conceal themselves in Evelyn's room, until you'd all gone to bed, and then commence operations on your cash-box and jugular. One o' 'em's a convict o' eleven years' standin'. He's been regularly initiated into all the honors of Auburn and Cherry Hill."

"And you arrested them?"

"Do you see this coverlet about my head? That's what I got for attemptin' it. They escaped from the garret, by getting upon the roof, and jumpin' down on a shed. If my calculations are correct, they're up-stairs jist now, preparin' for their campaign on your cash-box and jugular."—

"Cash-box! I have no cash-box. My cash is all in bank!"

"Gammon. It won't do. Behind yer seat is yer iron safe,—one o' th' Salamanders; you're got ten thousand in gold, in that."

Mr. Somers changed color.

"They intend to blow up the lock with powder, after they'd fixed your jugular."

Mr. Somers clasped his hands, and shook like a leaf.

"What's to be done, what's to be done!" he cried in perfect agony.

"There's six o' my fellows outside. I've got a special warrant from the authorities. Now, if you've a key to Evelyn's rooms, we'll just go up-stairs and search 'em. You can stand outside, while we go in. But no noise,—no fuss you know."

"But they'll murder you," cried the merchant, "they'll murder me. They'll,"—

Blossom drew a six-barreled revolver from one pocket, and a slung-shot from the other.

"This is my settler," he elevated his revolver, "and this, my gentle persuader," he brandished the slung-shot.

"Oh!" cried Mr. Somers, "property is no longer respected,—ah! what times we've fallen in!"

"How many folks have you in the house?"

"The servants sleep in the fourth story, over Evelyn's room. The housekeeper sleeps under Evelyn's room, and my room and the room of my private secretary are just above where I am sitting."

"Good. Now take the candle, and come," responded Blossom, "we want you as a witness."

The merchant prince made many signs of hesitation,—winking his heavy lids, rubbing his low forehead with both hands, and pressing his pointed chin between his thumb and forefinger,—but Blossom seized the candle, and made toward the door.

"You are not going to leave me in the dark?" cried Mr. Somers, bounding from his chair.

"Not if you follow the light," responded Blossom; "by-the-by, you may as well bring the keys to Evelyn's room."

With a trembling hand, Mr. Somers lifted a huge bunch of keys from the table.

"There, open all the rooms on the second and fourth floors," he said, and followed Blossom into the hall.

There, shoulder to shoulder, stood six stout figures, in glazed caps and great coats of rough, dark-colored cloth, with a mace or a pistol protruding from every pocket. They stood as silent as blocks of stone.

"Boys," whispered Blossom, "we'll go up first. You follow and station yerselves on the second landin', so as to be ready when I whistle."

A murmur of assent was heard, and Blossom, light in hand, led the merchant prince toward the stairway which led upward from the center of the hall. At the foot of the stairway, they were confronted by a servant-maid, who had answered the bell when Blossom first rang: her red, round cheeks were pale as ashes, and she clung to the railing of the staircase for support.

"Och, murther!" she ejaculated, as she beheld the red face of Blossom, and the frightened visage of her master.

Blossom seized her arm with a tight grip.

"Look here, Biddy, do you know how to sleep?" was the inquiry of the rubicund gentleman.

"Slape?" echoed the girl, with eyes like saucers.

"'Cause if you don't go back into the kitchen, and put yourself into a sound sleep d'rectly; yourself, your master and me, will all be murdered in our beds. It 'ud hurt my feelin's, Biddy, to see you with your throat cut, and sich a nice fat throat as it is!"

Biddy uttered a groan, and shrunk back behind the stairway.

"Now then!" and Blossom led the way up-stairs, followed by the lean, angular form of the merchant prince, who turned his head over his shoulder, like a man afraid of ghosts.

They arrived at the small entry at the head of the stairs, on the third floor; three doors opened into the entry; one on the right, one on the left, and the third directly in the background, facing the head of the stairs.

"Hush!" whispered Blossom, "do you hear any noise?"

Advancing on tip-toe, he crouched against the door on the right, and listened. In an instant he came back to the head of the stairs, where stood Mr. Somers, shaking in every nerve.

"It's a snore," said Blossom, "jist go and listen, and see if it's your son's snore."

It required much persuasion to induce the merchant prince to take the step.

"Where are your men?"

Blossom pointed over the merchant's shoulder, to the landing beneath. There, in the gloom, stood the six figures, shoulder to shoulder, and as motionless as stone.

"Now will you go?"

Mr. Somers advanced, and placed his head against the door on the right. After a brief pause, he returned to the head of the stairs where Blossom stood. "It is not my son's snore," he said, "that is, if I am any judge of snores."

Blossom took the light and the keys, and advanced to the door on the right, which he gently tried to open, but found it locked. Making a gesture of caution to the merchant prince, he selected the key of the door from the bunch, softly inserted it, and as softly turned it in the lock. The door opened with a sound. Then stepping on tip-toe, he crossed the threshold, taking the light with him.

Mr. Somers, left alone in the dark, felt his heart march to his throat.

"I shall be murdered,—I know I shall," he muttered, when the light shone on his frightened face again. Blossom stood in the doorway, beckoning to him.

Somers advanced and crossed the threshold.

"Look there," whispered Blossom "now d'ye believe me?"

A huge man, dressed in the jacket and trowsers of a convict, was sleeping on the bed, his head thrown back, his mouth wide open, and one arm hanging over the bedside. His chest heaved with long, deep respirations, and his nostrils emitted a snore of frightful depth.

At this confirmation of the truth of Blossom's statement, Mr. Somers' face became as white as his cravat.

"Look there!" whispered Blossom, pointing to a pistol which lay upon the carpet, almost within reach of the brawny hand which hung over the bed-side.

"Good God! ejaculated Somers.

"Now look there!" Blossom pointed to the brandy bottle on the table, and held the light near it. "Empty! d'ye see?"

Then Blossom drew from his capacious pocket, certain pieces of rope, each of which was attached to the middle of a piece of hickory, as hard as iron.

"Hold the light," and like a nurse attending to a sleeping babe, the ingenious Blossom gently attached one of the aforesaid pieces of rope to the ankles of the sleeper, in such a manner, that the two pieces of hickory,—one at either end of the rope,—formed a knot, which a giant would have found it hard to break. As the ankles rested side by side, this feat was not so difficult.

"Now for the wrists," and Blossom quietly regarded the position of the sleeper's hands. One was doubled on his huge chest, the other hung over the bedside. To straighten one arm and lift the other,—to do this gently and without awaking the sleeper,—to tie both wrists together as he had tied the ankles,—this was a difficult task, but Blossom accomplished it. Once the convict moved. "Don't give it up so easy!" he muttered and snored again.

Blossom surveyed him with great satisfaction.—"There's muscle, and bone, and fists,—did you ever see sich fists!"

"A perfect brute!" ejaculated Somers.

"Now you stay here, while I go into the next room, and hunt for the tother one."

This room, it will be remembered, communicated with an adjoining apartment by folding-doors. Blossom took the candle and listened; all was silent beyond the folding-doors. He carefully opened these doors, and light in hand, went into the next apartment. A belt of light came through the aperture, and fell upon the tall, spare form of the merchant prince, who, standing in the center of the first apartment gazed through the aperture just mentioned, into the second room. All the movements of Blossom were open to his gaze.

He saw him approach a bed, whose ruffled coverlet indicated that a man was sleeping there. He saw him bend over this bed, but the burly form of the police-officer hid the face of the sleeper from the sight of the merchant prince. He saw him lift the coverlet, and stand for a moment, as if gazing upon the sleeping man, and then saw him start abruptly from the bed, and turn his step toward the first room.

"What's the matter with you," cried the merchant prince, "are you frightened?"

Truth to tell, the full-moon face of Blossom, spotted with carbuncles, had somewhat changed its color.

"Can't you speak? It's Evelyn who's sleeping yonder,—isn't it? Hadn't you better wake him quietly?"

"Ah my feller," and the broken voice of Blossom, showed that he was human after all—all that he had seen in his lifetime,—"Ah my feller, he'll never wake again."

Somers uttered a cry, seized the light and strode madly into the next room, and turned the bed where the sleeper laid. The fallen jaw, the fixed eyeballs, the hand upon the chest, stained with the blood which flowed from the wound near the heart—he saw it all, and uttered a horrible cry, and fell like a dead man upon the floor.

Blossom seized the light from his hand as he fell, and turning back into the first room blew his whistle. The room was presently occupied by the six assistants.

"There's been murder done here to-night," he said, gruffly: "Potts, examine that pistol near the bed. Unloaded, is it? Gentlemen, take a look at the prisoner and then follow me."

He led the way into the second room, and they all beheld the dead body of Evelyn Somers.

"Two of you carry the old man down stairs and try and rewive him;" two of the assistants lifted the insensible form of the merchant prince, and bore it from the room. "Now, gentlemen, we'll wake the prisoner."

He approached the sleeping convict, followed by four of the policemen, whose faces manifested unmingled horror. He struck the sleeping man on the shoulder,—"Wake up Gallus. Wake up Gallus, I say!"

After another blow, Ninety-One unclosed his eyes, and looked around with a vague and stupefied stare. It was not until he sat up in bed, that he realized the fact, that his wrists and ankles were pinioned. His gaze wandered from the face of Blossom to the countenances of the other police-officers, and last of all, rested upon his corded hands.

"My luck," he said, quietly,—"curse you, you needn't awakened a fellow in his sleep. Why couldn't you have waited till mornin'?"

And he sank back on the bed again. Blossom seized a pitcher filled with water, which stood upon a table, and dashed the contents in the convict's face.

Thoroughly awake, and thoroughly enraged, Ninety-One started up in the bed, and gave utterance to a volley of curses.

Blossom made a sign with his hand; the four policemen seized the convict and bore him into the second room, while Blossom held the light over the dead man's livid face and bloody chest.

"Do you see that bullet-hole?" said Blossom; "the pistol was found a-side of your bed, near your hand. Gallus, you'll have to dance on nothin', I'm werry much afeard you will. But it 'ill take a strong rope to hang you."

"What!" shouted Ninety-One, "you don't mean to say,—" he cast a horrified look at the dead man, and then, like a flash of lightning, the whole matter became as plain as day to him. "Oh, Thirty-One," he groaned between his set-teeth, "this is your dodge,—is it? Oh, Thirty-One, this is another little item in our long account."

"What do you say?" asked one of the policemen. Ninety-One relapsed into a dogged silence. They could not force another word from him. Carrying him back into the first room, they laid him on the bed, and secured his ankles and wrists with additional cords. Meanwhile, they could peruse at their leisure, that face, whose deep jaw, solid chin, and massive throat, covered with a stiff beard, manifested at once, immense muscular power, and an indomitable will. The eyes of the convict, overhung by his bushy brows, the cheeks disfigured by a hideous scar, the square forehead, with the protuberance in the center, appearing amid masses of gray hair,—all these details, were observed by the spectators, as they added new cords to the ankles and the wrists of Ninety-One.

His chest shook with a burst of laughter, "Don't give it up so easy!" he cried, "I'll be even with you yet, Thirty-One."

"S'arch all the apartments,—we must find his comrade," exclaimed Blossom,—"a pale-faced young devil, whom I seen with him, last night, in the cars."

Ninety-One started, even as he lay pinioned upon the bed.—"Oh, Thirty-One," he groaned, "and you must bring the boy in it, too, must you? Just add another figure to our account."

The four rooms were thoroughly searched, but the comrade was not found.

"Come, boys," said Blossom, "we'll go down-stairs and talk this matter over. Gallus," directing his conversation to Ninety-One, "we'll see you again, presently."

Ninety-One saw them cross the threshold, and heard the key turn in the lock. He was alone in the darkness, and with the dead.

As Blossom, followed by the policemen, passed down stairs, he was confronted on the second landing by the affrighted servants,—some of them but thinly clad,—who assailed him with questions. Instead of answering these multiplied queries, Blossom addressed his conversation to a portly dame of some forty years, who appeared in her night-dress and with an enormous night-cap.

"The housekeeper, I believe, Ma'am?"

"Yes, sir,—Mrs. Tompkins," replied the dame, "Oh, do tell me, what does this all mean?"

"How's the old gentleman?" asked Blossom.

"In his room. He's reviving. Mr. Van Huyden, his private secretary is with him. But do tell us the truth of this affair—what—what, does it all mean?"

"Madam, it means murder and blood and an old convict. Excuse me, I must go—down-stairs."

While the house rang with the exclamations of his affrighted listeners, Blossom passed down stairs, and, with his assistants, entered the Library.

"The question afore the house, gentlemen, is as follows,"—and Blossom sank into the chair of the merchant prince—"Shill we keep the prisoner up-stairs all night, or shill we take him to the Tombs?"

Various opinions were given by the policemen, and the debate assumed quite an animated form, Blossom, in all the dignity of his bear-skin coat and carbuncled visage, presiding as moderator.

"Address the cheer," he mildly exclaimed, as the debate grew warm. "Allow me to remark, gentlemen, that Stuffletz, there, is very sensible. Stuff., you think as the coroner's inquest will be held up-stairs by arly daylight to-morrow mornin' it 'ud be better to keep the prisoner there so as to confront him with the body? That's your opinion, Stuff. Well, I can't speak for you, gentlemen, as I don't b'long to the reg'lar police,—(I'm only an extra, you know!)—but it seems to me, Stuff. is right. Therefore, let the prisoner stay up-stairs all night; the room is safe, and I'll watch him mesself. Beside, you don't think he's a-goin' to tumble himself out of a third story winder, or vanish in a puff o' brimstone, as the devil does in the new play at the Bowery—do you?"

There was no one to gainsay the strong position thus assumed by Poke-Berry Blossom, Esq.

"And then I kin have a little private chat with him, in regard to the $71,000,—I guess I can," he muttered to himself.

"What's the occasion of this confusion?" said a bland voice; and, clad in his elegant white coat, with his cloak drooping from his right shoulder, Colonel Tarleton advanced from the doorway to the light. "Passing by I saw Mr. Somers' door open, and hear an uproar,—what is the matter, gentlemen? My old friend, Mr. Somers, is not ill, I hope?"

"Evelyn, his son, has been shot," bluntly responded Blossom—"by an old convict, who had hid himself in the third story, with the idea o' attackin' old Somers' cash-box and jugular."

Colonel Tarleton, evidently shocked, raised his hand to his forehead and staggered to a chair.

"Evelyn shot!" he gasped, after a long pause.—"Surely you dream. The particulars, the particulars—"

Blossom recapitulated the particulars of the case, according to the best of his knowledge.

"It is too horrible, too horrible," cried Tarleton, and his extreme agitation was perceptible to the policemen. "My young friend Evelyn murdered! Ah!—" he started from the chair, and fell back again with his head in his hands.

"But we've got the old rag'muffin," cried Blossom, "safe and tight; third story, back room."

Tarleton started from the chair and approached Blossom,—his pale face stamped with hatred and revenge.

"Mr. Blossom," he said, and snatched the revolver from the pocket of the rubicund gentleman. "Hah! it's loaded in six barrels! Murdered Evelyn—in the back room you say—I'll have the scoundrel's life!"

He snatched the candle from the table, and rushed to the door. The policemen did not recover from their surprise, until they heard his steps on the stairs.

"After him, after him,—there'll be mischief," shouted Blossom, and he rushed after Tarleton, followed by the six policemen. Tarleton's shouts of vengeance resounded through the house, and once more drew the servants, both men and women, to the landing-place at the head of the stairs. That figure attracted every eye—a man attired in a white coat, his face wild, his hair streaming behind him, a loaded pistol in one hand and a light in the other.

"Ketch his coat-tails," shouted Blossom, and, followed by policemen and servant-maids, he rushed up the second stairway.

He found Tarleton in the act of forcing the door on the right, which led into the room where Ninety-One was imprisoned.

"It is locked! Damnation!" shouted Tarleton, roaring like a madman. "Will no one give me the key?"

"I'll tell you what I'll give you," was the remark of Blossom. "I'll give you one under yer ear, if you don't keep quiet,—"

But his threat came too late. Tarleton stepped back and then plunged madly against the door. It yielded with a crash. Then, with Blossom and the crowd at his heels, he rushed into the room, brandishing the pistol, as the light which he held fell upon his convulsed features,—

"Where is the wretch?—show him to me! Where is the murderer of poor Evelyn?"

Blossom involuntarily turned his eyes toward the bed. It was empty. Ninety-One was not there. His gaze traversed the room: a door, looking like the doorway of a closet, stood wide open opposite the bed. It required but a moment to ascertain that the door opened upon a stairway.

"By ——!" shouted Blossom, "he's gone! His comrade has been concealed somewhere, and has cut him loose."

"Gone!" echoed police-officers and servants.

"Gone!" ejaculated Tarleton, and fell back into a chair, and his head sunk upon his breast.

There he remained muttering and moaning, while the four apartments on the third floor were searched in every corner by Blossom and his gang. The search was vain.

"He can't be got far," cried Blossom. "Some o' you go down into the yard, and I'll s'arch this staircase."

Thus speaking, he took the light and disappeared through the open doorway of the staircase, while the other police-officers hastily descended the main stairway.

Tarleton remained at least five minutes in the darkness, while shouts were heard in the yard behind the mansion. Then, emerging from the room, he descended to the second floor, where he was confronted by the housekeeper, who was struck with pity at the sight of his haggard face.

"I am weak—I am faint; allow me to lean upon your arm," said Tarleton, and supported his weight upon the fat arm of the good lady.—"Support me to the bedchamber of my dear friend Somers,—the father of poor murdered Evelyn."

"This way, sir," said the housekeeper, kindly, "he's in there, with his private secretary—"

"With his private secretary, did you say?" faintly exclaimed Tarleton. "Close the door after me, good madam, I wish to talk with the dear old man."

He entered the bedchamber, leaving the housekeeper at the door.

---

[CHAPTER XII.]

"SHOW ME THE WAY."

A single lamp stood on a table, near a bed which was surmounted by a canopy of silken curtains. The room was spacious and elegant; chairs, carpet, the marble mantle, elaborately carved, and the ceiling adorned with an elaborate painting,—all served to show that the merchant prince slept in a "place of state." Every detail of that richly-furnished apartment, said "Gold!" as plainly as though a voice was speaking it all the while.

His lean form, attired in every-day apparel, was stretched upon the bed, and through the aperture in the curtains, the lamp-light fell upon one side of his face. He appeared to be sleeping. His arms lay listlessly by his side, and his head was thrown back upon the pillow. His breathing was audible in the most distant corner of the chamber.

"Gulian," said Tarleton, who seemed to recover his usual strength and spirit, as soon as he entered the room, "Where are you, my dear?"

The slight form of the private secretary advanced from among the curtains at the foot of the bed. His face, almost feminine in its expression, appeared in the light, with tears glistening on the cheeks. It was a beautiful face, illumined by large, clear eyes, and framed in the wavy hair, which flowed in rich masses to his shoulders. At sight of the elegant Colonel, the blue eyes of the boy shone with a look of terror. He started back, folding his hands over the frock coat, which enveloped his boyish shape.

"Ah, my God,—you here!" was his exclamation, "when will you cease to persecute me?"

The Colonel smiled, patted his elegant whiskers, and drawing nearer to the boy, who seemed to cringe away from his touch, he said in his blandest tone,—

"Persecute you! Well, that is clever!—Talk of gratitude again in this world! I took you when you were a miserable foundling, a wretched little baby, without father, mother, or name. I placed you in the quiet of a country town, where you received an elegant education. I gave you a name,—a fancy name, I admit—the name which you now wear—and when I visited you, once or twice a year, you called me by the name of father. How I gained money to support you these nineteen or twenty years, and to adorn that fine intellect of yours, with a finished education,—why, you don't know, and I scarcely can tell, myself. But after these years of protection and support, I appeared at your home in the country, and asked a simple favor at your hands. Ay, child, the man you delighted to call father asked in return for all that he had done for you, a favor—only one favor—and that of the simplest character. Where was your gratitude? You refused me; you fled from your home in the country, and I lost sight of you until to-night, when I find my lost lamb, in the employment of the rich merchant. His private secretary, forsooth!"

"Hush," exclaimed Gulian, with a deprecatory gesture, "You will wake Mr. Somers. He has had one convulsion already, and it may prove fatal. I have sent for a doctor,—oh, why does he not come?"

"You shall not avoid me in that way, my young friend," said Tarleton. He laid his hand on the arm of the boy, and bent his face so near to him that the latter felt the Colonel's breath upon his forehead. "The money which I bestowed upon your education, I obtained by what the world calls felony. For you—for you—" his voice sunk to a deeper tone, and his eyes flashed with anger; "for you I spent some years in that delightful retreat, which is known to vulgar ears by the word,—Penitentiary!"

"God help me," cried the boy, affrighted by the expression which stamped the Colonel's face.

"Penitentiary or jail, call it what you will, I spent some years there for your sake. And do you wish to evade me now when, I tell you that I reared you but for one object, and that object dearer to me than life? You ran away from my guardianship; you attempt to conceal yourself from me; you attempt to foil the hope for which I have suffered the tortures of the damned these twenty years? Come, my boy, you'll think better of it."

The smile of the Colonel was altogether fiendish. The boy sank on his knees, and raised to the Colonel's gaze that beautiful face stamped with terror, and bathed in tears.

"Oh, pardon me—forgive me!" he cried, "Do not kill me—"

"Kill you! Pshaw!"

"Let me live an obscure life, away from your observation; let me be humble, poor and unknown; as you value the hope of salvation, do not—I beseech you on my knees—do not ask me to comply with your request!"

"If you don't get up, I may be tempted to strike you," was the brutal remark of the Colonel. "Pitiful wretch! Hark ye," he bent his head,—"the robber who this night murdered Evelyn Somers, gained admittance to this house by means of a night-key. He had an accomplice in the house, who supplied him with the key. That accomplice, (let us suppose a case) was yourself—"

"Me!" cried the boy, in utter horror.

"I can obtain evidence of the fact," continued the Colonel, and paused. "You had better think twice before you enter the lists with me and attempt to thwart my will."

The boy, thus kneeling, did not reply, but buried his face in his hands, and his flowing hair hid those hands with its luxurious waves. He shook in every nerve with agony. He sobbed aloud.

"Will you be quiet?" the Colonel seized him roughly by the shoulder, "or shall I throttle you?"

"Yes, kill me, fiend, kill me, oh! kill me with one blow:" the boy raised his face, and pronounced these words, his eyes flashing with hatred, as he uttered the word "fiend." There was something startling in the look of mortal hatred which had so suddenly fixed itself upon that beautiful face. Even the Colonel was startled.

"Nay, nay, my child," he said in a soothing tone, "get up, get up, that's a dear child—I meant no harm—"

At this moment the conversation was interrupted by a hollow voice.

"You must pay, sir. That's my way.—You must pay or you must go."

The business-like nature, the every-day character of these words, was in painful contrast with the hollow accent which accompanied their utterance. At the sound the boy sprang to his feet, and the Colonel started as though a pistol had exploded at his ear.

The merchant prince had risen into a sitting posture. His thin features, low, broad forehead, wide mouth, with thin lips and pointed chin, were thrown strongly into view by the white cravat which encircled his throat. Those features were bathed in moisture. The small eyes, at other times half concealed by heavy lids, were now expanded in a singular stare,—a stare which made the blood of the Colonel grow cold in his veins.

"God bless us! What's the matter with you, good Mr. Somers?" he ejaculated.

But the rich man did not heed him.

"I wouldn't give a snap for your Reading Railroad—bad stock—bad stock—it must burst. It will burst, I say. Pay, pay, pay, or go! That's the only way to do business. D'ye suppose I'm an ass? The note can't lie over. If you don't meet it, it shall be protested."

As he uttered these incoherent words, his expanding eyes still fixed, he inserted his tremulous hand in his waist-coat pocket, and took from thence a golden eagle, which he brought near his eyes, gazing at it long and eagerly.

"He's delirious," ejaculated Tarleton, "why don't you go for a doctor?"

"Oh, what shall I do?" cried Gulian, rushing to the door, "why doesn't the doctor come?—"

But at the door he was confronted by the buxom housekeeper, who whispered, "Our doctor is out of town, but one of the servants has found another one: he's writing down-stairs."

"Quick! Quick! Bring him at once;" and Gulian, in his flight, pushed the housekeeper out of the room.

Mr. Somers still remained in a sitting posture, his eye fixed upon the golden eagle.

"Tell Jenks to foreclose," he muttered, "I've nothing to do with the man's wife and children. It isn't in the way of business. The mortgage isn't paid, and we must sell—sell—sell,—sell," he repeated until his voice died away in a murmur.

The doctor entered the room. "Where is our patient?" he said, as he advanced to the bedside. He was a man somewhat advanced in years, with bent figure and stooping shoulders. He was clad in an old-fashioned surtout, with nine or ten heavy capes hanging about his shoulders; and, as if to protect him from the cold, a bright-red kerchief was tied about his neck and the lower part of his face. He wore a black fur hat, with an ample brim, which effectually shaded his features.

The Colonel started at the sight of this singular figure. "Our friend of the blue capes, as I'm alive!" he muttered half aloud.

The doctor advanced to the bedside.—"You will excuse me for retaining my hat and this kerchief about my neck," he said in his mild voice, "I am suffering from a severe cold." He then directed his attention to the sick man, while Gulian and Tarleton watched his movements, with evident interest.

The doctor did not touch the merchant; he stood by the bedside, gazing upon him silently.

"What's the matter with our friend?" whispered Tarleton.

The doctor did not answer. He remained motionless by the bedside, surveying the quivering features and fixed eyes of the afflicted man.

"This person," exclaimed the doctor, after a long pause, "is not suffering from a physical complaint. His mind is afflicted. From the talk of the servants in the hall, I learned that he has this night lost his only son, by the hands of a murderer. The shock has been too great for him. My young friend," he addressed Gulian, who stood at his back, "it were as well to send for a clergyman."

Gulian hurried to the door, and whispered to the housekeeper. Returning to the bedside, he found the doctor seated in a chair, with a watch in his hand, in full view of the delirious man. The Colonel, grasping the bed-curtain, stood behind him, in an attitude of profound thought, yet with a faint smile upon his lips.

As for the merchant prince, seated bolt upright in the bed, he clutched the golden eagle, (which seemed to have magnetized his gaze), and babbled in his delirium—

"You an heir of Trinity Church?" he said, with a mocking smile upon his thin lips, "you one of the descendants of Anreke Jans Bogardus? Pooh! Pooh! The Church is firm,—firm. She defies you. Aaron Burr tried that game, he! he! and found it best to quit,—to quit—to quit. What Trinity Church has got, she will hold,—hold—hold. She buys,—she sells—she sells—she buys—a great business man is Trinity Church! And with your two hundred beggarly heirs of Anreke Jans Bogardus, you will go to law about her title. Pooh!"

"He is going fast," whispered the Doctor, "his mind is killing him. Where are his relatives?"

His relatives! Sad, sad word! His wife had been dead many years, and her relatives were at a distance; perchance in a foreign land. His nearest relative was a corpse, up-stairs, with a pistol wound through his heart.

Evelyn Somers, Sen., was one of the richest men in New York, and yet there was not a single relative to stand by his dying-bed. The death-sweat on his fevered brow, the whiteness of death on his quivering lips, the fire of the grave in his expanding eyes, Evelyn Somers, the merchant prince, had neither wife nor child nor relative to stand by him in his last hour. The poor boy who wept by the bed-side was, perchance, his only friend.

"Cornelius Berman, the artist, (who died, I believe, some years ago,) was his only relative in New York: his only son out of view." This was the answer of Colonel Tarleton, to the question of the Doctor.

And the dying man, still sitting bolt upright, one hand on his knee, and the other grasping the golden coin, still babbled in his delirium in the hollow tone of death. He talked of everything. He bought and sold, received rent and distressed tenants, paid notes and protested them, made imaginary sums by the sale of stocks, and achieved imaginary triumphs by the purchase of profitable tracts of land,—it was a frightful scene.

The Doctor shuddered, and as he looked at his watch, muttered a word of prayer.

The Colonel turned his face away, but was forced by an involuntary impulse, to turn again and gaze upon that livid countenance.

The boy Gulian—in the shadows of the room—sunk on his knees and uttered a prayer, broken by sobs.

At length the dying man seemed to recover a portion of his consciousness. Turning his gaze from the golden coin which he still clutched in his fingers, he said in a voice which, in some measure, resembled his every-day tone,—

"Send for a minister, a minister, quick! I am very weak."

The words had scarcely passed his lips, when a soft voice exclaimed, "I am here, my dear friend Somers, I trust that this is not serious. A sad, sad affliction, you have encountered to-night. But you must cheer up, you must, indeed."

The minister had entered the room unperceived, and now stood by the bed-side.

"Herman Barnhurst!" ejaculated Colonel Tarleton.

The tall, slender figure of the clergyman, dressed in deep black, was disclosed to the gaze of the dying man, who gazed intently at his blonde face, effeminate in its excessive fairness, and then exclaimed, reaching his hand,—

"Come, I am going. I want you to show me the way!"

"Really, my dear friend," began Barnhurst, passing his hand over his hair, which, straight and brown and of silken softness, fell smoothly behind his ears, "you must bear up. This is not so serious as you imagine."

"I tell you I am going. I have often heard you preach,—once or twice in Trinity—I rather liked you—and now I want you to show me the way! Do you see there?" he extended his trembling hand, "there's the way I'm going. It's all dark. You're a minister of my church too; I want you to show me the way?"

There was a terrible emphasis in the accent,—a terrible entreaty in the look of the dying man.

The Rev. Herman Barnhurst sank back in a chair, much affected.

"Has he made his will?" he whispered to the Doctor, "so much property and no heirs: he could do so much good with it. Had not you better send for a lawyer?"

The Doctor regarded, for a moment, the fair complexion, curved nose, warm, full lips, and rounded chin of the young minister; and then answered, in a low voice,

"You are a minister. It is your duty not altogether to preach eloquent sermons, and show a pair of delicate hands from the summit of a marble pulpit. It is your duty to administer comfort by the dying-bed, where humbug is stripped of its mark, and death is 'the only reality'. Do your duty, sir. Save this man's soul."

"Yes, save my soul," cried Somers, who heard the last words of the Doctor, "I don't want the offices of the church; I don't want prayers. I want comfort, comfort; now." He paused, and then reaching forth his hand, said in a low voice, half broken by a burst of horrible laughter, "There's the way I've got to travel. Now tell me, minister, do you really believe that there is anything there? When we die, we die, don't we? Sleep and rot, rot and sleep, don't we?"

Herman, who was an Atheist at heart, though he had never confessed the truth even to himself—Herman, who was a minister for the sake of a large salary, fine carriage, and splendid house—Herman, who was, in fact, an intellectual voluptuary, devoting life and soul to the gratification of one appetite, which had, with him, become a monomania—Herman, now, for the first moment in his life, was conscious of a something beyond the grave; conscious that this religion of Christ, the Master, which he used as a trade, was something more than a trade; was a fact, a reality, at once a hope and a judgment.

And the Rev. Herman Barnhurst felt one throe of remorse, and shuddered. Vailing his fair face in his delicate hands, he gave himself up to one moment of terrible reflection.

"He is failing fast," whispered the Doctor; "you had better say a word of hope to him."

"Yes, the camel is going through the eye of the needle," cried Somers, with a burst of shrill laughter. "Minister, did you ever see a camel go through the eye of a needle? Oh! you fellows preach such soft and velvety sermons to us,—but you never say a word about the camel—never a word about the camel. You see us buy and sell,—you see us hard landlords, careful business men,—you see us making money day after day, and year after year, at the cost of human life and human blood,—and you never say a word about the camel. Never! never! Why we keep such fellows as you, for our use: for every thousand that we make in trade, we give you a good discount, in the way of salary, and so as we go along, we keep a debit and credit account with what you call Providence. Now rub out my sins, will you? I've paid you for it, I believe!"

"Poor friend! He is delirious!" ejaculated Herman Barnhurst.

The boy Gulian, (unperceived by the doctor,) brought a golden-clasped Bible, and laid it on the minister's knees. Then looking with a shudder at the livid face of the merchant prince, he shrank back into the shadows, first whispering to the minister—"Read to him from this book."

Somers, with his glassy eye, caught a glimpse of the book, as in its splendid binding, it rested on the minister's knees—

"Pooh! pooh! you needn't read. Because if that book is true, why then I've made a bad investment of my life. I never deceived myself. I always looked upon this thing you call religion as a branch of trade—a cloak—a trap. But now I want you to tell me one thing, (and I've paid enough money to have a decent answer): Do you really believe that there is anything after this life? Speak, minister! Don't we go to sleep and rot,—and isn't that all?"

Herman did not answer.

But the voice of the boy Gulian, who was kneeling in the shadows of the death-chamber, broke through the stillness—

"There is something beyond the grave. There is a God! There is a heaven and a hell. There is a hope for the repentant, and there is a judgment for the impenitent." There was something almost supernatural in the tones of the boy's voice, breaking so slowly and distinctly upon the profound stillness.

The spectators started at the sound; and as for the dying man, he picked at his clothing and at the coverlet with his long fingers, now chilling fast with the cold of death—and muttered incoherent sounds, without sense or meaning of any kind.

"His face has a horrible look!" ejaculated the Colonel; who was half hidden among the curtains of the bed.

"He is going fast," said the Doctor, looking at his watch. "In five minutes all will be over,—"

"And you said, I believe, that he had not made his will?"

It was Herman who spoke. The sensation of remorse had been succeeded by his accustomed tone of feeling. His face was impressed with the profound selfishness which impelled his words. "He had better make his will. Without heirs, he can leave his fortune to the church,—"

"For shame! for shame!" cried the Doctor.

"A little too greedy, my good friend," the Colonel, at his back, remarked. "Allow me to remark, that your conduct manifests too much of the Levite, and too little of the gentleman."

Herman bit his lip, and was silent

After this, there was no word spoken for a long time.

The spectators watched in silence the struggles of the dying man.

How he died!—I shudder but to write it; and would not write it, were I not convinced that atheism in the church is the grand cause of one half of the crimes and evils that afflict the world.

The death-bed of the atheist church-member, with the atheist minister sitting by the bed, was a horrible scene.

I see that picture, now:—

A vast room, furnished with all the incidents of wealth, lofty ceiling, walls adorned with pictures, and carpet that was woven in human blood. A single lamp on the table near the bed, breaks the gloom. The curtains of that bed are of satin, the pillow is of down, the coverlet is spotless as the snow; and there a long slender frame, and a face with the seal of sixty years of life upon it, attract the gaze of silent spectators.

The doctor—his face shaded by the wide rim of his hat, sits by the bed, watch in hand.

Behind him appears the handsome face of Colonel Tarleton—the man of the world, whose form is shrouded in the curtains.

A little apart, kneels the boy, Gulian, whose beautiful face is stamped with awe and bathed in tears.

And near the head of the bed, seated on a chair, which touches the pillow upon which rests the head of the dying—behold the tall form and aquiline face of the minister, who listens to the moans of death, and subdues his conscience into an expression of calm serenity.

The dying man is seized with a spasm, which throws his limbs into horrible contortions. He writhes, and struggles, with hands and feet, as though wrestling with a murderer: he utters horrible cries. At length, raising himself in a sitting posture, he projects his livid face into the light; he reaches forth his arm, and grasps the minister by the wrist,—the minister utters an involuntary cry of pain,—for that grasp is like the pressure of an iron vice.

"Not a word about the camel,—hey, minister?"

That was the last word of Evelyn Somers, Sen., the merchant prince.

There, projecting from the bed-curtains his livid face,—there, with features distorted and eyes rolling, the last glance upon the evidences of wealth, which filled the chamber,—there, even as he clasped the minister by the wrist, he gasped his last breath, and was a dead man.

It was with an effort that Herman Barnhurst disengaged his wrist from the gripe of the dead man's hand. As he tore the hand away, a golden eagle fell from it, and sparkled in the light, as it fell. The rich man couldn't take it with him, to the place where he was going,—not even one piece of gold.

The Rev. Herman Barnhurst rose and left the room without once looking back.

The doctor, also, rose and straightened the dead man's limbs, and closed his eyes. This done, he drew his broad-brimmed hat over his brow, and left the room without a word—yes, he spoke four words, as he left the place: "One out of seven!" he said.

The Colonel emerged from the curtains; he was ashy pale, and he tottered as he walked. This time his agitation was not a sham. Once he looked back upon the dead man's face, and then directed his steps to the door.

"Remember, Gulian," he whispered as he passed the kneeling boy: "to-morrow I will see you."

Gulian, still on his knees in the center of the apartment, prayed God to be merciful to the dead,—to the dead son, whose corpse lay in the room above, and to the dead father, whose body was stretched before his eyes.

Tarleton paused for a moment on the threshold, with his hand upon the knob of the door—

"If Cornelius Berman were alive, he would inherit this immense estate!" muttered the Colonel. "As it is, here is a palace with two dead bodies in it, and no heir to inherit the wealth of the corpse which only half an hour ago was the owner of half a million dollars. But it is no time to meditate. There's work for me at the Temple."

Turning from that stately mansion, in which father and son lay dead, we will follow the steps of Rev. Herman Barnhurst.

---

[CHAPTER XIII.]

THE REVEREND VOLUPTUARIES.

As the Rev. Herman Barnhurst passed from the hall-door of the palace of the merchant prince, and descended the marble steps, his thoughts were by no means of a pleasant character. The image of Alice, for the moment forgotten, the thoughts of Herman were occupied with the scene which he had just witnessed,—the hopeless death-bed of the merchant prince.

"The fool!" muttered Herman, drawing his cloak around him, and pulling his hat over his brows, "The miserable fool! To die without making a will, when he has no heirs and the church has done so much for him. Why (in his own phrase) it has been capital to him, in the way of reputation; he has grown rich by that reputation; and now he dies, leaving the church and her ministers,—not a single copper, not a single copper."

It was too early for Herman to return to his home,—so he thought,—therefore, he directed his steps toward Broadway, resolving, in spite of the late hour of the night, to pay a visit to one of his most intimate friends.

But, as he left the palace of the merchant prince, a man wrapped also in a cloak, and with a cap over his eyes, rose from the shadows behind the marble steps, and walked with an almost noiseless pace in the footsteps of the young clergyman.

This man had seen Herman enter the house of the merchant prince. Standing himself in the darkness behind the steps, he had waited patiently until Herman again appeared. In fact, he had followed the steps of the clergyman for at least three hours previous to the moment when he came to the residence of Evelyn Somers, Sr.; followed him from street to street, from house to house, walking fast or slow, as Herman quickened or moderated his pace; stopping when Herman stopped; and thus, for three long hours, he had dogged the steps of the clergyman with a patience and perseverance, that must certainly have been the result of some powerful motive.

And now, as the Rev. Herman Barnhurst left the house where the merchant prince lay dead, the man in cap and cloak, quietly resumed his march, like a veteran at the tap of the drum.

At the moment when Herman reached a dark point of the street near Broadway, the man stole noiselessly to his side and tapped him on the shoulder.

Herman turned with an ejaculation,—half fear, half wonder. The street was dark and deserted; the lights of Broadway shone two hundred yards ahead. Herman, at a glance, saw that himself and the man were the only persons visible.

"It's a thief," he thought,—and then, said aloud, in his sweetest voice: "What do you want, my friend?"

"The twenty-fifth of December is near," said the man, in a slow and significant voice: "I have important information to communicate to you, in relation to the Van Huyden estate."

Herman was, of course, interested in the great estate, as one of the seven; but he had a deeper interest in it, than the reader,—at present, can imagine. The words of the man, therefore, agitated him deeply.

"Who are you?" he asked.

"That I will tell you, when you have taken me to a place, where we can converse freely together."

Herman hesitated.

"Well, as you will," said the man—"It concerns you as much as it does me. You are afraid to grant me an interview. Good night—"

Thus speaking, he carelessly turned away.

Now Herman was afraid of the man, but there were other Men of whom he was more afraid. So balancing one fear against another, he came to this conclusion, that the man might communicate something, which would save him from the other Men, and so he called the stranger back.

"Why this concealment?" he asked.

"You will confess, after we have talked together, that I have good reasons for this concealment," was the answer of the man.

"Come, then, with me," said Herman, "I will not take you to my own rooms, but I will take you to the rooms of a friend. He is out of town and we can converse at our ease."

He led the way toward the room of the Rev. Dr. Bulgin, whom the profane sometimes called Bulgine, which, as the learned know, is good Ethiopian for Steam Engine. This seemed to imply that the Rev. Dr. was a perfect Locomotive in his way.

"My friend Bulgin," said Herman, as they arrived in front of a massive four story building, on a cross street, not more than a quarter of a mile from the head of Broadway, "occupies the entire upper floor of this house, as a study. There he secludes himself while engaged in the composition of his more elaborate works. He has a body servant and a maid servant to wait upon him; and a parlor down stairs, for the reception of his visitors; but he has no communication with the other part of the house. In fact, he never sees the occupants of the boarding-house beneath his study. He rents his rooms of the lady who keeps the boarding-house,—Mrs. Smelgin,—who supplies his meals. Thus, he has the upper part of the house all to himself; and as I have a key to his rooms, we can go up there and talk at our ease."

"But, is not Dr. Bulgin married?" asked the man.

"He is. But his lady, on account of her health (she cannot bear the noise of the city), is forced to reside in the country with her father."

"Ah!" said the man.

Herman opened the front door with a night key, and led the way along a hall and up three ranges of stairs, until he came to a door. This door he opened with another key, and followed by the man, he entered Dr. Bulgin's study. He then locked the door, and they found themselves enveloped in Egyptian darkness.

"This may be Dr. Bulgin's study, but it strikes me, a little light would not do it much harm."

"Wait a moment," said Barnhurst,—"I'll light the lamp." And presently, by the aid of matches, he lighted a lamp which stood on a table of variegated marble. A globular shade of an exquisite pattern tempered the rays of the lamp, and filled the place with a light that was eminently soft and luxurious.

"Be seated," said Barnhurst, but the stranger remained standing, with his cloak wound about him and his cap drawn over his brows. He was evidently examining the details of the study with an attentive,—may be—an astonished gaze.

Dr. Bulgin's study was worthy of examination.

It was composed of the upper floor of Mrs. Smelgin's boarding-house, and was, therefore, a vast room, its depth and breadth corresponding to the depth and breadth of the house.

It was, at least, thirty yards in length and twenty in breadth, and the ceiling was of corresponding height. Four huge windows faced the east, and four the west.

Thus, vast and roomy, the apartment was furnished in a style which might well excite the attentive gaze of the stranger.

In the center of the southern wall, stood the bookcase, an elegant fabric of rosewood, surmounted by richly-carved work, and crowned with an alabaster bust of Leo the Tenth; the voluptuous Pope who drank his wine, while poor Martin Luther was overturning the world.

The shelves of this bookcase were stored with the choicest books of five languages; some glittering in splendid binding, and others looking ancient and venerable in their faded covers. There were the most recondite works in English, French, German, Spanish; and there were also the most popular works in as many languages. Theology, metaphysics, mathematics, geometry, poetry, the drama, history, fact, fiction,—all were there, and of all manner of shapes, styles and ages. It was a very Noah's Ark of literature, into which seemed to have been admitted one specimen, at least, of every book in the universe.

On the right of the bookcase was a sofa that made you sleepy just to look at it; it was so roomy, and its red-velvet cushioning looked so soft and tempting. This sofa was framed in rosewood, with little rosewood cupids wreathed around its legs.

And on the left of the bookcase was another sofa of a richer style, and of a more sleep-impelling exterior.

Above each sofa hung a picture, concealed by a thick curtain.

Along the northern wall of the study were disposed a sofa as magnificent as the others, and a series of marble pedestals and red-velvet arm-chairs. Every pedestal was crowned by an alabaster vase or statue of white marble. There were Eve, Apollo, Canova's Venus, and the Three Graces,—all exquisite originals or exquisite copies, in snowy marble.

The arm-chairs were arm-chairs indeed. Red-velvet cushions and high backs and great broad arms; they were the idea of a happy brain, impregnated with belief in Sancho's "Blessed be the man that invented sleep."

And this northern wall was hung with pictures in massive frames, richly gilt; the frames were exposed, but the pictures were vailed.

In the intervals between the western windows were pedestals crowned with vases, and mosaic tables loaded with objects of virtu: exquisite trifles of all sorts, gleaned from the Old World.

And in the intervals between the eastern windows were recesses, covered with hangings of pale crimson. What is concealed in those recesses, doth not yet appear. Both eastern and western windows were curtained with folds of intermingled white and damask, floating luxuriantly from the ceiling to the floor.

The floor was covered with an Axminster carpet of the richest dyes.

Gilt mouldings ran around the ceiling, and in the center thereof, was a cupid, encircled by a huge wreath of roses, and reposing on a day-break cloud.

The table, of variegated marble, which stood in the center of the study, was surrounded by three arm-chairs of the same style as those which lined the wall. It was circular in form, and upon it, appeared an elegant alabaster inkstand, gold pens with pearl handles, gilt-edged paper touched with perfume, a few choice books, and an exquisite "Venus in the Shell," done in alabaster. One of these books was a modern edition of the Golden Ass of Apuleius; and the other was a choice translation of Rabelais.

Altogether, the Rev. Dr. Bulgin's room was one of those rooms worthy of a place in history; and which, may be, could tell strange histories, were its chairs and tables gifted with the power of speech.

"And this is the study of the Rev. Dr. Bulgin!" ejaculated the man.

"It is," replied Herman, flinging himself into an arm-chair; "here he composes his most elaborate theological works."

"Why is his library crowned with that bust of Leo the Tenth, the Atheist and Sensualist?"

"He is writing a work on the age of Luther," replied Herman.

"Oh!" responded the man.

"And this!" the man drew the vail and bore one of the pictures to the light: "and this! what does it mean?"

"You are inquisitive, sir," replied Herman, somewhat confounded by the sudden disclosure of this singular picture, "why, in fact, Dr. Bulgin is writing a tract against immoral pictures."

"A-h!" responded the man, and picked from the table the Golden Ass of Apuleius, illustrated with plates, "what does this do here? Are these plates to be understood in a theological sense?"

"Dr. Bulgin is getting up a treatise upon the subject of immoral literature. He has that book as an example."

"And when he writes a treatise on the infernal regions, he'd send there for a piece of the brimstone as an example?"

"You are profane," said Herman, tartly; "let me hope that you will proceed to business."

The man placed his cloak on a chair, and his cap on the table. Then seating himself opposite the minister, he gazed steadily in his face. Herman grew red in the face, and felt as though he had suddenly been plunged into an oven.

"Your name is,—is,"—he hesitated.

"Don't you know me?" said the man.

"I,—I,—why,—I,—let me see."

Herman shaded his eyes with his hand, and steadily perused the face of the stranger, as though, in the effort, to recognize him.

He was a young man of a muscular frame, clad in a single-breasted blue coat, which was buttoned over a broad chest. He was of the medium height. His forehead was broad; his eyes clear gray; his lips wide and firm; his nose inclining to the aquiline; his chin round and solid. The general expression of his features was that of straightforwardness and energy of character. There was the freshness and the warmth of youth upon his face, and his forehead was stamped with the ideality of genius. As he wore his brown hair in short, thick curls, it marked the outline of his head, and threw his forehead distinctly into view.

"You are,—you are,—where did I see you?" hesitated Herman.

"I am Arthur Dermoyne," was the reply, in an even, but emphatic voice.

Then there was an embarrassing pause.

"Where have I met you?" said Herman, as if in the painful effort to recollect.

"At the house of Mr. Burney, in the city of Philadelphia," was the answer.

"Ah! now I remember!" ejaculated Herman; "Poor, poor Mr. Burney! You have heard of the sad accident which took place last night, ah—ah—?"

Herman buried his face in his hands, and seemed profoundly affected.

"I saw his mangled body at the house half way between New York and Philadelphia, only a few hours ago," the young man's voice was cold and stern, "and now I am in New York, endeavoring to find the scoundrel who abducted his only daughter."

Herman looked at cupid in the ceiling and pretended to brush a hair from his nose—

"Ah, I remember, poor Mr. Burney told me last night, that his child had been abducted. Yes,—" Herman looked at the hair, and held it between his eyes and the light, "he told me about it just before the accident occurred. Poor girl! Poor girl! Oh, by-the-bye," turning suddenly in his arm-chair, but without looking into the face of Dermoyne, "you take an interest in the Burney family. Are you a relative?"

"I have visited the house of Mr. Burney, from time to time, and have seen Alice, his only daughter. You may think me romantic, but to see that girl, so pure, so innocent, so beautiful, was to love her. I will confess that had it not been for a disparity of fortune, and a difference in regard to religious views, between her father and myself, I would have been most happy to have made her my wife."

The tone of the young man was somewhat agitated; he was endeavoring to suppress his emotions.

"Courage! He does not know," muttered Herman to himself, and then assuming a calm look, he continued, aloud: "And she would have made you a noble wife. By-the-bye, you spoke of your profession. A merchant, I suppose?"

"No, sir."

"A lawyer?"

"No, sir."

"A medical gentleman?"

"No, sir."

"You are then—"

"A shoemaker."

"A what," ejaculated Herman, jumping from his chair.

"A shoemaker," repeated Arthur Dermoyne. "I gain my bread by the work of my hands, and by the hardest of all kinds of work. I am not only a mechanic, but a shoemaker."

Herman could not repress a burst of laughter.

"Excuse me, but, ha, ha, ha! You are a shoemaker? And you visited the house of the wealthy Burney, and aspired to his daughter's hand? You will excuse me, ha, ha, ha!—but it is so very odd."

Dermoyne's forehead grew dark.

"Yes, I am a shoemaker. I earn my bread by the work of my hands. But before you despise me, you will hear why I am a shoemaker. As an orphaned child, without father or mother, there was no other career before me, than the pauperism of the outcast or the slavery of an apprentice. I chose the latter. The overseers of the poor bound me out to a trade. I grew up without hope, education, or home. In the day-time I worked at an occupation which is work without exercise, and which continued ten years, at ten hours a day, will destroy the constitution of the strongest man. From this hopeless apprenticeship, I passed into the life of a journeyman, and knew what it was to battle with the world for myself. How I worked, starved and worked, matters not, for we folks are born for that kind of thing. But as I sat upon my work-bench, listening to a book which was read by one of my own brother workmen, I became aware that I was not only poor, but ignorant; that my body was not only enslaved, but also my soul.—Therefore, I taught myself to read; to write; and for three years I have devoted five hours of every night to study."

"And are still a shoemaker?" Herman's smooth face was full of quiet scorn and laughter.

"I am still a shoemaker—a workman at the bench—because I cannot, in conscience, enter one of the professions called learned.—I cannot separate myself from that nine-tenths of the human family, who seem to have been only born to work and die—die in mind, as well as body—in order to supply the idle tenth with superfluities. Oh! sir, you, who are so learned and eloquent, could you but read the thoughts which enter the heart of the poor shoemaker, who, sitting at his work-bench, in a cramped position, is forced sometimes to reflect upon his fate!—He beholds the lawyer, with a conscience distinct from that given to him by God; a conscience that makes him believe that it is right to grow rich by the tricks and frauds of law. He beholds the doctor, also with the conscience of his class, sending human beings to death by system, and filling graveyards by the exact rule of the schools. He beholds the minister, too often also with but the conscience of a class, preaching the thoughts of those who do not work, and failing to give utterance to the agonies of those who do work—who do all the labor, and suffer all the misery in the world. And these classes are respected; honored. They are the true noblemen! Their respectability is shared by the merchant, who grows rich by distributing the products of labor. But as for the shoemaker—nay, the workman, of whatever trade—whose labor produces all the physical wealth of the world—who works all life long, and only rests when his head is in the cold grave,—what of him? He is a serf, a slave, a Pariah. On the stage no joke is so piquant as the one which is leveled at the 'tailor,' or the 'cobbler;' in literature, the attempt of an unknown to elevate himself, is matter for a brutal laugh; and even grave men like you, when addressed by a man who, like myself, confesses that he is a—shoemaker! you burst into laughter, as though the master you profess to serve, was not himself, one day, a workman at the carpenter's bench."

"These words are of the French school." Herman gave the word "French" a withering accent.

"Did the French school produce the New Testament?"

Herman did not answer, but fixed his glance upon cupid in the ceiling.

"But you are educated—why not devote yourself to one of the professions?" and Herman turned his eyes from cupid in the ceiling, to Venus in the Shell.

Dermoyne's face gleamed with a calm seriousness, a deep enthusiasm, which imparted a new life to every lineament.

"Because I do not wish to separate myself from the largest portion of humanity. No, no,—had I the intellect of a Shakspeare, or the religion of a St. Paul, I would not wish to separate myself from the greater portion of God's family—those who are born, who work, who die. No, no! I am waiting—I am waiting!"

"Waiting?" echoed Herman.

"Maybe the day will come, when, gifted with wealth, I can enter the workshops of Philadelphia, and say to the workmen, 'Come, brothers. Here is capital. Let us go to the west. Let us find a spot of God's earth unpolluted by white or black slavery. Let us build a community where every man shall work with his hands, and where every man will also have the opportunity to cultivate his mind—to work with his brain.—There every one will have a place to work, and every one will receive the fruits of his work. And there,—oh, my God!—there will we, without priest, or monopolist, or slaveholder, establish in the midst of a band of brothers, the worship of that Christ who was himself a workman, even as he is now, the workman's God.'"

Arthur Dermoyne had started from his chair; his hands were clasped; his gray eyes were filled with tears.

"French ideas—French ideas," cried Herman. "You have been reading French books, young man!"

Arthur looked at the clergyman, and said quietly:

"These ideas were held by the German race who settled in Pennsylvania, in the time of William Penn. Driven, from Germany by the hands of Protestant priests, they brought with them to the New World, the 'French ideas' of the New Testament."

"The Germans who settled Pennsylvania—a stupid race," observed Herman, in calm derision; "Look at some of their descendants."

"The Germans of the present day—or, to speak more distinctly,—the Pennsylvania Germans, descendants of the old stock, who came over about the time of Penn, are a conquered race!—"

"A conquered race?" echoed Herman.

"Conquered by the English language," continued Dermoyne. "As a mass, they are not well instructed either in English or in German, and therefore have no chance to develop, to its fullest extent, the stamina of their race. They know but little of the real history of their ancestors, who first brought to Pennsylvania the great truth, that God is not a God of hatred, pleased with blood, but a God of love, whose great law is the progress of all his children,—that is, the entire family of man, both here and hereafter. And the Pennsylvanian Germans are the scoff and sneer of Yankee swindler and southern braggart; but the day will come, when the descendants of that race will rise to their destiny, and even as the farms of Pennsylvania now show their physical progress, so will the entire American continent bear witness to their intellectual power. They are of the race of Luther, of Goethe, and of Schiller,—hard to kill,—the men who can work, and the men whose work will make a people strong, a nation great and noble."

"You are of this race?" asked Herman, pulling his cloak gently with his delicate hand.

"My father, (I am told, for he died when I was a child,) was a wealthy farmer, whose wealth was swallowed up by an unjust lawsuit and a fraudulent bank. My grandfather was a wheelwright; my great-grandfather a cobbler; my great-great-grandfather a carpenter; and his father, was a tiller of the field. So you see, I am nobly descended," and a smile crossed the lips of Dermoyne. "Not a single idler or vagabond in our family,—all workers, like their Savior,—all men who eat the bread of honest labor. Ah! I forgot;" he passed his hand over his forehead—"there was a count in our family. This, I confess, is a blot upon us; but when you remember that he forsook his countship in Germany, to become a tiller of the fields in Pennsylvania—about the year 1680—you will look over the fault of his title."

Herman burst into a fit of pleasant laughter.

"You have odd ideas of nobility!" he ejaculated.

"Odd as the New Testament," said Dermoyne; "and as old. By-the-bye, this count in our family, was related to the Van Huyden family. (You, also, are one of the seven?—Yes, your name is among the others.) Ah! should the 25th of December give into my hands but a few thousand dollars, I will try and show the world how workmen, united for the common good, can live and work together."

"A few thousands!" laughed Herman, displaying himself at full length on the capacious chair; "why, in case the Seven receive the estate at all, they will divide among them some twenty, perhaps, forty millions of dollars!"

"Forty millions of dollars!" Dermoyne was thunderstruck. He folded his arms, and gazed upon vacancy with fixed eyes. "My God! what might not be done with forty millions!"—he paused and stretched forth his hand, as though a vision of the future dawned upon him.

"Did Mr. Burney—poor friend!—know that you were a—shoemaker?" Once more Herman shaded his eyes with his hand, and regarded the young man with a pleasant smile.

"He did not," answered Dermoyne. "I became acquainted with him,—it matters not how,—and visited his house, where, more than once, I have conversed with his daughter Alice. No, Mr. Burney did me wrong; for while I was a shoemaker, he persisted, (in ignorance of my character,) in thinking me—a gentleman! A gentleman—an idle vagabond, whose gentility is supported by the labor of honest men.—Faugh!"

"Well, I must confess," Herman said with a wave of the hand and a patronizing tone, "that from your manner, gestures, accent, et cetera, I have always taken you for an educated gentleman. But your principles are decidedly ungenteel,—allow me the remark."

Herman began to feel much more at ease. "He does not dream I have any share in the abduction of Alice!" This thought was comfort and repose to his mind.

But Arthur Dermoyne changed the tone of this pleasant dream by a single question: "Do you,—" he fixed his eyes sternly upon the young minister: "Do you know anything of the retreat of Alice Burney?"

"Do I know anything of the retreat—of—Alice—Burney!" he echoed: "What a question to ask a man of my cloth!"

Dermoyne placed his hand within the breast of his coat, and drew forth ten gold pieces, which he held in the light, in the palm of his hand.

"Every coin gained by days and nights of work—hard work," he said. "It has taken me three years to save that sum. When I thought of Alice as a wife, this little hoard, (such was my fancy,) might enable me to furnish a good home. Do you understand me, sir? You who receive five thousand dollars per year for preaching the gospel of your church, can you comprehend how precious is this fortune of one hundred dollars, to a poor workman, who earns his bread by sitting in a cramped position, fourteen hours a day, making shoes?"

"Well, what have I to do with this money?"

"You comprehend that these ten gold pieces are as much to me, as a ten hundred would be to you? These gold pieces will buy books which I earnestly desire; they will help me to relieve a brother workman who happens to be poorer than myself; they will help me to go to the far west, where there is land and home for all. Well, this fortune, I have dedicated to one purpose: To support me, here in New York, on bread and water, until I can discover the hiding-place of Alice Burney, and meet her seducer face to face. How long do you think my gold will furnish me with bread, while I devote day and night to this purpose?"

The iron resolution of the young man's face, made the clergyman feel afraid.

"You will remark," he exclaimed, stretching himself in his chair, and contemplating the whiteness of his nails, "that a witness of our conversation might infer, from the tenor of your discourse, that you have an idea—an idea—" he hesitated, "that I have something to do with the abduction of this young lady. Doubtless you do not mean to convey this impression, and therefore I will thank you to correct the tone of your remarks."

Herman was quite lordly.

"Then you know nothing of the retreat of Alice Burney?"

"The question is an insult—"

"Nothing of her seducer?"

"I repeat it; the question is an insult," and Herman started up in his chair, with flashing eyes and corrugated brow.

"Will you swear that you are ignorant of her retreat, and of the name of her seducer?" coolly continued Dermoyne.

"Men of my cloth do not swear," as coolly returned Herman.

"Allow me to congratulate you upon your ignorance," replied Dermoyne, "for—for;—will you have the goodness to observe me for a moment?"

While Herman watched him with a wondering eye, the young man replaced the gold pieces in his pocket, and rising from his chair, surveyed the room with an attentive gaze. His eye rested at length upon an iron candlestick, which stood upon a shelf of the library; it was evidently out of place in that luxurious room; and had been left there through the forgetfulness of the servant who took care of the Rev. Dr. Bulgin's study. Dermoyne took this candlestick from the shelf, and then returned to the light.

"Do you see this? It is about six inches long and one inch in diameter. Would it not take a strong man to break that in twain with both hands?"

Herman took the candlestick; examined it attentively: "It would take a Sampson," he said.

"Now look at my hand." Dermoyne extended a hand which, hardened by labor in the palm, was not so large as it was muscular and bony.

"What have I to do with your hand?" exclaimed Herman, in evident disgust.

"Watch me," said Dermoyne; and, resting the candlestick on his right hand, he closed his fingers, and pressed his thumb against it. After an instant he opened his hand again. The iron candlestick was bent nearly double. Dermoyne had accomplished this feat without the appearance of exertion.

"Why, you are a very Hercules!" ejaculated Herman,—"and yet, you are not above the medium height. You do not look like a strong man."

"God has invested me with almost superhuman strength," replied Dermoyne, as he stood erect before the minister, resting one hand upon the table: "had it not been for that, hard work would have killed me long ago. I can lift with one hand, a weight, which would task the strength of almost any two men but to budge; I can strike a blow, which, properly planted, would fell an ox; I can—"

"You needn't dilate," interrupted Herman, "the study of the Rev. Dr. Bulgin is not exactly the place for gymnastic experiments—"

"Well, you'll see my drift directly," calmly continued Dermoyne—"I have never dared to use this strength, save in the way of work or occasional exercise. I regard it as a kind of trust, given to me by Providence for a good purpose."

"What purpose, pray?" said Herman, opening his eyes.

"To punish those criminals whom the law does not punish; to protect those victims it does not protect," answered Dermoyne, steadily. "Now, for instance, were I to encounter the seducer of Alice Burney,—were I to stand face to face with him, as I do with you,—were I to place my thumb upon his right temple and my fingers upon his left temple,—thus—"

"You,—you,—" gasped the minister, who suddenly felt the hand of Arthur Dermoyne upon his forehead; the thumb pressed gently upon the right temple and the fingers upon his left—"you,—would,—what?"

"I would, quietly, without a word, crush his skull as you might crush an egg-shell," slowly answered Dermoyne.

He took his hand away. The face of Herman was white as a sheet. He shook in his velvet chair. For a moment he could not speak.

"I, therefore, congratulate you, that you know nothing of the matter," calmly continued Dermoyne, not seeming to notice the fright of the minister; "for, with a villain like this unknown seducer before me, I would lose all control over myself, and (ere I was aware of it) I would have wiped him out of existence. This would be murder, you are about to remark! So it would. But, is not this seducer a murderer in a three fold sense? First, he has murdered the chastity of this poor girl; and second, in the attempt to get rid of the proof of his guilt, he may (who knows?) murder her body and the body of her unborn child."

The room was still as the grave, as Dermoyne concluded the last sentence.

Barnhurst sank back in the chair, helpless as a child. For a moment his self-possession deserted him. His guilt was stamped upon his face.

"Here you can count three murders," continued Dermoyne, not seeming to notice the dismay of the minister,—"the murder of a woman's purity,—the murder of her body—the murder of her babe. Now, I don't pretend to say, that it would be right for me to kill the three fold murderer, but I do say, that, were I to meet him, and know his guilt, that my blood would boil,—my eyes would grow dim,—my hand would be extended, and in an instant, would hold his mangled skull, between the thumb and fingers."

Herman's arms dropped helplessly by his side. He was extended in the capacious chair, a vivid picture of helpless fright.

Dermoyne, whose broad chest and bold features, caught on one side the glow of the light, as he stood erect by the table, gazed upon the minister with a calm look, and continued—

"So, you see, I congratulate you, that you know nothing of the matter—"

"Oh, I am shocked, shocked," and Herman made out to cover his face with his hands, "I am shocked, at the vivid, viv-id," he stammered,—"vivid picture which you have drawn of the crimes of this seducer."

Dermoyne sank quietly into the chair on the opposite side of the table, and shaded his eyes with his right hand. He also was thinking.

For a long pause, there was profound stillness. The lamp on the table shed its luxurious light over the vast room, peopled as it was, with images of wealth, ease and voluptuousness, and upon the figures of these men, seated opposite to each other, and each with his eyes shaded by his hand.

At length, Herman recovering a portion of his self-possession, exclaimed without raising his hands from his face:

"I trust you will end this interview at once. You have given my nerves a severe shock. To-morrow,—to-morrow,—I will talk to you about the Van Huyden estate, about which, I presume, you asked this interview."

Dermoyne raised his hand to his forehead,—somewhat after the manner of Herman,—and surveyed the clergyman with a keen, searching gaze. Gradually a smile, so faint as to be scarcely perceptible, stole over his features.

Herman felt the force of that gaze and his smooth complexion turned from deathly white to scarlet, and from scarlet to deathly white again.

"What next?" he muttered to himself, "does he know? Had I better call for assistance?"

Dermoyne, quietly left his seat, and advancing until he confronted Herman, placed a small piece of paper on the table, and held it firmly under his thumb, so that the words written upon it, were legible in the lamp-light.

"Read that," he said, and his flashing eye was fixed on Barnhurst's face.

Half wondering, half stupefied, Barnhurst bent forward and read:—

Dec. 24, 1844.

Madam:—Your patient will come to-night.

Herman Barnhurst.

As he read, Herman looked like a man who has received his death-warrant. The very effort,—and it was a mortal one,—which he made to control himself, only gave a stronger agitation to his quivering lineaments.

"Can you tell where I found this?" whispered Dermoyne. "Near the mangled body of the father of Alice,—at sunset, but a few hours ago, and at the house half-way between New York and Philadelphia,—there among the ashes, and half consumed by fire, I discovered this precious document. Did you drop this paper from your pocket, my friend, when you sought shelter in the house, after the accident on the railroad, last night?"

Herman had not the power to reply. His eyes were riveted by the half-burned fragment.

"What has the Rev. Herman Barnhurst, the clergyman, to do with Madam Resimer, the murderess of unborn children?" continued Dermoyne; "and the patient,—who is the patient? Is it Alice? This letter is dated the 24th, and to-morrow night, Alice will cross the threshold of that hell, where the Madam rules, as the presiding Devil!"

A gleam of hope shot across Herman's soul. "He does not know, that Alice is already in the care of Madam Resimer. Courage,—courage!"

"Have you no answer?" Dermoyne's eye gleamed with deadly light; still holding the paper, he advanced a step nearer to the clergyman.

"Yes, I have an answer!" exclaimed Herman, sinking back in the chair: "that letter is a forgery."

Dermoyne was astonished.

"You never wrote it?"

"Never,—never!" Herman raised his hands to Heaven,—"it is the work of some mortal enemy. Beside, were I guilty, is it reasonable to suppose, that I, a clergyman, would sign my own name to a letter addressed to Madam Resimer?"

Dermoyne was puzzled; he glanced from the letter to Barnhurst's face, and a look of doubt clouded his features.

"A forgery?" he asked.

"An infamous forgery!" cried Barnhurst, resuming his dignity. "Now, that you have wrung my very soul, by an accusation so utterly infamous, so thoroughly improbable, let me hope that you will—" he pointed to the door.

Dermoyne resumed his cap and cloak, first, carefully replacing the letter in his vest pocket.

"By to-morrow," he said, in a voice which rang low and distinct through the apartment, "by to-morrow, I will know the truth of this matter; and if I discover that this is, indeed, your letter,—if you have, indeed, dishonored poor Alice, and consigned herself and unborn babe, to the infernal mercies of Madam Resimer, why then,"—he moved toward the door, "then there will be one man the less, on the 25th of December."

He opened the door, and was gone ere his words had ceased to echo on the air.

His parting words rung in the very soul of the clergymen, as his footsteps died away on the stairs.

"What an abyss have I escaped!" ejaculated Herman, "exposure, disgrace and death!" He pressed his scented kerchief over his forehead, and wiped away the cold sweat which moistened it. "Fool! he little knows that Alice is already there. The Madam is a shrewd woman. Her rooms are dark, her doors secured by double bolts; her secrets are given to the keeping of the grave. This miserable idiot, this cobbler, cannot possibly gain admittance into her mansion? No, no, this thought is idle. And Alice, poor child, why can't I marry her? Her father's death will leave her in possession of a handsome fortune,—why can't I marry her?"

Too well he knew the only answer to this question.

"We are all but mortal; she may die!" and an expression of remarkable complacency came over his face. Joining his thumbs and fingers in front of his breast, he reflected deeply. "But if she survives?"

His brow became clouded, his lips compressed; all the vulture of his soul was written on his vulture-like countenance.

"If she survives!"

While the light disclosed his slender figure, centered in the scarlet cushions of the arm-chair, and fell upon his countenance, revealing the purpose which was written there, Herman still muttered between his set teeth, the question, "If she survives?" To him, it was a question of life and death.

But his meditations were interrupted by a burst of boisterous laughter.

"Why Barnhurst! you are grave as an owl. What's the matter, my dear?"

Herman looked up with a start, and a half-muttered ejaculation. The Rev. Dr. Bulgin stood before him, his cloak on his arm, and a cap in his hand.

"I thought you was out of town?" cried Herman.

"So I was; a convention of divines, speeches, resolutions, and so forth, you know. But now I'm in town, and,—such an adventure, my dear boy! I must tell you of it."

Before Bulgin tells his adventure, we must look at him. A man of thirty-five years, with broad shoulders, heavy chest and unwieldy limbs; a portly man, some would call him, dressed in black, of course, and with a white cravat about his neck, which was short and fat. Draggled masses of brownish hair stray, in uneven ends, about Bulgin's face and ears; that face is round and shiny,—its hue, a greasy florid,—its brow, broad and low; its eyes large, moist and oyster-like. In a word, the upper part of Bulgin's head indicates the man of intellect; the face, the eyes, mouth, nose and all, tell the story of a nature thoroughly animal,—bestial, would be a truer word.

That head and face were but too true in their indications.

Bulgin was, in intellect, something of a god; in real life; in the gratification of appetite; in habits, strengthened by the growth of years, he was a beast. It may seem a harsh word, but it is the only one that suits Bulgin's case. He was a beast. Not a quiet ox, cropping clover at his ease, nor yet a lordly bull, madly tossing his horns in the center of a grassy field,—of course, we mean nothing of the kind,—but a beast on two legs, gifted with a strong intellect and an immortal soul, and devoting intellect and soul to the full gratification of his beastly nature. He was, withal, a good-humored beast. He enjoyed a joke. His laugh was jovial; reminding you of goblets of wine and suppers of terrapin. His manner was off-hand, free and easy—out of the pulpit, of course; in the pulpit, no one so demure, so zealous and pathetic as the Rev. Dr. Bulgin.

He regarded his ministerial office as a piece of convenient clock-work, invented some years ago, for the purpose of supplying the masses with something to believe; and men like himself, with a good salary, a fine house, plenty to eat and drink, fair social position, and free opportunity for the gratification of every appetite.

His creed was a part of this clock-work. It was his living. Therefore, everything that he wrote or uttered, in regard to religion, was true to his creed; true, eloquent, and breathing the loftiest enthusiasm. To doubt his creed, was to doubt his living. Therefore, the Rev. Dr. Bulgin did not doubt his creed, but took it as he found it, and advocated it with all the energy of his intellectual nature.

As to any possible appreciation of the Bible, or of that Savior who, emerging from the shop of a carpenter, came to speak words of hope to all mankind, and, in especial, to that portion who bear all the slavery, and do all the work of the world, the Rev. Dr. Bulgin never troubled himself with thoughts like these; he was above and beyond them; the Bible and the Savior were, in his estimation, convenient parts of that convenient clock-work which afforded him the pleasant sum of five thousand dollars per year.

To look at the Rev. Dr. Bulgin; to see him stand there, with his sensual form and swinish face, you would not think that he was the author of one of the most spiritual works in the world, entitled "Our Communion with the Spirit."

To know the Rev. Dr. Bulgin,—to know him when, his stage drapery laid aside, he appeared the thing he was,—you could, by no means, imagine that he was the author of an excellent work on "Private Prayer."

And yet he was no hypocrite; not, at least, in the common sense of the word. He was an intellectual animal whose utmost hopes were bounded by the horizon of this world. Beyond this world there was nothing. He was an Atheist. Not an Atheist publishing a paper advocating Atheistic principles, but an Atheist in the pulpit, professing to preach the Gospel of Jesus Christ. You may shudder at the thought, but the Reverend Doctor Bulgin was such a man.

And just such men, in churches of all kinds,—Protestants and Catholics, Orthodox and Heterodox,—have these eighteen hundred years been preaching a clock-work Gospel, leaving unsaid, uncared for, the true Word of the Master—a Word which says, in one breath, temporal and spiritual prayers—a Word which enjoins the establishment of the kingdom of God, on earth, in the physical and intellectual welfare of the greatest portion of mankind.

Too well these Atheists know that were that Word once boldly uttered, their high pulpits and magnificent livings would vanish like cobwebs before the sweeper's broom.

How much evil have such Atheists accomplished in the course of eighteen hundred years?

It will do no harm to think upon this subject, just a little.

"Herman, my boy, I must tell you of my last adventure," said Bulgin, dropping into the seat which Dermoyne had lately occupied; "it will make your mouth water!" He smacked his lips and clapped his hands; the lips were oily, and the hands fat and dumpy. "But, first, you must tell me what's the matter with you? Anything wrong in your church?"

"That doesn't trouble me," responded Herman. "True, there is the trial of the Bishop, and the wrangling of these Low Church fellows, about our gowns and altars; our views of the sacrament, and our high notions of the priesthood. These Low Church people are actually Methodists. They would rob the church of all dignity, and turn the priest of the altar into the ranter of the conventicle,—"

"We are not troubled with bishops, nor apostolic successions," interrupted Bulgin: "High and Low Church don't trouble us.—Our deacons want a minister; they call him and pay him. Now, if our church admitted of a bishop, I think that—" he put his thumbs in the arm-holes of his vest, and surveyed his heavy limbs with great complacency, "that your humble servant would make a—"

"Bishop?" cried Herman, with a laugh.

"Ay, and a capital bishop, too, if all be true that these Low Church fellows say of the Bishop of your church. I am a man of feeling, eh, my boy?"

This was a home thrust. Notwithstanding his intimacy with Bulgin, Herman did not regard him as a real priest of the church, but only as the called teacher of a congregation. Therefore, he felt the allusion to his bishop the more heavily.

"You were speaking of an adventure?" suggested Herman, anxious to change the subject: "What about it?"

Bulgin flung back his head, and burst into a roar of laughter.

"I'm laughing at my adventure, not at you, my dear Herman. Just imagine my case. I have a patient on my hands, who is rich, crippled with a dozen diseases, and troubled in his mind on some doctrinal point. In the morning I visit the old gentleman, and after hearing afresh the list of his diseases, I soothe him on the doctrinal point.—Soothe him, and quote the Fathers, and fire him up with a word or two about the Pope. And in the afternoon—" he closed one eye, and looked at Herman in such a manner, that the latter could not avoid a burst of laughter, "in the afternoon, while the old man is asleep, I visit his wife,—young and handsome, and such a love of a woman—and soothe her mind on another doctrinal point. Sometimes my lessons are prolonged until evening, and—ha, ha!—I have my hands full, I assure you."

"You called there to-night, on your way home?" asked Herman, with a smile.

"Just to see if the old gentleman was better, and,—but wait a moment," he rose from his chair, and hurried into the shadows of the room, turned one of the recesses, between the western windows. There he remained, until Herman grew impatient.

"What are you doing," he exclaimed, and as he spoke, Bulgin returned toward the light, "what is this!" and his eyes opened with a wondering stare.

"I'm a cardinal; that is all. The dress of Leo the Tenth, before he became Pope. Don't you think I look the character?"

He was attired in a robe of scarlet velvet, which covered his unwieldy form from the neck to the feet, and enveloped his arms in its voluminous sleeves. His florid face appeared beneath the broad rim of a red hat, and upon his broad chest hung a golden chain, to which was appended a huge golden cross. The costume was of the richest texture, and gave something of a lordly appearance to the bulky form of the reverend doctor.

"I'm a cardinal," said Bulgin with a wink; "There is a nice party of us, who meet to-night, between twelve and one, to confer upon grave matters. Every one wears a mask and costume. Will you go with me? There is the robe of a Jesuit yonder, which will fit you to a hair."

Herman's eyes flashed, and he started from his chair.

"The wife of your old patient,"—he began.

"Goes as the cardinal's niece, you know! we didn't know the costume of a cardinal's niece, and so I told her to wear a dress-coat and pantaloons. Will you go?"

Herman's face glowed with the full force of his monomania.

"For wine and feasting, I care not," he cried, "but a scene where beautiful women—" he paused, and fixed his eyes on vacancy, while that singular monomania shone from his humid eyes, and fired his cheeks with a vivid glow. "Where are we to go?" he asked.

"To the Temple," said the Rev. Dr. Bulgin, with his finger on his light: "You remember the night when we were there?"

"Remember?" echoed the Rev. Herman Barnhurst, with an accent of inexpressible rapture: "Can I ever forget?" He strode hastily toward the recess. "Where is the Jesuit robe?"

But as he touched the curtain of the recess, he was palsied by a sudden thought.

"Ah, this cobbler, this Dermoyne! He will go to Madame Resimer's with my note in his hand, and pretend to come in my name. He will, at least, induce her to open the doors, and then force his way into her house. If he enters there, I am lost."

Turning to Bulgin, he flung his cloak around him, and took up his cap. "No, sir, I cannot go with you. Excuse me—I am in a great hurry."

He hurried to the door, and disappeared ere Bulgin could answer him with a word.

"Dermoyne has a half an hour's start of me," muttered Herman, as he disappeared, "I must be quick, or I am lost."

"That is cool!" soliloquized Bulgin: "some difficulty about a woman, I suppose: our young friend must be cautious: exposure in these matters is fatal."

Without bestowing another word upon his friend, the Rev. Dr. Bulgin, attired in the cardinal's hat and robe, sank in the arm-chair, and put his feet upon the table, and flung back his head, thus presenting one of the finest pictures of ecclesiastical ease, that ever gratified the eyes of mortal man.

He suffered himself to be seduced into the mazes of an enchanting reverie:

"Ah, that's my ideal of a man," he suffered his eye to rest upon the head of Leo the Tenth: "Without a particle of religion to trouble him, he took care of the spiritual destinies of the world, and at the same time enjoyed his palace, where the wine was of the choicest, and the women of the youngest and most beautiful. He was a gentleman. While poor Martin Luther was giving himself a great deal of trouble about this worthless world, Leo had a world of his own, within the Vatican, a world of wit, of wine and beauty. That's my ideal of an ecclesiastic. Religion, its machinery, and its terrors for the masses,—for ourselves," he glanced around his splendid room, "something like this, and five thousand a year."

And the good man shook with laughter.

"I must be going,"—he rose to his feet—"It's after twelve now, and before one, I must be at the Temple."

---

And while Barnhurst, Bulgin and Dermoyne go forth on their respective ways, let us—although the Temple is very near—gaze upon a scene, by no means lighted by festal lamps, or perfumed with voluptuous flowers. Let us descend into the subterranean world, sunken somewhere in the vicinity of Five Points and the Tombs.

---

[CHAPTER XIV.]

BELOW FIVE POINTS.

It is now the hour of twelve, midnight, on the 23d of December, 1844.

We are in the region of the Five Points, near the Tombs, whose sullen walls look still more ominous and gloomy in the wintery starlight.

Enter the narrow door of the frame-house, which seems toppling to the ground. You hear the sound of the violin, and by the light of tallow candles, inserted in tin sconces which are affixed to the blackened walls, you discover some twenty persons, black, white and chocolate-colored, of all ages and both sexes, dancing and drinking together. It is an orgie—an orgie of crime, drunkenness and rags.

Pass into the next room. By a single light, placed on a table, you discover the features of three or four gamblers,—not gamblers of the gentlemanly stamp, who, in luxurious chambers, prolong the game of "poker" all night long, until the morning breaks, or the champagne gives out,—but gamblers of a lower stamp, ill-dressed fellows, whose highest stake is a shilling, and whose favorite beverage is whisky, and whisky that is only whisky in name, while in fact, it is poison of the vilest sort—whisky classically called "red-eye."

Open a scarcely distinguishable door, at the back of the ruffian who sits at the head of the table. Descend a narrow stairway, or rather ladder, which lands you in the darkness, some twenty feet below the level of the street. Then, in the darkness, feel your way along the passage which turns to the right and left, and from left to right again, until your senses are utterly bewildered. At length, after groping your way in the darkness, over an uneven floor, and between narrow walls; after groping your way you know not how far, you descend a second ladder, ten feet or more, and find yourself confronted by a door. You are at least two stories under ground, and all is dark around you—the sound of voices strikes your ear; but do not be afraid. Find the latch of the door and push it open. A strange scene confronts you.

The Black Senate!

A room or cell, some twenty feet square, is warmed by a small coal stove, which, heated to a red heat, stands in the center, its pipe inserted in the low ceiling, and leading you know not where. Around the stove, by the light of three tallow candles placed upon a packing-box, are grouped some twenty or thirty persons, who listen attentively to the words of the gentleman who is seated by the packing-box.

This gentleman is almost a giant; his chest is broad; his limbs brawny; and his face, black as the "ace of spades," is in strong contrast with his white teeth, white eyeballs, white eyebrows, and white wool. He is a negro, with flat nose, thick lips, and mouth reaching from ear to ear. His almost giant frame is clad in a sleek suit of blue cloth, and he wears a cravat of spotless whiteness.

His auditors are not so fortunate in the way of dress. Of all colors, from jet black to chocolate-brown, they are clad in all sorts of costumes, only alike in raggedness and squalor.

This is the Black Senate, which has met for business to-night, in this den, two stories under ground. Its deliberations, in point of decorum, may well compare with some other senates,—one in especial, where 'Liar!' is occasionally called, fisticuffs exchanged, knives and pistols drawn; and it embraces representatives from all parts of the Union. Whether, like another senate, it has its dramatic characters,—its low clown, melodramatic ruffians, genteel comedian, and high tragedy hero, remains to be seen.

The very black gentleman, by the packing-box—book in one hand and paper and pencil before him—is the speaker of the house. It is our old acquaintance "Royal Bill," lately from South Carolina.

"The genelman frum Varginny hab de floor," said the speaker, with true parliamentary politeness.

The gentleman from Virginia was a six-foot mulatto, dressed in a ragged coat and trowsers of iron gray. As he rose there was an evident sensation; white teeth were shown, and "Go in nigga!" uttered encouragingly by more than one of the colored congressmen.

"Dis nigga rise to de point ob ordah. Dis nigga am taught a great many tings by philosopy. One day, in de 'baccy field, dis nigga says to hisself, says he. 'Dat are pig b'longs to massa, so does dis nigga. Dis nigga kill dat pig un eat 'um—dat be stealin'? Lordy Moses—no! It only be puttin' one ting dat b'longs to massa into anoder ting dat also b'longs to massa:'—dat's philosopy—"

"S'pose de nigga be caught?" interrupted a colored gentleman, lighting his pipe at the red-hot stove.

"Dat wouldn't be philosopy," responded the gentleman from Virginia. "It ain't philosopy to be caught. On de contrary it am dam foolishness."

A murmur of assent pervaded the place.

"Soh, reasonin' from de pig, dis nigga wor taught by philosopy to tink a great deal—to tink berry much;—and soh, one day de nigga got a kind o' absen' minded, and walked off, and forgot to come back.—Dis nigga actooaly did."

"Dat wor philosopy!" said a voice.

"An' as de nigga is in bad health, he am on his way to Canada, whar de climate am good for nigga's pulmonaries. An' fur fear de nigga mought hurt people's feelin', he trabels by night; an' fur fear he mought be axed questi'n which 'ud trubble him to ansaw, he carries dese sartificats—"

He showed his certificates—a revolving pistol and a knife. And each one of the colored congressmen produced certificates of a similar character from their rags.

"Lor', philosopy am a dam good ting!"

"Don't sweah, nigga!—behabe yesself!"

"Read us nudder won ob dem good chap'er from de Bible, Mistaw Speakaw," cried a dark gentleman, addressing old Royal.-"'Ehud, I hab a message from God to dee!' Yah-hah-hah!"

"Yah-hah-a-what!" chorused the majority of the congress, showing their teeth and shaking their woolly heads together.

"Jis tell us som'thin' more about yer ole massa, dat you lick last night," cried a voice.

"Dat am an ole story," said old Royal, with dignity. "Suffis it to say, dat about five o'clock last ebenin', I took massa Harry from de house whar he'd been licked, de night afore, and tuk him in a carriage and put 'im aboard de cars at Princeton. I gib him some brandy likewise. His back was berry sore—"

Here one of the gentlemen broke in with a parody of a well-known song—

"Oh, carry me back to ole Varginny—
My back am berry sore—"

He began, in rich Ethiopian bass.

"Silence nigga!" said old Royal, sternly, yet, showing his white teeth in a broad grin. "He am in New York at the present time, at de Astor House, I 'spec'; an' de Bloodhoun' am with him—"

"De kidnapper!"

"De nigger-catcher!"

Cries like these resounded from twenty throats; and by the way in which knives and pistols were produced and brandished, it was evident that there was a cordial feeling—almost too cordial—entertained by the congress, toward our old friend, Bloodhound.

"To business," said old Royal, surveying the motley crowd. "I hab come to visit you to-night by d'rection ob somebody dat you don't know. It am ob de last importance dat you all get yesselves out o' dis town to Canada as quick as de Lord 'ill let you. Darfore I hab provided you wid dem revolvers,"—he pointed to the pistols, "and derfore I am here, to send you on yer ways, for de kidnappers am about."

"Oh, dam de kidnappers!" was the emphatic remark of a dark gentleman; and it was chorused by the congress unanimously.

"It am berry easy to say 'dam de kidnappers,'—berry easy to say dam—dam's a berry short word; but s'pose de kidnapper hab you, and tie you, and take you down south—eh, nigga? w'at den?"

But before the gentlemen could reply to this pointed question of old Royal's, a circumstance took place which put an entire new face upon the state of affairs.

The door was burst open, and two persons tumbled into the room, heels over head. Descending the stairs in the darkness, these persons had missed their footing, and fell. The door gave way before their united weight, and they rolled into the room in a style more forcible than graceful.

When these persons recovered themselves and rose to their feet, they found themselves encircled by some thirty uplifted knives,—every knife grasped by the hand of a brawny negro. And the cry which greeted them was by no means pleasant to hear:—

"Death to the kidnappers!"

"We're fooled. It's a trap," cried one of the persons—our old friend Bloodhound.

"Trap or no trap, I'll cut the heart of the damned nigger that comes near me," cried the other person, who was none other than our friend Harry Royalton, of Hill Royal, South Carolina.

The cloak had fallen from his shoulders, the cap from his brow. He stood erect, his tall form clad in black, with a gold chain on the breast, dilating in every muscle. His face, with its large eyes and bushy whiskers—a face by no means unhandsome, as regards mere animal beauty—was convulsed with rage. And even as he started to his feet, he drew a revolver from his belt, and stood at bay, the very picture of ferocity and desperation. While his right hand grasped the revolver, his left hand flourished a bowie-knife. Harry Royalton was dangerous.

By his side was the short, stout figure of the Bloodhound, encased to his chin in a rough overcoat, and, with his stiff, gray hairs straggling from beneath his seal-skin cap over his prominent cheek-bones. His small gray eyes, twinkling under his bushy brows, glanced around with a look half desperation, half fear.

And around the twain crowded the negroes, every hand grasping a knife; every face distorted with hatred; and old Royal, in his sleek blue dress and white cravat, prominent in that group of black visages and ragged forms.

"They've got us! Judas Iscar-i-ot! It's a trap, my boy. We'll have to cut ourselves loose."

"Back, you dogs!" shouted Harry, with the attitude and look of command. "The first one that lays a finger on me I'll blow him to ——!"

There was a pause of a moment, ere the conflict began. Thirty uplifted knives, awaited only a look, a gesture, from old Royal.

That gentleman, grinning until his white teeth were visible almost from ear to ear, said calmly—"Dis am a revivin' time, wid showers of grace! Some nigga shut dat door and make 'um fast."

His words were instantly obeyed; one of the thirty closed the door and bolted it.

"Now, massa Harry," said old Royal, grinning and showing the whites of his eyes, "dis am a fav'oble opportunity fur savin' your poor lost soul. How you back feel, ole boy? Want a leetle more o' de same sort, p'raps? S'pose you draw dat trigger? Jis try. Lor a massa, why dere's enough niggas here to eat you up widout pepper or salt."

Harry laid his finger on the trigger and fired, at the same moment stepping suddenly backward, with the intention of planting himself against the wall. But he forgot the negroes behind him. As he fired, his heels were tripped up; his ball passed over old Royal's head. Harry was leveled to the floor, and in an instant old Royal's giant-like gripe was on his throat. And by his side, wriggling in the grasp of a huge negro, black as ink, and strong as Hercules, our friend Bloodhound, rubbed his face against the floor.

Over and around these central figures gathered the remainder of the band, filling the den with their shouts—

"Death to the dam kidnappers!"

"Yah-hah! Cut their dam throats!"

Cries like these, interspersed with frightful howls, filled the place.

The Bloodhound moaned pitifully; and Harry, with the suffocating gripe of old Royal on his throat, and his back yet raw from the lashes of the previous night, could not repress a groan of agony.

It was a critical moment.

"Do you know, massa Harry,"—and old Royal bent his face down until Harry felt his breath upon his cheek—"Do you know, massa Harry, dat you are not berry far from glory? Kingdom-come am right afore, ole boy—and you am booked—hah! yah!—wid a through ticket."

Old Royal, (who had laid down his pistol,) took a knife from one of the negroes, and, tightening his gripe and pressing his knee more firmly on Harry's breast, he passed the glittering blade before his eyes.

"Oh!" groaned Royalton. The groan was wrung from him by intolerable agony.

"Let me up—a-h!" cried Bloodhound, in a smothered voice, as his face was pressed against the hard boards.

"Death to the dam kidnappers!"

Old Royalton clenched the knife with his left hand, and placed its point against Harry's breast.

"You am bound for glory, massa—" and a negro held a candle over Harry's face, as old Royal spoke.

At this critical moment, even as Harry's life hung on a thread, a violent knocking was heard at the door, and a voice resounded through its panels—

"Old Royal, old Royal, I say! Let me in, quick! quick!"

"Open the door, nigga. It's massa Harry's brack brudder. Let um in, so he can see his brudder bound for glory!"

The door was opened, and Randolph, pale as death, came rushing to the light. Wrapped in the cloak, which concealed his pistols and knives, and which hung about his tall form in heavy folds, he advanced with a footstep at once trembling and eager.

His pale face was stamped with hatred; his blue eyes shone with vengeance, as he at a glance beheld the pitiful condition of his brother.

"Soh, brother of mine, we have met again!" he cried, in a voice which was hoarse and deep with the thirst of vengeance.

"Why, he's whitaw dan his white brudder!" cried the negro who held the light.

"Release him," cried Randolph—"Release him, I say! Tie that fellow there;" he touched Bloodhound with his foot; "close the door. You'll see a fight worth seeing; a fight between the master and slave, between brother and brother. Do you hear me, Royal? Let him get up,—"

"But massa 'Dolph!" hesitated old Royal.

"Up, I say!" and Randolph flung his cap and cloak to the floor, and drew two bowie-knives from his belt. "Up, I say! You have heard my history from old Royal?" he glanced around among the negroes.

"Yah-hah! an' ob de lashes dat you gib dis dam kidnapper!" said the negro who held the candle.

"Then stand by and see us settle our last account," cried Randolph. "Let him get up, old Royal."

Old Royal released his hold, and Harry slowly arose to his feet, and stood face to face with his brother.

"Good evening, brother," said Randolph. "We have met again, and for the last time. One of us will not leave this place alive. Take your choice of knives, brother. I will fight you with my left hand; I swear it by my mother's name!"

Harry looked around with a confused glance—

"It is easy for you to talk," he said, brushing his hand over his forehead and eyes, as if in effort to collect his scattered senses. "Even if I kill you, these niggers will kill me. They will not let me leave the door alive, even if I master you."

"Old Royal, you know my history; and you know how this man has treated me and my sister—his own flesh and blood. Now swear to me, that in case he is the victor in the contest that is about to take place, you will let him go from this place free and unharmed?"

"I—I—swear it massa 'Dolph; I swear it by de Lord!"

"And you?" Randolph turned to the negroes.

"We does jist as old Royal says," cried the one who held the candle; and the rest muttered their assent.

"Take your choice of knives, brother," said Randolph, as his eyes shone with deadly light, and his face, already pale, grew perfectly colorless: "The handles are toward you; take your choice. Remember I am to fight you with my left hand. You are weak, brother, from the wounds on your back. With my left hand I will fight and kill you."

Harry Royalton took one of the knives—they were ivory handled, silver mounted, and their blades were long, sharp and glittering—and at the same time surveyed his brother from head to foot.

"I can kill him," he thought, and smiled; and then said aloud, "I am ready."

The negroes formed a circle; old Royal held the light, and the brothers stood in the center, silently surveying each other, ere the fatal contest began. Every eye remarked the contrast between their faces. Harry's face flushed with long-pent-up rage, and Randolph's, pallid as a corpse, yet with an ominous light in his eyes. Both tall and well formed; both clad in black, which showed to advantage, their broad chests and muscular arms; there was, despite the color of their eyes and hair, some trace of a family likeness in their faces.

"Come, brother, begin," said Randolph, in a low voice, which was heard distinctly through the profound stillness. "Remember that I am your slave, and that when I have killed you, I, with sister Esther, also your slave, will inherit one seventh of the Van Huyden estate,—remember how you have lashed and hounded us,—remember the dying words of our father—and then defend yourself: for I must kill you, brother. Come!"

Raising the knife with his left hand, he drew his form to its full height, and stood on his defense.

You might have heard a pin drop in that crowded cellar.

"You damned slave!" shouted Harry, and at the same time, rushed forward, clutching his knife in his right hand. His face was inflamed with rage, his eye steady, his hand firm, and the point of his knife was aimed at his brother's heart.

The intention was deadly, but the knife never harmed Randolph's heart. Even as Harry rushed forward, his knees bent under him, and he fell flat on his face, and the knife dropped from his nerveless fingers. Overcome by the violence of his emotions, which whirled all the blood in his body, in a torrent to his head, he had sunk lifeless on the floor, even as he sprang forward to plunge his knife into his brother's heart.

Randolph, who had prepared himself to meet his brother's blow, was thunderstruck by this unexpected incident.

"De Lord hab touck him," cried old Royal; "he am dead."

Dead! At that word, revenge, vengeance, the memory of his wrongs, and of his brother's baseness, all glided from Randolph's heart, like snow before the flame. In vain he tried to combat this sudden change of feeling. Dead! The word struck him to the soul. He dropped his knife, and sinking on one knee, he placed upon the other the head of his lifeless brother. Harry's eyes were closed, as if in death; his lips hung apart, his face was colorless.

"De Lord hab touck him," again cried old Royal; and his remark was welcomed by a burst of laughter from the thirty negroes, which broke upon the breathless stillness, like the yell of so many devils.

"He is not dead: he has only fainted. Water! water!" cried Randolph. But he cried in vain.

"Dis nigga am not agoin' to gib him one drop to cool him parched tongue," said old Royal, showing his teeth. "What say, niggas?"

"Not a drop! not a dam drop!"

Reaching forth his hand, Randolph seized his cap and cloak, and then started to his feet, with the insensible form of Harry in his arms. Without a word, he moved to the door.

"Massa 'Dolph, massa 'Dolph!" shouted old Royal. "By de Lord, you don't take him from dis place;" and he endeavored to place himself between Randolph and the door.

Randolph saw the determination which was written on his face, and saw the looks and heard the yells of the thirty negroes; and then, without a word, felled old Royal to the floor. One blow of his right hand, planted on the negro's breast, struck him down like an ox under the butcher's ax. When old Royal, mad with rage, rose to his feet again, Randolph had disappeared—disappeared with his brother, whom he bore in his arms to upper air.

"Let's after um," shouted the foremost of the negroes.

Old Royal stepped to the door, (which Randolph had closed after him,) but stopped abruptly on the threshold, as if arrested by a sudden thought.

"Dis nigga meet you 'gin, massa 'Dolph," he muttered, and then, pointing to something which was folded up in one corner, he said, "Dar's game fur you niggas!"

He pointed to the form of poor Bloodhound, who, tied and gagged, lay helpless and groaning on the floor.

It was, perhaps, the most remarkable hour in Bloodhound's life. His hands and feet tightly bound, a coarse handkerchief wound over his mouth, and tied behind his neck, he was deprived of the power of speech or motion. But the power of vision remained. His small gray eyes twinkled fearfully, as he beheld the faces of the thirty negroes—faces that were convulsed with rage, resembling not so much the visages of men as of devils. And he could also hear. He heard the yell from thirty throats, a yell which was chorused with certain words, mingling his own name with an emphatic desire for his blood—his life.

Bloodhound was an old man; his hair was gray with the snows of sixty years, spent in the practice of all the virtues; but Bloodhound felt a peculiar sensation gather about his heart, at this most remarkable moment of his life.

"Bring forrad de pris'ner," said old Royal, resuming his seat by the packing-box. "Put 'um on him feet. Take de kankercher from him jaw."

He was obeyed. Bloodhound stood erect in the center of the group, his hands and feet tied, but his tongue free. The light, uplifted in the hand of a brawny negro, fell fully upon his corded face, with its gray hair, bushy eyebrows, and wide mouth. Bloodhound's hands shook,—not with cold, for the place was suffocatingly warm,—and Bloodhound trembled in every atom of his short thick-set body. Glancing before him, then to the right and left, and then backward over each shoulder, he saw black faces everywhere, and black hands grasping sharp knives, confronted him at every turn.

"You am a berry handsum man," said old Royal, encouragingly. "Jist look at um, niggas. Do you know de pris'ner?"

The replies to this query came so fast and thick, that we are unable to put them all upon paper.

"He stole me fader!"

"He took me mother from Fildelfy and sold her down south."

"He kidnapped my little boy."

"Dam kidnapper! he stole my wife!"

"I knows him, I does—he does work for da man dat sells niggas in Baltimore."

"Don't you know how he tuk de yaller gal away from Fildelfy, making b'lieve dat her own fader was a-dyin', and sent for her?"

Such were a few of the responses to old Royal's question. It was evident that Bloodhound was known. And, although his hair had grown gray in the practice of all the virtues, it did not give him much pleasure to find that he was known; for he felt that he was in the hands of the wicked.

"Don't hurt me, niggers, don't hurt me! I wasn't after any of you, upon my word, I wasn't. I've allays been good to the niggers, when I could get a chance,—don't hurt me!"

"Oh! we won't go fur to hurt massa, will we niggas?" replied old Royal.

"O' cos not. Don't tink of sich a ting!! Yah-hah!"

"You see I've got a child at home," faltered Bloodhound, "that is to say, two or three of 'em. You wouldn't go to hurt the father of a family, would you?"

"Does you know massa, dat you mos' make dis nigga cry," cried old Royal, with an infernal grin. "Niggas, 'scure dis tear! He am de fader ob a family, dis good man am."

Old Royal wiped away a tear,—that is, an imaginary tear,—and then surveyed the faces of his colored brethren, with a look that turned Bloodhound's heart to ice. He felt that he was lost.

"Don't, don't, d-o-n-'-t!" he shrieked, in agony of fear, "d-o-n-'-t!"

"Why, who's a-touchin' you? Dar am not a single, solitary, blessed soul, layin' a fingaw on you."

As old Royal spoke, he made a sign with the thumb and forefinger of his right hand. It was obeyed by a huge negro who stood behind Bloodhound,—he struck the wretched man on the back of the head, with the stock of a revolver,—struck him with all the force of his brawny arm,—and the hard, dull sound of the blow, was heard distinctly, even above the fiendish shouts of the negroes.

"Oh! don't, d-o-n-'-t!" shrieked Bloodhound, as the blood spurted over his hair and forehead, and even into his eyes; "don't, d-o-n-'-t!"

Another blow.—from behind,—brought him to his knees. And then the thirty, or as many as could get near him, closed round him, shouting and yelling and striking. Every face was distorted with rage; every hand grasped a knife. Old Royal, who calmly surveyed the scene, saw the backs and faces of the negroes; saw the knives glittering, as they rose and fell; but Bloodhound was not to be seen. But his cries were heard, as he madly grappled with the knives which stabbed him,—for his bonds had been cut by one of the band,—and these cries, thick and husky, as though his utterance was choked by blood, would have moved a heart of stone. But every shriek only seemed to give new fire to the rage of the negroes; and gathering closer round the miserable man, they lifted their knives, dripping with his blood, and struck and struck and struck again, until his cries were stilled. As he uttered the last cry, he sprang madly into light, for a moment, shook his bloody hands above his head, and then fell to rise no more.

You would not have liked to have seen the miserable thing which was stretched on the floor, in the center of that horrible circle, a miserable, mangled, shapeless thing, which, only a moment ago, was a living man.

"Now genelmen," said old Royal, calmly, "de business bein' done, dis meetin' stand adjourn till furder ordaw. Niggas, I tink you'd bettaw cut stick."

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[PART THIRD.]