"Yes, my family have had the strange failing (that is, nearly all of them except myself, on the paternal side) of——"
But he said no more. The tension was loosened, and a great roar of laughter rose from the whole committee. How often every man there had joked him about that marvelous budget of stories which he infallibly began one way and one way only! And when the familiar formula sounded forth, it was all the funnier to those who heard it because of the solemn, judicial circumstances in which it again met their hearing.
The plaintiff was honorably acquitted. As for De Pommereul, as every word that Dalrymple had said concerning his past life in France happened to be perfectly true, the Count never reappeared at the Gramercy. His engagement with Mrs. Carrington was soon afterward broken off by the lady herself, and for a good while it was rumored that this lady had repentantly made it optional with Dalrymple whether he should once more become her accepted sweetheart.
But Dalrymple remained a bachelor. He is quite an old man now, yet he may be found in the card-room of the Gramercy nearly every evening. He is very willing to tell you the story of his "lost day" if you ask him courteously for it, and not in any strain of fun-poking; but he attempts no more voluntary recitals on the subject of his "family's" maladies or mishaps.
A TRAGEDY OF HIGH EXPLOSIVES.
BY BRAINARD GARDNER SMITH.
CHAPTER I.
In the course of my work last year I had occasion to go over a file of old Liverpool newspapers, and thus came upon a remarkable paragraph in the ship news. Translated out of the language of commerce, it was to the effect that the good ship Empress, just arrived from Australia, reported that while rounding the Cape of Good Hope she had been driven southward far out of her course by a storm; and that away down in the Southern Atlantic had sighted a vessel drifting aimlessly about. The first mate boarded her, and, returning, reported that the derelict was the ship Albatross. That she had been abandoned was plain, for all the boats were gone, and so were the log and the ship's instruments. On the deck, close by the companion hatch, lay two bodies, or rather skeletons, clad in weather-rotted garments, that showed them to have been man and woman. These bodies were headless, but the heads were nowhere to be found on the deserted deck. The mate found on the cabin table an open book, with writing on its pages. A pen lay on the table, and a small inkstand, in which the ink had evidently long since dried. The book was evidently a journal or diary, so the mate reported, and he put it in his pocket, meaning to carry it aboard the Empress; but when he was getting down into his small boat the book slipped from his pocket, dropped into the water and sunk. The Albatross was badly water-logged, and, he thought, could not have floated much longer. To this report the editor of the paper added a note saying that the readers would all doubtless remember that the Albatross had sailed from Liverpool several years before, bound for Australia, and it was thought to have gone down with all on board, as no news of her had since been received.