Geoffrey's victory;

by Mrs. Georgie Sheldon

He neither spoke nor moved, except to quickly turn his horses about and drive rapidly back in the direction from which he had come, leaving his victim standing in the middle of a lonely road with not a house in sight.

For a moment Geoffrey was so bewildered that he did not know what to do; he had not the slightest idea where he was, only he was sure that he must be miles and miles from Brooklyn.

But his insufficient clothing but illy protected him from the cold, and he soon began to realize that he could not stand there long without great danger to himself.

He began to walk rapidly, and soon found himself ascending a hill, and upon reaching the top he saw, beneath him, the lights of a small village gleaming through the darkness.

Quickening his steps he reached it after ten or fifteen minutes, and, to his joy, discovered that a line of railway passed through it.

Following this he soon came to the station, where he found a sleepy-looking agent and telegraph operator, who regarded him and his immaculate dress suit with undisguised astonishment.

He inquired when the next train went to Brooklyn, and to his dismay learned that this was only a branch road, and that no train was due there for an hour. It was small comfort, too, to be told that it would be only a freight train with a passenger car attached—that it would stop at every station where there was freight to be delivered or taken up; that it would be a full hour reaching the main line, where he would have to wait another hour for a train to Brooklyn.

All this delay he knew would prevent him from reaching home before midnight, and then there flashed upon him, for the first time, a suspicion that he had been brought to that remote place by no intoxicated driver’s freak, neither had he been the victim of a maniac’s frenzy, but that his abduction had been deliberately and cunningly planned to prevent his appearance at his own wedding—to hinder, if possible, his marriage with Gladys.

But who could have perpetrated such a dastardly act, and what could have been the ultimate object? It did occur to him that Everet Mapleson might have had something to do with it, but he quickly abandoned that idea for, much as he distrusted and disliked him, on many accounts, he could not think anything so bad as this of him—little dreaming how much worse he had done—while, too, he believed he had left the city more than a week previous.

He was very cold, and he knew he could not be three hours more on the road without a coat or wrap of some kind to protect him; but how to procure it was a question he could not solve, for the station-master told him there was not a clothing store in the place.