Pittston Gazette

              PITTSTON, LUZERNE CO., PA., FRIDAY, NOVEMBER IT, 18!»3. ESTABLISHED 18BO. » VOL. XLIII. NO. e«. y Oldest Newspaper in the Wyoming Vi lie*. A Weekly local and Family Journal. come when you can do me a favorr" to write ail enemy down ana out ot ex- freedom tempering the first aanteness of Virginia's awakening. Sho wfes thinking of Tom as she had first Been him years ago. He had stood on the steps of the chapel that April morning When the square was a glory of white clouds and young, rustling leaves. The stiff student cap threw a pointed shadow across his glowing eyes. His gown was pushed roughly back, one hand deep in his pocket as he laughed aloud and snapped his fingers at a little terrier rolling on the grass, mad in the caress of the sunlight.poured down and passed him with revii ing glances or cold faces turned away. and went upon his lips. Wretcnea anc wild though his face was, there was something of inexplicable triumph in that smile—a light above a wreck. A ©it lass# . §®UI JORDAN^ IIFWIII COPYKKxMT 1893 PYJ.P.LIPPINCOTT C0MI»N£, ¥**■ | |jU-AND PUPLI5T1CP DY 5PCCtAL-ARKAN(rC.Wt:MT WITH TnDO 'Can I indeed?' istence. BILL AND CLARENCE. itaietgn, spartannurg, t-oiatnoia anu aukums, through South Carolina. "You don't seem overjoyed," he sain ft purring tone. "Look here. I kno we've had a few small differences, bu can any two people of marked individuality live together in a state of unruffled peace? Tom, give me your hand." These dangers lay in wait for him at some turning in the darkness beyond his vision. But there was something more terrible—a voice that spoke to him as no living voice could. Mystic and personal, it came from his soul. Conscience, like the- giant of fairy lore, sometimes awakens refreshed and hungry from a seven years' sleep. In this interval of inaction it was impossible for Tom to look back on the short life he bad so quickly and completely degraded and feel no pang. In silence, with his love's hand cling ing to his, they joined the ascending line. Up, up, until his bodj was weary and his veins throbbed with pain, and still beyond were other shadowy .stairs under appalling arches. Faint and battling for breath, they reached the top at last. A vast hall wrapped in luminous gloom stretched away into immeasurable space. From its strange circular windows they could see the green of the sea, far, far below, the waves rolling iD with a languorous movement. Tiie eye, saddened by tlie alisrnce of furred »nd feathered life in the rural districts of the Bortli. wfs here with pleasure the buzzard and the hawk Imverlng in the sky, the wild fowl clustering mion the inlets and swamps, and In the forests squirrels and chipmunks playing about, with perhaps a deer or two. The cypresses and great white sycamores are a welcome change from the live oak and maple and fir, and the negro population,growing denser, lends an interesting feature to the prolonged Journey. He looked straight at Pluuket THEY ARE OVER IN LONDON PLAY- "The lie? No! The lie was mine. Dc you hear? The horrid, damnable lie was mine. The play was his. I stole it I called it 'In the Name of the Czar,' and when he came to me I wouldn't giv« it up. I wouldn't do it. But now—oh take it—and with it remove the curs« that has followed me!'' ING AROUND TOGETHER Nye Says That Clarence Likes Him Because He Is 8ucb a Good Provider, and Rating Is Clarence's Strong Point—An Answer to Sir Edwin Arnold Farther south your train goes "marching through Georgia," and you begin to feel the Influences of a subtropical latitude in the vegetation and character of ihe common life. Types of the southerner and his belongings enter and leave the carriage and divert by the novelty of their ideas and language, while the odd mixture of American with Indian, French and classical names for the towns entertains you In passing from Columbia to Augusta, Augusta to Macon. Macon to Vienna and Abbeville, and so by Val d'Osta, Trader's Hill. Jasper, Live Oak, Tallahassee, and dozens of strangely entitled spots, to Hristol. A groan of agony came with the words His eyes looked past the amazed and startled group to the open doorway. Was Virginia's gray, drawn face as h« had seen it in his dream still before hi! fancy? He looked again. Then he saw she was really upon the threshold, hei eyes mirroring the pity and horror hei trembling lips could not speak. She hac heard all. [Copyright, 1893, by Edgar W. Nye.] No. 3, Hazelwood Mansions, Sutton ■ Court Road, Near Kings Highway. Care Mrs. Presslt, London, ■ Great Britain. West Central, Enol » nd. Oct. 28, 1898. The heartburning, the anxiety, left their haggard marks upon his face. He grew thin, he became morose and melancholy His world lost sight of him, but hidden in some corner ot the crowded theater, driven there by a restless fascination, by the same resistless impulse which forces the murderer to feast his shrinking eyes upon his victim, be nightly watched the play that told him in every line he was a thief. The then and now! Ages had rolled between that moment and this one. Was there nothing to be done—no price she could pay, no sacrifice she could make— to give him back that innocence and know him again as he was that day? X Ne it V V, tin CON NTTNUKD The above was my address for a week, but now I have changed it. I also turned it wrong side out and cut off one of the flounces in the back. I am now living near Buckingham palace, where the queen lives at. I go over every day to see how her lawn is doing. I told her you. This afternoon I saw it acted at Palliser's theater, your name on the programme as its author," "Virginia!" CHAPTER XII. Prom that day Tom vras never alone. This was the moment of supreme dissimulation, and Tom knew it. All the forces within hiln were roused to a throbbing sens/ of self preservation. But he could nC/t lie to him. He could be very wicked' but for one strain inherent in his nature. The waywardness rolled like a sea, only to break upon this as upon a bar and surge back strengthlesa ind abortive. No, he could not lie to him. His glance wavered, the cigar dropped from his trembling fingers, he1 moved a little nearer Felix Dawson, hie heart in his eyes. His secret went with him everywhere. When after a month's hurried preparation the play, rechristened "In the Name of the Czar," was put before the public, and he knew again the intoxication of praise and applause, his secret had much to say to him of a confidential and contemptuous nature: But it is all somewhat tedious in Its monotony until, approaching Florida and the coast of the gulf of Mexico, you come into more special scenery, where the Spanish moss swinge upon the dark forest tree*, and the palmetto shoots up from the lagoon*, and over the interminable sea marshes lietween Appalachee bay and New Orleans flights of long tailed black shrikes and gray crows Oil the air. and the stagnant water swarms with catfish and alligators. I lilce America, and have good reason to like her. hut look hack upon the greater part of that prodigious Journey with the recollection of a fatigue and ennui such as few railway trips ever left liehlnd. CHAPTER XVI, His nights were sleepless and filled with fears—intolerable links between morma. feverish days. He drank heavily, tryiug to find in the flaming odors of brandy an assuagement for the ache in his heart. The snow was falling through the blacl night. Chelsea square was silent, and the wind among the line of trees stand ing sentinel wise came like a tremendous sigh ascending to a moan. The yeai would die and the new year be born in t whirling whiteness, winding sheet and baptismal robe in one. "If these people only knew the truth! ■Can't you fancy how the friendly hand •ctop would grow startled, coltl; and the fingers leave yours as if they had touched something unclean? You have the arena all to yourself. The plaudits are all yoors. They do not know. But I do; I do." "Oh, yes, I'll /wire It hack." This was Tom's life now. And across this waste, like a pale ray trembling from pure, open skies, came a longing, persistent as a thirst, to see Virginia, "Dent W. JnawkiBh. Come to the point. You want something. What is it?" The lights in the lumps flared lone somelv or bent to the rush of the wind. Their uncertain flicker fell upon Tom and sent strange, leaping Bhadows acrosf his face. He walked as one without purpose and kept close to the palings. "What will you do? Wait before you speak. Hear me." He stopped suddenly, pierced to the heart. "My GodJ what must you think of me?" "Why, you're positively brutal, you uncompromising young dog!" said Delatole, with a laugh, and then leaned confidingly on his arm, something terrieri like in the intensified sharpness of his face, "but here goes! I know you'll help me, now that you are a Croesus again. I'm tired working for The Challenge. The pay, large as it seems, is beastly small for all I do. Emerson is anxious to sell The Morning Cry, and I want to buy it. Whew! What a chance for me. I'd make it yell. Why, I'd be rich in a year. Now, if I can only pay him a third of the required amount down, ifs mine. I want you, Murray, to lend it to me." As yon get west ward, between New Orleans and the Pacific coast, passing through Lonlsiana and the Immense desert* of southern Texas, things are different. Vast as is the monotony there also, you cannot pass for the first time across the Colorado river and through •he sand wattes of the Apache mountains to El Paso and the Rtofirsnde without pleasure in studying the extraordinary landscapes. It is snother world from that which you have traversed when you rattle along through the eurions thickets of candelabra cactus on the Llano Estacado ef New Mexico, and thence to Arlrona and the wonderful foothills of lower California. He could not account for it. It wa« not that he fancied their friendship might be in any degree renewed, indeed he never seemed farther from her'thad at this period, never more undeserving of a glance from her eyes. But the desire was there, not forcible enough tc send him seeking her, yet with him always. While fearing, half expecting tc come face to face with Dawson, he was unconsciously looking for her on the streets, in shops and at the theater. He let hU folded arm* rent upon the tablt Be listened with a growing equanimity to these whisperings. He saw the philosophy of getting on the friendliest terms with his secret, since it would never leave him. Besides he possessed it absolutely. He never considered that some day it might possess him. «iwi Utitl him head upon tiicm Following liis confession had conw Delatole's attacks in the press, each word an adder bite. He had expected them but they drove him mad, and for a week he had been hidden in the nether circles of the city. Such a week!—a conflagration in which he had tried to burn ever} vestige of honorable manhood left him. "What do I think of yon?" asked Dawson, the low, resonant voice suddenly quivering with contempt. "I would not touch your hand for all the money in the world if I starved tomorrow. You seem to me like a rich man who searches through a beggar's rags and steals his last coin. You are utterly detestable to me. You coward! You thief!" Tom felt a numbness seize him. He sighed again and again, at length tearing away the white folds of cloth ftom his breast in an effort to ease its burn ing. " Virginia!" There was a new significance in Rich-, ard Monklow's touch upon her arm, light as it was. She felt it in her blood. There was a sudden shyness in her glance. She drew back, a new recognition startling her, and looked intently at the bronzed face under the shorn white hair. How composed it was, how earnest and gentlel "What place is this?'' faltered froffi his dry lips. It was now early in December. The theaters had just deluged Broadway with thousands of matinee goers. The evening was slushy, the air damp and warm. Rose leaf tints flecked the smoky vapor of the sky. At the perspective of .the crowded street, crawling like a luminous cleft between vast masses of arodk, the humidity had heaped itself into a low hanging pink cloud. Tom came oat of the stage entrance, poan4 to light a cigar and strolled toward Broadway. He had not risen 3 o'clock. The day was just beginning for His face had the opaque whiteness debauchery leaves, and warm though it was the occasional dabs of damp air struck through him, carrying a depressing chilL As he turned the corner the currents of people eddied around him. His wandering glance alighted with butterfly swiftness on the trifles that sway a crowd, then darkened, dilated, fastened upon one face. I LET HIM EAT WITH ME. gardener that I had just gone through the business and conld give her points, so he and I are planting the bald places on her lawn. The weather has been so dry, every one says, that lawns have all suffered. Still it doesn't seem to be ao blistering dry to me. I have never allowed myself to be five minutes from my umbrella since I came, and the poor crossing sweepers who keep the mud off so one can get on the other side win my sympathy and keep me out of change. In fact, instead of changing flags I am "changing sovereigns," in the language of a Texan whom I met on this side. I Dlo not know where Hendersham is, bnt imagine he moan* Hendersonville. We are grateful for what he says of North Carolina and the railroad, but we dislike what he says nf the "stringy'" scenery. That is not the fanlt of nature, for it is beanKfnl ami prosperous to look at. The farmers who have sold their very roofs t* purveyors of mandrake pills, wlw are sneh by special appointment to his royal Silliness the Prince of Wains, will tofever coins to a good end. Virginia did not answer, stricken dumb with grief. She seemed 4 Bnt he had not succeeded. No, for lit was here in this last hour of the ypar, making his indeterminate way for a last look at the peaceful old square he had once thought so stupid, a last look at the walls that had frowned on his fro ward hopes, perhaps a last word with Virginia. And then? The river—a sleep in the snow—an end somehow. Tom started and flung back his head. Two years had passed, and he had nev er chanced upon her. Such a thing could only be possible in a city like New York, where interests lie so widely apart and life rushes in great circles, one within another, never meeting. Virginia was scarcely a mile from him, yet not seeking each other they could not hare been more separate had they lived in different towns. Bohemia aui Chelsea square are antithetic—the one all fever, struggle, laughter, frailty, the other Bomnolent In an odor of sanctity, riffled only by trern ulous chimes as the days walk demurely on. "No, I'm not that. I'm not what you believe. I didn't rob you of your one possession and add it to my many. I took it when I was mad with despair. You must believe me—you must. It was here in this very room," and he held out his arms, looking around the place, an almost childish pleading in his eyes, "I came in knowing I had failed. I accepted defeat with what agony perhaps you can guess. It was then I read youi play for the first time. Mone than a yeai had passed since you left it, and I thought you dead. It would mean nothing to you, everything to me. I took it. I ask you again, what will you do?" Before a door leading to au innei chamber ah old man stood on guard. His shoulders were curved as if he had toiled with the spade. His hair}-, laboi twisted hands were crossed upon a staff. One sentence only left his lips in a mo notono"s sing song: It was triumph that flickered deeply in Tom's level glance. How often in his luckless moments this voice had sharply prodded him that now, sunk to a caressing tone, asked help of him! "You know who that was," she said; "you're heard father revile him often enough." She paused, and again a biting mist swam across her sight. "Poor Torn! His bitterest enemy mignt pity him now," '•Quite impossible, my dear Delatole," he said promptly, with a shrug. "I need every penny just now." "The Hall of the Situ at t^apy," At the tree where the knowledge ol his love and power first came to him he paused. His arms were loosely folded on his breast. His eyes were shadowy and grieved as those of a beaten animal thoroughly cowed. Tom hesitated before him, joy welling in his heart. The simple, trusting, adoring old man was his father. Oh, here he would find love unspeakable. '•Perhaps you would like to follow him. Would you? If he lives alone, has no one to help him"—— "You're jesting," And Delatole grew visibly paler. "What is ypnr pressing aped, pray?" Still that is pleasanter to me than the scenery along the underground railway. Did yon ever' get. in a cheap car—down cellar where the sun has never dried the mud that Jnlins C*Mr bronght with him from Rome, and where the sam» old air is still stagnating, filled with the sulphnr and sewer gaa that Brutus complained of iu tho county papers 1,108 years B. C., over the signature of Pro Bono Publico? If uot, you shonUl do so then. "What do you mean?" And her burning hand was on his arm. "Father!" he whispered, with vehement tenderness. Suddenly the shade at Virginia's window was raised, and she stood with hei bod" pressed against the glass, her hand* arched over her eyes as she peered into the night. Oh, was she watching for him? Oh, had she one thought for him? "I must pay my debts. As you so often reminded me, they are legion. I owe you nothing more—thank God for that- - but there are others." Yet, so strange is the affinity betweer thought and sequence, Tom felt scarcely any surprise when one night at the thea ter he lifted his languid eyes and saw Virginia in a lower box. "He seemed to me on the verge of a collapse. I saw a sailor once whose face wore that look. He shot himself. If he hadn't, I think he would have gone mad." But the worn, gentle face took on 8 look of hatred it had never worn in life, The gnarled fingers flung his  . "I sacrificed for you. Hunger, despair were my portion many a time that you rnipht lie happy, free and some day great. This I did for you, but you have poisoned eternity for me," were the words that left his lips with the fury ol a malediction. Clarence, my yalet, is still with me. He points out what I ought to eat and then eats it. I certainly never saw a man with such a groping for food, such a yearning for groceries, cereals and endogenous asparagus. There was understanding in Felij Dawson's eyes, but no softening. His heart was like a wrung out sponge—it knew no extremes. The one passion left him was a morbid love for the play he had written. "Murray, this is bosh. Let them wait. I should certainly be first with you. This is a critical moment for me. You can't refuse," There she was as he had so often pic tured her through these useless, feverish, fear haunted days. His sick soul ragec with yearning, and in all the crowded half lit house he only saw her face. Ht scarcely seemed to breathe. His eyei devoured her. The dear face! Then was no other like it in the world. She threw out her hands in a gesture of pain- "Yes—come. Wecan get his address at the box office. If not, I know where the manager lives. Come. You will go with me, won't you?" With a yearning sob Tom made a forward and then retreated. He could see the* whole room, A had entered. He remembered him aa Virginia's companion at the theater. He carried a bunch of flowers as white as the snow clinging to his broad shoulders, and as Virginia went toward him he took her hand and gave them to her. He took a vacation the other day and went into the country about eight or ten miles, which simply takes one into a muddier part of London, but he came home to his meals, and after eating uaout of house and home returned to his play. ft is very hard for an American gentleman to know how to treat a valet. Pve had Clarence two weeks now, and all that he has done so far was to feaoh up my back for a suspender that had escaped me. He said he could shave me when I engaged him, and he could if I did not regret it so after he did it. He got me in a chair upholstered with hone hair cloth, and which I fell onto! twice while he was working my face into place by means of my nose, then he shaved me with a razor that was captured during the Crimean war, and I can truly say that Plum Levi, Patton avenue, Asheville, North Carolina, U. S. A., in his best flights of genius could not approach Clarence. Plum might have been as gifted in the matter of torture, but he never had the preceding generations of that sort of thing to help him. One face—it seemed to leap up from the sea of other faces to meet him, the eyes strained, piteous, dark with an arraignment, a challenge. "I do. I refuse." "Poor, wronged dead men. They cannot all come back as I have done. But unfortunately for you," he said, with a slight curl of his lip, "I was not dead. 1 came here three times in the summer following. The place seemed shut up. The rest of the time I have spent in a hospital. Facing death and eternity, I forgot life, I forgot you. God has cursed me for many years, and I never bent to the rod. And now, when I had thought the long, bitter day was to end in storm and darkness, there is a promise of a new dawn." "You mean? — and the words were a terrified breath on Tom's lips. There was a sullen, red point in Dela tole's purplish pupils. He felt very much as an elderly hen does who sees u half feathered chicken leave the shelter of her wing and with a defiant chirp make its hesitating way alone. It was h moment before he could control himself and speak. 1 hate to pick a quarrel with a poet who is older and smarter in every way than I, bnt I'd rather ride among long tailed shrike* and stringy trees that are just "doing the bent they can" than to He made no answer in words, but gazing down into her questioning eyes a flood of fealty poured from his, a long, yearning, inspiring glance of passion that thrilled her to the core of her troubled soul. Tom could not linger to question or appeal. The throng pressing behind him bore him on to the center of the innei hall, where a presence, awful in its austerity and grandeur, hung like a shadow, with eyes of fire above a parchment outspread upon a marble ledge. Around this the crowd circled, looked and moved on one by one. Tom's jaded heart suddenly livened with an awful fear. But he did not pause. The streets swayed around him as he walked on. Once he turned as if to glance at some flowers in a florist's shop, and he saw the pale lamplight and the gray dusk casting a weird radiance over the face. He was being followed. He seemed to hear those dogging step* above the multitude of footfalls oo •very side. The light was in her eyes, the red ii her arching lips, the soft fire of expect ing, exulting youth not one whit dimmed. It is only in books women show upon their faces when they hare passed the first milestone on the path ol pain. What words was he speaking now"; Tom could see his strong, quivering face, his moving lips, his submissive yet im passioned attitude. "Surely Mrs. Baudoine's money"—he commenced with a forced, insulting laugh. CHAPTER XV. Scarcely 10 minutes later Tom entered his Bitting room. It was dark. He hated the darkness. He wanted light—light tc keep the terrors from crowding upon him —an invisible, awful horde. He lit the lamp, staggered to the sinking fire and fell xhausted Into a chair, where he sat with heavily hanging arms and head fallen forward. His breath came in spurts, his heart was in his throat, his wide, circled eyes were sightless, but his inward vision was the more hideously acute. Oh, God, the pathos of what he saw! He loved Virginia. Yes, and the enchanted whisper of his love seemed to steal out to the watcher through the drifting snow. "You've talked a good deal about that money, Delatole. I'm sorry it must be left out of your calculations. The en gagexnent's off. Sink or swim, I go it alone. Mrs. Baudoine understands, and we remain good friends." He bent over it eagerly. Here lay the explanation,the quest of this vast throng. He looked, and his breath seemed tc cease. Before his eyes lay the stolen play. It pages were charred as if it had been passed through flame. It was blotted with tears and smeared with blood. His name was written there for all to see. and far off he still heard his father's quavering, husky roice—the roice that once sang lullabies to him—repeating to the curious thousands: Wonld she see him? He hardly knew whether he most longed for or dreaded her glance. How would she look if she knew the truth about the play she watched so earnestly? What would hei eyes say then? A hansom stood idle at a corner. He sprang into it, telling the man to drive fast, and sank back, feeling bewildered, stunned, sick. A moment tney stood ciosely togetner, then Virginia was in his arms, clinging to him, and he had kissed her. "What can I mean but that you are to give me my play?" he cried. "So that's the way the wind lies? You must be growing sentimental again. Well, then, your own money will answer. You're drawing big royalties from your play, and it's one to last. I tell you, Murray, if you refuse to assist me yon are a contemptible ingrate." He stood up, placed his palms upon the table, his voice coiling serpent wise around the words. "It was I who made you. Don't forget that, my friend. You are an un formed siripling, a youngster groping in the dark, without polish, withont snav Ity. Why, without me"  A sharp breath of longing broke from Tom. To shut out the picture he turned his face to the wet bark of the tree, shuddering and sobbing like a woman. Virginia another's. He not the slightest influence in her life ever again—fallen into darkness, utterly forgotten. Felix Dawson, the man he had de frauded, was alive. "I can't. Don't you see that it is impossible—now?" The prayer had gone from Tom's voice. It was dogged, desperate. "I'll give you every penny I get for it, but my name must stand as its author. To acknowledge your right would be confessing my theft. That I refuse to do. It would mean social disgrace. Do you understand?" A coldness began to steal orer him, a desire to shriek. His head was whirling. Was he going mad? This dull, inarticulate grief preying upon his heart—oh, ii he could sigh it away! It had been so easy for Tom with the comfortable suppleness of his nature to assume that this man's long silence had meant his death and gradually to assimilate this supposition until it became .* surety. He had never realized the enormity of his act before. Felix Dawson had been but a shadowy memory to him, a name. He had taken his play, jtnd by a tortuous, sophistical vein of reasoning this fact had grown to seem scarcelv worse than if he had onlv deetroyed it, since no one was injured. "The Hall of the Sinful Copy." One after another he reviewed the wickednesses, the degradations of hie life. How closely they pressed togethei —a series of steps, each one lower, forming a stairway and descending into a gulf! He stood faltering upon the edge of the last, the darkness hungry for hit soul, the roar of an incoming torrent in his ears. The dews of terror for some unknown but approaching disaster broke from every pore, and he sank to his knees, drawing Virginia with him. Faintly the first chimes floated from the belfry, and he looked up. I've a good notion to retire Clarence for he has got after all a degree of appetite and dignity which make people mistake him for the gentleman of the two. Possibly it's partly, too, because I'm 15 years younger than he and naturally more frisksome and debonair. Virginia had left her lover, who stood just behind her. She was again at the window, still under curved hands looking into the darkness, and now he could plainly see the pity, the tender, searching look in the wide, clear eyes. Dawson's face was terrible in its scorn. "Oh, kiss me once, love," she whispered, her white cheek hard upon his; "we must part so soon!" "Money won't content me," 1 SAW SfR EDWIN ARNOLD. "See here. I could have denied youi right to this play—lied to your teeth. But I didn't. Face to face in this silent room I have been honest with you. I would undo it all if I could, God know* how readily." He paused, and his voice, though quiet, was like the strokes of eieel upon steel. "But before the world it will be different. If you have no mercy on my position, 111 have none on you. I wilf swear if need be that the play is mine from the first word to the last. I tell you it will be an unequal struggle, and I will win. Cranks and blackmailers abound in New York. You will be classed among them and be forgotten. Yotfd. better accept my terms. Think agaifi. Take the money. I'll be glad to give it to you. But the play must remain mine. It is too late for anything else. Don't you see? Can't you see?" mount a cold, stenchy oar worth about £2 and 80 cents and plunge through the darkness, the bad air of this black gopher hole, and with tlie ri.*k of losing your Waterburv watch Wfore yon can say John H. Robinson. And, shaking of advertisements, there is noue that can or does approach this save the queen and the devil take the r»»st country. The blood rushed to Tom's face. "Don't leave me," he pleaded. "I love you. To be near you is delight even in this fearful place. I'll give back the play. In the light of truth I will stand unmasked. I ll do it gladly, let them revile me as they will. Then I'll have peace—and your love, dearer than all the world." The second morning after I took these lodgings I did not get my boots (sometimes called shoes) from the blacker down stairs, and so I went down myself. The blacker said that he did not black servants' shoes. He mistook me for Clarence.It was ao different now that he knew Felix Dawson was not dead—no longer a memory, buta man, following him, hie heart fired by this wrong; a man with eyes to scorch and voice to be raised in condemnation; an opponent to faoe, to "Don't remind me of what I was— without you. Don't let me think of what I have become following you," he interrupted fiercely. "You made me. you say? I have ruined myself, rather, and you have ably assisted at the wrecking. You can no more remake me now than can I myself." Tonight he had stood face to face with Virginia, not with the white memory which had always followed him, but with the living woman whose warm, fragrant lips had surrendered to his kiss for one ecstatic moment, long, long ago. Oh, that fervent, remembered kiss! Oh, her deep, mystical eyes! t \ / - A kind Creator gave Clarence dignity to make up for his gnawing hunger. fear. Oh, her lovely, melting eyes, her kiss heavy with farewell! His coming meant ruin, disgrace before the world, but it meant also a sudden, sickening awakening to the nature He stood up, his eyes flashing with their old impulsive passion. The wordt came slowly, deliberately: I let him eat with me,- for I actually suffer when I have to eat alone. The kind, hospitable Englishman looks out for my dinners, but the breakfasts are especially lonesome without Clarence. He has done valeting for others, among them an American and two Australians. He likes me the best, he says, because I am a better provider. As he sort of directs my diet so that I won't get the gout, which threatened me for 10 days and nights, he makes suggestions which suit him. Clarence agrees with me aiul has traveled a good bit. t D' Those eyes! Ah, they had read him through and through, making his blood leap and shiver! Her power was still unshaken in his soul—nay, she was indeed his soul, for near her he felt and understood more keenly, and life took on a deeper meaning. She was his light, his breath, his revelation, with power in the small compass of one glance to save him even from himself. "It is too late," she sighed, and he felt her lips upon his throat. "All that is past." And for another moment she clung to him. A man here who has been somewhat snubbed bv her majesty told me a lot of scandal about the royal family that would mak* good interesting reading, but why should I break off with the royal family and lose good neighbors by stories? ( Moreover, to do it would require 10 years right off my life If I did the family substantial justice. and of his act, a shame and hatred of himself. He was a thief in the commonest sense. "Perhaps it's just as well we speak plainly at last. Delatole, you've robbed me." Saw Virginia in a lower box. "No, no. We will be happy cried in anguish. yet," he When the horse was pulled np at the curb before his door, it was almost a mhnfir He had been sitting upright, his hands grasping the apron of the hansom, looking straight ahead, but blind, not even aware that it had commenced to rain. "What?" And all the while in the rosy gloon. thrown upward by the footlights Vir ginia's face shone like a star. And «L the while the old passion grew with thC seconds, no longer single and pure, tht ideal love of a man's youth, but a reck less, dominant oraving for her, the fruil of past experience and present despair. "Yes, you've lived upon me success fully for two years. I'm negligent about money, and I let you go on, but I'm not a fool. You have bled me in a most consistent and masterly manner, doubled my expenses with a lavish recklessness, and I knew it all the time. But I kept the peace, for I had made up my mind tc end it at the first opportunity." He leaned forward, his face close to Delator's, and his clinched hand rang on the table. "It's ended now." But the words were hushed upon his \ •V lips. In some occult way the truth wan revealed to him. He knew that all the faces he had looked upon were those ol the dead. He too was dead, and Virginia. Life and earth were gone forever. Repentance was vain, redemption impossible, parting, shame and despaii eternal. But she was lost to him forever. With the sight of Dawson's face had come the thought of what he was—not fit to stand before her, not fit to touch her hand. Dawson seemed scarcely to listen to him. He was looking past him, a faint, dreamy smile upon his pale lips. Delatole called to him as he went down the h*11 He paid no heed, and entering his study flung himself into a chair. His face was clammy and wan. lie turned hi* facc from where the rivet For breakfast we take a sole, with a boiled egg, toast, coffee and possibly some liver and bacon, with apollinaris, which is fivepenoe the bottle. Then for lunch at 1:30 we have a beautiful mackerel—not a fossil mackerel, with his bosom full of brine, but a tender, blue eyed mackerel, with a radiant complexion and genuine good feeling. Then a big, juicy steak, with brown gravy. Oh, sir, me eyes, but that steak and that gravy make England look good to me, and I am willing to let bygones be bygones. Then there is fine old stilton cheese, with what I used to call a cracker, but now a biscuit. Also celery and brussels sprouts, with a bottle of Burgundy, because water here Is only used externally. "That's your view of the situation. Now hear mine. I've been trying for 15 years to touch success. I've always just missed it. I made my last throw when I wrote 'Dr. Fleming,' and it won. Money? Do you think money will make up for the loss of the thing most precious to me? Deny me as you will; I'll take my chances. You've robbed me of what I love. That play was friend and sweetheart, fire and food, to me for a year. It is part of me. All I have hoped and suffered appears in its lines like a reflection in a glass. Oh, yes, I'll have it back." He remembered nothing more until ht stood before her, their hands locked. lay. Oh, that moment! With a cry like an animal strangling he threw out his arms. Oh, if he could be better—or worse! But to have always seen the good and loved it, and yet with unstable feet to have drifted away to all that was vile, even while keeping his eyea fixed upon the beacon that shed its light In vain for him—this was torture. Oh, if he could go back! If he only could like a child go back and begin all over again! He was not forgotten. No, no, not even in this first moment of her new happiness. It was for him her gaze tried to pierce the deep gloom, for him—poor wanderer—the light burned brightly in her window, as if she knew, who knew him so well, he might stray back that night. (Limited.) Something must be done. What? What could he say when Felix Dawson faced him? What defense could he make? That he was coming he was absolutely sure. He must be near now. Perhaps in five minutes he would cross the threshold. Suppose Delatole heard him Suppose the blow fell that aftersoon.He was dimly conscious of a strangt man with Virginia and of an introduc tion to him, but he seemed an interminable distance away through a madden ing red blur. The crowd, the music, too, had receded, and Virginia's upraised eyes, her warm, confiding palm, were the only realities. In the sudden blackness that swept down like the shadow cast by a monstrous wing Virginia's body slipped from his longing arms, and he was alone. * A (wall Club. A Detroit man on his way to oatch a train for Chicago yesterday met a friend. "Well," he said, "I'm off for the fair.** "You look it." "Have you been?" During his adventurous life Anthony Delatole had many times been surprised, but never so thoroughly confounded before. He stood leaning upon the table and watched Tom out of the room. There was a craven malignity in every line of his sneering face. A longing almost irresistible gripped him to knock Tom down and kick lum until the hot, brutal desire for retaliation had been glutted. The cry that broke from his humiliated soul sent the vision whirling, and he awoke, conscious of a bursting heart and a quivering body bathed in cold dews. He made an effort to rise, and at he did so felt a hand upon his shoulder, heard a voice speaking his name. He stepped into the deeper shadow, but his spent heart felt one quivering thrill of hope. A tumultuous, anguished craving to live again swept through him. If he were worth her remembrance, if she wanted him back, might he not yet make something of the ruins of his youth—not the marvelous structure he liad once dreamed of with turrets in the clouds—yet something—something  "No." "No." "Aren't you going?" He sat absolutely still, his eyes fixed npon the door, his veins holding a fluid, icy terror instead of blood. What he said to her he never knew— something muttered, incoherent—wordi seemed of such little value then beside the longing to crush her to his sore heart "Why not?" He got up slowly and fumbled among the glasses on the table until lis found the bottle he wanted—a little wine to help quench this aching regret, this self reproach in every heart throbt He drained the glasa thirstily, let his folded arms rest upon the table and laid his head upon them. "Because I'm going to stay away and organize the I - haven't • been - to - the- World's-fair club. It's bound to be the most select and exclusive thing in the entire country."—Detroit Free Press. "What else?" he cried, flinging back his head, his eyes flashing a maddened defiance and clouded with blood. "What else? Oh, God!" At last, to his intense relief, Delatole thrust in his head, saying: Then for a moment he looked away his eyes drawn upward as by a spell. "Are you going to dine here? Well, Til be back in time to have a demitasse with you. I want to see you. Don't go out." He walked to the door, the bluish dusk shading his white, earnest, clear cut face, and clothing him with mystery. "Stumped, by God!" ho muttered. A cry wavered from his paling lips, he reeled backward and flung her hand from him. Above, among the sea ol faces, was Felix Dawson's, the light from hia eyes shooting through Tom's guilty heart like a vein of electricity. To his blinded, maddened senses the face seemed distorted by a terrible menace. His doom was written there. Mr. Plunket's commonplace face was close to him. Then at 6:30 we have dinner. I have the name of paying for it and Clarence eats it. It is a fine broiled fish after some anchovies and pea soup. Then a joint and a bird with a bottle of Moselle and sweets. Sweets are mostly tarts. I've never eaten one. They look like a medallion in paste and gooseberry, and I've often thought that if her most gracious majesty the queen of Great Britain, empress of India and tamer of Ireland would some day while I'm up at her place for dinner decorate me with one of them, I'd wear it on my breast forever. Long after he was gone Tom stood listening to the splashing of the rain. His brain was afire with questions. CHAPTER XIII. Their Wlik. The next fortnight saw an important change in Tom's life. Ho left the University building and took a cheaper suite of rooms on Irving place, one of the bivouacs of Bohemia. Delatole and he had parted in a silence that was sul try. The things of the actual world slipped away, and his sleep was troubled by a dream. "Murray, you must be ill. You've been dreaming—crying out as if some ono were hurting you. Wake up. Don't stare so, man. Wake up." He covered his face with his crossed arms, and the bitterest moment of his life was upon him. The danger of betrayal over for the moment, Tom breathed more freely. He crossed to the window and flung it np, letting the rain dash upon his face. The chaos in his brain was rent suddenly by one sententious thought: Dawson would accuse turn, out it would amount to nothing; he would be thought a man driven frantic by misfortune. But the money—that was a different matter and an unpleasant one. He would never put another penny ol the play's payments to his own use. They must be saved for Felix Dawson—saved secretly—and some day he might be induced to accept them. This meant sudden poverty for himself and might excite curiosity. He could say he was paying his debts, or some of the speculation recently indulged in might Ik» fortunate. He was not afraid. He felt secure. A picture seemed to rise before him, thrown outward iu bold lines upon a misty whiteness. He saw a disheartened miner laying down his spade before a worked ont mine which had failed in its golden promise. Before him into the west and the falling night stretched a new road, and toward this his face was set. But he looked back once over the blue prairie, back to the east, a farewell in his eyes. It was a moment's halt—a little space for dreaming and regret. He was alone. The night sighed around him, the moon swung in the high, misty spaces. He felt a sense of predestination as he moved along, as if each step had been ordered by a will other than Staring, trembling, his tongue thick, Tom sprang up. The sense of utter loss, the tragedy of Virginia's last kiss, were still with him. He looked around, startled, dumb. Yonder in the crimson circle cast by the lamp stood Delatole smiling. Just beyond him wore the gaunt form and lonely eyes of Felix Dawson. Both were waiting. In a moment he was fleeing from it, pushing through the waiting crowds is the aisles as a man breasts a sea. "This man you dread has no proof." No proof. The words sang in hi? brain, the denuded trees creaked them, the wind laughed in glee. His plunges in Wall street kept him well supplied with money for the time being, and of the future he thought but little. his own, as if he must walk that road and eventually see what lay ahead in the mystery of the far, blue shadows. CHAPTER XIV. "Defy him. Defeat him. He is powerleas. You are strong." The secret had changed its aspect. He no longer cared to face it. It was now a monstrous fear maddening him with whispers of a hundred possibilities, prod ding him, sending out false alarms and slowly chilling his assurance into an ever present premonition. Since the day Felix Dawson left him with the declaration, "Oh, yes, I'll have it back," he had not seen nor heard of him. This absolute withdrawal was more significant than threats. Suppose he had incontestable proof, after all? What if he lied when he said lie had no copy? What if he conld produce witnesses to prove he had written the play? Would this man some day appear again, relentless in his quiet way, and hurl the bombshell that would bring his false life in ruins about his eurs? Virginia, at the door of the box, stood facing the crowd where Tom had disap peared. A shudder shook her from head to foot. She still seemed looking into a pair of tormented blue eyes alight with a shifting flame; the choked, broken accents of a familiar voice were in her ears. His vision became clearer, and he saw himself clad in a long, white gown, made pilgrim fashion, a staff in his hand. The silver at his feet became the sand of a beach, and the sweet, monotonous whisper stealing through the desolate whiteness the incessant sobbing of the sea. Yes, he was walking on the very edge of the fretting waters. I saw Sir Edwin Arnold a few days ago in Piccadilly, and the following day saw a column or two devoted by him in The Telegraph to America, and generally to The bell in the passage gave a whispering tinkle. Tom turned, scarcely surprised. The moment had come. "My dear Murray, I am here nndei protest," said Plunket, wringing his fat hands in a loose, soft, helpless way as he stood with his head on one side. "Thin man's story is absurd—now lie quiet, don't get angry, but—but—he says youi last play was one he sent yon and which you — er — er — er — appropriated. Ht hasn't a shadow of proof. How could he? Why, it's preposterous! As if 1 wouldn't know your style anywhere! 1 poohpoohed him, but Mr. Delatole jiersuaded me to let him face you with his story. That is all, my dear Murray that is all." Tom's nerveless hands fell down. He gave a quivering sigh, like a man coming up to breathe after the water hod passed over him. "Mr. Mnrray, sir, a gentleman to see yon," said the English valet. Coffee and liquors were on the table when Delatole rushed in. local songs like the "Swanee River," comparing our local songs with thoee of the Scotch, the Irish, French, Italian, and so forth. When he says oar scenery is "stringy," however, I say that his own is very tart. Here follows Arnold's piece: "Show him in here. If any one else comes, I'm ont. Remember." And yet—oh, could it be?—was it really Tom who had stood there? That gaunt figure and sickly face, the dissolute eyes and coarsened mouth were like a travesty on the memory cherished so tenderly. The pity of itl His artistic life was complete iu its terrible incompleteness. This was his moment of transition. Was there a new road for him? Its beginning might lie in shadow, but did it lead anywhere? Could he go on? Where? How? He did not know. He was lighting a cigar with an affectation of carelessness, his back to the door as the visitor entered. In reality hla muscles were braced to a painful rigidity, his face was greenish white. He was prepared to deny the charge absolutely, to decry the man as mad. "Pass over .the absinthe, Tom," he said, with a smile and a comfortable kind of shiver. "Gad, this room looks cozy after the rain. Hear it, splashing in bucketfuls. I had to go to Emerson'e and have a bite with him—listened to nothing bnt praises of you from the soup until I broke away before dessert. He says you're a genius. But that's noth ing new. Haven't I always said you stood alone? This last play settles the point beyond dispute. The Russian coloi is admirable! How the deuce you caught it I can't tell, wlien you never had youi nose in Russia. But who can explain the vagaries of genius? When yon wrote that play, Tom, yon prepared a delight for posterity."' Mr. Tiresome—Don't you think Gfoorg* is a very entertaining young man? They—Indeed we do. We wish you had brought him with you.—Truth. A warm hand slipped into his, and Virginia walked beside him. Her hair was unbound. It softly lashed hei cheeks, and sometimes he felt its silken caress. He drew her to him, seeking her lips. Well Equipped. Her raised arm drooped against the curtain in the shadow, and she laid her face upon it, closing her eyes and letting the slow, heavy tears fall as they would. These thoughts come to me, remembering something that happened fit at long journey which 1 took last year between New York and New Orleans, going round by the sooth and following what Is called by enterprising railway advertisers there the "Sunset route." Train traveling In the states Is wonderfully well organized and fairly comfortable for long trips, but it cannot be said that the average scenery of the great republic Is Iteautiful or interesting. There is an aspect altout the general American landscape which can be liest defined as "stringy." The trees are spindly, the wild growth of woods and wastes is ragged, and even In some of the prettier combinations hideous collections of black and half burnt stumps deface the prospect and make the land seem like a collection of cemeteries in memory of Its bygone forests. The following notice is posted up in a public house in the neighborhood of Denver:But Virginia in the window still watched for hiui, and now the chimes were pealing like mad. Oh, their rise and fall, their winged clamor, their ecstatic repetitions reasoning down his pitiful hesitation! "No proof. No copy. No eye saw yon. It is your word against his." "Stay with me, dear," he whispered "Stay with me now." A love born of long association is not an easy thing to kill. Virginia's died hard in that piteous moment, but it died surely. She scarcely knew it herself, eo keen, so deep was the rush of compassion, almost maternal in its intensity, that took its place. Tom regarded him vacantly while he spoke. He started blindly forward and paused midway in. the room, leaning upon a chair. Notice.—A man i* engaged in the back yard to do ell cursing and bed language required at this establishment. A dog is kept to doall the barking. Our potman (or chucker out) has won 75 prize fights and is an excellent revolver •hot. An undertaker calls every morning for wder*. Braced by a dogged, passionless assurance in the stability of the lie on which he bad surely bnilded, he looked Felix Dawson in the eyes, and then hi i plan of defense shriveled, bis heart melted within him for very pity This waa not an accuser come to demand justice. This was a man in whom the fires of life had died. His eyes were graves of dead illusions. So might one look who had parted with hope and stood with outstretched, empty hands, crying to fate, in tones of imbittered triumph: "Paee by me now. Leave me free. Yon have taken all." He felt the warmth of her young, red mouth on bis, but her eyes remained wide and beseeching. She murmured his name and led him on until they stood before a building of austere and awful structure. It seemed to have risen from the waters. The waves broke in greenish tongues upon its steps, and within he saw a fallen lamp sputtering before a ruined shrine. As they paused in the rfladow of its door they heard the sound of bare feet whispering upon stone, and slowly up one staircase and down another a silent multitude poured, all garbed like Virginia and himself in the simple vestments of the antique world. Many of his friends were in the throng, many of his old classmates; hie enemies, too—Delatole and Dawson. It was a curious thing that those going up •miled at him, but those returning His rupture with Delatole—that, too, made him uneasy. Oh. it was a load from his heart to have told him the truth, to have seen the sullen surprise deepen into'a stolid hatred in his horrid eyes. It was a relief, a balm, but it brought a danger in its wake. Suppose they met, these two who for different reasons would rejoice in his overthrow. Then indeed might he shudder, would follow the scent insatial//. He would come like a vulture to pick his bones. Even if proof were not possible he would so damn him with suspicion, so besmeai him with the trail of his innuendoes, so riddle him with the darts of his acrid humor, hiB prestige would be lost forever. Delatole had the power, the opportunity and the unswerving patience He was not dreaming still? No; these tfere men, not shades. This was his familiar room—Virginia was not faraway. All was not over. The living moment was still his. Considerations so important bnt a little while ago were lost sight of; his tortured sensibilities overleaped them all in a maddening thirst tc redeem himself in his own eyes while h6 could, to purge the soilurefrom his soul, so that never—oh, never—might h« really know that sense of awful, final condemnation revealed to him in a dream. He turned his face from where the river lay and walked eastward through the falling snow. His heart was bathed in a strange, warm peace. The chimes followed him—a silver, celestial voice. -Tit-Bits. Those Happy Day*. But gradually as the tears fell and the throes of the awakening continued she saw the truth. The passion that had held her to the past was like a wornout coil whose strands in the weak places she had persistently kept mended until Tom's own hand had out it tonight, leaving in ht r irrasp onlv a handful of wornout shreds. The old feeling was like something done with and put away forever. Weak and morbid natures cling to a sentiment when the ideal that projected it is lost. A proud and virile heart leaps exultant, free. "Don't you remember meV Ah, it was to hear words like these that Felix Dawson demanded what he created. Money, after all, was the amallest part of the triumph. Tom roused himself and found Delatole smiling at hiu» in his most engaging way. His smiles were usually very expensive dainties and augured frowns for some body else. THE END. "Can't say that I ever saw youbefore." A Kind Hearted Man. "Don't you remember little Sammy Bambry, who used to steal your peaches and break your windows 80 years ago, right here in Harlem?" "The charge against the prisoner," Mtid the judge, addressing the witness, "is cruelty to animals, and you have been called to testify in his favor. What do you know about him?" When once you get out of the large and well built towns and cities, the country regions are full of mean and ugly wooden houses made of weather board, and as yon go farther south these degenerate into ragged farmhouses, which paint tipon their roofs the names of patent medicines in staring letters, or uegro slianlies scarcely more htinian in appearance titan pigsties. South of Washington there are certainly some charming regions under the Blue ridge and among the woods of Virginia, and nlimate and scenery both alter a little for the better when the train crosses into North Carolina, and you run down by Ilendersham and "Why, certainly, I remember now very well how you used to steal my peaches, and don't yon remember how I canght yon just as yon were getting over the fence one day and how I tanned your hide for yon?" "Yon remember me?" And his quiet ▼oice was peculiarly sad and strong. "I never knowed him to be cruel to animals. Why, that there man, judge, feeds his pet bulldog on beefsteak. Cruel to animals! Why, I've known him to kick his wife for not taking good care of his dog."—New York Press. Tom stood like one arraigned before a superior, a judge. "Yes, I do." "Do you know, Tom." and his black /eyes sparkled as he looked down at the opalescent liquor swaying under the movement of .his fingers, "the time haa "Speak up, Murray. Throw the lie in his teeth,''"cried Plunket. A pallor suddenly struck Tom's face from brow to chin; a pale smile came "You bet you did. Ah, those happy days will never come again 1"—Texa* Siftinss, "A long time ago I left a play with But there wa9 none of the triumph of