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Mr. Hawthorne, as did his father, embodies his most tragical conceptions in such simple and direct language, that the spell wrought upon the reader does not pass with the reading, but remains long after the book has been laid aside. There is a psychological value, too, in Mr. Hawthorne s work, which rewards a close study of his characters. One feels that he is not a UK-re story-teller, but, as well, an acute analyzer and a close student of human nature in some of its most perplexing phases. " Prince Saroni s Wife " is a tale of an Italian prince, and "The Pearl-Shell Necklace " is a story of American life. ARCHIBALD MAXMAISON. By JULIAV HAWTHORKK. Price, paper, 15 cts. ; cloth, extra paper, 75 cts. A novel that has received and is receiv ing some of the highest encomiums from leading critics that any novelist of the day has over been able to boast. 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It has the merit of being thoroughly an American story, though the ba*is for the plot is laid in the separation of two English lovers in the early days of American colonization, the lady going with her father to the new world, her lover being at the last moment forced to remain in England never again to rejoin his sweetheart. From this nep- aration and the chance meeting, after 200 years, of a descendant of the young Englislonan with representatives of his sweetheart s line, Mr. Lathrop weaves a tale of uncommon interest, and of much dramatic power. He has struck perhaps the richest vein of romance that Amer ican history affords. The other stories in the volume. "Major Barrington s Mar riage." " Bad Peppers," "The Three Bridges," and "In Each Other s Shoes," are good each in its own way, and afford a pleasant variety of excellent reading. lt>5 STANDARD LIBRARY FOR 1884, Order No. Name of Author. Name of Book. Date of Issue. Retail rice of Book. 106 10T Edmoud O Donovan. ^ riie Story of Merv. Epitomized by the author rom the Merv Oasis. Ready. $0.25 .15 .25 [van Tursrenieff* Mumu. Ready. 108 j Juaqa.Il Miller. iMemorie and Rime. Ready. 10) ;iolm P. Newman, D.D. Christianity Triumph ant. Ready. .15 110 in i 112 113 j;hii Habberton. Author of "Helen s Babies." riie Bowshaiu Puzzle. Fiction. Ready. as .25 i. It. Haweis. Author of Music and Morals," and "Amer- My Musical Memories. Icau Humorists." i Ready. Julian Hawthorne. KgBE!?* Malmni80n Ready. .15 .25 |In the Heart of Africa. Sir Samuel Baker. S^^^^^ Ready. 114 Charles H. Spurgeon. hjURSWMsy^ Ready. .15 113 jtidward Everett Hale. The Fortunes of Rachel. Fiction. Ready. .25 .15 .25 .25 116 Archibald Forbes. Chinese Gordon. Ready. Ready. r~TT" |Wit, Wisdom HUU rui- UT Jean Paul Richter. | lowophy. m f <\ ftnldfiniltti. Himself Again. Fiction. Ready 119 120 r.mra {]. Hollo Way. Home in Poetry. Ready .25 Dr. Joseph J. Pope, M.B.C.S. Number One : and How to Take C are of Hint. A popular treatise on 1 re serving Health. . Ready .15 121 Edgar Fawcett. itiifheribrd. Fiction. Ready. .25 122 Judge Wiglittle. Ten Year s a Police Court Judge. .25 i23!j ;iquin Miller. 49. A Story of the Si erras. .15 .25 .25 .15 .25 Lydia Wood Baldwin. A Yankee School Teach- er in Viruinia. lohn Laird Wilson. Life of Wycliffe. Uapt. Roland Coffin. An Old Sailor s Yarns. "/ deem them the vent sea stories ever written." JOHJ) HABBERTON. Geo. F. Pentecost, B.D. Out of Egyptt Wni. Cleaver Wilkinson. Edwin Arnold a* Poeti- zer and as Pneanizer or the "Light of Asia "ex aminod for Its Literature and Its Buddhism. .15 George Parsons Lathrop. T f l^ ion. .25 Julian Hawthorne. Pearl Shell Neck hi re. Prince Sardoni s Wile. .15 Edward Everett Hale. A Story for Clirintmas. .25 PRINCE SARONI S WIFE AND THE PEARL-SHELL NECKLACE BY JULIAN HAWTHORNE AUTHOR OF "ARCHIBALD MALMAIS ON," "DUST," "GARTH," ETC., ETC. FUNK & WAGNALLS NEW YORK 1884 LONDON 10 AND 12 DET STREET 44 F LEET All Rights Reserved Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1834, by FUNK & WAGNALLS, In the Office of the Librarian of Congress at Washington, D. 0. PEIWCE SABCXNrS WIFE. PRINCE SAKOKTS WIFE. I. THE prince, when 1 first had the honor of knowing him, was a young man of about twenty-seven or eight ; a thorough Italian in nature and aspect, though he spoke correct English, and was accustomed to foreign manners and men. His face, when you examined it, was unde niably handsome ; but the type was so different from our Anglo-Saxon traditions of masculine beauty, that 1 fancy he usually produced the impression of something Irizarre and noticeable, rather than of classic comeliness, on the ordinary beholder. I recollect his being pre sented, on one occasion, to one of the reigning beauties of the London season, a young lady who was certainly not deficient in familiarity with the ways and looks of the average male social animal ; but she turned pale as her eyes fell upon him, responded to his courteous ad vances incoherently and with manifest nervousness, and, within a few minutes, began to laugh hysterically, and had to be taken to her carriage. So far as I have ever been able to find out, the poor prince was not in the least to blame, and he was unquestionably not a little distressed by the incident. But Mrs. Ful via, whenever his name was mentioned to her afterward, would shudder and turn away her lovely head. " He is hideous !" she M51S243 6 PRINCE SARONVS WIFE. would exclaim ; " I felt as if 1 were being drawn into the power of a demon ! It seemed to me as if his eyes left a black mark upon me !" Saronfs eyes were cer tainly very black, and so was his short, erect hair, which had a crisp curl through it, that inspired some one to say that it looked as if his head were encompassed with black flames. Black, also, and wiry was his untrimmed but not overgrown beard, which came down to a point below the chin, owing, perhaps, to his fondness for lay ing hold of it and letting it slip through his hand. His complexion was dark, but not sallow ; there were life and blood beneath it. On his temple, beneath the skin, a peculiar vein was discernible ; it lay in such curves as a serpent makes in swimming rapidly through the water. When the prince was in a serene mood, this strange little vein was scarcely seen ; but as soon as he became ex cited, or laughed, it started into prominence ; and if the testimony of Mrs. Fulvia is to be believed, actually wriggled ! I mention these things merely to give what color I can to Saroni s portrait ; it would be vain to attempt to describe a man like him by the dry enumera tion of physical details. He was lithe, and, at the same time, leisurely, in his movements, though his gesticula tion was sometimes rapid and full of the picturesque suggestiveness natural to an Italian. " Saroni is as natural as a dog," a friend of his once said of him ; and the phrase expressed very well a certain innocent anima tion that characterized him. He was in such thorough good-humor with his body and its senses he so enjoyed their services and companionship and he uniformly alluded to that enjoyment with such ingenuous simplicity that we sometimes found ourselves wondering how it was that we had forgotten to be scandalized. But the fact is, Saroni was what is termed a privileged person privileged by nature even more than by rank and poei- tion. Everybody liked him, except the few who (like Mrs. Fulvia) conceived an aversion for him at first sight, and everybody was content that he should behave like himself and not like other people. Of course, it must not be inferred that Saroni was a boor or a fool. He was an aristocrat and a gentleman ; his social position was impregnable ; he was never awkward and never dull. Nevertheless, underneath that refined surface, not interfering with it, but contriving to exist in apparent harmony with it, you might always discern the uncon ventional, unsophisticated, spontaneous animal ; thor oughly at home and at ease in its human cage, and able to gratify all its instincts, without so much as rubbing against the bars. But perhaps I am giving undue prominence to an aspect of Saroni s character which was not in reality the predominant one. He came to London as an attache of the Italian Embassy ; it was a post rather of honor than of emolument or diplomatic complexity ; and to Saroni it meant, practically, little more than an introduction, under the best auspices, to the best London society. He availed himself of his opportunities, and pleased himself immensely with everything. The amount of downright hard work he could accomplish in the course of a London season was surprising ; nothing could make him feel Hase or dull the poignancy of his satisfactions. It was a curious spectacle that of a man essentially so close to the primitive creature, expanding himself without stint in one of the most stolidly artificial societies in the world. But Saroni always seemed less to accommodate himself to circumstances than to accommodate them to himself. I apprehend, also, that the germ at least of what was so luxuriant in him was present in much more 8 PRINCE SAKOia S WIFE. conventional people ; so that he may have found, in secret or intuitive sympathy, all the response that was necessary to his spiritual composure. There was in Saroni, apart from his social and emo tional self, a subtle and sagacious intellect. He some times darted a look so penetrating and comprehensive that but for the laughing roguishness of expression that accompanied it you would have felt uncomfortably transparent. He was capable of rapid and complicated mental operations ; of making instant but acute esti mates of motive and character ; of taking bold and con fident action on data which would only have made a man less finely organized hesitate. He also possessed the power of continuous attention, insomuch that he could think out an abstruse subject, hour in and hour out, until he had completely resolved it. I fancied nor was I alone in my opinion that Saroni would have been on all accounts the better if he had lacked this vigorous intel lectual gift. It was the only trait about him that did not seem entirely amiable. Were so unlikely a thing ever to happen as that the prince should do anything wicked, evidently the evil counsel would proceed from his brain and not from his heart. To do him justice, however, he seldom obtruded his brains upon anybody ; and one might have been acquainted with him a long time without ever being startled or inconvenienced by them. This is all that it is worth while to say, at present, about the personal manifestation of Prince Saroni. He was a zealous and, upon the whole, rather successful gambler ; but that was only what was to be expected from a man of his make. II. ONE evening in August Prince Saroni walked from his lodgings near Piccadilly to Waterloo Station, and took the train thence to Richmond. He got out there, passed through the town, crossed the bridge, and pro ceeded in a south-westerly direction for about half a mile. It was a still, hazy evening, and the moon was rising. From a church in the town a clock struck nine. Saroni turned aside from the road along which he was walking, and followed a long narrow lane, overshadowed on each side by short elm trees. In about two minutes he paused opposite a gate, beyond which an avenue led up to a small villa. He sat down on a stone post beside the gate, took out his cigarette-case and lit a cigarette, and then, folding his arms, he gazed at the dim moon, and smoked. After a while he rose to his feet and looked eagerly over the gate up the avenue. A darkly-clad figure came with a light step over the gravel, and having passed through the gate, turned to him, and put both. hands in his. He drew the figure toward him, threw his arms round it, and kissed it on both cheeks and on the mouth. " Do you love me as much as ever?" asked a low womans voce. " As ever? I love you ten times! Are you not Ethel and I am Saroni ?" " There are many Ethels in London more lovable than V 11 I do not know them. They perhaps are lovable by 10 PRINCE SARONl S WIFE. others, but not by me. I find all myself in yon. "When I am with you, then, only, I am not alone !" The girl rested her hands on his shoulders, and looked intently into his eyes. As revealed by the moonlight, her countenance showed a type of beauty at once serious and spirited. There was power in her dark level brow and in the meeting of her full but resolute lips. Her face was rather long, and nearly colorless. Her dark hair was drawn back from her forehead and massed in a coil behind. So far, the expression of the features was of gravity and steadfastness ; but in the wide and sensi tive nostrils, in a certain kindling and dilatation of the eyes, and in an occasional defiant movement of the cor ners of the mouth, was discernible a haughty and pas sionate spirit. Her figure was of the middle height, deep-bosomed, round-armed, and justly proportioned. She was a woman worth loving, and being loved by ; but the man who should venture to wrong her might make up his mind to nothing less than tragedy. "I am a fool to be here," she said, dropping her hands, " and a great fool to love you as I do. Can you tell me what makes me do it ?" " I have never thought," answered Saroni, caressing her arms, and meeting her gaze smilingly. " It is glori ous to love ! I have always not known what I was meant to do ; but I saw you, and I knew I was meant to love you. It makes me happy and strong here !" he struck his breast and smiled again. " It is the fools who do not love." " Have you loved any one before me ?" " I have thought so, perhaps," said Saroni, musingly. " But only you have made me go out from myself ; and the more I go out, the stronger I am to go. 1 love you forever !" PHIXCE SARONl S WIFE. 11 u Come down the lane a little," said the girl. " My father thinks I am in my room. Yes, I am a fool, but I don t care. I have tried wisdom, and find no pleasure in it. i suppose 1 need to be foolish in order to be happy. The world has gone hard with me always. No matter ! I don t care now !" She uttered the last word with infinite tenderness. They were walking slowly down the dark lane ; Saroni s arm was flung about her shoulders. She stopped, slowly disengaged herself, and faced him. " You have taken me beyond my own help," she said, with a tremor in her voice. u Oh, this love ! it makes me helpless. 1 would do or be anything in the world for you. 1 don t understand how it can be so with me. Father has so often told me that I should never care for any one, that I believed him. He believes it still, I suppose !" She laughed a little. " Even now I tell myself you cannot deserve it all. 1 don t believe you are altogether good. For aught I know you may be all evil. But it makes no difference. 1 should love you just the same 1 should love your wickedness. Father is a good man, and I don t love him. What are his books and his sermons to me? 1 didn t make good and evil, and why should I order my love according to another s rule ? If I choose, evil may be my good it is a question of words. Well, you see what a fool I am !" Saroni could do characteristically many things which would have seemed extravagant in another. He knelt on the pathway at Ethel s feet, took her hands, and pressed them against his cheeks. u You are my Madonna !" he said, passionately. " 1 gay my prayers to you. 1 have no heaven above you. You step on my heart ; you live in my soul ! To touch you makes me a king ; to kiss you makes me immortal ! 12 PRIKCE SARONI S WIFE. If you are thirsty, drink my blood ! 1 do not find it dark when you are with me, for then the eyes of love open. Darling, give me your lips !" She stooped, sighing with delight. They walked on in silence, and, emerging from the lane, crossed the road and the meadow beyond, and came to the brink of the river. " Here is where we first met," said Ethel. " That is the snag on which your boat upset ; and you floundered ashore where 1 was standing. What a wet, wild creature you looked, and how you laughed ! What a little while ago that was not more than six weeks. And I have seen you . . . eight times since then. Eight hours can they change one s whole long, weary life !" " So does death change all," said Saroni, musingly. "Yes, it is like death," assented she ; "and, like death, it opens a new life, to be passed in heaven or will it be heaven for us, I wonder ?" "I fear nothing; 1 am content!" said the Italian, gazing into the dark stream with folded arms. " Love would be love, even in hell !" " But how will our love end ?" pursued the girl, pass ing her arm beneath his, and leaning her head on his shoulder. " How end ?" demanded Saroni, quickly. " When it becomes misery ; when we are parted. We shall be parted. 1 am a poor dissenting minister s daughter. You are a prince, and a Catholic. You can not marry me." " 1 did not make myself ; but I became your lover, " &aid Saroni ; " and whatever I am beside, 1 lay at your dear feet. We are man and w r oman, and so we are mar ried ; and if a priest were to marry me to any other woman, you only would still be my wife, and not she." PRINCE SAROXI S WIFE. 13 " Are you asking me to be your mistress ?" inquired Ethel, in a very quiet tone. " No !" he exclaimed, with a vigorous gesture of aver sion. " You are " " "Wait a moment. 1 love you with all my heart ; it is the only thing my heart has ever done. If you and I were equals if you had no more to lose before the world than I have I would come to you freely ; I should want no security greater than your love, for none would he worth anything to me, if that were gone. Oh, that would be sweet !" She murmured these last words abstractedly, pressing her cheek against his shoulder. He looked down at her, clutching his beard in his hand. He saw that she was in a mood of exalted emotion, and he knew enough of her to know that it was impossible to tell what she might do next. At first, she did not -seem to intend saying anything more. She lingered over her last thoughts, as though loath to deal with others. But at length, freeing herself from the Italian, and standing alone upon the margin of the river, she raised her eyes to his face and said : " But do not make me jealous !" Saroni gave a short, remonstrative laugh, throwing out his arms and slanting his head to one side. " You could be jealous only of yourself," he ex claimed. " Not only to love no one else," continued Ethel, breathing faster. " The touch of another woman s hand on yours would be poison to me. I don t build my honor, like other women, on a ceremony or a dogma. To be married, if the real marriage be kept back, is nothing to me. But I have an honor of my own, which 110 one shall tamper with. I would follow you on my 14 PRINCE SARONl S WIFE. knees round the world ; but I would rather see you dead, and die myself, than find you had shared a word or a thought such as has passed between us with any other woman. Are you true ?" she suddenly and breathlessly demanded, stepping closer and gazing at him through the gloom. " If we mast ever part, let it be now !" " Where would you go ?" asked the Italian. " Home to my father, and copy out his sermons, and darn his stockings, and listen to his scoldings, and be re spectable and ... 1 would go underneath that water, and you should see my drowned face all the rest of your life !" These sentences were uttered with fierce excite ment. Saroni watched her keenly, with that peculiar astute expression already alluded to. He did not seem discomposed by her words ; they appeared to give him pleasure. He tossed back his head and stamped his foot, as if finally taking some resolution. Then he grasped her hands and lifted them to his lips. " You are the woman that I thought that I need !" he said, emphatically. " Now I know you are as strong and brave as you are beautiful and lovely. If some enemy, some obstacle opposed you, you would crush it or die. 1, also, am of that spirit. My right to live as 1 will is as great as the right of the world to prevent me. Now you shall read in my soul. I shall give up to you everything. 1 shall trust you in such things that you shall never find it possible to distrust me ; for it will give you power over me as long as you have life. Come listen !" They turned away from the river and walked slowly back across the meadow. The belated waterman, who had been lying in his boat under the shadow of the bushes, could perceive that the foreign gentleman was PRIXCE SAROXl S WIFE. 15 talking rapidly and earnestly, and that the young lady seemed taken aback. And that was the last he saw of them. But, an hour later, Ethel Moore was lying face down ward on her bed, her fingers clutching the pillow, and a wild tumult in her heart ; and Prince Saroni was play ing cards at the club, and losing heavily. III. ABOUT the middle of August, when everybody was well started on their summer migration, it w r as rumored that Prince Saroni was going to be married. The news was considered, under the circumstances, to be a breach of social courtesy. Not one of us but would have given almost anything to see the prince s wedding, and to mark whether, in so overpoweringly conventional a pre dicament, he would remain as distinctively himself as in the less trying crises of life. To add to the bitterness of our curiosity, the lady in the case was unknown in Lon don. It was asserted that she was stupendously wealthy ; but whether she were young or old, lovely or hideous, black or white, we were left to conjecture. To cap the climax, it was stated (in the Morning Post] that the bride and bridegroom, immediately after the ceremony, would leave for the United States, where the prince had accepted an important diplomatic mission. So we should never have our mystification cleared up at all. It was now that I rejoiced, for the first time in my life, that obstacles had prevented me from leaving Lon- 16 don as early as the rest of the world had done. I lost no time in repairing to the prince s house in Bruton Street, and was lucky enough to find him at home. He was lying in a recklessly negligent attitude on his sofa, one hand pulling at his beard, while with the fingers of the other he beat a devil s tattoo on the floor. A sash of crimson silk was bound round his waist, and he had on a loose jacket and waistcoat of fine white cashmere, trimmed with broad gold braid, which brought into splendid relief the Indian swarthiness of his face. He half rose when he saw me, and stretched out his left hand (Saroni could never be got to comprehend the social distinction between his right hand and his left) to bid me welcome. His grasp, without being firm, was always warm and cordial. " I am glad to see you, my dear," he said. " You take off your hatj your coat. You lie down on the sofa vis-d-vis. The cigarettes are on the table. Some punch is in the silver jug, isn t it ? Now we shall be at ease." As soon as I decently could, I began. " What charming news is this 1 hear, Saroni ? You going to become a Benedict ?" " Oh, yes ; oh, yes," he returned, indifferently. He rolled over on his sofa so as to face me, and added, " I shall be married to her in two weeks." " And nobody in town to see you turned off." " Well, now I shall tell you about -it," he exclaimed, swinging himself to a sitting posture, and rubbing his hands through his hair. u 1 am tired of keeping so much to myself. Will it be tiresome to you ? Take more punch." " The punch is good, but your story will be better. Out with it," 16 I think it is the same as often happens," said 17 Saroni, with his elbows on his knees and his shoulders up to his ears. "It is an affair arranged ! you under stand. The lady thinks it will be nice to be a princess ; arid I think well, that I have very badly played carda this summer, that is all ! We buy each other it is that ! And since she did not make her money any more than 1 make my rank, so we both cost each other nothing, except the trouble to live together ; that is all there is of it ! , This frank confession greatly amused me, as not only comic in itself, but quite in accord with Saroni s unique style. The social institution of matrimony must of course, to this primitive creature, seem a ponderous nuisance. To a man like him, love should be nothing more ceremonious than the pairing of doves or deer ; a sort of annual excursion, to be repeated with variations. u So I am not sad if there are not many people in church," added Saroni, getting up from the sofa and giving himself a thorough stretching. " Is the lady a native of London ?" " I have never asked her. She has been six or seven years in a French convent, to make her wise and charm ing. She is twenty-one, she has brown hair and eyes, and a face smooth and pale. Her name is Miss Medwin, and she has twenty thousand pounds a year. That is all 1 know of mademoiselle my fiancee." " But," 1 ventured to interpose, " you have not told me how much you are in love with her." The prince replied, " My dear, it is a thing 1 do not ask myself. It is not of the bargain. How otherwise ? I have seen her five or six times, always with signora the mamma of the company. "We talk of the weather, of France, of Italy ; I make my salute, and I depart. To think of love would be to defame the proprieties of the matrimonial state. It is a thing we pass over." 18 PItlXOE SAROXI S WIFE. "You will come to it afterward," I affirmed, opti mistically. Saroni thrust his hands in his pockets, and lounged up and down the room. After a while he said, " There is one thing that makes it unlikely. " " What is that ?" " I love another lady." " This will never do !" 1 exclaimed, with severity. "Eh ! it is done. It is the fate of this civilization of yours. It is not enough you live with the lady you do not love ; you must also not live with the lady you do love. If I had not come to know Miss Moore, I could he comfortable to be dull with Miss Medwin. You see, I reserve nothing from you. Why should I ? The worst is that it is so." 1 i But why not marry Miss Moore instead of Miss Medwin?" " My dear, there are two things. Miss Medwin has the money I told you ; Miss Moore has only herself who is more precious than all the gold in the world, but who cannot pay the debts I have made since I come to live in this charming London. The second is, if 1 marry any one that is not good Catholic, my inheritance is forfeit, and my younger brother succeeds me. He is good boy, but I do not wish that. The way is so." " What does Miss Moore say to all this?" I asked, after some reflection. The prince halted in his walk, and shook his head gloomily. " To tell her shall be the last thing. She is proud and fierce, and she loves me with all her heart. She has told me once, < If you deceive me, 1 go in the water, and my face drowned shall meet you always ! That makes me unhappy. I think, sometimes, it would be better I use this. PRINCE SAROXl S WIFE. 19 As lie spoke, lie took from the table a small silver- mounted pistol, and put the muzzle between his white teeth. Something in his look made me feel that the action was not mere bravado. This poor prince, with his pleasure-loving, unsophisticated nature, had got so ensnared in our great social cobweb, as to have seriously contemplated making away with himself. The moral aspect of the act had never presented itself to him, his creed being that everybody should do what they liked, and trust to Providence to make it all right. However, as an older and more worldly man than himself, I under took apparently not without some effect to put things before him in their true light. I also advised him to tell Miss Moore frankly how he was placed, and to appeal to her good sense to accept the inevitable. But on this point I could not get him to see with me. He would not do anything disagreeable so long as it could possibly be avoided. When, at length, we parted, I was not without misgivings as to the upshot of the affair. I called upon him several times afterward, but failed to find him in. One day, however, I met him coming out of his club on Pall Mall, and, at his request, I accom panied him home. On our arrival there he threw off his coat and hat, as his custom was, and stretched himself out at full length on the hearth-rug. He looked more dejected than ever. " What news since I saw you last ?" 1 demanded, in a cheerful tone. " She knows everything," replied Saroni, without raising his eyes. "Miss Moore?" He nodded. " I am glad you told her. How did she take it ?" " I wrote to her," he replied, " and this morning I 20 PRINCE SARONI S WIFE. got this packet. " He pointed to a small parcel on the table, folded up in white paper, and addressed in a female hand. It had been opened, and then folded again. " The things you had given her ?" I said. He looked at me without speaking. " Did she send no word ?" I continued. " That was all !" answered the poor fellow. " If she had hated me, she could not have done otherwise." " If she does hate you, it s the best thing that could happen. It s a sign that she ll recover, and forget you before you forget her." " But I don t want her to forget me ; 1 love her more than ever !" declared this incorrigible young man. " Take my word for it," 1 said, " you are well out of the scrape ; and you and Miss Moore will both live to rear your respective families in peace and respectability." "You are wise, but to be wise is not everything," rejoined the prince. " Something here," he struck his breast, " tells me it will not end as you think. Well, I am not good company to-day, my dear. I wished you should know the last, that is all ; so now you shall leave ine to be disagreeable to myself. A rivederla!" I accepted my dismissal, expecting soon to see him again. But, as it turned out, that was not to be. We did not meet until after the ocean had been between us. PRINCE SARONl 3 WIFE. IV. A FEW days previous to the date appointed for Sarom s wedding, he made his appearance at a large house in South Kensington, and was shown up-stairs. After he had walked up and down the parlor for five minutes, a young lady came in, let her hand rest in his a moment, and then seated herself in an easy chair beside a huge delft jar full of flowers. " You are earlier than 1 expected, - she said. " You don t often come too early." Her face was pretty, though lacking in expression ; but she had a plaintive way of drawing her eyebrows together and bringing up her lower lip, like a spoilt child. Her figure was shapely, and rather slender than plump, and^ she managed it with grace. Her dress was rich, but made with perfect art, and admirably adapted to the wearer. i Does it please you for me to be early?" asked Saroni, standing in front of her, with one hand resting on the jar of flowers. " That is a strange question to ask the girl who is to become your wife next week," she replied, pouting. " What do you expect \ 1 have known no man before you, and 1 should like to feel at least acquainted with you before I give myself to you forever. Everybody was good to me at the convent, and did things to please me ; but 1 dorr t know whether you ll be good to me. 1 don t know whether you ll make me happy. Mamma is almost like a stranger to me, and she is such an invalid she can t amuse me or go about with me, I ve been in PRINCE SAIlOKl S WIFE. London six months, and have seen nothing and met no body except you. Sometimes I feel afraid of you." Saroni pulled his beard. u 1 have not much to give, but what there is you will have. You will be a princess. The girl opened and shut her fan, looked up at him a moment, and looked away. Almost inaudibly she said, " Yes, if it had not been for that ..." " I have something for you to hear," exclaimed Saroni. He plucked a cluster of white geranium, and twisted it between his lingers as he went on. " Perhaps I would not be a good husband how can I know it bet ter than you ? Signora, I do not wish to do you harm. If you say, now, that you wish to be free, 1 will also say it. To be a princess, and yet not to be happy, is possi ble. Shall it be like that ?" The girl s face flushed. " You want to break off our engagement," she said, angrily. u You have led me on all this time, only to tell me this now ! It is unkind and cruel !" she went on, breaking into tears. " You want to be rid of me, and that I should bear the blame. I won t have it so ! You think you can insult me because 1 have no one to defend me. I believe you love some one else, and you want to go to her. Well, 1 hope she will serve you as you have served me !" Saroni s face darkened, and he set his teeth together. But after a moment he shrugged his shoulders, smiled, tossed away the geranium, stooped forward, and lightly touched her arm. She drew away petulantly from his touch, her face buried in her hands. At length, how ever, she allowed herself to glance at him askance ; and finally, wiping her eyes and catching her breath in little sobs, she disposed herself to listen to her future hus band s apology, should any be forthcoming. PKTXCE SARONI S WIFE. 23 " We will not remember all that," was what he said. " It is gone by." " Why do you say such tilings,, if you want me to for get them ?" she asked. Saroni laughed. "It is told me that 1 am a wild ani mal," he said, " that I do not know how to be as other men. But you are so pretty you can make wild animals tame. "Well, now I have something to tell you besides that." " Something pleasant ?" she demanded, plaintively. u Oh, very pleasant ! We shall be married on Thurs day ; on Saturday sails the steamer from Liverpool ; that gives a day before we must leave London. Have you been at Richmond ? " No, indeed, I have not," said the girl, beginning to look animated. " There is a pretty house there, beside the river, and a boat. In the afternoon, when you have been made a princess, we shall say good-by to mamma, and go down there by ourselves. In the evening, when it is cool, we shall get in the boat and row on the river. Then, the next day, we go to Liverpool, and sail to America. Will that be good?" " I shall like it very much !" The Italian drew a deep breath. u We shall say good-by to England there," said he. " Have you loved England, signora ? u Pretty well ; but I haven t had much time, you know." " It is better you do not love it very much, since you must leave it. But as for me " he paused, his black eyes resting on her upturned face " I shall say good- by to many things on that day," he added, dropping his voice " good-by for the last time !" 24 PllIKCE SARONI S WIFE. I have often wondered, in after times, what possessed Saroni to make tins trip to Richmond. No doubt it was his purpose to see Ethel Moore ; but why should he plan to take his leave of her on the first night of his marriage, and with his wife, as it were, looking on ? Had he hoped to bring the two women to some sort of reconciliation with each other ? The idea was too un likely, even had the appalling sequel not discredited it. To this hour, I can only conjecture what may have been in Saroni s mind when, on that Thursday evening, he got into the boat with his new-made wife, and dropped down the stream. All that I feel sure of is, that the Princess Saroni s innocent little heart was far from har boring any suspicion of what was in the wind. She was full of enjoyment of the sights and sounds of the twi light river and the pleasurable excitement of the first opening-out of a new and untried life. 1 doubt if she were even aware of the existence of Ethel Moore, much less that she intended evil against her. Hers w r as not a profound nature, but she was good-humored and easily pleased, and was incapable of bearing serious malice toward any one. What actually happened (so far as was known at the time) was simple enough, and is easily told. The prince and princess dined in the house by the river at six o clock, the dinner being sent in from the hotel near by ; for, as they were to spend but one night in the villa, they had brought no servants with them. At half past seven they went down to the river bank and got into the boat. The villa is situated some distance above the old stone bridge ; and before eight o clock two or three persons noticed the boat drop down beneath it, pass on to the railway bridge, and so round the curve and out of sight. The prince had the oars, and the PKItfCE SAROXl S WIFE. 25 princess sat in the stern and handled the tiUer. From this time they were lost sight of for some hours ; but, at a quarter before eleven o clock, a policeman testified to having seen the drawing-room window of the villa lighted, and Princess Saroni in the act of drawing down the blind. The .next morning the pair were driven to the railway station, were locked into a reserved carriage by the deferential guard (with the prince s half crown in his pocket), and so proceeded to London. In accordance with their prearranged plan, they went on to Liverpool the same night, embarked on Saturday on board the Russia, and landed at New York on Tuesday of the week following. Such is the chronology of events, with but a single ghastly occurrence omitted. For, on that same Thursday night of the newly- married pair s excursion down the river, a human lifo came to a violent end within a few yards of a spot which their boat must have passed. Whether or not the death were self-inflicted, and whether or not the Prince and Princess Saroni were aware of the tragedy at the time of its occurrence, were questions which engaged the atten tion and taxed the brains of many ingenious persons for a long time afterward. Y. IT was on the following Monday, if I remember right, that, looking over the morning paper, I came upon a paragraph announcing " Another Mysterious .Disappear ance." A young lady, Moore by name, had left her 26 PRINCE SARONl S WIFE. hoirie near Isle worth on the Thames, somewhere be tween seven and nine o clock on the evening of Thurs day last. A description of her dress and personal appear ance followed. It was requested that any information concerning her should be sent to her father, Eev. James Moore, at the address given. The name, of course, struck me at once, and gave rne the uncomfortable sensation of being, as it were, the in nocent accomplice in an ugly affair. My first impulse was not to reveal my knowledge to the authorities ; but I finally decided that, in so grave a case, I had no right to consult my own convenience. I did not, at this period, apprehend that Miss Moore was dead ; but where could she be ? I began to realize that the elucida tion of this question might involve Saroni. I spent the day in anxious cogitation, and, on Tuesday morning, I betook myself to the Rev. James Moore, at Isleworth. He turned out to be a grim and difficult old person ; and he not only had never heard that his daughter had had an attachment for any one, but he utterly refused to ac cept my hints to that effect. And when, at length, I succeeded in shaking his conviction on that score, lie became intractable on another. He now declared that his daughter was a dishonest wretch, and that he would spend not another thought or word on her. And even when I had pointed out the possibility (which was hourly becoming a certainty to myself) that she had taken some desperate means of avoiding the agony of separation from the man she loved, this cantankerous parent still refused to betray a decent amount of solici tude about her. Meanwhile the police were in motion, and the country was scoured in all directions, but with no result. It transpired that she had taken no money with her ; and 27 her only ornaments were the necklet and bracelets of chased silver, given her by her deceased mother. She could not have travelled far on such a capital as that. Day by day the area of inquiry narrowed, until at last it centred upon the river as my reluctant premonition had feared would be the case. It was beneath the quiet surface of that stream that the revelation of the mystery was to be sought. I must admit that Saroni was more often and anxiously in my thoughts than Ethel Moore, whom, after all, I had never seen ; for I saw that the catastrophe would probably compromise him ; and, as 1 heartily believed in his innocence of voluntary evil, I dreaded the more lest the logic of events should seem to insinuate the contrary. On Monday, September 12th, the revelation came. A waterman, punting along the bank opposite Kew Gardens, hooked up the body of a woman, which had evidently been more than a week in the water. It was greatly disfigured ; but it was the body of a young woman with dark brown hair. 1 telegraphed to Saroni, under cover to his bankers in Kew York, the same after noon. The message was as follows : " Send sworn state ment of your whereabouts and actions between seven and eleven P.M., September 1st. Ethel Moore found drowned in Thames near Richmond." This was in anticipation of the turn the inquest was sure to take ; Saroni s authenticated testimony, if not his personal presence, would be required sooner or later. As re garded the identification of the remains, there was, " fortunately" as the coroner put it u no difficulty." I was present at the inquest. " Do you recognize this body as that of any one you know ?" inquired the official of the Rev. James Moore, who stood beside the pallet, with his hat dragged down over his furrowed brow, and 28 PRINCE SARONl S WIFE. the harsh skin puckering and twitching round the cor ners of his mouth. "It is the body of my daughter, Ethel Moore," said he, with a dogged but unready utterance. " I know it by the general appearance, though grievously disiig- ured ; by the dress ; by the initials on the handkerchief ; and by the necklet and bracelet of chased silver, given her ten years ago by her mother, which she habitually wore. Is that sufficient ?" " Quite so, Mr. Moore," returned the official, with a bow. The old man turned to go out ; but T noticed that his step was uncertain, and he put out one arm, as though groping his way. Eeaching the doorway, he leaned his head and shoulder against it, and I thought he was going to fall. But in a few moments his giddiness passed off, and facing round again, he once more ad dressed the coroner. "Mark my words," he said, in a husky whisper, " and forget them not. They will try to prove that my girl committed suicide. It is false ! She was murdered murdered ! I swear it before God ! And while God spares me life and sense, 1 will search the murderer out, and bring him to justice. Do you hear me ?" "All right, sir," said the official, respectfully, but not overawed. " I ll make a note of your statement, and nobody will be appier to indict the guilty parties, when found, than I shall. Wish you good-day, sir." The subsequent discussion in the newspapers turned chiefly on the comparative probability of murder or sui cide ; for the theory of accidental death was negatived by the fact that a mass of stones, fifty or sixty pounds in weight, was found in a plaited twine bag attached to the girl s waist. One important piece of testimony in favor PRINCE SARONI S WIFE. 29 of suicide was that of a waterman, who stated that, some three or four weeks back, he had been in the way of overhearing a conversation between Miss Moore (whom lie knew by sight) and a " furren genTman," whom he sufficiently described ; " and Miss Moore she vowed she d drown herself if the genTman went for to keep company with any other woman besides her." The worst point made against Saroni was that he had visited Richmond, and been on the river the very night, and at the very spot, where the tragedy had occurred. But, on the other hand, had the prince anticipated a violent in terview with Ethel Moore, assuredly he would not have taken his wife to witness it. All the same, I was glad that the telegram had been sent to Saroni. An answer might be expected to arrive by mail in about a week. A week had not elapsed when I was startled, one night, by a sharp and imperious knock at my door ; and before I could say "Who s there?" Saroni himself strode in. He was gaunt, travel-stained, hectic with excitement. Thrusting his hand in his coat-pocket, he pulled out the torn and crumpled telegram that he had received in New York, and held it out to me, with a questioning look, but without a word. "Yes," I said, understanding him, "it is true, my dear Saroni ; and I m glad, on all accounts, that you have come in person. Is your wife with you ?" " My wife ? No !" lie looked hard at me. " She will riot be wanted." " Have you any evidence to give ?" He nodded. " 1 saw her that night ; I went to see her." "You did see her? Why?" For answer, he handed me a letter, bearing date August 25th, and signed " Ethel Moore." Its language 30 was sad but gentle, and the gist of it was that Saroni should meet her once more before he went away. " I wish to part from yon in kindness," the letter said, " not to reproach you. Bring your wife with you, but let me see her, if possible, without her seeing me. I shall be at the place you know of, on the river-bank, at half-past eight on Thursday." There was nothing else of importance in the letter. " Did you answer it ?" I asked. " 1 let her know I would be there." " Did you say anything to your wife about ?" Saroni shook his head, and sank heavily into a chair. I gave him some brandy, which he drank freely. By and by I asked him whether Ethel had been as quiet as her letter. "I thought so yes," said he. "1 kissed her. Diavolo ! I would have gone with her anywhere ! If I had known this was to come . . . Well, a woman can deceive !" " Did she meet your wife ?" " Bah ! it would have been folly. I left the princess further down, in the boat ; I came ashore and walked a little way; Ethel was there." He fell into a gloomy abstraction. u All was said in ten minutes," he added. u Then 1 carne back to the boat." " She was not excited ?" " She was . . . cold !" replied he, in a peculiar tone. " Poor girl !" I muttered. " After all, it was you who killed her, Saroni." " That is a lie !" cried he, leaping to his feet. I thought he was going to attack me. His set teeth gleamed through his black beard ; his eyes glared. For a moment, I realized that there were possibilities in the Italian that 1 had not reckoned with. But then, remem- PRINCE SARONT S WIFE. 31 bering the state of nervous agitation lie must be in, 1 felt no wonder lie should lose his self -mastery. I quieted him at length, arid he lay down on my sofa and slept. There was a wild, haggard beauty in him as he lay there. It was several hours before he awoke, and then he left me, with the understanding that we were to meet at the adjourned inquest the next day. Pondering over our interview, it seemed to me strange in more ways than one. Saroni had made no direct pro fession of grief for Ethel s death ; he had seemed fierce, gloomy, and almost reserved, save for his outbreak of passion at my remark. Was a remorse haunting him ? Ethel had told him that she would haunt him after death. Had he, during their last farewell, spoken some word which had driven Ethel to desperation ? I concluded, finally, that I did not understand Saroni ; he had depths which I had not sounded. Meanwhile, I was glad that his outburst had not taken place before the coroner s jury. But, at the inquest next day, he was quiet and com posed, and I noticed that he had taken unusual pains with his personal appearance. The gist of his evidence was substantially as I have given it, and though the. jury was surprised, the impression produced was good. The noteworthy event of the proceedings was the Rev. James Moore s cross-examination of the prince. " Sir," said he, standing up, rigid and angular, in his rusty black garb, and fixing his dull gray eyes on the vivid and swarthy Italian, " Sir, did you love my daughter?" " I loved her, 1 said Saroni. " Why did you keep me in ignorance of your love for her?" " It was her wish. She said there was no love be tween you and her." 33 The old man winced at this, but he went on. " When you first met her, you were betrothed to an other ?" " Yes," said Saroni, with a smile. " When did my daughter first know that ?" " Before the midst of August." "What did she say to it?" " There was pain and anger. She said she would drown herself. My heart was in trouble." " Did you propose that your love should continue in dishonor ?" Saroni s face flushed, and the snake-like vein in his temple seemed to writhe. " It is you who would do her dishonor !" he exclaimed, defiantly. " Did she submit tamely to be cast aside, so that you might pay some debts and live in purple and fine linen ?" Saroni was silent. At last he. said, " She did not sub mit." " Did you attempt to pacify her ?" " I said I would come to her, and lose all, if she would have it so." "Why did you not doit?" " She said no. You have read her letter, and ac knowledged it her writing." " She wrote it to secure the interview, which you would otherwise have refused her." Saroni shrugged his shoulders. " Bat," continued the other, charging each word with the bitter venom of hatred, u what did she say to you when you stood beside her on the river-bank, just before you stuffed the handkerchief in her mouth, and strangled lier with your hands, and sunk her body in the river, with the bag of stones at her waist ?" As he spoke, the bony figure of the gray-haired man PRINCE SARONI S WIFE. 33 seemed to grow taller, his hands reached forward as if to clutch his enemy, and his eyes had the dull, fixed glitter of a serpent s. It seemed to me but it may have been iny fancy that Saroni flinched. But the next moment he drew himself up and said, w r ith contemptuous quiet ness : " I request the court that it protect me. This man has gravely mistaken. I should be happier to be dead myself, than to harm his daughter, or let her be harmed." The coroner cleared his throat and administered a gentle remonstrance to the old clergyman, to which the jury murmured an assent. The attack, though ingeni ously planned, had failed to invalidate the prince s testi mony. No motive had been shown to justify the charge of murder. The coroner put the question to the jury, and their verdict was, that the deceased drowned her self, while temporarily of unsound mind. They added their condolences to the deceased s father, and their thanks to Prince Saroni for his courtesy in travelling three thousand miles to assist them in their duties. The inquest then closed. But as Saroni and I were leaving the house, a heavy, hasty step came after us, and the Rev. James Moore thrust himself in our way. " A parting word to you, sir," he began, in his harsh, monotonous tones, addressing the prince, who faced him silently. " We shall meet again. I see murder in your face, and I will wring the confession from you yet ! You will live day and night in fear of discovery ; and when you are discovered, I shall be there to see. May God give you the mercy you gave to that dead girl ? " Sir, you are in my path," was all Saroni s reply ; and passing by him, he resumed his walk by my side, to all appearance unmoved. 34 PRINCE SARONI S WIFE. VI. SAEONI returned to America immediately. He never wrote to me during his sojourn in Washington, but 1 used to hear of him occasionally. It would appear that he had resigned himself to his lot quite philosophically. He became noted in the American capital for his enter tainments ; and the princess was spoken of as a beauty, and a charming hostess. It was added that the two were conspicuously devoted to each other a peculiarity which, in the United States, stands in the way of a couple s popularity less than in London. Mrs. Medwin, the Princess Saroni s mother, died in London during the ensuing year. She was the princess s last surviving relative. Not long after this event, tho news reached me that the Saronis were about to return to Europe. They did not, however, come to London, but landed at Havre, and proceeded to Paris. I should have mentioned that the Rev. James Moore did not allow the acquaintance between us to drop. Ever and anon 1 ran across him ; and always he made a point of informing me that his conviction of Saroni s guilt remained unaltered ; and, further, that he was using every means to obtain the evidence to confirm his belief. It was an ugly spectacle this old man, by pro fession dedicated to the work of spreading Christ s gospel on earth, devoting his remaining years of life to the prosecution of an unholy and desperate revenge. His one thought or monomania was to bring Saroni to the gallows. On this theme would he discourse, in his slow, acrid tones, at inexhaustible length ; but with- PBIKCE SAROKl S WIFE. 35 out ever saying anything that might lead a sane person to give heed to him. About the time the Saronis reached Paris, I took a fancy to go thither myself, though not with the special intention of meeting them. As it happened, however, I saw the prince on the day of my arrival, at Munroe s banking house. He was a good deal changed. He had grown much stouter, and his glance had lost its -briskness and intensity. He impressed me as a man who had de teriorated. He invited me to call on him and the princess ; and, accordingly, the next afternoon 1 was ushered into her drawing-room. She was a young and, I thought, a strikingly hand some woman, though a good deal emaciated ; American air seeming to have taken from her the flesh it had be stowed on her husband. Her eyes were large and bright, but had an anxious look ; and she had a trick of ever and anon half glancing over her shoulder while conversing with you. Her hands, refined in form and texture, were never completely at rest ; if they were not playing with a fan or a handkerchief, or moving a book or a paper-knife on the table, they were twisting them selves together slowly in her lap. Her face, despite its lack of happiness and serenity, had great tenderness in it, and struck me as strangely pathetic. She greeted me cordially ; but, at first, she had an air of watching me with so much intentness, indeed, that once or twice she replied at random to my remarks. But gradually this watchfulness died away, and she became comparatively composed. The longer we conversed, the more her charm grew upon me ; and I wondered that Saroni should ever have wished for a better wife than this. Half as good a one, I thought, would have con tented me. 3G " Did you like America ?" of course 1 asked. " Very much ; they are an easy, hospitable people. We shall return some day.* " But we shall see you in London first ?" " No," replied the princess, fixing her eyes upon me intently ; " no, we shall not go to London." I felt that perhaps I should not have introduced the subject. " London is, to be sure, neither picturesque nor salubrious," 1 said. " Paris and Washington are much brighter and prettier." We went on to speak of the comparative architectural merits of various cities ; and finally the princess took me to the window, at the end of the room, to show me some photographs of the street in which they had lived in Washington. The pho tographs were in a portfolio, on a large mahogany stand. While the princess was searching for the photograph, with her back to the room, arid the open window in front of her, a servant entered, ushering in some visitor. The noise in the street prevented her from hearing the announcement, and she did not turn round. But I saw a tall, stiff figure, in a black coat, enter the room, and, after looking in our direction, pause. I did not recog nize the figure, in the slight glance 1 gave it. " This must be it yes, it is !" said the princess, tak ing out the photograph. Her full, agreeable voice, with the sad chord vibrating through it, corresponded with the pathos in her face. " See, this was our house," she continued, pointing it out to me with her finger ; " this, with the high steps, and the portico. I loved that portico, because it re minded me of the house I lived in one I saw, that is, in England. This was the window of my boudoir." She broke off abruptly, with that odd glance over her shoulder. This time my eyes followed hers. I had PKINCE SARONl S WIFE. 37 forgotten our visitor ; but there he stood, where he had first taken up his position. At that distance 1 could not distinguish his features ; but nevertheless, I now recog nized him : it was the Rev. James Moore. 1 suppose he had seen in the papers that the Saronis were in Paris. I felt the desirability of getting him out of the house as speedily and quietly as possible before the prince should come in. " I know this gentleman," I said in an undertone to the princess. " He s a trifle deranged in the upper story. With your permission, I ll conduct him down stairs." But she paid no attention to me. " Do you wish to speak to me, sir ?" she said to Mr. Moore. " Will you come this way ? " Thank you, madam," he replied, moving a few steps nearer. " I came to see your husband ; but there is something in your voice that. ..." Here a curious change came over the Rev. James Moore. His brow and eyelids quivered, and then were lifted upward, as if he saw a spectre. An exaggerated trembling shook his body. His hands wavered about aimlessly. " God have mercy !" I heard him murmur, in a thin voice. " I m going mad. That s my murdered girl. . . . Ethel!" I looked at the Princess Saroni. She raised her hands, and pressed them for a moment against her tem ples ; then let them fall, w r ith a long, long sigh, like the giving up of a weary and passion-strained life. Her lips moved, but not audibly. " My murdered Ethel !" quavered the old man again. ".Not murdered, father, but the murderess," said the princess, in a dry, quiet tone. 38 PRINCE SARONl S WIFE. The old man clasped his shaking hands together, and burst into a hurried, crowing laugh. " Alive, my girl ! alive and sound and well, Ethel ! God be thanked God be praised ! Ho, ho, ho, ho ! And now you ll come back and live with me, Ethel, my girl ! And never say I don t love you, child. I do ! I do ! you ll never hear a hard or loveless word from me again. Come, girl come at once !" He tried to grasp her ; but she avoided him quietly. "It is too late, father," she said. " The truth is known, and can be hidden no more. We cannot begin to be father and daughter now. 1 have had my way, and my love, for a year. And I was loved, too ; but it was time even that should end. Even love is not enough ; we have had time to find that out !" A few words of explanation may be required. Al though the princess as we may still call her took on herself the chief responsibility of the murder, it was shown at the trial that Saroni was the really guilty one. His first plan was to elope with Ethel, and so much of the other woman s money as he could lay hands on. But she indignantly rejected this proposal. He then but without making Ethel privy to the scheme resolved on the murder. The letter was written by her after the murder was done. What happened on that fatal evening will never be certainly known. The two women were dressed nearly alike, and the murdered girl had on Ethel s ornaments, which Saroni had previously borrowed of her, on the pretext of having them remounted, and had then pre sented to his doomed wife as a wedding gift. Every thing was so contrived as to favor the theory of suicide ; and I am now inclined to think that Saroni s con versa- PRINCE SAROtfl S WIFE. 30 tions with me, recorded in the third chapter of this story, were deliberately intended to mislead me on this essential point. The reader must form his own conclusions as to SaronTs real character, and the degree of Ethel s par ticipation in his crime. My opinion is that he was very much as I have represented him genial and simple in some ways, diabolically subtle in others, and clever enough to use his simplicity to further his diabolism. Ethel I do not presume to judge. Her former life had been repressed and barren ; her love w r as like the sud den flowering out of some sweet but poisonous plant ; her passions, good and bad, were of exceptional intensity. What she did, she did ; and, no doubt, she suffered, even before the end. I do not think she found in Saroni all that she had expected. THE PEAEL-SHELL NECKLACE. THE PEARL-SHELL NECKLACE. AMONG the pleasantest memories of my earlier days is one of an old gabled f arm-house overlooking the sea. It is a July afternoon, calm and hot. The sea is pale blue and its surface glassy smooth ; but the passage of a storm somewhere to the eastward causes long slumberous undulations to lapse shoreward. They break upon the Devil s Ribs that low black reef about half a mile out and the sound is borne to our ears some seconds after the white-foam line has marked itself against the blue and vanished. There is a fine throb of sun-loving insects in the air, which we may hear if we listen for it ; but more immediately audible is the guttural drawing of old Jack Poyntz s meerschaum pipe, and the delicate click ing of his sweet daughter Agatha s polished knitting- needles. From w r ithin doors comes the fillip of water and the clink of chinaware good Mrs. Poyntz washing up the dinner things. For we have just dined, and the blessing of a good digestion is upon all of us. Yes ; there we three sit, in my memory, side by side upon the stone bench outside the farm-house door. The projecting eaves throw a quiet, transparent shadow over us. Two or three venerable hens are scratching and nestling in the hot sandy soil near yonder corner, and 44 THE PEARL-SHELL NECKLACE. conversing together in long-drawn, comfortable croak- ings. The fragrant smoke from Poyntz s pipe-bowl circles upward on the air, until it takes the sunlight high over head. Truly a pleasant time, whose peacefulness is still present with me after so many years. I am old, who then was young ; but that July sunshine is warm in iny heart to-day. Poyntz was an ancient mariner not lean and uncanny, however ; but burly, jovial, and brown : with a huge grizzled beard spreading over his mighty chest, a voice as deep and mellow as a sea-lion s, and eyes as blue and clear as the ocean upon which they had looked for more than sixty years. He had been a successful sailor ; had visited many lands and brought home many cargoes, and was, in a rough, simple way, a thorough cosmopolitan. After his last voyage he had settled down in the ances tral farm-house, and applied himself to agriculture. He was as prosperous, contented, and respected a man as any in the neighborhood ; and during the fortnight or so that 1 had lodged beneath his roof, 1 had grown into a hearty liking for him. While as to Agatha . . . ah, it was not liking that I felt for her ! Strange that that fair, finely moulded, queenly creature was only a sailor s daughter ! Much as I honored Poyntz, I could not help sometimes feeling surprised at it. At all events, she was as perfect a lady as ever stepped on high-arched feet ; and I fancied that the old mariner and his wife treated her in a manner more befitting a distinguished visitor than a child of their own. There was sturdy little Peter, now he whose brown legs were visible be neath the low-spreading bough of a scrub-oak beside the mill-stream yonder there could be no doubt as to him. But what a brother for Agatha ! How well 1 recall her aspect, though it is more than THE PEARL-SHELL NECKLACE. 45 twenty years since that day. Her shapely head was bound about with a turban of her bright yellow hair, but her eyes and eyebrows were dark. Her neck was round and slender, and supported its burden in unconscious poses of maidenly dignity. The contours of her figure were full, yet refined ; her wrists were small, and her hands were shaped like that which lies on the bosom of Canova s. Yenus. Her manners breathed simplicity and sweet composure, yet were reserved and serious withal, and sometimes they were tinged with a shadow of mel ancholy. At such moments her hands would fall into her lap, her head would droop a little forward, and her dark eyes gravely fix themselves upon some sunlit sail that flecked the pale horizon. So would she remain until, perhaps, the sail sank below the verge, or became invisible in shadow ; then, with a sigh, the soft fetters of her preoccupation would seem to fall away from her. What were her thoughts during those reveries ? and why should they be sad ones ? I had never ventured to question her much as yet ; her mystery was itself u fas cination. One thing about her had attracted my particular notice from the first the curious pearl-shell necklace that she always wore clasped round her smooth throat. It was composed of very small shells of a peculiar species, not found in that part of the world. These were woven into a singular pattern of involved curves, arid were fastened with a broad gold clasp, in the centre of which was set a large pearl. Handsome as the ornament was, however, and becoming to its wearer, it would not have so riveted my attention but for a circumstance to which . I must here make a passing allusion. Among my most precious possessions at that time was a fine oil portrait of my great-grandmother, who was a 46 THE PEARL-SHELL NECKLACE. famous beauty in her day. My family, I should have said, is of Danish extraction, though the name Feuer- berg was, after the emigration of the elder branch to America, translated to the present Firemount. In my great-grandmother s days there had been a bitter family quarrel ; the younger brother had attempted to cast doubts upon the legitimacy of the firstborn, and when he failed to make good his claim, he had fraudulently seized upon a large portion of the inheritance and made his escape whither was not known, for no effort was made to pursue him. It was believed that he went to Germany and married there ; and that afterward he or his son had made another remove, since which even con jecture had been silent concerning them. But to return to the portrait. It was a half-length, and had the quaint head-dress and costume of the period, one part only being out of the fashion ; but it was this very part that had always possessed most interest for me. It was the curious pearl-shell necklace, woven in a strange pat tern, and fastened with a golden clasp, which was repre sented upon my great-grandmother s statuesque bosom. This necklace had for centuries been a family heirloom, and many quaint traditions were connected with it. It was said to have been given to the founder of our race by a w^ater- witch, or some such mythologic being ; and sundry mysterious virtues were supposed to belong to it. Precisely what these virtues were I cannot tell, nor does it happen to be of much consequence. One saying only 1 remember that the wearing of it would insure us happiness and prosperity so long as no member of the family brought dishonor on the name ; but thereafter it would bring ruin. Now the necklace had been handed on from one prosperous generation to another, until the date of the quarrel above alluded to ; and then, all at THE PEARL-SHELL NECKLACE. 47 once, it had disappeared ; arid my great-grandmother was the last person known to have worn it. She men tioned it on her deathbed, and foretold that no good fort une was to be expected for the Feuerbergs until the sacred heirloom was recovered, and made a symbol of the healing of the family feud. The negative part of the prophecy had certainly been verified. The elder branch of the Feuerbergs never got over the effects of the blow inflicted upon it by the younger brother. They gradually subsided from their original high estate, and were at last compelled to abandon the ancestral homestead, and try their luck in the New World. At the time of my birth we were in decently comfortable circumstances, which improved upon the whole as I grew toward manhood. I passed through college, and was afterward admitted to the bar, which by and by afforded me a tolerable income. But one spring I fancied myself ailing, and resolved to try the sea air ; and so it happened that I became acquainted with Jack Poyntz, and with. Agatha, and with her pearl- shell necklace. Of course, all idea of recovering the original necklace had long ago been abandoned. It had been conjectured that the seceding brother of old times had appropriated it along with many other things that did not belong to him ; but there was no proof of this, other than that its disappearance had been simultaneous with his own. Moreover, if the truth must be told, I had outgrown the easy credulity of boyhood, and was rather inclined to suspect that the whole picturesque old tradition was three parts imagination to one of fact. To be sure, there was the painted necklace in the portrait ; but all the rest of the evidence concerning it rested upon mere hearsay. Very likely it had been made to my great- 48 THE PEARL-SHELL NECKLACE. grandmother s order in Copenhagen ; and she had mis laid it or broken it, and afterward had entertained her grandchildren with fairy stories about it, which they had grown np to believe true. But no young lawyer of this age, even if he happen to be of a romantic turn of mind, can afford to put faith in water- witches ; and if that part of the tradition must be rejected, why not all the rest ? It might soothe my family pride to ascribe our decadence to the loss of a trinket, or I might excuse my indolence by declaring that fortune was attainable only on condi tion of its being found again ; but if I descended to hard matter-of-fact, as a lawyer should do, I must admit there was nothing cross-questionable in such an old-wives tale. Cross-questionable or not, it will readily be conceived that the sight of Agatha s pearl shells gave me a thrill of surprise, and deepened my interest in one who needed no such accidental attraction to render her irresistible. The necklace so closely resembled the one in the por trait, that the latter might have been painted from it. It was possible, no doubt, that my great-grandmother s necklace was not unique ; that a duplicate nay, many duplicates existed. But it was not upon the face of it probable, nor was I disposed to accept any such common place solution of the problem. I loved Agatha, and I loved to think (for ha^c I not hinted that I was roman tic, though a lawyer ?) I say it suited me to believe that the necklace linked her, however unaccountably, with me. It was evident that she herself looked upon it as a most precious possession. She wore it continually, as she might have worn a talisman, and touched it often, twisting the golden clasp about, or following the woven pattern with meditative finger-tips. Once, when sud denly alarmed, I saw her grasp it quickly in her hand, as if either seeking protection from it, or instinctively THE PEARL-SHELL NECKLACE. 49 yielding it protection ; and another time, during a storm, when a vessel was laboring in the offing, and seemed in danger of being carried upon the Devil s Ribs, I came upon her just as she kissed the great pearl in the clasp, as a Catholic would have kissed the crucifix to avert misfortune. " Water- witch ! water- witch ! be thy spells whole some ?" I said in Danish, for a knowledge of the ances tral tongue has always been kept alive in the family. She turned round, started, and, to my no small sur prise, answered in the same language " Doubt not the spell, if the danger be daunted !" And then, seeming to recollect herself, she blushed, and said in English, u It was a song my old nurse taught me. I should like to be a witch, if I might save people from being shipwrecked." 1 made no reply, and we stood silently watching the struggle of the vessel with the storm for perhaps ten minutes. At length it succeeded in tacking at the very moment when all seemed lost, and bore safely away. Agatha s eyes met mine for an instant ; there were both smiles and tears in them. She kissed her pearl again and moved away. But my digression has already gone further than I intended. Let us return to the stone bench beneath the eaves, and the hot July sunshine. II. " MR. POYNTZ," said I, clasping my hands behind my head, and crossing one knee over the other, " how hap pens your house to be set up directly opposite the Devil s 50 THE PEAKL-SHELL NECKLACE. Ribs, and at least a mile and a half from the village ? It s well enough in summer, of course, but in winter, when the snow is on the ground, I should think you d want to be nearer your butcher, not to speak of the meeting-house. " " Ay, surely !" answered Mr. Poyntz, taking the pipe from his mouth, and smoothing down the great sheaf of his beard. " But, d ye see, sir, twas not I set the house here, nor rny father before me, and maybe there was no butcher, not yet no meeting-house, along in those times. And another thing, since you ve set me a-going, sir ; you see the lighthouse on the point yonder ?" indi cating an abrupt rocky promontory half a mile to the right of our position, which lay athwart the shore like a vast wall, separating us from the little fishing harnlet on the other side. " Ye see the lighthouse on tip-end of Gloam s Point, don t ye ? Well, sir, old as that light house looks to you now, I, that am a deal older than you are, can remember when twa n t there. And that brings me round to what I was going to say. Along in those times, sir, when there wa n t no regular lighthouse, but no bit less danger of craft running ashore, they used to rig up a sort of a jury-light, if I might so call it, in the front of our old gable. Ye may see the fixings now if ye steps forward a bit and look up there. Ay, ay, every dark night, more especially every dirty night, some one of us would mount the garret shrouds, d ye see, and show the lantern. And many a ship we saved, no doubt ; but they d come ashore once in a while, for the best we could do." " That s a suggestive name Devil s Ribs. I suppose the bones of many a good man and vessel lie swallowed lip in them." " Ay, surely," returned the ancient mariner, swathing THE PEAKL- SHELL NECKLACE. 51 bis head in a haze of tobacco-smoke. " The more since the currents and whirlpools thereabout mostly keep back the floating bits spars, bodies, and such like from get ting to the beach. Whatever strikes there, sinks there, speaking in a general way. And forasmuch as there s five and thirty fathom clear water there, and always a tidy bit of surf on, tain t very popular work dredging." "That s an ugly thought," 1 observed; "a great ship might go down there and nothing ever be found to show what she was or who sailed in her." 1 happened to glance at Agatha as I made this obser vation, and noticed that she paled a little and let her hands fall in her lap, and after a few moments she got up and entered the house, leaving Mr. Poyntz and me to ourselves. I fancied but I may have been mistaken that as she passed the threshold she laid her finger upon the pearl-shell necklace. " Miss Agatha doesn t like to hear of wrecks," I re marked after a pause. " Why, no, sir," said Poyntz slowly, his blue eyes fixed upon the surf- whitened reef ; " and perhaps tis natural she should not specially those wrecks that the Devil s Ribs is to blame for." u Has that necklace of hers anything to do with it ?" 1 asked though 1 cannot tell what possessed me to put so inconsequent a question. Partly to justify myself, I added, " It looks as if it might have been washed up out of the sea." Poyntz threw a sharp look at me out of the corner of his weather-eye. " Ye ve noticed the necklace, have ye ?" said he ; " and ye ve a quick wit of your own, as they say is the way with lawyers, llowbeit, 1 think Jack Poyntz knows an honest man when he sights him, and hoping ye ll excuse the freedom, sir, metliinks you 52 THE PEARL-SHELL NECKLACE. are one. Now there s a bit of a yarn I d like to spin ye you being beknown among the great gentlefolks down to New York and elsewhere about a wreck that once was on the Devil s Eibs. Maybe some of those you do business for can throw light upon it like ; for what the ship was that was wrecked, or whence she sailed, was never known ; for only that necklace that Agatha wears only that and . . . something else, ever came to land. Ye guessed right, sir, d ye see, and in hopes of your guessing yet more, I ll spin ye the yarn, leastways if ye ve no objection. But afore starting, if ye ll kindly allow me, sir, I ll load my pipe, for with me the words come ever easier when there s smoke behind em." I said nothing, but Poyntz saw well enough that I was very much interested, and, like all incorrigible yarn- spinners, he found a humorous pleasure in prolonging his hearer s suspense. It was five minutes before his pipe was cleaned out, refilled, and lighted to his satisfac tion, and then, having spread out his great arms along the back of the bench, stretched his mighty legs in front of him, and fixed his gaze upon the lighthouse his favorite yarn-spinning attitude he appeared to wait for an inspiration. " How long ago was it?" I asked at length, to set him going. " Well, sir, it might be five-and-twenty years ago that that wreck took place. You was hardly more than out of your nursery then, I m thinking. As for me, I was a chap of maybe forty or maybe not so much ; my old father he had just parted his last cable, as 1 might say, and I had just come in from a voyage to the Pacific Coast for hides, and was living in this house alone by myself. I d come home, sir, to find the girl as had given me her word spliced to another man ; and so it THE PEARL-SHELL NECKLACE. 53 happened that I stayed a bachelor till after the age when many finds themselves grandads. But I wedded at last, sir, as ye see, and never had canse to think the worse of myself for doing it !" " I should think not, indeed," I assented, laughing. But meanwhile I was telling myself that Agatha must be nearly twenty years old, and that if Poyntz had wedded only at the age of a grandfather, she could hardly be his own offspring by marriage. Were the doubts which her aspect had already suggested to me well founded, then ? I prudently waited, in the hope that this question like wise might find its answer in the course of my host s story. " It was along about that time, sir," Poyntz contin ued, having acknowledged my compliment with a friendly nod, " that I first came acquainted with Scholar Gloam, as the folks called him ; him that yonder point s named after, and that lived at the Laughing Mill, over there, back of the wood. But now I come for to think on it," broke off the old yarn-spinner, pulling his meer schaum out of the corner of his mouth and looking round at me, " did I ever chance to speak to ye of Scholar Gloam afore ?" " I don t think you ever did ; but I always like to hear about anything that has a picturesque nickname, as almost everything hereabouts seems to have." The hale old man laughed, and raked his brown fingers through his spreading beard. " In an out-of-the- way place like this, sir," said he, " where s few enough things any way, nicknames come natural. "Well, now, as touching Scholar Gloam, he died nigh a score of years ago ; leastways he knocked off living in the body. For there be those," lowering his voice and wrinkling his brows, " there be those superstitious like ready to 54 THE PEARL-SHELL NECKLACE. take affidavit of having seen him, certain days in the year, a prowling round the Laughing Mill. His grave is near by, right under the Black Oak ; and maybe the place is a bit skeery. " Howsoever, that don t concern us now. When I knew Scholar Gloam, he was a middling-sized, slender- built young gentleman, having queer hair not all of the same color, and a trick of talking to himself in a sort of a low mumbling way, as it might be the bubbling of water under a ship s stern, if ye know what I mean, sir. He was a comely favored man of the pale sort, and grave and silent, though always the gentleman in his manners, as by blood arid breeding. For the Gloams was the great family here fifty years ago, and was landlords of most of the farms roundabout ; but they steered a bad course, as I might say, and died out, so as Scholar Gloam was the last of em. Old Harold, the Scholar s father, he was a reckless devil-may-care, if any man ever was ; and when he died twas found that Gloam Hall and all belonging thereto must go to the auction. The only bit left was the Laughing Mill itself, and an acre or two of land round about it." " What did the mill laugh at, Mr. Poyntz ? its own prosperity ?" " Nay, sir !" returned the burly mariner, shaking his head. " I heard it laugh once, and I d as soon crack jokes with Davy Jones as listen to it again. Twas a mad, wild scream more than a laugh, and like nothing human, praise goodness, that ever I heard ! There was ugly yarns about that mill, d ye see ; folks said as how it had killed a man, and afterward had got possessed with his evil spirit that was always roaming about seek ing whom it might devour ... or maybe I ve got things a bit mixed !" THE PEARL-SHELL NECKLACE. 55 " Who was it that was killed ?" I suggested. "Ay, surely," said Mr. Poyntz, thoughtfully, "I should have told ye that. It was the man that was mar ried to old Squire Harold s housekeeper. And that housekeeper, sir, when she was a young one, was about as well-favored a wench as a man would care to speak with on a week day ; and twas said," hitching himself nearer to me on the bench and rumbling in my ear, " that the Squire had a fancy to her, and that after a time she was married off in a hurry and sent to live at the mill, and that her baby was born six months from the wedding. Well, all I know is, little enough that child looked like him as passed for its father ; and now comes the ugliest part of it. A year after the child s birth the miller was found dead one morning underneath his own mill-wheel. Seems he d fallen in the mill-race by some mishap, and so had the life crushed out of him. But bad things was said . . . and the widow and child they went back to the Hall, and lived there many years, till the Squire died. The child got all his growth and training there, and folks used to say he d have been more like the Squire if he hadn t been most like his mother. "Well, the Squire being gone at last, and the estate all sold saving just the mill, as I told ye, what does the housekeeper and her son do but go back to the mill again. The son David he was called was then a likely young chap of maybe seventeen ; and he took right hold and began for to run the mill, and a very fair profit he made out of it, taking one year with another. And Scholar Gloam, he was living in the mill-house along with them, having his room to himself, and his books and instruments quite cosey." " Wasn t that rather an odd thing for him to do, Mr. Poyntz, under the circumstances ?" 56 THE PEARL-SHELL KECKLACE. " Ay, surely ; but ye must keep it in mind, sir, that Scholar Gloam was a wondrous odd man. He d been his whole life shut up with his books and his studies, and no doubt had a vast deal of that sort of learning ; but of worldly knowledge, as I might say, he d none at all whatever, no more than a child. Little he d heard of his father s doings, be it with the handsome housekeeper or anything else ; and little he dreamed ye can make affidavit that her son had any claim to call himself his brother, though twas told him once afterward, as we ll come to presently. Nay, but my thought of him is, he was a simple, honest gentleman at that time, kind of heart and thinking ill of no one ; only a bit strange and distant, d ye see, as was no harm in the world for him to be. And being quite the same thing to him whether he lived in a palace or a mud hut, so long as he might study his fill, why, likely he d an easy enough time of it. u And twould have been smooth enough sailing for the whole of them only for one thing, which is to say as how, ever and anon, in the mid of a big run of luck, that there mill would take on a spell of its laughing ; and with that folks would be giving it a wide berth, and business would slack up again. It was no use the old \vornan and David a swearing that a bit of rust on the axle was the cause of it all ; for, mind ye, there was no steering round that black fact of the old miller s having met his death on the wheel ; and, too, though they was never done hunting for that bit of a rust spot, they never found it ; or if ever they thought they had, lo ! there d be the laugh in their faces again, so to say, the next morning. Ay, twas a bad, unholy sound that, sir ; but the Scholar, strange to be told, seemed less to mind it than any one ; the cause being, mayhap, as how he was a wondrous absent-minded man any way, and the only TilE PEARL-SHELL NECKLACE. 57 one as had never been told the true story of how the old miller came by his end. " So now, sir, having dropped ye this bit of a hint of who Scholar Gloam was, I ll go on with the yarn of the wreck on the Devil s Kibs and the necklace. III. "BuT, first and foremost," continued Mr. Poyntz, after having revived his failing pipe with a dozen or so of quick whiffs, "first and foremost I must mention a queer habit he had Scholar Gloam, I mean and by which it was as 1 first came acquainted with him. As long as the sun was over the horizon line he d stay in doors, behind the lock of his study door ; but at night fall out he d walk, foul weather or fair, and through the wood back yonder, down across the rocky pasture to the sea, a trip of maybe a mile and over. And often at midnight, as I ve been pulling shoreward from the offing in my fishing dory, I ve seen him standing a-top of the point, where the lighthouse stands now, the sky being light behind him, and he looking black, and bigger than any human creature ; and sometimes he d be tossing his arms about, and shouting out some unchristian lingo, though there was no one there to talk to leastwise that 1 could see. Twas a queer thing, I say, for a slender, delicate-looking gentleman like him to be out so by night, in all weathers, seeming not to know the differ ence whether it blew, or rained, or snowed, or all three together. Some folks used for to shake their heads over 58 THE PEARL-SHELL NECKLACE. it, and say he was gone daft ; others there was (the superstitious kind, d ye see) would have it as how Davy Jones, whose black bones had been the end of many a good ship and cargo, was in the custom of corning nightly to the point to hold parley with him, as it might be to strike a bargain whereby Davy should get the Scholar his estates and riches again in change for his soul. " But Jack Poyntz never troubled his head with such fancies, sir ; and times, when I d stowed my boat away, I d hail him, and have him down to the house ; and sitting snug together by the kitchen fire, many a strange yarn has he spun me, the like of which never was heard before leastways not outside of the books that were hid in his library and of which many were writ in strange tongues as are not spoken in our Christian times. But it s not for me to be repeating of em now, only, as I was a telling ye, it was such-like things brought us ac quainted ; and very good chums we were, allowing for his being a young gentleman scholar, and me a sailor as had no great book-learning, though knowing more of men and things than a hundred such as him. And by the end of a couple of years or so, meeting him that way off and on, I knew him as well as ever anybody knew him as well, maybe, as he knew himself. " Well, things being this way, one day, about the last week in September, it came on to blow. There was no rain, but no moon either, and the air was thick ; and night coming on, it was as black as my hat. It wasn t long afore there was a heavy sea running, and ye could have heard the surf on them Devil s Kibs five miles inland. 1 shipped the lantern up in the fore gable as usual, though knowing it couldn t show far in such a night ; and, thinks I, see it or not, any ship that gets caught in the tide this weather is bound to wreck ; so I ll hope, THE PEARL-SHELL NECKLACE. 59 says I to myself, that they ll give us a wide berth. Howbe, I wasn t sleepy, so I loaded my pipe, and, thinks 1, I ll have a snug smoke and a drop of grog alongside the kitchen fire afore turning in. No chance, thinks I, of my Scholar happening in this night ; he never could beat up against that wind, not if he had Davy Jones himself to pilot him. Well, there I sat for maybe an hour, the noise of the storm getting ever louder and louder, so at times I could hardly hear the rattle of my spoon as I stirred up the grog in the tum bler. Then all of a sudden there comes a knocking at the door, quick and heavy, and up I jumps and opens it, and lo ! there was the Scholar, with no hat and no coat, and that strange-colored hair of his blown up wild about his head, and his eyes wide open and bright as a binnacle. u i Why don t you come in, sir, shouts I, loud as if I was a hailing him at the maintop, such a noise the w r ind made ; ye ll get the heart and lungs blown clean out of ye if ye stop there ! " Seemed like he answered me something, I couldn t make out what ; but he laid hold on my sleeve with that thin white hand of his, that gripped like a vice, as if he d pull me out into the storm with him, instead of coining in to me. And by his face I could see there was a storm within him as stirred him more than the one without ; and then he pointed down seaward, and thinks I, tis a ship he s seen or heard on the Devil s Ribs. And though I knew well we could no more help any poor wrecked souls than if they was in the moon, yet it wasn t in me to back out of going with him to see what there was to see. So just laying hold of my tar paulin and a flask of rum, off we starts on the run, dead in the wind s eye. How he managed for to scud over the ground at that rate is more than I could make out ; 60 THE PEARL-SHELL NECKLACE. the wind seemed to take no hold on him, but just let him through easy, though all the time it was near blow ing my ears off. " Well, down we came to the beach at last, at a place about a cable s length this side of the point. I d kept my man in sight up to this time by reason of the white shirt he had on, his coat, as I told ye, being off him, but whither gone I d not remembered for to ask him. But now, all of a sudden, I found he d disappeared, and all 1 could see was the pale froth of the surf that came leap ing up the beach, with a sound from the black wave be hind it like the going off of a big gun. Howsoever, 1 presently stumbled round the corner of a big boulder ye may see it yonder, sir, in a line with the face of the lighthouse and the top of the pine stump and there he was on his knees beside something wrapped up and still ; and when I looked, twas seemingly a young girl, about twelve to thirteen years old, with no life in her. She had come ashore on a bit of planking, arid the Scholar he had seen her coming, and had scrambled down from the cliff in time to haul her in and under the lea of the boulder. Ilovv he did it the Lord only knows, for ten men working together might have failed in it. But there she lay, with no mark of harm or bruise upon lier, and yet (as my heart misgave me) lifeless from the wash ing of the waves through which she had voyaged to land. " I saw twould be no use trying to give her brandy yet awhile, so I stoops to lift her up along with the bit of planking that she lay upon ; and Scholar Gloam he helped, though neither of us spoke, by reason of the thundering noise of the surf and the wind that half deaf ened us. It took us maybe a quarter of an hour, and then we were at home, and had her down before the fire, and wrapped in hot blankets, and everything done that THE PEARL-SHELL NECKLACE. 61 could be done ; arid after nigh a couple of hours work, she moved the least mite in the world, and fetched a sigh. With that I sings out like I d come upon a chest full of gold dollars, and says I, All s well, Scholar Gloain ; she s a-coming to, and she ll live to smile on us yet ! And then what does he do, sir, but just throws his head back with a little laugh, and topples over in a dead faint. Twas the exhaustion, ye must understand, as had come on all at once after the suspense of whether she was alive or dead was over. So there was I with the two of em to doctor. Well, 1 soon had the Scholar all right again ; but when he saw as how the child was a-doing well, he drops off suddenly to sleep, being tired right out and unable for to keep his eyes open ; and I didn t wake him, but just threw a blanket over him, and let him sleep it out. " It was, maybe, half an hour after that that the little girl spoke ; she had been opening her eyes and then shut ting them several times, and wondering where she was got to, I suppose, poor little dear. She was pretty and white, with yellow hair and big blue eyes, and soft little feet and hands, and pointed fingers ; and round her neck was the pearl-shell necklace that ye ve seen Agatha wearing, sir. Well, she looked at me for a bit, and seemed like to cry, not knowing who 1 was, or where she d got to, d ye see ; and then she said something, re peating it over twice or thrice ; but I couldn t under stand her, by reason of her speaking some foreign lingo as was unknown to me. Howsoever, 1 took for granted that it must be some of her people she was asking after ; so I pointed to the back room, and made believe as they were in there, but asleep, and not to be disturbed then. She believed me, poor little soul, and presently after dropped quietly asleep, with the tears yet under her eye- G2 THE PEARL-SHELL NECKLACE. lids, and the firelight flickering over her sweet face and yellow hair. Well, I sat there between the two, for I wasn t sleepy at all myself, and kept the fire alight, and my own pipe a-going, till morning, by which time the storm was mostly cleared off. So I got the old lantern down from the gable, and stirred about to get breakfast ready ; and at sunrise, the two being still sleeping, I walked out to see if so be as anything of the wreck was visible. But the Devil s Ribs was only a bank of foam, and when 1 came to the beach there was nought there but a few shattered timbers and bits of spars and rigging ; whatever else there may have been had gone down within the whirlpool of the Devil s Eibs, and would never see daylight more ; nor was there anything to tell where the wrecked ship hailed from, or what she was, or whither she was bound. Nay, a man might well have doubted whether there d been any wreck at all ; and superstitious folks might have thought that the pretty child we had found was a sea-nymph or a mermaid, who had come on the shoulders of waves to bring us good luck or bad, maybe ! Not that I d have ye to think, sir, that I m of the superstitious kind, being a man as has seen much of the world, and lived a number of years in it. But twas a strange thing altogether, and stranger yet was to fol low, as ye shall hear. " In my walk 1 happened by the boulder where I d been with the Scholar overnight, and there 1 picked up a small iron box, with a big lock on it ; it was lashed to four bits of wood, so as it might float, and 1 think it must have come ashore along with the raft that brought the little girl. Just as 1 laid hands on it, and cut away the lashings, I sighted one of the villagers a-coming over the cliff path toward me. So, not caring to be hailed at THE PEARL-SHELL NECKLACE. G3 that time, 1 slipped the box in the pocket of my jacket, and steered for the house. " And lo ! there was the fair child sitting in the chair, and the Scholar he was kneeling in front of her, with her hands in his, and they were a-talking together in that same foreign lingo as she had spoken in to me ; for, d ye see, he had learnt it all from his books, and under stood it as well as she who was born to it. The child was a bit scared and tearful still, and he seemed to be a- comforting of her ; and as 1 came in, says he, Don t let on that her folks are drowned, Jack ; for I ve told her they re but borne away to another harbor, and will return one day to claim her. So, meanwhile, says he, 4 she ll come to live with me at the mill, and be my little girl ; for is she not my little girl now, since twas I brought her forth from the ocean that would have robbed her sweet young life ? With that he kisses her little hands, and says somewhat to her again in her own tongue. It touched my heart to see the two together, sir ; for, d ye see, the Scholar had never seemed to be aware, as I may say, of women or children until now ; he had moved through life without seeing them or speaking to them, save at times in an absent, dreamy sort of a way, as though they were in different worlds. But now he was full of earnestness and a kind of joyful, trem bling surprise, as one who had all of a sudden opened his eyes to a great treasure, and was delighting in it all the more for that he had been unknowing of it before. He was all in all a changed man, and softened, and waked up inside, so that his eyes seemed to be a-seeing the things that was round him, and not things in a dream ; and methought there was a difference in his voice, too ; it was deeper and tenderer like, and made you feel as how he had grown to be a man more than a scholar. I G4 THE PEARL-SHELL NECKLACE. thought he was as a ship that had long been lingering in cold, dark waters, baffled with winds that set toward no pleasant harbor, but which had at last found its sails filled with a fair, fresh breeze, as was blowing her to warm southern seas and tropic islands full of heat and life. Ye ll maybe laugh, sir, to hear an old sailor talk like this ; but surely I had loved the man, and pitied him, too, for his loneliness ; and it touched me, as 1 said, to see that he had found a good thing in the world, and could feel the happiness of it. " Pretty soon, Jack, says he again, ye must help me carry her to the mill this morning, before the village folks are astir ; and don t tell them that she s there, or whence she came. She s my own, and her past is all gone forever ; God has sent her to me for my own. 1 shall make her love me as I now love her, and no other shall have any part in her. I will be to her all that she has lost, and more ; and I will cherish her always and make her happy. And when the village folks find out that I have her (as soon of course they must), they shall be told that she is a good fairy come to bring me fortune and de light. I d say that she rose up one morning out of the deep clear pool just above the mill-race ; and that though appearing as a human being, she is in very truth not mortal, but has consented to live with me so long as I continue worthy of her companionship. But when the time comes which God forbid it ever should ! that 1 prove unworthy, then shall she vanish back to her natural abode, and I be more desolate than before she came. And as for this necklace, says he, i it is a talisman ; and should fate ever separate us, yet this be left me, twill be a pledge that . . . " What s happened T THE PEARL-SHELL NECKLACE. 05 1Y. THE yarn broke off abruptly enough. Poyntz and I liad both started to our feet, our eyes and ears straining toward the mill-stream, where little Peter had during the last hour been quietly fishing. The sound of a quick scramble, a heavy plunge, and simultaneously a lusty scream, had sharply broken the repose of the summer afternoon. " Tis the brat has toppled in!" cried Poyntz, the sunburnt ruddiness of his complexion turning to a tawny sallow hue. " He can t swim ; haste ye lower down, sir ; I ll to the pool ; but if as he s carried over the fall, ye ll stop him at the rapid." "We had already set off on a run toward the bank, and we now separated in accordance with Poyntz s sugges tion. I saw no more of the latter, being wholly ab sorbed in carrying out my part of the programme ; and in a few moments I was standing panting beside the rushing water, trying to select the best point from which to take my plunge. Just then I heard a swift rustling step behind me, and there was Agatha, her lovely face and eyes aglow with terrified excitement. Then it passed through my mind that she had always evinced a particular tenderness and affection for poor little Peter ; and at the thought 1 must confess that my resolve to save him at all risks became tenfold as strong as it had been D before. It was all a whirl and confusion ; and only by com paring notes afterward did we make out the order of events. Master Peter, it seems, after much unfruitful angling, had at last succeeded in hooking a huge trout, 66 THE PEARL-SHELL NECKLACE. and straightway liad lost first liis mental and then his bodily balance. The fish being fairly on the hook, and pulling hard, the little man had rather chosen to go in after it, rod and all, than save himself at the cost of losing it. His scream, however, had startled not only his father and myself, but Agatha and his mother like wise ; and the latter had followed her husband, as Agatha did me. When Poyntz reached the brink of the pool, the young fisherman had just risen for the second time, and was circling helplessly in the eddy. Poyntz sprang forward ; but his foot catching in a vine, he fell prone, his head in the water and the rest of his body on dry land. Before he could disentangle himself (an operation which the well-meant but too convulsive efforts of Mrs. Poyntz only served to retard) the child had drifted into the current and was carried over the fall. It was now that Agatha and I first caught sight of him. She pressed impulsively forward, and had I not retained her would have leaped into the headlong rapids herself. As I caught her arm, I felt rather than saw her glance at me, as though measuring rny ability to do what must be done. Apparently her decision was in my favor, for she stepped back ; and an instant after I was staggering breast deep in the boiling stream, watching the swift but topsy-turvy onset of Master Peter. Down he swept ; and to make a long story short, 1 succeeded in catching hold of him without losing my footing, and thereby in saving his life and my own. Agatha helping from the bank, we were soon landed high and dry, or rather, very wet. Then ensued a great and indescribable hullaballoo, wherein the first distinguishable words burst from Mr. Poyntz : " Look ye here, wife !" cried he, laughing and weep- THE PEARL-SHELL NECKLACE. 67 ing in the same breath, " look if the lad hasn t stuck to his fish through it all !" And so it proved ; Peter had rivalled the childish ex ploit of his predecessor, stout little Kit North. There was the rod, still lightly gripped in his small fist ; and a three-pound trout was flapping and gasping at the end of the line. " He s but a chip of the old block, Mr. Poyntz," said I, when the shouts that greeted the discovery had some what subsided. " What is that sticking in the corner of your mouth ?" The old mariner put up his hand and took the thing out, and after staring at it for a moment in comical dis may, he burst into a laugh, in which everybody joined. It was the stem of his well-loved meerschaum, held un consciously between his teeth throughout the entire turmoil ; the bowl had probably been snapped off when he fell on the brink of the pool. So we all retraced our way to the house, the trout resting triumphantly in Peter s arms, who was himself carried by his father. Agatha and I walked side by side ; neither spoke to the other, and 1 knew not what thoughts were in her mind ; but for my own part I had never been more light of heart, and 1 regarded Peter and his trout as the best friends that ever lover had. My achievement had been trifling enough, heaven knows ; but such as it was, it had been done before her eyes, and partly at least for her sake. When we had reached the house door, and the others had passed in before us, she paused on the threshold and turned to me, smiling, with her finger upon the necklace-clasp. " I kissed it to save you ... and Peter !" she added, hastily, and with a light in her dark eyes that was half mischievous, half earnest. 68 THE PEARL-SHELL NECKLACE. " And now that we re saved, I suppose yon are going to kiss . . . Peter?" I dared to reply, for my duck ing had given me courage. She blushed, but looked straight at me ; and the next moment was gone into the house, leaving me uncertain whether I had gone too far or not far enough. But, ah ! happy Peter. A few bruises, and the involuntary swallowing of a gallon or two of water, were the extent of his injuries ; while his blessings were beyond estima tion. When I came down-stairs half an hour later, after changing my clothes, I found him bundled up in an old pea-jacket of his father s, and sitting in Agatha s arms. He w r as watching his mother clean the big trout, the prize of his valor ; and as I passed by, Agatha glanced up at me and kissed him ! I stole oufc by the kitchen door and looked about for Mr. Poyntz ; for his yarn had, for several reasons, begun to interest me exceedingly, and I was most anxious to hear the end of it. But he was nowhere to be seen ; ho had gone off to attend to something on the farm, and would as likely as not be absent till supper-time. It was a long time till then, and meanwhile I was without any thing to amuse me. My mind was restless and excited, and I would have been thankful for any distraction. Nothing turned up, however, and at length without being at the pains even to notice what direction I was taking 1 set off on an objectless tramp, and was soon out of sight of the farm-house. I had plenty to think about so much, indeed, that 1 could think coherently about nothing. Ideas crowded incongruously upon one another, now this one and now that catching my attention for a moment, and then receding to the background. From the picture of my late adventure in the mill-stream, I slid to a review of THE PEARL-SHELL NECKLACE. 69 Agatha my relations with her ; did she care for me ? had my lucky exploit really advantaged me ? and ought 1 to have stolen a kiss upon the doorstep ? Instead of considering these questions, I was pondering the tale which Poyntz had begun to tell. Was it ail true ? would he ever finish it ? and what would be its upshot ? But now the pearl-shell necklace ruled my thoughts. Was it possibly the same as that which my great-grandmother had lost ? and if so, would Agatha be likely to know anything about it ? The next moment a vision of Scholar Gloam had risen before me. How had he come to die, and be buried beneath the Black Oak ? and why was the old mill considered haunted ? David the hand some housekeeper s son what had become of him ? and, above all, what had been the fate of the little sea- nymph ? Then the necklace once more how came Agatha to attach such talismanic virtues to it ? and was not her doing so evidence that she must know its ancient history ? Again, was Agatha Poyntz s own daughter ? and if so, who and what had been her mother ? for she must be the child of a union prior to that which had resulted in Peter. The speculation gave place in turn to the idea of the mill-wheel possessed by the devil, or by the soul of the murdered miller Poyntz had seemed uncertain which. Had its " laugh" really been so terri ble ? or had not an originally harmless, if disagreeable noise acquired a supernatural horror only because list ened to across a gap of twenty years ? Ah well, what matter to me were all these idle, unanswerable queries ? Behind all things before all things, I seemed to meet the sweet fascination of Agatha s dark eyes, and to catch the gleam of her yellow hair. Yes, ever and ever, as the pendulum swings outward and returns, does my thought come back to Agatha ! 70 THE PEARL-SHELL NECKLACE. Immersed in such disjointed musings, I had journeyed on 1 know not how long, when all at once I became con scious, so to speak, of the outward world, and looked up and on all sides of me. Where was I ? In no place certainly that I had ever visited before. The sea was nowhere visible ; the surface of the ground was rocky and irregular, and in nearly every direction the view was shut in by thick growths of pine, birch, and oak. From beyond a clump pf the latter, southward from where I stood, I thought I detected the noise of falling water ; and glancing eastward, I could trace the course of a stream which was itself unseen, by the hedge of stunted timber that fringed its banks. The aspect of the neigh borhood was wild and remote ; it seemed to lie apart from men s ways ; and certainly he would have been an unsocial spirit who should have chosen such a spot to live in. On the other hand, any one in search of a good, place to do a murder in, or hold a witch meeting, need not have looked further. A corpse might lie among these rocks and bushes for twenty years without a chance of being discovered ; and ghosts and witches might scream their eiriest unheard by mortal ear. Meanwhile 1 walked on to the other side of the clump of oak trees, when I suddenly found myself gazing on a scene that involuntarily brought ine to a standstill. Y. 1 WAS now standing on the bank of a stream which, coming from the west, took its course past my feet east ward. For some distance its approach was between THE PEARL-SHELL NECKLACE. 71 gradually rising walls of rock, which were highest just where I stood. Thence was a precipitous descent into a small gorge about one hundred paces in length, whose steep sides opened out toward the east, their meeting- point being my present station. Through the natural gateway which it had cut for itself in the face of the precipice, the stream fell cataract-wise into a deep pool below, whence overflowing it rushed down a rugged in cline, and, having leaped another fall, raced along the middle of the little glen, and so hurried with foam and noise onward to the sea. There were vestiges of a rude bridge, long since broken down, across the natural gateway just men tioned ; and I even fancied that I could detect traces of an ancient footpath which had its beginning somewhere in the west, and, crossing the stream at this point, had then clambered down the slope to the bottom of the gorge. The bridge had not been entirely of stone ; but a stout plank had probably spanned the flood, secured at either end by rough masonry. It must have been a ticklish passage without a handrail, for a false step, fol lowed by a plunge over the cataract, would have been almost certain death. If Master Peter had tumbled in here instead of at the other pool miles lower down, not Poyntz, nor Agatha, nor I, nor all the luck in the world could have got him out alive. The hollow of the gorge was much overgrown with bushes and brambles, and along the margin of the noisy stream the grass was high and rank. At the opening of the little valley farthest from where I stood rose an im mense oak tree the only tree of anything like its size to be seen within a mile whose wide-spreading branches cast a deep shadow on the earth beneath. So thickly clustered the leaves on the stalwart boughs, and so dark ?> THE PEARL-SHELL NECKLACE. was their tint of green, the whole great tree seemed to have been steeped in night. The gorge, though full of sunlight and verdure, and vocal with the splash of the cataracts, wrought on me even at the first glance an im pression of loneliness and desolation. The blue sky seemed farther away from this than from other parts of the earth s surface, and methought the sun shone upon it rather in mockery than in love. Nearly midway down the hollow, and just under the second cataract, hung a huge water-wheel. It hung there motionless, and plainly many a year had passed since it had revolved upon its ponderous axle. It was built of wood, on a clumsy and old-fashioned model, and had become so blackened by age and weather that one might have fancied it charred by fire. Its parts were fastened together with great nails and clamps of iron, the strength of which, however, was now but a deceptive appearance, for the metal was eaten away by red rust, so that a hearty shake would probably have caused the whole structure to tumble into ruin. The rain and snow of unrecorded seasons had spread the rust in streaks and blotches over the swarthy rottenness of the woodwork, until I could almost have believed it dabbled with un sightly stains of blood. Side by side with these ominous discolorations, how ever, were growing patches of tender green moss ; and thick tufts of grass bent gracefully over the heavy rim of the wheel, where it impended above the rushing water. A. delicate vine of convolvulus had become rooted somewhere above, and had wreathed itself in and out among the rigid spokes. It seemed as though nature were striving, with but partial success, to win back to her own fresh bosom this gaunt relic of man s handi work. With but partial success ; for all the magic of THE PEARL-SHELL KECKLACE. 73 lier beautiful adornments could not annul the odd feel ing of repulsion or was it perverted fascination ? with which this sullen wheel began to aft ect me. I know not how to interpret, even to my own mind, the nature of this impression. Solitary as I stood there, I yet could not rid myself of the notion that I was not (in the ordi nary sense of the word) alone. That wheel there was something about it more than belongs to mere negative brute matter. It seemed not devoid of a low and evil form of consciousness almost of personality. I recog nized the morbid extravagance of the idea at the same time that I was po\verless to do away with it. Every one, probably, has had some similar experience ; and the fact that reason cannot account for the sensation does not lessen its impressiveness. The wheel had caught my eye from the first, and, as it were, commanded my main attention. But after a few minutes I looked away from it, not without a con scious effort of will, and gave a closer examination to other objects in the glen. The mill to which the wheel appertained stood on the right bank of the stream, but was now little more than a heap of ruins. The wooden part was wholly decayed, and the stone foundations were displaced and shattered, and covered with weeds and rubbish. A few paces farther back, huddled against the southern acclivity of the gorge, was the carcass of a dis mantled and deserted house. The roof had fallen in, the window frames and sashes were gone, and the lifeless rooms stood open to the air. The stone walls had for merly been overlaid with plaster, but this had mostly fallen away, and what patches remained here and there were stained with greenish mould. A tall clump of barberry bushes was growing just within the threshold of the doorway, as if to dispute the entrance of any 7i THE PEARL-SHELL NECKLACE. chnnce intruder ; and a vigorous plantation of some species of yellow flowers was waving above the remains of the chimney. The spectacle was in every respect forlorn and depressing ; no barren desert, that had never been trodden by the foot of man, could have so repelled and saddened the observer. Man feels no sympathy for what has never known life ; but that which once has lived and now is dead, yet retains in death some sem blance of its extinct vitality that it is which brings the true feeling of desolation home to us. After a time I climbed cautiously down from my coign of vantage, and making my way between loose stones and tangled shrubbery, 1 passed the black wheel and arrived at length beneath the shadow of the great oak. And here, for the first time, I began to feel very weary, with a weariness as much of the mind as of the body. In fact, what with my adventure with Peter, my long walk, and the excitement produced by old Jack Poyntz s strange yarn, I had been through a good deal for an invalid, and had earned the right to a little rest. Looking about for a seat, my eye fell upon a small mound which lay between me and the base of the oak, with a bit of gray stone jutting out from one end of it. It might once have been a bench ; at all events, it would serve my turn, so I threw myself down at full length and pillowed my head and shoulders against it. As I lay, my face was turned toward the open end of the gorge, and away from the house and mill-wheel. These, however, dwelt in my memory ; and on closing my eyes, 1 found that the scene of the ruin stood distinctly before my mental sight, more weird than the reality, because the phantom sunshine appeared pallid and ineffective. The sound of a breeze stirring amid the thick leaves over my head mingled with the gurgle of the stream, THE PEARL-SHELL NECKLACE. 75 until it seemed as if some voice were speaking in a low minor key a tone without passion and without hope. As 1 listened, and fancifully attempted to fashion words and sentences out of the inarticulate murmur, that odd sensation of not being alone (which had all along been hovering about me) suddenly intensified itself to the pitch of conviction. Sitting up with something of a start, 1 glanced nervously toward the mill, and at once had the pleasure of seeing my conviction justified. Tho figure of a man was actually standing on the opposite side of the stream, one hand resting upon the wheel, while he fixed upon me the gaze of a pair of black eyes. He had probably been there from the first, or if not precisely there, then in the near vicinity ; there were, hiding-places enough among the ruins. Nevertheless I felt an unreasonable anger against him. He had como upon me unawares ; and a surprise, if it be not agree able, is apt to be very much the reverse. lie was a person of medium height, perhaps a little below it, and was clad in a shabby old-fashioned coat and small-clothes. He wore no hat, and the black hair which grew thickly upon his high head was curiously variegated with large patches of white. His counte nance showed refinement and sensitiveness ; but the ex pression stamped upon it was singularly painful. I can not better describe it than by saying that it seemed to indicate loss loss beyond remedy either in this world or the next. Its effect upon me resembled that wrought by the desolate house, but was more potent, because humanized. The man seemed beyond middle age, judg ing from the furrows on his brow and the stoop on his shoulders : and yet there was a kind of immaturity in his aspect. He was as one whose intellectual much out weighed his actual experience ; who had dwelt amid ?G THE PEARL-SHELL NECKLACE. theories and eschewed reality. Such a combination of age and youth needs a strong seasoning of sincerity and simplicity to make it palatable ; but in the present case these qualities were wanting, and instead there was an indefinable flavor of moral perversion. When we had regarded each other for several mo ments, the man crossed the mill-race and advanced toward me, making a gesture of greeting with his hand. Ills manner was well-bred and quiet, and left no doubt that lie was a gentleman ; notwithstanding which I felt an antipathy against him, and was half -minded to ad monish him that his presence was unwelcome. That I did not yield to this impulse was due, perhaps, less to courtesy than to the strong sentiment of curiosity with which the stranger had already inspired me. In other words, he was a magnet that attracted me with one pole while repelling me with the other ; and the attraction was, for the moment, the stronger force of the two. At this juncture it occurred to me I know not how 1 had failed to think of it before that these ruins must be what was left of the Laughing Mill, to which Poyntz had made allusion in his interrupted yarn. The recog nition gave me a thrill of a kind not altogether agree able ; I was glad that the sun shone instead of the moon. Nor did I, under these changed conditions, so much regret the presence of a companion. I was in a nervous and abnormal state, and though far from superstitious no lawyer could venture to be that I preferred society to solitude in a place which had the reputation of being haunted. It was healthier to converse about such fol lies even with an unsympathetic interlocutor than to brood over them in private. This old-fashioned per sonage, moreover, had the air of being familiar with the neighborhood ; perhaps he was in the habit of coming THE PEARL-SHELL NECKLACE. 77 here, and could give me some information about its former inhabitants Scholar Gloam and the rest. I re pented my former rude intentions, and resolved to bo friends with him, and draw him out. Accordingly I returned his salute, and commanded my features to an expression of affability. VI. WITHIN about three paces of me he stopped, and passed his hand two or three times through the black and white masses of his hair. He had the air of trying to rouse himself from a mood of painful preoccupation. At length he spoke in a faint, unaccented tone, like a voice heard far off. " 1 want your sympathy," said he. " Have we met before ?" 1 asked, rather taken aback. " I really don t remember but I believe I ve been half asleep, and am hardly awake yet." He shook his head slowly, his black eyes curiously perusing my face. " You have chosen an ill place to sleep in," he remarked, after a pause. " Many a year have I sought repose ther.e in vain." " Indeed ? Well, I came here quite by accident, and judging by the aspect of the place, 1 shouldn t have sup posed it would have been often visited." " You are right, few come hither now ; but as many as do so are liable to meet with me." I looked more narrowly at my queer companion, and all at once the thought struck me, the man is mad ! Yes, it must be so. How otherwise could the strange- 78 THE PEARL-SHELL NECKLACE. ness of liis appearance, behavior, and conversation be accounted for ? He did not look dangerous ; probably lie was some harmless crazy creature, incapable of doing harm, and therefore permitted to wander about as he liked. In the moral atmosphere of these ruins he was sensible of somewhat congenial to his own forlornness, and hence haunted them rather than any more cheerful spot. Certainly, this was an appropriate haunt for a madman for one whose mind had fallen into that ugliest chaos which was once beauty and order. But I liked the spectacle of mental even less than that of mate rial decay ; and though the poor gentleman had asked me for my sympathy, I scarcely knew how to give it to him. By I know not what faculty of divination, he ap peared to suspect what was passing in my mind. * I am not mad," he said, quietly, but with a tremor of the finely cut though irresolute lips. " I am not mad, I have passed beyond insanity. Let me sit down here and talk to you. Nay do not rise ! Recline as you were doing, and close your eyes if you will ; I need only your ears." While speaking thus he passed behind me, and appar ently seated himself at the foot of the oak tree, outside of my range of vision. But no sooner was he out of plain sight, than I was seized with an odd fantasy that he had actually vanished into thin air, and that were I to look round, I should not find him. His voice only was left, and even that now seemed unearthly. Was it a human voice ? and not rather the rustling of leaves and the gurgling of water, translated by my feverish imagi nation into weird speech ? " You were dreaming," resumed the voice ; li what dreams had you of the wheel T THE PEARL-SHELL NECKLACE. 79 " What dreams had I of the wheel ?" I repeated, leaning back on the mound, and clasping my hands across my eyes. Here was another instance of my new friend s insight. *How had he known that the wheel was in my thoughts at all ? Yet it was true that I had given rein to all sorts of fanciful speculations concerning it, and was now, moreover, quite in the mood to give them utterance. And what better auditor could I desire than a madman, whom the wildest extravagance could not disconcert, nor the most palpable absurdities an noy ? The opportunity was too fair to lose. u What dreamt I of the wheel ?" I exclaimed again ; " I dreamt it was the mighty Wheel of Fortune, who, weary of trundling it about the world, had left it here amid the sedge and spray of the waterfall. Henceforth, therefore, there shall be no more ups and downs in life, but mankind shall move forever across one level plain, unchecked by darkness and uncheered by light !" " Would you have it thus ?" " Oh, no not I ! Come back, fair goddess ! come back and wrest thy wheel from amid those clinging vines and brambles the arms wherewith reluctant nature strives to hold it back ! Bring it forth once again upon the dusty road, and turn it as you go, lest our sluggish hearts forget to beat, and we cease to draw the very breath of life, and our souls, torpid and uninspired, grovel earthward, nor dream of climbing higher than themselves ! Bring forth thy wheel, and turn it forever even as the world turns ; for thy fickleness is the life of our lives !" u Hetl links the wheel of misfortune were its truer title ; for it turns ever between a fool above and a corpse beneath ; and the laugh of madness sounds be fore, and behind is a track of blood !" 80 THE PEARL-SHELL NECKLACE. " !N"ay, name it how you will ; since all of 1mm an joy and grief, and life and death, have clustered round its course, as the moss and the vines qjuster about it now. See how nature seeks to make the awful symbol of des- / tiny into a plaything for her own beautiful idleness ! How fearlessly the light and shadow rest upon it ! Yet it is bloodstained. Those rank ferns bend and peer in quest of some lurking horror. What is it ? I feel its influence upon me." " Ay, you feel it !" murmured my unseen compan ion, tremulously ; " how could you help but feel it ? Do not the tragedies of human life instil their essence into the things we call inanimate ? You have shuddered when handling the rack and the Iron Virgin of the In quisition, and felt faint at the sight of the guillotine and the gallows. You were awed by an evil influence breathed from the actual wood and iron not by the mere knowledge of ghastly scenes in which they had borne a part. " " How came the influence there ?" I asked, humoring his grotesque theory. That which has existed in an atmosphere of revenge, hatred, and despair, becomes at last impregnated with a malignant intelligence derived from them ; an intelli gence both devilish in itself and able to endow you with its own deformity. And if you hold not aloof from it, you shall surely be destroyed in soul, if not in body likewise !" u But do we feel this influence unless aware before hand that it is there ?" " Fix your thought constantly upon yonder wheel," was the reply, " and mark if it does not answer you." Still with my hands clasped across my eyes, I concen trated my mind as directed, and presently felt my veins THE PEARL-SHELL NECKLACE. bl crawl with a slow chill of dismay a chill which deprived me of control over my faculties, while awakening them to unnatural activity. That the wheel had a conscious personality, instinct with evil, seemed no longer open to doubt. Now the plash and gurgle of the water changed to the stealthy drip of blood ; and 1 shrank from the breeze that moved my hair as from a pestilential breath. Was I going mad too ? My will seemed to falter ; a tremor which I could not repress passed through me from head to foot. " Ay, you feel it," murmured the voice again ; u you are answered !" By a determined effort I regained command of my self ; perhaps it was none too soon. Nothing is easier than to indulge this morbid vein, and few indulgences, I believe, are more perilous. With my change of mood came a change of tone ; I cast aside the hysteric style, and adopted one more brusque and matter-of-fact, to which the reaction from sentimentality may have added a touch of asperity. " Come, come !" 1 said, " we are overdoing this folly. I know well enough what place this is ; Mr. Poyntz began to tell me about it this afternoon. An amusing story all about the Laughing Mill, and the fellow who was drowned, and the nymph of the pearl-shell necklace you see I know what 1 am talking about ! But the tale broke off in the middle ; perhaps you can finish it ? " It is you who must finish it I 1 returned the other. " But I want your sympathy ; so let me tell my part." " Do so," said 1, by all means. " When 1 know you better, I shall be better able to sympathize with you. As to my finishing the story, I think I m more likely to succeed as a listener than as a narrator ; however, if it must be so, I ll give it the best ending I can. And I do 83 THE PEARL-SHELL NECKLACE. sympathize with you already," I added, after a pause, in a less flippant tone. " I am a man, and I believe in human brotherhood." My eccentric companion made no rejoinder, though I fancied he gave a sigh. Presently he began to speak in the same evenly-pitched, far-away voice that he had used throughout. The effect was rather as of a weary reader reading from a book than as of one who talks spontane ously. There was no hesitation, no rise and fall, no fire, no faltering. Yet the recital moved me more deeply than if it had been delivered with impassioned eloquence. Through the sad colorless medium I seemed to behold the direct movement of events, and almost to take part in them. Moreover, as the narrator proceeded, the notion more than once possessed me that his words reached my ears from some inward source that I was merely thinking the things 1 seemed to hear. His tone was so attuned to the desolateness of the surroundings, as to appear like the mystic interpretation of their signifi cance, such as might result from intense brooding over them. Indeed, taking into consideration all that I had seen, heard, and fancied that day, I almost believe I could have fallen asleep and dreamed just such a story as he told me. Certainly no dream could have been stran ger than the things he told. VII. THEY brought the yellow-haired little maiden to the mill (ran the story), and Gloam called her Swanhilda. Jacl, the old housekeeper, looked at her sharply, and THE PEARL-SHELL NECKLACE. 83 asked what good such a little creature could be among poor people ? the girl was of no use herself, and would only hinder those who had to work. Gleam answered, " Heaven has sent her to us. She shall be our inspiration, and the symbol of our good. Treat her with reverence, and tenderly, as you would treat the best and purest aspiration of your heart. If we wrong her, it will be our deadliest sin. If we cherish her, the sins we have committed may be forgiven ur%" " She is a gentleman s daughter, at all events," said Jael. " Look at the shape of her hands and feet ! No, she never worked, nor did her mother before her. Well, maybe her family will come after her some day, and pay us well for taking care of her. Or who knows but she may turn out heiress to some great estate, when she grows up ? If that were so ... David, son, come hither. See she s a pretty little thing." Handsome David stooped down and took the child s email soft hand. " And so she is a little beauty !" he exclaimed, looking into her blue eyes. Can t speak English, eh ? That s a pity ; but live and learn. Eight glad am I that you brought her here, sir," he added, to Gloam. " Where did you pick her up ?" " She s the rainbow after the storm," Gloam an swered, smiling. " But I shall not teach her English. Let her speak only the language which she has brought with her." And he led the child away. " That may do for him," muttered David, " but it won t do for me. He can talk with her and I can t ; so if he won t teach her English 1 will. Devil take me if she isn t a sweet little fairy ; and she s quite enchanted the Scholar already. He s a changed man since yester day. But he sha n t have all the fun to himself." "She looks thirteen, don t you think?" said Jael. 84 THE PEARL-SHELL NECKLACE. " She won t be a child much longer, David. Why, come three years or so, she ll be old enough to be mar ried." " Ay, old woman ; but 1 shall be too old to marry her," he answered, with a keen look and a laugh. " 1 tell you, son, she s a lady, and good enough to mate with any man." " That s your notion, and likely enough it s true. But good blood isn t all 1 want I ve got that already, thanks to your good looks ; what I want and haven t got is money. And Miss Swanhilda, pretty as she is, has less money even than I." " But she has relations rich relations ; her own father and mother may be alive for all we know. If she was saved off a ship where all the rest were lost, of course there ll be no telling for some time to come. But it s worth waiting for." " Did no papers come ashore nothing to help iden tify her ?" " 1 asked Poyntz that, said Jael, " and so far as 1 can make out, I think there hasn t been anything." " Well, I ll make sure of that next time 1 go over. We might advertise in the foreign papers after a while. A right pretty little thing she is, and no mistake. But I m not a-going to run any risks, old woman. Supposing 1 was to get tied down to her for life, and then find out that she d got nothing, what would 1 do then ?" " There s no need of supposing any such thing, David. As if you couldn t make the girl fond of you so as she wouldn t marry any but you ; then you d have her safe, and if all turned out well, twould be time enough to put the ring on her finger." " Ay, that s about the idea, i suppose. Well, the Scholar s got the start of us now ; and twon t do to let THE PEARL-SHELL NECKLACE. 85 him sec what we re up to ; luckily he never did see what s going on under his nose. By the way, that s a quaint bit of a necklace the child wears ; may haps that ll help us to find out something " He broke off suddenly, with an oath, and he and his mother stood listening, pale-faced. His eyes were angry, but terror lurked in those of the woman. A strange jarring sound filled the air ; it seemed to come from every side, and screamed harshly into the listeners ears. If a fiend had burst into a long iit of malignant laughter close at hand the effect could not have been more hateful and discordant. " The laugh again !" David muttered between his teeth. " It would be just our luck if it scared our best customer away. The witch take me if I don t begin to believe it is the soul of that cursed husband of yours, that you treated so affectionately. I ll swear there s not a spot of rust on the machinery as big as a pin s head." " Oh, son, don t look that way at me," said the woman, in a shaken voice. " 1 would prevent it if 1 could ; what can I do ?" " You might jump in and follow your husband ; that s what he wants, I suppose," returned the son, angrily. " It s you that wronged him, not I ; and as long as you re here we ll have no luck that s the long and short of it !" The laugh had died away, and Jael, pressing her hand above her head, turned aside and passed out. She loved her son, and would have shed her blood for him ; but this was not the first time he had spoken thus. After she was gone, David stood at the window, biting his lips and muttering to himself. Suddenly he heard Gloam s step behind him, and looked round in surprise. " What was that noise ?" Gloam asked. 8G THE PEAKL-SHELL KECKLACE. " Why, nothing new, sir. The same old story. Something wrong with the wheel again, I suppose." 11 1 remember no such sound before," said Gloam, ex citedly. " It is hideous, like the shriek of an evil spirit. Let it never come again it frightens Swanhilda, and comes between us like a prophecy of woe. Let it never come again !" " You have taken to hearing through her ears and feeling through her senses that s all the matter," an swered David, smiling. " It sounds bad to you because it makes her head ache. As to stopping it, I d do so and gladly if 1 but knew how. It loses us half our cus tom, for folks say the devil s at the bottom of it, sure enough !" "It is a wicked sound!" exclaimed Gloam again, "full of mockery and bitterness. Swanhilda was born to hear divine harmonies, and she will leave us if we greet her with such hideous discord." " She was born to take her chance with the rest of the world, Mr. Gloam," replied the younger man, in a harder tone. Then he smiled again, and added, in his muttering way, as he left the room, u She ll get used to it fast enough, never fear. " But a long time passed without the recurrence of the hateful sound, and meanwhile Swanhilda was recovering from her first melancholy and home-sickness. Gloam had told her that she would see her father and mother again some day, and by degrees her anxiety calmed down to a quiet and not uncheerful expectation. She seemed to know little of the history of her family, or else was averse from discussing it ; for amid all her winning sweetness and pure sincerity she retained a maidenly reserve and dignity not lightly to be overcome. But the guileless fascination which she unconsciously exercised THE PEARL-SHELL NECKLACE. 87 upon all she met it was impossible to resist. She glad dened all eyes and hearts, and the mill became a store house of beauty and gladness as well as of grain and meal. People came from all the surrounding neighbor hood to see Scholar Gloam s water-nymph ; and at last, when the Laughing Mill was mentioned, they thought of Swanhilda s airy merriment not of the ill-omened sound that had first given it that name, but was already being fast forgotten. So the prosperity of handsome David increased, and was greater than it had ever been before ; he had as many customers as the mill could supply, and bade fair, in the course of years, to become a wealthy man. He and Jael treated the little water-nymph with every kindness, as well they might ; and what Gloam had said seemed likely to come true that she would be the means of their regeneration. And Gloam himself was as a man transfigured. He lived no longer amid his books, but made himself free to all, and the neighbors wondered to find him so genial and gladsome. He and Swanhilda were constantly to gether ; they played and laughed like children ; they w T ent on long rambles hand in hand ; in winter they pelted each other with snowballs ; in summer and autumn they gathered flowers and berries and nuts. He treated her with the most reverent and entire affection ; he was ready to sacrifice anything for her sake, to give her anything unless it were, perhaps, the freedom to be to another all that she was to him. But apparently she was well content. Gloarn was the only one who spoke her language, and the only one, therefore, with whom she could converse unrestrainedly. He would not teach her English, and if others attempted to do so it was without his knowledge or consent. He believed, it may be, that no one but himself could appreciate her 88 THE PEARL-SHELL NECKLACE. full worth, and thought it would be a kind of desecra tion to let another approach her too nearly. Certainly they were happy together. That part of his nature to which she appealed was not less youthful than she was herself ; and in her society he felt himself immortally young. He forgot that there were lines upon his brow, and that his figure was bent, and that his hair had begun to be prematurely white. And he doubted not that as he felt, so he seemed to her. Was his confidence justified ? Had this child, who was just beginning to be a young woman, penetration to see the fresh soul within the imperfect body ? A more experienced man would have had misgivings, knowing that young women are apt to judge by appearances, and to be more swayed by downright power and passion than by abstract right and beauty. But Gleam s experience had not taught him this. He did not dream that she could ever learn to deceive him, or to give him less than the first place in her heart. But he dreamed that some clay, distant perhaps, at least indefinite they would be married. By all rights they belonged to each other, and when they had played their childish games to the end, and had wearied of them, then would they enter upon that new phase of life. Meanwhile he would not speak to her of the deeper love, lest she should be startled, and the frankness of their present intercourse be impaired. But women have been lost ere now through fear of start ling them. So more than two years slipped away, and the child Swanhilda had grown to be a tall and graceful maiden ; which seemed half a miracle, so quickly had the time passed. Her blue eyes had waxed larger and deeper, and in moments of excitement they became almost black. Her hair was yellow as an evening cloud ; her face and THE PEARL-SHELL NECKLACE. 89 bearing full of life and warmth. Her nature was strengthening and expanding ; she was beginning to measure herself against her associates. Though so gentle, she was all untamed ; no one had ever mastered or controlled her. She knew neither her own strength nor weakness, but the time approached when she would seek to know them. Every woman is both weaker and stronger than she believes, and it is well for her, when the trial comes, if her strength be not the betrayer of her weakness. YIII. AT this point in the story the voice of the narrator grew fainter, and then made a pause. I still kept my reclining position, with my hands clasped above my closed eyes. In fact, it would have required a greater effort than I at the moment cared to make to have sat up and looked about me. The sun, I knew, had already sunk below the crest of the slope ; the gorge lay in shadow, and beneath the oak it was almost dark. As I lay waiting for the tale to recommence, the sombre influ ence of the wheel asserted itself more strongly than ever. There it loomed, in my imagination, black, grim, and portentous. Its huge spokes stretched out like rigid arms, and the long grass which streamed along the gur gling water resembled the hair of a drowned woman s head. . . . But now the voice began again. One summer afternoon Gloam and Swanhilda were sitting on the wooden bench beside the mill, watching the heavy revolutions of the great wheel. They were 90 THE PEARL-SHELL NECKLACE. alone. David was in the mill-room finishing the clay s work, and Jacl was preparing supper in the kitchen. For several minutes neither of them had spoken. "Do you remember," said Swanhilda, at last, using her native tongue, " the first day I came here, how there came a terrible sound that made me miserably fright ened ? I have never heard it since then. What was i. 95? it g " Only a rusty axle ; at least, so I suppose. That careless David had forgotten to oil it properly. But 1 gave him such a scolding that there lias been no more trouble." " David is not careless he works very hard, and 1 love him," retorted Swanhilda, tossing back her yellow hair. " Besides, such a noise could not be made by an axle." " You may like David, but you mustn t love him ; you are a little princess, and he is only the housekeeper s son." " What is the difference between loving and liking ?" inquired Swanhilda, folding her hands in her lap, and turning round on her companion. He took her hand and answered, " I shall teach you that when you are older." " I am not so young as you think. 1 am old enough to be taught now." " No, no, no !" said Gloam, shaking his head and laughing ; " you are nothing but a child yet. There is plenty of time, little water-nymph." "If you will not teach me, I ll find some one else who will teach me. I will ask David ! he has taught me some things already." "He? What have you learned from him?" cried Gloam. THE PEARL-SHELL NECKLACE. 91 Swanhilda hesitated. " I should not have said that but it s nothing, only that I am learning to speak Eng lish. He didn t want you to know until I was quite perfect, so as to make it a surprise to you." " lie had no right to do it. Why should you learn to speak with any one but me ?" exclaimed Gloam, passion ately. " Do you think I belong to you ?" demanded Swan hilda, lifting her head in half earnest, half laughing de fiance. " No ; 1 am my own, and there are other places besides this in the world, and other people. I will go back to my own country." " Oh, Swanhilda," said Gloam, his voice husky with dismay, " you will never leave us ? I cannot live with out you." " I will, if you are unkind to me. . . . "Well, then, you must not be angry because David taught me Eng lish ; and you must let him teach me the difference be tween liking and loving ; I m sure he knows what it is!" "Do not ask him do not ask him! That is my right ; no one can take it from me ! I saved you, Swanhilda ; I brought you back to life, and that new life belongs to me !" The hand that held hers had turned cold, and he was pale and trembling. " I have kept you for myself ; I have given up my own life the life that I used to live for you. I cannot return to it, if you leave me." " I did not ask you to give it up," she returned, way- wardly. Then she relented, and said, " Well, you may teach me about loving, if you want to. Only, after- w ard, you must let me love any one I please !" Gloam looked upon her for several moments, his black eyes lingering over every line of her face and figure. 92 THE PEARL-SHELL NECKLACE. " Yon belong to me," he repeated at last. " If yon left me for another, I should wish that your pearl-shells had drawn yon down " Before he could finish uttering the thought that was in his heart, the words were drowned in a throbbing yell as of demoniac laughter. The evil spirit of the wheel, after biding its time so long in silence, had seemingly leaped exultingly into life at the first premonition of meditated wrong. Swanhilda shuddered, and hid her face in her hands. David thrust his head out of the mill-room window, and saw Gloam make a gesture of rage and defiance. " Aha !" lie muttered to himself, " so the children s games are over, are they ? Can it be the devil s game that my beloved brother thinks of beginning now ?" Another year passed, and again a man and a woman were sitting together on the bench beside the mill. It was night, and a few stars twinkled between the rifts of cloud overhead. The gorge was so dark that the mill- stream gurgled past invisibly, save where now and then a rising eddy caught the dim starlight. The tall wheel, motionless now, and only discernible as a blacker imprint on the darkness, lurked like a secret enemy in ambush. The man s arm was clasped round the woman s waist ; her head rested on his shoulder, and her soft fingers were playing with the pearl-shell necklace that encircled her neck. They spoke together in whispers, as though fear ful of being overheard. "Yon silly little goose! the man said; "a few months ago, nothing would make yon happy but learn ing what love was ; and now you have found out yon must ever be whimpering arid paling. Why, what are you afraid of ?" THE PEARL-SHELL NECKLACE. 93 " Yon know I am happy in loving yon, David/ was the tremulous answer; "but must lovers always hide their love, and pretend before others that they do not feel it ? "When I first dreamed of love, it seemed to me like the blue sky and the sunshine, and the songs of the birds ; but our love is secret and silent, like the night." " Pooh ! nonsense, and so much the better ! Our love is nobody s business but our own, my" lass. You wouldn t have Gloam find it out, would you, and part us ? What, have you forgotten the fit he was in at my teaching you English a year ago ? He wants you all to himself, the old miser ! You weren t happier with him than you have been with me, were you ?" " Oh, David," whispered the girl, clinging to him, " that was so different ! 1 was happy, then, like a wave on the beach in summer. I had no deep thoughts, and my heart never beat as you make it beat, and my breath never came in long sighs as it does often now. Gloam used to say that he had brought me back from death to life ; but it was not so. I lived first when 1 loved you. And the old happiness was not real happiness, for there was no sadness in it ; it never made me cry, as this does." He drew her to him with a little laugh. "When you ve lived a little more and got used to it, you ll stop sighing and crying, and be as bright and saucy as you were with Gloam. But you won t want to tell him ... eh ?" She hid her face on his shoulder. " Oh, no, no, no ! 1 could not ; 1 should feel ashamed. But why do I feel ashamed, David ? Is not loving right ?" " Right ? to be sure it is. Nothing more so ! And the pleasantest kind of right, too, to my thinking. Eh, little one ?" 94 THE PEARL-SHELL NECKLACE. " David, I have heard are not people who love each other married at least sometimes ? and after that they are not afraid, or sad, or ashamed ?" A smile hovered on David s handsome lips. " Mar ried ? yes, stupid people get married. Timid folks, who are afraid to manage their own affairs, and can t be easy till they ve called in the parson to help them out. They re the folks that don t love each other right down hard, as you and I do. They re suspicious, and afraid of being left in the lurch ; so they stand up in a church and tie themselves together by a troublesome knot they call marriage. No, no ; we ve nothing to do with that ; we re much better off as it is." " But my father and mother were married, and they were not suspicious," ventured Swanhilda again, after a pause. " Oh, ay, they were married," assented David ; add ing, half to himself, " and if they were alive, too, and anxious to fill a son-in-law s pockets, I d open mine, and gladly. But my father and mother were not married," he resumed to Swanhilda, with another smile, " so you see we ve a good example either way." She made no reply, but lifted her head from his shoulder and sat twisting the necklace between her rest less fingers, her eyes fixed absently on the darkness. The clasps of the necklace came unawares apart, and it slipped from her bosom to the ground. She uttered a little cry, and stood up with her hands clasped, all of a tremble. " I have lost it !" she said. " David, some harm is coming to me !" " Nonsense ! here it is, as good as ever." He picked it up as he spoke, and drawing her down beside him, fastened it again round her neck, and then kissed her THE PEARL-SHELL NECKLACE. 95 face and lips. " There, there, you re all right. Did you think it was dropped in the mill-race ?" "Some harm is coming," she repeated. "It has never fallen from me since my mother put it on my shoulders, and said it would keep me from being hurt or drowned, but that I must never part from it. But I trust you, oh, my love ! 1 trust you. Something seems wrong, somehow ; 1 have given you all myself . . ." " Lean close up to me, little one ; rest that soft little qlieek of yours against mine, and have done with crying now, or I ll think you mean to melt all away and leave me ; and what would I do then ?" She turned and clasped her arms round him with a kind of fierceness. " I leave you, David ? Oh ha, ha, ha ! Oh, but you must never leave me, my love love love ! Oh, what should I do if you were to leave me ?" Hush, girl, hush ! you ll rouse the house laughing and crying in the same minute ! Don t you know 1 won t leave you? There hush. You ll wake Gloarn else." " He loved me, too ; he wouldn t leave me ; but he thought I wasn t old enough not old enough, ha, ha ! . . . David, does God know about us ?" " Not enough to trouble Him much, I expect," said the young man, with a short laugh. "If anything knows about us, it s the old wheel there, waiting like a black devil to carry us off. Come, we must creep back to the house. They rose, Swanhilda stood before him, her sweet, sad face glimmering shadowy pale through the darkness. " Say, t I love you, Swanhilda, and I will never leave you ! she whispered. He hesitated, laughed, stroked her hair, and stooping, 96 THE PEARL-SHELL NECKLACE. gazed deep into "her eyes, as on the day when they first met. Did his heart falter for a moment, realizing how utterly she was his own ? " You trusted me just now," said he ; " are you getting suspicious again ?" "No; but I am afraid always afraid now. When you are not with me, 1 am afraid of every one 1 meet ; 1 think they will see our secret in my eyes. When I lie alone at night, I am afraid to pray to God, as 1 used to do. What is it ? Why do I feel so ? It must be that we have done some wrong. My poor love ! have I made you do any wrong ? I would rather be dead." " Little darling no ! You couldn t do wrong if you tried. There is no wrong I swear there isn t ! Listen, now, in. your ear : I love you, Swanhilda, and I will never leave you ! Satisfied now ? Low as the words were whispered, they were heard beyond the stars, and stamped themselves upon the eter nal records. But their only palpable witness was the mill-wheel. A log of wood, carried over the fall, came forcibly in contact with the low-impending rim. It swung the heavy structure partly round upon its axle. And straightway, upon the hollow night, echoed a faint yet appalling sound as of jeering laughter. Slowly it died away, and silence closed in once more, like darkness after a midnight lightning flash. But it vibrated still in the startled hearts of the man and the woman, who crept so stealthily back to the house, and vanished in the blackness of the doorway, and it revisited their unquiet dreams. THE PEARL-SHELL NECKLACE. " 97 IX. SUMMER and winter came and went, and were followed by a gloomy and dismal spring. The late-lying snow was dissolved by heavy rains, so that the mill-stream was swollen beyond precedent, and rolled thundering through the gorge with the force of a full-grown cataract. But the mill was idle, and the wheel stood still. None came for flour now, nor to bring grist ; for many a week all work had been foregone. Yet the house was not deserted. An elderly woman, with a forbidding face that had once been handsome moved to and fro behind the windows ; and a man, bent and feeble, with strangely grizzled hair, sat motionless for hours at a time in his study-chair. Sometimes, in his loneliness, he would set his teeth edge to edge, and clench his thin hands desperately, and utter an inarticu late sound of menace. But at a certain hour of the evening he would arise and walk with noiseless steps to the door of a darkened chamber. There he would pause and lean and listen. Presently from within would be heard tho shrill, petulant crying of an infant, and anon the voice of its young mother, sad and tender, soothing and pathetic. < Baby, baby, don t cry ; hush, hush, hush ! father will come to us soon ; he will come, he will come ! he loves us and will never leave us ; hush hush, hush P At these sounds the pallid visage of the man would quiver and darken, and he would press his clenched hands upon his breast. Returning at length to his study, he got upon his knees and stretched his arms upward. " God God of evil or of good, whichever you are 98 THE PEARL-SHELL NECKLACE. give my enemy into my power ! Let my curse work upon him till it destroy him ; let my eyes see him perish ! He has robbed me of my love, and my hope, and my salvation ; he has defiled and dishonored that which was mine ; he has made my life a desert and an abomination ! Yet I would live, and suffer all this and more, if he might perish by my curse, body and soul, forever ! Grant me this, God or devil, and after do with me what you will !" Such was his prayer. But he never entered the dark ened chamber where the child and its young mother lay ; he never looked upon them or spoke to them, nor did his heart forgive them. He could not forgive till lie had had revenge. Since that hour in which he had first learned the truth, and with hysteric fury had sprung at the seducer s throat, his soul had been empoisoned against them and all the world. He was possessed by that devil to which he prayed, and good was evil to him. One day he was standing in a kind of stupor at his window staring out at the black mill-wheel, which was now the only object in the world with which he felt him self in sympathy. There came a knock at the door, and Jael, the housekeeper, entered. Since the calamity which had befallen, her mariner toward Gloam had un dergone a change. She had before exercised a kind of authority over him, such as a compact and unsympathetic nature easily acquires over one of wider culture but more sensitive than its own. But Gloam had become more terrible in his desolation than a less naturally gentle man would have been ; and Jael feared him. She felt that he might murder her ; and minded her steps, lest in some sudden paroxysm he should leap out upon her. She advanced a little way into the room, and stopped. THE PEARL-SHELL KEOKLAOE. 99 lie did not turn, or show that he was aware of her pres ence. After a few moments she said : " Master, he is coming back ; David s coming home again, sir. He s going to make it all right with Swan- hilda lie means to marry her !" Gloam did not stir ; but as Jael watched him nar rowly, she fancied that his limbs and body slowly stif fened, until they became quite rigid ; only his head had a slight shivering motion. The woman shrank back a step, with a feeling of alarm. It seemed a long while before Gloam spoke, and the same slight, involuntary shiver pervaded his voice. He still kept his face carefully averted. - David coming back ?" Yes, sir ; I had a message from him this morning." "To . . . marry her !" " Yes, indeed, sir ; he ll make an honest woman of her. What he has done has laid heavy on his conscience ever since. And so he says he hopes you ll forgive and forget, and that we ll all prosper and be happy in the future." Gloam s chest began to heave, and he folded his arms tightly across it. There was another long pause, as though he feared to trust his voice to speak. Finally the words came between his shut teeth : " When when when ?" " Did you mean, when will he be here, sir ? Well, lie was expecting to reach the next town late this after noon ; and from there he d foot it over here ; and that wouldn t bring him here till nigh midnight. But likely he ll wait over, and get here to-morrow morning. Luckily though there s a moon to-night, to show him where to step, in case he comes right on." Gloam unfolded his arms, and raising his hands to his 100 THE PEARL-SHELL NECKLACE. head, passed them several times slowly through his hair ; staring downward, meanwhile, at the wheel. The rigidity had passed away, and he seemed to be recover ing from the agitation into which the first shock of the news had thrown him. Jael s mind was a good deal re lieved at the absence of any signs of hostility on his part against David ; and she was just about withdrawing, when Gloam turned quickly about and stepped after her. For the first time in the interview she now saw his face ; and the sight so far startled her firm nerves as to draw from her a short, low cry. It was not that the face was pallid, furrowed, and wasted ; it had been all that from the first ; but what appalled her was the ghastly expression of the mouth and eyes. It was not a smile, unless an evil spirit smiles, foreseeing the destruc tion of its victim. Evil it was delightedly evil, like the triumph of long-baffled hate. It was a cruel, hun gry, debased expression, hideously at variance with the passionate and ill-regulated but refined character of the man. It suggested the idea that Gloam was possessed by a strange spirit, more potent and more wicked than his own, which commanded his body to what uses it pleased, in spite of all that he could do. For it was evident that he himself understood the cause of Jael s dismay ; and he made a violent effort to drive the awful look out of his face. So far from suc ceeding, however, he was forced to break out into a frantic laugh, which echoed shrilly through the silent house, and seemed, to Jael s scared ears, a copy of the infernal cachinnation which was wont to issue from the bewitched mill. " Don t mind it, Jael," he said, as soon as he could speak; " it s nervousness it s the reaction from sus pense ! Wait have you told , . . ?" THE PEARL-SHELL NECKLACE. 101 " Swanliilda, sir? not yet I thought I d best break it gradually \ " Don t tell her don t hint it to her !" He spoke in a harsh whisper, bending forward toward her ; " be cause because he might not come after all !" Then the mocking devil seized upon him again ; and though he folded his arms and held down his head, the unholy laughter which he strove to suppress shook his whole body and turned his white face dark. The housekeeper was glad to escape from the room, for she thought Gloam must have gone mad, and knew not what insane violence he might commit. Her first impulse was to run out and summon help ; but after her immediate panic had cooled down, she thought better of such a proceeding. The explanation of his behavior which Gloam himself had given seemed, upon reflection, reasonable enough. The abrupt manner in which she had told the news had thrown him for the moment off his balance. It was, upon the whole, rather a good sign than a bad one, for it showed him not so much deadened by suffering as he had appeared to be. When he had had time to rally, he w^ould be his own gentle and man ageable self once more. Meanwhile she made preparations to receive David on his return. The young man s conduct toward Swan- hilda had so angered his mother that she had more than acquiesced in the banishment which Gloam s rage had forced upon him. Not that she loved Swanliilda much ; nor did the mere immorality of her son s deed greatly afflict her. But she had never ceased to have faith that, sooner or later, news would come of the yellow-haired maiden s relatives beyond the sea. It would come, per haps, in the form of a wealthy and open-hearted gentle man ; or of a lady, with diamonds sparkling on her 102 THE PEARL-SHELL NECKLACE. hands and bosom. They would say, " We have learned that the little niece or cousin whom we had thought lost was saved, and is living here with you." " Yes," Jael would reply ; u and she has been brought up as true a lady as if she were in a queen s palace ; for we knew she had blue blood in her veins, and would come by her own at last." Then Swanhilda would appear, and captivate them with her beauty and simplicity. But when they offered to take her away, the girl would say, " Not with out David, for I love him !" "Whereupon, no doubt, there would be objections and remonstrances ; but David s handsome face and engaging manners would half disarm them ; and at the last Jael herself would arise, and, sacrificing the woman to the mother, would declare openly, " He too is of gentle blood ; his father was old Harold Gloam ; he is the descendant of gentle men, and not unworthy of the girl who loves him." So would resistance finally be overcome, and all concerned be enriched. Such had been Jael s dream ; and her resentment at the revelation of David s crime had been mainly aroused by the fact that it involved the frustration of a chance of fortune her own espousal of which had rendered espe cially dear to her. When the scheme was first con ceived, the young man had, indeed, acquiesced in it ; but as time went on and inquiries proved fruitless, he had abandoned the hope of obtaining wealth and station through Swanhilda s means. Yet the girl loved him, arid was very beautiful ; much of their time was of necessity passed in each other s society ; and in the end the sin was sinned. Doubtless he had regretted her ruin ; but to make her honorable amends had not been compatible with the projects of his ambition ; and when Gloam s unexpectedly violent outbreak had driven him THE PEARL-SHELL NECKLACE. ICK} forth upon the world, he had perhaps deemed his banish ment a not inconvenient pretext for freeing himself from the ineumbrances, such as they were, which might other wise have impeded him. He left Swanhilda behind, to pass her dark hour alone. Bnt, this being so, what was the occasion of his sndden change of purpose ? Was he penitent ? or had he found that honor and expediency could be made compatible, after all ? The letter which he had written to Jael did not explicitly answer this question ; but from hints which it contained, the housekeeper had drawn favor able inferences ; and she looked forward to his coming with agreeable anxiety. She had told Gloam the news, intending (should he refuse a reconciliation) to acknowl edge to him that his father was David s likewise. But his strange behavior had frightened this purpose out of her head ; and when she recollected it again, it seemed most advisable that the revelation should for the present be postponed. X. ABOUT sunset Jael was surprised by the beginning; of a jarring and rumbling noise, the like of which had not been heard in the gorge for a number of weeks past. Half incredulous of the evidence of her own ears, she paused to listen. Certainly there was no mistake the mill was going ! She stepped to the window and looked out. Yes, there revolved the great black wheel heavily upon its axle, churning the headlong torrent into foam, and hurling the white froth from its rigid rims. As she 104 THE PEARL-SHELL NECKLACE. gazed, astonished, she saw Gloam issue from the mill and stand beside the boiling mill-race, .watching with manifest excitement the sullen churning of the huge machine. He wore no hat, his hair was tossed and tangled, his bearing reckless and wild. All at once (for the machinery, having been so long out of use, had doubtless become very rusty) an unearthly peal of laugh ter or what seemed such was launched upon the even ing air. It partly died away ; then it again burst forth, clinging to the listener s ears and stabbing them, and leaving a sting that rankled there long afterward. In the midst of the infernal din, Jael saw Gloam toss up his arms and abandon himself to a sympathetic paroxysm of grisly merriment. The man and the machinery were possessed by one and the same demon. " Master Master Gloam !" cried the woman, throw ing open the window and lifting her voice to her shrillest pitch, " what is the matter ? why have you set the mill going?" He glanced up at her with wild eyes and waved his hand. " It is a season of rejoicing !" he answered. " The prayer that 1 prayed is coming to pass ! There fore let the wheel go round ! Hear it, how it laughs and rejoices !" " But there is no grist the mill is empty !" " It will not be empty long ; the grist is coming it comes, it comes ! Let the great wheel go round and grind it to powder !" Jael drew back with a sickening apprehension at her heart. Gloam was too plainly in a state of delirious frenzy, if he were not actually mad. She longed for David s appearance, and yet dreaded it ; she knew not whether the meeting between the two men would issue well or ill. And then her mind reverted to Swarihilda, THE PEARL-SHELL NECKLACE. 105 and she asked herself what the effect of her lover s pres ence would be upon her ? Ever since the first week fol lowing upon his departure, the young mother had main tained a singularly passive demeanor, only occasionally disturbed by reasons of vague and tremulous anxiety. The housekeeper had looked in upon her several times that afternoon. She lay quietly in one position, her eyes open and fixed, save when the baby claimed her atten tion. She did not speak, and seemed scarcely aware of outward things. Even the uproar of the mill, when that began, commanded her notice but for a short time, and appeared rather to gratify than to distress her. She perhaps associated it with the thought of David, and fancied it in some way indicative of that home-return which she had all along never allowed herself to despair of. But she was as one partly entranced, whose ears and eyes (as some believe) are opened to things beyond the ordinary ken of human senses. The evening was cloudy, and night came on apace. Gloam had re-entered the house shortly after dark ; and Jael presently went to his room to ask him where he would take his evening meal. But he met her in the upper passage-way. He seemed to carry something in his hand ; she could not make out what it was ; and he immediately hid it beneath his coat. To her inquiries he replied that he was going forth to resume his old practice of walking, and that he would sup with David after his return. Jael, in her uneasiness, would gladly have persuaded him to remain at home ; but he was ob stinate against all entreaties, and finally pushed roughly by her and was gone. Meanwhile, the mill was still in motion. The house keeper had an impulse, soon after Gloam s departure, to go out and uncouple the machinery ; but she feared lest 106 THE PEAEL-SHELL NECKLACE. he might resent her interference, and forbore. The noise and the suspense she was in combined to keep her in a state of feverish restlessness. Her thoughts busied themselves against her will with all manner of gloomy and painful memories and speculations. The vision of her youth rose up before her, and filled her with vain remorseful terrors. She strove to cheer her self with picturing her son s arrival, but even that had now become a source of apprehension rather than of comfort. All the time she was oppressed by an indefin able sensation that some one was prowling about outside the house ; and once, after the wheel had delivered itself of an outpouring of inhuman mirth, Jael fancied the strain was taken up in a no less wild, though not so pene trating, key. Was it possible that Gloarn was lurking in the gorge ? and if so, what could he be doing there ? Cautiously she peered out of the window ; but the moon was as yet obscured by clouds, and nothing was certainly distinguishable. She returned to the fireside ; yet paused and listened again, because or else her excited imagination deceived her another and a different sound had reached her from without ; a sharp, grating sound, like that made by a rusty saw eating its way through close-grained timber. Ere she could be certain about the matter, however, the noise stopped, and returned no more. An hour or so later, it wanting then only a few min utes of midnight, Swanhilda suddenly awoke from her half trance, and sat upright in her bed. The house resounded dully to the mu tiled throbbing of the machi nery, but otherwise there was no stir. The little baby had fallen sound asleep, and lay at its mother s side, with its tiny hands folded beneath its chin, and grasping the pearl-shell necklace, which was its favorite plaything. THE PEARL-SHELL NECKLACE. 107 After sitting* tense and still for a moment, Swanhilda got out of bed, huddled on some clothes, kissed the uncon scious baby twice or thrice, and then silently left the room. In another minute she had stolen down the stairs, and was standing between the house and the stream, in the open air. She looked first one way and then another, and finally, without any hesitation in her manner, but with an assured and joyful bearing, bent her steps toward the top of tfte gorge. A narrow foot path led up thither, and at the highest point turned to the right, and was carried across the torrent by a narrow bridge formed of a single plank. When Swanhilda came to the turn, she did not go over the bridge, but sat down upon a stone amid the shrubbery, and waited. How had she known that there was any one to wait for ? Jael, certainly, had told her nothing ; still less could she have learned anything from Gloam. Never theless, there she sat, waiting, and knowing beyond ques tion that her lover was near, and was rapidly coming nearer. In a few minutes she would hear his steps ; then he would be upon the bridge, and she would rise and meet him there. Had he not promised, months ago, that he would never leave her ? and though he had been driven away for a time, she had never doubted that he would return. He loved her ; soon, soon she would feel his arms about her, his kisses on her lips. Ah ! what happiness after all this pain ; what measure less content ! How glad would be their meeting ; and when she showed him their little baby, the cup of joy would be full. Nay, it was so already. In all Swaii- hilda s life she had never known a moment so free from all earthly trouble as was this ! It was near the end. She stood up ; she had heard a footstep ; yes, there again ! He must be close at hand ; 108 THE PEARL-SHELL NECKLACE. if it were not so dark she would have already seen him. And now the clouds which had so long obscured the moon broke away, and the pale sphere hung poised in dark purple space, and shed a dim lustre over the little gorge. The light glanced on the curve of the cataract, and twinkled in the eddies of the pool, and danced along the tumultuous rapid, and glistened upon the froth of the mill-race. There the black wheel still plunged to its work, whirling its gaunt arms about as if grasping for a victim. In the bushes close beside it crouched a man with white face and staring eyes. He had laid his trap, and was awaiting the issue. He had not seen Swanhilda leave the house and climb the little path ; his eyes and thoughts had been turned elsewhither. David came swiftly along the upland path, whistling to himself as he walked. We will not search his thoughts, seeing he was so near the end of his journey. "When he arrived at the brow of the gorge, and was within a few paces of the bridge, he halted and peered forward earnestly. What figure was that that seemed to stand expectantly on the other side ? It could not be Swanhilda ay, but it was ! He gave a little laugh, and then his hard heart softened and warmed toward her. " How she does love me, poor little thing !" he mut tered. " And I ve treated her devilish badly, no mis take. Well, well, I ll make it up to her, if all goes well, see if I don t !" He came on to the bridge, and Swanhilda also hurried forward. Then the man below among the bushes started up, dry-mouthed and breathless. In an instant he sent forth a great, terrible cry of warning and agony ; but before it could be uttered the lovers had met upon the narrow plank, and Swanhilda had received her kiss. While their lips yet touched, the plank, sawn in two all THE PEARL-SHELL NECKLACE. 109 but a finger s breadth, broke downward, and they fell, clasped in each other s arms headlong down over the fall, down to the bottom of the eddying pool ; up again, and over in the rapids, whirling round and round, dashed against the jagged stones, bleeding piteously ; stunned, let us trust, already, but still clinging to each other. Now the last plunge ; and so, at length, with a final shriek of heaven-defying laughter, the hungry demon of the wheel grappled its prey. Ay, snatch at them, tear, break, grind them down and hold them there ; they are past feeling now. But not so the man upon the bank, with uncovered hair showing black and white in the moonlight, who has looked on at this scene, powerless to help, but awake to every swift phase of the tragedy, losing not a struggle or a pang, realizing his own un speakable horror and anguish, and foreseeing no comfort or pardon through all time to come. The wheel stopped suddenly. Jael came breathless out of the mill-house, and shrinkingly approached the margin. A formless mass of something was wedged be neath the lower rim of the wheel and the bed of the stream, and a long mass of yellow hair floated out along the black water, and gleamed in the lustre of the un troubled moon. The man on the other side was kneel ing down, and seemed to be gazing idly into the current. " He was your brother," said Jael, sobbing with rage and misery. " Your father was his. You have mur dered him. God curse you ! I wish you lay where he is." (( Why, Jael," returned Gloam, smiling at her, " you invoke a curse and a blessing in the same breath ! My brother ? well. Swanhilda loved him and not me. Thank God I was the brother of the man she loved ; the same blood ran in onr veins she loved a part of me in 110 THE PEARL-SHELL NECKLACE. him. But why do you trouble yourself to curse me, Jael ? I ask the charity of all men, and their sym pathy !" . . . I unclasped my hands from above my eyes, and started to my feet. No, there was no one near me ; 1 was quite alone. It was deep twilight, but objects were still dis cernible ; yet nowhere, neither beneath the Black Oak, nor beside the Laughing Wheel, nor anywhere in the gorge, could 1 see a trace of my late companion of him whose last words were even then ringing in my ears : " I ask the charity of all men, and their sympathy !" XI. THE next morning I was down late to breakfast. It was glorious weather, and the blue sparkle of the sea came through the open window, bringing with it a limit less inspiration of hope and wholesomeness. It was diffi cult to believe that there had ever been any sorrow or wrong in the world. " Ye re not looking right hearty," said Mr. Poyntz, with bluff geniality, while his good wife set before me a huge plate of daintily fried bacon and eggs, and a smok ing cup of coffee. " Maybe ye walked a bit too far last night? Twas powerful late afore ye got home, any how." " Yes," said I, glancing at Agatha, who was knitting a pair of stockings for Peter in the eastern window, the morning sun glistening on the broad plaits of her yellow hair. " Yes, Mr. Povntz, I think I must have made a THE PEAltL-SHELL NECKLACE. Ill very long journey last evening. By the way, is not to day Sunday?" " Ay, surely !" exclaimed husband and wife in a breath ; and then the former added, " Ye ll be wanting to go to church, I suppose ?" " No, not this Sunday ; though I hope to go before long, if Miss Agatha is willing to show me the way." I glanced at her again as I said this, but she would not look up, and I could not even be sure whether she were listening. " What 1 want," 1 continued, " is for you, Mr. Poyntz, since you ll be at leisure, to take a stroll with me a little way up the stream. It will be a nov elty, perhaps almost as much so to you as to me." " Up the stream, is it ?" returned he, pausing in the operation of cutting up a piece of tobacco, and turning his blue eye on me ; " why, truly, sir, that s a trip I ve not made for a number of years. Howsoever, none knows the road better than I do, and if so be as naught else 11 do ye, why, I m your man !" Accordingly, so soon as I had done breakfast, the sturdy old manner mounted a wonderful, glazed hat and a new pea-jacket of blue pilot cloth, took a fresh clay pipe from the mantelpiece, with a sigh and a shake of the head over the destruction of his beloved meer schaum, and professed himself ready. " Good-by, Agatha," 1 said, passing the window. " Is there anything you would like me to bring you, when we come back ?" " Oh, a great many !" answered she, looking up gravely ; " but nothing, I m afraid, that you can get for rne. Though you ll bring yourself back to dinner, I suppose, won t you ?" She bent over her knitting as she said it, and her mouth and downcast eyelids were very demure. Never- 112 THE PEARL-SHELL NECKLACE. theless, I was encouraged to fancy that my former remark about church- going had not fallen so entirely unheeded as it had appeared to do. Before I could hammer out a fitting answer (my brain always seemed to work with really abnormal sluggishness when I most wanted to do myself credit with Agatha), Poyntz rolled out in his deep, jovial voice, " Back to Sunday dinner ? "Well, I should hope so. Why, the old woman is baking a pie as I d sail round the Horn to get a snack of ! Come on, Mr. Firemount ; it ll go hard but we fetches back an appetite as 11 warm the women s hearts to look at." "We trudged off at a tolerably round pace, and soon struck into a narrow grass-grown lane which led toward the east ; and had proceeded some distance along it be fore 1 said : "Do you know, Mr. Poyntz, that your daughter is one of the loveliest women in the world ?" " Ye mean Agatha ? Ay, surely, that she is, heaven bless her ! She was always that. A tiny bit of a lass, 1 remember her, i\ot so long as my arm ; as pretty a baby she was then as she s a woman now." 61 Has she any thought of getting married soon ? Such a face and character must have suitors enough." " Well, as touching that, sir," said Poyntz, taking his pipe out of his mouth and looking at it carefully, " ye mustn t think of Agatha just the same as of the fisher men s girls you meet round about. Good, honest girls they all are, I m saying naught against that ; but Agatha, d ye see, is a bit different. Ye ll maybe think it queer I should say it, sir ; but say it T will that Agatha is a lady. She may live in our house, and put up with our ways nay, and love us too, which sure 1 am she does ; but all the same, if ye notice, she don t THE PEARL-SHELL NECKLACE. 113 speak the same as me and the old woman do, nor she don t think the same neither. She s built on other lines, as I may say a clipper yacht, while we re but fishing smacks, or trading schooners at best. And that being so as it is, the young fellows of our neighborhood don t find they ve got much show alongside of her, some how. They re afraid of her, that s the long and short of it ; not but she treats em kind enough, ye understand, as a lady should ; but tis the kindness of a lady and not of an equal, and there s not one of em stanch enough to hold out against it. And how be they re fine lads, many of them, I can t truly say as I m sorry for it, if so as Agatha is content." "Nor can I !" I echoed to myself with devout ear nestness. " She does seem of a different stock from most I see here," I said aloud. " I have seen women somewhat like her at Copenhagen ; though I don t know whether I should have thought of that if 1 hadn t happened to say something in Danish, yesterday, and she answered me in the same language." " Did she now !" said Poyntz, tipping forward his hat and scratching the back of his head. u And if I might ask it, sir, how came ye to speak Danish your own self ?" " My family was Danish before I. was born ; and I was taught the language almost before 1 knew English. Our name used to be Feuerberg ; but we ve translated it since we emigrated, you see." "Ay, surely Feuerberg," said Poyntz, puffing his pipe prcoccnpiedly. We walked on for a while in silence. So great was O my desire that the evidence which 1 had been arranging in my mind should be borne out by the facts, that I was almost afraid to put the matter definitely to the proof ; while Poyntz, on the other hand, was evidently taken by 114 THE PEARL-SHELL NECKLACE. surprise, and had not got his ideas quite settled. At length, however, I thought I would hazard one hint more. "I ve been thinking of that yarn you Avere spinning yesterday afternoon in fact, I believe 1 dreamt of it last night ; and I should imagine that the little yellow-haired girl, if she grew up, would have looked enough like Agatha to be her sister or her mother, at any rate. " And I ve been thinking, sir, of the accident that stopped me from finishing that there yarn ye speak of, and of the hearty thanks 1 owe ye for the stout heart and ready hand that saved my Peter. But thanks is easily said ; and I mean more than words come to. I d not have ye suppose as I d give all trust and confidence to a man just because he s done a brave act for me and mine. But as 1 told you once afore, and speaking out man to man, 1 like the looks of ye, and ever did ; and seeing as how ye ve found out a good bit of our little secret already, and seem like you d an interest to know more of it ; for that, and likewise because of another thing, as I ve just found out myself, and it may be as important as any well, I ll tell ye what about Agatha there is to tell." At this moment, however, we passed round a clump of oak trees, and found ourselves right at the entrance of the little gorge where I had had my adventure the night before. Poyntz halted, and fixed his eyes gravely upon the scene for several moments. " Ay, the same old harbor," said he ; " it s changed a bit now, but it brings it all back to me the last time I was here. This is the Laughing Mill, Mr. Feuerberg. And this here is the Black Oak, and here is poor Gloam s grave, d ye see ? with the bit of gray stone a-sticking out of the end of it. 5 THE PEARL-SHELL NECKLACE. 115 " Why was he buried here ?" " "Well, twas his wish, that s all. He was crazed the last years of his life, with grieving on the death of the young girl as he d picked up on the beach, that I was telling you of. A sad hing it was altogether. She went wrong, d ye see, with the fellow David, the Scholar s brother, and was drowned here along with him ; but how that came to pass was never rightly known. Tis thought the Scholar had meant for to marry the girl himself. And so would David have mar ried her, 1 doubt, if he d known what I know." "About the family?" " Ay, sir, that. Ye maybe 11 remember the iron box as I picked up ? Well, I didn t tell any one about it then, not even the Scholar ; and soon after the night of the storm, 1 shipped for Ilio, and was away a matter of two years. When I came back I heard as how David was thick with the girl Swanhilda they called her. Then I opened the box, not having done it before, and found papers in it telling who she was, and that folks of hers were living in Germany, having emigrated there from Denmark ; and from what 1 could make out for twas in a foreign lingo, and 1 was forced to borrow a lexicon to it it seemed likely as how they was well off. Now, I had my opinion of David, that he was a worth less sort of a chap, though clever and handsome ; so thinks 1, I won t tell him of this, for if so be as I do, he ll wed the girl in the hope of money, and not for true love of her, who was worthy the love of better than he. Bat what I ll do, I ll write to those her folks in Germany, telling them as how she s here ; and when they come, then they can do for her as they h ncl best, and it ll be out of my hands. And so I did, but had never an answer ; why, I don t know. But it never came 116 THE PEARL-SHELL NECKLACE. in my mind, sir, that the fellow David would ever be so black a scoundrel as to lead the poor innocent girl wrong. How be, when he had done it, thinks I, I ll tell him of her folks now, because now the best can happen will be that they marry, though the best is bad enough ; and if I tell him, maybe he ll make her an honest woman, as the saying is. And tell him I did, with a piece of my mind touching my thought of him, into the bargain. And he promised me as he d go and make it right the next day this being spoke in the town above here, whither I d gone for to see him. And it can t be said but what he kept his word ; only he and she was drowned in the night, and crushed under that there wheel, as never has turned since, to this day." 66 What became of her baby she had a baby ?" 66 Ay, and so she did, sir. Well, twas cared for by the housekeeper she being grandmother to it, and so having first right, the more as the Scholar was crazed, though not dangerous, but mild and melancholy-like. But in years the old woman she came to the poorhouse, and there died ; and I took the baby, and gave her what best I had to give, and better schooling than the lasses care for hereabouts. And as luck would have it, an elderly woman of Danish blood being come by a chance to the village, I got her to be nurse to the little one, and so grew up to a knowledge of her native tongue, d ye see, and the fairy tales and such like thereto belonging. And ay, I see you ve guessed it long already, sir that s Agatha." I had intended relating my vision to Mr. Poyntz on the spot where it occurred ; but I know not what reluc tance prevented me. It was too strange and solemn and inexplicable an experience to bear discussing so soon. So, instead of that, I told him, as we trudged homeward THE PEARL-SHELL NECKLACE. 117 together, the history of the Feuerberg family, and how all tended to ratify my conviction that Agatha and I were cousins, though far removed. And I may remark here that he and 1 between us had afterward no difficulty (what with his documents and my knowledge) in estab lishing the relationship beyond a doubt. " But," I added, as we stood on the brow of the slope overlooking the old house, and saw Agatha appear round the corner and kiss her hand to us, " but she and 1 are the last of oar race, and there is no great fortune awaiting us, that I know of. Only, Mr. Poyntz, I love her with my whole heart ; if she can love me, will you trust her to me ?" "Nay, ye mustn t ask me," replied the ancient mariner, grasping my hand, with tears in his old blue eyes. " I doubt she loves you well, already. And so do \\e all, for ye re a man, all be a quiet one. Twill be hard parting with her, as has been sunshine to us this many a year ; but ye ll bring her to see the old folks, as time serves ; and I m bold for to believe ye ll be as happy as the day is long." It is twenty years since then, and old Jack Poyntz s prophecy has proved true. My wife is wont to say, with a smile in her dark eyes, that our prosperity is due to the restored virtue of the Pearl-shell Necklace, which still rests upon her bosom. To me, however, the neck lace seems but as the symbol of the true love whose radi ance has blessed our lives, and brought us better luck than any witchcraft can bestow. THE END. ICO ARCHIBALD MALMAISON. A New Novel. By JULIAN HAWTHORNE. Price, paper, 15 cts.; cloth, extra paper, 75 cents. INDEPENDENT, N. Y. " Mr. Julian Hawthorne can choose no better com pliment upon his new romance, ARCHIBALD MALMAISON , than the assurance that he has at last put lorth a story which reads as if the manuscript, written in his father s indecipherable handwriting and signed Nathaniel Haw thorne, had lain shut into desk for twenty-five years, to be oniy just new- pulled out and printed. It is a masterful romance ; short, compressed, terri bly dramatic in its important situations, bcised upon a psychologic idea as weirl and susceptible of startling treatment as possible. It u- a book to be read through in two hours, but to dwell in the memory forever. It so cleverly surpasses Garth* or Bressant in its sympathy with the style of the elder Hawthorne that it must remain unique among Mr. Julian Hawthorne s works until he exceeds it. The employment of the central theme and the literary conduct of the plot is nearly beyond criticism. The frightful climax breaks upon the perception of the reader with surprise that he did not foresee it ; another tribute on his part to the unconventionality which is one of the many touches of eminent art in Mr. Hawthorne s tale." R. H. STODDARD, IN NEW YORK MAIL AND EXPRESS. "The cli max is so terrible, as the London Times h..s pointed out, and so dramatic in its intensity, that it is impossible to class it with any situation of modern fic tion. . . Mr. Hawthorne is cleaily and easily the first of living romancers." THE CONTINENT, N. Y. "The most noteworthy story Mr. Julian Haw thorne has ever produced. . . No wilder romance has ever been imagined. . A brilliant and intensely powerful work. . . It is certain that such power sets the author at the head of modern romancers. THE LONDON TIMES. " After perusal of this weird, fantastic tale (Arch> bald Malmaison), it must be admitted that upon the shoulders of Julian Hawthorne has descended in no small degree the mantle of his more illustri ous father. The climax is so terrible, and so dramatic in iis intensity, that it is impossible to class it with any situation of modern fiction. There is much psycho ogical ingenuity shown in some of the more subtle touches that lend an air of reality to this wild romance." THE LONDON GLOBE. " Archibald Malmaison, is one of the most daring attempts to set the wildest fancy masquerading in the cloak of science, which has ever, perhaps, been made. Mr. Hawthorne has managed to combine the almost perfect construction of a typical French novelist, with a more than typically German power of conception. Genius is here of a kind more artistic ally self-governed than Hoffman s, and less obviously self-conscious than Poe s. A strange sort of jesting humor gives piquancy to its grimne.-s." THE ACADEMY. " Mr. Hawthorne has a more powerful imagination than any contemporary writer of fiction. He has the very uncommon gilt of taking hold of the reader s attention at once, and the still more uncommon gift of maintaining his grasp when it is fixed." THE PEARL-SHELL NECKLACE. PRINCE SA- KONrs WIFE. Two Novels. By JULIAN HAWTHORNE, one volume, izmo, paper, 15 cents; cloth, extra paper, 75 cents. [In press.] CONTEMPORARY REVIEW. "The Pearl-Shell Necklace is a story of permanent value, and stands quite alone for subtle blending of individual and general human interest, poetic and psychologic suggestion, and rare hurnor." SPECTATOR. " The Pearl-Shell Necklace wherever found, v/ould stamp its author as a man of genius. Even the elder Hawthorne never produced more weird effects within any hing like the same compass. And yet there is absolutely no imitation." FUNK & WAGNALLS, Publishers, 10 & 12 Dey St., New York. 1G7 HIMSELF AGAIN. A New Novel. By J. C. GOLDSMITH, 12010, paper, 25-013.; ck>th, extra paper, $1.00. COMMENTS OF THE PRESS. THE BOSTON GLOBE. " Its peculiar qualities are its delineation of eccen tric character which is notabiy free and bold, and its familiarity with many kinds of present American life and manners, and its original, realistic treat ment. . . Beneath the sprightly dash with which the story is outlined and filled, there is conscioas strong power. It is finely written, and of decided merit." THE EVENING POST, HARTFORD. " Unlike most novels, the first chap ters of this remarkable story are the weakest. But let the reader persevere and he will find opened to him a wonderful world of novel and interesting charac ters, a valuab e and unique philosophy, and an almost unsurpassed background of American city and country scenery, both land and water." BOSTON ADVERTISER. The writer displays more than average insight into the workings of human nature, and the naturalness of his character draw ing is no doubt the secret of the special attiactioii that lies in the boo*." CLEVELAND LEADER. " This is a purely American novel. . . and one of the best we have seen. It is so vivid in its description of localities and personages, that the reader hardly doubts that all is real. And in accom plishing this the author achieves a kind of charm that is as delightful as it is hard to define." RUTHERFORD. A New Novel. By EDGAR FAWCETT. Author cf "An Ambitious Woman," "A Gentleman of Leisure," "A Hopeless Case," " Tinkling Cy>nbcus," etc. i2mo, paper, 25 cts; cloth, extra paper, gi.oo. MR. FAWCETT has of late been steadily and rapidly advancing toward the foremost place among American novelists, He deals with ph .ses of society that require the utmost skill ; but his quick insight into character, his ready sympathies, and his conscientious Iit-erary art, have proved more than equal to the tables he has undertaken. It is certain that many of the best critics are watching his course with high anticipations. In Rutherford, his lateft work, neither they nor the public will be disappointed. It is a novel of New York society, and rarely has character been portrayed with more de icate but effective touches than in the case of some of these representatives of Knicker bocker caste. The story is by no means confined to them however, but is en riched to a very great degree by characters taken from lower social planes. Nothing the author has ever done, perhaps, surpasses his characterization of Pansy one of the two sisters who have fallen from affluence to poverty. Through them he arouses the deepest sympathies, and shows a dramatic power that is full of promise. It is needless, of course, to commend the liter ary finish of Mr. Fawcett s style. It is fast approaching perfection. FUNK & WAGNALLS, Publishers, 10 & 12 Dey St., New York. 103 THE FORTUNES OF RACHEL. A New Novel. By EDWARD EVERETT HALE. 12010, paper, 250.; cloth, CHRISTIAN UNION N. Y Probably no American h: s a mere devoted constituency of readers than Mr Edward Everett Hale, and to all ihese his latest stoiy," The Fortunes of Rachel, will bring genuine pleasure. Mr. Hale is emphatically a natural writer; he loves to interpret common things and to deal with average persons. He does t!iis with such insight, with such noble conception of life and of his work, that he discovers that profound interest which belongs to the humblest as truly as to the most brilliant forms of life. . . 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TRIBUNE. " His characters are vital; they suffer with a pathos that irresistibly touches the reader to sympathy. Those who would write in the same vein get merely his admirable manner, full of reserve, of self-restraint, of joyless patience; but while under this surface with Turgemeffhe throbbing arteries and quivering flesh, his imitators offer us nothing more than lay figures in whose fortunes it is impossible to take any lively interest. "I hey represent before us only poor phases of modern society, while Turgenieif has explained to us a nation ard shown the play of emotions that are as old as the world and as new as the hour in which they are born." LITERARY WORLD, Boston. " These two stories . . are unquestion ably to be ranked among their author s masterpieces. . . Mumu will bear a great amount of study ; it marks out a whole method in fiction." THE MANHATTAN. "One of the most powerful and touching pictures of slave-Ike in i.U literature." LirPINCOTTS MAGAZINE, Phila. 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