WEDDED FOR PIQUE.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XXVI, Issue 9325, 30 March 1889, Page 3 (Supplement)

WEDDED FOR PIQUE.

- * BY MRS. MAY AGNES FLEMING, » AutbdUr of Guy EarLscpurt's Wife," " .Wonderful - Woman," " A Mad " One Night'sMystery," " Lost for a Woman," &c. ... - V > CHAPTER XXIX. ' THE .'PRISONER. * * V. The August roses were in full, bloom, in the scorching heat of early afternoon, within a pretty garden, in a pretty village, some miles from London, as a light waggon, holding -two gentlemen, drove through the wooden gates, and' up a shaded avenue, toward a largo brick building. The gentlemen—one, tall and handsome, with a grand, kingly sort of face, and dark, grave eyes; the other, middle-sized, but looking puny compared with his companion, a very shining' personage, with yellow tinselled hair, -wearing a • bright buff waistcoat, and a great profusion of jewelleryalighted before the principal entrance. A stout little gentleman, standing 011 the steps awaiting them, ran down at their approach, and shook hands with the latter, in the manner of an old friend.

» "Good-afternoon, Mr. Sweet. It is a sight for sair eon, as the Scotch say, to see you again." Thank you, doctor," said the tinselled individual. " This is the gentleman I told you of." Dr. South, Colonel Shirley." The doctor bowed low, and the Colonel raised his hat.

"You are welcome, Colonel. I presume you have come to see my unfortunate patient, Mrs. Wildman." " I have. We can see her, I hopo ?" "Oh, certainly, poor thing! A very quiet case, hers, but quite endurable. Most eases of melancholy madness are. This way, if you please." Leading them through a long hall, the doctor ascended a staircase, entered a corridor, with a long array of doors 011 either hand, followed by his two companions. " My fomale patients are all on this side," he said, unlocking one of the doors, and again leading the way into another, with neat little sleeping-rooms 011 each side, and, finally, into a large, long apartment, with the summer sunshine coming pleasantly through two high windows, grated without, filled with women of all ages. Some sat peaceably knitting and sewing ; some were walking up and down ; some sat talking to themselves ; but the Colonel was astonished to see how comparatively quiet they all were/ His eye wandered round in search of her he had come to see, and it rested and lingered at last on one sitting close to a window, who neither moved nor looked up at their entrance, but remained gazingvacantly out, and slowly and continually wringing her hands. A pallid and faded creaturo, with dim, fair hair, cut short like a child's, and streaking her furrowed forehead ; a thin, wan face, pitiable in its quiet hopelessness, the light-blue eyes vacant and dull, and the poor fingers she twisted continually nothing but skin and bone. Yet, as Colonel Shirley looked, his thoughts went back to a certain stormy night, eighteen years before, when a pretty, fair-haired woman had kissed and cried over his little child ; and he recognised this faded shadow instantly. The doctor went over, and patted her lightly on the shoulder. "Mrs. Wildman, my dear, look round. Here id* gentleman come to see you." The woman turned her pale, pinched face, and looked up, in a hopeless sort of way, in the pitying eyes of the Indian officer. " Have you brought her back ?" sho asked, mournfully. " She sent her away ; my little Bar bara ; my only child—my only child !"

"She keeps that up continually," said tho doctor, with an intelligent nod to the Colonel. " Nobody ever can get anything out of her but that."

"1 wish you would bring her back to me !" said the imbecile, still looking in the same hopeless way at her visitor. "She sent her away—my little Barbara—and I loved her so much ! Do go and bring her back !"

The Colonel sat down beside her and took one of the wasted hands in his, with a look that was infinitely kind and gentle. Who was it that sent her —your little Barbara ?"

" She did ! The one she kept was the gentleman's child, audit was always crying and troublesome, and nob kind and good like my little Barbara. I wish you woul4 go and bring her back. It is so lonesome here without hor ; and she was my only child, my only child !" "I told you so," said the doctor, with another nod. " You won't get her beyond that if you keep at her bill doomsday !" " Where did she send her to ?" asked the Colonel; but the woman only looked at him vacantly. "She sent her away," she repeated, "and kept the gentleman's childthe tall gentleman that was so handsome, and gave me the money. But she sent away my little Barbara; my only child, my only child ! Oh, won't somebody go and bring her back ?"

The Colonel bent over her, took her other hand, and looked steadfastly into the dull eyes. "Mrs. Wildman, do you not know me? I am the gentleman who left the child."

She looked at him silently ; but her gaze was listless and without meaning. " Your little Barbara has grown up—is a young lady, beautiful and accomplisheddo you understand ?" No ; she did not. She only turned away her eyes, with a little aweary sigh, very sad to hear, and murmured over again : " Oh ! I wish somebody would bring her back ! She was my only child, my only child !"

"It's all useless," interposed the doctor. " No earthly power wall over get her beyond that. Hers is a case quite harmless and quite hopeles." Colonel Shirley arose, and pressed something he took out of his waistcoat-pocket into the doctor's hand.

"Be good to her, doctor. Poor creature !"

"Thank you, Colonel," said the doctor, glancing with infinite complacency at the bank-note for fifty pounds. " She shall have the bsst of care. Perhaps you would like to go over the whole establishment ?" "Not to-day, I think. We must catch the two o'clock brain back to London."

The doctor led the way downstairs, and bowed them obsequiously out. Only one sentence was spoken as they drove rapidly down to tho depot. " Poor thing ! she is greatly changed, but looks like Miss—Vivia," Mr. Sweet had said, and had received a look in answer that effectually silenced him for the rest of the way, Next day, when the early afternoon train from London came steaming into Cliftonlea, Colonel Shirley and Mr. Sweet got out and walked up to the town. The latter gentleman speedly turned off in the direction of his own house, and the Colonel walked with a grave face up High-street, turning neither to the right nor the left, until ho stood knocking at the principal entrance of the town gaol. The turnkey who opened it opened his eyes, too, for, during the two months his young relative had been a lodger there, the Colonel had nob come once to visit him.

All Cliftonlea was in a state of ferment; for the assizes were on, and Tom Shirley's trial would begin to-morrow; and setting his visit) down to this cause, the turnkey admitted him.

There was no difficulty in obtaining the desired interview, and in a few minutes a ponderous key was turning in a ponderous lock, a strong door swung open, the Colonel was in the prison cell, listening to the relocking of the door without, and the retreating steps of the gaoler. The cell was as dismal as could be desired, and as empty of furniture, holding but a bed, a chair, and a table ; but the August sunshine came just as brightly through the little grated square of light as it did through the plate-glass of Castle Cliffe, and lay broad, and bright, and warm on the stone floor,

The prisoner sat beside the table, reading a little book bound in gold and purple velvet, that looked odd enough in the dreary cell. It was a gift, prized hitherto for the sake of the giver—a little French testament, with "To Cousin Tom, with Yivia's love," written in a delicate Italian hand on the fly-leaf ; but of late days Tom had learned to prize it for a sake far higher. He rose at sight of his visitor, looking very thin, very pale, very quiet, and both stood gazing at each other for a few seconds in silence. *

" Is it really Colonel Shirley ?" said Tom, at last, with just a shade of sarcasm in his tone. "This is indeed an unexpected honour."

" You do not need to ask, Tom, why I have never been hero before," said the

Colonel, whose face, always pale lately, had grown even a shade paler. "Scarcely. Do me the honour to be seabed, and let me know to what I am indebted for this visit.*" m He presented his chair with formal politeness as he spoke; but his visitor only , availed himself of it to lean one hand lightly on its back and the other on the young man's shoulder. * ' . * ."Tom," he said, looking earnestly,and' searchingly at him, 'VI have come here to, ask you one question, and I want you 'toanswer it truthfully before God ! Are'#you .innocent?'^* "It is late to ask that question,''* said Tom, disdainfully. > ,->s' Answer it, Tom !" A " Excuse me, sir. .The very question is an insult." * "Tom, for Heaven's sake, do not stand balancing hairs with mo ! You alwaysHvere the soul of honour and candour, and,' late as it is, if you will only toll me, in the face of Heaven, you are innocent, I will believe you." Tom's honest black eyes, that never quailed before mortal man, rose boldlysand truthfully to the speaker's face. ' Before Heaven," he said, solemnly raising 'his arm and dropping it on the purple book, "as I shall have to answer to God, I am innocent !" " Enough !" said the Colonel, taking his hand in a ,firm grasp. " I believe you, with all my heart ! My dear boy, forgive me for ever thinking you guilty ' for ? - a moment." _ ** "Don't ask it T How could you help thinking mo guilty, in the face of all this circumstantial evidence ? But sit down, and let mo look at you. It is good to see a friend's face again. You have been getting thin and pale, Colonel." - "I am afraid I must return. the compliment. I see only the shadow of the ruddy, boisterous Tom Shirley-of old."- *■ Tom smiled, and pushed back in a careless way his exuberant black curls. "Nothing very odd in that, sir. Soli-« tude and prison fare are not the best things I ever heard of for putting a man in good condition. How goes the world outside ?" " Much as usual. Have you no visitors, then?" i , "None to speak of. A few mere acquaintances came out of curiosity, but I declined to see them ; and as my friends," said Tom, with another smile, that-had very much of sadness in it, " thought me guilty, and hold aloof, I have been left pretty much to my own devices." " Your trial comes on to-morrow ?" It does." "You have engaged counsel, of course ?" "Yes ; one of the best advocates in England. But his anticipations, lam afraid, are not over brilliant." " The evidence is very strong, certainly, although merely circumstantial, bub—" " But better men than I have been condenmned on circumstantial evidence. I know it," said Tom, very quietly. " What do you anticipate yourself? - ' " Unless Providence should interpose and send the real murderer forward to make a clean breast of it, I anticipate a very speedy termination of my mortal cares " " And you can speak of it like this ! You are indeed changed, Tom." "Colonel," said Tom, gravely, "when a man site within four stone walls like this for two months, with a prospect of death before him, he must be something more than human not to change. I have at least one constant visitor, the Bishop ; and though I am perfectly certain he believes me guilty, lie has done me good ; and this small book has helped the work. Had I anything to bind me very strongly to life, it would be different; but there is nothing much in the outer world I care for, and so, let the result bo what it may, I think I shall meet it quietly. If one had a choice in so delicate a matter"—with another smile—" I might, perhaps,', prefer a different mode of leaving this world ; but what can't be curedyou know the proverb. Don't let us talk of it. How is Lady Agnes ?" " Well in body, but ill in mind. Sho is shut up in her room, and I never sco her." " And Margaret ?" "Margaret followed her example. Sir Roland is laid up again with the gout at Clifton wood." "Castle Cliffe must be a dreary place. I wonder you can stay there" "I shall be there but a short time now. My old regiment is ordered abroad for active service, and as soon as your trial is over, I shall rejoin them" Tom's eyes lighted, his face flushed hotly, and then turned to its former pale and sickly colour. "Oh, that I—" ho began, and then stopped short. But he was understood. 1 ' I wish to Heaven it were possible, Tom ; but, whatever happens, wo must contentoursolves with the cry of the old crusaders, 'God wills ib !' You must learn, as we all have to, the great lesson of life—endurance." Poor Tom had begun the lesson, but his facc showed that ho found the rudiments very bitter. The Colonel paused for a moment, and then, looking at the floor, went on, ih a more subdued tone: "Somebody else is learning it too, in tho solitude of a French convent —Vivia." Tom gave a little start at the unexpected sound of that name, and the flush came back to his face. " You have heard from her, then ?" "I have done betterl have seen her.. A shadow, a spirit, came behind the convent grating, and shook hands with me through it. She was so wan and wasted, with fasting and vigils, I suppose, that I scarcely knew her, and we talked for fifteen minutes, with the grate between us. Satisfactory— was it not ?"

" Very. Has she token the veil ?" "Not yet. No thanks to her, though. It was her wish ; but the superior, knowing itwas merely the natural revulsion of feeling, and that she had 110 settled inclination, would not permit it. Then Vivia wished to go out as governessthink of that! But 1 other Ursula would not hear of that, either. She is to make the convent her home for a year, and if, at the end of that time, she still desires it, she will be permitted to enter upon her novitiate. I will go by Paris, and see her again before I depart to join my regiment. " Does she know—" Tom paused. "She knows all. She gave me this for you." The Colonel produced his pocket-book, and took from between the leaves a little twisted note. Tom oponed it, and read :— "My Biiotheii, — I know you are innocent. I love you, and pray for yon every night and day. God keep you always ! " Vivia." That was all. Tom dropped his face on the table, without a word. Colonel Shirley looked at him an instant, then arose.

" I shall leave you now. Remember, I have firm faith in your innocence from henceforth. Keep up a good ho.irb, and until tomorrow, farewell." , He pressed his hand. But Tom neither spoko nor looked up; and the Colonel went out and left him with his head lying on the wooden table and the tiny note still crushed in his hand.

CHAPTER XXX.

THE SENTENCE. At day-dawn next morning Cliftonlea was all bustle and stir and at ten o'clock the court-house was a perfect jam. There were troops of people clown from London, who knew the Shirleys ; swarms of newspaper reporters, note-book and pencil in hand, not to speak of half the county besides. The gallery was filled with ladies, and among them glided in one in a long shrouding mantle, and wearing a thick veil; but people knew the white face of Margaret Shirley, despite any disguise. The Colonel was there, and so was Sir Roland ; and so was Joe, the gamekeeper's son, looking scared beyond everything, and full of the vague notion that he stood in as much danger of hanging, himself, as the prisoner. The prisoner did not look at all alarmed ; he sat in the dock as he had sat in his cell the day before, pale, quiet, and perfectly calm, scanning the crowd with his dauntless black eyes, and meeting the gaze of all, known and unknown, with the stoicism of an Indian. Some of the reporters began sketching his face in their note-books. Tom saw f it, and smiled; and the crowd set him down as a cool hand, and a guilty one. 18* Very few present had any doubt of his guilt—the facts that had come out at the inquest were strong against him; and there was nobody else, apparently, in the world who had the least interest in the death of the murdered man. All knew by that time I

how everything —how infatuated he had been with, the ;young lady, and how madly jealous hf was .of the accepted lover. And everybody knew, too, what jealousy will make, and has made, the best men do, from King David down ; and Tom's* hasty and violent temper was notorious.* Worst of all, he refused to give any account of himself whatever ; for the simple fact that he had no account to give that would not involve Yivia's name; and the tortures of a martyr would riot have drawn that from him in a crowded court-room. After the scene in the starlight under the chestnuts, he had fled from the* place and -haunted Cliftonlea like a lost Spirit. On th'e'.lifridal night •an yip'sane impulse drew him back again .with a relentless hand, and he had wandered up and. down among the trees almost beside *. himself, but wholly unable to go away. Tom could not very well have t6ld his pitiable tale of love-sickness and insanity to a grim judge and jury ; so he just held his tongue, resolved to let things take their course, almost indifferent to,the issue.

Things did take their course. They always do, where those two inexorable fates, Time and Law, are in question. The pase was opened in a brilliant speech by 'the counsel for the Crown, that told hard on the prisoner, and then the witnesses were called. Joe came in requisition? and so did Mr. Sweet's Elizabeth ; and it would be hard to say which of the two was the more terrified, or which cried the more before they were sent down. . Mr. Sweet had to give evidence, so had Colonel Shirley, so had Sir Roland, so had the doctor, so had the gamekeeper, so had a number of other people, whom one would thir/k had nothing to do with it. And at three o'clock the court adjourned, leaving things pretty much as they were before ; the prisoner was remanded back to his cell; the mob went home to their dinners, and to assert confidently that before long there would bo an execution in Cliftonleafe » 9 * Tho tria||, lasted three days; and with each passing one the interest grew deeper, and the case more and "more hopeless. • Every day" the crowd in and around the court-house grew more dense*; and always the first on the gr&Und was the shrinking figure of the veiled lady. But on the third day, just as the case was drawing to a close, something happened that settled the last doubt in .the minds of the jury, if such a thing as a "doubt ever rested, there. A woman who had mafle her way through the crowd by dint of sharp elbows and sharper tongue, and had taken her place 1 on tho witness-stand, in a very determined and excited state of mind. The woman was Jeannette, who had followed her young lady to France, and had evidently just come back from that delightful land ; and on informing them she had taken a long journey to give important evidence, she was sworn, and asked what she had to say. Jeannette had a good deal to say, chiefly in parenthesis, with a strong French accent, a great many Mon Dieus, and no punctuation marks to speak of. It appeared, however, when the evidence was shorn of all French embellishment, that on the night the deceased had returned from London (a couple of days before the one fixed for the wedding), Miss Vivia had been wandering alone in the pack, where she was suddenly joined by the prisoner. She, Jeannette, had followed.her young lady out to warn her against night dews, when, hearing a loud and angry „voice, she halted, discreetly, at a distance, with a true instinct of her class, to listen. Thero she had overheard the prisoner making very loud and honest protestations of love to Miss Shirley ; and when rejected, and assured by her that she would marry none but Mr. Cliffe, *ho had burst out in such a way that she, Jeannette, was scared pretty nearly into fits, and she was perfectly sure she had heard him threaten to murder the bridegroom-elect. Mademoiselle Jeannotto further informed her audience that, believing the prisoner guilty, her conscience would nob let her keep the matter secret, and it had sent her across the Channel, in spite of sea-sickness, unknown to her young lady, to unburden her mind.

It was hard evidence against the prisoner; and though mademoiselle underwent a galling cross-examination, her testimony could not* bo shaken, though it left her, as it well might, in a very wild and hysterical state of mind at its close.

Colonel Shirley, standing near Tom, stooped down in dismay, and whispered : " Have you anything to say to all this ?" " Nothing; it is perfectly true." Then your case is hopeless." "It has been hopeless all along," said Tom, quietly, as Mademoiselle Jeannette descended, trembling with excitement because of the cross-examination she had undergone. There was nothing more to be done. The evidence was summed up in one mighty mass against the prisoner, and the jury retired to find a verdict. It was not hard to'find. In five minutes they were back, and the swaying and murmuring of the crowd subsided into an awful hush of expectation as tho foreman arose.

" Gentlemen of the jury, is the prisoner at the bar guilty or not guilty of the felony with which he is charged?" And solemnly the answer came, what everybody knew it would bo : "Guilty my lord." The judge arose with his black cap on his head. His address to the prisoner was eloquent; and touching, and the crowd seemed to hush their very heart-beating to listen. There were tears in his eyes before he had done; and his voice was tremulous as he closed with the usual ghastly formula. "Your sentence is that you be taken hence to the place whence you came, thence to the place of execution, to.be hanged by the neck till dead, and may God have mercy on your soul!" He sat down, but the same dead silence reigned still. It was broken at last by a sound common enough at such timesa veiled lady in the gallery had fallen forward in a dead swoon.

CHAPTER XXXI. THE TUBN OF THIS WHEEL. It was a wild night on the Sussex coast. A north wind roared over the Channel— terrible north wind, that skrieited, and raved, and lashed the waves into white fury ; that tore up trees by the roots, blew off tall steeples, and filled the air with a shower of tiles and chimney-pots, and demolished frailer buildings altogether. A terrible night in Cliftonleathe oldest inhabitant had never remembered anything like it. A terrible night in Lower Cliffe, where nobody thought of going to bed at all for the dreadful roaring of the storm and the cannonading of the rising sea on the shore seemed to threaten entire destruction to the little village before morning. A terriblo night within the park, where tall trees of a century's growth were torn up and flung aside like straws. A terrible night, even within the strong walls of the old castle, where the great kitchen, and the servants' hall, and butler's pantry, and the housekeeper's room, were filled with terrific:! footmen and housemaids ; whore Lady Agnes shivered as Bhc listened to it in the ghostly solitude of her own room ; where Margaret woko up, cowering and shuddering from the stupor in which she lay, and covered her eyes from the lightning, and wondered how the condemned man bore it in his prison cell. He, sitting reading by the light of a flaring tallow candle a little gold and purple book, lifted his pale and quiet face, and listened to it much more calmly than any of them.

Much more calmly than Colonel Shirley, pacing up and down in his own room, as the midnight |iour $ras striking, like an uneasy ghost. It Was*a splendid roomsplendid in green velvet and malachite, with walnut paneling and wainscotting, the furniture of massive mahogany, upholstered in green billiard-cloth, and the bed - hangings of green velvet and white satin. The same sober tints of green and brown were repeated in the medallion carpet ; a buhl clock ticked on the carved walnut mantle, and over it a bright portrait of Vivia looked down and smiled. There was a small armcury on one side, full of Damascus swords, daggers, and Eoniards, pistols and muskets, eel-spears, ows and arrows, and riding-whips, all flashing in the light of a bright wood-fire burning on the marble hearth ; for though the month was August, these grand, vast old rooms were always chilly, and on this tempestuous night particularly so. Around table, on which burned two wax candles, was drawn up before the fire, and covered over with ledgers, cheque-books, and packages of fresher looking documents tied up with red tape. A green-cushioned armchair stood on either side of the table, and though they were empty now, they had not been a couple of hours previously.

Ih the first train to-morrow morning Colonel Shirley was leaving Cliftonlea, perhaps for ever, and going where glory led : him ; and he and Mr. Sweeti had had a very I busy afternoon and evening in settling the plicated accounts of the estate. They had finished about ten, and Mr. Sweet had gone home, despite tfye rising storm 1 which was now at its height and ever»since the Colonel- been walking up and down, up and • down, anxiously impatient for ,the' morning that was to see him off. * , It was the evening that had concluded Shirley's trial; and he, too, like Margaret, was thinking of "him in his lonely cell; and' the roar of 'the storm, the sea, and tlie wind boomed an awful harmony around them; he scarcely heeded either; and as the clock vibrated on the last silvery stroke of twelve, there vftia a tap at the door, and then the handle was turned, and the respectful face of Mr. Hurst looked in., "There's a ij( man,d'own below, siif, that has just arrived,' and he insists on seeing your It is*a matter of lite and death, he says." * ' The Colonel stopped, astonished, in his walk. _ "Someone to see-me on such a night! Who is he ?" " don't know, sir. He looks like a sailor, in a peajacket and a sou'-wester hat; but the collar of the jacket is turned up, and the hat is pulled doVn, and there's no seeing anything of him but his nose." " And he Said it was a matter of life or death. It ought to be, certainly, to bring him out in a night like this." "Yes, sir. He said he would see you, if he had to search the house over for you. He's a precious rough-looking customer, sir." "Show him up!" was the curt reply; and Mr. Hursftbowed and withdrew. I He was leahing against the carved mangel, one elbow resting upon it, and his eyes fixed thoughtfully on the fire, when his visitor entered—a somewhat stout.and not very tall man, in a large rough .peajacket, a shining hat of the sailor pattern, and splash top-boots. There was more of the man splashed than his boots, f for he was dripping all over like a water-god ; and, as Mr. Hurst had intimated,-his coat-collar was turned up, and his hat pulled down, so that, besides the nose ; nothing was visible but a pair of fierce eyes. This nocturnal intruder took the precaution to turn the key in the lock as soon as the valet disappeared, and then came slowly forward and stood before the Colonel. "•* . '*> " Well, my friend," said that gentleman, quietly, '' you wanted to see me ?" "Yes, I did." ■ * "CM a matter of importance, my servant said." "If it waren't important," said the man, gruffly, "it ain't very likely I'd come hereto tell it to you on a night that ain't fib foft a mad dog to be out. It'& something you'd give half your estates to learn, Colonel Shirley, or I'm mistaken." * "Out with it,'then; and, in the meantime, suppose you sit down." * His visitor drew up one of the green armchairs closer to the hearth, and dropping into it, without, however; removing his hat, spread out his splashed top-boots to tho genial influence of the hot wood fire. There was something familiar about the man, in his burly figure, rough voice, and fierce" eyes ; but the Colonel could not remember where ho had seen the man before ; and a I long silence followed, during which the man in tho top-boot 3 looked at the fire, the Colonel looked 11 at him, the lightning flashed, the wind shrieked, and the portrait of Vivia smiled down on all. At last: "If you merely wish to warm yourself, my friend," said the Colonel, composedly, "I presume there is a fire in the servants' hall. Allow me to inform you that it is past twelve, and I have a long journey to commence to-morrow morning." " You'll commence no journey to-morrow morning," the man in the peajacket coolly said. "Indeed ! Suppose, for politeness' sake, you remove, that ijiat, and let me see the face of the gentleman who makes so extraordinary an assertion."'" "Just you hold a minute, and you'll see my face soon enough ! As I said, it's a matter of life or death brings me here; and you'll hear it all in time, and you won't take any journey to-morrow. I've been fool enoughJta my time, Lord knows, but I ain't such a fool as to come out on such a night, and get half drowned, for nothing." " Very good ! I am waiting for you to go on."

"There was a murder committed here a couple of months ago," said the mysterious person in the peajacket, " wasn't there?" " Yes," said the Colonel, with a slight recoil, as ho thought that perhaps the real murderer sat before him.

"The young gentleman as was murdered was Mr. Leicester Cliffe ; and another young gentleman, Mr. Tom Shirley, has been tried and condemned for the murder ?" " Yes." Well," said the man in the pea-jacket, still quite coolly, " he is innocent." " I know it." "Do you ? Perhaps you know, too, who's the guilty party ?" "No. Do you?" " Yes, I do," said the man, "and that's what brings me here to-night." Again there was a pause. The Colonel's lips had turned white, but nothing could shake his stoical composure. The man in the sailor's dress had his hands on his knees, and was loaning forward, looking up at him. "And whobub first, my mysterious friend, before any more questions are asked or answered, I must insist on your removing that hat, and showing me who you are." " All right. It's only a hanging matter, anyway ! Look here !" His visitor rose up, turned down the collar of the peajacket, lifted off the dripping sou'-wester, and glared up at him in the firelight with a pair of exceedingly green and wolfish eyes., "Ah!" said the Colonel, slowly, "I thought it was you. And you have come back then ?"

"I have come back," said the visitor, with a savage gleam in his wolfish eyes. " I have come back to be hung, very likely ; but by I'll hang over and over again a thousand times for the pleasure of seeing him hang beside me once ! Hunted down ! hunted down ! He's been at it for* the last six years, until lie's got me to the end of the rope at last! My dog's life hasn't been such a comfort to me, Lord knows, that I should care to lose it; but when Ido hang, he'll hang beside me, by !"

"Have the goodness to calm yourself, Mr. Black, and become intelligible. Whom are you talking about ?" " My name ain't Black, and you know it! My name is Wildman Wild man, as was transported for life ; and I don't care if the Old Boy heard it! Who am I talking about ? I'm talking about a man as I hate, as I've hated for years; and if I had him here, I would tear the eyes out of his head, and the black heart out of his body, and dash his brains out against this here wall! I would, by the Eternal!" The man's oaths were appalling. The Colonel shuddered slightly with disgust and repulsion a3 he heard him, for his face was like that of a demon.

" Willyou come to the point, Mr. Black, or Mr. Wildman, whichever you choose? You say you know the real murderer of Leicester Cliffewho is he ?"

" Him as lam talking —a yellow devil, with a black heart, and his name is Sweat!"

Colonel Shirley started up, and grasped the mantel against which he leaned. " Man !" he cried, " what have you said "I have said the truth, and lean prove it! That yellow dog, that I would strangle if I had him near me, that Lawyer^ wee— he killed the young gentleman ; I saw him with my own eyes !" , The Colonel stood looking a hundred questions hp could not speak— for the moment perfectly speechless. " Yes, you may wonder?" said Mr. Black, subsiding into his chair again, and letting himself cool down like a bottle of soda water after the first explosion; " but it's true as gospel; I saw him do the deed myself the .night of the wedding; and Mr. T6m Shirley—he is innocent. *' Toll' me all,said the Colonel, finding voice V " and, foe. heaven's sake, do it instantly." # "I am going to. I have taken all this journey in the wind and nun to-night to do it; and I'll hunt him down, as he has hunted me, if they were to hang me the next minute. You know that evening I went away, and I don't think anybody here ever heard of me since." Go on." . "I had been out that day, and it was nigh on to sundown when I came home. I found my old mother on the ground, just recovering from a fit, and just able to tell me that that yellow villain had been with her and was going to tell all—

the secret ho had kept so long. That was the first I ever knew of Barbara's being your daughter* instead of mine, though I did know he had some power over the old woman I could not get at. the bottom of. Whatever he may say, he knowed the secret sell along ; and it was that made him marry Barbara. " From the time, he met you in the graveyard, the night you buried your wife, he never lost ".sight of my wife and that baby. But when, she told me it all, and how he threatened to peach about my being a re- ' turned convict, I'believe the very old Satan got into me, and I started up, and went out to find him and kill lym. They say a worth will turn if trodden on ; he had fcrod«den on me Hong enough" Heaven knows!" and it was my turn'now. If I had met him in the middle of the town, with all* the people in it looking on, I would have tori} his heart out as I would a mad dog's ! .1 would have done it if they was to burn me alive for it tjie next minute. ( "As I got'up near his house, I saw him . come out, and I hid' behind a tree to watch 1 him. Before he got far he stopped, and began watching somebody himself; it was Mr. Leicester Cliffe, who came along Highstreet Without seeing either of us, and went in. Then Sweet* (Jodged round the back" way, and went into the house after .him, and I was,'left alone hiding' behind the tree, and waiting for my ( game<to come out. : # "I don't know exactly what passed, bqt I have a notion that Mr. Leicester wanted" Barbara to run away with him* and that the yellow vipetf was listening, and heard it all. It was nigh onto dark when Mr.Leicester came out, and set oft like a steamengine toward Lower Cliffe, to take-a short cut, I expect, to the castle; and Sweet came sneaking after him, like the snake in the grass he is. There Ave was, a-dodging after each other, the three of us, and Sweet and me trying to keep out of sight as well as wo could, and getting into allay-ways and behind brees whenever we saw anybody coming. There wasn't many out to see us, for that matter ; for all the town, and the village, too, was up in the park; and Mr. Leicester went up through the park gates, and we too sneaked after him withoutmeeting a soul. Instead of going straight iip to the castle, as he'd ought to do, Mr. Leicester turned off to that lonesome spot they call the Nun's Grave ; and still we two was dodging in through the trees after him. When he got there* he stopped and stood, with his arms crossed, looking down at it; and there was that yellow Street behind' him, and I could-, see His face in the moonlight, and he looked more like a devil tnan ever. There was a cl&b lying? on the grass, just as if Old Nick had left it there for his favourite son—a big knotted stick, that would have felled an ox ; and Sweet he raised it, his grinning mouth grinning more than you ever saw it, and, with one blow, knocked the young gentleman stiff on the ground." [To be continued.]