The Art of Disappearing

by John Talbot Smith

THE TEST OF DISAPPEARANCE.

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CHAPTER XXVII.

A PROBLEM OF DISAPPEARANCE.

After patient study of the disappearance of Horace Endicott, for five years, Richard Curran decided to give up the problem. All clues had come to nothing. Not the faintest trace of the missing man had been found. His experience knew nothing like it. The money earned in the pursuit would never repay him for the loss of self-confidence and of nerve, due to study and to ill success. But for his wife he would have withdrawn long ago from the search.

"Since you have failed," she said, "take up my theory. You will find that man in Arthur Dillon."

"That's the strongest reason for giving up," he replied. "Once before I felt my mind going from insane eagerness to solve the problem. It would not do to have us both in the asylum at once."

"I made more money in following my instincts, Dick, than you have made in chasing your theories. Instinct warned me years ago that Arthur Dillon is another than what he pretends. It warns me now that he is Horace Endicott. At least before you give up for good, have a shy at my theory."

"Instinct! Theory! It is pure hatred. And the hate of a woman can make her take an ass for Apollo."

"No doubt I hate him. Oh, how I hate that man ... and young Everard...."

"Or any man that escapes you," he filled in with sly malice.

"Be careful, Dick," she screamed at him, and he apologized. "That hate is more to me than my child. It will grow big enough to kill him yet. But apart from hate, Arthur Dillon is not the man he seems. I could swear he is Horace Endicott. Remember all I have told you about his return. He came back from California about the time Endicott disappeared. I was playing Edith Conyngham then with great success, though not to crowded houses."

She laughed heartily at the recollection.

"I remarked to myself even then that Anne Dillon ... she's the choice hypocrite ... did not seem easy in showing the letter which told of his coming back, how sorry he was for his conduct, how happy he would make her with the fortune he had earned."

"All pure inference," said Curran. "Twenty men arrived home in New York about the same time with fortunes from the mines, and some without fortunes from the war."

"Then how do you account for this, smart one? Never a word of his life in California from that day to this. Mind that. No one knows, or seems to know, just where he had been, just how he got his money ... you understand ... all the little bits o' things that are told, and guessed, and leak out in a year. I asked fifty people, I suppose, and all they knew was: California. You'd think Judy Haskell knew, and she told me everything. What had she to tell? that no one dared to ask him about such matters."

"Dillon is a very close man."

"Endicott had to be among that long-tongued Irish crowd. I watched him. He was stupid at first ... stuck to the house ... no one saw him for weeks ... except the few. He listened and watched ... I saw him ... his eyes and his ears ought to be as big as a donkey's from it ... and he said nothing. They made excuses for a thing that everyone saw and talked about. He was ill. I say he wanted to make no mistakes; he was learning his part; there was nothing of the Irish in him, only the sharp Yankee. It made me wonder for weeks what was wrong. He looked as much like the boy that ran away as you do. And then I had no suspicions, mind you. I believed Anne Dillon's boy had come back with a fortune, and I was thinking how I could get a good slice of it."

"And you didn't get a cent," Curran remarked.

"He hated me from the beginning. It takes one that is playing a part to catch another in the same business. After a while he began to bloom. He got more Irish than the Irish. There's no Yankee living, no Englishman, can play the Irishman. He can give a good imitation maybe, d'ye hear? That's what Dillon gave. He did everything that young Dillon used to do before he left home ... a scamp he was too. He danced jigs, flattered the girls, chummed with the ditch-diggers and barkeepers ... and he hated them all, women and men. The Yankees hate the Irish as easy as they breathe. I tell you he had forgotten nothing that he used to do as a boy. And the fools that looked on said, oh, it's easy to see he was sick, for now that he is well we can all recognize our old dare-devil, Arthur."

"He's dare-devil clear enough," commented her husband.

"First point you've scored," she said with contempt. "Horace Endicott was a milksop: to run away when he should have killed the two idiots. Dillon is a devil, as I ought to know. But the funniest thing was his dealings with his mother. She was afraid of him ... as much as I am ... she is till this minute. Haven't I seen her look at him, when she dared to say a sharp thing? And she's a good actress, mind you. It took her years to act as a mother can act with a son."

"Quite natural, I think. He went away a boy, came back a rich man, and was able to boss things, having the cash."

"You think! You! I've seen ten years of your thinking! Well, I thought too. I saw a chance for cash, where I smelled a mystery. Do you know that he isn't a Catholic? Do you know that he's strange to all Catholic ways? that he doesn't know how to hear Mass, to kneel when he enters a pew, to bless himself when he takes the holy water at the door? Do you know that he never goes to communion? And therefore he never goes to confession. Didn't I watch for years, so that I might find out what was wrong with him, and make some money?"

"All that's very plausible," said her husband. "Only, there are many Catholics in this town, and in particular the Californians, that forgot as much as he forgot about their religion, and more."

"But he is not a Catholic," she persisted. "There's an understanding between him and Monsignor O'Donnell. They exchange looks when they meet. He visits the priest when he feels like it, but in public they keep apart. Oh, all round, that Arthur Dillon is the strangest fellow; but he plays his part so well that fools like you, Dick, are tricked."

"You put a case well, Dearie. But it doesn't convince me. However," for he knew her whim must be obeyed, "I don't mind trying again to find Horace Endicott in this Arthur Dillon."

"And of course," with a sneer, "you'll begin with the certainty that there's nothing in the theory. What can the cleverest man discover, when he's sure beforehand that there's nothing to discover?"

"My word, Colette, if I take up the matter, I'll convince you that you're wrong, or myself that you're right. And I'll begin right here this minute. I believe with you that we have found Endicott at last. Then the first question I ask myself is: who helped Horace Endicott to become Arthur Dillon?"

"Monsignor O'Donnell of course," she answered.

"Then Endicott must have known the priest before he disappeared: known him so as to trust him, and to get a great favor from him? Now, Sonia didn't know that fact."

"That fool of a woman knows nothing, never did, never will," she snapped.

"Well, for the sake of peace let us say he was helped by Monsignor, and knew the priest a little before he went away. Monsignor helped him to find his present hiding-place; quite naturally he knew Mrs. Dillon, how her son had gone and never been heard of: and he knew it would be a great thing for her to have a son with an income like Endicott's. The next question is: how many people know at this moment who Dillon really is?"

"Just two, sir. He's a fox ... they're three foxes ... Monsignor, Anne Dillon, and Arthur himself. I know, for I watched 'em all, his uncle, his friends, his old chums ... the fellows he played with before he ran away ... and no one knows but the two that had to know ... sly Anne and smooth Monsignor. They made the money that I wasn't smart enough to get hold of."

"Then the next question is: is it worth while to make inquiries among the Irish, his friends and neighbors, the people that knew the real Dillon?"

"You won't find out any more than I've told you, but you may prove how little reason they have for accepting him as the boy that ran away."

"After that it would be necessary to search California."

"Poor Dick," she interrupted with compassion, smoothing his beard. "You are really losing your old cleverness. Search California! Can't you see yet the wonderful 'cuteness of this man, Endicott? He settled all that before he wrote the letter to Anne Dillon, saying that her son was coming home. He found out the career of Arthur Dillon in California. If he found that runaway he sent him off to Australia with a lump of money, to keep out of sight for twenty years. Did the scamp need much persuading? I reckon not. He had been doing it for nothing ten years. Or, perhaps the boy was dead: then he had only to make the proper connections with his history up to the time of his death. Or he may have disappeared forever, and that made the matter all the simpler for Endicott. Oh, you're not clever, Dick," and she kissed him to sweeten the bitterness of the opinion.

"I'm not convinced," he said cheerfully. "Then tell me what to do."

"I don't know myself. Endicott took his money with him. Where does Arthur Dillon keep his money? How did it get there? Where was it kept before that? How is he spending it just now? Does he talk in his sleep? Are there any mementoes of his past in his private boxes? Could he be surprised into admissions of his real character by some trick, such as bringing him face to face on a sudden with Sonia? Wouldn't that be worth seeing? Just like the end of a drama. You know the marks on Endicott's body, birthmarks and the like ... are they on Dillon's body? The boy that ran away must have had some marks.... Judy Haskell would know ... are they on Endicott's body?"

"You've got the map of the business in that pretty head perfect," said Curran in mock admiration. "But don't you see, my pet, that if this man is as clever as you would have him he has already seen to these things? He has removed the birthmarks and peculiarities of Horace, and adopted those of Arthur? You'll find it a tangled business the deeper you dive into it."

"Well, it's your business to dive deeper than the tangle," she answered crossly. "If I had your practice——"

"You would leave me miles behind, of course. Here's the way I would reason about this thing: Horace Endicott is now known as Arthur Dillon; he has left no track by which Endicott can be traced to his present locality; but there must be a very poor connection between the Dillon at home and the real Dillon in California, in Australia, or in his grave; if we can trace the real Arthur Dillon then we take away the foundations of his counterfeit. Do you see? I say a trip to California and a clean examination there, after we have done our best here to pick flaws in the position of the gentleman who has been so cruel to my pet. He must get his punishment for that, I swear."

"Ah, there's the rub," she whimpered in her childish way. "I hate him, and I love him. He's the finest fellow in the world. He has the strength of ten. See how he fought the battles of the Irish against his own. One minute I could tear him like a wolf, and now I could let him tear me to pieces. You are fond of him too, Dick."

"I would follow him to the end of the world, through fire and flood and fighting," said the detective with feeling. "He loves Ireland, he loves and pities our poor people, he is spending his money for them. But I could kill him just the same for his cruelty to you. He's a hard man, Colette."

"Now I know what you are trying to do," she said sharply. "You think you can frighten me by telling me what I know already. Well, you can't."

"No, no," he protested, "I was thinking of another thing. We'll come to the danger part later. There is one test of this man that ought to be tried before all others. When I have sounded the people about Arthur Dillon, and am ready for California, Sonia Endicott should be brought here to have a good look at him in secret first; and then, perhaps, in the open, if you thought well of it."

"Why shouldn't I think well of it? But will it do any good, and mayn't it do harm? Sonia has no brains. If you can't see any resemblance between Arthur and the pictures of Horace Endicott, what can Sonia see?"

"The eyes of hate, and the eyes of love," said he sagely.

"Then I'd be afraid to bring them together," she admitted whispering again, and cowering into his arms. "If he suspects I am hunting him down, he will have no pity."

"No doubt of it," he said thoughtfully. "I have always felt the devil in him. Endicott was a fat, gay, lazy sport, that never so much as rode after the hounds. Now Arthur Dillon has had his training in the mines. That explains his dare-devil nature."

"And Horace Endicott was betrayed by the woman he loved," she cried with sudden fierceness. "That turns a man sour quicker than all the mining-camps in the world. That made him lean and terrible like a wolf. That sharpened his teeth, and gave him a taste for woman's blood. That's why he hates me."

"You're wrong again, my pet. He has a liking for you, but you spoil it by laying hands on his own. You saw his looks when he was hunting for young Everard."

"Oh, how he frightens me," and she began to walk the room in a rage. "How I would like to throw off this fear and face him and fight him, as I face you. I'll do it if the terror kills me. I shall not be terrified by any man. You shall hunt him down, Dick Curran. Begin at once. When you are ready send for Sonia. I'll bring them together myself, and take the responsibility. What can he do but kill me?"

Sadness came over the detective as she returned to her seat on his knee.

"He is not the kind, little girl," said he, "that lays hands on a woman or a man outside of fair, free, open fight before the whole world."

"What do you mean?" knowing very well what he meant.

"If he found you on his trail," with cunning deliberation, so that every word beat heart and brain like a hammer, "and if he is really Horace Endicott, he would only have to give your character and your address——"

"To the dogs," she shrieked in a sudden access of horror.

Then she lay very still in his arms, and the man laughed quietly to himself, sure that he had subdued her and driven her crazy scheme into limbo. The wild creature had one dread and by reason of it one master. Never had she been so amenable to discipline as under Dillon's remote and affable authority. Curran had no fear of consequences in studying the secret years of Arthur Dillon's existence. The study might reveal things which a young man preferred to leave in the shadows, but would not deliver up to Sonia her lost Horace; and even if Arthur came to know what they were doing, he could smile at Edith's vagaries.

"What shall we do?" he ventured to say at last.

"Find Horace Endicott in Arthur Dillon," was the unexpected answer, energetic, but sighed rather than spoken. "I fear him, I love him, I hate him, and I'm going to destroy him before he destroys me. Begin to-night."

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CHAPTER XXVIII.

A FIRST TEST.

Curran could not study the Endicott problem. His mind had lost edge in the vain process, getting as confused over details as the experimenter in perpetual motion after an hundred failures. In favor of Edith he said to himself that her instincts had always been remarkable, always helpful; and her theory compared well with the twenty upon which he had worked years to no purpose. Since he could not think the matter out, he went straight on in the fashion which fancy had suggested. Taking it for granted that Dillon and Endicott were the same man, he must establish the connection; that is, discover the moment when Horace Endicott passed from his own into the character of Arthur Dillon.

Two persons would know the fact: Anne Dillon and her son. Four others might have knowledge of it; Judy, the Senator, Louis, and Monsignor. A fifth might be added, if the real Arthur Dillon were still living in obscurity, held there by the price paid him for following his own whim. Others would hardly be in the secret. The theory was charming in itself, and only a woman like Edith, whose fancy had always been sportive, would have dreamed it. The detective recalled Arthur's interest in his pursuit of Endicott; then the little scenes on board the Arrow; and grew dizzy to think of the man pursued comparing his own photograph with his present likeness, under the eyes of the detective who had grown stale in the chase of him.

He knew of incidents quite as remarkable, which had a decent explanation afterwards, however. He went about among the common people of Cherry Hill, who had known Arthur Dillon from his baptism, had petted him every week until he disappeared, and now adored him in his success. He renewed acquaintance with them, and heaped them with favors. Loitering about in their idling places, he threw out the questions; hints, surmises, which might bring to the surface their faith in Arthur Dillon. He reported the result to Edith.

"Not one of them" said he, "but would go to court and swear a bushel of oaths that Arthur Dillon is the boy who ran away. They have their reasons too; how he dances, and sings, and plays the fiddle, and teases the girls, just as he did when a mere strip of a lad; how the devil was always in him for doing the thing that no one looked for; how he had no fear of even the priest, or of the wildest horse; and sought out terrible things to do and to dare, just as now he shakes up your late backers, bishops, ministers, ambassadors, editors, or plots against England; all as if he earned a living that way."

She sneered at this bias, and bade him search deeper.

It was necessary to approach the Senator on the matter. He secured from him a promise that their talk would remain a secret, not only because the matter touched one very dear to the Senator, but also because publicity might ruin the detective himself. If the Senator did not care to give his word, there would be no talk, but his relative might also be exposed to danger. The Senator was always gracious with Curran.

"Do you know anything about Arthur's history in California?" and his lazy eyes noted every change in the ruddy, handsome face.

"Never asked him but one question about it. He answered that straight, and never spoke since about it. Nothing wrong, I hope?" the Senator answered with alarm.

"Lots, I guess, but I don't know for sure. Here are the circumstances. Think them out for yourself. A crowd of sharp speculators in California mines bought a mine from Arthur Dillon when he was settling up his accounts to come home to his mother. As trouble arose lately about that mine, they had to hunt up Arthur Dillon. They send their agent to New York, he comes to Arthur, and has a talk with him. Then he goes back to his speculators, and declares to them that this Arthur Dillon is not the man who sold the mine. So the company, full of suspicion, offers me the job of looking up the character of Arthur, and what he had been doing these ten years. They say straight out that the real Arthur Dillon has been put out of the way, and that the man who is holding the name and the stakes here in New York is a fraud."

This bit of fiction relieved the Senator's mind.

"A regular cock-and-bull story," said he with indignation. "What's their game? Did you tell them what we think of Artie? Would his own mother mistake him? Or even his uncle? If they're looking for hurt, tell them they're on the right road."

"No, no," said Curran, "these are straight men. But if doubt is cast on a business transaction, they intend to clear it away. It would be just like them to bring suit to establish the identity of Arthur with the Arthur Dillon who sold them the mine. Now, Senator, could you go into court and swear positively that the young man who came back from California five years ago is the nephew who ran away from home at the age of fifteen?"

"Swear it till I turned blue; why, it's foolish, simply foolish. And every man, woman, and child in the district would do the same. Why don't you go and talk with Artie about it?"

"Because the company doesn't wish to make a fuss until they have some ground to walk on," replied Curran easily. "When I tell them how sure the relatives and friends of Arthur are about his identity, they may drop the affair. But now, Senator, just discussing the thing as friends, you know, if you were asked in court why you were so sure Arthur is your nephew, what could you tell the court?"

"If the court asked me how I knew my mother was my mother——"

"That's well enough, I know. But in this case Arthur was absent ten years, in which time you never saw him, heard of him, or from him."

"Good point," said the Senator musingly. "When Artie came home from California, he was sick, and I went to see him. He was in bed. Say, I'll never forget it, Curran. I saw Pat sick once at the same age ... Pat was his father, d'ye see?... and here was Pat lying before me in the bed. I tell you it shook me. I never thought he'd grow so much like his father, though he has the family features. Know him to be Pat's son? Why, if he told me himself he was any one else, I wouldn't believe him."

Evidently the Senator knew nothing of Horace Endicott and recognised Arthur Dillon as his brother's son. The detective was not surprised; neither was Edith at the daily report.

"There isn't another like him on earth," she said with the pride of a discoverer. "Keep on until you find his tracks, here or in California."

Curran had an interesting chat with Judy Haskell on a similar theme, but with a different excuse from that which roused the Senator. The old lady knew the detective only as Arthur's friend. He approached her mysteriously, with a story of a gold mine awaiting Arthur in California, as soon as he could prove to the courts that he was really Arthur Dillon. Judy began to laugh. "Prove that he's Arthur Dillon! Faith, an' long I'd wait for a gold mine if I had to prove I was Judy Haskell. How can any one prove themselves to be themselves, Misther Curran? Are the courts goin' crazy?"

The detective explained what evidence a court would accept as proof of personality.

"Well, Arthur can give that aisy enough," said she.

"But he won't touch the thing at all, Mrs. Haskell. He was absent ten years, and maybe he doesn't want that period ripped up in a court. It might appear that he had a wife, you know, or some other disagreeable thing might leak out. When the lawyers get one on the witness stand, they make hares of him."

"Sure enough," said Judy thoughtfully. Had she not suggested this very suspicion to Anne? The young are wild, and even Arthur could have slipped from grace in that interval of his life. Curran hoped that Arthur could prove his identity without exposing the secrets of the past.

"For example," said he smoothly, with an eye for Judy's expression, "could you go to court to-morrow and swear that Arthur is the same lad that ran away from his mother fifteen years ago?"

"I cud swear as manny oaths on that point as there are hairs in yer head," said Judy.

"And what would you say, Mrs. Haskell, if the judge said to you: Now, madam, it's very easy for you to say you know the young man to be the same person as the runaway boy; but how do you know it? what makes you think you know it?"

"I'd say he was purty sassy, indade. Of coorse I'd say that to meself, for ye can't talk to a judge as aisy an' free as to a lawyer. Well, I'd say manny pleasant things. Arthur was gone tin years, but I knew him an' he knew me the minute we set eyes on aich other. Then, agin, I knew him out of his father. He doesn't favor the mother at all, for she's light an' he's dark. There's a dale o' the Dillon in him. Then, agin, how manny things he tould me of the times we had together, an' he even asked me if Teresa Flynn, his sweetheart afore he wint off, was livin' still. Oh, as thrue as ye're sittin' there! Poor thing, she was married. An' he remembered how fond he was o' rice puddin' ice cold. An' he knew Louis Everard the minute he shtud forninst him in the door. But what's the use o' talkin'? I cud tell ye for hours all the things he said an' did to show he was Arthur Dillon."

"Has he any marks on his body that would help to identify him, if he undertook to get the gold mine that belongs to him?"

"Artie had only wan mark on him as a boy ... he was the most spotless child I ever saw ... an' that was a mole on his right shoulder. He tuk it wid him to California, an' he brought it back, for I saw it meself in the same spot while he was sick, an' I called his attintion to it, an' he was much surprised, for he had never thought of it wanst."

"It's my opinion," said Curran solemnly, "that he can prove his identity without exposing his life in the west. I hope to persuade him to it. Maybe the photographs of himself and his father would help. Have you any copies of them?"

"There's jist two. I wudn't dare to take thim out of his room, but if ye care to walk up-stairs, Mr. Curran, an' luk at thim there, ye're welcome. He an' his mother are away the night to a gran' ball."

They entered Arthur's apartments together, and Judy showed the pictures of Arthur Dillon as a boy of fourteen, and of his youthful father; old daguerreotypes, but faithful and clear as a likeness. Judy rattled on for an hour, but the detective had achieved his object. She had no share in the secret.

Arthur Dillon was his father's son, for her. He studied the pictures, and carefully examined the rooms, his admiration provoking Judy into a display of their beauties. With the skill and satisfaction of an artist in man-hunting, he observed how thoroughly the character of the young man displayed itself in the trifles of decoration and furnishing.

The wooden crucifix with the pathetic figure in bronze on the wall over the desk, the holy water stoup at the door, carved figures of the Holy Family, a charming group, on the desk, exquisite etchings of the Christ and the Madonna after the masters, a prie-dieu in the inner room with a group of works of devotion: and Edith had declared him no Catholic. Here was the refutation.

"He is a pious man," Curran said.

"And no wan sees it but God and himself. So much the betther, I say," Judy remarked. "Only thim that had sorra knows how to pray, an' he prays like wan that had his fill of it."

The tears came into the man's eyes at the indications of Arthur's love for poor Erin. Hardness was the mark of Curran, and sin had been his lifelong delight; but for his country he had kept a tenderness and devotion that softened and elevated his nature at times. Of little use and less honor to his native land, he felt humbled in this room, whose books, pictures, and ornaments revealed thought and study in behalf of a harried and wretched people, yet the student was not a native of Ireland. It seemed profane to set foot here, to spy upon its holy privacy. He felt glad that its details gave the lie so emphatically to Edith's instincts.

The astonishing thing was the absence of Californian relics and mementoes. Some photographs and water colors, whose names Curran mentally copied for future use, pictured popular scenes on the Pacific slope; but they could be bought at any art store. Surely his life in the mines, with all the luck that had come to him, must have held some great bitterness, that he never spoke of it casually, and banished all remembrances.

That would come up later, but Curran had made up his mind that no secret of Arthur's life should ever see the light because he found it. Not even vengeful Edith, and she had the right to hate her enemy, should wring from him any disagreeable facts in the lad's career. So deeply the detective respected him!

In the place of honor, at the foot of his bed, where his eyes rested on them earliest and latest, hung a group of portraits in oil, in the same frame, of Louis the beloved, from his babyhood to the present time: on the side wall hung a painting of Anne in her first glory as mistress of the new home in Washington Square; opposite, Monsignor smiled down in purple splendor; two miniatures contained the grave, sweet, motherly face of Mary Everard and the auburn hair and lovely face of Mona.

"There are the people he loves," said Curran with emotion.

"Ay, indade," Judy said tenderly, "an' did ever a wild boy like him love his own more? Night an' day his wan thought is of them. The sun rises an' sets for him behind that picther there," pointing to Louis' portraits. "If annythin' had happened to that lovely child last Spring he'd a-choked the life out o' wan woman wid his own two hands. He's aisy enough, God knows, but I'd rather jump into the say than face him when the anger is in him."

"He's a terrible man," said Curran, repeating Edith's phrase.

He examined some manuscript in Arthur's handwriting. How different from the careless scrawl of Horace Endicott this clear, bold, dashing script, which ran full speed across the page, yet turned with ease and leisurely from the margin. What a pity Edith could not see with her own eyes these silent witnesses to the truth. Beyond the study was a music-room, where hung his violin over some scattered music. Horace Endicott hated the practising of the art, much as he loved the opera. It was all very sweet, just what the detective would have looked for, beautiful to see. He could have lingered in the rooms and speculated on that secret and manly life, whose currents were so feebly but shiningly indicated in little things. It occurred to him that copies of the daguerreotypes, Arthur at fourteen and his father at twenty-five, would be of service in the search through California. He spoke of it to Judy.

"Sure that was done years ago," said Judy cautiously. "Anne Dillon wouldn't have it known for the world, ye see, but I know that she sint a thousand o' thim to the polis in California; an' that's the way she kem across the lad. Whin he found his mother shtill mournin' him, he wrote to her that he had made his pile an' was comin' home. Anne has the pride in her, an' she wants all the world to believe he kem home of himself, d'ye see? Now kape that a secret, mind."

"And do you never let on what I've been telling you," said Curran gravely. "It may come to nothing, and it may come to much, but we must be silent."

She had given her word, and Judy's word was like the laws of the Medes and Persians. Curran rejoiced at the incident of the daguerreotypes, which anticipated his proposed search in California. Vainly however did he describe the result of his inquiry for Edith. She would have none of his inferences. He must try to entrap Anne Dillon and the priest, and afterwards he might scrape the surface of California.

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CHAPTER XXIX.

THE NERVE OF ANNE.

Curran laid emphasis in his account to his wife on the details of Arthur's rooms, and on the photographs which had helped to discover the lost boy in California. Edith laughed at him.

"Horace Endicott invented that scheme of the photographs," said she. "The dear clever boy! If he had been the detective, not a stupid like you! I saw Arthur Dillon in church many times in four years, and I tell you he is not a Catholic born, no matter what you saw in his rooms. He's playing the part of Arthur Dillon to the last letter. Don't look at me that way, Dick or I'll scratch your face. You want to say that I am crazy over this theory, and that I have an explanation ready for all your objections."

"I have nothing to say, I am just working on your lines, dearie," he replied humbly.

"Just now your game is busy with an affair of the heart. He won't be too watchful, unless, as I think, he's on our tracks all the time. You ought to get at his papers."

"A love affair! Our tracks!" Curran repeated in confusion.

"Do you think you can catch a man like Arthur napping?" she sneered. "Is there a moment in the last four years that he has been asleep? See to it that you are not reported to him every night. But if he is in love with Honora Ledwith, there's a chance that he won't see or care to see what you are doing. She's a lovely girl. A hint of another woman would settle his chances of winning her. I can give her that. I'd like to. A woman of her stamp has no business marrying."

She mused a few minutes over her own statements, while Curran stared. He began to feel that the threads of this game were not all in his hands.

"You must now go to the priest and Anne Dillon," she resumed, "and say to them plump ... take the priest first ... say to them plump before they can hold their faces in shape: do you know Horace Endicott? Then watch the faces, and get what you can out of them."

"That means you will have Arthur down on you next day."

"Sure," catching her breath. "But it is now near the end of the season. When he comes to have it out with me, he will find himself face to face with Sonia. If it's to be a fight, he'll find a tiger. Then we can run away to California, if Sonia says so."

"You are going to bring Sonia down, then?"

"You suggested it. Lemme tell you what you're going to find out to-day. You're going to find out that Monsignor knew Horace Endicott. After that I think it would be all right to bring down Sonia."

Little use to argue with her, or with any woman for that matter, once an idea lodged so deep in her brain. He went to see Monsignor, with the intention of being candid with him: in fact there was no other way of dealing with the priest. In his experience Curran had found no class so difficult to deal with as the clergy. They were used to keeping other people's secrets as well as their own. He did not reveal his plan to Edith, because he feared her criticism, and could not honestly follow her methods. He had not, with all his skill and cunning, her genius for ferreting.

Monsignor, acquainted with him, received him coldly. Edith's instructions were, ask the question plump, watch his face, and then run to Anne Dillon before she can be warned by the Monsignor's messenger. Looking into the calm, well-drilled countenance of the priest, Curran found it impossible to surprise him so uncourteously. Anyway the detective felt sure that there would be no surprise, except at the mere question.

"I would like to ask you a question, Monsignor," said Curran smoothly, "which I have no right to ask perhaps. I am looking for a man who disappeared some time ago, and the parties interested hope that you can give some information. You can tell me if the question is at all impertinent, and I will go. Do you know Horace Endicott?"

There was no change in the priest's expression or manner, no starting, no betrayal of feeling. Keeping his eyes on the detective's face, he repeated the name as one utters a half-forgotten thing.

"Why has that name a familiar sound?" he asked himself.

"You may have read it frequently in the papers at the time Horace Endicott disappeared," Curran suggested.

"Possibly, but I do not read the journals so carefully," Monsignor answered musingly. "Endicott, Endicott ... I have it ... and it brings to my mind the incident of the only railroad wreck in which I have ever had the misfortune to be ... only this time it was good fortune for one poor man."

Very deliberately he told the story of the collision and of his slight acquaintance with the young fellow whose name, as well as he could remember, was Endicott. The detective handed him a photograph of the young man.

"How clearly this picture calls up the whole scene," said Monsignor much pleased. "This is the very boy. Have you a copy of this? Do send me one."

"You can keep that," said Curran, delighted at his progress, astonished that Edith's prophecy should have come true. Naturally the next question would be, have you seen the young man since that time? and Curran would have asked it had not the priest broken in with a request for the story of his disappearance. It was told.

"Of course I shall be delighted to give what information I possess," said Monsignor. "There was no secret about him then ... many others saw him ... of course this must have been some time before he disappeared. But let me ask a question before we go any further. How did you suspect my acquaintance with a man whom I met so casually? The incident had almost faded from my mind. In fact I have never mentioned it to a soul."

"It was a mere guess on the part of those interested in finding him."

"Still the guess must have been prompted by some theory of the search."

"I am almost ashamed to tell it," Curran said uneasily. "The truth is that my employers suspect that Horace Endicott has been hiding for years under the character of Arthur Dillon."

Monsignor looked amazed for a moment and then laughed.

"Interesting for Mr. Dillon and his friends, particularly if this Endicott is wanted for any crime...."

"Oh, no, no," cried the detective. "It is his wife who is seeking him, a perfectly respectable man, you know ... it's a long story. We have chased many a man supposed to be Endicott, and Mr. Dillon is the latest. I don't accept the theory myself. I know Dillon is Dillon, but a detective must sift the theories of his employers. In fact my work up to this moment proves very clearly that of all our wrong chases this is the worst."

"It looks absurd at first sight. I remember the time poor Mrs. Dillon sent out her photographs, scattered a few hundred of them among the police and the miners of California, in the hope of finding her lost son. That was done with my advice. She had her first response, a letter from her son, about the very time that I met young Endicott. For the life of me I cannot understand why anyone should suppose Arthur Dillon...."

He picked up the photograph of Endicott again.

"The two men look as much alike as I look like you. I'm glad you mentioned the connection which Dillon has with the matter. You will kindly leave me out of it until you have made inquiries of Mr. Dillon himself. It would not do, you understand, for a priest in my position to give out any details in a matter which may yet give trouble. I fear that in telling you of my meeting with Endicott I have already overstepped the limits of prudence. However, that was my fault, as you warned me. Thanks for the photograph, a very nice souvenir of a tragedy. Poor young fellow! Better had he perished in the smash-up than to go out of life in so dreary a way."

"If I might venture another——"

"Pardon, not another word. In any official and public way I am always ready to tell what the law requires, or charity demands."

"You would be willing then to declare that Arthur Dillon——"

"Is Mrs. Dillon's son? Certainly ... at any time, under proper conditions. Good morning. Don't mention it," and Curran was outside the door before his thoughts took good shape; so lost in wonder over the discovery of Monsignor's acquaintance with Endicott, that he forgot to visit Anne Dillon. Instead he hurried home with the news to Edith, and blushed with shame when she asked if he had called on Anne. She forgave his stupidity in her delight, and put him through his catechism on all that had been said and seen in the interview with Monsignor.

"You are a poor stick," was her comment, and for the first time in years he approved of her opinion. "The priest steered you about and out with his little finger, and the corner of his eye. He did not give you a chance to ask if he had ever seen Horace Endicott since. Monsignor will not lie for any man. He simply refuses to answer on the ground that his position will not permit it. You will never see the priest again on this matter. Arthur Dillon will bid you stand off. Well, you see what my instinct is now! Are you more willing to believe in it when it says: Arthur Dillon is Horace Endicott?"

"Not a bit, sweetheart."

"I won't fight with you, since you are doing as I order. Go to Anne Dillon now. Mind, she's already prepared by this time for your visit. You may run against Arthur instead of her. While you are gone I shall write to Sonia that we have at last found a clue, and ask her to come on at once. Dillon may not give us a week to make our escape after he learns what we have been doing. We must be quick. Go, my dear old stupid, and bear in mind that Anne Dillon is the cunningest cat you've had to do with yet."

She gave an imitation of the lady that was funny to a degree, and sent the detective off laughing, but not at all convinced that there was any significance in his recent discovery. He felt mortified to learn again for the hundredth time how a prejudice takes the edge off intellect. Though certain Edith's theory was wrong, why should he act like a donkey in disproving it? On the contrary his finest skill was required, and methods as safe as if Dillon were sure to turn out Endicott. He sharpened his blade for the coming duel with Anne, whom Monsignor had warned, without doubt. However, Anne had received no warning and she met Curran with her usual reserve. He was smoothly brutal.

"I would like to know if you are acquainted with Mr. Horace Endicott?" said he.

Anne's face remained as blank as the wall, and her manner tranquil. She had never heard the name before, for in the transactions between herself and her son only the name of Arthur Dillon had been mentioned, while of his previous life she knew not a single detail. Curran not disappointed, hastened, after a pause, to explain his own rudeness.

"I never heard the name," said Anne coldly. "Nor do I see by what right you come here and ask questions."

"Pardon my abruptness," said the detective. "I am searching for a young man who disappeared some years ago, and his friends are still hunting for him, still anxious, so that they follow the most absurd clues. I am forced to ask this question of all sorts of people, only to get the answer which you have given. I trust you will pardon me for my presumption for the sake of people who are suffering."

His speech warned her that she had heard her son's name for the first time, that she stood on the verge of exposure; and her heart failed her, she felt that her voice would break if she ventured to speak, her knees give way if she resented this man's manner by leaving the room. Yet the weakness was only for a moment, and when it passed a wild curiosity to hear something of that past which had been a sealed book to her, to know the real personality of Arthur Dillon, burned her like a flame, and steadied her nerves. For two years she had been resenting his secrecy, not understanding his reasons. He was guarding against the very situation of this moment.

"Horace Endicott," she repeated with interest. "There is no one of that name in my little circle, and I have never heard the name before. Who was he? And how did he come to be lost?"

And she rose to indicate that his reply must be brief.

Curran told with eloquence of the disappearance and the long search, and gave a history of Endicott's life in nice detail, pleased with the unaffected interest of this severe but elegant woman. As he spoke his eye took in every mark of feeling, every gesture, every expression. Her self-command, if she knew Horace Endicott, remained perfect; if she knew him not, her manner seemed natural.

"God pity his poor people," was her fervent comment as she took her seat again. "I was angry with you at first, sir," looking at his card, "and of a mind to send you away for what looked like impertinence. But it's I would be only too glad to give you help if I could. I never even heard the young man's name. And it puzzles me, why you should come to me."

"For this reason, Mrs. Dillon," he said with sincere disgust. "The people who are hunting for Horace Endicott think that Arthur Dillon is the man; or to put it in another way, that you were deceived when you welcomed back your son from California. Horace Endicott and not Arthur Dillon returned."

"My God!" cried she, and sat staring at him; then rose up and began to move towards the door backwards, keeping an eye upon him. Her thought showed clear to the detective: she had been entertaining a lunatic. He laughed.

"Don't go," he said. "I know what you imagine, but I'm no lunatic. I don't believe that your son is an impostor. He is a friend of mine, and I know that he is Arthur Dillon. But a man in my business must do as he is ordered by his employers. I am a detective."

For a minute she hesitated with hand outstretched to the bell-rope. Her mind acted with speed; she had nothing to fear, the man was friendly, his purpose had failed, whatever it was, the more he talked the more she would learn, and it might be in her power to avert danger by policy. She went back to her seat, having left it only to act her part. Taking the hint provided by Curran, she pretended belief in his insanity, and passed to indignation at this attempt upon her happiness, her motherhood. This rage became real, when she reflected that the Aladdin palace of her life was really threatened by Curran's employers. To her the prosperity and luxury of the past five years had always been dream-like in its fabric, woven of the mists of morning, a fairy enchantment, which might vanish in an hour and leave poor Cinderella sitting on a pumpkin by the roadside, the sport of enemies, the burden of friends. How near she had been to this public humiliation! What wretches, these people who employed the detective!

"My dear boy was absent ten years," she said, "and I suffered agony all that time. What hearts must some people have to wish to put me through another time like that! Couldn't any wan see that I accepted him as my son? that all the neighbors accepted him? What could a man want to deceive a poor mother so? I had nothing to give him but the love of a mother, and men care little for that, wild boys care nothing for it. He brought me a fortune, and has made my life beautiful ever since he came back. I had nothing to give him. Who is at the bottom of this thing?"

The detective explained the existence and motives of a deserted, poverty-stricken wife and child.

"I knew a woman would be at the bottom of it," she exclaimed viciously, feeling against Sonia a hatred which she knew to be unjust. "Well, isn't she able to recognize her own husband? If I could tell my son after ten years, when he had grown to be a man, can't she tell her own husband after a few years? Could it be that my boy played Horace Endicott in Boston and married that woman, and then came back to me?"

"Oh, my dear Mrs. Dillon," cried the detective in alarm, "do not excite yourself over so trifling a thing. Your son is your son no matter what our theories may be. This Endicott was born and brought up in the vicinity of Boston, and came from a very old family. Your suspicion is baseless. Forget the whole matter I beg of you."

"Have you a picture of the young man?"

He handed her the inevitable photograph reluctantly, quite sure that she would have hysterics before he left, so sincere was her excitement. Anne studied the portrait with keen interest, it may be imagined, astonished to find it so different from Arthur Dillon. Had she blundered as well as the detective? Between this portrait and any of the recent photographs of Arthur there seemed no apparent resemblance in any feature. She had been exciting herself for nothing.

"Wonderful are the ways of men," was her comment. "How any one ..." her brogue had left her ... "could take Arthur Dillon for this man, even supposing he was disguised now, is strange and shameful. What is to be the end of it?"

"Just this, dear madam," said Curran, delighted at her returning calmness. "I shall tell them what you have said, what every one says, and they'll drop the inquiry as they have dropped about one hundred others. If they are persistent, I shall add that you are ready to go into any court in the land and swear positively that you know your own son."

"Into twenty courts," she replied with fervor, and the tears, real tears came into her eyes; then, at sight of Aladdin's palace as firm as ever on its frail foundations, the tears rolled down her cheeks.

"Precisely. And now if you would be kind enough to keep this matter from the ears of Mr. Dillon ... he's a great friend of mine ... I admire him ... I was with him in the little expedition to Ireland, you know ... and it was to save him pain that I came to you first ... if it could be kept quiet——"

"I want it kept quiet," she said with decision, "but at the same time Arthur must know of these cruel suspicions. Oh, how my heart beats when I think of it! Without him ten years, and then to have strangers plan to take him from me altogether ... forever ... forever ... oh!"

Curran perspired freely at the prospect of violent hysterics. No man could deal more rudely with the weak and helpless with right on his side, or if his plans demanded it. Before a situation like this he felt lost and foolish.

"Certainly he must know in time. I shall tell him myself, as soon as I make my report of the failure of this clue to my employers. I would take it as a very great favor if you would permit me to tell him. It must come very bitter to a mother to tell her son that he is suspected of not being her son. Let me spare you that anguish."

Anne played with him delightfully, knowing that she had him at her mercy, not forgetting however that the sport was with tigers. Persuaded to wait a few days while Curran made his report, in return he promised to inform her of the finding of poor Endicott at the proper moment. The detective bowed himself out, the lady smiled. A fair day's work! She had learned the name and the history of the young man known as Arthur Dillon in a most delightful way. The doubt attached to this conclusion did not disturb her. Wonderful, that Arthur Dillon should look so little like the portrait of Horace Endicott! More wonderful still that she, knowing Arthur was not her son, had come to think of him, to feel towards him, and to act accordingly, as her son! Her rage over this attempt upon the truth and the fact of their relationship grew to proportions.

---

CHAPTER XXX.

UNDER THE EYES OF HATE.

Edith's inference from the interviews with the Monsignor and Anne did justice to her acuteness. The priest alone knew the true personality of Arthur. From Anne all but the fact of his disappearance had been kept, probably to guard against just such attempts as Curran's. The detective reminded her that her theory stood only because of her method of selection from his investigations. Nine facts opposed and one favored her contention: therefore nine were shelved, leaving one to support the edifice of her instincts or her suspicions. She stuck out her tongue at him.

"It shows how you are failing when nine out of ten facts, gathered in a whole day's work, are worthless. Isn't that one fact, that the priest knew Horace Endicott, worth all your foolish reasonings? Who discovered it? Now, will you coax Sonia Endicott down here to have a look at this Arthur Dillon? Before we start for California?"

He admitted humbly that the lady would not accept his invitation, without stern evidence of a valuable clue. The detectives had given her many a useless journey.

"She'll be at the Everett House to-morrow early in the morning," said Edith proudly. "Want to know why, stupid? I sent her a message that her game had been treed at last ... by me."

He waved his hands in despair.

"Then you'll do the talking, Madam Mischief."

"And you'll never say a word, even when asked. What! would I let you mesmerize her at the start by telling her how little you think of my idea and my plans? She would think as little of them as you do, when you got through. No! I shall tell her, I shall plan for her, I shall lead her to the point of feeling where that long experience with Horace Endicott will become of some use in piercing the disguise of Arthur Dillon. You would convince her she was not to see Horace Endicott, and of course she would see only Arthur Dillon. I'll convince her she is to see her runaway husband, and then if she doesn't I'll confess defeat."

"There's a good deal in your method," he admitted in a hopeless way.

"We are in for it now," she went on, scorning the compliment. "By this time Arthur Dillon knows, if he did not before, that I am up to mischief. He may fall on us any minute. He will not suffer this interference: not because he cares two cents one way or the other, but because he will not have us frightening his relatives and friends, telling every one that he is two. Keep out of his way so that he shall have to come here, and to send word first that he is coming. I'll arrange a scene for him with his Sonia. It may be sublime, and again it may be a fizzle. One way or the other, if Sonia says so, we'll fly to the west out of his way. The dear, dear boy!"

"He'll dear you after that scene!"

"Now, do you make what attempts you may to find out where he keeps his money, he must have piles of it, and search his papers, his safe...."

"He has nothing of the kind ... everything about him is as open as the day ... it's an impertinence to bother him so ... well, he can manage you, I think ... no need for me to interfere or get irritated."

Then she had a tantrum, which galled the soul of Curran, except that it ended as usual in her soft whimpering, her childish murmuring, her sweet complaint against the world, and her falling asleep in his arms. Thus was he regularly conquered and led captive.

They went next day at noon to visit Sonia Endicott at the Everett House, where she had established herself with her little boy and his nurse. Her reception of the Currans, while supercilious in expression, was really sincere. They represented her hope in that long search of five years, which only a vigorous hate had kept going. Marked with the characteristics of the cat, velvety to eye and touch, insolent and elusive in her glance, undisciplined, she could act a part for a time. To Horace Endicott she had played the rôle of a child of light, an elf, a goddess, for which nature had dressed her with golden hair, melting eyes of celestial blue, and exquisite form.

The years had brought out the animal in her. She found it more and more difficult to repress the spite, rage, hatred, against Horace and fate, which consumed her within, and violated the external beauty with unholy touches, wrinkles, grimaces, tricks of sneering, distortions of rage. Her dreams of hatred had only one scene: a tiger in her own form rending the body of the man who had discovered and punished her with a power like omnipotence; rending him but not killing him, leaving his heart to beat and his face unmarked, that he might feel his agony and show it.

"If you had sent me the telegram," she remarked to Curran, "I would not have come. But this dear Colette, she is to be my good angel and lead me to success, aren't you, little devil? Ever since she took up the matter I have had my beautiful dreams once more, oh, such thrilling dreams! Like the novels of Eugene Sue, just splendid. Well, why don't you speak?"

He pointed to Edith with a gesture of submission. She was hugging the little boy before the nurse took him away, teasing him into baby talk, kissing him decorously but lavishly, as if she could not get enough of him.

"He's not to speak until asked," she cried.

"And then only say what she thinks," he added.

"La! are you fighting over it already? That's not a good sign."

With a final embrace which brought a howl from young Horace, Edith gave the boy to the nurse and began her story of finding Horace Endicott in the son of Anne Dillon. She acted the story, admirably keeping back the points which would have grated on Sonia's instincts, or rather expectations. The lady, impressed, evidently felt a lack of something when Curran refused his interest and his concurrence to the description.

"What do you wish me to do?" said she.

"To see this Dillon and to study him, as one would a problem. The man's been playing this part, living it indeed, nearly five years. Can any one expect that the first glance will pierce his disguise? He must be watched and studied for days, and if that fetches nothing, then you must meet him suddenly, and say to him tenderly, 'at last, Horace!' If that fetches nothing, then we must go to California, and work until we get the evidence which will force him to acknowledge himself and give up his money. But by that time, if we can make sure it is he, and if we can get his money, then I would recommend one thing! Kill him!"

Sonia's eyes sparkled at the thought of that sweet murder.

"And wait another five years for all this," was her cynical remark.

"If the question is not settled this Fall, then let it go forever," said Edith with energy.

"The scheme is well enough," Sonia said lazily. "Is this Arthur Dillon handsome, a dashing blade?"

"Better," murmured Edith with a smack of her lips, "a virtuous sport, who despises the sex in a way, and can master woman by a look. He is my master. And I hate him! It will be worth your time to see him and meet him."

"And now you," to Curran.

Sonia did not know, nor care why Edith hated Dillon.

"I protest, Sonia. He will put a spell on you, and spoil our chances. Let him talk later when we have succeeded or failed."

"Nonsense, you fool. I must hear both sides, but I declare now that I submit myself to you wholly. What do you say, Curran?"

"Just this, madam: if this man Arthur Dillon is really your husband, then he's too clever to be caught by any power in this world. Any way you choose to take it, you will end as this search has always ended."

"Why do you think him so clever? My Horace was anything but clever ... at least we thought so ... until now."

"Until he has foiled every attempt to find him," said Curran. "Colette has her own ideas, but she has kept back all the details that make or unmake a case. She is so sure of her instincts! No doubt they are good."

"But not everything, hey?" said the lady tenderly. "Ah, a woman's instincts lead her too far sometimes...." they all laughed. "Well, give me the details Colette left out. No winking at each other. I won't raise a hand in this matter until I have heard both sides."

"This Arthur Dillon is Irish, and lives among the Irish in the old-fashioned Irish way, half in the slums, and half in the swell places...."

"Mon Dieu, what is this I hear! The Irish! My Horace live among the Irish! That's not the man. He could live anywhere, among the Chinese, the Indians, the niggers, but with that low class of people, never!" and she threw up her hands in despair. "Did I come from Boston to pursue a low Irishman!"

"You see," cried Edith. "Already he has cast his spell on you. He doesn't believe I have found your man, and he won't let you believe it. Can't you see that this Horace went to the very place where you were sure he would not go?"

"You cannot tell him now from an Irishman," continued the detective. "He has an Irish mother, he is a member of Tammany Hall, he is a politician who depends on Irish voters, he joined the Irish revolutionists and went over the sea to fight England, and he's in love with an Irish girl."

"Shocking! Horace never had any taste or any sense, but I know he detested the Irish around Boston. I can't believe it of him. But, as Colette says truly, he would hide himself in the very place where we least think of looking for him."

"Theories have come to nothing," screamed Edith, until the lady placed her hands on her ears. "Skill and training and coolness and all that rot have come to nothing. Because I hate Arthur Dillon I have discovered Horace Endicott. Now I want to see your eyes looking at this man, eyes with hate in them, and with murder in them. They will discover more than all the stupid detectives in the country. See what hate did for Horace Endicott. He hated you, and instead of murdering you he learned to torture you. He hated you, and it made him clever. Oh, hate is a great teacher! This fool of mine loves Arthur Dillon, because he is a patriot and hates England. Hate breeds cleverness, it breeds love, it opens the mind, it will dig out Horace Endicott and his fortune, and enrich us all."

"La, but you are strenuous," said the lady placidly, but impressed. She was a shallow creature in the main, and Curran compared his little wife, eloquent, glowing with feeling, dainty as a flame, to the slower-witted beauty, with plain admiration in his gaze. She deserves to succeed, he thought. Sonia came to a conclusion, languidly.

"We must try the eyes of hate," was her decision.

The pursuit of Arthur proved very interesting. The detective knew his habits of labor and amusement, his public haunts and loitering-places. Sonia saw him first at the opera, modestly occupying a front seat in the balcony.

"Horace would never do that when he could get a box," and she leveled her glass at him.

Edith mentally dubbed her a fool. However, her study of the face and figure and behavior of the man showed care and intelligence. Edith's preparation had helped her. She saw a lean, nervous young man, whose flowing black hair and full beard were streaked with gray. His dark face, hollow in the cheeks and not too well-colored with the glow of health, seemed to get light and vivacity from his melancholy eyes. Seriousness was the characteristic expression. Once he laughed, in the whole evening. Once he looked straight into her face, with so fixed, so intense an expression, so near a gaze, so intimate and penetrating, that she gave a low cry.

"You have recognized him?" Edith whispered mad with joy.

"No, indeed," she answered sadly, "That is not Horace Endicott. Not a feature that I recall, certainly no resemblance. I was startled because I saw just now in his look, ... he looked towards me into the glass ... an expression that seemed familiar ... as if I had seen it before, and it had hurt me then as it hurts me now."

"There's a beginning," said Edith with triumph. "Next time for a nearer look."

"Oh, he could never have changed so," Sonia cried with bitterness of heart.

Curran secured tickets for a ball to be held by a political association in the Cherry Hill district, and placed the ladies in a quiet corner of the gallery of the hall. Arthur Dillon, as a leading spirit in the society, delighted to mingle with the homely, sincere, warm-hearted, and simple people for whom this occasion was a high festival; and nowhere did his sorrow rest so lightly on his soul, nowhere did he feel so keenly the delight of life, or give freer expression to it. Edith kept Sonia at the highest pitch of excitement and interest.

"Remember," she said now, "that he probably knows you are in town, that you are here watching him; but not once will he look this way, nor do a thing other than if you were miles away. My God, to be an actor like that!"

The actor played his part to perfection and to the utter disappointment of the women. The serious face shone now with smiles and color, with the flash of wit and the play of humor. Horace Endicott had been a merry fellow, but a Quaker compared with the butterfly swiftness and gaiety of this young man, who led the grand march, flirted with the damsels and chatted with the dames, danced as often as possible, joked with the men, found partners for the unlucky, and touched the heart of every rollicking moment. The old ladies danced jigs with him, proud to their marrow of the honor, and he allowed himself ... Sonia gasped at the sight ... to execute a wild Irish pas seul amid the thunderous applause of the hearty and adoring company.

"That man Horace Endicott!" she exclaimed with contempt. "Bah! But it's interesting, of course."

"What a compliment! what acting! oh, incomparable man!" said Edith, enraged at his success before such an audience. Her husband smiled behind his hand.

"You have a fine imagination, Colette, but I would not give a penny for your instinct," said Sonia.

"My instinct will win just the same, but I fear we shall have to go to California. This man is too clever for commonplace people."

"Arthur Dillon is a fine orator," said Curran mischievously, "and to-morrow night you shall hear him at his best on the sorrows of Ireland."

Sonia laughed heartily and mockingly. Were not these same sorrows, from their constancy and from repetition, become the joke of the world? Curran could have struck her evil face for the laugh.

"Was your husband a speaker?" he asked.

"Horace would not demean himself to talk in public, and he couldn't make a speech to save his life. But to talk on the sorrows of Ireland ... oh, it's too absurd."

"And why not Ireland's sorrows as well as those of America, or any other country?" he replied savagely.

"Oh, I quite forgot that you were Irish ... a thousand pardons," she said with sneering civility. "Of course, I shall be glad to hear his description of the sorrows. An orator! It's very interesting."

The occasion for the display of Arthur's powers was one of the numerous meetings for which the talking Irish are famous all over the world, and in which their clever speakers have received fine training. Even Sonia, impressed by the enthusiasm of the gathering, and its esteem for Dillon, could not withhold her admiration. Alas, it was not her Horace who poured out a volume of musical tone, vigorous English, elegant rhetoric, with the expression, the abandonment, the picturesqueness of a great actor. She shuddered at his descriptions, her heart melted and her eyes moistened at his pathos, she became filled with wonder. It was not Horace! Her husband might have developed powers of eloquence, but would have to be remade to talk in that fashion of any land. This Dillon had terrible passion, and her Horace was only a a handsome fool. She could have loved Dillon.

"So you will have to arrange the little scene where I shall stand before him without warning, and murmur tenderly, 'at last, Horace!' And it must be done without delay," was her command to Edith.

"It can be done perhaps to-morrow night," Edith said in a secret rage, wondering what Arthur Dillon could have seen in Sonia. "But bear in mind why I am doing this scene, with the prospects of a furious time afterwards with Dillon. I want you to see him asleep, just for ten minutes, in the light of a strong lamp. In sleep there is no disguise. When he is dressed for a part and playing it, the sharpest eyes, even the eyes of hate, may not be able to escape the glamour of the disguise. The actor asleep is more like himself. You shall look into his face, and turn it from side to side with your own hands. If you do not catch some feeling from that, strike a resemblance, I shall feel like giving up."

"La, but you are an audacious creature," said Sonia, and the triviality of the remark sent Edith into wild laughter. She would like to have bitten the beauty.

The detective consented to Edith's plans, in his anxiety to bring the farce to an end before the element of danger grew. Up to this point they might appeal to Arthur for mercy. Later the dogs would be upon them. As yet no sign of irritation on Arthur's part had appeared. The day after the oration on the sorrows of Erin he sent a note to Curran announcing his intention to call the same evening. Edith, amazed at her own courage in playing with the fire which in an instant could destroy her, against the warning of her husband, was bent on carrying out the scene.

Dearly she loved the dramatic off the stage, spending thought and time in its arrangement. How delicious the thought of this man and his wife meeting under circumstances so wondrous after five years of separation. Though death reached her the next moment she would see it. The weakness of the plot lay in Sonia's skepticism and Arthur's knowledge that a trap was preparing. He would brush her machinery aside like a cobweb, but that did not affect the chance of his recognition by Sonia.

Dillon had never lost his interest in the dancer and her husband. They attracted him. In their lives ran the same strain of madness, the madness of the furies, as in his own. Their lovable qualities were not few. Occasionally he dropped in to tease Edith over her lack of conscience, or her failures, and to discuss the cause of freedom with the smooth and flinty Curran. Wild humans have the charm of their wilderness. One must not forget their teeth and their claws. This night the two men sat alone. Curran filled the glasses and passed the cigars. Arthur made no comment on the absence of Edith. He might have been aware that the curtains within three feet of his chair, hiding the room beyond, concealed the two women, whose eyes, peering through small glasses fixed in the curtains, studied his face. He might even have guessed that his easy chair had been so placed as to let the light fall upon him while Curran sat in the dim light beyond. The young man gave no sign, spoke freely with Curran on the business of the night, and acted as usual.

"Of course it must be stopped at once," he said. "Very much flattered of course that I should be taken for Horace Endicott ... you gave away Tom Jones' name at last ... but these things, so trifling to you, jar the nerves of women. Then it would never do for me, with my little career in California unexplained, to have stories of a double identity ... is that what you call it?... running around. Of course I know it's that devil Edith, presuming always on good nature ... that's her nature ... but if you don't stop it, why I must."

"You'll have to do it, I think," the detective replied maliciously. "I can do only what she orders. I had to satisfy her by running to the priest, and your mother, and the Senator——"

"What! even my poor uncle! Oh, Curran!"

"The whole town, for that matter, Mr. Dillon. It was done in such a way, of course, that none of them suspected anything wrong, and we talked under promise of secrecy. I saw that the thing had to be done to satisfy her and to bring you down on us. Now you're down and the trouble's over as far as I am concerned."

"And Tom Jones was Horace Endicott," Arthur mused, "I knew it of course all along, but I respected your confidence. I had known Endicott."

"You knew Horace Endicott?" said Curran, horrified by a sudden vision of his own stupidity.

"And his lady, a lovely, a superb creature, but just a shade too sharp for her husband, don't you know. He was a fool in love, wasn't he? judging from your story of him. Has she become reconciled to her small income, I wonder? She was not that kind, but when one has to, that's the end of it. And there are consolations. How the past month has tired me. I could go to sleep right in the chair, only I want to settle this matter to-night, and I must say a kind word to the little devil——"

His voice faded away, and he slept, quite overpowered by the drug placed in his wine. After perfect silence for a minute, Curran beckoned to the women, who came noiseless into the room, and bent over the sleeping face. In his contempt for them, the detective neither spoke nor left his seat. Harpies brooding over the dead! Even he knew that!

Arthur's face lay in profile, its lines all visible, owing to the strong light, through the disguise of the beard. The melancholy which marks the face of any sleeper, a foreshadow of the eternal sleep, had become on this sleeper's countenance a profound sadness. From his seat Curran could see the pitiful droop of the mouth, the hollowness of the eyes, the shadows under the cheek-bones; marks of a sadness too deep for tears. Sonia took his face in her soft hands and turned the right profile to the light. She looked at the full face, smoothed his hair as if trying to recall an ancient memory.

"The eyes of hate," murmured Edith between tears and rage. She pitied while she hated him, understanding the sorrow that could mark a man's face so deeply, admiring the courage which could wear the mask so well. Sonia was deeply moved in spite of disappointment. At one moment she caught a fleeting glimpse of her Horace, but too elusive to hold and analyze. Something pinched her feelings and the great tears fell from her soft eyes. Emotion merely pinched her. Only in hate could she writhe and foam and exhaust nature. She studied his hands, observed the fingers, with the despairing conviction that this was not the man; too lean and too coarse and too hard; and her rage began to burn against destiny. Oh, to have Horace as helpless under her hands! How she could rend him!

"Do you see any likeness?" whispered Edith.

"None," was the despairing answer.

"Be careful," hissed Curran. "In this sleep words are heard and remembered sometimes."

Edith swore the great oaths which relieved her anger. But what use to curse, to look and curse again? At the last moment Curran signalled them away, and began talking about his surprise that Arthur should have known the lost man.

"Because you might have given me a clue," Arthur heard him saying as he came back from what he thought had been a minute's doze, "and saved me a year's search, not to mention the money I could have made."

"I'll tell you about it some other time," said Arthur with a yawn, as he lit a fresh cigar. "Ask madam to step in here, will you. I must warn her in a wholesome way."

"I think she is entertaining a friend," Curran said, hinting plainly at a surprise.

"Let her bring the friend along," was the careless answer.

The two women entered presently, and Edith made the introduction. The husband and wife stood face to face at last. Her voice failed in her throat from nervousness, so sure was she that the Endicotts had met again! They had the center of the stage, and the interest of the audience, but acted not one whit like the people in a play.

"Delighted," said Arthur in his usual drawling way on these occasions. "I have had the pleasure of meeting Mrs. Endicott before."

"Indeed," cried the lady. "I regret that my memory...."

"At Castle Moyna, a little fête, mother fainted because she saw me running across the lawn ... of course you remember...."

"Why, certainly ... we all felt so sorry for the young singer ... her father...."

"He was in jail and died since, poor man. Then I saw you coming across on the steamer with a dear, sweet, old lady...."

"My husband's aunt," Sonia gasped at the thought of Aunt Lois.

"Oh, but he's letter-perfect," murmured Edith in admiration.

"And you might remember me," said the heartless fellow, "but of course on a wedding-tour no one can expect the parties to remember anything, as the guide for a whole week to your party in California."

"Of course there was a guide," she admitted, very pleasant to meet him again, and so on to the empty end. Edith, stunned by her defeat, sat crushed, for this man no more minded the presence of his wife than did Curran. It was true. Arthur had often thought that a meeting like this in the far-off years would rock his nature as an earthquake rocks the solid plain. Though not surprised at her appearance, for Edith's schemes had all been foreseen, he felt surprise at his own indifference. So utterly had she gone out of his thought, that her sudden appearance, lovely and seductive as of old, gave him no twinge of hate, fear, repugnance, disgust, horror, shame, or pain.

He took no credit to himself for a self-control, which he had not been called upon by any stress of feeling to exercise. He was only Arthur Dillon, encountering a lady with a past; a fact in itself more or less amusing. Once she might have been a danger to be kept out like a pest, or barricaded in quarantine. That time had gone by. His indifference for the moment appalled him, since it showed the hopeless depth of Endicott's grave. After chatting honestly ten minutes, he went away light of heart, without venturing to warn Edith. Another day, he told her, and be good meanwhile.

Curran became thoughtful, and the women irritable after he had gone. Edith felt that her instincts had no longer a value in the market. In this wretched Endicott affair striking disappointment met the most brilliant endeavors. Sonia made ready to return to her hotel. Dolorously the Currans paid her the last courtesies, waiting for the word which would end the famous search for her Horace.

"I have been thinking the matter over," she said sweetly, "and I have thought out a plan, not in your line of course, which I shall see to at once. I think it worth while to look through California for points in the life of this interesting young man, Mr. Dillon."

When the door closed on her, Edith began to shriek in hysterical laughter.

---

CHAPTER XXXI.

THE HEART OF HONORA.

While Edith urged the search for Endicott, the little world to be horrified by her success enjoyed itself north and south as the season suggested, and the laws of fashion permitted. At the beginning of June, Anne settled herself comfortably for the summer in a roomy farmhouse, overlooking Lake Champlain and that particular island of Valcour, which once witnessed the plucky sea-fight and defeat of dare-devil Arnold. Only Honora accompanied her, but at the close of the month Louis, the deacon, and Mrs. Doyle Grahame joined them; and after that the whole world came at odd times, with quiet to-day and riot to-morrow. Honora, the center of interest, the storm-center, as we call it in these days, turned every eye in her direction with speculative interest. Would she retire to the convent, or find her vocation in the world? She had more than fulfilled her father's wish that she remain in secular life for a year. Almost two years had passed. He could not reproach her from his grave.

One divine morning she came upon the natural stage which had been the scene of a heart-drama more bitter to her than any sorrow. Walking alone in the solemn woods along the lake shore, the path suddenly ended on a rocky terrace, unshaded by trees, and directly over the water. Raspberry bushes made an enclosure there, in the center of which the stumps of two trees held a rough plank to make a seat. A stony beach curved inward from this point, the dark woods rose behind, and the soft waters made music in the hollows of the rock beneath her feet. Delightful with the perfume of the forest, the placid shores of Valcour, sun, and flower, and bird filling eye and ear with beauty, the sight of the spot chilled her heart. Here Lord Constantine had offered her his love and his life the year before. To her it had been a frightful scene, this strong, handsome, clever man, born to the highest things of mind, heart, talent and rank, kneeling before her, pleading with pallid face for her love, ... and all the rest of it! She would have sunk down with shame but for his kindness in accepting the situation, and carrying her through it.

Why his proposal shocked her his lordship could not see at first. He understood before his mournful interview and ended. Honora was of that class, to whom marriage does not present itself as a personal concern. She had the true feminine interest in the marriage of her friends, and had vaguely dreamed of her own march to the altar, an adoring lover, a happy home and household cares. Happy in the love of a charming mother and a high-hearted father, she had devoted her youthful days to them and to music. They stood between her and importunate lovers, whose intentions she had never divined.

With the years came trouble, the death of the mother, the earning of her living by her art, the care of her father, and the work for her native land. Lovers could not pursue this busy woman, occupied with father and native land, and daily necessity. The eternal round of travel, conspiracy, scheming, planning, spending, with its invariable ending of disappointment and weariness of heart, brought forth a longing for the peace of rest, routine, satisfied aspirations; and from a dream the convent became a passion, longed for as the oasis by the traveler in the sands.

Simple and sincere as light, the hollow pretence of the world disgusted her. Her temperament was of that unhappy fiber which sees the end almost as speedily as the beginning; change and death and satiety treading on the heels of the noblest enterprise. For her there seemed no happiness but in the possession of the everlasting, the unchangeable, the divinely beautiful. Out of these feelings and her pious habits rose the longing for the convent, for what seemed to be permanent, fixed, proportioned, without dust and dirt and ragged edges, and wholly devoted to God.

After a little Lord Constantine understood her astonishment, her humiliation, her fright. He had a wretched satisfaction in knowing that no other man would snatch this prize; but oh, how bitter to give her up even to God! The one woman in all time for him, more could be said in her praise still; her like was not outside heaven. How much this splendid lake, with sapphire sky and green shores, lacked of true beauty until she stepped like light into view; then, as for the first time, one saw the green woods glisten, the waters sparkle anew, the sky deepen in richness! One had to know her heart, her nature, so nobly dowered, to see this lighting up of nature's finest work at her coming. She was beautiful, white as milk, with eyes like jewels, framed in lashes of silken black, so dark, so dark!

Honora wept at the sight of his face as he went away. She had seen that despair in her father's face. And she wept to-day as she sat on the rough bench. Had she been to blame? Why had she delayed her entrance into the convent a year beyond the time? Arthur had declared his work could not get on without her for at least an extra half year. She was lingering still? Had present comfort shaken her resolution?

A cry roused her from her mournful thoughts, and she looked up to see Mona rounding the point at the other end of the stony beach, laboring at the heavy oars. Honora smiled and waved her handkerchief. Here was one woman for whom life had no problems, only solid contentment, and perennial interest; and who thought her husband the finest thing in the world. She beached her boat and found her way up to the top of the rock. To look at her no one would dream, Honora certainly did not, that she had any other purpose than breathing the air.

Mrs. Doyle Grahame enjoyed the conviction that marriage settles all difficulties, if one goes about it rightly. She had gone about it rightly, with marvellous results. That charming bear her father had put his neck in her yoke, and now traveled about in her interest as mild as a clam. All men gasped at the sight of his meekness. When John Everard Grahame arrived on this planet, his grandfather fell on his knees before him and his parents, and never afterwards departed from that attitude. Doyle Grahame laid it to his art of winning a father-in-law. Mona found the explanation simply in the marriage, which to her, from the making of the trousseau to the christening of the boy, had been wonderful enough to have changed the face of the earth. The delicate face, a trifle fuller, had increased in dignity. Her hair flamed more glorious than ever. As a young matron she patronized Honora now an old maid.

"You've been crying," said she, with a glance around, "and I don't wonder. This is the place where you broke a good man's heart. It will remain bewitched until you accept some other man in the same spot. How did we know, Miss Cleverly? Do you think Conny was as secret as you? And didn't I witness the whole scene from the point yonder? I couldn't hear the words, but there wasn't any need of it. Heavens, the expression of you two!"

"Mona, do you mean to tell me that every one knew it?"

"Every soul, my dear ostrich with your head in the sand. The hope is that you will not repeat the refusal when the next lover comes along. And if you can arrange to have the scene come off here, as you arranged for the last one ... I have always maintained that the lady with a convent vocation is by nature the foxiest of all women. I don't know why, but she shows it."

The usual fashion of teasing Honora attributed to her qualities opposed to a religious vocation.

"Well, I have made up my mind to fly at once to the convent," she said, "with my foxiness and other evil qualities. If it was my fault that one man proposed to me——"

"It was your fault, of course. Why do you throw doubt upon it?"

"It will not be my fault that the second man proposes. So, this place may remain accursed forever. Oh, my poor Lord Constantine! After all his kindness to father and me, to be forced to inflict such suffering on him! Why do men care for us poor creatures so much, Mona?"

"Because we care so much for them ..." Honora laughed ... "and because we are necessary to their happiness. You should go round the stations on your knees once a day for the rest of your life, for having rejected Lord Conny. It wasn't mere ingratitude ... that was bad enough; but to throw over a career so splendid, to desert Ireland so outrageously," this was mere pretence ... "to lose all importance in life for the sake of a dream, for the sake of a convent."

"You have a prejudice against convents, Mona."

"No, dear, I believe in convents for those who are made that way. I have noticed, perhaps you have too, that many people who should go to a convent will not, and many people at present in the cloisters ought to have stayed where nature put them first."

"It's pleasant on a day like this for you to feel that you are just where nature intended you to be, isn't it? How did you leave the baby?"

Mona leaped into a rhapsody on the wonderful child, who was just then filling the time of Anne, and at the same time filling the air with howlings, but returned speedily to her purpose.

"Did you say you had fixed the day, Honora?"

"In September, any day before the end of the month."

"You were never made for the convent," with seriousness. "Too fond of the running about in life, and your training is all against it."

"My training!" said Honora.

"All your days you were devoted to one man, weren't you? And to the cause of a nation, weren't you? And to the applause of the crowd, weren't you? Now, my dear, when you find it necessary to make a change in your habits, the changes should be in line with those habits. Otherwise you may get a jolt that you won't forget. In a convent, there will be no man, no Ireland, and no crowd, will there? What you should have done was to marry Lord Conny, and to keep right on doing what you had done before, only with more success. Now when the next man comes along, do not let the grand opportunity go."

"I'll risk the jolt," Honora replied. "But this next man about whom you have been hinting since you came up here? Is this the man?"

She pointed to the path leading into the woods. Louis came towards them in a hurry, having promised them a trip to the rocks of Valcour. The young deacon was in fighting trim after a month on the farm, the pallor of hard study and confinement had fled, and the merry prospect ahead made his life an enchantment. Only his own could see the slight but ineffaceable mark of his experience with Sister Claire.

"Take care," whispered Mona. "He is not the man, but the man's agent."

Louis bounced into the raspberry enclosure and flung himself at their feet.

"Tell me," said Honora mischievously. "Is there any man in love with me, and planning to steal away my convent from me? Tell me true, Louis."

The deacon sat up and cast an indignant look on his sister.

"Shake not thy gory locks at me," she began cooly....

"There it is," he burst out. "Do you know, Honora, I think marriage turns certain kinds of people, the redheads in particular, quite daft. This one is never done talking about her husband, her baby, her experience, her theory, her friends who are about to marry, or who want to marry, or who can't marry. She can't see two persons together without patching up a union for them...."

"Everybody should get married," said Mona serenely, "except priests and nuns. Mona is not a nun, therefore she should get married."

"The reasoning is all right," replied the deacon, "but it doesn't apply here. Don't you worry, Honora. There's no man about here that will worry you, and even if there was, hold fast to that which is given thee...."

"Don't quote Scripture, Reverend Sir," cried Mona angrily.

"The besotted world is not worth the pother this foolish young married woman makes over it."

The foolish young woman received a warning from her brother when Mona went into the woods to gather an armful of wild blossoms for the boat.

"Don't you know," said he with the positiveness of a young theologian, "that Arthur will probably never marry? Has he looked at a girl in that way since he came back from California? He's giddy enough, I know, but one that studies him can see he has no intention of marrying. Now why do you trouble this poor girl, after her scene with the Englishman, with hints of Arthur? I tell you he will never marry."

"You may know more about him than I do," his sister placidly answered, "but I have seen him looking at Honora for the last five years, and working for her, and thinking about her. His look changed recently. Perhaps you know why. There's something in the air. I can feel it. You can't. None of you celibates can. And you can't see beyond your books in matters of love and marriage. That's quite right. We can manage such things better. And if Arthur makes up his mind to win her, I'm bound she shall have him."

"We can manage! I'm bound!" he mimicked. "Well, remember that I warned you. It isn't so much that your fingers may be burned ... that's what you need, you married minx. You may do harm to those two. They seem to be at peace. Let 'em alone."

"What was the baby doing when you left the house?" said she for answer.

"Tearing the nurse's hair out in handfuls," said the proud uncle, as he plunged into a list of the doings of the wonderful child, who fitted into any conversation as neatly as a preposition.

Mona, grew sad at heart. Her brother evidently knew of some obstacle to this union, something in Arthur's past life which made his marriage with any woman impossible. She recalled his silence about the California episode, his indifference to women, his lack of enthusiasm as to marriage.

They rowed away over the lake, with the boat half buried in wild bushes, sprinkled with dandelion flowers and the tender blossoms of the apple trees. Honora was happy, at peace. She put the scene with Lord Constantine away from her, and forgot the light words of Mona.

Whoever the suitor might be, Arthur did not appear to her as a lover. So careful had he been in his behavior, that Louis would have as much place in her thought as Arthur, who had never discouraged her hope of the convent, except by pleading for Ireland. The delay in keeping her own resolution had been pleasant. Now that the date was fixed, the grateful enclosure of the cloister seemed to shut her in from all this dust and clamor of men, from the noisome sights and sounds of world-living, from the endless coming and going and running about, concerning trifles, from the injustice and meanness and hopeless crimes of men.

In the shade of the altar, in the restful gloom of Calvary, she could look up with untired eyes to the calm glow of the celestial life, unchanging, orderly, beautiful with its satisfied aspiration, and rich in perfect love and holy companionship. Such a longing came over her to walk into this perfect peace that moment! Mona well knew this mood, and Louis in triumph signalled his sister to look. Her eyes, turned to the rocky shore of Valcour, saw far beyond. On her perfect face lay a shadow, the shadow of her longing, and from her lips came now and then the perfume of a sigh.

In silence these two watched her, Louis recognizing the borderland of holy ecstasy, Mona hopeful that the vision was only a mirage. The boat floated close to the perpendicular rocks and reflected itself in the deep waters; far away the farmhouse lay against the green woods; to the north rose the highest point of the bluff, dark with pines; farther on was the sweep of the curved shore, and still farther the red walls of the town. Never boat carried freight so beautiful as this which bore along the island the young mother, the young deacon, and deep-hearted Honora, who was blessing God.

---

CHAPTER XXXII.

THE PAULINE PRIVILEGE.

For a week at the end of July Arthur had been in the city closing up the Curran episode. On his return every one felt that change of marked and mysterious kind had touched him. His face shone with joy. The brooding shadow, acquired in his exile, had disappeared. Light played about his face, emanated from it, as from moonlit water, a phosphorescence of the daylight. His mother studied him with anxiety, without which she had not been since the surprising visit of Curran. The old shadow seemed to have fled forever.

One night on the lake, as Louis and he floated lazily towards the island, he told the story. After enjoying a moonlight swim at the foot of the bluff, they were preparing to row over to Valcour when Honora's glorious voice rang out from the farmhouse on the hill above, singing to Mona's accompaniment. The two sat in delight. A full moon stood in the sky, and radiance silvered the bosom of the lake, the mystic shores, the far-off horizon. This singer was the voice of the night, whose mystic beauty and voiceless feeling surged into the woman's song like waters escaping through a ravine. Dillon was utterly oppressed by happiness. When the song had ceased, he stretched out his arms towards her.

"Dearest and best of women! By God's grace I shall soon call you mine!"

Louis took up the oars and pulled with energy in the direction of Valcour. "Is that the meaning of the look on your face since your return?" said he.

"That's the meaning. I saw you all watching me in surprise. My mother told me of it in her anxiety. If my face matched my feelings the moon there would look sickly besides its brightness. I have been in jail for five years, and to-day I am free."

"And how about that other woman ...?"

"Dead as far as I am concerned, the poor wretch! Yesterday I could curse her. I pity her to-day. She has gone her way and I go mine. Monsignor has declared me free. Isn't that enough?"

"That's enough," cried Louis, dropping the oars in his excitement. "But is it enough to give you Honora? I'm so glad you think of her that way. Mona told her only yesterday that some lover was pursuing her, not mentioning your name. I assured her on the contrary that the road to the convent would have no obstacles. And I rebuked Mona for her interference."

"You were right, and she was right," said Arthur sadly. "I never dared to show her my love, because I was not free. But now I shall declare it. What did she think of Mona's remarks?"

"She took them lightly. I am afraid that your freedom comes at a poor time, Arthur; that you may be too late. I have had many talks with her. Her heart is set on the convent, she has fixed the date for September, and she does not seem to have love in her mind at all."

"Love begets love. How could she think of love when I never gave any sign, except what sharp-eyed Mona saw. You can conceal nothing from a woman. Wait until I have wooed her ... but apart from all that you must hear how I came to be free ... oh, my God, I can hardly believe it even now after three days ... I have been so happy that the old anguish which tore my soul years ago seemed easier to bear than this exquisite pain. I must get used to it. Listen now to the story of my escape, and row gently while you listen so as to miss not a word."

Arthur did not tell his chum more than half of the tale, chiefly because Louis was never to know the story of Horace Endicott. He had gone to New York at the invitation of Livingstone. This surprising incident began a series of surprises. The Currans had returned from California, and made their report to Sonia; and to Livingstone of all men the wife of Horace Endicott had gone for advice in so delicate an affair as forcing Arthur Dillon to prove and defend his identity. After two or three interviews with Livingstone Arthur carried his report to Monsignor.

"All this looks to me," said the priest, "as if the time for a return to your own proper personality had come. You know how I have feared the consequences of this scheme. The more I look into it, the more terrible it seems."

"And why should I give up now of all times? when I am a success?" cried the young fellow. "Do I fear Livingstone and the lawyers? Curran and his wife have done their best, and failed. Will the lawyers do any better?"

"It is not that," said the priest. "But you will always be annoyed in this way. The sharks and blackmailers will get after you later...."

"No, no, no, Monsignor. This effort of the Currans and Mrs. Endicott will be the last. I won't permit it. There will be no result from Livingstone's interference. He can go as far as interviews with me, but not one step beyond. And I can guarantee that no one will ever take up the case after him."

"You are not reasonable," urged the priest. "The very fact that these people suspect you to be Horace Endicott is enough; it proves that you have been discovered."

"I am only the twentieth whom they pursued for Horace," he laughed. "Curran knows I am not Endicott. He has proved to the satisfaction of Livingstone that I am Arthur Dillon. But the two women are pertinacious, and urge the men on. Since these are well paid for their trouble, why should they not keep on?"

"They are not the only pertinacious ones," the priest replied.

"You may claim a little of the virtue yourself," Arthur slyly remarked. "You have urged me to betray myself into the hands of enemies once a month for the last five years."

"In this case would it not be better to get an advantage by declaring yourself, before Livingstone can bring suit against you?"

"There will be no suit," he answered positively. "I hold the winning cards in this game. There is no advantage in my returning to a life which for me holds nothing but horror. Do you not see, Monsignor, that the same reasons which sent me out of it hold good to keep me out of it?"

"Very true," said Monsignor reluctantly, as he viewed the situation.

"And new reasons, not to be controverted, have sprung up around Arthur Dillon. For Horace Endicott there is nothing in that old life but public disgrace. Do you know that I hate that fat fool, that wretched cuckold who had not sense enough to discover what the uninterested knew about that woman? I would not wear his name, nor go back to his circle, if the man and woman were dead, and the secret buried forever."

"He was young and innocent," said the priest with a pitiful glance at Arthur.

"And selfish and sensual too. I despise him. He would never have been more than an empty-headed pleasure-seeker. With that wife he could have become anything you please. The best thing he did was his flight into everlasting obscurity, and that he owed to the simple, upright, strong-hearted woman who nourished him in his despair. Monsignor," and he laid his firm hand on the knee of the priest and looked at him with terrible eyes, "I would choose death rather than go back to what I was. I shall never go back. I get hot with shame when I think of the part an Endicott played as Sonia Westfield's fool."

"And the reason not to be controverted?"

"In what a position my departure would leave my mother. Have you thought of that? After all her kindness, her real affection, as if I had been her own son. She thinks now that I am her son, and I feel that she is my mother. And what would induce me to expose her to the public gaze as the chief victim, or the chief plotter in a fraud? If it had to be done, I would wait in any event until my mother was dead. But beyond all these minor reasons is one that overshadows everything. I am Arthur Dillon. That other man is not only dead, he is as unreal to me as the hero of any book I read in my boyhood. It was hard to give up the old personality; to give up what I am now would be impossible. I am what I seem. I feel, think, speak, dream Arthur Dillon. The roots would bleed if I were to transplant myself. I found my career among your people, and the meaning of life. There is no other career for me. These are the people I love. I will never raise between them and me so odious a barrier as the story of my disappearance would be. They could never take to Horace Endicott. Oh, I have given the matter a moment's thought, Monsignor. The more I dwell on it, the worse it seems."

He considered the point for a moment, and then whispered with joyous triumph, "I have succeeded beyond my own expectations. I have disappeared even from myself. An enemy cannot find me, not even my own confession would reveal me. The people who love me would swear to a man that I am Arthur Dillon, and that only insanity could explain my own confession. At the very least they would raise such a doubt in the mind of a judge that he would insist on clean proofs from both sides. But there's the clear fact. I have escaped from myself, disappeared from the sight of Arthur Dillon. Before long I can safely testify to a dream I had of having once been a wretch named Horace Endicott. But I have a doubt even now that I was such a man."

"My God, but it's weird," said Monsignor with emotion, as he rose to walk the room. "I have the same notion myself at times."

"It's a matter to be left undisturbed, or some one will go crazy over it," Arthur said seriously.

"And you are happy, really happy? The sight of this woman did not revive in you any regret...."

"I am happy, Monsignor, beyond belief," with a contented sigh. "It would be too much to expect perfect happiness. Yet that is within my reach. If I were only free to marry Honora Ledwith."

"I heard of that too," said the priest meditatively. "Has she any regard for you?"

"As a brother. How could I have asked any other love? And I am rich in that. Since there is no divorce for Catholics, I could not let her see the love which burned in me. I had no hope."

"And she goes into the convent, I believe. You must not stand in God's way."

"I have not, though I delayed her going because I could not bear to part from her. Willingly I have resigned her to God, because I know that in His goodness, had I been free, He would have given her to me."

Monsignor paused as if struck by the thought and looked at him for a moment.

"It is the right spirit," was his brief comment.

He loved this strange, incomprehensible man, who had stood for five years between his adopted people and their enemies in many a fight, who had sought battle in their behalf and heaped them with favors. His eyes saw the depth of that resignation which gave to God the one jewel that would have atoned for the horrid sufferings of the past. If he were free! He thought of old Lear moaning over dead Cordelia.

She lives! If it be so,
It is a chance which does redeem all sorrows
That ever I have felt.

"It is the right spirit," he repeated as he considered the matter. "One must not stand in the way of a soul, or in the way of God. Yet were you free, where would be the advantage? She is for the convent, and has never thought of you in the way of love."

"Love begets love, father dear. I could light the flame in her heart, for I am dear to her as a brother, as her father's son."

"Then her dream of the convent, which she has cherished so many years, cannot be more than a dream, if she resigned it for you."

"I cannot argue with you," he said hopelessly, "and it's a sad subject. There is only the will of God to be done."

"And if you were free," went on Monsignor smiling, "and tried and failed to light love in her heart, you would suffer still more."

"A little more or less would not matter. I would be happy still to give her to God."

"I see, I see," shaking his sage head. "To God! As long as it is not to another and luckier fellow, the resignation is perfect."

Arthur broke into a laugh, and the priest said casually:

"I think that by the law of the Church you are a free man."

Arthur leaped to his feet with a face like death.

"In the name of God!" he cried.

Monsignor pushed him back into his chair.

"That's my opinion. Just listen, will you. Then take your case to a doctor of the law. There is a kind of divorce in the Church known as the Pauline Privilege. Let me state the items, and do you examine if you can claim the privilege. Horatius, an infidel, that is, unbaptized, deserts his wife legally and properly, because of her crimes; later he becomes a Catholic; meeting a noble Catholic lady, Honoria, he desires to marry her; question, is he free to contract this marriage? The answer of the doctors of the law is in the affirmative, with the following conditions: that the first wife be an infidel, that is, unbaptized; that to live with her is impossible; that she has been notified of his intention to break the marriage. The two latter conditions are fulfilled in your case the moment the first wife secures the divorce which enables her to marry her paramour. Horatius is then free to marry Honoria, or any other Catholic lady, but not a heretic or a pagan. This is called the Pauline Privilege because it is described in the Epistle of St. Paul to the Corinthians. My opinion is that you are free."

The man, unable to speak, or move, felt his hope grow strong and violent out of the priest's words.

"Mind, it's only my opinion," said Monsignor, to moderate his transports.

"You must go to Dr. Bender, the theologian, to get a purely legal decision. I fear that I am only adding to your misery. What if he should decide against you? What if she should decide against you?"

"Neither will happen," with painful effort. Sudden joy overcame him with that anguish of the past, and this was overwhelming, wonderful.

"The essence of love is sacrifice," said Monsignor, talking to give him time for composure. "Not your good only, but the happiness of her you love must control your heart and will; and above all there must be submission to God. When He calls, the child must leave the parent, the lover his mistress, all ties must be broken."

"I felt from the beginning that this would come to pass," said Arthur weakly. "Oh, I made my sacrifice long ago. The facts were all against me, of course. Easy to make the sacrifice which had to be made. I can make another sacrifice, but isn't it now her turn? Oh, Monsignor, all my joy seems to come through you! From that first moment years ago, when we met, I can date——"

"All your sorrow," the priest interrupted.

"And all my joy. Well, one cannot speak of these great things, only act. I'm going to the theologian. Before I sleep to-night he must settle that case. I know from your eyes it will be in my favor. I can bear disappointment. I can bear anything now. I am free from that creature, she is without a claim on me in any way, law, fact, religion, sympathy. Oh, my God!"

Monsignor could not hinder the tears that poured from his eyes silently. He clasped Arthur's hand and saw him go as he wept. In his varied life he had never seen so intimately any heart, none so strange and woful in its sorrow and its history, none so pathetic. The man lived entirely on the plane of tragedy, in the ecstasy of pain; a mystery, a problem, a wonder, yet only an average, natural, simple man, that had fought destiny with strange weapons.

This story Arthur whispered to Louis, floating between the moonlit shores of Champlain. He lay in the stern watching the rhythmic rise of the oar-blades, and the flashing of the water-drops falling back like diamonds into the wave. Happiness lay beside him steering the boat, a seraph worked the oars, the land ahead must be paradise. His was a lover's story, clear, yet broken with phrases of love; for was he not speaking to the heart, half his own, that beat with his in unison? The tears flowed down the deacon's cheek, tears of dread and of sympathy. What if Honora refused this gift laid so reverently at her feet? He spoke his dread.

"One must take the chance," said the lover calmly. "She is free too. I would not have her bound. The very air up here will conspire with me to win her. She must learn at once that I want her for my wife. Then let the leaven work."

The boat came back to the landing. The ladies sat on the veranda chatting quietly, watching the moon which rose higher and higher, and threw Valcour into shadow so deep, that it looked like a great serpent asleep on a crystal rock, nailed by a golden spike through its head to the crystal rock beneath. The lighthouse lamp burning steadily at the south point, and its long reflection in the still waters, was the golden nail. A puffing tug passed by with its procession of lumber boats, fanciful with colored lights, resounding with the roaring songs of the boatmen; and the waves recorded their protest against it in long groans on the shore. Arthur drank in the scene without misgiving, bathed in love as in moonlight. This moon would see the consummation of his joy.

---

CHAPTER XXXIII.

LOVE IS BLIND.

Next morning after breakfast the house began to echo with the singing of the inmates. Mona sang to the baby in an upper room, the Deacon thrummed the piano and hummed to himself in the raucous voice peculiar to most churchmen. Judy in the kitchen meditatively crooned to her maids an ancient lamentation, and out on the lawn, Arthur sang to his mother an amorous ditty in compliment to her youthful appearance. Honora, the song-bird, silent, heard with amusement this sudden lifting up of voices, each unconscious of the other. Arthur's bawling dominated.

"Has the house gone mad?" she inquired from the hallway stairs, so clearly that the singers paused to hear. "What is the meaning of all this uproar of song. Judy in the kitchen, Mona in the nursery, Louis in the parlor, Arthur on the lawn?"

The criminals began to laugh at the coincidence.

"I always sing to baby," Mona screamed in justification.

"I wasn't singing, I never sing," Louis yelled from the parlor.

"Mother drove me to it," Arthur howled through the door.

"I think the singin' was betther nor the shoutin'," Judy observed leaning out of the window to display her quizzical smile.

A new spirit illumined the old farmhouse. Love had entered it, and hope had followed close on his heels; hope that Honora would never get to her beloved convent. They loved her so and him that with all their faith, their love and respect for the convent life, gladly would they have seen her turn away from the holy doors into Arthur's reverential arms. With the exception of Anne. So surely had she become his mother that the thought of giving him up to any woman angered her. She looked coldly on Honora for having inspired him with a foolish passion.

"Come down, celestial goddess," said Arthur gayly, "and join the Deacon and me in a walk over the bluff, through the perfumed woods, down the loud-resounding shore. Put on rubbers, for the dew has no respect for the feet of such divinity."

They went off together in high spirits, and Mona came down to the veranda with the baby in her arms to look after them. Anne grieved at the sight of their intimacy.

"I have half a mind," she said, "to hurry Honora off to her convent, or to bring Sister Magdalen and the Mother Superior up here to strengthen her. If that boy has his way, he'll marry her before Christmas. He has the look of it in his eye."

"And why shouldn't he?" Mona asked. "If she will have him, then she has no business with the convent, and it will be a good opportunity for her to test her vocation."

"And what luck will there be in it for him?" said the mother bitterly. "How would you feel if some hussy cheated Louis out of his priesthood, with blue eyes and golden hair and impudence? If Arthur wants to marry after waiting so long, let him set eyes on women that ask for marriage. He'll never have luck tempting a poor girl from the convent."

"Little ye think o' the luck," said Judy, who had come out to have her morning word with the mistress. "Weren't ye goin' into a convent yerself whin Pat Dillon kem along, an' wid a wink tuk ye to church undher his arm. An' is there a woman in the whole world that's had greater luck than yerself?"

"Oh, I know you are all working for the same thing, all against me," Anne said pettishly.

"Faith we are, and may the angels guide him and her to each other. Can't a blind man see they wor made to be man an' wife? An' I say it, knowin' that the convent is the best place in the world for anny girl. I wish every girl that was born wint there. If they knew what is lyin' in wait for thim whin they take up wid a man, there wouldn't be convents enough to hould all that wud be runnin' to thim. But ye know as well as I do that the girls are not med for the convent, except the blessed few...."

Anne fled from the stream of Judy's eloquence, and the old lady looked expressively at Mona.

"She's afraid she's goin' to lose her Artie. Oh, these Irish mothers! they'd kape a boy till his hairs were gray, an' mek him belave it too, if they cud. I never saw but wan mother crazy to marry her son. That was Biddy Brady, that wint to school wid yer mother, an' poor Micksheen was a born ijit, wid a lip hangin' like a sign, so's ye cud hang an auction notice on it. Sure, the poor boy wudn't lave his mother for Vanus herself, an' the mother batin' him out o' the house every day, an' he bawlin' for fear the women wud get hould of him."

Honora had observed the happy change in Arthur, her knight of service, who had stood between her and danger, and had fought her battles with chivalry; asking no reward, hinting at none, because she had already given him all, a sister's love. What tenderness, what adoration, what service had he lavished on her, unmarred by act, or word, or hint! God would surely reward him for his consideration. Walking through the scented woods she found it easy to tell them of the date fixed for her entrance into the convent. Grand trees were marshalled along the path, supporting a roof of gold and green, where the sun fell strong on the heavy foliage.

"September," said Arthur making a calculation. "Why not wait until October and then shed your colors with the trees. I can see her," he went on humorously, "decorously arranging the black dress so that it will hang well, and not make her a fright altogether before the other women; and getting a right tilt to the black bonnet and enough lace in it to set off her complexion."

"Six months later," said the Deacon taking up the strain, "she will do better than that. Discarding the plain robes of the postulant, she will get herself into the robes of a bride...."

"Oh, sooner than that," said Arthur with a meaning which escaped her.

"No, six months is the period," she corrected seriously.

"In wedding finery she will prance before her delighted friends for a few minutes, and then march out to shed white silk and fleecy tulle. A vengeful nun, whose hair has long been worn away, will then clip with one snip of the scissors her brown locks from her head...."

"Horror!" cried Arthur.

"Sure, straight across the neck, you know, like the women's-rights people. Then the murder of the hair has to be concealed, so they put on a nightcap, and hide that with a veil, and then bring her into the bishop to tell him it's all right, and that she's satisfied."

"And what do they make of the hair?" said Arthur.

"That's one of the things yet to be revealed."

"And after that she is set at chasing the rule, or being chased by the rule for two years. She studies striking examples of observing the rule, and of the contrary. She has a shy at observing it herself, and the contrary. The rule is it when she observes it; she's it when she doesn't. At this point the mother superior comes into the game."

"Where do the frowsy children come in?"

"At meals usually. Honora cuts the bread and her fingers, butters it, and passes it round; the frowsy butter themselves, and Honora; this is an act of mortification, which is intensified when the mistress of novices discovers the butter on her habit."

"Finally the last stage is worse than the first, I suppose. Having acquired the habit she gets into it so deeply...."

"She sheds it once more, Arthur. Then she's tied to the frowsy children forever, and is known as Sister Mary of the Cold Shoulder to the world."

"This is a case of rescue," said Arthur with determination, "I move we rescue her this minute. Help, help!"

The woods echoed with his mocking cries. Honora had not spoken, the smile had died away, and she was plainly offended. Louis observant passed a hint to Arthur, who made the apology.

"We shall be there," he said humbly, "with our hearts bleeding because we must surrender you. And who are we that you need care? It is poor Ireland that will mourn for the child that bathed and bound her wounds, that watched by her in the dark night, and kept the lamp of hope and comfort burning, that stirred hearts to pity and service, that woke up Lord Constantine and me, and strangers and enemies like us, to render service; the child whose face and voice and word and song made the meanest listen to a story of injustice; all shut out, concealed, put away where the mother may never see or hear her more."

His voice broke, his eyes filled with tears at the vividness of the vision called up in the heart of the woods; and he walked ahead to conceal his emotion. Honora stopped dead and looked inquiringly at the Deacon, who switched the flowers with downcast eyes.

"What is the meaning of it, Louis?"

He knew not how to make answer, thinking that Arthur should be the first to tell his story.

"Do you think that we can let you go easily?" he said. "If we tease you as we did just now it is to hide what we really suffer. His feeling got the better of him, I think."

The explanation sounded harmless. For an instant a horrid fear that these woods must witness another scene like Lord Constantine's chilled her heart. She comforted Arthur like a sister.

"Do not feel my going too deeply. Change must come. Let us be glad it is not death, or a journey into distant lands with no return. I shall be among you still, and meanwhile God will surely comfort you."

"Oh, if we could walk straight on like this," Arthur answered, "through the blessed, free, scented forest, just as we are, forever! And walking on for years, content with one another, you, Louis, and I, come out at last, as we shall soon come out here on the lake, on the shore of eternity, just as life's sun sets, and the moon of the immortal life rises; and then without change, or the anguish of separation and dying, if we could pass over the waters, and enter the land of eternity, taking our place with God and His children, our friends, that have been there so long!"

"Is not that just what we are to do, not after your fashion, but after the will of God, Arthur? Louis at the altar, I in the convent before the altar, and you in the field of battle fighting for us both. Aaron, Miriam, Moses, here are the three in the woods of Champlain, as once in the desert of Arabia," and she smiled at the young men.

Louis returned the smile, and Arthur gave her a look of adoration, so tender, so bold, that she trembled. The next moment, when the broad space through which they were walking ended in a berry-patch, he plunged among the bushes with eagerness, to gather for her black raspberries in his drinking-cup. Her attempt to discuss her departure amiably had failed.

"I am tired already," said she to Louis helplessly. "I shall go back to the house, and leave you to go on together."

"Don't blame him," the Deacon pleaded, perceiving how useless was concealment. "If you knew how that man has suffered in his life, and how you opened heaven to him ..." she made a gesture of pain ... "remember all his goodness and be gentle with him. He must speak before you go. He will take anything from you, and you alone can teach him patience and submission."

"How long...." she began. He divined what she would have asked.

"Mona has known it more than a year, but no one else, for he gave no sign. I know it only a short time. After all it is not to be wondered at. He has been near you, working with you for years. His life has been lonely somehow, and you seemed to fill it. Do not be hasty with him. Let him come to his avowal and his refusal in his own way. It is all you can do for him. Knowing you so well he probably knows what he has to receive."

Arthur came back with his berries and poured them out on a leaf for her to eat. Seated for a little on a rock, while he lay on the ground at her feet, she ate to please him; but her soul in terror saw only the white face of Lord Constantine, and thought only of the pain in store for this most faithful friend. Oh, to have it out with him that moment! Yet it seemed too cruel. But how go on for a month in dread of what was to come?

She loved him in her own beautiful way. Her tears fell that night as she sat in her room by the window watching the high moon, deep crimson, rising through the mist over the far-off islands. How bitter to leave her beloved even for God, when the leaving brought woe to them! So long she had waited for the hour of freedom, and always a tangle at the supreme moment! How could she be happy and he suffering without the convent gates? This pity was to be the last temptation, her greatest trial. Its great strength did not disarm her. If twenty broke their hearts on that day, she would not give up her loved design. Let God comfort them, since she could not. But the vision of a peaceful entrance into the convent faded. She would have to enter, as she had passed through life, carrying the burden of another's woe, in tears.

She could see that he never lost heart. The days passed delightfully, and somehow his adoration pleased her. Having known him in many lights, there was novelty in seeing him illumined by candid love. How could he keep so high a courage with the end so dark and so near? Honora had no experience of love, romantic love, and she had always smiled at its expression in the novels of the time. If Arthur only knew the task he had set for himself! She loved him truly, but marriage repelled her almost, except in others.

Therefore, having endured the uncertainty of the position a week, she had it out with Arthur. Sitting on the rocks of an ancient quarry, high above the surface of the lake, they watched the waters rough and white from the strong south wind. The household had adjourned that day for lunch to this wild spot, and the members were scattered about, leaving them, as they always did now, by common consent alone.

"Perhaps," she said calmly, "this would be a good time to talk to you, Arthur, as sister to brother ... can't we talk as brother and sister?"

For a change came over his face that sickened her. The next moment he was ready for the struggle.

"I fear not, Honora," said he humbly. "I fear we can never do that again."

"Then you are to stand in my way too?" with bitterness.

"No, but I am not going to stand in my own way," he replied boldly. "Have I ever stood in your way, Honora?"

"You have always helped me. Do not fail me at the last, I beg of you."

"I shall never fail you, nor stand in your way. You are free now as your father wished you to be. You shall go to the convent on the date which you have named. Neither Ireland, nor anything but your heart shall hinder you. You have seen my heart for a week as you never saw it before. Do not let what you saw disturb or detain you. I told your father of it the last day of his life, and he was glad. He said it was like ... he was satisfied. Both he and I were of one mind that you should be free. And you are."

Ideas and words fled from her. The situation of her own making she knew not how to manage. What could be more sensible than his speech?

"Very well, thank you," she said helplessly.

He had perfect control of himself, but his attitude expressed his uneasiness, his face only just concealed his pain. All his life in moments like this, Arthur Dillon would suffer from his earliest sorrow.

"I hope you will all let me go with resignation," she began again.

"I give you to God freely," was his astonishing answer, "but I may tell you it is my hope He will give you back to me. I have nothing, and He is the Lord of all. He has permitted my heart to be turned to ashes, and yet gave it life again through you. I have confidence in Him. To you I am nothing; in the future I shall be only a memory to be prayed for. If we had not God to lift us up, and repay us for our suffering, to what would we come? I could not make my heart clear to you, show you its depths of feeling, frightful depths, I think sometimes, and secure your pity. God alone, the master of hearts, can do that. I have been generous to the last farthing. He will not be outdone by me."

"Oh, my God!" she murmured, looking at him in wonder, for his words sounded insanely to her ear.

"I love you, Honora," he went on, with a flush on his cheek, and so humble that he kept his eyes on the ground. "Go, in spite of that, if God demands it. If you can, knowing that I shall be alone, how much alone no one may know, go nevertheless. Only bear it in mind, that I shall wait for you outside the convent gate. If you cannot remain thinking of me, I shall be ready for you. If not here, then hereafter, as God wills. But you are free, and I love you. Before you go, God's beloved," and he looked at her then with eyes so beautiful that her heart went out to him, "you must let me tell you what I have been. You will pray for me better, when you have learned how far a man can sink into hell, and yet by God's grace reach heaven again."

---

CHAPTER XXXIV.

A HARPY AT THE FEAST.

Honora now saw that suffering was not to be avoided. Experience had taught her how to economize with it. In the wood one day she watched for minutes two robins hopping about in harmony, feeding, singing now and then low notes of content from a bough, and always together. A third robin made appearance on the scene, and their content vanished. Irritated and uneasy, even angered, they dashed at the intruder, who stood his ground, confident of his strength. For a long time he fought them, leaving only at his own pleasure. Longer still the pair remained unquiet, distressed by the struggle rather than wearied, complaining to each other tenderly.

Behold a picture of her own mind, its order upset by the entrance of a new idea. That life of the mind, which is our true life, had to change its point of view in order to meet and cope with the newcomer. Arthur's love had the fiber of tragedy. She felt rather than knew its nature. For years it had been growing in his strong heart, disciplined by steady buffeting, by her indifference, by his own hard circumstances; no passion of an hour like Romeo's; more like her father's love for Erin.

Former ideas began to shift position, and to struggle against the intruder vainly. Some fought in his favor. The vision of convent peace grew dim. She must take it with tears, and his sorrow would cloud its beauty. Marriage, always so remote from her life, came near, and tried to prove the lightness of its yoke with Arthur as the mate. The passion of her father's life awoke. Dear Erin cried out to her for the help which such a union would bring.

Her fixed resolve to depart for her convent in September kept the process from tangle. Sweet indeed was the thought of how nobly he loved her. She was free. God alone was the arbiter. None would hinder her going, if her heart did not bid her stay for his sake. Her father had needed her. She would never have forgiven herself had she left him to carry his sorrow alone. Perhaps this poor soul needed her more. With delight one moment and shame the next, she saw herself drifting towards him. Nevertheless she did not waver, nor change the date of her departure.

Arthur continued to adore at her shrine as he had done for years, and she studied him with the one thought: how will he bear new sorrow? No man bore the mark of sorrow more terribly when he let himself go, and at times his mask fell off in spite of resolve. As a lover Honora, with all her distaste for marriage, found him more lovable than ever, and had to admit that companionship with her hero would not be irritating. The conspiracy in his favor flourished within and without the citadel. Knowing that he adored her, she liked the adoration. To any goddess the smell of the incense is sweet, the sight of the flowers, the humid eyes, the leaping heart delightful. Yet she put it one side when the day over, and she knelt in her room for prayer. Like a dream the meanings of the day faded, and the vision of her convent cell, its long desired peace and rest, returned with fresher coloring. The men and women of her little world, the passions and interests of the daylight, so faded, that they seemed to belong to another age.

While this comedy went on the farmhouse and its happy life were keenly and bitterly watched by the wretched wife of Curran. It was her luck, like Sonia's, to spoil her own feast in defiling her enemy's banquet. Having been routed at all points and all but sent to Jezebel's fate by Arthur Dillon, she had stolen into this paradise to do what mischief she could. Thus it happened, at the moment most favorable for Arthur's hopes, when Honora inclined towards him out of sisterly love and pity, that the two women met in a favorite haunt of Honora's, in the woods near the lake shore.

To reach it one took a wild path through the woods, over the bluff, and along the foot of the hill, coming out on a small plateau some fifteen feet above the lake. Behind rose a rocky wall, covered with slender pines and cedars; noble trees shaded the plateau, leaving a clearing towards the lake; so that one looked out as from a frame of foliage on the blue waters, the islet of St. Michel, and the wooded cape known as Cumberland Head.

As Honora entered this lovely place, Edith sat on a stone near the edge of the precipice, enjoying the view. She faced the newcomer with unfailing impertinence, and coolly studied the woman whom Arthur Dillon loved. Sickness of heart filled her with rage. The evil beauty of Sonia and herself showed purely animal beside the pale spiritual luster that shone from this noble, sad-hearted maid. Honora bowed distantly and passed on. Edith began to glow with delight of torturing her presently, and would not speak lest her pleasure be hurried. The instinct of the wild beast, to worry the living game, overpowered her. What business had Honora with so much luck? The love of Arthur, fame as a singer, beauty, and a passion for the perfect life? God had endowed herself with three of these gifts. Having dragged them through the mud, she hated the woman who had used them with honor. What delight that in a moment she could torture her with death's anguish!

"I came here in the hope of meeting you, madam," she began suddenly, "if you are Miss Ledwith. I come to warn you."

"I do not need warnings from strangers," Honora replied easily, studying the other for an instant with indifferent eyes, "and if you wished me to see on proper matters you should have called at the house."

"For a scene with the man who ran away from his wife before he deceived me, and then made love to you? I could hardly do that," said she as demure and soft as a purring cat.

Honora's calm look plainly spoke her thought: the creature was mad.

"I am not mad. Miss Ledwith, and your looks will not prevent me warning you. Arthur Dillon is not the man he pretends——"

"Please go away," Honora interrupted.

"He is not the son of Anne Dillon——"

"Then I shall go," said Honora, but Edith barred the only way out of the place, her eyes blazing with the insane pleasure of torturing the innocent. Honora turned her back on her and walked down to the edge of the cliff, where she remained until the end.

"I know Arthur Dillon better than you know him," Edith went on, "and I know you better than you think. Once I had the honor of your acquaintance. That doesn't matter. Neither does it matter just who Arthur Dillon is. He's a fraud from cover to cover. His deserted wife is living, poor as well as neglected. The wretched woman has sought him long——"

"Why don't you put her on the track?" Honora asked, relieved that the lunatic wished only to talk.

"He makes love to you now as he has done for years, and he hopes to marry you soon. I can tell that by his behavior. I warn you that he is not free to marry. His wife lives. If you marry him I shall put her on his track, and give you a honeymoon of scandal. It was enough for him to have wrecked my life and broken my heart. I shall not permit him to repeat that work on any other unfortunate."

"Is that all?"

Edith, wholly astonished at the feeble impression made by her story, saw that her usual form had been lacking. Her scorn for Honora suggested that acting would be wasted on her; that the mere news of the living wife would be sufficient to plunge her into anguish. But here was no delight of pallid face and trembling limbs. Her tale would have gone just as well with the trees.

"I have risked my life to tell you this," said she throwing in the note of pathos. "If Arthur Dillon, or whoever he is, hears of it, he will kill me."

"Don't worry then," and Honora turned about with benign face and manner, quite suited to the need of a crazy patient escaped from her keepers, "I shall never tell him. But please go, for some one is coming. It may be he."

Edith turned about swiftly and saw a form approaching through the trees. She had her choice of two paths a little beyond, and fled by the upper one. Her fear of Arthur had become mortal. As it was she rushed into the arms of Louis, who had seen the fleeing form, and thought to play a joke upon Mona or Honora. He dropped the stranger and made apologies for his rudeness. She curtsied mockingly, and murmured:

"Possibly we have met before."

The blood rose hot to his face as he recognized her, and her face paled as he seized her by the wrist with scant courtesy.

"I scarcely hoped for the honor of meeting you again, Sister Claire. Of course you are here only for mischief, and Arthur Dillon must see you and settle with you. I'll trouble you to come with me."

"You have not improved," she snarled. "You would attack my honor again."

Then she screamed for help once, not the second time, which might have brought Arthur to the scene; but Honora came running to her assistance.

"Ah, this was your prey, wolf?" said Louis coolly. "Honora, has she been lying to you, this fox, Sister Claire, Edith Conyngham, with a string of other names not to be remembered? Didn't you know her?"

Honora recoiled. Edith stood in shame, with the mortified expression of the wild beast, the intelligent fox, trapped by an inferior boy.

"Oh, let her go, Louis," she pleaded.

"Not till she has seen Arthur. The mischief she can do is beyond counting. Arthur knows how to deal with her."

"I insist," said Honora. "Come away, Louis, please, come away."

He flung away her wrist with contempt, and pointed out her path. In a short time she had disappeared.

"And what had she to tell you, may I ask?" said the Deacon. "Like the banshee her appearance brings misfortune to us."

"You have always been my confidant, Louis," she answered after some thought. "Do you know anything about the earlier years of Arthur Dillon?"

"Much. Was that her theme?"

"That he was married and his wife still lives."

"He will tell you about that business himself no doubt. I know nothing clear or certain ... some hasty expressions of feeling ... part of a dream ... the declaration that all was well now ... and so on. But I shall tell him. Don't object, I must. The woman is persistent and diabolical in her attempts to injure us. He must know at least that she is in the vicinity. He will guess what she's after without any further hint. But you mustn't credit her, Honora. As you know...."

"Oh, I know," she answered with a smile. "The wretched creature is not to be believed under any circumstances. Poor soul!"

Nevertheless she felt the truth of Edith's story. It mattered little whether Arthur was Anne Dillon's son, he would always be the faithful, strong friend, and benefactor. That he had a wife living, the living witness of the weakness of his career in the mines, shocked her for the moment. The fact carried comfort too. Doubt fled, and the weighing of inclinations, the process kept up by her mind apart from her will, ceased of a sudden. The great pity for Arthur, which had welled up in her heart like a new spring, dried up at its source. For the first time she felt the sin in him, the absence of the ideal. He had tripped and fallen like all his kind in the wild days of youth; and according to his nature had been repeating with her the drama enacted with his first love. She respected his first love. She respected the method of nature, but did not feel forced to admire it.

Her distaste for the intimacy of marriage returned with tenfold strength. One might have become submissive and companionable with a virgin nature; to marry another woman's lover seemed ridiculous. This storm cleared the air beautifully. Her own point of view became plainer, and she saw how far inclination had hurried her. For some hours she had been near to falling in love with Arthur, had been willing to yield to tender persuasion. The woman guilty of such weakness did not seem at this moment to have been Honora Ledwith; only a poor soul, like a little ship in a big wind, borne away by the tempest of emotion.

She had no blame for Arthur. His life was his own concern. Part of it had brought her much happiness. Edith's scandalous story did not shake her confidence in him. Undoubtedly he was free to marry, or he would not have approached her. His freedom from a terrible bond must have been recent, since his manner towards herself had changed only that summer, within the month in fact. The reserve of years had been prompted by hard conditions. In honor he could not woo. Ah, in him ran the fibre of the hero, no matter what might have been his mistakes! He had resisted every natural temptation to show his love. Once more they were brother and sister, children of the dear father whose last moments they had consoled. Who would regret the sorrow which led to such a revealing of hearts?

The vision of her convent rose again to her pleased eye, fresh and beautiful as of old, and dearer because of the passing darkness which had concealed it for a time; the light from the chapel windows falling upon the dark robes in the choir, the voices of the reader, chanter, and singer, and the solemn music of the organ; the procession filing silently from one duty to another, the quiet cell when the day was over, and the gracious intimacy with God night and day. Could her belief and her delight in that holy life have been dim for an instant? Ah, weakness of the heart! The mountain is none the less firm because clouds obscure its lofty form. She had been wrapped in the clouds of feeling, but never once had her determination failed.

---

CHAPTER XXXV.

SONIA CONSULTS LIVINGSTONE.

Edith's visit, so futile, so unlike her, had been prompted by the hatefulness of her nature. The expedition to California had failed, her effort to prove her instincts true had come to nothing, and Arthur Dillon had at last put his foot down and extinguished her and Sonia together. Free to snarl and spit if they chose, the two cats could never plot seriously against him more. Curran triumphed in the end. Tracking Arthur Dillon through California had all the features of a chase through the clouds after a bird. The scene changed with every step, and the ground just gone over faded like a dream.

They found Dillons, a few named Arthur, some coincidences, several mysteries, and nothing beyond. The police still had the photographs sent out by Anne Dillon, and a record that the man sought for had been found and returned to his mother. The town where the search ended had only a ruined tavern and one inhabitant, who vaguely remembered the close of the incident. Edith surrendered the search in a violent temper, and all but scratched out the eyes of her devoted slave. To Sonia the detective put the net result very sensibly.

"Arthur Dillon did not live in California under his own name," said he, "and things have so changed there in five years that his tracks have been wiped out as if by rain. All that has been done so far proves this man to be just what he appears. We never had a worse case, and never took up a more foolish pursuit. We have proved just one sure thing: that if this man be Horace, then he can't be found. He is too clever to be caught, until he is willing to reveal himself. If you pursue him to the point which might result in his capture, there'll be murder or worse waiting for you at that point. It might be better for you two not to find him."

This suggestion, clever and terrifying, Sonia could not understand as clearly as Curran. She thought the soft nature of Horace quite manageable, and if murder were to be done her knife should do it. Oh, to seize his throat with her beautiful hands, to press and squeeze and dig until the blood gorged his face, and to see him die by inches, gasping! He had lied like a coward! Nothing easier to destroy than such a wretch!

"Don't give up, Sonia," was Edith's comment on the wise words of Curran. "Get a good lawyer, and by some trick drag Dillon and his mother and the priest to court, put them on oath as to who the man is; they won't perjure themselves, I'll wager."

"That is my thought," said Sonia tenderly nursing the idea. "There seems to be nothing more to do. I have thought the matter over very carefully. We are at the end. If this fails I mean to abandon the matter. But for his money I would have let him go as far as he wanted, and I would let this man pass too but for the hope of getting at his money. It is the only way to punish Horace, as he punished me. I feel like you, that the mystery is with this Arthur Dillon. Since I saw you last, he has filled my dreams, and always in the dreams he has been so like Horace that I now see more of a likeness in Arthur Dillon. I have a relative in the city, a very successful lawyer, Quincy Livingstone. I shall consult him. Perhaps it would be well for you to accompany me, Edith. You explain this case so well."

"No, she'll keep out of it, by your leave," the detective answered for her. "Dillon has had patience with this woman, but he will resent interference so annoying."

Edith made a face at him.

"As if I could be bossed by either you or Arthur. Sonia, you have the right stuff in you, clear grit. This trick will land your man."

"You'll find an alligator who will eat the legs off you both before you can run away," said Curran.

"Do you know what I think, Dick Curran?" she snapped at him. "That you have been playing the traitor to us, telling Arthur Dillon all we've been doing. Oh, if I could prove that, you wretch!"

"You have a high opinion of his softness, if you think he would throw away money to learn what any schoolboy might learn by himself. How much did you, with all your cleverness, get out of him in the last five years?"

He laughed joyfully at her wicked face.

"Let me tell you this," he added. "You have been teasing that boy as a monkey might a lion. Now you will set on him the man that he likes least in this world, Livingstone. What a pretty mouthful you will be when he makes up his mind that you've done enough."

Nevertheless the two women called on Livingstone. The great man, no longer great, no longer in the eye of the world, out of politics because the charmed circle had closed, and no more named for high places because his record had made him impossible, had returned to the practice of law. Eminent by his ability, his achievement, and his blood, but only a private citizen, the shadow of his failure lay heavy on his life and showed clearly in his handsome face. That noble position which he had missed, so dear to heart and imagination, haunted his moments of leisure and mocked his dreams. He had borne the disappointment bravely, had lightly called it the luck of politics. Now that the past lay in clear perspective, he recognized his own madness.

He had fought with destiny like a fool, had stood in the path of a people to whom God had given the chance which the rulers of the earth denied them; and this people, through a youth carrying the sling of David, had ruined him. He had no feeling against Birmingham, nor against Arthur Dillon. The torrent, not the men, had destroyed him. Yet he had learned nothing. With a fair chance he would have built another dam the next morning. He was out of the race forever. In the English mission he had touched the highest mark of his success. He mourned in quiet. Life had still enough for him, but oh! the keenness of his regret.

Sonia's story he had heard before, at the beginning of the search, as a member of the Endicott family. The details had never reached him. The cause of Horace Endicott's flight he had forgotten. Edith in her present costume remained unknown, nor did she enlighten him. Her thought as she studied him was of Dillon's luck in his enterprises. Behold three of his victims. Sonia repeated for the lawyer the story of her husband's disappearance, and of the efforts to find him.

"At last I think that I have found him," was her conclusion, "in the person of a man known in this city as Arthur Dillon."

Livingstone started slightly. However, there must be many Arthur Dillons, the Irish being so numerous, and tasteless in the matter of names. When she described her particular Arthur his astonishment became boundless at the absurdity of the supposition.

"You have fair evidence I suppose that he is Horace Endicott, madam?"

"I am sorry to tell you that I have none, because the statement makes one feel so foolish. On the contrary the search of a clever detective ... he's really clever, isn't he, Edith?... shows that Dillon is just what he appears to be, the son of Mrs. Anne Dillon. The whole town believes he is her son. The people who knew him since he was born declare him to be the very image of his father. Still, I think that he is Horace Endicott. Why I think so, ... Edith, my dear, it is your turn now. Do explain to the lawyer."

Livingstone wondered as the dancer spoke where that beautiful voice and fluent English had become familiar. Sister Claire had passed from his mind with all the minor episodes of his political intrigues. He could not find her place in his memory. Her story won him against his judgment. The case, well put, found strength in the contention that the last move had not been made, since the three most important characters in the play had not been put to the question.

His mind ran over the chief incidents in that remarkable fight which Arthur Dillon had waged in behalf of his people: the interview before the election of Birmingham, ... the intrigues in London, the dexterous maneuvers which had wrecked the campaign against the Irish, had silenced McMeeter, stunned the Bishop, banished Fritters, ruined Sister Claire, tumbled him from his lofty position, and cut off his shining future. How frightful the thought that this wide ruin might have been wrought by an Endicott, one of his own blood!

"A woman's instincts are admirable," he said, politely and gravely, "and they have led you admirably in this case. But in face of three facts, the failure of the detective, the declaration of Mr. Dillon, and your failure to recognize your husband after five years, it would be absurd to persist in the belief that this young man is your husband. Moreover there are intrinsic difficulties, which would tell even if you had made out a good case for the theory. No Endicott would take up intimate connection with the Irish. He would not know enough about them, he could not endure them; his essence would make the scheme, even if it were presented to him by others, impossible. One has only to think of two or three main difficulties to feel and see the utter absurdity of the whole thing,"

"No doubt," replied Sonia sweetly. "Yet I am determined not to miss this last opportunity to find my husband. If it fails I shall get my divorce, and ... bother with the matter no more."

Edith smiled faintly at the suggestive pause, and murmured the intended phrase, "marry Quincy Lenox."

"Very well," said the lawyer. "You have only to begin divorce proceedings here, issue a summons for the real Horace Endicott, and serve the papers on Mr. Arthur Dillon. You must be prepared for many events however. The whole business will be ventilated in the journals. The disappearance will come up again, and be described in the light of this new sensation. Mr. Dillon is eminent among his people, and well known in this city. It will be a year's wonder to have him sued in a divorce case, to have it made known that he is supposed to be Horace Endicott."

"That is unavoidable," Edith prompted, seeing a sudden shrinking on the part of Sonia. "Do not forget, sir, that all Mrs. Endicott wants is the sworn declaration of Arthur Dillon that he is not Horace Endicott, of his mother that he is her son, of Father O'Donnell that he knows nothing of Horace Endicott since his disappearance."

"You would not like the case to come to trial?" said the lawyer to Sonia.

"I must get my divorce," she answered coolly, "whether this is the right man or no."

"Let me tell you what may happen after the summons, or notice, is served on Mr. Dillon," said the lawyer. "The serving can be done so quietly that for some time no others but those concerned need know about it. I shall assume that Mr. Dillon is not Horace Endicott. In that case he can ignore the summons, which is not for him, but for another man. He need never appear. If you insisted on his appearance, you would have to offer some evidence that he is really Horace Endicott. This you cannot do. He could make affidavit that he is not the man. By that time the matter would be public property, and he could strike back at you for the scandal, the annoyance, and the damage done to his good name."

"What I want is to have his declaration under oath that he is not Horace. If he is Horace he will never swear to anything but the truth."

For the first time Sonia showed emotion, tears dropped from her lovely eyes, and the lawyer wondered what folly had lost to her husband so sweet a creature. Evidently she admired one of Horace's good qualities.

"You can get the declaration in that way. To please you, he might at my request make affidavit without publicity and scenes at court."

"I would prefer the court," said Sonia firmly.

"She's afeared the lawyer suspects her virtue," Edith said to herself.

"Let me now assume that Arthur Dillon is really Horace Endicott," continued Livingstone. "He must be a consummate actor to play his part so well and so long. He can play the part in this matter also, by ignoring the summons, and declaring simply that he is not the man. In that case he leaves himself open to punishment, for if he should thereafter be proved to be Horace Endicott, the court could punish him for contempt. Or, he can answer the summons by his lawyer, denying the fact, and stating his readiness to swear that he is not any other than Arthur Dillon. You would then have to prove that he is Horace Endicott, which you cannot do."

"All I want is the declaration under oath," Sonia repeated.

"And you are ready for any ill consequences, the resentment and suit of Mr. Dillon, for instance? Understand, my dear lady, that suit for divorce is not a trifling matter for Mr. Dillon, if he is not Endicott."

"Particularly as he is about to marry a very handsome woman," Edith interjected, heedless of the withering glance from Sonia.

"Ah, indeed!"

"Then I think some way ought to be planned to get Anne Dillon and the priest into court," Edith suggested. "Under oath they might give us some hint of the way to find Horace Endicott. The priest knows something about him."

"I shall be satisfied if Arthur Dillon swears that he is not Horace," Sonia said, "and then I shall get my divorce and wash my hands of the tiresome case. It has cost me too much money and worry."

"Was there any reason alleged for the remarkable disappearance of the young man? I knew his father and mother very well, and admired them. I saw the boy in his schooldays, never afterwards. You have a child, I understand."

Edith lowered her eyes and looked out of the window on the busy street.

"It is for my child's sake that I have kept up the search," Sonia answered with maternal tenderness. "Insanity is supposed to be the cause. Horace acted strangely for three months before his disappearance, he grew quite thin, and was absent most of the time. As it was summer, which I spent at the shore with friends, I hardly noticed his condition. It was only when he had gone, without warning, taking considerable money with him, that I recalled his queer behavior. Since then not a scrap of information, not a trace, nor a hint of him, has ever come back to me. The detectives did their best until this moment. All has failed."

"Very sad," Livingstone said, touched by the hopeless tone. "Well, as you wish it then, I shall bring suit for divorce and alimony against Horace Endicott, and have the papers served on Arthur Dillon. He can ignore them or make his reply. In either case he must be brought to make affidavit that he is not the man you look for."

"And the others? The priest and Mrs. Dillon?" asked Edith.

"They are of no consequence," was Sonia's opinion.

After settling unimportant details the two women departed. Livingstone found the problem which they had brought to his notice fascinating. He had always marked Arthur Dillon among his associates, as an able and peculiar young man, he had been attracted by him, and had listened to his speeches with more consideration than most young men deserved. His amazing success in dealing with a Livingstone, his audacity and nerve in attacking the policy which he brought to nothing, were more wonderful to the lawyer than to the friends of Dillon, who had not seen the task in its entirety.

And this peculiar fellow was thought to be an Endicott, of his own family, of the English blood, more Irish than the Irish, bitterer towards him than the priests had been. The very impossibility of the thing made it charming. What course of thought, what set of circumstances, could turn the Puritan mind in the Celtic direction? Was there such genius in man to convert one personality into another so neatly that the process remained undiscoverable, not to be detected by the closest observation? He shook off the fascination. These two women believed it, but he knew that no Endicott could ever be converted.

---

CHAPTER XXXVI.

ARTHUR'S APPEAL.

Suit was promptly begun by Livingstone on behalf of Sonia for a divorce from Horace Endicott. Before the papers had been fully made out, even before the officer had been instructed to serve them on Arthur Dillon, the lawyer received an evening visit from the defendant himself. As a suspicious act he welcomed it; but a single glance at the frank face and easy manner, when one knew the young man's ability, disarmed suspicion. The lawyer studied closely, for the first time with interest, the man who might yet prove to be his kinsman. He saw a form inclined to leanness, a face that might have been handsome but for the sunken cheeks, dark and expressive eyes whose natural beauty faded in the dark circles around them, a fine head with dead black hair, and a handsome beard, streaked with gray. His dress, gentleman-like but of a strange fashion, the lawyer did not recognize as the bachelor costume of Cherry Hill prepared by his own tailor. Nothing of the Endicott in face or manner, nothing tragical, the expression decorous and formal, perhaps a trifle quizzical, as this was their first meeting since the interview in London.

"I have called to enter a protest," Arthur began primly, "against the serving of the papers in the coming Endicott divorce case on your humble servant."

"As the papers are to be served only on Horace Endicott, I fail to see how you have any right or reason to protest," was the suave answer.

"I know all about the matter, sir, for very good reasons. For some months the movements of the two women concerned in this affair have been watched in my interest. Not long after they left you a few days ago, the result of their visit was made known to me. To anticipate the disagreeable consequences of serving the papers on me, I have not waited. I appeal to you not only as the lawyer of Mrs. Endicott, but also as one much to blame for the new persecution which is about to fall upon me."

"I recognize the touch," said Livingstone, unable to resist a smile. "Mr. Dillon must be audacious or nothing."

"I am quite serious," Arthur replied. "You know part of the story, what Mrs. Endicott chose to tell you, but I can enlighten you still more. I appeal to you, as the lady's lawyer, to hinder her from doing mischief; and again I appeal to you as one to blame in part for the threatened annoyances. But for the lady who accompanied Mrs. Endicott, I would not be suspected of relationship with your honored family. But for the discipline which I helped to procure for that lady, she would have left me in peace. But for your encouragement of the lady, I would not have been forced to subject a woman to discipline. You may remember the effective Sister Claire?"

So true was the surprise that Livingstone blushed with sudden violence.

"That woman was the so-called escaped nun?" he exclaimed.

"Now Mrs. Curran, wife of the detective employed by Mrs. Endicott for five years to discover her lost husband. She satisfies her noblest aspirations by dancing in the theaters, ... and a very fine dancer she is. Her leisure is devoted to plotting vengeance on me. She pretends to believe that I am Horace Endicott; perhaps she does believe it. Anyway she knows that persecution will result, and she has persuaded Mrs. Endicott to inaugurate it. I do not know if you were her selection to manage the case."

This time Livingstone did not blush, being prepared for any turn of mood and speech from this singular young man.

"As the matter was described to me," he said, "only a sentimental reason included you in the divorce proceedings. I can understand Mrs. Curran's feelings, and to what they would urge a woman of that character. Still, her statements here were very plausible."

"Undoubtedly. She made her career up to this moment on the plausible. Let me tell you, if it is not too tedious, how she has pursued this theory in the face of all good sense."

The lawyer bowed his permission.

"I am of opinion that the creature is half mad, or subject to fits of insanity. Her husband had talked much of the Endicott case, which was not good for a woman of her peculiarities. By inspiration, insane suggestion, she assumed that I was the man sought for, and built up the theory as you have heard. First, she persuaded her good-natured husband, with whom I am acquainted, to investigate among my acquaintances for the merest suspicion, doubt, of my real personality. A long and minute inquiry, the details of which are in writing in my possession, was made by the detective with one result: that no one doubted me to be what I was born."

Livingstone cast a look at him to see the expression which backed that natural and happy phrase. Arthur Dillon might have borne it.

"She kept at her husband, however, until he had tried to surprise my relatives, my friends, my nurse, and my mother, ... yes, even my confessor, into admissions favorable to her mad dream. My rooms, my papers, my habits, my secrets were turned inside out; Mrs. Endicott was brought on from Boston to study me in my daily life; for days I was watched by the three. In the detective's house I was drugged into a profound sleep, and for ten minutes the two women examined my sleeping face for signs of Horace Endicott. When all these things failed, Sister Claire dragged her unwilling husband to California, where I had spent ten years of my life, and tried hard to find another Arthur Dillon, or to disconnect me with myself. She proved to her own satisfaction that these things could not be done. But there is a devil of perversity in her. She is like a boa constrictor ... I think that's the snake which cannot let go its prey once it has seized it. She can't let go. In desperation she is risking her own safety and happiness to make public her belief that I am Horace Endicott. In spite of the overwhelming proofs against the theory, and in favor of me, she is bent on bringing the case into court."

"Risking her own safety and happiness?" Livingstone repeated.

"If the wild geese among the Irish could locate Sister Claire, who is supposed to have fled the town long ago, her life would be taken. If this suit continues she will have to leave the city forever. Knowing this the devil in her urges her to her own ruin."

"You have kept close track of her," said Livingstone.

"You left me no choice," was the reply, "having sprung the creature on us, and then thrown her off when you found out her character. If she had only turned on her abettors and wracked them I wouldn't have cared."

"You protest then against the serving of these papers on you. Would it not be better to settle forever the last doubts in so peculiar a matter?"

"What have I to do with the doubts of an escaped nun, and of Mrs. Endicott? Must I go to court and stand the odium of a shameful imputation to settle the doubts of a lunatic criminal and a woman whose husband fled from her with his entire fortune?"

"It is regrettable," the lawyer admitted with surprise. "As Mrs. Endicott is perhaps the most deeply interested, I fear that the case must go on."

"I have come to show you that it will not be to the interest of the two women that it should go on. In fact I feel quite certain that you will not serve those papers on me after I have laid a few facts before you."

"I shall be glad to examine them in the interest of my client."

"Having utterly failed to prove me other than I am," Arthur said easily, while the lawyer watched with increasing interest the expressive face, "these women have accepted your suggestion to put me under oath as to my own personality. I would not take affidavit," and his contempt was evident. "I am not going to permit any public or official attempt to cast doubt on my good name. You can understand the feeling. My mother and my friends are not accustomed to the atmosphere of courts, nor of scandal. It would mean severe suffering for them to be dragged into so sensational a trial. The consequences one cannot measure beforehand. The unpleasantness lives after all the parties are dead. Since I can prevent it I am going to do it. As far as I am concerned Mrs. Endicott must be content with a simple denial, or a simple affirmation rather, that I am Arthur Dillon, and therefore not her husband. It is more than she deserves, because there is not a shred of evidence to warrant her making a single move against me. She has not been able to find in me a feature resembling her husband."

"Then, you are prepared to convince Mrs. Endicott that she has more to lose than to gain by bringing you into her divorce suit?"

"Precisely. Here is the point for her to consider: if the papers in this suit are served upon me, then there will be no letting-up afterward. Her affairs, the affairs of this woman Curran, the lives of both to the last detail, will be served up to the court and the public. You know how that can be done. I would rather not have it done, but I proffer Mrs. Endicott the alternative."

"I do not know how strong an argument that would be with Mrs. Endicott," said Livingstone with interest.

"She is too shallow a woman to perceive its strength, unless you, as her lawyer and kinsman, make it plain to her," was the guileless answer. "Mrs. Curran knows nothing of court procedure, but she is clever enough to foresee consequences, and her history before her New York fiasco includes bits of romance from the lives of important people."

Livingstone resisted the inclination to laugh, and then to get angry.

"You think then, that if Mrs. Endicott could be made to see the possibilities of a desperate trial, the possible exposures of her sins and the sins of others, that she would not risk it?"

"She has family pride," said Arthur seriously, "and would not care to expose her own to scorn. I presume you know something about the Endicott disappearance?"

"Nothing more than the fact, and the failure to find the young man?"

"His wife employed the detective Curran to make the search for Endicott, and Curran is a Fenian, as interested as myself in such matters. He was with me in the little enterprise which ended so fatally for Ledwith and ... others." Livingstone was too sore on this subject to smile at the pause and the word. "Curran told me the details after he had left the pursuit of Endicott. They are known now to Mrs. Endicott's family in part. It is understood that she will marry her cousin Quincy Lenox when she gets a divorce. He was devoted to her before her marriage and is faithful still, I am told."

Not a sign of feeling in the utterance of these significant words!

"It is not affection, then, which prompts the actions of my client? She wishes to make sure of the existence or non-existence of her husband before entering upon this other marriage?"

"Of course I can tell you only what the detective and one other told us," Arthur said. "When Horace Endicott disappeared, it is said, he took with him his entire fortune, something over a million, leaving not one cent to his wife. He had converted his property into cash secretly. Her anxiety to find him is very properly to get her lawful share in that property, that is, alimony with her divorce?"

"I see," said Livingstone, and he began to understand the lines and shadows on this young man's face. "A peculiar, and I suppose thorough, revenge."

"If the papers are served on me, you understand, then in one fashion or another Mrs. Endicott shall be brought to court, and Quincy Lenox too, with the detective and his wife, and a few others. It is almost too much that you have been made acquainted with the doubts of these people. I bear with it, but I shall not endure one degree more of publicity. Once it is known that I am thought to be Horace Endicott, then the whole world must know quite as thoroughly that I am Arthur Dillon; and also who these people are that so foolishly pursue me. It cannot but appear to the average crowd that this new form of persecution is no more than an outgrowth of the old."

Then they glared at each other mildly, for the passions of yesterday were still warm. Livingstone's mood had changed, however. He felt speculatively certain that Horace Endicott sat before him, and he knew Sonia to be a guilty woman. As his mind flew over the humiliating events which connected him with Dillon, consolation soothed his wounded heart that he had been overthrown perhaps by one of his own, rather than by the Irish. The unknown element in the contest had given victory to the lucky side. He recalled his sense of this young fellow's superiority to his environment. He tried to fathom Arthur's motive in this visit, but failed. As a matter of fact Arthur was merely testing the thoroughness of his own disappearance. His visit to Livingstone the real Dillon would have made. It would lead the lawyer to believe that Sonia, in giving up her design, had been moved by his advice and not by a quiet, secret conversation with her husband. Livingstone quickly made up his mind that the divorce suit would have to be won by default, but he wished to learn more of this daring and interesting kinsman.

"The decision must remain with Mrs. Endicott," he said after a pause. "I shall tell her, before your name is mixed up with the matter, just what she must expect. If she has anything to fear from a public trial you are undoubtedly the man to bring it out."

"Thank you."

"I might even use persuasion ..."

"It would be a service to the Endicott family," Arthur said earnestly, "for I can swear to you that the truth will come out, the scandal which Horace Endicott fled to avoid and conceal forever."

"Did you know Endicott?"

"Very well indeed. I was his guide in California every time he made a trip to that country."

"I might persuade Mrs. Endicott," said the lawyer with deeper interest, "for the sake of the family name, to surrender her foolish theory. It is quite clear to any one with unbiased judgment that you are not Horace Endicott, even if you are not Arthur Dillon. I knew the young man slightly, and his family very well. I can see myself playing the part which you have presented to us for the past five years, quite as naturally as Horace Endicott would have played it. It was not in Horace's nature, nor in the Endicott nature to turn Irish so completely."

Arthur felt all the bitterness and the interest which this shot implied.

"I had the pleasure of knowing Endicott well, much better than you, sir," he returned warmly, "and while I know he was something of a good-natured butterfly, I can say something for his fairness and courage. If he had known what I know of the Irish, of their treatment by their enemies at home and here, of English hypocrisy and American meanness, of their banishment from the land God gave them and your attempt to drive them out of New York or to keep them in the gutter, he would have taken up their cause as honestly as I have done."

"You are always the orator, Mr. Endi ... Dillon."

"I have feeling, which is rare in the world," said Arthur smiling. "Do you know what this passion for justice has done for me, Mr. Livingstone? It has brought out in me the eloquence which you have praised, and inspired the energy, the deviltry, the trickery, the courage, that were used so finely at your expense.

"I was like Endicott, a wild irresponsible creature, thinking only of my own pleasure. Out of my love for one country which is not mine, out of a study of the wrongs heaped upon the Irish by a civilized people, I have secured the key to the conditions of the time. I have learned to despise and pity the littleness of your party, to recognize the shams of the time everywhere, the utter hypocrisy of those in power.

"I have pledged myself to make war on them as I made war on you; on the power that, mouthing liberty, holds Ireland in slavery; on the powers that, mouthing order and peace, hold down Poland, maintain Turkey, rob and starve India, loot the helpless wherever they may. I was a harmless hypocrite and mostly a fool once. Time and hardship and other things, chiefly Irish and English, have given me a fresh start in the life of thought. You hardly understand this, being thoroughly English in your make-up.

"You love good Protestants, pagans who hate the Pope, all who bow to England, and that part of America which is English. You can blow about their rights and liberties, and denounce their persecutors, if these happen to be French or Dutch or Russian. For a Pole or an Irishman you have no sympathy, and you would deny him any place on the earth but a grave. Liberty is not for him unless he becomes a good English Protestant at the same time. In other words liberty may be the proper sauce for the English goose but not for the Irish gander."

"I suppose it appears that way to you," said Livingstone, who had listened closely, not merely to the sentiments, but to the words, the tone, the idiom. Could Horace Endicott have ever descended to this view of his world, this rawness of thought, sentiment, and expression? So peculiarly Irish, anti-English, rich with the flavor of the Fourth Ward, and nevertheless most interesting.

"I shall not argue the point," he continued. "I judge from your earnestness that you have a well-marked ambition in life, and that you will follow it."

"My present ambition is to see our grand cathedral completed and dedicated as soon as possible, as the loudest word we can speak to you about our future. But I fear I am detaining you. If during the next few days the papers in the divorce case are not served on me, I may feel certain that Mrs. Endicott has given up the idea of including me in the suit?"

"I shall advise her to leave you in peace for the sake of the Endicott name," said Livingstone politely.

Arthur thanked him and departed, while the lawyer spent an hour enjoying his impressions and vainly trying to disentangle the Endicott from the Dillon in this extraordinary man.

---

CHAPTER XXXVII.

THE END OF MISCHIEF.

Arthur set out for the Curran household, where he was awaited with anxiety. Quite cheerful over his command of the situation, and inclined to laugh at the mixed feelings of Livingstone, he felt only reverence and awe before the human mind as seen in the light of his own experience. His particular mind had once been Horace Endicott's, but now represented the more intense and emotional personality of Arthur Dillon. He was neither Horace, nor the boy who had disappeared; but a new being fashioned after the ideal Arthur Dillon, as Horace Endicott had conceived him. What he had been seemed no more a part of his past, but a memory attached to another man. All his actions proved it.

The test of his disappearance delighted him. He had gone through its various scenes with little emotion, with less than Edith had displayed; far less than Arthur Dillon would have felt and shown. Who can measure the mind? Itself the measure of man's knowledge, the judge in the court of human destiny, how feeble its power over itself! A few years back this mind directed Horace Endicott; to-day it cheerfully served the conscience of Arthur Dillon!

Edith and her husband awaited their executioner. The detective suffered for her rather than himself. From Dillon he had nothing to fear, and for his sake, also for the strange regard he had always kept for Curran's wife, Arthur had been kind when harshness would have done more good. Now the end had come for her and Sonia. As the unexpected usually came from this young man, they had reason to feel apprehension. He took his seat comfortably in the familiar chair, and lit his cigar while chaffing her.

"They who love the danger shall perish in it," he said for a beginning. "You court it, Colette, and not very wisely."

"How, not wisely?" she asked with a pretence of boldness.

"You count on the good will of the people whom you annoy and wrong, and yet you have never any good will to give them in return. You have hated me and pursued me on the strength of my good will for you. It seems never to have occurred to you to do me a good turn for the many I have done for you. You are a bud of incarnate evil, Colette."

How she hated him when he talked in that fashion!

"Well, it's all settled. I have had the last talk with Livingstone, and spoiled your last trick against the comfort of Arthur Dillon. There will be no dragging to court of the Dillon clan. Mr. Livingstone believes with me that the publicity would be too severe for Mrs. Endicott and her family, not to mention the minor revelations connected with yourself. So there's the end of your precious tomfoolery, Colette."

She burst into vehement tears.

"But you weep too soon," he protested. "I have saved you as usual from yourself, but only to inflict my own punishment. Don't weep those crocodile diamonds until you have heard your own sentence. Of course you know that I have followed every step you took in this matter. You are clever enough to have guessed that. You discovered all that was to be discovered, of course. But you are too keen. If this trial had come to pass you would have been on the witness stand, and the dogs would have caught the scent then never to lose it. You would have ruined your husband as well as yourself."

"Why do you let him talk to me so?" she screamed at Curran.

"Because it is for your good," Arthur answered. "But here's briefness. You must leave New York at once, and forever. Get as far from it as you can, and stay there while I am alive. And for consolation in your exile take your child with you, your little boy, whom Mrs. Endicott parades as her little son, the heir of her beloved Horace."

A frightful stillness fell in the room with this terrific declaration. But for pity he could have laughed at the paralysis which seized both the detective and his wife. Edith sat like a statue, white-faced, pouting at him, her hands clasped in her lap.

"Well, are you surprised? You, the clever one? If I am Horace Endicott, as you pretend to believe, do I not know the difference between my own child and another's? I am Arthur Dillon only, and yet I know how you conspired with Mrs. Endicott to provide her with an heir for the Endicott money. You did this in spite of your husband, who has never been able to control you, not even when you chose to commit so grave a crime. Now, it is absolutely necessary for the child's sake that you save him from Mrs. Endicott's neglect, when he is of no further use to her. She loves children, as you know."

"Who are you, anyway?" Curran burst out hoarsely after a while.

"Not half as good a detective as you are, but I happen in this matter to be on the inside," Arthur answered cheerfully. "I knew Horace Endicott much better than his wife or his friends. The poor fellow is dead and gone, and yet he left enough information behind him to trouble the clever people. Are you satisfied, Colette, that this time everything must be done as I have ordered?"

"You have proved yourself Horace Endicott," she gasped in her rage, burning with hate, mortification, shame, fifty tigerish feelings that could not find expression.

"Fie, fie, Colette! You have proved that I am Arthur Dillon. Why go back on your own work? If you had known Horace Endicott as I did, you would not compare the meek and civilized Dillon with the howling demon into which his wife turned him. That fellow would not have sat in your presence ten minutes knowing that you had palmed off your child as his, without taking your throat in his hands for a death squeeze. His wife would not have escaped death from the madman had he ever encountered her. Here are your orders now; it is late and I must not keep you from your beauty sleep; take the child as soon as the Endicott woman sends him to you, and leave New York one hundred miles behind you. If you are found in this city any time after the month of September, you take all the risks. I shall not stand between you and justice again. You are the most ungrateful sinner that I have ever dealt with. Now go and weep for yourself. Don't waste any tears on Mrs. Endicott."

Sobbing like an angry and humiliated child, Edith rushed out of the room. Curran felt excessively foolish. Though partly in league with Arthur, the present situation went beyond him.

"Be hanged if I don't feel like demanding an explanation," he said awkwardly.

"You don't need it," said Arthur as he proceeded to make it. "Can't you see that Horace Endicott is acting through me, and has been from the first, to secure the things I have secured. He is dead as I told you. How he got away, kept himself hid, and all that, you are as good an authority as I. While he was alive you could have found him as easily as I could, but he was beyond search always, though I guess not beyond betrayal. Well, let me congratulate you on getting your little family together again. Don't worry over what has happened to-night. Drop the Endicott case. You can see there's no luck in it for any one."

Certainly there had been no luck in it for the Currans. Arthur went to his club in the best humor, shaking with laughter over the complete crushing of Edith, with whom he felt himself quite even in the contest that had endured so long. Next morning it would be Sonia's turn. Ah, what a despicable thing is man's love, how unstable and profitless! No wonder Honora valued it so lightly. How Horace Endicott had raved over this whited sepulcher five years ago, believed in her, sworn by her virtue and truth! And to-day he regarded her without feeling, neither love nor hate, perfect indifference only marking his mental attitude in her regard. Somehow one liked to feel that love is unchangeable, as with the mother, the father; as with God also, for whom sin does not change relationship with the sinner.

When he stood before her the next day in the hotel parlor, she reminded him in her exquisite beauty of a play seen from the back of the stage; the illusion so successful with the audience is there an exposed sham, without coherence, and without beauty. Her eyes had a scared look. She had to say to herself, if this is Horace then my time has come, if it is Arthur Dillon I have nothing to worry about, before her hate came to her aid and gave her courage. She murmured the usual formula of unexpected pleasure. He bowed, finding no pleasure in this part of his revenge. Arthur Dillon could not have been more considerate of Messalina.

"It is certainly a privilege and an honor," said he, "to be suspected of so charming a relationship with Mrs. Endicott. Nevertheless I have persuaded your lawyer, Mr. Livingstone, that it would be unprofitable and imprudent to bring me into the suit for divorce. He will so advise you I think to-day."

She smiled at the compliment and felt reassured.

"There were some things which I could not tell the lawyer," he went on, "and so I made bold to call on you personally. It is disagreeable, what I must tell you. My only apology is that you yourself have made this visit necessary by bringing my name into the case."

Her smile died away, and her face hardened. She prepared herself for trouble.

"I told your lawyer that if the papers were served on me, and a public and official doubt thrown on my right to the name of Arthur Dillon, I would not let the business drop until the Endicott-Curran-Dillon mystery had been thoroughly ventilated in the courts. He agreed with me that this would expose the Endicott name to scandal."

"We have been perhaps too careful from the beginning about the Endicott name," she said severely. "Which is the reason why no advance has been made in the search for my dear husband."

"That may be true, Mrs. Endicott. You must not forget, however, that you will be a witness, and Mrs. Curran, and her husband, and Mr. Quincy Lenox, and others besides. How do you think these people would stand questioning as to who your little boy, called Horace Endicott, really is?"

She sat prepared for a dangerous surprise, but not for this horror; and the life left her on the spot, for the poor weed was as soft and cowardly as any other product of the swamp. He rang for restoratives and sent for her maid. In ten minutes, somewhat restored, she faced the ordeal, if only to learn what this terrible man knew.

"Who are you?" she asked feebly, the same question asked by Curran in his surprise.

"A friend of Horace Endicott," he answered quietly.

"And what do you know of us?"

"All that Horace knew."

She could not summon courage to put a third question. He came to her aid.

"Perhaps you are not sure about what Horace knew? Shall I tell you? I did not tell your lawyer. I only hinted that the truth would be brought out if my name was dragged into the case against my protest. Shall I tell you what Horace knew?"

With closed eyes she made a sign of acquiescence.

"He knew of your relations with Quincy Lenox. He saw you together on a certain night, when he arrived home after a few days' absence. He also heard your conversation. In this you admitted that out of hatred for your husband you had destroyed his heir before the child was born. He knew your plan of retrieving that blunder by adopting the child of Edith Curran, and palming him off as your own. He knew of your plan to secure the good will of his Aunt Lois for the impostor, and found the means to inform his aunt of the fraud. All that he knew will be brought out at any trial in which my name shall be included. Your lawyer will tell you that it cannot be avoided. Therefore, when your lawyer advises you to get a divorce from your former husband without including me as that husband, yon had better accept that advice."

She opened her eyes and stared at him with insane fright. Who but Horace Endicott could know her crimes? All but the crime which he had named her blunder. Could this passionless stranger, this Irish politician, looking at her as indifferently as the judge on the bench, be Horace? No, surely no! Because that fool, dolt though he was, would never have seen this wretched confession of her crimes, and not slain her the next minute. Into this ambuscade had she been led by the crazy wife of Curran, whose sound advice she herself had thrown aside to follow the instincts of Edith. Recovering her nerve quickly, she began her retreat as well as one might after so disastrous a field.

"It was a mistake to have disturbed you, Mr. Dillon," she said. "You may rest assured that no further attempt will be made on your good name. Since you pretend to such intimacy with my unfortunate husband I would like to ask you...."

"That was the extent of my intimacy, Mrs. Endicott, and I would never have revealed it except to defend myself," he interrupted suavely. "Of course the revelation brings consequences. You must arrange to have your little Horace die properly in some remote country, surround his funeral with all the legal formalities, and so on. That will be easy. Meanwhile you can return the boy to his mother, who is ready to receive him. Then your suit for divorce must continue, and you will win it by default, that is, by the failure of Horace Endicott to defend his side. When these things are done, it would be well for your future happiness to lay aside further meddling with the mystery of your husband's disappearance."

"I have learned a lesson," she said more composedly. "I shall do as you command, because I feel sure it is a command. I have some curiosity however about the life which Horace led after he disappeared. Since you must have known him a little, would it be asking too much from you...."

She lost her courage at sight of his expression. Her voice faded. Oh, shallow as any frog-pond, indecently shallow, to ask such a question of the judge who had just ordered her to execution. His contempt silenced her. With a formal apology for having caused her so much pain, he bowed and withdrew. Some emotion had stirred him during the interview, but he had kept himself well under control. Later he found it was horror, ever to have been linked with a monster; and dread too that in a sudden access of passion he might have done her to death. It seemed natural and righteous to strike and destroy the reptile.

---

CHAPTER XXXVIII.

A TALE WELL TOLD.

Of these strange and stirring events no one knew but Arthur himself; nor of the swift consequences, the divorce of Sonia from her lost husband, her marriage to Quincy Lenox, the death and burial of her little boy in England, and the establishment of La Belle Colette and her son Horace in Chicago, where the temptation to annoy her enemies disappeared, and the risk to herself was practically removed forever. Thus faded the old life out of Arthur's view, its sin-stained personages frightened off the scene by his well-used knowledge of their crimes. Whatever doubt they held about his real character, self-interest accepted him as Arthur Dillon.

He was free. Honora saw the delight of that freedom in his loving and candid expression. He repressed his feelings no more, no longer bound.

He was gayer than ever before, with the gaiety of his nature, not of the part which he had played. Honora knew how deeply she loved him, from her very dread of inflicting on him that pain which was bound to come. The convent would be her rich possession; but he who had given her and her father all that man could give, he would have only bitter remembrance. How bitter that could be experience with her father informed her. The mystery of his life attracted her. If not Arthur Dillon, who was he? What tragedy had driven him from one life into another? Did it explain that suffering so clearly marked on his face? To which she must add, as part of the return to be made for all his goodness!

Her pity for him grew, and prompted deeper tenderness; and how could she know, who had been without experience, that pity is often akin to love?

The heavenly days flew by like swift swallows. September came with its splendid warnings of change. The trees were suddenly bordered in gold yellow and dotted with fire-red. The nights began to be haunted by cool winds. Louis packed his trunk early in the month. His long vacations had ended, ordination was at hand, and his life-work would begin in the month of October.

The household went down to the city for the grand ceremony. Mona and her baby remained in the city then, while the others returned to the lake for a final week, Anne with perfect content, Honora in calmness of spirit, but also in dread for Arthur's sake. He seemed to have no misgivings. Her determination continued, and the situation therefore remained as clear as the cold September mornings. Yet some tie bound them, elusive, beyond description, but so much in evidence that every incident of the waiting time seemed to strengthen it. Delay did not abate her resolution, but it favored his hope.

"Were you disturbed by the revelations of Mrs. Curran?" he said as they sat, for the last time indeed, on the terrace so fatal to Lord Constantine. Anne read the morning newspaper in the shadow of the grove behind them, with Judy to comment on the news. The day, perfect, comfortable, without the perfume of August, sparkled with the snap of September.

"My curiosity was disturbed," she admitted frankly, and her heart beat, for the terrible hour had come. "I felt that your life had some sadness and mystery in it, but it was a surprise to hear that you were not Anne Dillon's long-lost son."

"That was pure guess-work on Colette's part, you know. She's a born devil, if there are such things among us humans. I'll tell you about her some time. Then the fact of my wife's existence did not disturb you at all?"

"On the contrary, it soothed me, I think," she said with a blush.

"I know why. Well, it will take my story to explain hers. She told the truth in part, poor Colette. Once I had a wife, before I became Anne Dillon's son. Will it be too painful for you to hear the story? It is mournful. To no one have I ever told it complete; in fact I could not, only to you. How I have burned to tell it from beginning to end to the true heart. I could not shock Louis, the dear innocent, and it was necessary to keep most of it from my mother, for legal reasons. Monsignor has heard the greater part, but not all. And I have been like the Ancient Mariner.

Since then at an uncertain hour
That agony returns;
And till my ghastly tale is told,
The heart within me burns.
* * * *
That moment that his face I see
I know the man that must hear me;
To him my tale I teach."

"I am the man," said she, "with a woman's curiosity. How can I help but listen?"

He holds him with his glittering eye—
The wedding-guest stood still,
And listens like a three years' child:
The mariner hath his will.
The wedding-guest sat on a stone,
He cannot choose but hear;
And thus spake on that ancient man,
That bright-eyed mariner.

"Do you remember how we read and re-read it on the Arrow years ago? Somehow it has rung in my ears ever since, Honora. My life had a horror like it. Had it not passed I could not speak of it even to you. Long ago I was an innocent fool whom men knew in the neighborhood of Cambridge as Horace Endicott. I was an orphan, without guides, or real friends. I felt no need of them, for was I not rich, and happily married? Good nature and luck had carried me along lazily like that pine-stick floating down there. What a banging it would get on this rocky shore if a good south wind sprang up. For a long time I escaped the winds. When they came.... I'll tell you who I was and what she was. Do you remember on the Arrow Captain Curran's story of Tom Jones?"

He looked up at her interested face, and saw the violet eyes widen with sudden horror.

"I remember," she cried with astonishment and pain. "You, Arthur, you the victim of that shameful story?"

"Do you remember what you said then, Honora, when Curran declared he would one day find Tom Jones?"

She knew by the softness of his speech that her saying had penetrated the lad's heart, and had been treasured till this day, would be treasured forever.

"And you were sitting there, in the cabin, not ten feet off, listening to him and me?" she said with a gasp of pleasure.

"'You will never find him, Captain Curran ... that fearful woman shattered his very soul ... I know the sort of man he was ... he will never go back ... if he can bear to live, it will be because in his obscurity God gave him new faith and hope in human nature, and in the woman's part of it.' Those are your words, Honora."

She blushed with pleasure and murmured: "I hope they came true!"

"They were true at that moment," he said reflectively. "Oh, indeed God guided me, placed me in the hands of Monsignor, of my mother, of such people as Judy and the Senator and Louis, and of you all."

"Oh, my God, what suffering!" she exclaimed suddenly as her tears began to fall. "Louis told me, I saw it in your face as every one did, but now I know. And we never gave you the pity you needed!"

"Then you must give it to me now," said he with boldness. "But don't waste any pity on Endicott. He is dead, and I look at him across these five years as at a stranger. Suffer? The poor devil went mad with suffering. He raved for days in the wilderness, after he discovered his shame, dreaming dreams of murder for the guilty, of suicide for himself——"

She clasped her hands in anguish and turned toward him as if to protect him.

"It was a good woman who saved him, and she was an old mother who had tasted death. Some day I shall show you the pool where this old woman found him, after he had overcome the temptation to die. She took him to her home and her heart, nourished him, gave him courage, sent him on a new mission of life. What a life! He had a scheme of vengeance, and to execute it he had to return to the old scenes, where he was more alone——

Alone, alone, all, all alone,
Alone on a wide, wide sea!
And never a saint took pity on
My soul in agony.
* * * * *
O wedding-guest! this soul hath been
Alone on a wide, wide sea;
So lonely 'twas that God Himself
Scarce seemed there to be."

The wonder to Honora, as he described himself, was the indifference of his tone. It had no more than the sympathy one might show toward a stranger whose suffering had been succeeded by great joy.

"Oh, God grant," he broke in with vehemence, "that no soul suffers as did this Endicott, poor wretch, during the time of his vengeance. Honora, I would not inflict on that terrible woman the suffering of that man for a year after his discovery of her sin. I doubted long the mercy of God. Rather I knew nothing about His mercy. I had no religion, no understanding of it, except in a vague, unpractical way. You know now that I am of the Puritan race ... Livingstone is of my family ... the race which dislikes the Irish and the Catholic as the English dislike them ... the race that persecuted yours! But you cannot say that I have not atoned for them as nearly as one man can?"

Trembling with emotion, she simply raised her hands in a gesture that said a thousand things too beautiful for words.

"My vengeance on the guilty was to disappear. I took with me all my property, and I left Messalina with her own small dower to enjoy her freedom in poverty. She sought for me, hired that detective and others to hound me to my hiding-place, and so far has failed to make sure of me. But to have you understand the story clearly, I shall stick to the order of events. I had known Monsignor a few days before calamity overtook me, and to him I turned for aid. It was he who found a mother for me, a place among 'the mere Irish,' a career which has turned out very well. You know how Anne Dillon lost her son. What no one knows is this: three months before she was asked to take part in the scheme of disappearance she sent a thousand photographs of her dead husband and her lost son to the police of California, and offered a reward for his discovery living or dead. Monsignor helped her to that. I acknowledged that advertisement from one of the most obscure and ephemeral of the mining-camps, and came home as her son."

"And the real Arthur Dillon? He was never found?"

"Oh, yes, he answered it too, indirectly. While I was loitering riotously about, awaiting the proper moment to make myself known, I heard that one Arthur Dillon was dying in another mining-camp some thirty miles to the north of us. He claimed to be the real thing, but he was dying of consumption, and was too feeble, and of too little consequence, to be taken notice of. I looked after him till he died, and made sure of his identity. He was Anne Dillon's son and he lies in the family lot in Calvary beside his father. No one knows this but his mother, Monsignor, and ourselves. Colette stumbled on the fact in her search of California, but the fates have been against that clever woman."

He laughed heartily at the complete overthrow of the escaped nun. Honora looked at him in astonishment. Arthur Dillon laughed, quite forgetful of the tragedy of Horace Endicott.

"Since my return you know what I have been, Honora. I can appeal to you as did Augustus to his friends on his dying-bed: have I not played well the part?"

"I am lost in wonder," she said.

"Then give me your applause as I depart," he answered sadly, and her eyes fell before his eloquent glance. "In those early days rage and hate, and the maddest desire for justice, sustained me. That woman had only one wish in life: to find, rob, and murder the man who had befooled her worse than she had tricked him. I made war on that man. I hated Horace Endicott as a weak fool. He had fallen lowest of all his honest, able, stern race. I beat him first into hiding, then into slavery, and at last into annihilation. I studied to annihilate him, and I did it by raising Arthur Dillon in his place. I am now Arthur Dillon. I think, feel, act, speak, dream like that Arthur Dillon which I first imagined. When you knew me first, Honora, I was playing a part. I am no longer acting. I am the man whom the world knows as Arthur Dillon."

"I can see that, and it seems more wonderful than any dream of romance. You a Puritan are more Irish than the Irish, more Catholic than the Catholics, more Dillon than the Dillons. Oh, how can this be?"

"Don't let it worry you," he said grimly. "Just accept the fact and me. I never lived until Horace Endicott disappeared. He was a child of fortune and a lover of ease and pleasure. His greatest pain had been a toothache. His view of life had been a boy's. When I stepped on this great stage I found myself for the first time in the very current of life. Suffering ate my heart out, and I plunged into that current to deaden the agony. I found myself by accident a leader of a poor people who had fled from injustice at home to suffer a mean persecution here. I was thrown in with the great men of the hour, and found a splendid opponent in a member of the Endicott family, Livingstone. I saw the very heart of great things, and the look enchanted me.

"You know how I worked for my friends, for your father, for the people, for every one and everything that needed help. For the first time I saw into the heart of a true friend. Monsignor helped me, carried me through, stood by me, directed me. For the first time I saw into the heart of innocence and sanctity, deep down, the heart of that blessed boy, Louis. For the first time I looked into the heart of a patriot, and learned of the love which can endure, not merely failure, but absolute and final disappointment, and still be faithful. I became an orator, an adventurer, an enthusiast. The Endicott who could not speak ten words before a crowd, the empty-headed stroller who classed patriots with pickles, became what you know me to be. I learned what love is, the love of one's own; of mother, and friend, and clan. Let me not boast, but I learned to know God and perhaps to love Him, at least since I am resigned to His will. But I am talking too much, since it is for the last time."

"You have not ended," said she beseechingly.

"It would take a lifetime," and he looked to see if she would give him that time, but her eyes watched the lake. "The latest events in my history took place this summer, and you had a little share in them. By guess-work Colette arrived at the belief that I am Horace Endicott, and she set her detective-husband to discover the link between Endicott and Dillon. I helped him, because I was curious to see how Arthur Dillon would stand the test of direct pursuit. They could discover nothing. As fast as a trace of me showed it vanished into thin air. There was nothing to do but invent a suit which would bring my mother, Monsignor, and myself into court, and have us declare under oath who is Arthur Dillon. I blocked that game perfectly. Messalina has her divorce from Horace Endicott, and is married to her lover. There will be no further search for the man who disappeared. And I am free, Monsignor declares. No ties bind me to that shameful past. I have had my vengeance without publicity or shame to anyone. I have punished as I had the right to punish. I have a noble place in life, which no one can take from me."

"And did you meet her since you left her ... that woman?" Honora said in a low voice half ashamed of the question.

"At Castle Moyna ..." he began and stopped dead at a sudden recollection.

"I met her," cried Honora with a stifled scream, "I met her."

"I met her again on the steamer returning," he said after a pause. "She did not recognize me, nor has she ever. We met for the last time in July. At that meeting Arthur Dillon pronounced sentence on her in the name of Horace Endicott. She will never wish to see me or her lost husband again."

"Oh, how you must have suffered, Arthur, how you must have suffered!"

She had grown pale alarmingly, but he did not perceive it. The critical moment had come for him, and he was praying silently against the expected blow. Her resolution had left her, and the road had vanished in the obscurity of night. She no longer saw her way clear. Her nerves had been shaken by this wonderful story, and the surges of feeling that rose before it like waves before the wind.

"And I must suffer still," he went on half to himself. "I was sure that God would give me that which I most desired, because I had given Him all that belonged to me. I kept back nothing except as Monsignor ordered. Through you, Honora, my faith in woman came back, as you said it would when you answered the detective in my behalf. When Monsignor told me I was free, that I could speak to you as an honorable man, I took it as a sign from heaven that the greatest of God's gifts was for me. I love you so, Honora, that your wish is my only happiness. Since you must go, if it is the will of God, do not mind my suffering, which is also His will...."

He arose from his place and his knees were shaking.

"There is consolation for us all somewhere. Mine is not to be here. The road to heaven is sometimes long. Not here, Honora?"

The hope in him was not yet dead. She rose too and put her arms about him, drawing his head to her bosom with sudden and overpowering affection.

"Here and hereafter," she whispered, as they sat down on the bench again.

---

"Judy," said Anne in the shade of the trees, "is Arthur hugging Honora, or...."

"Glory be," whispered Judy with tears streaming down her face, "it's Honora that's hugging Arthur ... no, it's both o' them at wanst, thanks be to God."

And the two old ladies stole away home through the happy woods.

---

CHAPTER XXXIX.

THREE SCENES.

Anne might have been the bitterest critic of Honora for her descent from the higher to the lesser life, but she loved the girl too well even to look displeasure. Having come to believe that Arthur would be hers alone forever, she regarded Honora's decision as a mistake. The whole world rejoiced at the union of these ideal creatures, even Sister Magdalen, from whom Arthur had snatched a prize. Honora was her own severest critic. How she had let herself go in pity for a sufferer to whom her people, her faith, her father, her friends, and herself owed much, she knew not. His explanation was simple: God gave you to me.

The process of surrender really began at Louis' ordination. Arthur watched his boy, the center of the august ceremony, with wet eyes. This innocent heart, with its solemn aspirations, its spiritual beauty, had always been for him a wonder and a delight; and it seemed fitting that a life so mysteriously beautiful should end its novitiate and begin its career with a ceremony so touching. The September sun streamed through the venerable windows of the cathedral, the music soared among the arches, the altar glowed with lights and flowers; the venerable archbishop and his priests and attendants filled the sanctuary, an adoring crowd breathed with reverence in the nave; but the center of the scene, its heart of beauty, was the pale, sanctified son of Mary Everard.

For him were all these glories! Happy, happy, youth! Blessed mother! There were no two like them in the whole world, he said in his emotion. Her glorified face often shone on him in the pauses of the ceremony. Her look repeated the words she had uttered the night before: "Under God my happiness is owing to you, Arthur Dillon: like the happiness of so many others; and that I am not to-day dead of sorrow and grief is also owing to you; now may God grant you the dearest wish of your heart, as He has granted mine this day through you; for there is nothing too good for a man with a heart and a hand like yours."

How his heart had like to burst under that blessing! He thought of Honora, not yet his own.

The entire Irishry was present, with their friends of every race. In deference to his faithful adherent, the great Livingstone sat in the very front pew, seriously attentive to the rite, and studious of its significance. Around him were grouped the well-beloved of Arthur Dillon, the souls knit to his with the strength of heaven; the Senator, high-colored, richly-dressed, resplendent, sincere; the Boss, dark and taciturn, keen, full of emotion, sighing from the depths of his rich nature over the meaning of life, as it leaped into the light of this scene; Birmingham, impressive and dignified, rejoicing at the splendor so powerful with the world that reckons everything by the outward show; and all the friends of the new life, to whom this ceremony was dear as the breath of their bodies. For this people the sanctuary signified the highest honor, the noblest service, the loftiest glory. Beside it the honors of the secular life, no matter how esteemed, looked like dead flowers.

At times his emotion seemed to slip from the rein, threatening to unman him. This child, whose innocent hands were anointed with the Holy Oil, who was bound and led away, who read the mass with the bishop and received the Sacred Elements with him, upon whom the prelate breathed solemn powers, who lay prostrate on the floor, whose head was blessed by the hands of the assembled priests: this child God had given him to replace the innocent so cruelly destroyed long ago!

Honora's eyes hardly left Arthur's transfigured face, which held her, charmed her, frightened her by its ever-changing expression. Light and shadow flew across it as over the depths of the sea. The mask off, the habit of repression laid aside, his severe features responded to the inner emotions. She saw his great eyes fill with tears, his breast heave at times. As yet she had not heard his story. The power of that story came less from the tale than the recollection of scenes like this, which she unthinking had witnessed in the years of their companionship. What made this strange man so unlike all other men?

At the close of the ordination the blessing from the new priest began. Flushed, dewy-eyed, calm, and white, Louis stood at the railing to lay his anointed hands on each in turn; first the mother, and the father. Then came a little pause, while Mona made way for him dearest to all hearts that day, Arthur. He held back until he saw that his delay retarded the ceremony, when he accepted the honor. He felt the blessed hands on his head, and a thrill leaped through him as the palms, odorous of the balmy chrism, touched his lips.

Mona held up her baby with the secret prayer that he too would be found worthy of the sanctuary; then followed her husband and her sisters. Honora did not see as she knelt how Arthur's heart leaped into his eyes, and shot a burning glance at Louis to remind him of a request uttered long ago: when you bless Honora, bless her for me! Thus all conspired against her. Was it wonderful that she left the cathedral drawn to her hero as never before?

The next day Arthur told her with pride and tenderness, as they drove to the church where Father Louis was to sing his first Mass, that every vestment of the young priest came from him. Sister Magdalen had made the entire set, with her own hands embroidered them, and he had borne the expense. Honora found her heart melting under these beautiful details of an affection, without limit. The depth of this man's heart seemed incredible, deeper than her father's, as if more savage sorrow had dug depths in what was deep enough by nature. Long afterward she recognized how deeply the ordination had affected her. It roused the feeling that such a heart should not be lightly rejected.

---

Desolation seized her, as the vision of the convent vanished like some lovely vale which one leaves forever. Very simply he banished the desolation.

"I have been computing," he said, as they sat on the veranda after breakfast, "what you might have been worth to the Church as a nun ... hear me, hear me ... wait for the end of the story ... it is charming. You are now about twenty-seven, I won't venture any nearer your age. I don't know my mother's age."

"And no man will ever know it," said Anne. "Men have no discretion about ages."

"Let me suppose," Arthur continued, "that fifty years of service would be the limit of your active life. You would then be seventy-seven, and there is no woman alive as old as that. The oldest is under sixty."

"Unless the newspapers want to say that she's a hundred," said Anne slyly.

"For the sake of notoriety she is willing to have the truth told about her age."

"As a school-teacher, a music-teacher, or a nurse, let me say that your services might be valued at one thousand a year for the fifty years, Honora. Do you think that a fair average?"

"Very fair," said she indifferently.

"Well, I am going to give that sum to the convent for having deprived them of your pleasant company," said he. "Hear me, hear me, ... I'm not done yet. I must be generous, and I know your conscience will be tender a long time, if something is not done to toughen it. I want to be married in the new cathedral, which another year will see dedicated. But a good round sum would advance the date. We owe much to Monsignor. In your name and mine I am going to give him enough to put the great church in the way to be dedicated by November."

He knew the suffering which burned her heart that morning, himself past master in the art of sorrow. That she had come down from the heights to the common level would be her grief forever; thus to console her would be his everlasting joy.

"What do you think of it? Isn't it a fair release?"

"Only I am not worth it," she said. "But so much the better, if every one gains more than I lose by my ... infatuation."

"Are you as much in love as that?" said Anne with malice.

They were married with becoming splendor in January. A quiet ceremony suggested by Honora had been promptly overruled by Anne Dillon, who saw in this wedding a social opportunity beyond any of her previous triumphs. Mrs. Dillon was not your mere aristocrat, who keeps exclusive her ceremonious march through life. At that early date she had perceived the usefulness to the aristocracy of the press, of general popularity, and of mixed assemblies; things freely and openly sought for by society to-day. Therefore the great cathedral of the western continent never witnessed a more splendid ceremony than the wedding of Honora and Arthur; and no event in the career of Anne Dillon bore stronger testimony to her genius.

The Chief Justice of the nation headed the élite, among whom shone like a constellation the Countess of Skibbereen; the Senator brought in the whole political circle of the city and the state; Grahame marshaled the journalists and the conspirators against the peace of England; the profession of music came forward to honor the bride; the common people of Cherry Hill went to cheer their hero; Monsignor drew to the sanctuary the clerics of rank to honor the benefactor of the cathedral; and high above all, enthroned in beauty, the Cardinal of that year presided as the dispenser of the Sacrament.

As at the ordination of Louis the admirable Livingstone sat among the attendant princes. For the third time within a few months had he been witness to the splendors of Rome now budding on the American landscape. He did not know what share this Arthur Dillon had in the life of Louis and in the building of the beautiful temple. But he knew the strength of his leadership among his people; and he felt curious to see with his own eyes, to feel with his own heart, the charm, the enchantment, which had worked a spell so fatal on the richly endowed Endicott nature.

For enchantment there must have been. The treachery and unworthiness of Sonia, detestable beyond thought, could not alone work so strange and weird a transformation. Half cynic always, and still more cynical since his late misfortunes, he could not withhold his approbation from the cleverness which grouped about this young man and his bride the great ones of the hour. The scene wholly depressed him. Not the grandeur, nor the presence of the powers of society, but the sight of this Endicott, of the mould of heroes, of the blood of the English Puritan, acting as sponsor of a new order of things in his beloved country, the order which he had hoped, still hoped, to destroy. His heart bled as he watched him.

The lovely mother, the high-hearted father, lay in their grave. Here stood their beloved, a prince among men, bowing before the idols of Rome, receiving for himself and his bride the blessing of the archpriest of Romanism, a cardinal in his ferocious scarlet. All his courage and skill would be forever at the service of the new order. Who was to blame? Was it not the rotten reed which he had leaned upon, the woman Sonia, rather than these? True it is, true it always will be, that a man's enemies are they of his own household.

---

A grand content filled the heart of Arthur. The bitterness of his fight had passed. So long had he struggled that fighting had become a part of his dreams, as necessary as daily bread. He had not laid aside his armor even for his marriage. Yet there had been an armistice, quite unperceived, from the day of the cathedral's dedication. He had lonely possession of the battle-field. His enemies had fled. All was well with his people. They had reached and passed the frontier, as it were, on that day when the great temple opened its sanctuary to God and its portals to the nation.

The building he regarded as a witness to the daring of Monsignor; for Honora's sake he had given to it a third of his fortune; the day of the dedication crowned Monsignor's triumph. When he had seen the spectacle, he learned how little men have to do with the great things of history. God alone makes history; man is the tide which rushes in and out at His command, at the great hours set by Him, and knows only the fact, not the reason. In the building that day gathered a multitude representing every form of human activity and success. They stood for the triumph of a whole race, which, starved out of its native seat, had clung desperately to the land of Columbia in spite of persecution.

Soldiers sat in the assembly, witnesses for the dead of the southern battle-fields, for all who had given life and love, who had sacrificed their dearest, to the new land in its hour of calamity. Men rich in the honors of commerce, of the professions, of the schools, artists, journalists, leaders, bore witness to the native power of a people, who had been written down in the books of the hour as idle, inferior, incapable by their very nature. In the sanctuary sat priests and prelate, a brilliant gathering, surrounding the delicate-featured Cardinal, in gleaming red, high on his beautiful throne.

From the organ rolled the wonderful harmonies born of faith and genius; from the pulpit came in sonorous English the interpretation of the scene as a gifted mind perceived it; about the altar the ancient ritual enacted the holy drama, whose sublime enchantment holds every age. Around rose the towering arches, the steady columns, the broad walls, lighted from the storied windows, of the first really great temple of the western continent!

Whose hands raised it? Arthur discovered in the answer the charm which had worked upon dying Ledwith, turned his failure into triumph, and his sadness into joy. What a witness, an eternal witness, to the energy and faith of a poor, simple, despised people, would be this temple! Looking upon its majestic beauty, who could doubt their powers, though the books printed English slanders in letters of gold? Out of these great doors would march ideas to strengthen and refresh the poor; ideas once rejected, once thought destructible by the air of the American wilderness. A conspiracy of centuries had been unable to destroy them. Into these great portals for long years would a whole people march for their own sanctification and glory!

Thereafter the temple became for him a symbol, as for the faithful priest; the symbol of his own life as that of his people.

He saw it in the early dawn, whiter than the mist which broke against it, a great angel whose beautiful feet the longing earth had imprisoned! red with the flush of morning, rosy with the tints of sunrise, as if heaven were smiling upon it from open gates! clear, majestic, commanding in the broad day, like a leader of the people, drawing all eyes to itself, provoking the question, the denial, the prayer from every passer, as tributes to its power! in the sunset, as dying Ledwith had seen it, flushed with the fever of life, but paling like the day, tender, beseeching, appealing to the flying crowd for a last turning to God before the day be done forever! in the twilight, calm, restful, submissive to the darkness, which had no power over it, because of the Presence within! terrible when night falls and sin goes forth in purple and fine linen, a giant which had heaved the earth and raised itself from the dead stone to rebuke and threaten the erring children of God!

He described all this for Honora, and, strangely enough, for Livingstone, who never recovered from the spell cast over him by this strange man. The old gentleman loved his race with the fervor of an ancient clansman. For this lost sheep of the house of Endicott he developed in time an interest which Arthur foresaw would lead agreeably one day to a review of the art of disappearing. He was willing to satisfy his curiosity. Meanwhile, airing his ideas on the providential mission of the country, and of its missionary races, and combatting his exclusiveness, they became excellent friends. Livingstone fell deeply in love with Honora, as it was the fashion in regard to that charming woman. For Arthur the circle of life had its beginning in her, and with her would have its end.

THE END.