The door closed. The prisoner was again alone within the grated cell.
The hours dragged on and brought the gloomy night. With it there hovered over the great city the black and vulture wings of a terrible storm. It hissed, it roared, it swept with devastating, cyclonic force through that area where the prison was situated. Trees, roofs, houses even, yielded to its terrific fury, and flew like feathers before its angry breath. The poor prisoners, cowering in superstitious terror before the awful voices of the warring elements, prayed to God for mercy; but the answer seemed far, far away, for suddenly there came a terrible, deafening roar; the earth seemed to rock like a cradle, and the great stone tower of the prison fell with a sound as though heaven and hell had clashed, while lurid flames shot up from the awful ruin into the midnight air. Sentence of death had already been pronounced on many who were awaiting trial, and many a soul went up in that holocaust of smoke and flame and tempest to render an account of the deeds done in the flesh. Some few survived, some few escaped. Where was Fedora?
[CHAPTER LXIV.]
"YOUR FATHER IS GEORGE HARRISON, THE CONVICT!"
It is a common fate—a woman's lot—
To waste on one the riches of her soul,
Who takes the wealth she gives him, but can not
Repay the interest, and much less the whole.
Ella Wheeler Wilcox.
"Another letter! Gad, they come thick and fast! Ta, ta, Fedora! sorry I haven't time to read it; but a fellow must look out for his own neck, and mine has felt deuced uncomfortable ever since I found out that that devil Jack Wren is on my trail. How did he strike it, I wonder; for I thought we had covered up our tracks very cleverly. But the fellow's a sleuth-hound, they tell me, and I've got to escape him. Poor Fedora! it's a pity to leave you to your fate, but the sooner I pack up and be afloat on the briny, the better for my neck," muttered Ivan Belmont, airily, as he moved about his shabby apartment, in a very unsavory quarter of Boston, gathering together his belongings, that were scattered about on chairs and tables.
The letter from Fedora that he had found on coming in he tossed unread into the fire, and as he ransacked the bureau drawers he hummed, carelessly:
"'Long have I been true to you,
Now I'm true no longer.'"