When the lad was gone he spread the slip on the desk before him. The first words he saw formed the title of the column he was about to read: "Horrible Murder in Victoria Park!" Beneath it were the sub-headings, "Stabbed to the Heart!" and "A Bunch of Blood-stained Daisies!" To a newspaper reader such events, shocking though they be, are unhappily no novelties, and Mr. Melladew looked down the column, I will not say mechanically, for he was a humane man, but steadily, and stirred no doubt by pity and indignation. But before he had got half-way down the pulsations of his heart seemed to stop, and the words swam before his eyes. His eyes lighted on the name of the girl who had been murdered.
It was that of his own daughter, Lizzie Melladew!
[CHAPTER III.]
A SHOAL OF VISITORS FOLLOWED BY ANOTHER MYSTERY.
In an agony of horror and despair he had flown from the printing-office to my house.
I cannot say whether he chose my house premeditatedly; it is likely that it was done without distinct intention, but it was a proof that he regarded my friendship as genuine, and that he knew he could depend upon my sympathy in times of trouble. As indeed he could. My heart bled as I gazed upon him. The words issued with difficulty from his trembling lips; his features were convulsed; he shook like a man in an ague.
"O, my Lizzie!" he moaned. "My poor, poor Lizzie! O, my child, my child!"
I took in regularly a penny daily newspaper, and I had read it on this morning, but there was no mention in its columns of the dreadful occurrence. The discovery had been made too late for the first editions of the daily journals.
Mr. Melladew's story being told, disjointedly, and in fragments which I had to piece together in order to arrive at an intelligible comprehension of it, the unhappy man sat before me, moaning.
"O, my Lizzie! O, my poor child!"