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 GLORIOUS FORTUNE. 
 
 i 
 
 4 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 JOHNNY OF OREGON. 
 
 The road, which is little more than a rough track — in 
 the open parts, during the summer, dust; in the winter, 
 mud — runs at this place through the virgin forest, un- 
 touched, for the most part, by ax, and almost untrodden 
 by foot of man. It is a very remote and untrodden track; 
 it has not yet even advanced, like a young plow-boy, to 
 the dignity of corduroy; it runs along slopes of hills and 
 across the valleys between them. When the way is clear 
 of trees, which is not often, one gets a view of the blue 
 Pacific far away in the west; every evening the sun sinks 
 into it, making a glorious double rose of evening in the 
 sky above and the sea beneath. Yet every half-dozen 
 miles or so one may, perhaps — or may not, perhaps — come 
 across a clearing or farm cut out of the solid forest, the 
 stumps of the trees still sticking dolefully out of the 
 ground, and the fields divided and staked out by rough 
 snake-fences. In a few years, when the stumps have quite 
 disappeared, and beautiful green things have grown over 
 the ugly fences, this farm, with its backing of wood and 
 hill, will be as perfectly beautiful as it is now unkempt, 
 ragged, and unsightly. 
 
 You never meet anybody walking along this road, for it 
 runs straight up into the hills, where it is presently lost; 
 but in the fields and upon the new farms you may some- 
 times see a man at work. It is, in fact, on the other side 
 of the Rocky Mountains, which seems a great way off to 
 £ll except those philosophers who find the world so sm^ll; 
 
 777907 
 
4 
 
 A GLORIOUS FORTUNE. 
 
 in the land of Oregon, on the borders of the great Pacific, 
 where, as yet, men are scarce. 
 
 The most untidy, most uncared-for clearing along this 
 road was one in the wildest and most solitary part of it, 
 high up among the slopes of the hills. It seemed as if 
 the settler had begun with immense energy, stubbing up 
 brushwood, sowing timothy-grass, hewing the fir trunks, 
 and laying down log-fences, as if he intended to live a 
 thousand years there, but had then lost heart, and so 
 suffered the weeds to grow, stubbed up no more brush- 
 wood, and left his fences unfinished. 
 
 The house belonging to the farm was nothing but a 
 little log cabin, gray-colored and weather-beaten, with two 
 windows and a door in the middle opening to a narrow 
 stoop or veranda. A little beyond the hut there ran 
 babbling and sparkling in the sun (where it was not over- 
 hung with alder, wild-cherry, and syringa), quite the most 
 beautiful little brook in the world. At the back of the 
 house rose steeply a great hill, covered with oak, maple, 
 hemlock, and fir; where the trees had been cut down, but 
 the ground not further cleared, there grew every kind of 
 underwood, bush, brier, and climbing-plant; the wild 
 cucumber trailing its long shoots; blackberries as big as 
 English mulberries; huckleberries; thimbleberries; yellow 
 salmon berries; and sweet sal-lal; for this is the country 
 where the King of Berry-land holds his court. 
 
 Under the trees, and wherever there is a glade or open- 
 ing, there are huge ferns: it is a land of greenery and sun- 
 shine; a land where everywhere trickling streams make 
 carpets of spongy moss, and the air is soft like unto the 
 air of England. On the right hand, looking east, are the 
 great mountains, and on the left, if you can see it, the 
 broad Pacific. 
 
 High up among the hills at this time of year, which is 
 autumn (or else the berries would not be ripe), the farmers 
 and their families camp out — the girls sleeping in tents 
 and the boys in the open; they shoot, fish, gather berries, 
 and make jam — buckets of jam, casks of jam, hogsheads 
 of jam — breathe as sweet and pure an air as there is any- 
 where in the world (except, of course, Dartmoor, Hexham 
 Common, and the top of Malvern Hill), and presently go 
 home again, ready for the winter’s dances, flirtations and 
 sledging and skating and fun. Also on the slopes of those 
 
A GLORIOUS FORTUNE. 
 
 5 
 
 mountains live herdsmen, mostly eremites or solitaries, who 
 doubtless meditate on things holy and spiritual among their 
 cattle; and, just as the holy men of old were continually 
 troubled by devils permitted to assume the forms of men 
 or women — especially ihe latter — so these herdsmen are 
 hindered in their spiritual musings by bears, gray wolves, 
 and coyotes. And they do not go away in the winter like 
 the campers-out, but abide upon the hills and endure hard- 
 ness and frost, snow and hail, rain and wind, in their sea- 
 son. 
 
 The clearing and cabin of which I speak stood quite 
 alone, and at least ten miles from any other farm. In 
 Europe a man would be afraid to live in so solitary a fash- 
 ion; in Oregon, loneliness is not so much felt, because 
 there is nothing to be afraid of. Very few of these hermits 
 in log huts have got anything to lose, and if they had there 
 would be no one to rob them. Wayfarers by day are few 
 and far between; wayfarers by night exist not; while as for 
 ghosts, phantoms, wraiths, dames blanches, and specters, 
 they belong to old settled places, and have not yet had 
 time to get further west than New England; and have their 
 origin in what we fondly call the Komance of History, 
 meaning the murders, robberies, piracies, cruelties, tort- 
 ures, abductions, fratricides, revenges, wraths, and vio- 
 lences of which, in a new country, there have been as yet 
 comparatively few. In the matter of ghosts, the county 
 of Northumberland, little though it be, would, I am con- 
 vinced, prove a match for the whole of the United States 
 taken together (with Canada thrown in), excepting only 
 Alaska, which is a grisly and a creepy country, and haunted 
 by troops of devils, in honor of whom the belles of Alaska 
 blacken their faces — a thing done in no other country, and 
 a compliment which must be received as at once delicate 
 and unexpected. 
 
 It was a warm afternoon in late September; there was a 
 feeling in the air as if, after four months — nay, six — of 
 splendid sunshine, one ought to be satisfied and contented. 
 Even of warmth and clear skies, there cometh satiety in 
 the end, and certain hymns which speak hopefully con- 
 cerning everlasting sunshine were written by poets imper- 
 fectly acquainted with human wants, and ignorant of the 
 tropics. I believe an expurgated edition of the hymn- 
 book has been prepared, in which a Paradise with occa- 
 
6 
 
 A GLORIOUS FORTUKE. 
 
 sional clouds is dwelt upon, for the use of our equatorial 
 brethren. Nature, in fact, was saying as plainly as she 
 could speak: “ I could now, thank you, enjoy a little cool- 
 ness, with clouds and rain, in order to turn my green 
 leaves into red, and crimson and gold, for the delight of 
 humans. After that I will trouble you for the cus- 
 tomary frost and snow; but all in moderation.” Every- 
 body who can hear the voice of Nature should immediately 
 make haste to be in harmony with her. Then they will be 
 strong and sturdy in the winter; hopeful in the spring, 
 and brimming over with love for everybody, especially for 
 those who are still young and beautiful; in the summer, 
 they will be meditative, drowsy, and slumberous; and in 
 the autumn, whether or no a man wears that blue ribbon 
 about which they make nowadays such a coil, he should 
 feel the vinous mystery of the season, and grow drunk, if 
 only in imagination, upon the fruits and harvest of the 
 year. 
 
 There were two men outside that log-hut on the shady 
 side, which was the front; between them was a table 
 (home-made), on which were cards, tobacco, a pannikin, 
 and a whisky-bottle. One had a chair; the other sat on 
 an empty keg turned bottom upward. The man on the 
 keg was the squire or owner of the clearing, and lived 
 alone in the hut. A man of five-and-forty, or perhaps 
 fifty, about the middle height, and spare; he wore a long 
 beard, and his hair was long. Both beard and hair were 
 brown, touched with gray; he had regular features, which 
 had been once, probably, handsome, but weak; and blue 
 eyes, which wandered as he spoke, and were unsteady. 
 His fingers were long and delicate; and somehow at the 
 very first sight of him, one thought that here was a poor, 
 weak creature, whose opinions mattered nothing, and 
 who was perfectly certain never to get on in the world. 
 He had a pipe in his mouth, and continually he turned 
 upon the whisky-bottle eyes of affection. 
 
 On the other side of the table sat his companion, a man 
 of much the same height and figure, with eyes the same 
 color, only of a darker blue, steadier, not to say keener, 
 in their look; his hair and beard were quite gray; his 
 hands were strong and square; at sight of him the inexperi- 
 enced, thinking of certain stories would have said that here 
 was a strong, brave man, one of Nature’s noblemen, turned 
 
A GLORIOUS FORTUNE. 
 
 7 
 
 out ready-made, uneducated and ignorant, never, maybe, 
 having read a single book; rude and rough of speech, 
 coarse of manners; yet chivalrous as a true Castilian, 
 honorable as an English gentleman, and as fuM of noble 
 sentiments and lofty aspirations as the most cultivated 
 Dean. 
 
 We know very well, and feel ashamed of it, that such a 
 man cannot be found in this country of ours. He does 
 not grow in the same soil as an enslaving aristocracy, 
 whether of birth, education, genius, or knowledge. This 
 man, then, would have appeared at first sight, and toper- 
 sons of limited experience and unlimited imagination, a 
 true nobleman of Nature’s making. But there were about 
 him certain outward signs and tokens, which spoke vol- 
 umes to such as had wisdom, and could interpret small 
 facts of evidence, and were not too eager to believe in the 
 perfection of the human race. For instance, among 
 other signs, his hands were white, which, in such a coun- 
 try, bodes ill; his eye was restless, his clothes were good; 
 therefore, whenever wise (and therefore suspicious) per- 
 sons met this man, or any like unto him, they would edge 
 away from him, avoid him, and whisper to each other 
 such words as “sportsman,” “gang,” “sharper,” 
 “cheat and rogue,” or their equivalents, whether in 
 Bostonian, Virginian, Kentuckian, Californian, or Ore- 
 gonese; pleasant languages, every one, full of local color- 
 ing, and all remarkably like modern English. 
 
 This man had a cigar in his mouth, and sat on a chair 
 — the only chair — tilted up against the door-posts. His 
 feet were on the table; it is a graceful, easy, convenient, 
 well-bred attitude, and was based by the original inventor 
 on consideration for the comfort of others. 
 
 “ Go on, Johnny,” he said encouragingly. Note, that 
 when one man calls another, without first asking his 
 Christian-name, Johnny, this single fact saves the his- 
 torian whole pages of character-drawing. Many a novel 
 of “analysis of character” would vanish altogether if 
 the hero were at the outset simply named Johnny. But 
 then that novel would never get written. Pity; but then, 
 again, perhaps no one ever wanted it to be written. And, 
 again, when one man, not knowing another man’s Chris- 
 tian or surname, addresses that man, from the outset, as 
 Colonel, that also is a fact which speaks volumes. 
 
8 
 
 A GLORIOUS FORTUNE. 
 
 “J was talking, Colonel/’ replied the other, “ about 
 the old days, and my wife and the little one, wasn’t I?” 
 he asked with some doubt, as if he might have been talk- 
 ing state politics, and had, perhaps, forgotten the thread 
 of his argument. 
 
 “ You never talk about anything else, Johnny,” said 
 the man in the chair. 
 
 “ Why, no, Colonel — p’raps not. You see, mate, when 
 you’ve been four years and more mostly alone, and a 
 stranger comes along and stays a week, you naturally talk 
 about what’s in your mind; don’t you now? I don’t 
 know who you are. Colonel, nor where you come from, 
 but you’re good company, and I thank you for staying. 
 Make it another week.” 
 
 “ Go on, Johnny! Don’t get drunk till the evening, or 
 I shall have no one to play poker with.” For Johnny’s 
 hand was wandering feebly and tentatively in the direc- 
 tion of the bottle. 
 
 “ The little maid must be growing a tall girl now,” 
 Johnny went on. “It is nigh twenty years since I saw 
 her last, and then she was only a babe of four months. 
 Quite a tall girl she must be growing— -almost a woman 
 now.” 
 
 “Almost, indeed!” 
 
 “A surprising baby she was, with a beautiful voice 
 already. I was sorry to come away for her sake, I re- 
 member.” 
 
 “ What did you do, Johnny?” The Colonel asked this 
 question without the least hesitation or apology, though it 
 is a most improper and embarrassing question to put any- 
 where in America or Australia to a gentleman of European 
 birth and slender luck. “ What did you do, Johnny?” 
 
 “ Nothing,” replied the other man. 
 
 “Nothing? Not any little difficulty with accounts or 
 trust-money — eh?” 
 
 “No,” he said, not at all offended by an insinuation 
 which would have made some sensitive brothers wince and 
 kick. “No; I was always for straight ways.” 
 
 “ Drink, I suppose?” 
 
 “Notin those days, Colonel. I’ve only been used to 
 drink since I came to the Land o’ Freedom.” 
 
 “ What did you come over for, then?” 
 
A GLORIOUS FORTUNE. 9 
 
 “Well, it’s a strange story. Some wouldn’t believe it. 
 You see, I had a wife.” 
 
 “ So you’ve told me before.” 
 
 “ Yes, I was married. Why I got married the Lord 
 knows; but I did* And I had a berth in a good House at 
 three quid a-week — more than ever I’ve had since. We 
 lived at Hackney Wick then. Quite a nice house we had, 
 with two sittin’-rooms and three bedrooms, furnished and 
 genteel; and for a bit my Matilda — that was her name 
 — was as contented a woman as you’d come across, in spite 
 of my ridiculous Christian-name.” 
 
 “What was your Christian-name?” 
 
 “ Never mind. Colonel. That hasn’t come across the 
 Atlantic, at any rate. It was a beast of a name. The 
 boys at school made nicknames out of it; they called me 
 the Lord Mayor and his lordship and — never mind. The 
 clerks in the House found it out, and made my life mis- 
 erable about it. A man ought to be able to bring an 
 action against his godfathers and godmothers for libel; but 
 I suppose the lawyers would get all the money, because it 
 would have to be done under age. Don’t you worry about 
 my Christian-name, because you won’t learn it. My 
 Christian-name! When I came away, it was a comfort to 
 think that I’d left that behind. The boys have had their 
 fun out of me over here, you bet, because I won’t shoot 
 nor fight; but they never found that out. No, no!” 
 
 “ Well, go on; one may just as well listen to your story 
 as go to sleep* Go on, Johnny.” 
 
 “ We got on very well for a spell — about a year and a 
 half it was — Matilda happy and contented, and feeling 
 quite the lady. We had two seats in a pew at church, 
 and the clergyman had called more than once. And then 
 a dreadful misfortune happened, though we thought it was 
 grandeur. For Matilda’s younger sister, P’leena, did a 
 great deal better than herself, and married into carriage 
 company and the wholesale line, at Hornsey. After that, 
 nothing went well, and every time her sister P’leena drove 
 over to call on Matilda — which was oftener than was 
 necessary between married sisters, and meant display — in 
 her own carriage, Matilda turned yellow, and had to go to 
 bed. Then nothing would do but I must have ambition. 
 I must rise — I must soar; she threw in my teeth, as if it 
 were a disgrace, that I was only a clerk. Why not a clerk? 
 
10 
 
 A GLOKlOtJS VO JlTUffE. 
 
 My father was a clerk; so was hers; so were her cousins, 
 and her brothers, and her friends; so were all mine. She 
 ought to have thought of it before she married me. I 
 didn’t want to soar. I wanted my pipe of an evening, 
 and be left alone; soaring would have made me uncom- 
 fortable. The nagging, especially the day after P’leena 
 had called, was more than I could bear. So I came away, 
 and I think I’ve made my Fortune and done pretty weil, 
 at last.” His eye ran slowly round his weedy fields, and 
 unfinished fences, and at last rested lovingly upon the 
 whisky-bottle. “ Pretty well — though I had a good spell 
 of waiting.” 
 
 “You call this pretty well, do you? Then, Johnny, 
 you are easily pleased.” 
 
 “This is a sweet spot, Colonel, for a man to rest in; 
 there’s a pig or two in the sty, there’s a barrel of pork in 
 the house; there’s plenty of game and birds on the hills; 
 there’s oats and grass to be traded for whisky and things. 
 As for the wife, she’s gone, and the little maid don’t feel 
 she wanted me, and I’d be ungrateful to up and cut sticks 
 and leave this place. Besides, it fell into my hands 
 providential — quite providential, which a man should 
 think upon.” 
 
 “ How did it fall into your hands?” 
 
 “This way it was. I was going along, four years ago, 
 alone and down on my luck, as, in those days, I generally 
 was. Suddenly, at the turn of the road, I came upon this 
 very clearin’, and on this same identical house. The door 
 was open and I walked in. No one in the house, but a 
 whisky-bottle on the table, so that I took a drink. Then 
 I went out and looked around. Presently, I saw lyin’ 
 under a tree, a dead man. He was quite dead; but he 
 hadn’t been dead very long, and must ha’ dropped bein’ 
 neither knifed nor shot. First, I buried him under that 
 tree there; yes, that’s his grave; then I stayed here; then 
 I came to feel as if I’d inherited the shanty and the clear- 
 in’, the pigs and the oats. If there had been any monejq” 
 he added slowly, “I should have inherited that as well; 
 but there was not any. No, there was no money, Col- 
 onel.” 
 
 “ Did anybody ever accuse you of murdering that man, 
 Johnny?” 
 
 “Nobody.” 
 
A GLORIOUS FORTUHE. 
 
 11 
 
 “ Lucky for you.” The Colonel yawned. “ And now 
 I suppose you mean to stay till you send in your checks?” 
 “ I think that is so/’ he replied, looking about him con- 
 tentedly. The sun was sloping westward now, and the 
 hills and forests were lying in a splendid golden bath. 
 “Why should I move on? What could I get anywhere 
 better than this? I am boss. I’ve never been boss before. 
 I get up when I like, I work no harder than I like. Be- 
 fore, I had to work as it pleased other people; here I 
 work for myself: all the wages are my own. As for com- 
 pany, I don’t want any but my own, seeing that most of 
 the company in this country is fighting and quarreling, 
 and screechin’ mad with drink.” 
 
 “ Don’t you want to see your wife and daughter, then?” 
 “ As for my wife I shall see her quite soon enough, 
 because, I tell you, she’s dead; therefore there’s no harry 
 respecting her. As for my little maid, I should like— yes, 
 I really should like to set eyes on that child again.” He 
 made a determined effort, grasped the whiskv-bottle, and 
 resolutely filled half the pannikin, which he drank off. 
 “A beautiful voice she had.” His eyes grew softer and 
 weaker, and he rambled in his talk, and began feebly to 
 repeat himself. “Her mother wanted to be proud of her 
 husband, but couldn’t, she said, because he was nothing 
 but an insignificant clerk, and contented with that and 
 his low friends. So how could she? Lord! I was always 
 the most contented of men. Give me my pipe, I say, and 
 my drop of beer in the evening, with a talk and a friend 
 of two; what more does any man want? And pay? Why, 
 they would have advanced me to five pounds a week in 
 time; more than ever I’ve had since she nagged me into 
 running away.” 
 
 “ Then you did pluck up spirit to run away?” 
 
 “ I did. One evening, when she’d been going on worse 
 than usual, I put on my hat and coat, and wrapped up 
 my throat with a comforter on account of the east wind, 
 and I said, ‘Very well, Matilda, I’m off.’ That’s all I 
 said. ‘I’m off, Matilda.’ All she said was ‘Good-by,’ 
 and my Christian-name, which she never used but for 
 purposes of nagging.” 
 
 “ So you came away, and left your wife on the parish?” 
 “ No, Colonel, I didn’t ” — he said this without the least 
 indignation at this charge — “ no. Matilda had her own 
 
12 
 
 k GLORIOUS FORTUNE. 
 
 money, left to* her and invested in houses. Now she’s 
 dead, the little maid has it, no doubt. A hundred and 
 twenty pounds a year the money was. Perhaps it is more 
 by this time.” 
 
 “ Was it settled upon her?” 
 
 “ Why?” He took another drink out of the pannikin. 
 “ Don’t I tell you it was her money?” 
 
 “ What is the wife’s is the husband’s.” 
 
 “ You wouldn’t say that, Colonel, if you’d known Ma- 
 tilda. You wouldn’t, indeed.” 
 
 “ Well, you ran away?” 
 
 “Yes, I ran away.” He laughed gently. “I thought 
 I would surprise Matilda, s.o I took my passage that same 
 day for New York. When I got there I wrote to Matilda. 
 I said she’d be glad to find her husband was a man of 
 spirit; that I was bound to make my Fortune before I 
 came home again; and I told her where a letter would find 
 me. She replied that she should think the better of me 
 for the future, and as regards the Fortune I was to send it 
 home bit by bit, as I made it, because she didn’t believe, 
 if I knew how to make it, that I had the pluck to keep it. 
 
 “I don’t think,” he went on after a pause, “that any 
 man’s Fortune was so slow of coming as mine. I tried it 
 clerking in a store, I tried it as a book-agent, and a bogus 
 auctioneer’s help, and a traveler in clocks and reaping- 
 machines, and a conjuror’s confederate, and an actor, and 
 a schoolmaster, and Lord knows what. Except a preacher, 
 I think I’ve been most everything. Just before the Fort- 
 une came — I mean this little clearin’, and the house — [ 
 had the hardest job of all, for I hitched on to a plow- 
 gang.” 
 
 “ Yes, I suppose you must have always have been a 
 pretty useless galoot. There’s lots like you Johnny.” 
 
 “ Matilda,” Johnny went on, heedless of these con- 
 temptuous words, “didn’t quite know all that happened. 
 No, sir, the letters I sent home would have done credit 
 to Mr. Vanderbilt; for I told her that the dollars were 
 running in so thick ’twas impossible to count them, 
 but I couldn’t send them home because they had all to be 
 invested again. She wasn’t so grateful for the news as 
 she might have been; wanting all the time to take a better 
 position, as she said, and if I was making all this money, 
 why was she starving on a hundred and twenty pounds a 
 
A GLORIOUS FORTUNE. 
 
 13 
 
 year? Well, poor thing, perhaps she would have found 
 out the truth, because she was threatening to come out 
 after the dollars, but she was taken ill and died — all pure 
 Vexation because I wouldn’t send any of it home. After 
 that the little maid wrote instead, and 1 kept on, just to 
 please her, pilin’ it up about my Glorious Fortune. But, 
 somehow, what with this unexpected Fortune and the 
 whisky. I’ve forgotten to change the post-town and the 
 State, and I guess she must have left off writing.” 
 
 “So,” said the other man, “you’ve got a daughter at 
 home, and you’ve done nothing to prevent your showing 
 your face again, and there’s money waiting for you, and 
 yet you stay here in this cursed lonely place without a 
 friend” — Johnny embraced the whisky-bottle — “or a 
 man to speak to.” 
 
 “You’ve been with me for a week. Colonel,” said 
 Johnny. 
 
 “And no money ” 
 
 “Enough to buy whisky and notions,” he inter- 
 rupted. 
 
 “And nothing to expect.” 
 
 “ I expect,” said Johnny, “ to go on living here for a 
 thousand years. What do I want with change? I’ve been 
 driven around long enough. Land o’ Freedom, is it? I’ve 
 never come across any freedom. What’s it like, your 
 freedom? Show me a bit of it? All I’ve seen in this 
 country is a boss at one end of a bit of work and a beef- 
 steak at the other. As for you. Colonel, you’ve had a 
 bully fine time, I guess. Euchre?” 
 
 The other nodded. 
 
 “Monte?” 
 
 He nodded again. 
 
 “ Poker? I thought so, and a difficulty now and then? 
 Quite so. I thought once of going into the sporting line 
 myself, but I concluded ’twas unwholesome for delicate 
 constitutions. I dare say, Colonel, you’ve shot your man 
 before now? Yes, I thought so. You look like it. 
 P’raps you wouldn’t believe it, but I’ve never even carried 
 a revolver, and never had a fight. Born in England, 
 Colonel? Said so, moment I set eyes on you. In London, 
 most likely. They all come from London. Some trouble, 
 no doubt? Jes’ so. As is most often the case, and no 
 need to ask further. For there’s more deserves the trouble 
 
14 
 
 A GLORIOUS FORTUNE. 
 
 than gets it, and if the jury was to change place with the 
 prisoner, very often more justice would be done.” 
 
 Johnny went on rambling in this discursive way, 
 with an occasional sip at the pannikin, his guest paying 
 little heed. 
 
 Presently he got up, and said rather thickly that 
 it was close on sunset, and he must go and fix up the 
 supper. 
 
 Two or three hours later the two men were within the 
 hut, sitting with the table between them. On the table 
 were a petroleum lamp, the whisky-bottle, and a pack of 
 cards. But unhappily Johnny had over-estimated his 
 strength of head, which now lay on the table among the 
 cards. In other words he was drunk. 
 
 The Colonel, who seemed sober, sat perfectly still. 
 Presently he rose and softly went into the open-air. It 
 was a cloudless night, there was a perfect stillness in the 
 air, but the Colonel looked round him with restless and 
 uneasy eyes. 
 
 “ What is it?” he murmured. “ I havn’t felt like this 
 for fifteen years or more. Why, I see and feel London 
 again. I am to give one of them a dinner at the Cafe 
 Royale. We are going to the theater afterward. It is 
 all just as it used to be before the smash. By this time 
 I suppose they have got old, and there’s r new lot, but 
 they are exactly like their predecessors, and the old games 
 go on just the same.” 
 
 “ Oh!” he heaved a long, deep sigh. “ But it is with- 
 out me. I am out of it — for ever.” 
 
 He sighed again, and began to walk backward and for- 
 ward, swinging his arms and cracking his fingers. He 
 was living over again the old life. The rambling talk of 
 his companion had touched some chord which awakened 
 old memories, and these for the time maddened him. He 
 was at Newmarket, at Doncaster, at Epsom; he was sing- 
 ing and drinking after a great supper; he was gambling 
 at a baccarat-table; he was riding a steeplechase; he was 
 acting with a troup of amateurs; he was dancing; he was 
 love-making. 
 
 “ If I had rnonev,” lie said, Ci 1 could go back to all of 
 it. As for the old set, I suppose they are alive. They 
 would welcome any one back again who had money to go 
 the pace. Even if I had no money,” he went on, “I 
 
A GLORIOUS FORTUNE. 15 
 
 might go home and pretend I had. Lots of men get on 
 1 without money. Why not?” 
 
 , For two hours and more he remained outside, while, 
 within the hut, the drunken man still lay asleep, breath- 
 ing heavily, his head upon the table. 
 
 Presently a chill breeze sprang up from the sea, and the 
 dreamer returned to the hut shivering. 
 
 “Ugh!” he groaned, looking round the bare planks 
 and comfortless room, his head full of memories of Club-, 
 land. i 
 
 The lamp was burning low — he trimmed it. Then he! 
 took a drink from the whiskv-pannikin, then he sat down 1 
 again with the cards and began to shuffle, deal, cut, com- 
 bine, arrange, and sort the cards with deft fingers, all the 
 time looking an imaginary partner in the face, so that 
 when the game should be finished, the stakes would be 
 handed over to himself without a suspicion or any dimi- 
 nution of confidence. He alone is the perfect sportsman 
 who can always land the money and never be suspected. 
 But there are, alas! few of these. 
 
 Presently he got tired of his game of dummy pigeon, 
 and began to think that he was tired, and might as well 
 turn in. Now his host, in offering him hospitality dur- 
 ing the last week, had naturally reserved for himself his 
 own bed, giving his guest a shake-down of skins and 
 blankets, and it occurred to the Colonel that, Johnny 
 being so very drunk, he himself might just as well take 
 the bed, which would be easier than the shake-down on 
 the floor. A drunken man does not mind a hard bed. 
 
 The bed-place was a kind of bunk, in which blankets 
 were spread on straw. The Colonel began to beat up the 
 straw and arrange *the blankets. Now while he was 
 thoughtfully preparing a pillow, a very strange thing hap- 
 pened. At the head of the bed he found a small -recess, 
 contrived, no doubt, by the builder of the house, for a 
 safe receptacle of valuable things. It was, in fact, a secret 
 cupboard; no one would suspect such a thing in a log-hut, 
 and, leas^t of all, at the head of the bed-place. Secret 
 cupboards belong to old manor-houses, granges, baronial 
 halls, and castles, not to wooden cabins in Western States; 
 yet here was such a hiding-place. The Colonel, with con- 
 siderable curiosity, pulled out the contents and brought 
 them to the table. First, there were three or four little 
 
16 
 
 A GLORIOUS FORTUNE. 
 
 bundles of letters, tied up with string; they were frayed 
 at the edges and soiled, because they had been a good deal 
 carried about in the pocket. The drunken man still lay 
 motionless and sleeping heavily. The Colonel untied the 
 string and turned over the letters. Some were signed 
 “ Your affectionate wife.” He read two or three of them, 
 and smiled. Johnny therefore hlad told the truth; he had 
 really run away from a nagging wife. He deceived her as 
 to his success in the New World; she nagged him still by 
 letter. The others, of which there were a great many, 
 were written, first in a school-girl's unformed hand, but 
 afterward in a firm round writing, clear and strong. 
 They began “ My dear father,” and ended “Your affec- 
 tionate daughter, Milly Montoro.” 
 
 “ So,” said the Colonel, “ I thought the man was lying. 
 He’s a poor helpless creature. Can’t even lie. His name 
 is Montoro. How the devil do these clerks and beggars 
 get such names? And. his daughter’s name is Milly. 
 What is Milly? Emily? Matilda? What’s in this bundle? 
 More letters, I suppose.” 
 
 The last bundle was tied up with the greatest care, and 
 wrapped in an oilskin cloth. The Colonel opened it, and 
 changed color, turning suddenly quite white; for the bun- 
 dle was nothing else than a packet of English bank-notes 
 — ten-pound notes, eighty of them — eight hundred 
 pounds! He counted them three times over. Eight hun- 
 dred pounds! 
 
 As he counted them and gazed upon them, his eyes 
 flashed and his lips trembled. Then he thought they 
 might be forged notes. What on earth could a man want 
 with good English notes in a log-cabin? He held them 
 up to the light and examined their edges and looked at 
 the numbers. No; they were good notes. 
 
 Then he remembered how the man he called Johnny — 
 the Montoro man — had alluded to money. “If there 
 had been any,” he said, “ I should have inherited that as 
 well.” He could lie, then, after all, this mean creature, 
 and he had lied. 
 
 Eight hundred pounds in notes! And still the drunken 
 man lay, head on the table, snoring heavily. 
 
 Eight hundred pounds! What could not be done with 
 eight hundred pounds? 
 
 You may invest it in the Three perCents. and gettwen- 
 
A GLORIOUS FORTUNE. 
 
 17 
 
 ty-four pounds a year for it, which is not much more than 
 a soldier’s pension of a shilling a day; you may buy the 
 stock and good-will of a genteel shop, such as a tobacco- 
 nist’s or a fancy-shop with Berlin work; you may buy a 
 lodging-house furnished; you may publish two or three 
 novels with it; you may have your portrait painted; you 
 may buy a really beautiful blue vase with it — you may do 
 quantities of useful things with eight hundred pounds; 
 but the Colonel thought not of these. His fancy quickly 
 turned to London and the West End. 
 
 He stood there for half an hour and more with the 
 notes in his hand, irresolute, listening to the voice of the 
 Tempter. 
 
 Now the Tempter whispered this and that, but always 
 came back to the same point, which was that with eight 
 hundred pounds for capital a man who knew how to play 
 might do very well in London. Why, when he — not the 
 Tempter, but the Colonel — was a youngster he lost his 
 whole fortune because he played with such men as he 
 himself had since become. Eight hundred pounds! Why 
 with two hundred he could go back to that old life and 
 begin again. Nobody knew anything when he came 
 away except that he was stone broke. Yes, he would go 
 back again. He was fifty, and he had grown quite gray. 
 That could be remedied. It was fifteen years since he 
 disappeared from the West End — and now he could 
 go back again if he liked. Heavens! how he should en- 
 joy once more the glad following of the rosy hours! Be- 
 sides, as the honest and virtuous Tempter said, it was not 
 Johnny’s money at all. He had lied. He said there was 
 no money; it was quite certainly the money of the dead 
 man. Serve Johnny right to punish him for lying and to 
 take away his money. 
 
 It grew late. The drunken man slept on. There are 
 never any clocks in log-huts until the agent in clocks has 
 called. But I think it must have been midnight, when 
 the Tempter said his last word, and the Colonel, without 
 listening to that other voice, which said that though he 
 had done a good many tolerably bad things, he had never 
 done anything half so bad as what he was now going to 
 do, and did he think that he could ever after it consider 
 himself worthy of any respect or consideration at all? For 
 to swagger and captain it around, to cheat and bully with 
 
18 
 
 A GLORIOUS FORTUNE. 
 
 those who cheat and bully — ready at a moment to fight 
 for your life — to be a ruffian, open and confessed, hath in 
 it something of bravery which commands a little admira- 
 tion; but to be a mean, secret thief — to reward hospitality 
 with robbery — this, indeed, is different. But this voice 
 was a small voice, and the other was loud and persuasive. 
 Therefore the Colonel put on his hat, turned down the 
 lamp, stuffed the bundles, notes, letters, and all, into his 
 pocket, and stepped out stealthily and disappeared. 
 
 An hour or so afterward, Johnny moved uneasily, 
 moaned and grunted in his sleep, discovered that the edge 
 of the table was sharp, and his neck stiff; then he opened 
 his eyes, and lifted his head, feeling a little cold and 
 somewhat cramped from the position in which he had been 
 lying. 
 
 Pretty well awake now, he slowly rose and tried to shake 
 himself together. Then he remembered something. 
 
 “Colonel!” he said, hoarsely. 
 
 There was no reply. 
 
 “ Colonel’s asleep,” he whispered. “Less go to bed.” 
 
 He threw himself into the bunk and drew the blankets 
 over him, without the usual preliminary of undressing. 
 As soon as he was quite comfortable, he addressed him- 
 self to sleep, but first, as a matter of custom, he felt in 
 the right-hand corner for the recess in which he kept his 
 bundles. Very odd, he could not find them. They were 
 not there. 
 
 In a moment, he was broad awake, and perfectly sober. 
 On his knees he began to fumble and feel everywhere for 
 his treasures. Then he sprang out of bed, crying, 
 “ Colonel! Colonel! wake up ! ” and groped about for his 
 matches. When he had found them, still wondering why 
 the Colonel slept so heavily, he lit the lamp, and searched 
 again for his packets. But in vain. They were gone. 
 Then he looked for his guest, and he was gone too. 
 
 Then he understood what had happened, and seizing 
 his gun with a loud cry, the robbed man ran wildly into 
 the road, and rushed along the track southward. That 
 was a great pity, because the Colonel, who felt quite safe 
 and easy in his mind, and was not making any violent 
 effort to cover the ground quickly, was marching due 
 north. 
 
A GLORIOUS FORTUNE. 
 
 19 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 ON THE RIVER LEA. 
 
 The River Lea is honorably known among fellows of 
 the Royal Geographical Society; schoolboys who go in for 
 their prize, and the makers of maps, as forming the east- 
 ern boundary of Middlesex. It is not, however, a river 
 • which goes into society, like a certain other river which 
 runs along the south of the same county. This is to be 
 accounted for in several ways: first, because society is a 
 good long way off; next, because you cannot get at the 
 East of London except from Broad Street, which is not 
 a society station; next, on account of what may be called 
 the personal character of the river. Its mouth is respect- 
 able, but homely, and a good deal encumbered, though of 
 a lordly breadth at high-tide, with barges, lighters, works, 
 and wharves. Higher up, it shows a sad want of direct- 
 ness and purpose; it winds about among the low meadows 
 and marshes without ever making a bold push among 
 such unresisting material; it continually goes off into 
 three or four channels; for a large part of its course the 
 prospect on one bank at least always terminates with a 
 row of low cottages, built of gray brick with red roofs. 
 Even the Thames at Cliveden could not maintain its dig- 
 nity against that mean endless row of small gray houses 
 and red roofs. 
 
 Yet the river is regarded with passionate fondness by 
 all who dwell between Stratford and Hertford. Eor you 
 may fish in it all the year round; and you may now row 
 upon it for nine months in the year; you may bathe in it 
 for three months in the year; and you may get drowned 
 in it, and very often do, if you happen to be upset and 
 cannot swim. On half-holidays and on summer evenings, 
 there are as many boats upon it as on the Thames at 
 Richmond. There is also to be found upon its banks the 
 Riverside Jack, a creature whom, at first, it seems incon- 
 gruous to meet so far east. The ignorant traveler would 
 as soon expect a salmon in the River Lea as a Jack like 
 him of Putney, Richmond, Chertsey, and Kingston, upon 
 its banks. Yet here he is; using his favorite language 
 
20 
 
 A GLORIOUS FORTUNE. 
 
 with the one favorite adjective which goes with everything, 
 like the Spanish onion, or curry-powder, or Spyer’s Uni- 
 versal Sauce; patriotically drinking the national bever- 
 age; loafing about among the boats; always pretending to 
 be extremely busy, yet never doing anything, and still a 
 waiter — “he also serves, who only stands and waits ” — 
 upon Providence for the casual tip; his expectations be- 
 ing pitched lower than those of his Richmond cousins. 
 The Lea River Jack has a cottage upon the bank, green 
 with damp in the winter and picturesque with dirt in the 
 summer; behind the cottage is a garden in which he 
 grows the most gigantic Jerusalem artichokes — perhaps 
 that vegetable, in some subtle, unknown way, appeals to 
 a poetic side, hitherto unsuspected, in his nature: here 
 and there he has a ferry-boat, in which he will take you 
 across for a penny. Whether business is brisk or slack, 
 he always has a rod or two in the water, and as he goes 
 about his chores, he still keeps one eye upon the float, 
 ready at a moment’s notice to strike the silver roach. 
 
 If you were to ascend the river from the mouth, where 
 it is called Bow Creek, beside the East India Dock, you 
 would pass, on your left, wharves, gasworks, and man- 
 kind, all the way by Bromley, Bow, and Stratford, till 
 you came to Clapton; and all the way upon the right you 
 would have a broad and dreary flat, which has many 
 names, but is one swamp — the Great Dismal Swamp — 
 once, I believe, and up to the days of Henry the Eighth, 
 who loved hunting in Epping and Hainault, and there- 
 about, full of alligators, snapping turtles, and Wantley 
 Dragons, or at least the Sussex kind, which were smaller. 
 No one must contemplate this swamp too long, or on 
 many days, except when there is a sunny sky above, with 
 a west wind driving light clouds about, making alterna- 
 tions of light and shade. 
 
 It is not, I think, until one gets to Clapton that the 
 stream becomes possible for those who are affected by their 
 surroundings; above that point it is a real river, which 
 may be rowed upon or fished in, and enjoyed as much as 
 any other river in England, though with more moderate 
 raptures. It is not so picturesque as the Wye, for in- 
 stance; nor so bright as the southern Avon; nor so dashing 
 as the Usk; nor so pleasing as the Tyne; nor so lovely as 
 the Coquet; but yet it pleases. 
 
A GLORIOUS FORTUNE. 
 
 21 
 
 It was on the evening of Thursday, the 28th of June in 
 the present year of grace, 1883, that among other boats 
 upon the River Lea, was one — the 'only one with which 
 we are concerned — containing two persons. Had these 
 two persons been old, or even middle-aged, nobody would 
 have noticed them; but as they were both young, and one 
 was not only young, but very pleasing for the eye to rest 
 upon, people on the bank looked after them as the boat 
 sped on her way. As for the evening, it was exactly the 
 sort of evening which this homely river wants to set off 
 its simple beauty; the wind was from the west and blew 
 in gusts, but not too heavily; the clouds scudded across 
 the sky, the air was clear; there was a lively ripple in the 
 water, and a pleasant lapping and plashing of the water 
 among the tall rank grass which serves the Lea at this 
 part in place of reeds and water-lilies. The river was 
 quite full and brimming over, but the girl who sat in the 
 stern and held the rudder-strings could not see the flat 
 marshy fields, because of this tall grass standing in the red 
 clay of the low bank. When the sun got a chance be- 
 tween the impertinent clouds, the wavelets were blue and 
 bright, and sparkled and danced merrily, like bubbles in 
 a glass of champagne, or zoedone at the very least; so that 
 it did one good only to see them. When a flying cloud 
 hid the sun, and the wind came down upon the water, it 
 became inky-black, and the little billows were as threaten- 
 ing as if they had been great waves, and the giiTs eyes 
 fell instinctively upon the young man with her, as if for 
 protection. This was quite natural, because he was her 
 lover. Any girl would have done the same. 
 
 As for her appearance, I declare that there was nothing 
 at all out of the common in her face; and yet she was very 
 far from being common. Women said of her that she 
 was rather pretty, in their cold and critical way; young 
 men would have found her charming, but she only knew 
 one or two. I have seen thousands of such pretty, sweet- 
 faced English girls, with the seal of goodness and tender- 
 ness on their foreheads; you may see them in any town 
 of this happy realm wherever girls do congregate, that is 
 to say, in church or at evening parties — whether most they 
 love their prayers or their waltzing is a question which I 
 leave to philosophers — they are as plenty as blackberries, 
 and yet, though so plenty, they are so very precious. 
 
22 
 
 A GLORIOUS FORTUNE. 
 
 This girl, Milly Montoro, was nineteen, or perhaps 
 twenty; of her beauty it is enough to say that it was 
 entirely conformable to the ideal of this present year, 
 which, among other things, likes its damsels to be tall 
 rather than petites, and perhaps prefers a brunette to a 
 blonde. This evening she was perfectly happy; she had 
 all she wanted; love, and plenty of it; youth, health, 
 strength, hope, a modest sufficiency — what can girl desire 
 more? She was so happy that she felt in a way ashamed, 
 and afraid of showing her happiness too much, lest George 
 should think her silly — which indeed she was not. She 
 was so happy that she did not care much about talking, 
 and would have been contented to go on watching river, 
 and sky, and bank, and the face of her lover before her, 
 without a word; she was so happy, in short, that she felt 
 as if all the rest of the world must needs be as happy as 
 herself; and the golden age with Eoger Bontemps; the 
 Ship which is bound to come home, but is always overdue: 
 the Home of Plenty; the Land of Cockaigne; the Garden 
 of Delight, and the Paradise of Sweet Contentment, were 
 all come together, most unexpectedly, and had every 
 intention of staying, and never going away again at all! 
 A blissful dream, truly! Happy those' who fail not of it 
 once in their lives. 
 
 Along the bank there sat rows of anglers. On the 
 Lea they are of all ages. The angler, like the poet and 
 the aesthete, is born, not made; some upon the bank were 
 old, old men, seventy, eighty, ninety years of age. 
 Charles Lamb, fifty years ago, used to see them in the 
 same place, fishing, with the same rod, after the same 
 roach. Others were middle-aged men, whose work in the 
 City, though necessary, was irksome, because it kept them 
 from the banks; others were young men, but thoughtful 
 and reflective, who sit every evening, rod in hand, in 
 grave silence and patience, while their frivolous compeers 
 in cruelty collars and tight trousers, goa-mashing; others, 
 again, were mere boys and striplings yet, already bound 
 for life to the brotherhood, though no oaths or secret 
 mysteries of initiation and reception were offered or re- 
 quired. Milly pitied them a little this evening; it cer- 
 tainly did seem to her that men at every time of life would 
 be better employed in making love than in fishing. 
 
 “ Oh, George,” she leaned forward and murmured low, 
 
A GLORIOUS FORTUHE. 23 
 
 “do the young men never leave the banks and look for 
 some girl, to make her happy?” 
 
 “ You would like everybody to be happy,” said her 
 lover, resting on his oars. “ Why, my darling, it is not 
 every girl who can make every man happy. Do you 
 think any other girl in the world would have made me 
 happy?” 
 
 If you think of it there seems a little arrogance and 
 self-conceit in this little speech; but the young man did 
 not intend it. What he meant was, that not every girl 
 has the power of making the happiness of even an average, 
 ordinary, typical, commonplace young man such as him- 
 self; he was quite a humble young man in his own estima- 
 tion. He designed to pay a high compliment to his 
 betrothed, because, so lofty being the ideal woman even 
 in the most commonplace manly bosom, Milly Montoro 
 alone, of all the women he had ever seen, reached this 
 giddy height. She understood him to mean this, and she 
 blushed and lowered her eyes, being afraid for herself lest 
 she might fail in this point or in that, and so have to 
 come down to a lower step, whereby she might imperil the 
 affections she had won. 
 
 The early days of courtship are, to an innocent maid, 
 as the steps of one who walks with trembling feet upon 
 frozen snow, doubting the assurance of the guide who has 
 gone before, and assures her that all is safe; gjingdelicate- 
 ly, fearfully, pit-a-pat, softly feeling the strength of the 
 treacherous surface, until, quite assured that it is safe 
 indeed, the traveler may walk in ease and happiness. The 
 very peril, however, lends excitement and pleasure to the 
 journey. 
 
 So the girl listened, and her heart glowed within her to 
 hear these words; and yet she was afraid. Is it not a 
 delightful thing to feel, for once in a life, that you are a 
 real angel, wanting nothing but a couple of wings, and 
 bound to play up to the part, and to scorn the little 
 temperous tiffs, sharp sayings, unworthy thoughts, with 
 which some girls, not yet. fully assured that they belong 
 to the holy army of angels, do poison and corrupt their 
 minds? 
 
 “ Oh, George,” she murmured, “ do not spoil me, or 
 you will be disappointed afterward. Let us talk of our 
 future.” 
 
24 
 
 A GLORIOUS FORTUNE. 
 
 The young man, at the invigorating thought of the 
 future, grasped his sculls with firmer hands, and put his 
 back into half-a-dozen strokes, so that the little craft, 
 astonished, and a little hurt in her feelings and rowlocks, 
 clove the waters at racing speed. 
 
 I am firmly fixed in the opinion, and am prepared to 
 maintain it in open tourney, lance in rest, and buckler 
 (especially buckler) on arm, that the whole hope of the 
 country in the future, its mainstay in the present, its 
 glory in the past, lies, will lie, and has always lain, in 
 those boys who do not distinguish themselves, or show any 
 enthusiasm over the subjects which we commonly call 
 literce humaniores , or belles lettres — in other words, who 
 do not “take to books/’ but prefer the carpenter’s shop, 
 the lathe, the Zoological Gardens, the natural history of 
 birds, beasts, fishes, and men; who want always to find 
 out how things are done, with what tools and methods, 
 and then are never satisfied until they can see their way to 
 improve those methods; whose heaven upon this earth is 
 a chemical and physical laboratory; who really cannot be 
 made to care for poetry — unless there is a rattling good 
 story in it — or for a story unless it is real, full of advent- 
 ure, and the fellow who wrote it knew what he was talking 
 about; who have no feeling for style and no taste for the 
 rhythm of verse, the fine aroma of an essay, the balance 
 of a period, the pointing of an epigram. That those who 
 do — bookish men — exist at all seems to those, who do not, 
 chiefly due to the necessity for keeping printers occupied. 
 But what a waste of life it appears compared with that 
 which is wholly given over to practical contrivances, making 
 easy what has hitherto proved hard, and cheap what has 
 hitherto been dear. George Ambrose was one of the practi- 
 cal men. Look at him as he handles his sculls, with bare 
 head and up-rolled sleeves. You see that he has a clear 
 steady eye, clean-cut features, a mouth set firm, and a 
 square chin. These are all indications pointing in the same 
 direction. As a boy, when other boys read books, he made 
 things, or inquired into causes. When it became time 
 for him to leave school, he requested that he might not be 
 sent into the City, whither all his schoolfellows were 
 bound, but might find a place, if it were only as door- 
 keeper, in some establishment where they made things. 
 His request was granted, because in the lower valley of 
 
A GLORIOUS FORTUNE. 
 
 25 
 
 the Lea such a request is recognized as not only reasonable, 
 but as likely to lead unto things substantial. The only 
 difficulty with a young man is to choose, for there are at 
 Stratford, West Ham, Hackney Wick, yea, and at Clapton 
 itself, men running many and divers trades, arts, and in- 
 dustries — those who spin jute, make cigar-boxes, creosote, 
 patent fuel, dye, tanks, crucibles, grease, chicory, drain- 
 pipes; with workers in glass, iron, leather, stone, lead, 
 gelatine, tin, zinc, and xylonite; and money to be made 
 in all these trades did one know how to choose the most 
 likely. • Young Ambrose made two or three false starts. 
 First, he entered the works of a gas company, but speedily 
 mastered the subject, and despised a thing in which the 
 amount of knowledge required is so limited. Next, he 
 went into a galvanized iron company, but pined for still 
 wider scope, and finally began afresh at the bottom of the 
 ladder in a great chemical company, which had to do with 
 a whole group of things, every one of inexhaustible inter- 
 est. He was now twenty-six years of age; he had worked 
 his way up to a good salary and highly responsible work; 
 he had taken his degree in science at the university in 
 Piccadilly; he was a member of the Chemical Society; he 
 had written papers and was already known; and he was so 
 full of ambitions, projects, designs, hopes, and plans, that 
 it was impossible for him to remain any longer alone, but 
 needs must that lie take a wife. Whom should he take 
 but the girl he had known for a dozen years, who lived 
 with his own cousin, Reginald Ambler— the best and 
 sweetest of girls, and eke the prettiest? He, who had 
 thought for ten years of nothing but the laboratory at the 
 works, his experiments, his science, and his reading, dis- 
 covered suddenly that he had always been in love with 
 Milly Montoro, and when he proposed to her, which he 
 did with as much eloquence, yet fear and trembling, as if 
 he had been a poet of the first water, he told her so, and 
 ascribed not to himself, but to her, all the merit. 
 
 “ Milly dear,” he said, after throwing his excitement 
 into the boat, “the house is perfect; no basement, no 
 kitchen below, two rooms on the ground-floor, three above 
 — nobody can want more. IPs only two miles from Strat- 
 ford and one from the river, where we shall like to take a 
 row now and then. As to the garden, you shall have the 
 front for jour flowers, and I shall have "the back for pease 
 
26 
 
 A GLORIOUS FORTUNE, 
 
 and beans. On Saturday afternoons I will look after 
 it.” 
 
 tC Yes, George, and I will look after it every day. Go 
 on. You will start every morning at half-past eight. 
 Yes, I know, breakfast at half-past seven; but you will be 
 at home to tea by seven every evening. George, we must 
 make our evenings delightful. Sometimes you shall read 
 to me; I will play for you; I will teach you to sing; you 
 have got a very good voice, sir, only you want to be taught 
 how to keep it in order. On Sundays we will go to 
 church together — no more reading chemistry on Sunday 
 mornings — and after church a little walk, and then din- 
 ner. Think of having you to dinner every Sunday! 
 After dinner I shall send you for a long walk to shake the 
 cobwebs out of your brain, and you shall come home to 
 tea and supper. Perhaps we may have one or two of the 
 children to tea with us; and, George, we will furnish the 
 spare room, so as to give a bed to them sometimes, will we 
 not? They are as good as my brothers and sisters, you 
 know, and ” 
 
 “You mean you have been as good as a sister to them, 
 Millv,” he laughed. “ Yes, you shall have your spare 
 room, and put as many of the children into the bed as 
 the bed will hold. My dear, I do not want you to lose 
 your friends.” 
 
 “ No, George.” The tears stood in her eyes for a mo- 
 ment, but soon cleared away. “ It is bad enough for 
 them, poor dears, as it is. They have been crying ever 
 since it was fixed for August.” 
 
 George showed no kind of sympathy with these poor 
 sufferers, knowing that their loss was his own gain. This 
 feeling very much helps to harden the heart; and, besides, 
 he was ready to explain, if necessary, that every girl must 
 expect to exchange her home for her husband, and to 
 point out that it was not as if the young Amblers had 
 any real claim upon Milly, who was neither kith nor kin, 
 but had only lived with them for eight years or so; and 
 the fact that they regarded her as their elder sister did 
 not make her one, but showed only the extraordinary 
 goodness of her disposition, seeing that she could com- 
 mand an amount of affection as can only be wrung from 
 the unsympathetic breasts of the young by extraordinary 
 sacrifice and ceaseless devotion. These thoughts passed 
 
A GL0K10US EOJiTUJSE. 
 
 27 
 
 through his brain quickly, but without requiring him to 
 put them into words. So he only looked at his fiancee 
 and nodded his head, and she understood just as well as 
 if he had talked a whole yard, or an ell or two, of printed 
 slips. 
 
 Then the young chemist began to talk of his own 
 schemes, which it would be a shame to reveal, because he 
 is in reality another Edison, only as yet his plans have 
 not become patents. He knew all the things which want 
 to be invented or made practicable through being made 
 cheap, with the inventions which want to be converted 
 from toys to practical purposes, and the possibilities of 
 certain scientific facts which are as yet in the limbo of 
 unpractical laboratories. Heavens! what extended open- 
 ings, chances, opportunities, and occasions there are for 
 the young chemist who has got eyes that look outside his 
 retort and can connect his laboratory with humanity! 
 
 “ You shall find out all the things that have to be found 
 out, George,” cried Milly, as if every woman has the power 
 of conferring genius, insight, conception, and more power 
 to his elbow upon the man she loves. And yet not every 
 woman, my friends; but unto some women is this power 
 given, and then happy — thrice happy — is he whom that 
 woman loves. The powers of women are as yet imper- 
 fectly known, which is one reason why they sometimes 
 try to imitate man; and I wish I could be born a hundred 
 years hence, when these powers are understood and devel- 
 oped, and be clever, strong, handsome, fresh, and frolic. 
 Then would a great career await me. Perhaps — who 
 
 knows? 
 
 “ Oh,” he went on, u when one thinks of the wonder- 
 ful world which is opening out all round us; the instru- 
 ments which register speech so that it can never be lost — 
 fancy, Milly, all one’s foolish words preserved for ever — 
 the little machine with which a scene is caught in a mo- 
 ment and so never lost; the wire which sends messages, 
 and the wire which whispers words; the unknown forces 
 which our great men are reducing to order and obedience, 
 so that before many years the reign of steam, and gas, 
 and coal will be at an end. It seems as if there was 
 nothing else worth living for, and everything outside the 
 laboratory was a sham and a delusion, except the school 
 which prepares the boys for the workshop ” 
 
28 
 
 A GLORIOUS FORTUNE. 
 
 “ And me, George / 5 said Milly jealously. “Am I not 
 worth living for? Tell me all that is in your thoughts 
 always. I know nothing of your science, but you shall 
 teach me. Promise that you will tell me everything . 55 
 
 “ My dear / 5 he replied, “ that is the reason why I want 
 you to marry me, because I must talk to some one . 55 
 
 Again, he did not mean to be selfish, vet he might have 
 seemed so; but he had never learned the language of com- 
 pliment, and he meant that to Milly it was an honor that 
 he should think her able to understand and to share his 
 thoughts; and all, just as before, because he was a humble 
 youth, who felt himself to be quite of the ordinary kind, 
 but educated, which Milly was not, only that she belonged 
 to the nobler kind of women who could, he thought, un- 
 derstand everything without education. Indeed, one 
 knows hundreds of women who do, and will sit out the 
 most scientific lecture, bristling with hard words, their 
 faces as full of intelligence at the end as at the beginning; 
 and I do not for a moment believe the wicked calumny 
 which accuses them of abstracting their thoughts at the 
 very beginning, and so remaining during the whole dis- 
 course. 
 
 Then he, in his turn, listened while Milly told him her 
 thoughts, but bashfully, being afraid lest, after the great 
 ambition of her lover, her own hopes might seem to him 
 small. Yet they were not, because they were nothing 
 short of an ardent desire to possess her life with ease, love, 
 and happiness, and her soul with comfort. No woman 
 can desire more, so that, in fact, Milly was most ambi- 
 tious. It is true that almost every girl permits herself the 
 same dream. While they talked, the sun went down, and 
 a light mist rose upon the low ground and spread over 
 the river. Then they turned, and George rowed gently 
 down stream, the water plashing at the bows. 
 
 “George / 5 said Milly presently, “I am thinking of my 
 father . 55 
 
 “ Why / 5 he replied, “it is four years since you heard 
 from him. He must be dead, long ago . 55 
 
 “Yes / 5 she sighed; “else he would never have for- 
 gotten me. I will show you some of his letters. They 
 are full of love and thought for me. He must be dead — 
 my poor father! And to think that he never saw me since 
 J was a child in arms. He was only a clerk in the City, 
 
A GLORIOUS FORTUNE. 
 
 20 
 
 you know; and suddenly lie resolved to go abroad and 
 make his fortune, which shows what a courageous spirit 
 he had. But no one ever thought he would have done so 
 splendidly.” 
 
 “ No one ever knows,” said George, “ what he can do, 
 until he is put upon his mettle. Yet he must have been 
 a determined and clever man. Because, you see, Milly, if 
 fortunes are to be made in America, the Americans are 
 generally sharp enough to keep them in their own hands.! 
 At the same time, very often people do not see what lies 
 at their feet. What did he go away for? Because I am 
 quite sure a clever man can do quite as well at home.” 
 “Can he?” asked Milly. “I thought that everybody 
 who goes to America makes a great fortune.” 
 
 “ That is what they hope to do beforehand. When they 
 are there, I believe they find life as hard, and money as 
 scarce, as it is at home. There is a clerk in the account- 
 ant’s office at the works who remembers your father. Says 
 nobody ever thought much of his cleverness; says he was a 
 lazy, easy sort of chap, who did his work and went home, 
 and was happy. No one ever could understand why he 
 threw up a good place and went away.” 
 
 “ Yet,” said Milly, “ my father said once in his letters 
 that America offers such a vast field for a man that his 
 money can be invested as fast as it is made. Sometimes 
 he spoke of millions.” 
 
 “ Why, dear,” said her lover, “ if these millions could 
 be found! They must be somewhere; but I am afraid 
 they have got into the wrong hands; what splendid works 
 we would put up! Oh, Lord!” he sighed heavily. 
 “ What a laboratory we could have with a million to 
 spend on it. Think of the electric batteries! What ex- 
 periments we could direct, and what an army of workmen 
 we could employ!” 
 
 “It would be too delightful George,” Milly replied, 
 kindling in sympathy. “ You should be the greatest man 
 in Stratford. But my poor father is dead, and as for his 
 fortune, that must be all gone and scattered.” 
 
 I think she imagined her father’s fortune to consist of 
 dollars tied up in sacks. But we know otherwise. 
 
 “If,” he said, “your father’s money was invested, the 
 investments must be somewhere and the papers in some- 
 body’s hands. Unless, that is, people stole them and 
 
30 
 
 A GLORIOUS FORTUHE. 
 
 forged his signature. There must be all kinds of mort- 
 gages, shares, leases, contracts, bonds, all sorts of things. 
 Unless, again — money got easily is as easily lost — the 
 speculations proved disastrous. Come, my dear; never 
 think of your father’s fortune. We shall never see any of 
 it. Why, with my three. hundred a year and your hun- 
 dred and fifty, we shall begin twice as well off as most 
 young married people. And of course I shall get a rise; 
 not to speak of the great things we shall do presently. 
 And here we are. Steady, steady. Let me get out 
 first.” 
 
 • They walked along the lane, between the river and the 
 road. Milly turned back to look at the river when they 
 reached the higher ground. 
 
 The romantic suburb of Upper Clapton stands upon a 
 terrace, like Richmond, and overlooks the broad valley of 
 the Lea; gardens lie on the gentle slope of the low hill, 
 and beyond these you can discern the river winding about 
 among the flat meadows; beyond the meadows, again, are 
 the hills and wooded inclines of AValthamstow, Woodford, 
 and Chingford; beyond these (but you cannot see it) is 
 Epping Forest. 
 
 “See,” said Milly, “how white and strange the mead- 
 ows look with the mist upon them, and how shadowy the 
 marshes lie beyond it. And look! did you ever see a moon 
 so big and dim?” 
 
 “A sign of rain,” said George the practical. 
 
 “ George,” said the girl, shivering, “ I feel afraid. 
 Give me your hand. How strong it is! If there was any 
 danger I should always have this strong hand, shouldn’t 
 I ?” 
 
 He kissed her — no one was in the lane, and it was twi- 
 light and misty beside — he kissed her twice, on her fore- 
 head and her lips, saying: 
 
 “Why, dear, what danger can there be? And if there 
 were?” He clinched his fist and his eyes looked danger- 
 ous. “ Come, my darling. It is past nine o’clock, and 
 the Great Discoverer will be getting hungry. To say noth- 
 ing of Kepler, Gopernica, and Tycho Brahe. ” 
 
JL GLORIOUS FORTUNE. 
 
 31 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 IS THE WORLD ROUND. 
 
 Supper was laid in the dining-room of Veritas Villa 
 waiting for the return of Milly and her lover. I call it 
 the dining-room, but it was also the breakfast-room, the 
 sitting-room, the day-nursery, the play-room, the work- 
 room, and my lady’s boudoir; not because there were not 
 other rooms in this genteel villa, but because the drawing- 
 room was wanted for Mr. Ambler’s maps and books, and 
 the breakfast-room, which opened conveniently upon the 
 garden, for his observatory, his models, his Orrery, his 
 telescope, and his scientific instruments. If you belong 
 to a great man you must be content to let him have the 
 comfort. There are so few great men that this law causes 
 little hardship. Besides, who would not willingly give 
 up two out of three rooms for the pride of being an 
 Ambler? 
 
 The boys, this evening, were shaping bows — that is to 
 say, they were making things with knives — boys who 
 never have pocket-money are greatly to be envied, because 
 they learn to make so many things for themselves; and 
 the girls were spinning. That is to say, Copernica Am- 
 bler, the only girl in the room, was finishing a frock for 
 her sister Somerville, now in bed, and asleep, while her 
 mother, with a great basket beside her, which never grew 
 less in bulk, was looking after the stockings and the socks 
 darning-needle in hand. Across her face lays the line of 
 care which marks the face of the woman who has to make 
 every shilling do the work of half-a-crown, and contrives, 
 manages, and continually occupies her mind with the 
 maintenance of her children. Who does not know such 
 women by the score? It seems a waste of life, this giving 
 \t all to the boys and girls; but perhaps it is made up 
 somehow — here or hereafter. 
 
 When Milly came home, followed by her lover, there was 
 a general stir, with the sudden appearance of smiles and 
 revival of cheerfulness, due partly to the immediate pros- 
 pect of supper, and partly as the toll of affection exacted 
 at all hours by this young person. For the mother looked 
 
32 
 
 A GLORIOUS FORTUHE. 
 
 up and smiled over her pile of stockings; and Copernica, 
 who was a sharp-featured thin girl of sixteen, who wore 
 spectacles, held up her newly-finished skirt for admiration; 
 and the boys shouted; and everyone called upon Milly 
 for sympathy with his work; and everybody had some- 
 thing to tell her, which was always the way when she 
 came home, whether she had been away for an hour or a 
 <%• 
 
 “You must he hungry, George,” said Mrs. Ambler. 
 “ Tycho, my dear, go call your father.” 
 
 Everybody, or nearly everybody, knows Reginald Am- 
 bler by reputation; a very large class of humanity, namely, 
 the Editors, know his handwriting, and cruelly toss his 
 communications into the basket unread; few, compara- 
 tively, have the advantage of his personal acquaintance. 
 He is a man now about fifty years of age; he is rather tall 
 and thin, his hair, gone gray, lies over his forehead in a 
 great mass, which he is always pushing back; his eyes are 
 large and full; they are also of a light blue color, so that 
 his face seems at first furnished with too much eye. When 
 he is in repose, the eyes have a far-off look; when he is 
 talking, they are quick and eager. His lips are nervous 
 and his fingers are restless. Columbus, one thinks, must 
 have been a good deal like Mr. Reginald Ambler. As for 
 his manner, it varies with every hour, ranging from the 
 depth of despondency — when an article has been rejected 
 or a letter treated contemptuously — to the height of con- 
 fidence, hope, and happiness — when he has begun another 
 or has trapped some unfortunate into a controversy. And 
 he has never been known to engage in any other subject 
 of conversation, or think upon any other matter whatever, 
 except his Great Discovery. 
 
 To-night he came to the supper-table and sat down with 
 a smile of welcome. 
 
 “Milly, my child,” he said, “take your place beside 
 me. George, you next to her, of course. Copernica, my 
 dear, this side of me. Galileo, fill George’s glass. Cut 
 some bread, Tycho, my boy. Kepler, some cheese for 
 
 Milly and your sister. So ” He rubbed his hands 
 
 and looked round upon his boys with the simple pride of 
 a father, though he was so great a man. “ Ptolemy and 
 Mary Somerville have gone to bed, I suppose? 
 
 “ This day,” he went on, “ will be a remarkable day in 
 
A GLORIOUS FORTUNE. 
 
 33 
 
 my history. I have noted it in the Autobiography. Chil- 
 dren, I have now laid down the last of the great voyages 
 round the world completely on the map. It threatened 
 to be troublesome at first, but it agrees, I find — of course 
 I expected nothing less — with my anticipations in every 
 particular!” 
 
 “ Oh, father!” Copernica clapped her hands. The wife 
 smiled, her mind being still full of the socks in the basket. 
 Milly nodded and laughed. The boys alone said nothing. 
 Boys, if you come to think of it, never understand a 
 father’s greatness. Many great men have lamented this 
 to me, speaking confidentially. “ Oh, father!” cried Coper- 
 nica, “ what will they say now?” 
 
 “ They will say, my daughter, what they always do say. 
 The Fellows of the Geographical Society will sneer; the 
 Editors of scientific journals will refuse to listen; comic 
 writers will make jokes upon it; map-makers and globe- 
 makers will try to hide the truth; and the rest of the 
 world, like George here, will pass it over without paying 
 any attention.” 
 
 “If it were something in the chemical line,” said 
 George, “I would listen; as it is not, I have not time 
 for it.” 
 
 This he said out of subtlety and duplicity, because in 
 his secret soul he jeered at the Great Discovery. 
 
 “ No, no; and thus it is,” said the Philosopher, “that 
 the greatest discoveries steal upon the world, and those 
 who make them are unheeded. I have now laid down 
 upon the map the route of every great voyager; my dig* 
 tances, my time, agree with his! Show me the globe- 
 geographer who has ever attempted the like. Yes, my 
 work is done; the chain of evidence is complete; I can at 
 any moment, if I should be called away, leave the work of 
 my life to the judgment of posterity. As for my con- 
 temporaries, they may, if they choose, continue to class 
 me with the crack-brained enthusiasts — ” 
 
 “ Oh, father,” said Copernica. 
 
 “ — who think they can square the circle, find out the 
 site of Paradise — ” 
 
 “I wish I could go and look in at the gate,” said Milly. 
 
 “ — and transmute metals.” 
 
 “That would be only changing the currency,” said 
 George. 
 
34 
 
 A GLORIOUS FORTUKE. 
 
 The boys were steadily eating. They had heard this 
 talk before. 
 
 “ As for meeting me on a platform/’ Mr. Ambler con- 
 tinued, “ they remember the victory over Bagshott, and 
 tremble.” 
 
 Bagshott was a Baptist minister who once ventured on 
 a public controversy with Mr. Ambler, and had his head 
 knocked into a cocked hat, a thing quite improper for a 
 minister of the Gospel to wear, and recanted, and was 
 now a fervent disciple. 
 
 “ As for admitting at once and peacefully that I am 
 right, and they themselves, therefore, wrong, that is, I 
 suppose, too much to expect of anyone, especially of men 
 who live by the propagation of error.” 
 
 “ A great deal too much,” said George. 
 
 The boys went on with their supper and said nothing. 
 The two elder lads, Tycho Brahe and Kepler, arrived at 
 the dignity of clerkery, had long since plainly understood, 
 and now made no secret of their opinion, that a Great 
 Discovery may be a most calamitous thing for a family. 
 Palissy, himself, did not bring a more rooted antipathy to 
 fame into his home-circle than their father. Honor and 
 glory are very fine things indeed; meantime, when they 
 are abstract qualities, and therefore unproductive, and the 
 heels of your boots are down, they might be sold, if there 
 were any purchaser, for whatever they would fetch in the 
 rough. 
 
 “Better, far better,” thought Tycho, “for my father 
 to care nothing at all about honor, but a good deal about 
 making money, and saving it or using it to push his boys.” 
 
 Such a father he would have desired, red of cheek, im- 
 portant in his bearing, pompous in his talk, as might be 
 seen every day on Stamford Hill; a father who could put 
 his sons into good houses, buy them partnerships, give 
 them holidays at the seaside, with — oh, all the things for 
 which these lads vainly longed. 
 
 Reginald Ambler is nothing less, if you please, than the 
 Discoverer of the great truth that the world, so far from 
 being a round ball, thoughtfully flattened at the north 
 and south, so as to prevent the ice from slipping down 
 and spoiling the equator, is really, as can be demonstrated 
 with ease, a great flat circular disc of unknown thickness. 
 What we call the Arctic Pole, believing that the world 
 
A GLORIOUS FORTUNE. 
 
 35 
 
 twirls perpetually and ignominiously round it, like a fat 
 goose upon the spit, is in fact a central circle of ice and 
 snow, the origin and cause of which must be left for the 
 discovery of future philosophers; round it is the temper- 
 ate zone; beyond this the torrid zone; beyond this again 
 another great temperate circle, in which Australia, the 
 Cape of Good Hope, and New Zealand are comfortably 
 placed; “ neither het nor cauld,” as the Scot said. Out- 
 side this vast temperate zone the ocean lies, a tract of sea 
 indeed, immeasurable, desolate, without land or sail. 
 Spread round in another, and the last, great circle, beyond 
 the ocean at the outer-edge, is a Rim, ledge, hedge, bar- 
 rier, frontier-mark, boundary- wall, or whatever the inade- 
 quacy of language permits us to call it, of thick, solid, 
 mountainous ice. How broad is this Rim, whether it 
 stretches out forever into boundless space, whether it is 
 narrow, so that perhaps some day the voyager may hope 
 to reach its limit, and to peep over into infinity, no one 
 can at present say. From time to time ships, which have 
 sailed south, have reported cliffs, rocks, and mountains, 
 ice-bound, covered with snow, inaccessible, inhospitable, 
 without life. Nothing lives in this boundary Rim except, 
 upon the edge of it, a few seals, walruses, narwhals, 
 sword-fish, polar bears, whales, and such sea monsters, 
 who do not know how miserable they are. As for men 
 there are none at all, and will be none till time shall be no 
 more. 
 
 “ What is beyond the Rim,” said Reginald modestly, 
 “I cannot say any more than the globe-professors can tell 
 you what is beyond the furthest star.” 
 
 This improved kind of earth requires an entirely new 
 disposition of the heavens. 
 
 Reginald, quite early in the history of his Discovery, 
 remembered this, and constructed, with infinite pains, 
 a beautiful Orrery. In this, the sun, no longer an im- 
 mense globe of fire ninety millions of miles away, or there- 
 abouts, but a comfortable little fireplace, so to speak, half- 
 a-dozen miles above the world, went round and round 
 above the great circle of the torrid zone, wobbling to north 
 or south so as to produce summer and winter. He pulled 
 a string, and you saw the daily and the annual motion 
 most clearly set forth. The moon and planets in the same 
 way went on what seemed to be recklessly independent 
 
36 
 
 A GLORIOUS FORTUNE. 
 
 and dangerous paths of their own, and the fixed stars went 
 round the polar star continually. By an ingenious adjust- 
 ment of bars, eccentrics, and curves, he accounted for all 
 the natural phenomena — except one. This exception 
 came home to him sometimes in th& dead of night, and 
 took the conceit out of him. He had never been able to 
 account for lunar eclipses? Why not lunar eclipses? It 
 is too much to say that his faith ever wavered, but he was 
 worried and rendered unhappy when he remembered that 
 his Orrery would account for everything except a lunar 
 eclipse. But those moments, happily, were rare. Mostly 
 he was content to gaze upon his model with a perfect satisv 
 faction, to show inquirers over and over again how, upon 
 a flat and stationary earth, all the natural phenomena, 
 morning, noon, and evening, with the four seasons, the. 
 phases of the noon, the winter’s downward slope, and the 
 summer’s elevation of the sun, can all be explained and 
 accounted for. 
 
 Naturally he became one of the bugbears — there are al- 
 ways half-a-dozen living at the same time — of the scien- 
 tific world. He wrote to all the papers, journals, trans- 
 actions, and reports of the learned bodies; he offered to 
 lecture, he asked for an hour — only one short hour; he 
 sent his name with the offers of a paper, to the British 
 Association, to the Serial Science Congress, to the Balloon 
 Society, to the Church Congress, to the Oriental Congress, 
 to the Congress of Librarians, to the Congress of Head- 
 masters, to the Geographical Society, the Geologists, the 
 Society of Arts, the Physical Society, the Royal Astronom- 
 ical Society, the Young Men’s Christian Institute, the 
 Sunday School Union, the Church Missionary Society 3 
 the Open-Air Mission, the Salvation Army, the Eleusis 
 Club, the Grand Lodge of Freemasons, and the Congress 
 of Cathedral Vergers, not once, but every year, offering to 
 read a paper, show his maps and models, and reconstruct 
 the geography and shape of the world. It is sad to relate 
 that no one paid the least attention to these proposals, 
 and, being now fifty years of age, and with many years’ 
 experience, he had ceased to expect a hearing from these 
 learned bodies, any more than he expected admission into 
 the Times, Standard, Daily News, Morning Post, Daily 
 Telegraph, and Daily Chronicle, of the letters which he 
 regularly sent them all once every year, after six months 
 
A GLORIOUS FORTUNE. 
 
 37 
 
 of preparation As for (lie monthly, weekly, and quarter- 
 ly journal u lie had tried them all. They would have none 
 of him. And as for eminent men of science, there was 
 not a single mathematician at Cambridge, or a professor 
 of science in any university or college of the United King- 
 dom to whom he did not propose a meeting, public or 
 private, to discuss his theories. The signal victory al- 
 ready alluded to, which he achieved over the Rev. Mr. 
 Bagshott, Baptist minister of Hackney Wick, in a public 
 discussion held at the chapel, was an abiding proof of his 
 strength in advocacy and the goodness of his cause. 
 
 The school is small — it consists really of two, the 
 Prophet himself and Bagshott, but it is full of zeal. They 
 have an office, and an office-boy, in Chiswell Street. The 
 office is a second-pair back; the office-boy, whose hours 
 are from nine to six, spends his time chiefly in the street 
 surveying mankind; the publications — tracts and maps — 
 of the society are on sale there, but no one has ever bought 
 a copy except a journalist, who once saw his way to a 
 scoffing article on the subject, and so bought everything 
 there was, and put the things in his pocket-book and 
 went away; and presently forgot all about it. In fact, 
 there exists a general conspiracy against the Truth. 
 
 “ Astronomers/’ said Mr. Ambler, “ tremble at men- 
 tion of my name for fear, but pretend to smile in scorn. 
 They hope their system will last at least their own time, 
 forgetting that to be found out after death will be more 
 fatal to their reputation than to yield in life. In my au- 
 tobiography will be found not only the ‘ Short Reasons’ 
 but also the * Argument at Length/ and the ‘ Questions ’ 
 which I have sent to every one of them demanding a rely, 
 a platform, a public discussion, or an opportunity to state 
 my views. Not one of them has given me either. It will, 
 indeed/’ he added, with a lofty sneer, “ be greatly to the 
 credit of the Universities, in the next century, that they 
 refused even to let me speak.” 
 
 It was in this house that Milly was placed when the 
 death of her mother left her alone at ten years of age. The 
 reasons why Mr. Reginald Ambler was chosen for her 
 guardian were unusual, but not without precedent. He 
 had a cousin — many people have cousins; this cousin, 
 Richard Ambler, a practical Ambler, an unimaginative 
 Ambler, was a solicitor. Richard Ambler, therefore, on 
 
38 
 
 A GLORIOUS FORTUNE, 
 
 being asked by the child’s relations — they were unnatural 
 relations, descended by the parent’s side from a certain 
 illustrious uncle of two — who wanted to put the burden 
 of the little girl on somebody else’s shoulders, and to find 
 a home and a guardian for a child whom nobody wanted, 
 naturally considered first of all which of his own friends 
 would find the money most useful, and seeing that among 
 all his friends and cousins no one was so perfectly hope- 
 less, impecunious, and unpractical as Reginald the Dis- 
 coverer, and few so poor, sent her to him; not for any 
 fitness or special aptitude which Reginald possessed for 
 the task of guardian, but wholly and solely that the child’s 
 money, which now amounted to a hundred and eighty 
 pounds a year — house property having gone up — might be 
 paid yearly to Reginald for the good of himself and his 
 household. They were kind-hearted people, and as Milly 
 was a willing, clever kind of child, they were easily, though 
 gradually, persuaded to let her become governess, nurse, 
 assistant-housekeeper, maker of puddings and pies, mil- 
 liner, dressmaker, chaplain, adviser, counselor, and eldest 
 sister to the family. “And, oh, my dear,” said Mrs. 
 Ambler, when Milly’s engagement began, “ what we should 
 have done without you nobody knows; and what we are 
 going to do without you nobody can tell.” 
 
 Milly’s life was so busy that she never understood how 
 dull it would seem to any one outside the house, for there 
 were in it no amusements, no sights, no theater, no con- 
 certs, no opera, no pictures, and even very few novels; nor 
 perceived that she ought to have been treated differently, 
 nor comprehended that her guardian was regarded by 
 everybody as a lunatic with a harmless craze; nor knew or 
 suspected that there were any enjoyments to be had in life 
 other than those within her reach, namely, the children 
 in good temper and looking nice, the Sunday church, a 
 summer evening walk, and the daily cup of tea. She was, 
 however, distinguished above all her contemporaries of 
 Clapton Common by the possession of a romantic history. 
 She was the daughter of a man who had made a most 
 Glorious Fortune. Everybody knew so much. Nobody 
 knew what the Fortune actually was, either in amount or 
 in form, whether it was silver, oil, hogs, or railways; 
 whether it had been acquired by rings and corners, by 
 bulling and bearing, by lying, treachery, and deceit, by 
 
A GLORIOUS FORTUNE. 39 
 
 contracts, by plunder and pillage of the public money, or 
 in any of the many ways in which many tempt fortune 
 and a few succeed, winning thereby the universal respect 
 of their fellow-creatures. Mr. Montoro — no one ever spoke 
 of him without the honorable prefix — had been once a 
 clerk in the City. Somewhere about twenty years ago he 
 threw up his place and went away to seek his Fortune. 
 And he found it. Matter of common knowledge that he 
 found it; that he had sent none of it home was also known; 
 and that for four or five years his daughter had heard 
 nothing from him, whence it might be concluded that he 
 was dead. And the great Fortune — where was that? Why, 
 the United States of America being so big, one might as 
 well look for a lost needle in Hyde Park as for a lost fortune 
 in a country popularly believed to consist entirely of men 
 who have made enormous fortunes. No doubt it was lying 
 somewhere packed up, and would be lost for want of some- 
 one to claim it. So that Millv was not regarded as an 
 heiress so much as the daughter of a man who had dis- 
 tinguished himself. But still there was always the chance 
 that her father might turn up, his Fortune in his hand. 
 The thought that her father might be still alive and might 
 yet return never left the girl. She had his letters in her 
 desk, which she read until she knew them by heart, both 
 those to her mother and those to herself. The former 
 were curiously cold and constrained. He was prospering 
 exceedingly, but he did not explain how. He was richer 
 already than any of the people they had known at home; 
 he was waiting an opportunity to realize some of his gains 
 and enable her to keep her carriage; and so on. To her- 
 self the letters were full of affection and tenderness, speak- 
 ing of a time when he would either go home or have his 
 daughter with him. He spoke of his continued success, 
 but without the least hint of his occupation, and his ad- 
 dress was always changing; so that whatever it was, his 
 work took him from one State to another. 
 
 The girl constructed her ideal father from the letters. 
 He must be a gentle and quiet creature because her mother 
 had always spoken of him as a peaceful man who gave no 
 offense to any, and loved tranquillity; yet he must be a 
 man of great courage thus to have forced his way to the 
 front, in a strange country, with no friends to help him. 
 He must be a man of fine manner and noble mind, be- 
 
 N 
 
40 
 
 A GLORIOUS FORTUNE. 
 
 cause bis letters were full of the most admirable senti- 
 ments, and he must be a father whom any girl would be 
 too ready to love, so full of tenderness was he himself. 
 The letters which this poor English waif and stray wrote 
 twice or three times every year to his daughter were in 
 fact to him, though they were loaded with falsehoods, the 
 ono thing which kept up his soul. He consorted with 
 gangs of the roughest; his work was the lowest; yet he had 
 to console him the letters of his child, fresh, innocent, 
 confiding; and he had, to lift himself out of the mire, to 
 make up in reply some answer which should make the 
 girl happy about him; and in order to do that he was 
 forced to imagine himself back in civilized life, a gentle- 
 man. If you come to think of it, there wants a good deal 
 of imagination for an unsuccessful emigrant, sunk as low 
 as can well be, to make people at home believe that he is 
 rolling in prosperity. It grew harder every year for the 
 poor man, but still he persevered, until he fell in with his 
 great stroke of luck, and became a landowner in Oregon. 
 Then, his life being now easy, and even assured, and the 
 whisky-bottle always handy, his brain began to deterio- 
 rate, and he wrote no more letters. While he was a 
 vagrant journeyman, ready to do anything, he would 
 imagine, conceive, and describe. The moment he became 
 settled, the fountain of fancy dried up, and he could pict- 
 ure no more. Therefore, the drop being too great from 
 a millionaire to a settler in a half-cleared plot of forest- 
 ground, with a log-hut and a couple of blankets, he ceased 
 to send any more letters. He was one of those who have 
 been ruined by prosperity. Had he still continued one of 
 a plow-gang, or a herdsman, or a hand on a steamer, or a 
 picker-up of odd jobs, his daughter would have continued 
 to receive those letters which for so many years had been 
 the chief happiness of her life. 
 
 But he would come home some day, she said — he would 
 come home. 
 
 Thus she grew up a sweet and natural girl, careless of 
 her own beauty, because she was always thinking about 
 the children, till she was past nineteen years of age, and 
 then love came to her in the shape of a brave young fel- 
 low — strong, ambitious, obstinately resolved to get on, 
 and quite certain to expect of her in return as much as 
 he would give to her. Then, the practical business of 
 
A GLORIOUS FORTUNE. 
 
 41 
 
 life thus suddenly opened out before her, she left off 
 dreaming about her father, finding henceforth no room 
 for anyone in her dreams except her sweetheni t. To be 
 sure, she had known him ever since she had joined the 
 Ambler household, because he was a cousin of Reginald 
 Ambler; but then to see a young fellow occasionally in 
 the house, and to be wooed by him, are very different 
 things. And how that love gradually came about, I am 
 not going to tell, because it is so simple a process that 
 all the world may imagine it. Besides, as the princess 
 said to the one-eyed Calendar, “ This is not a common 
 love-story.” 
 
 Now, on this evening, the supper was, as has been in- 
 dicated, a meal of unusually cheerful character, not on 
 account of George’s presence, because he was there nearly 
 every evening, but for certain unknown and inscrutable 
 reasons which act upon the family atmosphere, and can 
 only be judged by their effects, and make it, in fact, like 
 the climate of this country, variable — sometimes cloudy, 
 sometimes misty, and always impossible to be foretold. 
 Everyone who belongs to a large family must know the 
 uncertainty of the general temper, however that of the 
 individual (meaning oneself) may be depended upon. This 
 evening the dining-room of Veritas Villa seemed a little 
 heaven of cheerfulness. Even the two elder boys — 
 Kepler, who was eighteen, and Tycho, who was sixteen— 
 listened to their father without open scorn or impatience, 
 though they had the firmest belief that his talk was un- 
 mitigated nonsense. If anyone had held a curved hand 
 to his ear he would probably have heard distinctly a kind 
 of purr of satisfaction and content. Perhaps on a really 
 fine evening in June, when it is light at nine o’clock, 
 and the windows can be kept open, and the roses are 
 already in blossom, everyone ought to be in a good 
 temper. But then fine weather does not always make 
 fine tempers. 
 
 “I have never,” the Discoverer went on — he had been 
 talking ever since the last remark of his, quoted a few col- 
 umns back, but we had other things to talk about and 
 have not followed him — “I have never,” he was saying, 
 “ thought less of a man for being wrong, so long as his 
 mind is open to truth, and he has the courage of his opin- 
 ions. Thus, I have named the children after those who 
 
12 
 
 A GLORIOUS FORTUNE. 
 
 were my forerunners, though they did not, it is true, 
 prepare the way for my discoveries, but quite to the con- 
 trary. Ptolemy, Kepler, Tycho Brahe, Galileo, Coperni- 
 cus, are names which will always be held in honor, long, 
 long after that of Reginald Ambler has been elevated to 
 the highest place in the roll of honor. This, my children, 
 may not be till after I am dead and gone; yet it will come 
 in the lifetime of some among you. I say no more, but 
 that three letters of inquiry have been received at the 
 Society’s offices this week. Already the cause spreads 
 rapidly; bwt nothing, nothing to the wildfire speed with 
 which it will be taken up when once the people have been 
 allowed to see and judge for themselves.” 
 
 He drank off a whole glass of beer, paused, meditated 
 for a few moments, with his finger to his forehead, pushed 
 back his hair, and was about to proceed, when there were 
 sounds of wheels in the road, and a ring at the bell of the 
 outer gate. And this was so rare an event — indeed an 
 event hitherto unheard of — that everybody jumped in his 
 chair and looked at each other.” 
 
 “It is perhaps another anxious inquirer,” said the phi- 
 losopher. “ Can one of the Cambridge professors be go- 
 ing to accept the challenge?” 
 
 “ It is the Parcels Delivery Company,” said Kepler. 
 
 “It is Milly’s great Fortune,” said Copernica, “com- 
 ing home from America in a box.” 
 
 “It is ” began another, but stopped, because the door 
 
 opened and the servant — they had but one — put in her 
 head. 
 
 “Please, m’m,” she said, “there’s a gentleman wants 
 to see Miss Milly.” 
 
 They looked at each other in something like consterna- 
 tion. A gentleman wanting Milly! What gentleman? 
 Who could it be? 
 
 Milly turned very pale, and took George’s hand. 
 
 “ Come with me, George,” she said. 
 
 “If it is — if it is ” Mrs. Ambler could not say 
 
 “your father.” “Whoever it is, I think, Reginald, as 
 Millv^s guardian, you or both of us ought to go with her 
 too.” 
 
 “ Certainly,” said Mr. Ambler. “ Shall we show him 
 into the map-room? The contemplation of the charts 
 may lead him round — — ” 
 
43 
 
 A GLORIOUS FORTUNE. 
 
 “He shall come in here/’ said the mother, looking 
 round. “ Whoever it is, lie shall see Milly in the ordi- 
 nary way, with the children round her, bless her! Kep- 
 ler, my dear, ask the gentleman to come in.” 
 
 It was now nearly ten. Outside it was still twilight, 
 but in the room there was a pleasant obscurity. Milly 
 stood at the table, her back to the window, George beside 
 her, holding her hand. Everybody had risen in expecta- 
 tion. The tears were already in Copernica’s eyes, and 
 making her spectacles dim out of pure sympathy. The 
 family atmosphere was changed. Calm and serenity were 
 vanished; in their place the beating heart, the quickened 
 pulse, the agitation and oppression which fill the mind 
 before a thunderstorm. 
 
 Then the “gentleman” came into the room. In the 
 dim twilight Milly saw a tall figure in the doorway. 
 
 “Is there here,” he said, “a young lady named Milly 
 Montoro?” 
 
 “I am her guardian,” replied Mr. Ambler. “My 
 name is Reginald Ambler. I am, as you may be aware, 
 the Discoverer, under Providence, of the true astronomy. 
 Miss Montoro is here. Have you any message or parcel, 
 or — or anything for her?” 
 
 “If you will light your gas,” said the stranger, “I will 
 tell you.” 
 
 One of the boys lit the burners. They saw now a gen- 
 tleman with a heavy brown mustache, no beard or whis- 
 kers, strongly marked features, and eyes very keen, hard, 
 and bright. He was well dressed, and looked as if he 
 was, in City language, a substantial, or “warm” man, 
 yet not in the least like any City man they had ever en- 
 countered. He looked round the room, resting his eye 
 first for a moment on Copernica, but, as if dissatisfied 
 with the spectacles, he turned to Milly. Then he stepped 
 forward and held out his hand, saying coldly, “I sup- 
 pose you are my daughter!” 
 
 She sprang forward, and fell into his arms with a cry 
 of surprise and joy. Her father at last! 
 
 Her father! Then her Fortune had come home. The 
 boys looked straight before them, with tightness in their 
 throats. Copernica wept silently; the mother wept loud- 
 ly. Only George seemed discontented. 
 
 “My daughter,” the stranger repeated coldly, and dis- 
 
44 
 
 A GLORIOUS FORTUNE. 
 
 engaging himself from her arms without so much as kiss- 
 ing her. “ Yes, it is natural after all these years. I sup- 
 pose I might have expected to be hugged. That will do, 
 Milly. I suppose I must call you Milly. Of course. I 
 was hardly prepared, I must own, Mr. Ab — Ambler, for 
 such a — in fact I could not have believed that you were 
 so well -grown a girl. However — yes, my dear, it is your 
 father. You did not expect to see me, perhaps?” 
 
 “ You have been silent for four long years,” she replied. 
 “ How could I ” 
 
 “True, true; we will talk of that another time. You 
 have been living here, I suppose. And this is Mr. Am- 
 bler; and — ah!— Mrs. Ambler; and— ah! — the family Am- 
 blers.” 
 
 “These,” said Milly, “are the kind friends, and the 
 boys and girls I have told you of in my letters so often.” 
 
 “ You have, my — my dear.” Strange that the adjective 
 should seem so hard to say. “ You certainly have. Your 
 letters are all in my pocket at this moment. They have 
 never left me, I assure you.” 
 
 “Oh, father!” 
 
 “Never, my — ahem! — my dear. I have read some of 
 them — ahem! — more than once.” 
 
 Between having letters always in your pocket and read- 
 ing them more than once there seems a wide gap. 
 
 Milly’s eyes dropped. 
 
 “ Well, my daughter?” He hesitated and looked round. 
 “ As it is evening, and a little late, and I have to get back to 
 the West End, and — and — is there anything you wish to say 
 before I go? Of course we shall meet again to-morrow or 
 next day, or — or — in fact, you will study your own con- 
 venience. As regards future arrangements, I do not 
 suppose that I shall go back to America for a few weeks; 
 but of that we can speak afterward. So, for the pres- 
 ent ” 
 
 “ Stay, father, one moment!” The girl took George’s 
 hand, while the rest looked at each other bewildered. 
 Was this the kind of meeting one would dream of between 
 father and daughter after twenty years’ separation? 
 “This,” said Milly, “ is George Ambrose, my lover. We 
 are going to be married.” 
 
 Mr. Montoro slowly put up a pair of eye-glasses, and 
 looked at George from head to foot. 
 
A GLORIOUS FORTUNE. 
 
 45 
 
 “Not so fast/’ he said, not so fast. You have a father, 
 
 whose permission May I ask you, sir, what is your 
 
 profession ?” 
 
 “ Iam at present a clerk in a chemical works,” said 
 George, hot and red. 
 
 “A clerk — a mere clerk! My — ahem! — my daughter, 
 we will speak of this afterward.” 
 
 “ You were a clerk yourself once,” said George in a 
 quiet rage, while the two elder boys murmured, because 
 they too were clerks. 
 
 “What the devil do you mean by that?” asked Mr. 
 Montoro fiercelv. “ How dare you sav that I was once a 
 clerk?” 
 
 “ If you are ashamed of it.” said George, “I shall cer- 
 tainly not remind you of the fact again. I am not 
 ashamed of beginning as a clerk. Perhaps I shall rise out 
 of it.” 
 
 Here was a pretty beginning. Milly looked in con- 
 sternation from her father to her lover. Why did her 
 father fall into such sudden and violent wrath? Every- 
 body knew he had been a clerk, and had gone away and 
 made his Fortune. However, he recovered as quickly, 
 and deigning no further reply to the unlucky lover turned 
 to his daughter. 
 
 “ We will talk, Milly,” he said with a coldness of voice 
 which fell upon her heart like ice — “ we will talk of these 
 things another time. Meantime I have found out where 
 you live, which is a disgusting distance from anywhere. 
 1 shall probably call here again to-morrow afternoon. 
 M ean time — ah ! — good - n i gh t. ” 
 
 He gave her his hand without offering to kiss her, and 
 retired without another word. 
 
 Mr. Ambler had the presence of mind to follow him 
 and catch him by the arm. 
 
 “ Pardon me, sir, one word, if only to satisfy the neigh- 
 bors. Your Glorious Fortune, of which we have heard 
 so much, is it — is it safe? Is all well with it?” 
 
 “ Quite safe,” Mr. Montoro replied. “It is,” he added 
 with a grin, “ just exactly as safe as it always has been — 
 on as sound a basis, and as gigantic. I thought you would 
 want to know first thing about the Fortune. And as to 
 neighbors, be good enough to tell them that I don’t want 
 to know ’em, and I won’t know ’em, and I won’t see ’em. 
 
46 
 
 A GLORIOUS FORTUNE. 
 
 What I am going to do about Milly I cannot just yet tell 
 you; perhaps I have not made up my mind. But hark 
 
 ye, Mr. Addlepato, or whatever your name is ” 
 
 “ Ambler, sir — Reginald Ambler, the Discoverer of— — ” 
 “Remember, I will have no neighbors here, lei haps 
 I may have been a clerk myself in the old days. Perhaps 
 I am not too anxious to have them recalled. Keep them 
 out of my way, do you hear?” 
 
 He opened the door, walked noisily down the gravel, 
 got into his cab, and drove away. 
 
 “ Oh, good gracious!” cried Mrs. Ambler. “My poor 
 —poor child! Did anyone ever hear or see such a thing?” 
 “ Oh, poor Milly!” said Copernica, kissing he* until 
 the spectacles scratched her cheek. 
 
 “ But the letters he used to write!” said Milly. “ I can 
 not understand it. What has changed him? Not one 
 kind word! and the letters so full of sweet things! And 
 — oh, George!” 
 
 “ Never mind me, dear,” said George hoarsely. 
 
 “ But I must mind you. You are to come first, not 
 my father. He must not upset my life. Yes, I know 
 about the fifth commandment, but that can’t be meant 
 for fathers who stay away twenty years.” She looked 
 determined. “Go now, George, it is getting late. Go, 
 dear, and trust me.”- 
 
 “ I wish,” said Mr. Ambler, “Ido wish that he had 
 been shown first into the map-room. If he had under- 
 stood, even a little, under what a roof his daughter had 
 been brought up, he would have approached the question 
 of— of George — with a little more feeling. I say nothing 
 about the Truth. That may, or may not, come after- 
 ward. He looked as if he might become an Inquirer! 
 But we should have impressed him first. We did wrong. 
 We should have impressed him first of all, with the maps, 
 the charts, and the working models. 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 A WARM WELCOME. 
 
 An interval of fifteen ytars for moral refreshment is a 
 good spell. Unfortunately, whether the time be passed 
 in the neighborhood of Weymouth or on Dartmoor, or in 
 the new world, the patient, on his return to society, 
 
A GLORIOUS FORTUNE. 
 
 47 ■ 
 
 generally finds that his finer qualities, to remember which 
 has probably been his chief comfort in exile, are all clean 
 forgotten, and only those little episodes which necessitated 
 his departure are now remembered. 
 
 The extraordinary vitality of disagreeable things has 
 never yet been treated seriously. A man shall be your 
 most delightful companion for years, your bosom friend 
 and confidant; he then, perhaps, forges your name — only 
 once; steals your money — is only found out once; cheats 
 at cards — and is only once detected; embezzles his em- 
 ployer’s money— but is only once discovered, and there- 
 fore is compelled to seek retirement for a while. On his 
 return it is excessively annoying to find that nothing is 
 remembered except the misfortune which separated him 
 from his friends. 
 
 In a better state of things the patient will be welcomed 
 back as one who has been suffering from some brain dis- 
 order, the treatment of which is understood. He will be 
 considered perfectly recovered, and be even ostentatiously 
 trusted with checks payable to order, bags of gold, and 
 heaps of postal orders; he will be invited to play cards in 
 the most highly moral circles; he will be begged to take 
 care of money belonging to the church, or the neediest 
 widow, or the most helpless orphans, and in every way be 
 made to feel that his disease was completely cured. 
 
 This, I am sorry to say, was not the treatment received by 
 the Colonel on his return to England, which followed very 
 shortly after his departure from Oregon. He was in a 
 somewhat delicate position, because he was unable to 
 know how far the reasons of his exile were understood by 
 his old associates. Now, if a man simply disappears and 
 remains a “vanished hand” for a period of years, society 
 has certainly no right to question that man’s own version 
 of his story, or to entertain injurious suspicions, or to 
 spread malicious reports. There are many instances on 
 record of such re- appearances, and I have never heard 
 that the adventures related by the man supposed to have 
 gone under for good have been seriously doubted, whether 
 he declares that he was wrecked on a desert island, married 
 to an Amazon in the heart of the Dark Continent, carried 
 off by friendly gorillas, or compelled to wander among 
 Patagonians, Guachos, and Aztecs. But things are differ- 
 ent where nasty stories survive, as the Colonel experienced. 
 
48 
 
 A GLORIOUS FORTUNE. 
 
 His name, while he was yet in English society, was Per- 
 cival Brooke West; he was a gentleman by birth, and the 
 only son of his mother, who was a widow. By what ex- 
 travagances, selfish indulgences, wanton wastings, profli- 
 gacies, and prodigal-son business, he ran through his 
 patrimony; hardened his heart; deadened his conscience; 
 lost his taste for any pleasures which were not highly 
 flavored, peppered, and cabob-curried; destroyed the sense 
 of honor, and converted himself into a man-eating tiger, 
 it needs not here to relate, nor need we here even indicate 
 the path by which a plunging youth becomes a profligate 
 and ruined man. Nor need we pause to tell the story of 
 what he did. He “did something” many times, but at 
 the last he was discovered. And then he retired — disap- 
 peared, became the “vanished hand” at the card-table, 
 and the “voice that is still” in the smoking-room. The 
 world went on without him, and, for fifteen years, the 
 racecourse, the club, the streets of the West End knew 
 him no longer, and without him the old game went on 
 merrily — the young fellows on the “ unlimited chuck,” 
 the hawks hovering over the pigeons, and ever and anon 
 another young fellow “doing something” and speedily 
 disappearing. 
 
 Then he returned. 
 
 Before Mr. Percival Brooke West showed himself in the 
 old haunts — before, in fact, he took passage from New 
 York, he cut off his beard, dyed his hair and mustache 
 brown, and dressed himself in raiment as youthful as a 
 man near fifty, who wishes to pasj for five-and-thirty, can 
 venture upon. He took up his quarters in a good Bond 
 Street hotel, and he then considered which of his old 
 friends he should first attempt. Naturally he chose the 
 ones who had been in the same “swim” with himself — 
 that plunging, headlong, exhilarating swim down the 
 rapids, with the beautiful whirlpool at the end, reported 
 to have sucked many a stout swimmer beneath its boiling 
 waters. Had not he himself ? 
 
 He remembered seven or eight of the old set and sat 
 down to write to them. The letters were really models. 
 No polite letter-writer could have taught him more art- 
 fully to convey the strength and enduring warmth of his 
 old friendship, his own joy at his return, and his eager 
 looking forward to another meeting. He also contrived 
 
A GLORIOUS FORTUNE. 
 
 49 
 
 to let it be understood that bis financial position was ex- 
 traordinarily sound, and that feasting would come into 
 fashion again. 
 
 He forgot that in fifteen years such a set as his would 
 most certainly have fallen all to pieces — first because the 
 pace could not continue, and secondly because many of 
 the men, younger than himself, would leave it in order to 
 enter seriously upon the pursuit of the career. There are 
 really very few who continue in the resolute pursuit of 
 pleasure until past middle life, even though the ashes of 
 the Head Sea apples have got into their throats and made 
 them cough and choke. 
 
 The letters dispatched, he walked about the street! 
 waiting for answers. The dear old streets. Heave ns* 
 How delightful to be back again among them, eveu with 
 so moderate a sum as eight hundred pounds to spend! 
 But it would be enough, perhaps, to procure him readmis- 
 sion into the old circles, with such share in the riot of tha 
 'Fool’s Paradise as a man of fifty may look for. 
 
 After two days he got one answer — the first and the 
 only one. It was from a dear and old friend, and a fol- 
 lower of his own way of thinking. The writer said that 
 he rejoiced to receive so friendly a letter, because he had 
 long thought he had no friends left at all; that he had 
 been for a good while quite down on his luck, and was 
 now stone broke. But that he had a wife and family to 
 support, and in these his wretched and impoverished cir- 
 cumstances, he knew not where to look even for food for 
 them; chat he was ill, moreover, and like to die — with a 
 good deal more to the same effect, concluding with the 
 remark that they had both had misfortunes of the same 
 kind, and ought to feel for each other. (“ What the deuce 
 does he mean?” asked the reader.) Wherefore a temporary 
 advance would be most thankfully accepted, and a reply 
 to this note would be expected with the fullest confidence 
 and hope. 
 
 I am obliged to own that Mr. Brooke West tore this let- 
 ter up in a rage. 
 
 “Confound the fellow! What did he mean by the 
 ‘same misfortune’? Stone broke, was he? Let him 
 starve!” 
 
 But thei# cam.e no more answers to his letters. There- 
 
50 
 
 A GLORIOUS FORTUNE. 
 
 fore he resolved upon calling on his old friends, though 
 with some misgivings. 
 
 “ * The same misfortune.’ What did the impudent 
 beggar and pauper mean?” 
 
 One of the old set was a partner in a City house; an- 
 other was a barrister; a third, a fourth, and a fifth had 
 once been officers in the army, and so on. He W'ould 
 call. He would find out if they intended to be nasty 
 about a thing now fifteen years old, if, indeed, they knew 
 of it. 
 
 The results of his visits illustrated in a very surprising 
 manner the tendency which I have already deplored. 
 That is to say, no one was in the least disposed to forget 
 that thing, which they knew perfectly well, and coupled 
 with his memory as indelibly as the sailor associates an 
 anchor with the skin of his arm. And yet remark that 
 he, the man chiefly concerned, was as willing to bury it, 
 and have done with it, as the Red Indians are, in time of 
 peace, to bury a tomahawk! 
 
 I have often wondered if that tomahawk was always ex- 
 pended in the funeral service, or whether it was sometimes 
 dug up by a Resurrection brave and traded away for what 
 it would fetch in whiskey. 
 
 It is a dreadful story of outrage and humiliation. 
 
 First, Mr. Brooke West went to call upon his old friend 
 the partner in the City house. No one in his younger 
 days had carried on the game with greater eagerness than 
 the frolicsome young merchant adventurer. Surely this 
 man, at least, would be glad to welcome his old friend. 
 
 Was he glad? Not at all. On the contrary it appeared 
 that he was very sorry. When he got Mr. Brooke West’s 
 card, which was sent in to him, this merchant, no longer 
 frolicsome, but now quite sober and dignified, turned very 
 red in the cheeks — they were most respectable cheeks 
 now, as ready to blush at wickedness as the cheek of the 
 young person, and regularly seen every Sunday at church 
 — said strong things about the unqualified impudence of 
 disgraced swindlers, and sent oiit word that if the caller 
 and owner of the card did not instantly leave that office, 
 he was without delay to be driven and kicked down the. 
 stairs by the united efforts of the clerks. 
 
 Mr. Brooke West received this message, delivered in its 
 mtegnty, without making any reply or attempt at justi- 
 
A GLORIOUS FORTUNE. 
 
 51 
 
 fication. For a moment his eyes flashed and he clinched 
 his fists, so that the clerk, who glibly delivered the reply, 
 quailed and turned pale. Then, without a word, he 
 walked away. It is the worst of such a situation that a 
 man cannot afford the luxury of a row, else he would 
 have gone for that irreproachable merchant. 
 
 Next he went, but with much less confidence, to call 
 upon another old pal, a barrister in the Temple. He was 
 a man who had got on in his profession, thought of tak- 
 ing silk, gambled no more, had forgotten the ways of in- 
 iquity and its wages, was married and lived on Campden 
 Hill, and the memory of his younger days, when it came 
 back to him, was no longer a thing he loved to dwell 
 upon. 
 
 He, too, on receiving the card, jumped in his chair, 
 used strong words, tore up the card, and sent an insulting 
 message that he had nothing whatever to say to Mr. 
 Brooke West, and refused to see him. 
 
 Again the Colonel walked away without reply. But, I 
 think that, had he got that respectable merchant and that 
 successful lawyer on the Embankment in the evening, 
 two distinct flops or splashes would have been presently 
 heard in the river; or had he met either of them on a 
 lonely heath after dark there would have been a lively 
 dance, with steps not described in the books. 
 
 Next, he went to his old club, where he found a new 
 hall-porter, who did not know him. First, he asked for 
 his old friend Captain Pacer? Alas! the gallant captain 
 was dead this many a long year. Then for Major Fauch- 
 elevent, another of the glorious band of revellers? Why, 
 the major had left the club a long time; had been, in 
 fact, expelled from it. Then he asked for Colonel Cas- 
 sade? This member, now General Cassade, was actually 
 in the club at that moment. Mr. Brooke West sent up his 
 card, and waited with pale face, and lips that trembled a 
 little. In two minutes the general himself came down 
 the stairs, leaning heavily on his stick, gray-haired, red- 
 faced, gouty. And as for greeting, friendly smile, hand- 
 shaking, and a cordial welcome home! — when the returned 
 prodigal held out his hand, advancing with a genial 
 smile, though an uncertain eye, and said with hearty 
 smile, “Old fellow! how goes it?” the gallant officer, 
 standing in the middle of the hall, banged his stick on 
 
52 
 
 A GLORIOUS FORTUNE. 
 
 the floor, so that the panes in the windows shook for fear, 
 and every pair of tongs jumped, and most of the glasses 
 in the house fell into small fragments; and asked with 
 purple cheeks and furious eyes, and a stentorian voice, 
 what in the name of this, and of that — words which find 
 their fittest home on the banks of the silver Thames, and 
 especially at Richmond, or beside the stalls at Billings- 
 gate — what lie meant by his confounded impudence? A 
 fellow who was expelled — actually expelled that very same 
 club, daring to send up his impudent card, to call upon 
 him, the general! 
 
 “ Turn him out, hall-porter, do you hear?” he cried. 
 “Turn him out into the street! Knock him down if he 
 ventures to call again! Turn him out, I say!” 
 
 This last blow left no room for hope. That part of the 
 world — after all a very small one — was closed. As a mat- 
 ter of fact, Mr. Brooke West did not know until then 
 that he had been expelled the club. He thought that 
 perhaps a kindly interpretation of certain fishy transac- 
 tions, which had led to his exile, might have been laid be- 
 fore the committee. Well, that was done; he must try 
 something else. As for making a scene or having a row, 
 that was out of the question. He changed his hotel; he 
 went to the Langham, where there are generally more 
 Americans than English. There was little fear that any- 
 body there would recognize him for what he had been in the 
 Southern and Western States. He was now the English 
 gentleman, who had traveled and lost some of the national 
 prejudice and reserve. And here he stayed for six months 
 and more. He began to make acquaintances, and pres- 
 ently forced his way to certain places where play— good, 
 honest, high play — is to be had, whether baccarat, na- 
 poleon, hazard, monte, euchre, poker, or the simple rou- 
 lette. He found there were still plenty of hawks about; 
 and pigeons harder than ever to catch and pluck. But he 
 did pretty well. 
 
 I do not know how or when it was that he first thought 
 of Montoro’s daughter. By accident he carried off her 
 letters with the bank-notes. Now and then he turned 
 them over in his portmanteau. “ My dearest Father,” they 
 began, and after eight pages at least of gossip, they ended, 
 “ Y our most affectionate and loving daughter, Milly 
 Montoro.” There was property — she spoke about “ the 
 
A GLORIOUS FORTUNE. 
 
 53 
 
 houses;” the poor creature, her father, had spoken of 
 certain houses. Gradually he came to think upon this 
 property more and more. It was almost certainly her 
 father’s property; it was not likely that it was settled 
 upon the girl. Could not he get that property? It was 
 a little thing, but it might be of immense service to him. 
 And the thought came to fill his brain, as the thought of 
 Naboth’s vineyard filled the brain of Ahab. But there 
 was only one way to get it; only one way to get that prop- 
 erty — viz., boldly to assume the name of the man he had 
 robbed; to see as little as possible of the girl and her rel- 
 atives; and to sell the property for what it would fetch, 
 put the money in his own pocket, and go away with it. 
 As for the girl, she would find something to do; young 
 people can always work. And houses worth a hundred 
 and fifty pounds a year can be sold for something — two 
 thousand pounds, or perhaps more. Two thousand 
 pounds! But, then, to become a Claimant — to assume 
 another man’s personality! 
 
 The longer he pondered over this idea the more it 
 pleased him. As for difficulties, there were, so far as he 
 could see, few, so long as he kept out of the way of Mon- 
 toro’s cousins and relations; he could show an exact 
 knowledge of the life led by the girl who had told her 
 father everything; he had her letters; he knew the 
 scrambling household, the enthusiast and visionary, the 
 sons who had no chance at home and longed for one 
 abroad — everything. He knew, or guessed, what kind of 
 letters the man who had made so enormous a fortune sent 
 to his daughter; they were vague letters, full of splendors 
 and hazy glories, about which he could build any structure 
 he pleased. Everything was ready to his hand, provided 
 only there was no one to swear that he could not be the 
 lost Montoro. Here again he was helped, though he ad- 
 mitted to himself that it was the one serious risk. The 
 girl’s relations neglected her altogether. They never 
 made any inquiry about her; her father’s people, who be- 
 longed to quite the lower class of clerks, were scattered 
 and dispersed, and too much occupied with their own 
 troubles to ask what had become of Charles’s girl; her 
 mother’s sister, she who had married into “ carriage com- 
 pany,” had gone on up the hill of fortune, and was now, 
 with her husband, so rich that she had a great house at 
 
54 
 
 A GLORIOUS FORTUNE. 
 
 Wimbledon, with more than one carriage, and contented 
 herself with writing to her niece once a year or so. The 
 very people in whose house she lived knew nothing of her 
 father; nothing was wanted to carry through the business 
 but swiftness and courage — a rush and a bold front. If, 
 in the interval, which must be brief, between the first ap- 
 pearance and the last, cousins should offer to renew 
 cousinly acquaintance, those cousins must be insulted and 
 snubbed. The thing could be done safely if it were done 
 quickly. And though it was impossible to foresee all the 
 difficulties which might arise, he could provide against 
 most. Freedom and skill in lying, it seemed to him, were 
 the first essentials. And so far he was the equal of any 
 living man. 
 
 You have seen how he made his first appearance. It. 
 was after dark; if, peradventure, there was any one who 
 might have known Montoro in the old days, then was 
 t here time to prepare that person for a change in appear- 
 ance, manner, and voice; he did not assume the manner 
 of the affectionate and tender parent; he could not, in the 
 first place, and in the next, it was better for his purposes 
 to be the hard and stern father. He was astonished, 
 certainly, at his daughter’s embrace, having forgotten that 
 girls do kiss their fathers; but on the whole he was satis- 
 fied. So far he had been accepted without the slightest 
 suspicion. 
 
 The next day he drove to Yeritas Villa in the after- 
 noon. His daughter came to him, but on this occasion 
 she did not offer to throw herself into his arms; he held 
 out his hand coldly, and she took it as coldly, though she 
 had been crying all the night over this disappointment of 
 a father. Many a woman cries over a disappointing son, 
 but few have to lament that a father does not turn out as 
 he had been expected. Perhaps she had allowed her im- 
 agination too much freedom. All she had to go upon were 
 his letters, and these spoke to her of a writer very dif- 
 ferent from this cold man with the hard eyes. 
 
 “Let us talk,” he said. “There is a good deal to say. 
 Let me see, Milly is your name, is it not? Yes — Millv, 
 to be sure— Milly.” He wondered if it was Emily, Ame- 
 lia, Millicent, Matilda, or something else. “ It is strange, 
 at first, talking to my own daughter.” 
 
A GLORIOUS FORTUNE. 
 
 55 
 
 “ You did not find it strange writing to her.” 
 
 “No, that was different. Did you expect to find your 
 father what he is?” 
 
 “ I did not,” said Milly truthfully. 
 
 “You took me at your mother’s estimate. I believe 
 she told you I was of a meek and gentle nature. Perhaps, in 
 those days, I was. If a man wants to get on, over there, 
 mind you, he must get rid of his meekness. So, that is the 
 first thing I have to say. Next, I am accustomed to have 
 my own way. Please remember that. Perhaps you thought 
 when I came home you would have it all your way. Not 
 so fast, young lady.” 
 
 Milly said nothing; but a red flush on either cheek 
 might have told him, had he remembered Matilda, that 
 she was her mother’s daughter. 
 
 “When your mother died, you left Hackney Wick. 
 Lord! what a place to live in! Where was it that you 
 lived in Hackney Wick?” 
 
 “Why,” said the girl, surprised, “in the old house, of 
 course, where you lived until you went away.” 
 
 “ To be sure — the old house; the old house in Hackney 
 Wick. And then you came here?” 
 
 “ Mr. Richard Ambler, who managed the houses, sug- 
 gested his cousin to my aunt, when they wanted some one 
 to take care of me.” 
 
 “ Richard — Richard Ambler,” he stroked his chin. 
 “Do I remember him?” 
 
 “ No, I should think not. He told me once he had 
 never seen you.” 
 
 “ Good. I will go to see him then. Write down his 
 address. He manages the houses, does he? We will walk 
 round some day and see the old place. Are there any of 
 my old friends left to see you sometimes?” 
 
 She shook her head. 
 
 “ I think I have never seen any of your old friends or 
 relations at all. I do not know where they are.” 
 
 “Nor do I,” he said, with perfect truth. “We shall 
 not trouble ourselves much to find them, that is very cer- 
 tain. And your mother’s people?” 
 
 “They now live at Wimbledon, a long way off; and I 
 seldom see my aunt Paulina or my cousins. I do not 
 think anybody cares very much about me, except the An> 
 biers here. ” 
 
f)6 
 
 A GLORIOUS FORTUNE. 
 
 “ Very good/’ her father replied. “They keep away 
 from you so long as you are poor, do they? Then we will 
 keep away from them now that we are rich. As for me, 
 remember that I refuse to see cousins of this kind. Ab- 
 solutely refuse, mind!” 
 
 He looked so fierce — so needlessly fierce — that Milly was 
 frightened. Certainly this new father of hers was not one 
 to be crossed. 
 
 “ When I went away,” he said presently, “ when I gave 
 
 up the post I held in the firm of What the devil 
 
 now was the name of the people?” 
 
 Milly shook her head. She did not know. 
 
 “ I think the least you could have done,” he replied 
 angrily, “ was to make yourself acquainted with the his- 
 tory of your own father. Never mind. What did you 
 care about your father? When I went away your mother 
 had about a hundred and fifty pounds a year— some 
 trifle ” 
 
 “ She lived upon it, trifle though you call it, until she 
 died, since you sent her nothing, and I have lived upon it 
 since,” said Milly quickly. 
 
 “Yes, yes — I know. What is it worth now?” 
 
 “The houses are all let, and they produce, I believe, 
 after allowing for repairs, about a hundred a eighty 
 pounds a year. This is all paid to Mr. Ambler for my 
 maintenance, education, and dress.” 
 
 “Avery handsome sum, upon my word! A hundred 
 and eighty pounds a year! It should have been eighty, 
 that w r ould have been quite enough, and the rest saved 
 for me.” 
 
 “ For you? But the property was my mother’s, who left 
 it to me!” 
 
 “ Did she make any will?” 
 
 “No; there was no need. Nobody else could take her 
 property.” 
 
 “ You forget — her husband. There were no settle- 
 ments;” he did not at all know whether there were any or 
 not, but he assumed that there were none. “ All your 
 mother’s effects were therefore, and are still, mine.” 
 
 His! Milly trembled— was she to lose her little proper- 
 ty — the property which was going to do so much for the 
 home when she married George? 
 
A GLORIOUS FORTUNE. 57 
 
 “Fortunately,” she said timidly, “you are so rich that 
 you do not want it!” 
 
 “ Rich! yes; but no man refuses money, or can afford 
 to throw it away. As for those houses — see, girl,” he 
 rose and walked to the window, “ it is as well to under- 
 stand at once — I have come over here at great loss of time 
 and money, leaving enormous affairs— affairs of the very 
 greatest importance, in the hands of people I only half 
 trust, for you. I cannot stay long, there is nothing for 
 me to do here; I have got no friends in England; I am 
 out of the world; and there is no getting back to the old 
 life.” 
 
 “Getting back to the old life!” Milly stared and 
 gasped. She pretty well knew what the old life was, with 
 penniless brother-clerks for companions, and the bar- 
 parlor for club; “ the old life!” 
 
 “ Of course; when I said' the old life, I mean the old 
 friends.” 
 
 “ Would you care to meet them again — those old friends 
 of yours?” 
 
 Milly remembered her mother’s lamentations over the 
 memory of those old friends who took her husband from 
 his home, led him into taverns, drank with him, and 
 made him smoke too much tobacco; initiated him into 
 the Orders and Brotherhoods of Ancient Buffaloes, Druids, 
 Shepherds, Odd-Fellows, or even Free and Accepted 
 Masons. Her husband’s love of low life, she said, coupled 
 with his lack of ambition, was the bane of her married 
 life. Perhaps she exaggerated. 
 
 “ As for the friends,” her father replied, “ if they have 
 gone on in the old way, I don’t want to meet them. When 
 a man gets up in the world, the first thing he should do is 
 to kick away the ladder, and not know one of ’em. As 
 for the old life, I don’t suppose I ever want to hear about 
 that again. Why I was a clerk in the City; I had to go 
 and write all day. A pretty kind of life mine was: at a 
 desk all day, and your mother’s tongue in the evening. 
 Very well, then. Don’t interrupt. There is nothing to 
 keep me here. I shall sell the property, and we will 
 go back together; father and daughter ought not to be 
 separated; I suppose there is no particular reason why 
 you should stay here, is there?” 
 
 “ There is George,” she replied. 
 
58 
 
 A GLORIOUS FORTUNE. 
 
 “ Your sweetheart? The chemist’s clerk? You may 
 leave me to settle with him. About this Ambler fellow, 
 this jackass with the Discovery, has he got any money, or 
 do you keep him and all his family, too?” 
 
 “He has a small fortune; I know what it is because I 
 have heard over and over again. He has five thousand 
 pounds in the Three per Cents.” 
 
 “ Of course, then, he is mighty fond of you with your 
 hundred and eighty. Why, it is as good as doubting his 
 income. Go tell him, if he is in the house, that I want 
 to see him.” 
 
 “ Father,” said Milly, standing before him, and looking 
 him straight in the face, “there is one thing in which 
 you must please understand me at once. I can never give 
 up George.” 
 
 “ Not even to go back with me — your own father?” 
 
 “Not even that. I do not think in any case, even 
 without George, I could go back with you.” 
 
 “ Why not, pray?” 
 
 “ Because,” she was a perfectly truthful girl, and she 
 therefore spoke exactly what was in her mind, “ because 
 I am afraid of you. Your letters prepared me for some- 
 thing very different. You are cold and harsh; you begin 
 with taking away my property — my own, although you 
 are so rich that you despise it for being such a very little 
 property. I cannot prevent you, I suppose. But I will 
 not go back to America with you, and I will not give up 
 Geo ” 
 
 She broke down, her voice choked; she fled because she 
 would not let this hard father of hers see that he had 
 made her cry. 
 
 “ It is rather more serious work than I anticipated,” 
 said the Claimant to himself. “ It makes a man respect 
 the stage-father. I suppose she expected to be kissed and 
 cuddled and made much of. Well — I can’t do it. As 
 for George, I think it is a deuced lucky thing there is a 
 George, because she’s a creature with a will of her own, 
 not like her fool of a father, and she certainly will not 
 give up her lover for a dozen fathers. So much the bet- 
 ter for me. Because now I can sell up the property, and 
 go away openly without concerning myself about an un- 
 dutiful child who prefers to remain with her George. It 
 is better than running away. I am really very pleased 
 
A GLORIOUS FORTUNE. 
 
 59 
 
 there is a George. Bless them both! Suppose she had 
 thrown herself upon my bosom and swore never to leave 
 her fond and faithful father!” 
 
 At supper that evening, Mr. Ambler could talk of 
 nothing but Mr. Montoro, who had spent two hours with 
 him in the map-room, and had been most affable and 
 kind. 
 
 “ Before speaking of the business in hand, which was, 
 of course, you, Milly, my dear, he engaged in conversa- 
 tion concerning the Great Discovery. I found in him one 
 of those candid intellects, keen, incisive, logical, and open 
 to conviction. Nothing of prejudice about. Mr. Montoro. 
 He has been brought up, he confesses, in the old exploded 
 school, and has always been taught that the earth was 
 round; he was, indeed, greatly surprised to learn that it 
 is, on the other hand, flat, with a surrounding Rim of 
 ice. I begged him not to take my simple word for it, 
 but to listen, first, to the arguments. Well, he sat down. 
 First, I gave him my Plain Reasons — these shook him. 
 Then he answered, one after another, my Simple Ques- 
 tions, and I flatter myself conviction was growing in. 
 Then I read him the Refutation, which he put in his 
 pocket, and promised to see me again upon the matter. 
 
 “ Then he began to talk about his own affairs. Milly, 
 he is immensely rich, he is a millionaire over and over 
 again. I can hardly tell you what he has; there are 
 mines, cattle-runs, farms, houses — one whole town be- 
 longs to him, he says. Think of it. What a glorious 
 country it must be fora man in less than twenty years to 
 accumulate such wealth! I think I have made a Recruit 
 of the very first water — a Croesus among Recruits. Hither- 
 to, what we lacked in money we made up in logic. Per- 
 haps now we shall get both money and logic. 
 
 4 4 He spoke, among other things, of a college or univer- 
 sity, I forget which, in this city of his. It was built and 
 is owned entirely by himself. He said that among other 
 professional chairs there is a chair of astronomy worth a 
 thousand a year or so, and that it is, by great good luck, 
 at present vacant. He has this appointment in his own 
 gift. If, he added, he is quite satisfied with the new Dis- 
 covery as to which he was already favorably prepared by 
 his daughter’s letters — thank you, Milly, my dear, you are 
 
60 
 
 A GLORIOUS FORTUNE. 
 
 always our guardian angel ” — Milly looked horribly guilty 
 — “ he sees no reason why I should not fill that chair.” 
 
 “ Oh, Lord!” cried George. 
 
 “Eh, my dear? — eh, boys?” 
 
 “ Where did he say it is?” asked George. “ A thousand 
 a year! In his own gift? And in America?” 
 
 “He did not say where. We were only discussing pre- 
 liminaries, and I do think, children, that the name of 
 Professor Ambler — no longer plain Reginald Ambler — on 
 a title-page will carry weight, whether it is the title-page 
 of the Plain Reasons or the Simple Questions.” 
 
 But Milly’s cheeks were burning, because she had never 
 spoken of her guardian’s Discovery with respect in any 
 letter to her father. What did he want to deceive Mr. 
 Ambler for in so trifling a matter? And with all this 
 wealth, why — why should lie desire to take from her the 
 little property which would be so useful to George and 
 herself? Was it to make her an heiress? 
 
 “ George,” she said that night when she dismissed him 
 at the garden-gate, “ I do not want his riches; I wish he 
 would go away and leave me. Oh, George, I do not feel 
 the least speck of love for him!” 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 A BEAUTIFUL DREAM. 
 
 So far, things had gone so easily with this Pretender, 
 that he began seriously to wonder why — considering the 
 vast number of lost cousins, missing parents, strayed 
 brothers, and wandering uncles, claimants like himself for 
 the family affection, and family funds — family friends do 
 not continually turn up. Perhaps they do. Perhaps 
 there are hundreds among us — unsuspecting innocents — 
 bearing names to which they are not entitled, and enjoy- 
 ing fortunes to which they have no right. What is to 
 prevent a man who knows the circumstances to march into 
 the club of a dead man, for instance, supposing he alone 
 knows that the man is dead, and taking up his member- 
 ship? 
 
 Our Claimant went to the villa again next day; and the 
 day after, The girl, who thought she was his daughter, 
 
A GLORIOUS FORTUNE. 
 
 61 
 
 attracted him. She looked so pretty that he could not 
 choose but come. And after fifteen years, the sight of a 
 young and beautiful English girl is something, even to 
 a hardened, selfish old gambler. She behaved nicely to 
 him, was respectful in her language and obedient, save in 
 the matter of that young fellow . 
 
 “ Milly,” he said at the fourth visit — he was already so 
 far advanced that he called the girl by her Christian name, 
 and even addressed her as “ my dear/’ and “my child,” 
 without stammering or hesitation. “Milly, we are getting 
 on better. Are you still afraid of me?” 
 
 “How can I help being afraid of you?” she replied 
 truthfully. “ You want to take me away from my friends, 
 and from my lover, and you are going to take away what 
 I thought was my property.” 
 
 “Oh, your property! Silly child! Why, across the 
 ocean, for every pound you have here, you shall get a 
 hundred. Your property! Why, it is because I want to 
 have done with the place altogether that I wish to sell it. 
 Never heed such a trifle. Now tell me, do you like so- 
 ciety?” 
 
 “I do not know, we have no friends. I believe there 
 is very good society at Stamford Hill, but we never go 
 anywhere.” 
 
 “ Do you like theaters?” 
 
 “I do not know; we never go to any.” 
 
 “Do you like concerts?” 
 
 “Oh yes. I have been to a good many concerts, and 
 there are lectures and dissolving- views.” 
 
 “ Do you like the West End?” 
 
 “ I have never been there. You do not know as yet; we 
 are very quiet people; we are always at home working for 
 the children.” 
 
 “ Yes,” her father was grown softer in his manner, 
 though he was no whit more demonstrative or affection- 
 ate; “ye — yes,” he said, stroking his mustache; “ all 
 these things you know nothing of, but you would love 
 them if you knew them. Milly, without society there is 
 no life; without amusement there is no life; withou excite- 
 ment there is no life. Yon miserable people here do not 
 live; you sit all together in a room, you breathe and walk 
 in a cage; you know nothing about the world; you have 
 no idea of its pleasures. If you marry this young clerk, 
 
62 
 
 A GLORIOUS FORTUNE. 
 
 you will £0 on breathing and walking in a cage. Why, it 
 fills me with amazement that you can go on contentedly 
 with this suburban life; and yet there must be millions all 
 living like this.” 
 
 “ Why not? It is a very pleasant life. I think I would 
 rather not have the excitement you speak of.” 
 
 “Come with me, Milly,” said her father, his face actu- 
 ally softening, “and you shall have a life which shall give 
 you one pleasure after another — every day crowded and 
 filled up with pleasures.” 
 
 But she shook her head. 
 
 “I was thankful for George at first,” he said to himself. 
 “I thought it would rid me of the girl. Now I see I was 
 a fool, for I could do much better with her than without 
 her. But how to persuade her?” 
 
 For by this time another thought was lying in his brain, 
 receiving every day new food and encouragement. He 
 saw, in a kind of ecstatic vision, a salon or drawing-room 
 such as he had read of in the old days when he used to read 
 French novels. It was a beautifully furnished room, with 
 cabinets, china, pictures, a piano, mirrors, and all the 
 pretty things which belong to the life he had abandoned 
 fifteen years ago. He sighed as he thought of such a 
 room. “I did not know,” he said, “until I came home, 
 that I cared for it all so much.” The room was full of 
 people; there were ladies in beautiful toilets, young men 
 in evening dress. They were sitting, walking, and talk- 
 ing. He was himself a gentleman again to outward show. 
 At the piano sat the girl — he always thought of Milly as 
 the girl — playing and singing, the younger men hovering 
 round her, making their court. Presently she rose, said 
 something, and laughed, and they all sat down to a table 
 covered with green cloth, he at the head. 
 
 Yes, the Colonel was not in imagination returning to 
 paths of virtue, which, whether they led him into pleasant 
 drawing-rooms or not, would certainly prove monotonous 
 to him. It filled his soul with happiness, however, to 
 think that he could fill a room with people “comme il 
 faut,” through the attractions of his daughter, and do a 
 stroke of business with them afterward. The perfect 
 gambler can think of nothing as complete, unless there 
 are a pack of cards in it and a green table. 
 
 There was also another dream which much he loved, 
 
A GLORIOUS FORTUNE. 
 
 63 
 
 yet sometimes feared might be difficult to realize. In this 
 dream there was one young man only in the room besides 
 the girl and himself. The young man was often changed, 
 because the evening was made expensive for him. And in 
 this dream there was a mirror before the piano in which 
 the girl saw the hand held by the young man when the 
 flirting and singing were over and play began. Then, by 
 a judicious arrangement of chords, she conveyed to her 
 confederate the knowledge of that hand; or else she got 
 up and looked over his shoulder, while that innocent 
 sheep’s eye* looked up into her artless face. Oh, a beauti- 
 ful dream 1 But before it could become possible two things 
 were necessary: the girl must be across the water, and 
 away from her friends, and she must be made to love a 
 life of luxury and ease. 
 
 “ Good Heavens!” he cried, “ what a chance there is for 
 me! They’ve tried it with their painted and ruddled old 
 hacks, their Frenchwomen and their octoroons, but never 
 once, I swear, with a sweet- faced, innocent-looking En- 
 glish girl. They couldn’t get one. As for difficulty, there 
 would be none once across the Atlantic, away from all her 
 friends. As for doing her any harm, that is rubbish. 
 Very likely she would fall in love — many young women 
 do. I could get her off my hands that way without any 
 trouble. And, if not, why, then, when I had made all I 
 want — it isn’t really much — I could tell her everything, 
 and pack her off to Johnny in Oregon. She’ll console 
 him for the loss of the money, which wasn’t his any more 
 Hi an mine, and I shouldn’t want her more than a year or 
 nvo.” 
 
 He forgot that, before you get an honest English girl to 
 let as professional decoy to a card-sharper, there is likely 
 lo be a very considerable kind of row. 
 
 This dream remained in his mind so long that it became 
 a purpose with him. He was growing old; it would be 
 dreadful to give up the comfortable life to which he had 
 returned, and yet what to do when the money went? He 
 thought how easy and pleasant it would be to receive his 
 friends in a real high-toned salon, with a pretty girl to 
 play and sing to them, and help him to cheat them. She 
 should go with them. As for her lover, he must be 
 given up. 
 
 But first it was necessary to win her confidence. This 
 
64 
 
 A GLORIOUS FORTUNE. 
 
 he might have done very easily by the simple show of 
 affection. The man could feign a good deal, but love, 
 the plain and unmistakable love which many foolish 
 fathers wrap up and surround their daughters, he could 
 not feign. Therefore he sought to win her conGdence by 
 dazzling her. 
 
 First, he took her to a splendid restaurant, and gave 
 her a magniffcent dinner, consisting of a dozen courses, 
 served in a great room full of glass, mirrors, and flowers, 
 with champagne, of which Milly had heard, but had never 
 tasted. 
 
 “If you like / 5 said her father, “you shall dine with us 
 every night. Good Heavens! how have I longed in 
 America for this kind of thing again — I mean in the first 
 days, you know, before 55 
 
 “What, could you have known anything of this kind 
 of life in the old days ?’ 5 
 
 “ Perhaps , 55 he said, after a while, “a clerk may get 
 some knowledge of what a dinner should be by flattening 
 his nose at the window . 55 
 
 “ But , 55 she went on, “ to waste all this time and money 
 every day in such a tedious 55 
 
 “Confound it ! 5 he cri.ed in a rage. “You are not 
 worth such a dinner. After all, how should you under- 
 stand it? A mutton-chop and a potato, I believe, would 
 have pleased you quite as well . 55 
 
 Then he took her to a theater. They sat in a private 
 box, and Milly looked with wonder from the stage to the 
 house, and the house to the stalls. The performance was 
 a burlesque, and a favorite one. It was played partly by 
 actresses dressed as men, and Milly pitied them, though 
 the audience clapped and applauded. She could see 
 nothing to applaud; you see it wants a little education 
 before a girl, a suburban and East End girl, can really 
 admire the spectacle of women dressed in tights, or the 
 performance of a ballet, or the delivery of bad verses 
 crammed with puns, or the comic business, which seems 
 to them like horseplay. Such a girl does not see any- 
 thing to laugh at in a pun, or in a funny get-up, or in a 
 man tumbling down — for that matter, she does not want 
 to laugh at all; she would' like rather to cry, even, so long 
 as she could see a beautiful story beautifully played. But 
 this her father did not understand, but fell into a rage 
 
A GLORIOUS FORTUNE. 
 
 65 
 
 when he perceived that Milly was only bored with the 
 performance. He thought she was sulking with him on 
 account of his previous harshness. 
 
 “You shall have a private theater of your own if you 
 like, and a ballet and all, and you shall be manager / 7 he 
 said. “You shall act on your stage if you like, only say 
 what you would like / 7 
 
 “I do not want any ballet, thank you / 7 she replied 
 coldly, “ and I thought theaters were better worth going 
 to . 77 
 
 “ Oh, very well / 7 he replied; “if you are resolved to 
 like nothing I do for you, I might as well leave off trying 
 to please you . 77 
 
 He was now in no hurry about going back. At first he 
 spoke of going back in a few days, but he stayed on. It 
 was a fortnight since he first came to the villa, and now 
 he came every day, though Upper Clapton is not by any 
 means “ handy 77 for the Langham Hotel. He saw that 
 the girl disliked him still, but that shS’was trying to con- 
 quer her dislike, and he went on with his plan of concili- 
 ation. He had expected suspicion; there was none in any 
 quarter: he was even received by Mr. Richard 'Ambler, on 
 whom he called to ask about his houses, without the least 
 suspicion. What he had not expected, because he would 
 not have reckoned it as a factor of the least importance, 
 was dislike. Now, with this larger scheme in his mind, 
 it was of the first importance that the girl should learn to 
 trust in him and to believe him before getting her to obey 
 him. 
 
 He therefore persisted. Since she did not care for the 
 theater, he took her to the races. He was rewarded by 
 the consciousness that the girl was all day profoundly 
 dejected. She did not want to see the horses running; 
 she did not in the least care who won; and she was fright- 
 ened at the great crowd, in which she felt so entirely out 
 of place. Yet he had got a carriage, a hamper, and a 
 most beautiful lunch, and was mindful of a day long past 
 when, with a similiar carriage and hamper, but another 
 companion, he had spent a most enjoyable day at Ascot. 
 
 He drank all the champagne himself — a little too much 
 — and then began telling her stories which terrified her, 
 and made her Wonder what manner of life her father must 
 have led before he married, since he was familiar with 
 
66 
 
 A GLORIOUS FORTUNE. 
 
 what seemed to her simple mind the most wicked and 
 wasteful profligacy. 
 
 “Do you like no kind of amusement, then?” he asked 
 her. 
 
 She tried to explain to him that there are many other 
 amusements besides feasting, drinking, burlesques, racing, 
 betting, and gambling, which might seem to girls pleasing 
 and desirable things. 
 
 “Sometimes,” she said, “on summer evenings I go 
 upon the river with George, or we walk to Tottenham 
 and as far as Hornsey. There are lectures to go to, and 
 a choral society, then we have lawn-tennis, and sometimes 
 there are new books to read, and new music to play.” 
 
 Her father grunted. 
 
 Then he tried her with the shops of Regent Street. 
 No woman, he thought, can withstand the temptation of 
 fine things. He showed her all the beautiful things in 
 the world, or nearly all — dainty costumes, costly with 
 lace, bonnets which were a dream of loveliness, gloves 
 and parasols, ribbons, and what not — such as the girl had 
 never dreamed of possessing. She refused them — she 
 actually refused them. 
 
 “ George,” she said, “ is only a clerk as yet. If I were 
 to go dressed in these beautiful things it would make him 
 ridiculous.” 
 
 “George! What do I know about George? Are you 
 not my daughter and my heiress? Can’t you remember 
 that? Sometimes one would think you were going out to 
 America as a pauper. Do you really imagine that my 
 daughter — mine !— could show herself in New York 
 dressed like ” 
 
 “ Like the daughter and the wife of a clerk. But per- 
 haps the New York people will have no opportunity of 
 giving an opinion.” 
 
 “ Was there ever before,” asked her father impatiently, 
 “a girl who was bound to inherit millions, and preferred 
 — actually preferred to go about as shabby as a shop-girl?” 
 „ “ George is only a clerk,” she said; “ I must dress ac- 
 cording to my husband’s station.” 
 
 “ Why, hang it! are you not my heiress? Who will 
 have my money if not you? One would think you were 
 going out to America to be a governess.” 
 
 “ Forgive me,” she said. “I have been so long accus- 
 
A GLORIOUS FORTUNE. 
 
 67 
 
 tomed to consider your Fortune as a thing which has 
 nothing to do with me, that I cannot suddenly change my 
 mind. If you designed to make me an heiress, you should 
 have told me so ten years ago. Then, I dare say, I should 
 have been brought up differently. And, perhaps, I should 
 have liked these things. But I belong to the people whom 
 you now despise — though you were born among them. 
 We live the simple, homely life which you have forgotten. 
 As for these things — your great dinners, your theaters, 
 and all the rest of them, I suppose you enjoy them now. 
 But in the old days you knew nothing of them. Had 
 you not better leave me alone with my friends, just as you 
 always have done? You do not want me in your new life. 
 Why,” she looked him full in the face with those honest 
 eyes of hers, “ there is something — I know not what — 
 which stands between us. You do not love me as you 
 used to do when you wrote to me, or else you can no longer 
 pretend as you did then — but I cannot believe those let- 
 ters were all pretense. When I am with you I irritate 
 you, and then you fly into a rage and swear. You try to 
 please me with all kinds of things which I do not 
 want ” 
 
 “ What is it you do want?” he asked her. “ What can 
 I buy for you? Only tell me. See, Milly, I want you to 
 like me. It isn’t a question of money ” — indeed it was 
 not — “ I will buy anything you fancy. But you won’t 
 like anything that I can say or do. As for those old let- 
 ters of mine, bring them to me. Who is to remember 
 what he said ten years ago — writing to a little school- 
 girl ?” 
 
 She brought them to him obediently. There were not 
 many — only about twenty, all tied up neatly with green 
 silk and smelling of lavender. He cut the string and read 
 the letters deliberately. Remembering the log-hut, and 
 the whisky-bottle, Johnny’s wandering eyes and rambling 
 speech, his miserable story and his wretched life, he was 
 struck with admiration. The man possessed the first and 
 most essential qualifications of a novelist — he could make 
 those who read his letters believe his statements; more 
 than this, he could enter into his reader’s miud and un- 
 derstand what she would think of himself; what sort of 
 hero she would construct of her father; and he wrote ac- 
 cordingly. 
 
68 
 
 A GLORIOUS FORTUNE. 
 
 “ I was a clever fellow/’ be said at length, “ when I 
 wrote those letters. Yes, Milly, there are many things 
 in my life of which I may be proud, and many which 
 might have to be explained away. You thought from 
 these letters that it was all sailing before a fair wind. You 
 are mistaken; it was a hard fight all the time with men 
 as keen to get on as I was myself. Would you have 
 liked me to tell you the true history of those years of 
 struggle?” 
 
 “ I should like,” said Milly, “my father to be as affec- 
 tionate and as tender to me in words as he was in writ- 
 ing.” 
 
 He shook his head. 
 
 “ It can’t be, my child. If you like I could write more 
 letters to you, just the same as these. But I can’t talk 
 like that. Here, take back the things!” 
 
 “I do not want them any more,” she replied sadly. 
 “ To read them now would give me more pain than pleas- 
 ure. I would rather talk with you than have any more 
 letters from you.” 
 
 “ Why, there,” he replied, “ that is exactly what I 
 wanted you to say. No more humbugging milk-and- 
 water letters, but good, honest, straightforward talk. 
 You know me now, Milly, for what I am;” he stood up- 
 right and struck his chest; “a strong, plain man, and 
 perhaps as good-hearted as if I came to you with tears and 
 kisses. I am pleased with you — yes, satisfied and pleased. 
 You are a very pretty, well-set-up girl, good face, good 
 figure, good form. You will do. You don’t pretend to 
 love your father; very well, how should you? And you 
 are not afraid to tell him so. I like you the better for it. 
 Some day, perhaps, you will like me. Meantime, as you 
 are my daughter, and are going to inherit everything, 
 come out with me first to look at your inheritance.” 
 
 Always the same refrain, “ Come out with me.” 
 
 He certainly made no pretense at being a mild and 
 peaceful character, and filled the walls of Veritas Villa 
 with tales which fired the blood of the boys, and made 
 them long to rush beyond the reach of civilization, to ride 
 the half-broken mustang, to shoot at Mexican robbers, to 
 sleep round camp-fires, to wear a red-flannel shirt, a 
 crimson belt, a slouched hat, and great boots. Even 
 Copernica thought that no woman could have a happier 
 
A GLORIOUS FORTUNE. 69 
 
 lot than to live in constant danger from scalping Indians 
 and blood-thirsty Mexicans. 
 
 He laid himself out to please everybody except George, 
 whom he treated with cold contempt, insomuch that the 
 lover was fain to keep away from the house when Milly’s 
 father was there, and carried on his courtship in the gar- 
 den. He conciliated Mrs. Ambler with smooth words and 
 flatteries, assuring her that there was no lady in England 
 who would have brought up his daughter with more care 
 and kindness than she had shown, and that the boys and 
 girls should always be his sacred care, and he gave them 
 all watches, and to Copernica a gold watch and chain. 
 
 Yet they were afraid of him. 
 
 As for the Discoverer, Mr. Montoro became to him as 
 a god, or pope at least, because he announced his adhesion 
 to the theory, and admitted that he could no longer 
 stand out against the overwhelming arguments in its favor. 
 
 “ The world is flat,” he said. “ How thick it is, which we 
 should see if we looked beyond the Outer Rim, it is impos- 
 sible, as you say, for us to surmise. I have never taken 
 any special interest in science, because my work has been 
 of a more practical nature, but I hope I can follow an 
 argument as well as other men; and your argument, Mr. 
 Ambler, has convinced me.” 
 
 “ To win a Recruit, and such a Recruit,” replied the 
 blushing philosopher, “by the sheer force of persuasion, 
 is indeed a triumph.” 
 
 Mr. Montoro then turned the conversation upon the 
 subject of his college. It was a new college, he said; 
 there would be, probably, at first, but a small number of 
 students; the astronomical class wonld be one of the 
 smallest. Still, it was an opening; the country was be- 
 coming settled and populated; the college was endowed; 
 gradually the institution would grow. Would it really 
 be worth Mr. Ambler’s while to leave London and trans- 
 port himself to a strange country in order to lecture on his 
 own system in his own way? 
 
 Worth his while! The Discoverer bounded in his 
 chair. 
 
 “ Then, Mr. Ambler, I shall be pleased to offer you the 
 post. It is my intention to leave this country for America 
 in a few weeks. You can follow as soon after me as is 
 possible for you to wind up your affairs.” 
 
A GLORIOUS FORTUNE. 
 
 TO 
 
 “ I have no affairs/’ replied the Philosopher. “ There 
 is the society, to be sure, but I am afraid that there is 
 only one man, my convert Bagshott, who will lament its 
 temporary suspension. Bagshott leaves me the scientific 
 department, and occupies himself with the weekly demon- 
 stration from his pulpit that the Discovery is the only way 
 of reconciling revelation with science. The only way, 
 Mr. Montoro! Such a man is useful to me, and I shall 
 be sorry to leave him. They say his congregation has 
 dwindled to nothing. But the scientific aspect of the 
 question, which is my own special department, demands 
 t-hat such a chance of spreading the Truth should not be 
 neglected. Where, sir, if I may ask, is your college 
 situated?” 
 
 “ It is,” said Mr. Montoro, as unblushingly as if he had 
 been Johnny of Oregon himself — “ it is in Nevada, in 
 the city which has risen on my own ground, surrounding 
 my own works. You will not find it on any map, because 
 the city has only been built two or three years. You go 
 
 first to Colorado, and next But no matter for these 
 
 details. They can wait.” 
 
 It will be seen presently with what object the Colonel 
 was deceiving the unfortunate philosopher. 
 
 “ Children,” he said that evening, “ the way is now 
 clear to me. Should you like to go to Nevada?” 
 
 Nevada! Bret Harte’s books were about Nevada, were 
 they not? Nevada; where there are rocky mountains, 
 grizzly bears, silver-mines, adventurers, wolves, buffaloes, 
 prairies, rattlesnakes, perils and dangers, wealth, revolv- 
 ers, bowie-knives, and happiness! Go to Nevada? Kepler 
 looked at Tycho Brahe, and gasped. Ptolemy seized 
 Galileo by the hand, and said, “ Oh, oh!” slowly, and 
 from his heart. 
 
 “ Where is Nevada?” asked his wife. 
 
 “ It is one of the newest of the States. It is the place 
 where Mr. Montoro made his money. You did not know 
 that, Milly ?” 
 
 “ No. I have never had any letters from Nevada.” 
 
 “ There he has built a city — it is only two years old — 
 on his own grounds, and about his own works; and in the 
 city is the college. I am offered — definitely and formally 
 offered — the chair of astronomy. Shall I accept the 
 offer?” 
 
A GLORIOUS FORTUNE. 
 
 71 
 
 There was a rapturous shout. 
 
 “Well, my children/’ he went on, “if it is ordained 
 that I achieve the greatness in America, which Oxford 
 and Cambridge refuse me, I hope that I shall accept it in a 
 becoming spirit. As for you going with me, boys, I am 
 sure that with Mr. Montoro’s glorious example before us, 
 and his patronage at starting, we need have no fear or 
 hesitation.” 
 
 And then there was such joy in the Ambler family as 
 would have done your heart good only to see it, without 
 understanding what it was about at all. To the elder 
 boys it meant wealth unbounded, like Mr. Montoro’s, but 
 without so much temper; to the younger it meant change 
 and fun — no doubt there were no schools in Nevada; to 
 Copernicait meant justice — tardy, but still justice — to her 
 father; to the good wife it meant relief from tightness. 
 Who would not go to Nevada for a thousand pounds a 
 year? 
 
 Perhaps, too, they all thought there might come a time 
 when there would be less talk about that Grand Discovery 
 which made the family look upon all glory as vanity, so 
 much had it spoiled and wasted the father’s life. 
 
 It was now four weeks since Mr. Montoro’s return. He 
 had partly succeeded in reconciling Milly. She did not, 
 it is true, venture again upon the mistake of kissing him, 
 or of expecting any caresses from him; but she had over- 
 come the repulsion which at first filled her soul with re- 
 gard to him. Perhaps, if he had behaved more kindly 
 with regard to George, she would have looked upon him 
 with some approach to affection. What he wanted most, 
 however, he had got from her. She trusted him; she did 
 not in the least suspect him, and she was growing very 
 nicely, and just as he could wish, to feel toward the great 
 Fortune a personal interest. He felt sure that he could 
 manage the rest very easily, once she was away from her 
 friends. You do not, when you go a tempting, approach 
 the subject straight; you work round it; you talk about 
 other things; you prepare the mind for it; you sap the 
 ground; you gradually destroy principle; you do not, at 
 last, make the last step till you are perfectly certain of 
 success. The Colonel, who was a veritable serpent for 
 craft and subtlety, knew that it would take time to con- 
 vert an innocent girl into a rogue, thief, and confederate 
 
72 
 
 A GLORIOUS FORTUNE. 
 
 of cheats; but he knew what he was about, and he also 
 knew from long experience that there are few so strong as 
 to resist all kinds of temptation. 
 
 He now took his next step. 
 
 “ I must tell you, Milly,” he said with a touch of sor- 
 row in his voice, “ that I am now making my preparations 
 to go back in a week — this day week. I have again seen Mr. 
 Eichard Ambler, and I hear that he can find me a purchaser 
 for the houses, and will draw up the necessary papers im- 
 mediately. You have heard that lhave given Mr. Ambler 
 a post in my college. He and his family will therefore 
 start at once. This, if you persist in refusing to accom- 
 pany me, deprives you of a home.” 
 
 “I can find one with George.” 
 
 “ I shall not oppose it,” said her father. “I might 
 have looked higher for my daughter, but I will no longer 
 oppose your inclinations. You shall marry the man of 
 your choice, and I hope you will be happy. What you 
 will do when you come into your Fortune 1 do not know. 
 You will not, I fear, either of you, be equal to the position 
 in which you will find yourselves. However, that is, after 
 all, not my business, because I neglected you so long. It 
 is my punishment that I cannot interfere as an ordinary 
 parent might.” 
 
 “ You are very kind to me now,” said Milly. 
 
 “ You mean that I was not always. Perhaps not — per- 
 haps not. I did not know you, Milly, when first I landed, 
 four weeks ago. Forgive me, my daughter!” 
 
 She looked at him in surprise. Strange that even when 
 he was at his softest, using words which in other men 
 would have been accompanied by some outward sign of 
 tenderness, his eyes were as keen and his month as hard 
 as if he were contemplating something connected with 
 fight and struggle. 
 
 “Now, Milly, I have been thinking a good bit over 
 things, and I am prepared to say to you, ‘ Go and marry 
 your lover.’ I will not ask you to give him up, and come 
 across the water with me. I will even make a handsome 
 allowance, which will enable you to live like a lady, if you 
 please.” 
 
 “ Oh!” she replied, taking his hand. But he withdrew 
 it quickly, as if afraid of her falling upon his neck again. 
 
A GLORIOUS FORTUNE. 73 
 
 “I did not expect this,” she added. “ What am I to say? 
 How shall I thank you?” 
 
 “ Nay, I want no thanks. There is only one thing you 
 might do to pleasure your father.” 
 
 “Why, is there anything, except giving up George, 
 that I would not do?” 
 
 “ It is this, Milly: You know I have been a long time 
 
 from home, but I have never forgotten you; my letters 
 prove that. Now, it grieves me to go back without even 
 being able to show any of my kith or kin what I have done 
 and the edifice I have raised. It is hard to have no one 
 belonging to you. They will say when I go back, ‘ Col- 
 onel’ — they call me Colonel, out there — 'how did you find 
 the little maid?’ — that’s you, Milly — that is you; and I 
 shall have to tell them in reply that the little maid is 
 grown up into a woman, who doesn’t care about her father 
 — why, how should she? it is not in reason that she 
 should — and is going to be married to a lover in a low 
 station of life. And there is not a creature in all the 
 world who cares about me. It seems hard, doesn’t it? 
 What is the use of money if it can’t bring me that kind 
 of happiness?” 
 
 The tears came into Milly’s eyes as she stood before her 
 father and listened. They would have flowed more read- 
 ily if his own had showed the least emotion. 
 
 “Then I thought to myself, suppose that Milly would 
 come over with me for a year, or two years— not more. 
 Suppose I were to promise her faithfully that after two 
 years, at most, she should go back to her lover, if she 
 pleased. It is not a very long time, two years. Milly is 
 young; her lover is young. He may very well wait two 
 years. Come, Milly, what do you say? A run across the 
 ocean, a ride across the continent. First, Nevada for a, 
 year or so; then we will run over to California; perhaps 
 go up country to — to Oregon,” he laughed. “Yes, I 
 should like to show you Oregon. I know people in * 
 Oregon who would interest you very much. And when 
 you were tired of your father, and his great house, and all, 
 you could come straight away back to your lover’s arms. 
 What do you say, Milly?” 
 
 She was silent, thinking. Was there ever a more rea- 
 sonable or more generous offer? He would let her do 
 what she pleased, and only suggested, leaving the offer for 
 
74 
 
 A GLORIOUS FORTUNE. 
 
 her consideration, that she should give him two years of 
 her society. 
 
 “ I will consult George about it,” she said at length. 
 
 “ Soit ! Let it be so. Consult this infallible George. 
 Milly, one word of advice. Don’t let George know that 
 you think him infallible. It spoils a husband. Your 
 mother never spoiled me in that way. Quite the contrary.” 
 
 That evening George and Milly had a long and earnest 
 talk. The proposal made by Mr. Montoro seemed really 
 prompted by affection. After two years she might return 
 to him. Was two years a great deal for a father to ask of 
 his daughter? And then — one need not be quixotic, 
 although one is a clerk in a chemical works, with pros- 
 pects — there was all this great Fortune. No one doubted 
 the existence of the Fortune, any more than they sus- 
 pected Mr. Montoro of being somebody else. This Glori- 
 ous Fortune! Her father might marry again; he might 
 leave it away from his daughter; he might do anything 
 with it. Surely it was worth a little concession to make 
 that inheritance safe. 
 
 “I think, dear,” he said at length, “I think — how 
 can I part with you for two years? — that you ought to 
 go.” 
 
 “I think so, too, George. But I am afraid of him. I 
 do not know why, but I am afraid of him. The Amblers 
 will be with us. It is a great thing that Copernica is 
 going. But I am afraid of him.” 
 
 CHAPTEE VI. 
 
 JOHNNY AGAIN. 
 
 Milly must go, then. For two years she would be her 
 father’s companion. It was quite right and just; the pro- 
 posal was put so generously that it was impossible to re- 
 fuse. Yet George came away that night from Veritas 
 Villa in great sadness and despondency. Milly was afraid 
 of her father. Would he suffer her to return after two 
 years? He was afraid of the man, too. He knew not 
 why, but he was; the sight of Mr. Montoro filled him 
 with a kind of rage. What business had such a man with 
 
A GLORIOUS FORTUNE. 
 
 75 
 
 such a daughter? Some wise men hold that daughters do 
 take after, and resemble, more the father than the mother, 
 which is an admirable thing when the character of the 
 father is worth preserving and copying. But in what 
 single respect did Milly resemble her father? 
 
 Pilled with these thoughts he did not at first perceive 
 that there was a man wandering about in the middle of 
 the road with unsteady gait, apparently the worse for 
 drink, and looking for something. Presently this man 
 made for hirn in a devious and zig-zag course, and accosted 
 him. His voice was a little thick, but he was not too 
 drunk to express himself. He knew what he wanted. 
 
 46 Sir,” he said — in fact, he did say 44 shir,” and he ran 
 his words together a little, and missed a syllable here and 
 there, and omitted many' of the minor words, pronouns, 
 conjunctions, auxiliary verbs, and so forth. Let us hide 
 these proofs of human frailty as much as possible, and 
 print what he meant to say without dwelling too much on 
 how he said it. We are all human, only some are more 
 human than others. 44 Sir,” he said, 44 can you tell me 
 which is the house of Mr. Ambler?” 
 
 44 Mr. Ambler’s house?” George stared. 44 What do 
 you want with Mr. Ambler? It is half-past ten, and they 
 are all gone to bed. Come, you must wait to see Mr. 
 Ambler till to-morrow. Do you want to prove that the 
 world is square?” 
 
 The man shook his head. 
 
 44 Must get up for me. Haven’t seen her nigh twenty 
 years.” 
 
 44 Seen whom?” 
 
 44 Seen the little maid?” 
 
 44 What little maid?” 
 
 44 My little maid — my daughter — Milly Montoro.” 
 
 44 What?” 
 
 44 My little maid — my dear little maid,” this strange 
 person went on repeating. 
 
 Why, it was like the burden of Milly’s father’s letters. 
 They were full of 44 my little maid, my dear little maid?” 
 44 Who are you, then?” George seized him by the 
 shoulder. 44 Stand up,” he said, 44 try to be sober. Pre- 
 tend to be sober, man. Who the devil are you?” 
 
 44 I’m — I’m — her father: the little maid’s father — Milly’s 
 father.” 
 
76 
 
 A GLORIOUS FORTUNE. 
 
 “ Her father? What is your name, man?” 
 
 “ Mv name is Montoro. The Colonel called me Johnny, 
 Real Christian-name — baptized name — is a fool of a name 
 — Worshipful Charles.” 
 
 “ Good Lord!” cried George. “ But you are drunk. 
 Where do you come from?” 
 
 “ The Commercial Docks, Rotherhithe. Came over 
 from Quebec in timber-ship. Was ship’s cook. 
 
 “ Look here,” said George. “Whoever you are, you 
 cannot go to the house to-night, because you are drunk, 
 and because it is late. You must, therefore, come with 
 me.” 
 
 He took the man by the arm, and led him unresisting 
 to his own lodgings, which were not far off. 
 
 “Now,” he said, turning up the gas in the sitting- 
 room, “ let me look at you.” He did look, and he trem- 
 bled. 
 
 The man was dressed in an old and ill-fitting suit of 
 black cloth. I do not think there is any kind of dress in 
 which a man may look so fearfully shabby as a suit of 
 black. This is partly due to the fact that it is evening 
 dress, and should suggest social cheerfulness. In the 
 same way, no one could possibly look more melancholy 
 than a clown by daylight outside his show and in official 
 dress. A diess-coat, too, when it has grown old, and 
 has seen long service in some third-class restaurant, 
 falls into curves, lines, and folds which seem to debase 
 and degrade the figure of man beneath. This man’s whole 
 suit, again, was disgracefully and deplorably dirty, and 
 covered with streaks of grease. Everything was to match; 
 he wore no collar, but had a red handkerchief tied 
 about his neck, and a gray flannel shirt in rags; his hat 
 was a slouched felt of the commonest description. He 
 took off the hat and stood in the light, a little sobered, 
 but his eyes were heavy with drink. They were light 
 blue eyes, unsteady and weak. He wore a long grayish 
 beard, but his hair was brown and silky. And the reason 
 why George trembled was not because his clothes were so 
 shabby, but because his face was like unto the face of his 
 sweetheart and his eyes like her eyes, though different in 
 expression. The daughter was like the father, and he 
 knew — he was perfectly certain — that before him stood 
 the man whom the other pretended to be. 
 
A GLORIOUS FORTUNE. 
 
 77 
 
 " Once more — who do you say you are?” 
 
 "Worshipful Charles Montoro is my name.” 
 
 " Where do you come from?” 
 
 "'From Oregon, last,” he replied, partly sobered by this 
 young man’s earnestness. " I came from Quebec in a 
 timber vessel; shipped as cook.” 
 
 " You came over here as cook? Where is all your money 
 then ?” 
 
 The man shook his head. 
 
 " I haven’t got any money,” he replied. " There was 
 some in the bunk; the Colonel stole it.” 
 
 "Where is your Fortune then?” 
 
 " I haven’t got any Fortune. How should I have 
 any?” 
 
 "What did you mean 'then by your letters?” 
 
 "My letters? Oh!” Then he put his hand to his 
 head in a feeble way, trying to understand. Then he sat 
 down looking bewildered. And presently, while George 
 waited for further explanation, his head fell back and his 
 eyes closed. He was asleep. And while he slept he looked 
 still more like Milly. 
 
 The man slept all through the night; George mounting 
 guard over him lest he should wake up and slip away. 
 By the morning light he looked more disreputable than 
 ever. When he awoke at seven, George took him into his 
 own bedroom, and gave him, to begin with, a completely 
 new rig-out, in which, at all events, he presented a re- 
 spectable appearance. The man was very much subdued, 
 and asked no questions, taking what was offered him, and 
 doing what he was told. Apparently a gentle and amen- 
 able person. Then George gave him breakfast, and after 
 breakfast bade him tell his story. 
 
 I suppose there never was a man, since gift of speech 
 was first granted to humanity, who rambled in his talk so 
 much as Johnny of Oregon; what he had to tell we already 
 know, but George did not. He got at last, and after a 
 thousand twistings and turnings, to the point at which 
 the Colonel came, stayed with him a week, proved excel- 
 lent company, and finally made off with the money and 
 the letters. Then he went on: 
 
 " When the Colonel stole that money, and the letters as 
 well, and I could not come up with him, nor hear of him 
 anywheres, I hadn’t the heart to go back to the clearin’, 
 
78 
 
 A GLORIOUS FORTUNE. 
 
 and hung around a bit doin’ odd jobs, as many are ready 
 to do all over the States. And so somehow I worked my 
 way back again to the east, and in the spring got to Que- 
 bec, Now when you stand on the hill at Quebec and look 
 across to the east, it seems as if you can see all the way 
 across the water to London. Curious that, isn’t it? And 
 what with havin’ none of her letters to read, and lookin’ 
 across the water, and thinking I was gazing upon Hack- 
 ney Wick, I fell to dreamin’ about the little maid, and 
 longin’ to see her again.” 
 
 “So you came home, and got drunk?” 
 
 “ Yes, sir; that is so. Oh, I knew very well I should 
 have to own up! And I knew what they would say; par- 
 ticularly Matilda’s sister, P’leena, who married very well, 
 and now keeps carriage company. It would be rough on 
 the little maid at first to see her father such a disgraceful 
 old pauper, and a shame to a respectable terrace to be seen 
 loafin’ around, after all I’d told her, too. First I thought 
 I would just look over the palings like, and go away; some- 
 body would tell me which of them she was; perhaps I’d 
 beg a copper to carry away and remember her by. Then 
 I thought how would it be if I made a clean breast and 
 begged her pardon humble, and so went away again. All 
 the journey across the ocean in that timber ship I thought 
 about it, and what I should do. And when I got across 
 to Poplar only this morning, I tell you, sir, I’d no more 
 notion of what was best to be done than when I started.” 
 “ Perhaps you never have had any notion in all your life 
 of what was best to be done.” 
 
 “ Perhaps not, sir. Men who see clear get on in the 
 world. I never saw further than the end of the job.” 
 
 “ But why did you get drunk?” 
 
 “ Well, twasn’t right; but think of it. I hadn’t seen a 
 public-house for nineteen years. They haven’t got any 
 where I’ve been. They’ve got bars, but if you want a 
 comfortable drink with a pipe and a friend to talk to, you 
 must come to England. I don’t quite know how many 
 public-houses there are on the straight road between this 
 and Poplar, but I tried the drink at most, with a pipe 
 here and a pipe there, feelin’ comfortable because I was 
 workin’ my way, you see, with the little maid at the end 
 of the way.” 
 
 “And so you got disgracefully drunk. Yes — I see.” 
 
A GLORIOUS FORTUNE. 
 
 79 
 
 [j ?here seemed no possibility of doubting or disputing the 
 , nan’s statements. They were told too naturally for decep- 
 ion. But what was to be done next? 
 
 “ What is the Colonel like?” 
 
 Johnny described the man who had repaid his hospital- 
 ty by stealing his money. He described him so exact- 
 j y that there was little doubt in George’s mind who was 
 he personator, in spite of the discrepancies of beard and 
 nustache. 
 
 “As for his profession, he’s a sportsman,” continued 
 lis informer. “He sometimes plays alone, and some- 
 times he’s one of a gang. Sometimes he travels and plays 
 n the cars; sometimes he goes to bars, and sometimes he 
 keeps a gaming-saloon. There’s thousands like him in 
 r-he countries where I’ve been. Very good company they 
 are when there’s no plunderin’ and cheatin’ around. If 
 there’s a quarrel, which there mostly is, it’s wild cats. I 
 was a peaceful man, I was, and nobody never drew bead 
 on me; but I’ve seen many a fight over the cards, and now 
 and then a quiet man like myself got hit when the firin’ be- 
 gun. The best way is to roll over and lie on the floor till 
 
 it’s over. I remember now, once, down to ” 
 
 “ Never mind that. Let us get on.” 
 
 “ I’m a peaceful man,” he continued, repeating himself 
 as usual; “ yet if I had come across the Colonel after he 
 stole my money, I’d have shot him. Yes, if I hanged for 
 it. Seems now as if I don’t care much about it any more. 
 I never had any money before I found that roll of notes 
 in the empty cabin, and I’m no worse off than I was then. 
 P’raps I shall go back to Oregon, and liv6 in the cabin 
 again by myself when I’ve seen the little maid. It’s quiet 
 living all by yourself. When you go about in gangs 
 there’s no such things as getting an hour’s quiet, and a 
 peaceful man loves to be quiet. Lord! if you’d heard 
 the language I had to hear every day, you’d like a few 
 years’ quiet. No; I don’t care so much about the money, 
 and of course the Colonel has lost it all by this time.” 
 
 “ You want to see your daughter. I will help you, but 
 on conditions. First, I must tell you that I am going to 
 marry her.” 
 
 “ You are going to marry my little maid?” He stared 
 
 in great amazement. “Why, she can’t ” 
 
 “ I am sure,” said George, “ that she has not remained 
 
80 
 
 A GLORIOUS FORTUNE. 
 
 a baby in arms for nineteen years. Yes; I am going to 
 marry her. And it seems to me that the sooner I do it the 
 better.” j 
 
 “ Well, sir, it’s real friendly of you, and I hope she’ll 
 make a good wife, and that you’ll treat her kindly. But 
 I do assure you, sir, that it is not my wish nor my inteiw 
 tion to disgrace my daughter by staying at home. No, j- 
 sir, a clerk I was once, with three pounds a week, and| 
 therefore a gentleman. But I’ve had that knocked outjj 
 of me long ago, and now I’m only a common loafer and '! 
 tramp, except when I’m on my clearin’ in Oregon, and a 
 the whisky bottle’s most always too much for me. She 
 sha’n’t blush for her father, sir. Not after the first go-off, I 
 after I’ve, had to own up. Tell me, sir, does she think 
 much about the Fortune? Does she want money sent 
 home to her to keep up her position like her poor mother?” 
 “ No, she does not. She believes— or did believe until 
 the other day— that you are dead, and your Fortune all 
 lost, or fallen into wrong hands. The loss of what she 
 did not expect will certainly not grieve her much— not ; 
 half so much as to learn that her father, of whom she has 
 learnt to think so tenderly, is a man who — finds a whisky- 
 bottle most always too much for him.” 
 
 The man hung his head like a school-boy receiving re- 
 
 proof. , , 
 
 “ Yes,” he said, “I mustn’t stay at home. Thats a 
 fact. Can’t I go over this morning and have it out with 
 her, and go away again?” 
 
 “ No,” George replied with energy, “you cannot. It 
 is one of the conditions I make with you. You are to 
 stay here quietlv, for a week if necessary; you must not 
 go out unless I go with you. You must not make any at- 
 tempt at all to speak with her. Do you promise?” 
 
 The man hesitated. 
 
 “If you will not,” said George, “I will make you put 
 on again those disgraceful clothes — I will give you a bot- 
 tle of whisky, and turn yon into the road ; you can then 
 drink yourself blind drunk and stagger off to find your 
 daughter, and make her have you marched off to the sta- 
 tion as a drunken vagabond.” 
 
 The man shuddered and trembled. 
 
 “ I will do,” he replied, “ whatever you tell me.” 
 
 “Very well then. Stay at home — here — until I como 
 
A GLORIOUS FORTUNE. 
 
 81 
 
 iack. You may smoke a pipe all day long if you like, 
 »ut there is no drink. Do you promise.'' 
 
 “ Yes, sir; I will do what you order. I wouldn t shame 
 
 h “Very good’. But just- tell me what you did it for? 
 
 was the good of deceiving her about youi succes . 
 ^“Welt lmw”— he had grafted a kind of American 
 Irawl upon a full and rich cockney twang, the result of 
 ,vhich gave a peculiar flavor to his speech we , , 
 
 ae said slowlv, “ put it to yourself. Here is a child at 
 lome taught to believe her father a lazy and idle fellow 
 ivith no smartness. Her mother taught her that, likely. 
 Here’s a father a good many miles awav who wants that 
 child to stick out her chin like girls who have pride 
 their parents, as some do, not only in Standford H , 
 but also Tottenham, and many other places. Nothin 
 makes a girl proud and haughty, and therefore happy, as 
 being sure she’s got a great and noble fathei. I ieme “ 
 her them in church on a Sunday morning, their fathei 
 being perhaps an alderman, and perhaps a common-co 
 eilman. What does that father do? Twice a year he 
 borrows a sheet of paper, and on the Sabbath when e 
 rest are asleep or playin’ monty, he sits and writes to that 
 daughter letters which shall make her pi oud and happy. 
 Do you call that, sir, doin’ of a parent’s duty, or do yon 
 
 not?” 
 
 George did a verv unusual thing that morning. He 
 asked for a week’s holiday, and was granted it. 
 
 He began his week by a very busy and important moining. 
 First, he had a long conference with Mr. Rich aid 
 Ambler, in which many things of interest were considered 
 and action resolved upon. 
 
 “ Remember,” said the solicitor, “you have to protect 
 Milly against the real man as well as against , the pretender. 
 And suppose the real man wants to sell her houses and 
 pocket the money ?” 
 
 “ He will not,” said George. 
 
 “ I do not know. Perhaps he will not be tempted. As 
 for Reginald, leave him to me. Professor of Astronomy 
 indeed! But what is the use of fooling poor Reginald. 
 And to think that not one of us suspected the fellow I 
 Now go, and lose no time. We have the rogue sate 
 
82 
 
 A GLORIOUS FORTUNE. 
 
 enough, bat I do not know yet if we can proceed against 
 him criminally.” 
 
 “ At all events, he stole the notes.” I 
 
 “Yes, yes, but it was in Oregon, and perhaps they! 
 might ask to whom these notes belonged; on the whole, it 
 is a tangled business. He has attempted to defraud in 
 instructing me to sell the property; but in doing this 
 he injures not me nor his daughter, but the rightful owner, 
 who is this man, Montoro himself, and from your account 
 I should say he would not be a likely man to become a 
 prosecutor or give good evidence.” 
 
 “ The limpest weed of a man you ever saw,” said 
 George. 
 
 In the evening George came home. His prisoner had 
 been asleep most of the day, and had obediently kept 
 within the house. 
 
 “Very good,” said George, “I will now reward you.” 
 
 He took him out, and walked in the direction of Veritas 
 Villa. At this time, in these summer evenings, the Dis- 
 coverer’s family were generally in the garden playing 
 lawn-tennis. This evening they were all on the lawn 
 together, Milly with them, playing. There was only a 
 low wooden paling over which one could easily look with- 
 out the appearance of curiosity or impertinence. 
 
 “There,” said George, “is your daughter. Not the 
 little girl with the glasses; she is only fifteen, and Mr. j 
 Ambler’s daughter. The taller girl. Look at her well. 
 In a day or two you shall speak to her.” 
 
 The man looked his best. When George, a few minutes 
 later, drew him away, the tears were running down his 
 face. 
 
 “I see,” said George, “that your story is true. You 
 are really Milly’s father. But I was certain of it from the 
 beginning.” 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 TILL TO-MORROW. 
 
 The next morning George greatly astonished the in- 
 habitants of Veritas Villa, by paying them a visit in the 
 morning, a thing never known before. He explained that, 
 as he had a holiday, he thought he would just look round 
 

 A GLORIOUS FORTUNE. 83 
 
 j see them. His cousin Reginald was in the map-room? 
 
 I would go there. 
 
 [e found the Discoverer, aided by Copermca, specta- 
 j ; on nose, busily engaged in cataloguing books, looking 
 j ough letters, rolling up maps, and between these labors 
 king notes for that great inaugural lecture which was 
 revolutionize astronomical research, in America first, 
 
 [ the old world next. It was already a voluminous 
 ss of notes — the Philosopher belonging to the school 
 ich thinks that the longer they make their utterances 
 more likely they are to be listened to. In the same 
 f the scholars of ‘the Renaissance used to believe that 
 bigger their books the more certain would be their 
 mortality. And there are not wanting poets of this 
 y century who also believe that the more they wiite 
 ! better they will be loved and preserved, and their 
 mory kept green. As for novelists, they do not count, 
 ;ause nobody ever supposes that a picture of life can be 
 >ught worthy of preservation— lucky those who get 
 d by their own generation. 
 
 ‘ Come in, come in, George,” cried Reginald cheerily. 
 Here we are, hard at work — hard at work. I expect we 
 ill have to sail in a week or two — as soon, that is, as 
 | can sell off our sticks and get rid of the house. I am 
 i ting my inaugural lecture. This, George,” he added, 
 th great seriousness, “ is the most important piece of 
 rk, I am convinced, that I have ever yet been called 
 on to do. In it I have to strike a note, such a note as 
 ill be at once an alarm and a message of Truth, and an 
 ;10 he did not explain how an alarm could be all these 
 “ yes, and shall re-echo through the length and breadth 
 the land — from the North Pole to the — to the mysteri- 
 ;S ice caverns of the Outer Rim. A college class, George, 
 a very serious thing, it is a sacred thing. I may regard 
 j own as a collection of empty vessels waiting to be 
 ed, or as so many canals which have to irrigate a thirsty 
 antry, or as so many springs of Truth. Ought we not, 
 /■self and Copernica, who shall be my assistant lecturer, 
 consider ourselves as instruments appointed for the 
 reading of Truth, or even prophets?” 
 
 ^opernica blushed and gasped, and adjusted her 
 isses. • 
 
 “ Ought we not, I say v 
 
84 
 
 A GLORIOUS FORTUNE. 
 
 “ You certainly ought.’’ George replied, rudely inter- 
 rupting. “But, Reginald — I will not stop your work 
 many minutes— are you quite sure that it is wise to build 
 upon this offer, to jump at the conclusion that you ought 
 to accept it, to be so certain of going?” 
 
 “ Why, George,” the Discoverer smiled, “ as regards 
 the wisdom of the step, I may be allowed to be the best 
 judge; as regards the certainty of going, I have already 
 accepted the offer.” 
 
 “Yes, yes; but, Reginald, are you quite sure” — here 
 George looked confused — “ that it is a genuine offer?” j 
 “ Genuine offer! What do you mean, George? The 
 offer is made by Mr. Montoro himself — by Milly’s own 
 father. Surely I can trust Milly’s father?” 
 
 “Yes, I believe you can trust Milly’s father.” 
 
 George could not help saying this. 
 
 “ When he offers me such a post, what can I do but 
 accept with gratitude?” 
 
 “Why,” George replied, “it is ungracious to look a 
 gift horse in the mouth, but I think, if I were you, I 
 would first find out where the college is.” 
 
 “ It is in Nevada, near the city of Colorado. I know 
 where it is.” 
 
 “ In Nevada. Yes, yes. That is a long way off. 
 Would it not be prudent first to get the prospectus, papers, 
 calendar, or whatever the college has got to prove its 
 existence?” 
 
 “Now, George.” Mr. Ambler was really annoyed at 
 this appearance of distrust. “In Mi lly’s father’s hands 
 I am quite safe. ‘ He is bound to us/ he kindly says, * by 
 bonds of gratitude/ though Heaven knows Milly has 
 done ten times as much for us as we have done for her. 
 It is all quite settled. I have told Cousin Dick to have 
 my Funds sold out, and placed to my credit in the bank. 
 When we get out, Mr. Montoro is going to invest the 
 money for us at ten or twelve per cent. Think of that, 
 after a beggarly three! Milly is going with us.” George 
 started. He had not quite realized what this meant. 
 
 “ Going too. We shall be quite a family-party. George! 
 What are you swearing for? and what are you banging the 
 table for?” Because George suddenly remembered that 
 he had only the night before agreed to intrust Milly to 
 this villain’s care for two years. 
 
A GLORIOUS F011TUKE. 
 
 85 
 
 “ George/’ said Copernica, frightened, “ don’t look like 
 that. What is the matter? Because Milly is to go away 
 for two years? Oh, for shame!” 
 
 He made a desperate effort, and controlled himself. 
 
 “I want you seriously, Reginald,” he said, speaking 
 calmly, “ to consider the possibility of your not going at 
 all.” 
 
 “ I cannot.” 
 
 “Oh, George,” said Copernica, “when he has got the 
 chance at last of spreading the Truth all over the world.” 
 “He can spread the Truth just as well — better even — 
 from Veritas Villa,” replied George cruelly. “ Regi- 
 nald,” he repeated, “you must renounce this project.” 
 “ What! and give up my professorship?” 
 
 “ Why, George?” asked Copernica. “ Why is he to re- 
 nounce the project?” 
 
 “ Because — because there is a very good reason, but I 
 cannot tell you to-day.” 
 
 “'If there is a good reason,” Copernica insisted, “all 
 the more reason for telling it at once.” 
 
 “No. But think, Reginald, what would the place be 
 to you even if it were all that has been represented to 
 you? An obscure college, in a new, far-off American 
 town, a place where your voice would not reach beyond 
 the walls of the lecture-room with its half-dozen students. 
 Call that an opening? Why, here in London you address 
 the whole world. Everybody looks to London. Things 
 said and written in London go over the whole world. You 
 are at the head of a society, growing ” — here he stam- 
 mered, but held on bravely — “growing daily and rapidly 
 in importance. You know that they are afraid of you at 
 the universities. If you were in America you would be 
 out of their way; they would fear you no longer. They 
 ask for nothing better than your removal. Mr. Montoro 
 is playing into their hands. As for your society it would 
 fall to pieces, and your theories would be set aside, and 
 speedily forgotten, while you were eating out your heart 
 in obscurity. It would be exactly as if you had never 
 lived, while, after your death, some one would take up 
 your ideas and steal them, and bring them over here and 
 pretend that they were his own. But here you live like a 
 king — like a king,” he repeated mendaciously. “ You 
 control the scientific world, you keep your trembling op- 
 
86 
 
 A GLORIOUS FORTUNE. 
 
 ponents in perpetual terror; they are obliged to have 
 recourse to every kind of disreputable dodge which you 
 defeat; they try to close one avenue, you open another. 
 This incessant activity frightens them; it confounds 
 them; they never know on what side they are next to be 
 attacked. Consider this, my dear Reginald.” 
 
 “ George,” murmured the girl, “you don’t mean it. 
 You have never talked like this before. If only you 
 meant it, you would be a Recruit, and the best we have 
 ever had.” 
 
 “ I mean every word,” he replied, though he felt that 
 his name ought to have been written Ananias — “every 
 word I have said. And as for you, Copernica, instead of 
 crying out upon me for being unkind, you ought to be 
 backing your father up, and making him feel that his 
 right place is where Jie is sitting, in his wooden chair in 
 the map-room at Veritas Villa, ready to fight with all 
 comers.” 
 
 “But what does it mean?” asked Reginald blankly. 
 “Tell us only what you mean.” 
 
 “ I cannot to-day. But I will tell you to-morrow morn- 
 ing. Meantime, for Heaven’s sake cease to build your 
 hopes upon this project!” 
 
 “ As for the honor of Mr. Montoro ” Reginald be- 
 
 gan, but stopped short, because, to his amazement, George 
 began to clinch his fist, grind his teeth, jump about the 
 room, and show all the external signs of wrath which can 
 be only appeased and satisfied by the kickings, whackings, 
 and free fights of the good old times. 
 
 Some day — we may not live to see it — we shall return 
 to that excellent method of our ancestors. There are 
 many men with whom one would like to have it out “ en 
 champ clos.” I should, myself, enormously enjoy con- 
 templating my enemy after I had taken the conceit out 
 of him with a battle-ax. 
 
 This entanglement with Reginald Ambler was difficult 
 to understand. What did the man want? To get them 
 all out in America away from their friends, and to rob 
 them? It must be that. Or was it possibly pure devilry 
 and wanton mischief? Not the latter, certainly. The 
 Colonel was not at all the man to perpetrate such a gi- 
 gantic hoax. One may imagine Theodore Hook doing 
 such a thing if he had got the^chance and it occurred to 
 
A GLORIOUS FORTUNE. 
 
 8 ? 
 
 him; and how he would have made a song about it, and 
 how they would all have laughed over their punch in the 
 delicate and feeling manner of their time at the fine situ- 
 ation ,of the broken-hearted enthusiast. But not the 
 Colonel; he did not desire to laugh — had not laughed, in 
 fact, for something like twenty years, that is to say, ever 
 since he began to live on his wits. Those savages of Cey- 
 lon, who never laugh, and only begin to smile when they 
 are defunct and ghosts, live on their wits, which accounts 
 for their melancholy. What the Colonel was contriving 
 was pure rascality and robbery. In order to set up his 
 gaming-saloon in the best style he wanted as much money 
 to begin with as he could command. And he saw his 
 way to getting a good large haul out of Beginald Ambler. 
 However, George said no more, but left them abruptly. 
 Then Copernica burst into tears, and threw herself into 
 her father’s arms. 
 
 “ Oh, papa dear, what is it? what does he mean?” 
 
 “1 do not know, child. How should I know? Is 
 George gone mad?” 
 
 No; she shook her head. George was certainly not 
 gone mad. 
 
 “ There is something behind,” she cried; “ George does 
 not talk at random. Oh, what is it?” 
 
 “I would stake my life,” said her father shortly, “ on 
 Mr. Montoro’s honor. Why — is George silly? Here 
 comes home a man who has been so busy for twenty years 
 making a great Fortune that he has never even had time 
 to come home before; he is changed, of course. No one 
 expected in a rich millionaire the manner of a clerk, 
 which he was before he went out. Everybody says he was 
 once a very meek and humble creature. He isn’t now. 
 But so rich and successful a man can afford to be a little 
 
 overbearing. He comes home, then ” 
 
 “ Father,” said Copernica desperately, “ we may go on 
 talking till to-morrow morning, when George is to tell us 
 what he means. Talk as much as we like, we shall get no 
 further forward. Shall we try and make believe that the 
 whole thing is a dream, and that we shall not go out at 
 all, so that we shall feel the blow less?” 
 
 “I can’t, my dear,” her father replied. “I think I 
 must go out to America or somewhere else and have my 
 say, or choke. Here no one will listen to me.” 
 
88 
 
 A GLORIOUS RORTUHE. 
 
 “ They wouldn’t listen to Galileo.” 
 
 “ I wish they never had. But as for me, I must speak. 
 And this is my only chance.” 
 
 “ To-morrow morning— let us wait till to-morrow morn- 
 ing. At any rate, papa dear, if the worst were to happen 
 — that is to say, if we could not go — we should be exactly 
 the same as we were before Mr. Montoro came. But, oh, 
 it is impossible!” 
 
 “It is impossible,” said her father, trying to feel the 
 confidence of his words; “ George has got a bee in his 
 bonnet. Many chemists get bees in their bonnets. Let 
 us go on with our work, Copernica. Let us lose no time. 
 The college must find us prepared.” 
 
 But his hand shook, and his brain was troubled. 
 
 For there was a thing which he had not told. 
 
 On the morning before, Mr. Montoro had held with him 
 a last conference on the subject of the college and the 
 chair; he gave him a paper of instructions how to get to 
 Colorado, showing what would be the cost of the journey, 
 the time taken, and the best way there. It was a paper 
 calculated to carry conviction to the mind of the most 
 suspicious, even a Yankee lawyer. In fact, there is noth- 
 ing which one man cannot persuade another to believe if 
 he gets him quiet and away from his fellow-creatures. In 
 the smoking-room of a club, for instance, nobody believes 
 anybody. In the retirement of the Discoverer’s map- 
 room, the Colonel’s lies, ingeniously constructed, were 
 accepted without the least suspicion. 
 
 “ And now, my dear friend,” said Mr. Montoro finally, 
 “I think we have settled everything. I cannot tell you 
 with what satisfaction I look upon the fact that we have 
 secured you for our new college. The possession of gen- 
 ius in our Professorial Chairs is, above all, the great thing 
 wanted for anew institution. Oh yes, to be sure, I had 
 almost forgotten. About your own money matters. Have 
 you arranged them?” 
 
 “I have written to my cousin, who manages my affairs, 
 to sell out my stock and pay the amount to my account in 
 the bank.” 
 
 “Yes; that is well. We can get you better interest 
 across the water. How are you going to bring it with you?” 
 “I do not quite know,” replied the philosopher, who 
 
A GLORIOUS FORTUNE. 89 
 
 had thought of tying it up in gold, and so bringing it in 
 his pocket. 
 
 “ Let me advise you,” said Mr. Montoro. “If you are 
 sure you can quite trust me — actually trust me — I will pay 
 it into my own account, giving you a note or receipt for 
 it, which will make you quite safe. You can give me a 
 check payable to bearer, and I will save you all further 
 trouble about it.” 
 
 This was a perfectly faithful promise. He fully intend- 
 ed to save Mr. Ambler and his family all trouble about the 
 money for the future. 
 
 He then sat down and calculated the cost of the jour- 
 ney, with a margin; he was very particular about the mar- 
 gin, so as to allow ample room, he said, for possible emer- 
 gencies. This done; he subtracted the total amount from 
 the sum lying to Mr. Ambler’s credit. 
 
 “ There,” he said pleasantly, “it is a real comfort for 
 me to be of a little assistance as a practical man to a 
 Genius and a Philosopher Draw me the check, payable 
 to bearer — so. When did you order the sale of the stock? 
 Yes, I do not think the money will be paid to your credit 
 till the day after to-morrow. Then I. should think — but 
 that matters nothing to you. So, sign the check — Reginald 
 Ambler. Shake hands, my dear friend. I believe firmly 
 that you will always consider this as the very luckiest day 
 in all your life. Courage! The way of glory lies plain 
 and clear before you. Of glory? Ay, and of wealth and 
 success to your boys. For 1 shall take care of them all. 
 Yes, I charge myself with them.” 
 
 It was the memory of this check and what it might 
 mean, because the poor man knew nothing about stopping 
 checks, that lay on the Discoverer’s conscience as heavy 
 as lead. 
 
 George sought Milly, who was, if one may confess a 
 thing which should not be a cause of shame, in the kitchen 
 making gooseberry jam. This is a conserve favorably re- 
 garded by the youthful palate, and is cheap. To the adult 
 who is picksome, the jelly of Siberian crab, which is soft 
 and silky to the palate — as they say of claret and of tea — 
 is preferable, and so is the preserve made of blackberries, 
 which is full-flavored and fragrant, yet fresh from the 
 wood. 
 
90 
 
 A GLORIOUS FORTUNE. 
 
 “Milly, my dear,” he said cheerfully, though he was 
 oppressed with the thing he had to face, “you look de- 
 lightful in a white apron, and your fingers are so sticky 
 that you are defenseless.” 
 
 “George,” she said demurely, “did you stay away from ; 
 business on purpose to kiss me?” 
 
 “Not quite, dear child. On the contrary, I have a 
 great deal to say to you. First of all, I have made my 
 cousin Reginald miserable, and Copernica as well.” 
 
 “Oh! But why?” 
 
 “Next, I am going to make you, not miserable, but 
 full of wonder. Mv dear Milly, a very strange and most 
 unexpected thing has happened. I do not think I ought 
 to tell you to-day what that is. Indeed you must not 
 hint or let fall the slightest suspicion that anything at all 
 has happened.” 
 
 “ Has it anything to do, George, with — with — with my 
 father?” 
 
 “A good deal, Milly. But ask me no more.” 
 
 “Yes, tell me; is it anything against him? I told you, 
 George, that I do not love him as I ought to love my 
 father, but ” 
 
 “ Bat his honor is a sacred thing, Milly. There is 
 nothing against your father’s honor that I know of. Yet 
 remember that Mr. Montoro does not know that, and 
 must not be told, or allowed for a moment to suspect, 
 until to morrow.” 
 
 “ It looks like conspiring against one’s own father; but 
 1 do not expect that he will come here to-day.” 
 
 “ It is not that, Milly, as you will see to-morrow. It 
 is conspiring for him.” 
 
 “ George, I do not understand in the least. To-mor- 
 row! Why, he is coming here to-morrow, to meet Mr. 
 Richard about the sale of the houses. Oh, my poor 
 houses! I am so sorry they are to be sold.” 
 
 “I don’t think they will be sold,” said George. 
 
 “And to-morrow I am to drive about London, to buy 
 fine things for my outfit.” 
 
 “ Perhaps you will not take that drive,” said George 
 mysteriously. 
 
 “And I had a letter to-day from my aunt Paulina. She 
 has not seen me for four years, but I told her, when I 
 wrote last, that my father had returned, and she is coming 
 
A GLORIOUS FORTUNE. 
 
 91 
 
 here to-morrow to see him. ‘ Congratulate him/ she 
 says, ‘ on his splendid success, and we shall always be 
 pleased to see him, and you with him, at Wimbledon.’ ” 
 George laughed. 
 
 “ I am glad your aunt is coming. It will be another 
 agreeable surprise for your father. Does he know?” 
 “No, he does not. I only got the letter this morning. 
 He has always declared that he does not desire to see any 
 of his relations.” 
 
 “ Shall you send him the letter?” 
 
 “Why,” said Milly, “my father has never even told 
 me where he is staying.” 
 
 “I can tell you that, if you want to know. Stay, I 
 will tell you to-morrow.” 
 
 “ George, you are most mysterious. Tell me, is this a 
 bad thing that has ” 
 
 “ No, not a bad thing. It is such a good thing, Milly, 
 that had it not happened ” — his face darkened — “ I would 
 have wished you lying dead and buried in the graveyard, 
 and myself beside you. Oh, my dear,” again he clinched 
 his fist, and looked like one who thirsts for another man’s 
 blood, “it is such a good thing that we shall have to go 
 in humble gratitude for it all the rest of our lives.” 
 
 “And I shall leave it to-morrow? Why, George, what 
 can it be? It is not money — nothing to do with money 
 would make you wish me dead. And you say that it does 
 not affect my father’s honor. Why, what can it be?” 
 
 “ You shall learn it to-morrow. But for to-day, Milly, 
 can you trust me?” 
 
 “ Why, George dear,” she said, throwing her arm round 
 his neck — it was not true that her fingers were sticky — 
 “George, if I cannot trust you; whom am I to trust?” 
 “Then, my darling, obey me for exactly four-and- 
 twenty hours, aud I will obey you for all my life to come. 
 Listen, my dear.” 
 
 He whispered. 
 
 The effect of that whisper could not be equaled even by 
 the gallery in St. Paul’s Cathedral. Milly blushed, and 
 then turned pale; first her eyes looked startled and fright- 
 ened; next, they became soft; first she opened her mouth, 
 and gasped; then her lips trembled, and gradually settled 
 into a smile. 
 
 “ George,” she said, “do you mean this?” 
 
93 
 
 A GLORIOUS FORTUNE. 
 
 For reply he drew out a document and showed it to 
 her. She read it through and blushed again. It was a 
 formal document, the nature of which became evident to 
 her after the first few words of preamble. 
 
 “ But I sail the day after to-morrow.” 
 
 “Do you think* my dear, that I am going to let you 
 go?” 
 
 “But what am I to say? Oh, George, what will my 
 father say?” 
 
 “He will approve — he will consent; and yet you will 
 not go to America with him.” 
 
 “Oh, I am in a dream!” 
 
 “Do you consent then, my dear?” 
 
 She gave him both her hands. 
 
 “ Yes, George, only tell me what to do.” 
 
 “ You have only to come to my rooms to-morrow morn- 
 ing at ten. Bring Copernica — poor little maid! — with 
 you, and say nothing — not one word — to any one, my 
 dear. I cannot rest for thinking that you are not yet 
 under my protection. Only one day more to wait. You 
 cannot be carried off in one day.” 
 
 “ Who is to carry me off, George?” 
 
 “There is only one man, my dear, who would try, but 
 he is possessed of many devils. Kiss me, and trust me, 
 and say nothing.” 
 
 All that day there was a restraint at Veritas Villa, and 
 an uneasy feeling that something or other was going to 
 happen. Copernica went on with her task of cataloguing, 
 but without heart; the Discoverer continued to sit before 
 the notes of his inaugural lecture, but somehow his en- 
 thusiasm was, for the moment, quenched. He even fell 
 into one of those fits of despondency which sometimes, 
 but rarely, filled his mind with the blackness of despair, 
 because at those times a mocking voice asked him how it 
 was that he could never account for a lunar eclipse. What 
 should he say, when his class asked him how, on his 
 system, he could produce an eclipse of the moon? 
 
 “Father,” said Copernica at length, “ it is no use try- 
 ing to work. George meant something — he never talks 
 idly; but let us put the things away and go for a walk.” 
 She took her father to the banks of the river, where they 
 wandered in a mood of settled gloom. The child tried 
 to raise her father’s spirits by pointing out the many 
 
A GLORIOUS FORTUNE. 
 
 93 
 
 proofs of the earth’s flatness which could be gathered 
 from the prospect around them. In fact anyone who 
 contemplates the Wanstead Marshes long enough cannot 
 fail of arriving at the conclusion that the earth is as flat 
 as a pancake. But the Discoverer remained dejected. 
 Was the cup to be dashed away from his lips at the very 
 moment of fruition? Was he really to go on in the old 
 half-hearted way, making a Recruit now and then, court- 
 ing contempt, being held up to ridicule? And then — the 
 recollection of that check lay at his heart. Yet if one 
 could not trust Milly’s father, in whom was trust to be 
 placed ? 
 
 To-morrow — to-morrow he was. to know. 
 
 One person remained to be prepared. This was the 
 unfortunate Johnny. George took him in the afternoon 
 to see his old haunts. They visited together the places 
 which he had known in the old days: the cottage where 
 he brought home his young wife, and was happy before 
 the sister married into carriage company, and the bane- 
 ful passion of envy was aroused; the church where he 
 once held part of a pew; the tavern, where there had been 
 a club, to which he went once a week, when there was a 
 sing-song. Johnny — whom it is impossible to call Mr. 
 Montoro — shed tears in thinking of that weekly sing-song. 
 Then they took train — in the old days it was an omnibus 
 — to the City, and gazed at the exterior of the house 
 where he had once been a clerk. When the man’s heart 
 was thus softened with the past, George began to prepare 
 him for the morrow. 
 
 “ I have kept you a prisoner all this time,” he said, 
 6C partly for your own sake. Tell me, what would happen 
 if you had met the Colonel in America?” 
 
 “I should have shot him,” he replied. “ Oh yes! I 
 know I should have shot him; I felt exactly like shooting 
 him.” 
 
 “ If you were to meet him here in England, what would 
 you do?” 
 
 “ There would be a fight,” he said courageously. “ Yes, 
 I think — I’m most sure there’d be a fight, because I’m 
 bound to call him a thief, and the Colonel is not a man 
 likely to stand that — you lay your last dollar he isn’t. So 
 there must be a fight, you see.” 
 
94 
 
 A GLORIOUS FORTUNE. 
 
 “ It would be a poor sort of a fight,” said G tfrge. 
 “ Well, suppose you heard that the Colonel was calling 
 himself by your name ” 
 
 “ What’d he do that for?” 
 
 “Suppose he went to Mr. Ambler’s house and said he 
 was Mr. Montoro, and that Milly was his daughter, and 
 sold her houses, and told her to go oyer to America with 
 him.” 
 
 “With him! Go with him!” The man became pale, 
 and trembled in all his limbs. “The little maid go with 
 him!” 
 
 “ That is exactly what he has dona.” 
 
 Then Johnny began to swear. Mild as he was, he had 
 learned to swear after the manner of the American rough 
 and rowdy. He swore at the Colonel so terribly that 
 George thought he would have some kind of fit. He 
 swore so long that George thought he would never finish. 
 
 “Come,” he said at length, “if you hadn’t already 
 sworn enough for ten men, I would ask you to say it all 
 over again for me. How, I warn you, to-morrow you 
 will meet that identical villain. What are you going 
 to do?” 
 
 “Why,” Johnny replied slowly, “he hasn’t got the 
 little maid, has he? ’Twould be very different if lie had. 
 And he hasn’t got the money for them houses, has he? 
 So, mister, I think, as I’m a peaceful man, I shall kind 
 o’ let him go. The Colonel’s a terrible man to fight. It’s 
 a great thing to be peaceful — kind o’ gets a man on in the 
 world.” 
 
 “ Yes,” said Qeorge, “you are a beautiful example, are 
 you not?” 
 
 “But,” said Johnny, “about them notes. Yes, I am 
 afraid there may be a fight.” 
 
 Poor Milly! Her luck in fathers was very bad. George 
 wondered which of the twain, on the whole, was the more 
 undesirable. Difficult to honor either of them — and there 
 is an old-world prejudice that it is better to be a sturdy 
 rogue than a coward. If the Colonel was a rogue he was 
 sturdy. If Johnny was indifferent honest, he was a most 
 dreadful coward. 
 
A GLORIOUS FORTUNE, 
 
 95 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 WHO GIVETH AWAY THIS WOMAN? 
 
 “I knew,” said Copernica, when Milly asked her to 
 put on her hat and go for a walk with her, “I knew that 
 something would happen to-day, and I knew it would be 
 something to do with you, because George was in it. And 
 it will be something to do with Mr. Montoro, because papa 
 is in it. Yes, Milly dear, I will be ready in a minute. As 
 for poor papa, he has not slept a wink all night, but walked 
 about groaning, and this morning he is sitting all of a heap- 
 like among the boxes. And, oh, good gracious, Milly! 
 you’ve got on your white frock and white gloves. What 
 in the world ” 
 
 “ Come,” said Milly, smiling; “you shall know in half 
 an hour as much as I know myself. Why, dear, as to 
 what it all means, 1 know no more than you. But some- 
 thing has happened — something which is to make us 
 grateful all our days, George says, and to-day we shall 
 learn what it is.” 
 
 “But, why white frock and white gloves?” Copernica 
 persisted. “ It is like a wedding.” 
 
 “ Yes, dear,” Milly blushed, “ it is terribly like a wed- 
 ding, is it not?” 
 
 First, they went to George’s lodgings. This was in it- 
 self a remarkable thing, because George should have been 
 at his business. But he was not, he was standing at the 
 garden-gate waiting for them. With him were two gen- 
 tlemen — one of them Copernica’s cousin, Mr. Richard; 
 the other, a strange man — not a gentleman, exactly, to 
 judge by his look, which was downcast and shy, as if he 
 was dressed in a suit of clothes too good for him; and really, 
 when Corpernica, who was sharp of observation, brought 
 her eyes to bear upon that stranger’s dress, she became 
 conscious that he was dressed in George’s clothes, which 
 made her feel as if she was in a dream. She was certain 
 of it — quite certain of it — she knew the pattern and rec- 
 ognized the cut. Who was this strange man, who must 
 needs borrow a suit of George’s clothes? Had he turned 
 
56 
 
 A GLORIOUS FORTUNE. 
 
 np with nothing to wear? And when he lifted his head 
 and looked round him — in a furtive, ashamed kind of way 
 — the child’s brain became suddenly troubled, because he 
 reminded her of somebody — she knew not, for the mo- 
 ment, who it could be. This more than ever made her 
 feel like being in a dream. 
 
 This uncanny ghost-like feeling may be arrived at any 
 day by walking about the streets of London at twilight, 
 when you just catch a glimpse — no more — of the faces as 
 they pass, and find your mind presently filled with odd 
 fancies and vague, sorrowful suggestions. You have 
 seen — you remember when they have passed you — faces 
 which reminded you of dead friends. The procession of 
 London faces is endless; as one grows older the streets be- 
 come more and more filled with the faces of the dead; so 
 that one thinks sometimes that this marching in the pro- 
 cession beside the living may be one form of purgatory; 
 and one trembles to think that if we were to grow very 
 old indeed, the procession of faces in a crowded street 
 would be wholly composed of dead men. To this girl, the 
 face of the strange man suggested likeness to some one, a 
 feeling of having seen it before somewhere; and it made 
 her uncomfortable. George did not introduce him to 
 them; took no notice of him; and merely nodded to him 
 when he said that it was time to be moving. 
 
 They formed a little procession. George and Millv 
 went first; Mr. Richard and Copernica came next; and 
 the stranger followed behind, saying nothing, but hanging 
 his head with every appearance of great dejection. 
 
 It was only a part of the general mystery and strange- 
 ness, and, therefore, it did not in the least surprise Coper- 
 nica that they walked all the way to Hackney Church, and j 
 went up the steps, observing the same order. 
 
 But in the porch of that great square Saratoga, or 
 traveling-trunk, which does duty for a parish church, 
 George stopped and said: 
 
 “ Millv dear, I thought you would like to be married 
 in the same church as your father and mother.” 
 
 “ Ay,” said the stranger in a low voice, “it was in 
 this very same church, twenty-one years ago. And Ma- 
 tilda in pink.” 
 
 Then Milly was going to be married. That was one of 
 the things. But why? And where was her father? And 
 
A GLORIOUS EORTUHE. 
 
 97 
 
 George looking as serious as if lie was going to a funeral. 
 At weddings people ought to laugh and be happy, she 
 thought, being as yet young and ignorant, and not think- 
 ing that from weddings spring most of the ills which do 
 afflict humanity; such as a lean purse, a nagging tongue, 
 household troubles, sick children, bad sons, disappointing 
 daughters, distraction of peace, abolition of comfort, and 
 many others. It is true that there is the chance of great 
 blessings; such as But they are known to every- 
 
 body, and at the outset we all expect them, and mean to 
 have them, and shape our course accordingly. But what, 
 Copernica wondered, what in the world did this mysteri- 
 ous person mean by saying, “Matilda in pink”? Who 
 was Matilda. 
 
 Then they went into the church. There were already as- 
 sembled the People, represented — as is the way with the 
 People on state occasions, because they are all busy out- 
 side, toiling and moiling— -by their elected and trusted 
 functionaries, the verger and the pew-opener. And a 
 curate was in the vestry putting on his robes of office. 
 
 They walked up the aisle and stood before the altar, 
 and presently the clergyman came out of the vestry, and 
 took his place, book in hand, and began the service. The 
 words echoed mockingly in the great empty church. 
 Copernica would have cried had not at the very begin- 
 ning the stranger dressed in George’s clothes begun to 
 snuffle and to shed tears, which made her ashamed of 
 being in his company. Why should he cry? What busi- 
 ness had he with the wedding at all? She would have 
 liked to whisper her opinion of this conduct to her cousin 
 Dick Ambler, but he looked as serious as George, and 
 bore himself as if weeping strangers in other people’s 
 clothes belonged to every wedding, like the dreadful old 
 skeleton which was always present at the feast, though it 
 was good manners to take no manner of notice of it. 
 
 Another wonderful thing. When the clergyman asked, 
 “ Who giveth away this woman?” the stranger it was who 
 officiously stepped forward and performed this duty which 
 Cousin Dick should have done, and he did it, too, with a 
 most indecent choke and gulp, murmuring irreverently, 
 “You bet I do,” which is not in the prayer-book. And 
 then to the end of the service he never took his eyes from 
 the bride, who regarded him not at all^ and seemed 
 
98 
 
 A GLORIOUS FORTUNE. 
 
 not to know that he was present, being wholly occupied 
 with the overwhelming fact that she was being swiftly 
 converted into a wife. She had her heart’s desire — not 
 quite in the way she had expected, which was a way of 
 festivity and good wishes, but she had her desire. There- 
 fore she ought to have been happy. But, oh, what would 
 her father say? And what about that promise to go 
 with him for two years? Yet George assured her that 
 her father would actually consent. Why, how could 
 that be? But she was married, the ring was on her 
 finger, and the words were said; yet she was afraid — 
 a girl on such an occasion wants to have her spirits kept up 
 by the gathering of her friends; no one likes to be married 
 in an absolutely empty church; it was like some uncared- 
 for creature to be married with no one to support her ex- 
 cept Copernica, and even her own father not present. 
 
 When they went to the vestry to sign the strange man 
 came with them, and signed his name after the bride, but 
 she did not read his signature. 
 
 Then the ceremony was complete, and Copernica fell 
 into the bride’s arms and kissed and hugged her. 
 
 “Oh, Milly, Hilly,” she said, “ what does it mean? Are 
 you to stay while we go away without you?' And what 
 will your father say, and what will he do? Will he take 
 you away with him just the same?” 
 
 “ What should he do?” interposed the stranger huskily. 
 “It isn’t for the likes of him to carry sweet maids away 
 to America. Don’t you take on, miss. He never meant 
 it. Not for one minute did he think of doing such a 
 thing.” 
 
 “Come, Milly dear,” said George; “you have got to 
 listen to a little story before you go home — I mean, before 
 you go back to your old home. Your home is with me 
 now, thank Heaven! You will come too, Copernica. It 
 is a strange story, not very terrible, but it might have 
 been.” 
 
 So they all went back again. There was no wedding- 
 breakfast prepared, no champagne or drinking of healths, 
 or wishing of joy, or throwing of rice, or looking up of 
 old shoes. Not at all. They went silently into George’s 
 room, and stood looking at each other, and especially at 
 the stranger, whose face betokened the most painful shame 
 and confusion. 
 
A GLORIOUS FORTUNE. 
 
 99 
 
 “ Now,” Mr. Richard said to him, “you have got some- 
 thing to tell us and something to confess. Try to tell 
 your story straight through if you can. You had better 
 begin at once. Milly, sit down and listen. We will all 
 sit down.” 
 
 They did so, leaving the unfortunate man standing be- 
 fore them just like a culprit schoolboy. 
 
 “I s’pose I must begin somewheres,” he said feebly. 
 
 When this man was a clerk in the City he used not to 
 say “ somewheres,” but “somewhere.” He had lost, among 
 other things, the art of speaking correctly, and now spoke 
 as his companions for so many years habitually spoke. It 
 is terrifying to think that any one of us, under similar 
 conditions, would probably experience the same losses, and 
 come, in time, to speak like a Cockney coster or a Cali- 
 fornian rough. 
 
 In spite of the respectable clothes he wore — Milly herself 
 now perceived with wonder that they were borrowed 
 plumes— the poor man had so dejected and hang-dog a 
 look that one felt sorry for him. But by this time she 
 quite understood that something more unexpected even than 
 her own wedding was to happen, and now she connected 
 this walking Mystery in George’s twee is with the unex- 
 pected, than which, as we know, nothing is more certain. 
 
 “When I went away,” this mysterious person began 
 slowly, and as if feeling for his facts, “I thought, being 
 a fool and inexperienced, that if you wanted money all you 
 had to do was to go to America, where you would be sure 
 to find it. Everybody, I thought, got rich in the States. 
 
 It was only the trouble of going there and pickin’ up the 
 dollars. Lord! what a fool I was! Don’t none of you be- 
 lieve it. America’s the biggest fraud out. If anybody 
 gets rich it’s the Americans themselves. You’ve got to 
 work there harder than at home. If there’s any easy 
 places they’re grabbed by the natives. Look at me. I gave 
 up three pound a week to go out and make a Fortune. 
 Did I ever get that three pound a week again? Did I ever 
 get another easy place? Don’t you think it.” v 
 
 “Isn’t this,” asked Mr. Richard unfeelingly, “rather a 
 roundabout way of beginning?” 
 
 Copernica looked from Milly to the speaker, and back 
 again. Strange, he was like Milly! 
 
 “Thank you, sir,” the man replied humbly. “I’m 
 
100 
 
 A GLORIOUS FORTUNE. 
 
 cornin’ round to what I want to say. Lemme go my own 
 way, if you please. Though if you’ve a better way, tell me 
 that way, and I will go that way.” 
 
 “ You shall go any way you please,” said George, “if 
 only you’ll get to the end somehow.” 
 
 “ Thank you, sir,” he replied, “you are the only man 
 as has said a kind word to me for twenty years, and Pm 
 •bound to please that man if I can ” — he kept looking at 
 Milly furtively — “especially since he’s husband of the little 
 maid,” Milly started. “ Very well, then. Hard berths 
 I got, not easy at all. Sometimes it would be porter’s 
 work at a store. Did I expect when I gave up a most 
 gentlemanly desk to go rolling casks of treacle? Did I 
 expect to load the steamboats with wood? Did I go out 
 there to do odd chores around, a day’s work here, and an- 
 other there, with a spade and a hoe, or a crowbar and a 
 hammer? I’ve been a navvy on a railway; I’ve dug graves 
 for a cemetery; I’ve cut wood and stacked it. All the 
 hard jobs I had to do, while the natives spread themselves 
 out around the stoves and put up their feet. That’s the 
 way they reward a man who gives up three pound a week 
 to go out to them; that’s the kind of Fortune they let 
 him make; that’s the kind of friend America is — 
 a dollar and a hef a day and leave it if you don’t like it: 
 there’s plenty of tramps on the road will take it; that’s 
 what I gave up my berth for; that’s what Matilda” — 
 Milly started — “my wife, Matilda, sent me out for — said 
 I was bound to be ambitious. Told me I ought to soar.” 
 “George,” said Milly quickly, “ who is this man?” 
 
 “ Wait a moment, dear. Go on, if you can,” he said to 
 the speaker. I suppose we shall get to something in time. 
 Patience, Milly dear.” 
 
 “ I know who he is,” said Copernica, nodding her head. 
 “ I am sure I know. He gave her away. Oh, I see 
 'now!” 
 
 “ Well,” he continued, “at first I thought this was only 
 the beginning — kind of a rough, hearty, free and easy 
 welcome to new comers; presently I should get the hang 
 of things, and then I should begin to make that Fortune. 
 By this time I was as ambitious as Matilda could ha’ 
 wished, because I wanted badly to get back that three 
 pound a week with store clothes and a stove-pipe hat. 
 Then, I concluded she’d be the least mite anxious about 
 
A GLORIOUS FORTUHE. 
 
 101 
 
 me, and so I wrote her a letter. And just to make her 
 mind easy and to prevent herfrom falling into one of her 
 tempers, which she certainly would have done if she’d 
 known I was just then rollin’ molasses, tyin’ up sugar, 
 heavin’ logs, and countin’ candles, I just told her I 
 was soarin’ already to unexpected heights, and the dol- 
 lars cornin’ in wonderful. No country, I wrote, like 
 America. She wrote back, by retnrn post, that I was 
 to send all the money home as fast as I made it. I said 
 ’twas all wanted for the big business I was carrying on, 
 and bounced the more because I saw she was ashamed 
 of having thought me such a poor weak creature. The 
 more I bounced, the more she was ashamed, and kept 
 a waitin’ to come out, and bring the little maid with 
 her.” 
 
 “ George,” cried Milly again, “ who is this man?” But 
 George made no reply. 
 
 “I know who he is,” repeated Copernica; “ I am cer- 
 tain I know. 4 Matilda was in pink.’ Oh, I know.” 
 
 “When a man begins to lie, it .seems kind of impos- 
 sible to go back on himself; so I kept it up, and when 
 Matilda died, I carried on the same tale with the little 
 maid, whom I can’t believe to be grown up so tall and hand- 
 some, and married before my very eyes.” 
 
 “ George,” cried Milly for the third time, and springing 
 to her feet, “ tell me, who is he?” 
 
 “ My dear, he is your father— not the other man at all. 
 This is your father.” 
 
 “Yes, my dear,” the man repeated humbly, “your 
 father, and you are the little maid as I’ve written so many 
 letters to, and told so many lies about the Glorious Fort- 
 une.” 
 
 “ I said I knew,” Copernica murmured. “ Her father; 
 but I wonder who the other is. You can’t have two 
 fathers.” 
 
 “My father!” A month before Milly would have 
 jumped into his arms first, and remarked his hang-dog 
 look and poverty-stricken appearance afterward. But I 
 suppose there is only a limited amount of what may be 
 called the impulse of affection in the human heart. At all 
 events, her own did not leap up at all, nor did she show 
 any signs of joy, but held her husband’s hand more tight- 
 ly, looking at this colossal American failure, the man who 
 
A GLORIOUS FORTUNE. 
 
 102 
 
 had been twenty years wriggling at the lowest depths, 
 and could never wriggle any higher, and she repeated with 
 much more wonder than joy: “My father!” 
 
 “ I am, indeed,” he said. “ I would have liked to come 
 home in silks and satins and gold rings, but I never had 
 any luck. I would have sent the little maid all the money 
 she could wish if I’d had it. But I hadn’t got any to 
 send.” 
 
 “ George,” cried Milly, “if this is my father, who is — 
 the other?” 
 
 “The other, my dear, is a what you shall presently 
 
 learn.” 
 
 “But — but I have kissed him, and I was going away 
 with him.” 
 
 “ You were,” replied Mr. Richard, who, to his honor 
 be it said, had been witnessing the proceedings with more 
 than professional interest, though the morning’s work 
 would certainly be charged in the bill. “If it had not 
 been for this discovery you would have gone with him. 
 Fortunately we are in time to save not only you from this 
 danger, but also your fortune from destruction.” 
 
 “ He must be a rogue and a cheat,” Copernica said in 
 a low voice. “ Then all he told us and all he promised 
 us were lies. 0 — h! But I knew who this one was di- 
 rectly he began to speak. And this is what we were to 
 learn this morning. And George knew it yesterday.” 
 
 “My darling,” said George, taking his wife’s hand, 
 “ you understand now why I wanted to marry you at once. 
 If it rains fathers they cannot harm you now or take you 
 from me. As for this one, I think he will not try to harm 
 you. He is very different from the other. To begin with, 
 he quite understands ” — George shook his left forefinger 
 in the direction of the man as if he were a lecturer in a 
 show and pronouncing a discourse upon a giant, a dwarf, 
 or a monster — “ he quite understands that, after the life 
 he has led, the way he came home, the habits — the habits, 
 I say” — the stranger groaned and nodded gloomily — “ he 
 has contracted, the companions he has been among, the 
 very language he has learned, and — and — and everything, 
 it can no longer be considered reasonable that you either 
 owe him any obedience, or that he has any claim upon your 
 affection. Besides, he has practiced a most cruel and 
 heartless deception upon you.” The returned Fortune- 
 
A GLORIOUS FORTUNE. 
 
 103 
 
 hunter shook his head in the deepest self-reproach, “ The 
 most he can ask of you will be your forgiveness. As for 
 staying on here, that, of course, is out of the question ” 
 
 “ Quite,” said Johnny. “ Oh, quite! I know it.” 
 
 “ He has been among rough and common people so 
 long that he would feel unhappy in a respectable English 
 house.” 
 
 “ That is so,” said Johnny. 
 
 “He has got, he tells me, a very comfortable clearing 
 out in the Western States somewhere, with a house upon 
 it, and— -and, I suppose, what is wanted to live comfort- 
 ably.” 
 
 “Don’t forget there’s a whisky-bottle,” said Johnny, 
 not boastfully, but as one who wishes to make a completely 
 clean breast. 
 
 “ You see,” George went on, that one fact illustrating 
 the manner and customs of the man, without need of 
 further revelations, “he has a whiskv-bottle.” 
 
 “When you’ve got that,” said Johnny, “you don’t 
 want anything else,” again not boastfully or ostentatiously, 
 but meaning to deliver himself of his own sentiments, and 
 show himself to his daughter, in one full confession, the 
 man he really was. 
 
 “Oh, good gracious!” said Copernica; “nothing else!” 
 
 “So that,” George continued, “he has agreed and 
 promised me, in point of fact, to go away at once — this 
 very day — and get back to his cabin and his clearing in 
 Oregon, as fast as he can. I do not think he can get 
 away much further from us than Oregon, which is on the 
 other side of the Bocky Mountains. And when he is 
 really back again in his own clearing, we shall be very 
 glad to hear from him — occasionally.” 
 
 But Milly’s heart softened. 
 
 “If you are really my father,” she said, holding out 
 both her hands, “who used to write me such loving letters, 
 you should have something more to say to me, now, than 
 farewell?” 
 
 He took her hand, and then timidly bent and kissed 
 her forehead. 
 
 “My pretty,” he murmured, “I’m not fit to be your 
 father. I doubt whether you ought to ha’ let me kiss you. 
 I am only what your husband says I am. But I meant 
 
104 
 
 A GLORIOUS FORTUNE, 
 
 well. I did indeed. And they were a great comfort to 
 me — them letters.” 
 
 He said no more, but his eyes — those foolish, helpless, 
 and wandering eyes — filled with tears and ran over. This 
 natural emotion was sufficient excuse to his daughter for 
 his shambling speech and ungrammatical expressions. 
 When had the other man shown the least emotion? 
 
 “Milly,” said Copernica in her quick way, “I suppose 
 you’ll come home with me if it is only to break the news 
 and help unpack the maps again* How my poor father 
 will, ever get over it, I don’t know. Mother will be pleased, 
 I think. She never greatly took to the plan, and I think 
 she’ll be pleased to stay. But there, mother, you see, 
 doesn’t much believe in my father’s wonderful discoveries. 
 As for the boys, they must just stay where they are — poor 
 fellows! Well, I should be sorry to think that poor Tycho 
 was going out to roll molasses tubs, and Kepler to load up 
 a steamboat with wood. As to the people,” she added 
 vindictively, turning her glasses full on the people re- 
 ferred to, “who go abroad and come home again without 
 the common decency of being rich” — -the returned pauper 
 blushed — “ all I can say is that they’re quite as bad as 
 other people who come home and pretend to have colleges, 
 and not half so pleasant, while they last. What,” she 
 snapped at him so fiercely that he jumped, “what did you 
 go away at all for, then?” 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 HIS CHRISTIAN-HAME. 
 
 The map-room of Veritas Villa was stripped of every- 
 thing. The maps and charts were rolled up, the sections 
 showing the Polar Sea and the confines of the great Outer 
 Rim, the drawings, drawn from the Scriptural accounts, 
 the pictures made up from travelers’ accounts, the books, 
 all of which were astronomical, were taken down and 
 packed in black boxes, locked up, x fastened with rope, the 
 Professor’s name on them in wliite — Professor Ambler, 
 Passenger for Colorado, via New York. Only the notes 
 for the inaugural lecture remained, because the Discoverer 
 intended to touch up, beautify, and make perfect the in- 
 
A GLORIOUS FORTUNE. 
 
 105 
 
 augural lecture during the journey. The notes were 
 therefore neatly stitched together and placed in a little 
 portfolio made on purpose for them by Copernica, out of 
 millboard and white silk, the title being in crimson and 
 gold, and the sun, moon, and stars, which floated on the 
 cover, being in blue. It was beautiful and soul-inspiring 
 even to look at that white silk portfolio, and to feel what 
 an Evangel of Astronomical Truth it contained, and how 
 fortunate were the Americans of Colorado State in getting 
 such a Discoverer to reveal such a discovery. He sat — the 
 Philosopher — among the boxes. He should have been tri- 
 umphant, because he was going to get what he had prayed 
 for all his life; but there was a cloud upon his brow; he 
 was anxious. George’s warning words weighed upon him 
 still. 
 
 His wife sat with him. To her this breaking up of the 
 old home, where her children had been born, where they 
 had all been so happy, so anxious, so full of love, fear, 
 hope, joy, sorrow — all the things which go to make life a 
 thing always felt, if not always enjoyed, made her pro- 
 foundly dejected. To be sure she could not believe that 
 they were really going. 
 
 “ Reginald,” she said presently, and after a long silence, 
 “ is it real? Are we to have an income of a thousand a 
 year?” 
 
 “ You doubt still, my dear. To be sure, you have 
 doubted always.” 
 
 “ Not your cleverness, Reginald; but I could not under- 
 stand how you alone could be right, and all the wise men 
 wrong. Forgive me, husband.” 
 
 “It matters nothing,” he replied grandly; “ the faith 
 of the whole world will strengthen your faith too.” 
 
 “ But, George, my dear — what did George mean?” 
 
 “ I don’t know what he meant. What he said was silly. 
 Why, he tried to make out that I should do better by 
 staying here. Staying here, where 1 have had to under- 
 go every kind of contempt! What does George think 
 about that? It seems to him a light thing for a man 
 to be held -up as a laughing-stock. They have called me 
 a madman, they won’t answer my letters, they quote me 
 as one of the enthusiasts who ought to be locked up, they 
 
 whisper if I get into a train; and if I go to church ” 
 
 “ You never do, dear.” 
 
 1 
 
106 
 
 A GLORIOUS FORTUNE. 
 
 “ No; because when I do I hear them whispering as 1 
 walk up the aisle: * There is the madman,, or the fool, oi 
 the ass, who teaches that the earth is flat.’ Do you think 
 that is pleasant for me to hear? And then the Society 
 does not increase. Bagshott is very good, he talks about 
 Truth prevailing; but Truth doesn’t make a start. The 
 office-boy says that no one has called for six months, and 
 there have been no letters for three. The office might a* 
 well be shut. Bagshott says he will remain at home and 
 circulate the journal, which I shall be able to fill once I 
 get a hearing. Why, out there, oh, wife, I shall have a 
 hearing at last!” 
 
 He sprang from his chair and walked about, swinging 
 his arms and sending his coat-tails flying — a sure sign of 
 the deepest emotion. 
 
 His wife threw her arms round his neck. 
 
 “My dear,” she said, “it is sad to me that our home 
 should be broken up. But what matters anything if only 
 you get the recognition which is your due?” 
 
 “ Ah,” he continued, “ we shall begin a new life with 
 an honorable position, an official and recognized posi- 
 tion which must command — I say, my dear, command; 
 hitherto we have begged — the attention even of old- 
 fashioned astronomers. Oh, wife, do you not think 
 1 have felt the ignominy of my life which I thought 
 was going to be so glorious? Fifty years old next birth- 
 day, and nearly thirty given to the Great Discovery, and 
 Error still taught in every school, though I have never 
 ceased to lift up my voice. Here, what hope have I? 
 But there! — oh, there! with young and generous hearts, 
 unprejudiced, open to reason, what future awaits me there!” 
 
 He stopped, clapped his hand to his eyes as one who is 
 dazzled by the prospect, and sat down. His wife listened 
 and sighed. She had never before, perhaps, so fully real- 
 ized her husband’s position and enthusiasm; she sighed 
 because the thought would intrude itself that something 
 safe in the City would have been worth all the glory that 
 science can confer. This is the way with mothers who 
 have a large family and a small income; they would at any 
 moment actually sacrifice all the immortality about to bo 
 conferred by a grateful posterity on their husbands in re- 
 turn for a solid income; they think that there is nothing 
 in the world like domestic ease, comfort, and a good house 
 
A GLORIOUS FORTUNE. 
 
 107 
 
 allowance; nothing like bringing up the boys and girls well, 
 and giving them a good start in life. If that great man, their 
 father, cannot do that, why, a thousand pities that glory 
 and an income do not go together! Perhaps the reason 
 why the children of great men do not often become them- 
 selves great is that the family income would not allow of 
 the first elements of greatness being properly taught. 
 
 “The boys like the prospect / 7 said their mother, dubi- 
 ously. “We could not go without them, but Tycho is 
 getting on so well; and we have such good reports about 
 Kepler . 77 
 
 “ They will get on better, under Mr. Montoro’s patron- 
 age. Everybody gets on in America; the Americans wel- 
 come Englishmen; they give them their best things; they 
 smooth the way for them to get on. Mr. Montoro says 
 so, and he ought to know. Look at his example. My 
 dear, I have always been a republican, I believe. It will 
 be a congenial atmosphere . 77 He threw out his arms as if 
 to breathe the stimulating and bracing air of a Kepublic. 
 “ It is only under such a government that Prejudice van- 
 ishes and Truth can win her way. You will see very clearly 
 that in astronomy the great heart of the American people 
 will soon beat true and sound . 77 
 
 Just then Copernica appeared. She was returned from 
 the wedding. Her cheeks were flushed, her eyes red, and 
 the traces of tears lay upon her spectacles. She stole in 
 like a guilty criminal, and sank upon one of the boxes in 
 a fine unstudied attitude of despair. 
 
 “Papa , 77 she said, “we may begin to unpack our boxes 
 at once . 77 She jumped up and began to untie the cords 
 with feverish haste. “Let us put back the maps and 
 books, and go on as we used to. There will be no going 
 to America . 77 
 
 “Copernica, are you mad ? 77 
 
 The Discoverer turned pale and trembled. 
 
 “I am not mad , 77 she replied. “ In a little while you 
 will hear all. It is enough to make one mad, but I am 
 in my senses . 77 
 
 At this moment the Benefactor himself appeared with 
 a white rosebud in his button-hole, a white waistcoat, and 
 brand-new hat and lavender gloves. No one could look 
 richer than Mr. Montoro. Perhaps he overdid the part. 
 Very rich men, if % I may generalize from a limited field of 
 
108 
 
 A Glorious fortune. 
 
 observation, generally wear shabby hats and are careless 
 about their gloves. But at Veritas Villa they were not 
 close observers. At sight of him, so glossy, so well groom- 
 ed, so prosperous and sleek, so confident and so brave, tho 
 Philosopher recovered heart. 
 
 But his wife caught Copernica by the hand, and watch- 
 ed, her suspicions fully aroused. 
 
 “I shall not keep you long, Professor,” he said, smil- 
 ing. “All goes well with the preparations? The day 
 after to-morrow, Milly and I shall be on salt water. Your 
 cousin is coming here at twelve to complete the sale of my 
 little property. He told you?” 
 
 “ Yes, yes,” the Professor wiped his brow — all would be 
 well, surely. “Yes, Dick said I was to be in the way. 
 To be sure, I am always at home.” 
 
 “It is a bore,” said Mr. Montoro, “that one cannot 
 take a house and sell it as one sells a horse. The affair 
 has been dragging for three weeks, and every week means 
 loss when one’s concerns are so vast as mine. Money, mv 
 friend, even the richest of us cannot afford to lose, and yet 
 I believe I have lost more by the delay than if I had given 
 the houses away. Milly will come with me, after we have 
 finished, to complete her outfit in Begent Street.” 
 
 “Why,” said the Professor, “this little girl of mine 
 came running in five minutes ago, crying that we should 
 not go to America at all.” 
 
 “Nor more we shaVt,” said Copernica doggedly and 
 idiomatically. 
 
 Mr. Montoro’s eyes flashed. 
 
 “ What does the girl mean?” he asked. 
 
 “ We shall not go to America,” she repeated. 
 
 Mr. Montoro hesitated. What did she mean? It puz- 
 zled him. At this moment he had not the slightest fear 
 or suspicion of danger, yet the girl’s words troubled him. 
 What did she mean? In his pocket was the check for the 
 whole of his victim’s fortune. In a few moments he was 
 to receive the produce of the sale of his liouses which were 
 not his to sell. In another day he was to start for Amer- 
 ica, taking with him the girl whom he proposed to em- 
 ploy as a confederate and a decoy. 
 
 The moralist may pause to remark that the whole of 
 this villainous scheme had grown up bit by bit from the 
 
A GLORIOUS FORTUNE. 
 
 109 
 
 robbery"of the notes and the letters. Thus does one ill weed 
 produce another, till the whole garden is overrun. 
 
 “ Of course you will please yourselves about coming 
 out. But I thought you had accepted my offer, Mr. 
 Ambler . 55 
 
 The coldness of his tone frightened the Astronomer. 
 
 “ Of course I have accepted , 55 he hastened to make sub- 
 mission; “ of course I have accepted. Why, the child is 
 mad! I do not know what has possessed her this moaning. 
 Don’t be offended, Mr. Montoro . 55 
 
 “And yet we shall not go , 55 repeated this amazing girl. 
 
 Just then, at the stroke of twelve, Mr. Richard Ambler 
 arrived, bearing his bundle of papers. With him were 
 Milly and George. 
 
 It was remarked by Mrs. Ambler that Milly bestowed 
 no greeting upon her father. She, too, exhibited outward 
 and visible signs that something had happened. Her 
 father, however, seemed to observe nothing. 
 
 “Now , 55 he said, “let us finish the business.” 
 
 “ Your business , 55 replied the solicitor, “ shall be settled 
 in a very few moments . 55 
 
 He stood at the table, the papers in his hand, at the 
 right of the Discoverer, who sat in his wooden chair, look- 
 ing on with troubled eyes, because things were going on 
 which he understood not. On his left stood Mr. Mon- 
 toro. Behind the solicitor was Milly, George standing 
 beside her, and in the window Copernica and her mother. 
 Then there was a hush while Mr. Richard read over his 
 papers. 
 
 “ I must trouble you, Mr. — ah! — Mr. Montoro, 55 he said, 
 “with a little business first. I have received your rents 
 for a good many years. I have here a complete state- 
 ment, with vouchers of the receipts and disbursements for 
 years . 55 
 
 “ I don’t want to see it , 55 Mr. Montoro replied. “ I 
 really have not the time to look into these trifles . 55 
 
 “ A hundred and eighty pounds a year, or thereabouts,” 
 said Mr. Richard, “is not a trifle. But if you will not 
 examine the account, you will not perhaps object to give 
 me a discharge in full of all claims. My cousin, as you 
 know, has received the whole income, after paying ground- 
 rents, repairs, and my own charges, for the maintenance 
 and education of Miss Montoro.” 
 
110 A GLORIOUS FORTUNE. 
 
 “ Let us sign this discharge and get on,” said his client. 
 He took the paper offered him and wrote his name at 
 the end of the form — “ Charles Montoro.” 
 
 “ Thank you,” said Mr. Richard. “Only, pardon me, 
 in legal documents it is necessary to sign the name in full. 
 Is this your only Christian name?” 
 
 The effect of these words was wonderful. For suddenly 
 the man remembered the rambling talk of Johnny in his 
 cabin about his ridiculous Christian-name. He had for- 
 gotten to find out what it was. He changed color and 
 glanced round him like a wild creature at bay. In the 
 grave face of the solicitor, the angry looks of George 
 Ambrose, and the cold eyes of Milly he saw that the game, 
 somehow, was up. 
 
 “ We will have both your Christian names, Mr. — ah! — 
 Mr. Montoro.” 
 
 “Both my names?” He seized the pen again. “Give 
 me the paper back. I am to sign here, am I — and in 
 full? Very good. Milly, my dear, were you ever told 
 your father’s ridiculous Christian-name?” Milly made no 
 reply. “ Do you know it, Mr. Ambler? I think I would 
 bet you five dollars that you do not know it.” 
 
 “I do know it,” said Mr. Richard. “The point is, 
 that you do not.” 
 
 Mr. Montoro threw down the pen and tore the paper 
 across, with a remark about the Christian-name which is 
 generally expressed by a long black line. 
 
 “ Tell me, if you please, what this means?” 
 
 “It means many things. But, first of all, is it not an 
 unusual thing for a man to forget his Christian-name? 
 You may learn yours by looking at the register in Hack- 
 ney Church, where you were christened and married. 
 You are welcome to that information. Did you ever know 
 a case in which a man forgot his Christian-name?” 
 
 “This is a most extraordinary proceeding,” said Mr. 
 Montoro, recovering his coolness. “Is there anything 
 
 more to follow? Milly, are you ” She turned her 
 
 head and made no sign of hearing. “ Is this a conspiracy, 
 in which my own daughter is concerned? Are you in it, 
 too, you driveling old idiot?” He looked so fierce as he 
 addressed the Discoverer, who jumped in his chair, and 
 was seized with a mighty terror. 
 
 “ We are all in it, except Mr. Ambler,” said George. 
 
A GLORIOUS FORTUNE. 
 
 Ill 
 
 “In that case,” Mr. Montoro replied with dignity, 
 “ there is nothing for it but to set the law at work. You, 
 sir,” he addressed Mr. Richard, “ will have to give an ac- 
 count of your management; part of the plot, I suppose, 
 was to say nothing about it. Your share,” he addressed 
 George, “was the house property. Yours,” he addressed 
 Milly, “ was to aid and abet your lover. An ungrateful 
 and unnatural daughter.” 
 
 “Go on,” said George; “my turn will come directly.” 
 
 “ I have nothing more to say,” Mr. Montoro replied, 
 taking his hat. “ So far as I am concerned this is the 
 last time I shall speak with anybody in this room. The 
 law shall take its course.” 
 
 “By all means,” said Mr. Richard. “First, however, 
 George, you wished to tell the man what we know about 
 him.” 
 
 “ I will tell Reginald in his presence,” said George. He 
 took up his position at the door as if to bar escape. “This 
 man, Reginald, is not Charles Montoro at all — he is an 
 impostor and a pretender — his real name is Percival Brooke 
 West; he was once a gentleman, and in the army, but sold 
 out many years ago, after the Crimean War; he then lived 
 about town, gambling and throwing away his money. 
 Fifteen years ago he got into a mess, and did something — 
 I know not what — something disgraceful. Then he was 
 obliged to fly, and was expelled his club. He went to 
 America, and has lived on his wits, that is to say by cheat- 
 ing and gambling in various forms. He met Milly’s father 
 in Oregon, robbed him of his money and his daughter’s 
 letters, and came to London. He now lives at the Lang- 
 ham Hotel under his own name. No, sir, you stay until I 
 have finished. If you try to get out before we let you go, 
 you will have to fight me.” 
 
 The Claimant folded his arms, and tried to look uncon- 
 cerned, but he failed, because he was totally unprepared 
 for this. How on earth had they found it out? As re- 
 gards the Christian-name, that was an accident caused bv 
 his own carelessness; he ought to have foreseen this dan- 
 ger; it was a most foolish thing to forget. Bat the array 
 of facts — how had they got hold of them? And he re- 
 membered, too late, what he had at the very outset pro- 
 posed to himself, namely, to rush the thing through, and 
 be off before any questions could arise. Better, far better, 
 
I , * > 
 
 112 A GLORIOUS FORTUNE. 
 
 had lie not been tempted by this dream of gambling in its 
 higher branches, with a beautiful woman to help him. 
 Better had he been contented with the plunder of Milly’s 
 houses, and made no attempt upon the poor astronomer. 
 But he had his check in his pocket that moment. When 
 he got away he would drive straight to the bank: perhaps 
 it would not be too late. 
 
 “ You see,” George concluded, “you are known.” 
 
 “ 1 see,” he replied, “ that you have conspired together 
 to make up a story. Now, if you please, we will conclude 
 this scene. But do not imagine that I am going to let 
 you have my property.” 
 
 “ One moment. We shall not keep you much longer.” 
 George opened the door, and admitted the lawful owner 
 of the name of Montoro, “ You know this man, per- 
 haps.” 
 
 “ Oh,” said the Colonel, “you have got hold of Johnny, 
 have you! That explains it. So you made your way 
 home, Johnny, did you? Now I understand it all, and 1 
 suppose the game is up.” 
 
 “ Colonel,” said Johnny, with a show of courage, “ give 
 me back my money and my letters.” 
 
 “As for the letters,” the Colonel took out his pocket- 
 book; here they are; I have no longer any use for them. 
 As for the money, it was no more yours than mine. You 
 have now got your cabin and }our clearing. Be content 
 with it, unless you prefer to stay at home with the most 
 dutiful daughter in the world, and the most delightful 
 son-in-law. They will be as charmed with your personal 
 habits as you will be with the young man’s manners. 
 You were made for each other.” 
 
 He tossed the letters across the table. Johnny seized 
 them, and crammed them into his pockets. 
 
 “ Can you tell me your Christian-name before we break 
 up this meeting?” 
 
 “ They baptized me Worshipful Charles,” said Johnny. 
 “ Colonel, don’t keep all the money.” 
 
 “Worshipful Charles!” the Colonel repeated. “Now, 
 Mr. Richard Ambler, could any one gness such a fool of a 
 name as that? Worshipful Charles! It’s enough to turn 
 any man into such a Johnny as this poor creature. Milly, 
 you will learn to love your new father more and more the 
 longer you know him. He is as brave as he is truthful; 
 
A GLORIOUS FORTUtfE. 
 
 113 
 
 he is as warlike as’he is clear-sighted; he is as temperate 
 as he is resolute; he hates whisky as he hates the sin of 
 falsehood; and he is as rich as I am myself. As for the 
 houses 7 ” 
 
 “Matilda's houses/’ said Johnny; “they’re the little 
 maid’s now, not mine at all. Colonel, don’t be hard on a 
 man. I’m a peaceful man, but don’t keep all them 
 notes.” 
 
 “Peaceful! Good Lord!” cried George. “Is there a 
 single kick in the whole man? He robs you of your 
 money, he tries to rob you of your daughter, he has ah 
 most robbed her of her little fortune, and you call your- 
 self a peaceful man.” 
 
 “It pays best,” Johnny replied. “I’ve got through 
 life comfortably through being peaceful, with lots of fight- 
 ing men, stickers and shooters, around all the time. 
 Colonel, say you won’t keep it all.” 
 
 “Good Heavens!” cyied George again, “ why, you ought 
 to give him in charge. You should follow him to his 
 hotel, and go with him wherever he goes until he gives 
 you back the money.” 
 
 “ That is what you would do, my fine fellow,” said the 
 Colonel. “ I wish I had you out in the West, I would 
 make you dance, my cocky little clerk with the bantam 
 crow.” 
 
 “And I, Mr. Brooke West, would make you hang.” 
 
 “Hush! You don’t know,” said Johnny. “Oh, you 
 don’t guess what it is to fight a man like the Colonel. 
 No, no, speak him fair. You will find him very good 
 company, too,” he added without much fitness as far as 
 anyone could tell. But doubtless in his mind there was 
 some sort of connection. 
 
 “There are difficulties, Mr. Ambrose,” the Colonel 
 went on. He was quite easy and comfortable in his man- 
 ner now, having made up his mind that it was quite use- 
 less to carry on the game any longer. “ There are diffi- 
 culties which you do not understand. Our gallant and 
 daring friend Johnny, or Worshipful Charles, claims some 
 money. He must first prove that he lost that money; 
 next, that I took that money; and thirdly, that it was his 
 money.” 
 
 “I found it,” said Johnny. 
 
114 
 
 A GLORIOUS FORTUKE. 
 
 “ A very likely story. Now, is there anything more 
 you wish to say, Mr. Ambrose, or any of you?” 
 
 At this point the Great Discoverer, who had been listen- 
 ing in an abject state of confusion, bewilderment, and 
 terror, began to realize something of the situation. 
 
 “ George,” he pointed to the new comer, “ who, after 
 all, is this gentleman?” 
 
 “ This is Milly’s father, Reginald. Do you not under- 
 stand?” 
 
 “ The place in his college has been offered to me. He 
 knows that, I suppose?” 
 
 “Oh, papa,” cried Copernica, “there is no college — 
 there is no Fortune. This poor man is a beggar and a 
 pauper; all that was said about the Fortune was false, 
 wasn’t it, you Mr. Montoro?” 
 
 He shook his head. 
 
 “All lies,” he replied. 
 
 “ Oh!” the Discoverer sprang from his chair and liter- 
 ally hurled himself upon the Colonel. He was not a fight- 
 ing man, but his whole thought was not to let him go; 
 therefore, he threw his arms round his neck and hung on. 
 “Hold him — keep him from running away!” he screamed. 
 “He has got a check for all my money — all my money 
 — in his pocket — all my money!” he realJy shrieked in his 
 agony, thinking that he had made his wife and children 
 penniless. 
 
 “ Let him go, Reginald,” said his cousin; “let him go. 
 Your money is safe.” They dragged him, crying out for 
 his money, from his enemy. “ Your money is quite safe. 
 You see, cousin, I naturally thought when you sent me 
 instructions to sell out, that you were up to some foolish- 
 ness, so I took the liberty of delaying the business. Your 
 stock, my poor cousin, still stands to your name, and your 
 check is worthless.” 
 
 “Richard,” said Mrs. Ambler, who had been looking on 
 with an earnest desire for all to go away, so that she could 
 begin to make things as they used to be — “ Richard, I 
 shall be grateful to you for my whole life.” 
 
 “In that case,” said the Colonel, adjusting his rosebud, 
 which had been slightly bruised in the struggle, “in that 
 case, let us tear it up.” He took it out of his pocket- 
 book and did so. “And now, I am afraid there remains 
 nothing but to unpack your boxes and put up your maps 
 
A GLORIOUS EORTUHE. 
 
 iis 
 
 again. But you have my free permission to quote my 
 case as that of a Recruit won over by force of reason and 
 argument. If I can flatten the earth a little more for 
 you in any part of it, I shall willingly do so. Nothing 
 more, I think?” 
 
 “ Richard,” said Mrs. Ambler, “ please make Reginald’s 
 money so that he can never touch any of it again.” 
 
 ‘‘Except a criminal prosecution for conspiring to obtain 
 money under false pretenses,” said Mr. Richard. 
 
 “ Yes, that I fully expect. This witness,” he pointed 
 to Johnny, “ will be invaluable to you, will he not? Good- 
 by, Milly; I wish you, for your husband’s sake, your 
 mother’s te m pe r — good ■ by . ” 
 
 “ Good Heavens!” said Mrs. Ambler, “ we were within 
 a day of being beggars. Oh, Copernica!” 
 
 He put on his hat and was about to go, when the door 
 opened and a lady of middle-age, very stout, and extremely 
 dignified in her bearing, dressed in gorgeous silks, ap- 
 peared. 
 
 “ Where,” she said, looking round the room, “is my 
 brother-in-law, Charles Montoro?” 
 
 “Your brother-in-law, madam?” asked the Colonel. 
 “Is Worshipful Charles your brother-in-law? Do you 
 mean the rich, the successful — the enormously rich and 
 successful Worshipful Charles Montoro?” 
 
 “ Certainly I do. Milly, my dear, is this gentleman 
 
 your father? He does not look ” 
 
 “Behold him! Come Johnny.” The Colonel seized 
 the man of peace, who had shown, at sight of the new 
 comer, a desire to hide himself behind Mr. Richard, and 
 dragged him forward. “ Your sister-in-law — perhaps 
 Matilda’s sister who married into carriage company.” 
 
 “ Oh, Lord! It is P’leena,” said Johnny looking hor- 
 ribly guilty. 
 
 “My dear Aunt Paulina,” Milly stepped forward, 
 “ there has been a very great mistake. My father has 
 not made the great Fortune we all thought he had. He 
 has failed and is very poor, in fact he is going back to 
 America, where he has a small farm. All our plans are 
 changed, and I was married this morning to George 
 Ambrose.” 
 
 “No Fortune? No money made? You a pauper, 
 
ne 
 
 A GLORIOUS FORTUNE. 
 
 Charles?” the lady grew very red. “ Explain this decep- 
 tion, pray. Milly, I demand an explanation . 5 5 
 
 “ It is P 5 leena ! 55 Johnny repeated. 
 
 “ There is none to make, aunt, except what I have told 
 you — my father is not rich . 55 
 
 “ I have driven all the way from Wimbledon to be con- 
 fronted with a Pauper ! 55 said this amiable lady, “ after 
 what I have been given to understand. And you, Milly, 
 have actually married without consulting me, your only 
 respectable relation! Pray, what is your husband ? 55 
 
 “I am a clerk , 55 said George unblushingly. 
 
 “Henceforth, Milly , 55 said the outraged lady, “go your 
 own way. You have no more ambition than your father. 
 A Pauper ! 55 She withered the luckless Johnny. “ It is 
 enough to make my poor deceived, unfortunate sister 
 Matilda turn in the grave into which you have worried 
 her. After all that has been done for you, Milly, you 
 marry a clerk ! 55 
 
 She walked out, and the next moment they heard the 
 wheels of her carriage driving her away. 
 
 “ This is very amusing , 55 said the Colonel. “ I con- 
 gratulate you, Johnny, on your reception by your friends. 
 Nothing like the domestic affections, is there? Now I am 
 going. My cab is outside. Would you like a lift to town, 
 Johnny, just to talk about those notes? We shall agree 
 very well together, once we get away from mischievous 
 pettifoggers and greedy clerks . 55 
 
 Johnny followed unresisting. He could not resist the 
 Colonel. He did not even say good-by to his daughter, 
 but went without a word. 
 
 Milly expected her father to return that day, and the 
 next, and the day after. Then George went to the Lang- 
 ham and inquired. Mr. Brooke West was gone, and 
 nothing w.as known of any Mr. Montoro. What happened 
 was very simple. The Colonel drove his friend Johnny 
 to Wapping, or the neighborhood. There he gave him 
 dinner, with copious whisky. He then found out a 
 steamer going to sail to New York the next day. He per- 
 suaded Johnny, without the least difficulty, that his only 
 chance was to get back to Oregon with all speed, lest 
 gomebody should take possession of his clearing, and that 
 
A GLORIOUS FORTUNE. 
 
 117 
 
 ten pounds, as an advance, would quite cover any claims 
 he might have on account of that bundle of notes. He 
 nursed Johnny all that day, keeping him happy witli 
 whisky and amused with continual talk. In the morning 
 he took him on board, and did not leave him until the 
 last bell rang and the last visitor had to descend the com- 
 panion. In fact, he was the last, and as he went down, 
 Johnny was feebly hanging over the bulwarks, waving his 
 hat in a friendly farewell. Never was such a Johnny 
 known. 
 
 I believe that he is now sitting by himself in the shade 
 beside his cabin, listening contentedly to the murmur of 
 the stream, and regarding through the door with senti- 
 mental admiration a distant view of the whisky-bottle on 
 the table. 
 
 As for the Astronomer, it took him many days to re- 
 cover even the semblance of dignity and self-respect. He 
 was crushed; he did not dare to face the boys, who were 
 reduced to mere rags of despair and wrath. Copernica 
 took her father to the seaside at Walton-on-Naze, where 
 he amused himself by considering the flatness of the ocean, 
 and so gradually pulled round. He has now entirely re- 
 covered, because he has made converts of two ladies — sis- 
 ters — with money. They are convinced that he is not 
 only right and a very great Discoverer indeed, but also 
 that he is mentioned in Prophecy, and will be connected 
 with the end of the world. They talk of leaving him all 
 their money for the purpose of disseminating the truth. 
 He has begun a new chapter on the flatness of the earth, 
 and has promised a Speculation on the Outer Eim. Some- 
 times, however, the healed wound breaks out afresh, and 
 Jhe remembers with shame and sorrow how he was cajoled 
 and deceived, and how he was ready to part with the 
 whole of his fortune to an unscrupulous adventurer and 
 cheat. 
 
 I ought to leave the Colonel to his own devices. In 
 novels he would have gone back to America, there to lose 
 all his ill-gotten money on euchre and a black bottle; 
 after this he would have become once more adventurer, 
 sportsman, and card-sharper; and he would have been 
 finally hanged for horse-stealing, or shot for cheating at 
 
118 
 
 A GLORIOUS FORTUNE. 
 
 monte. I beg to explain that Mr. Percival Brooke West 
 did nothing of the kind. 
 
 Johnny dispatched, he sat down to think. 
 
 First of all he had not done so badly since he had man- 
 aged to get into his little gambling circle. The stolen 
 eight hundred pounds had increased to more than a thou- 
 sand, without deducting his personal expenses. And ho 
 felt that he could not possibly return to the old life. 
 And then he remembered that he had a mother and sisters. 
 
 They lived by the seaside in a pretty cottage — a widow 
 woman and two elderly daughters. They are quite well- 
 to-do people, and until the autumn of this year of grace, 
 eighteen hundred and eighty-three, they lamented con- 
 tinually the absence of the son and brother who had turn- 
 ed out so badly, and been so “extravagant” — that is how 
 they put it; but though they knew nothing for certain, 
 they were aware that there had been more than extrava- 
 gance. 
 
 One morning in September the prodigal came home. 
 
 “Mother,” he said, “let us have no talk of the past. 
 I have had time to sow my wild oats. I have saved, at the 
 expense of many privations and great resolution, a small 
 sum of money to come home with. Let me stay a little 
 while with you and my sisters before I go back to the 
 struggle.” 
 
 He had grown his gray beard again, looked quite gentle 
 and humble, and spoke so kindly that their hearts were 
 melted. 
 
 Let him stay? Will they ever let him go? And if a 
 tiger be well fed, regularly fed, and kept warm, and given 
 all that he wants, that tiger, in course of time, will become, 
 if you please, a mere tame cat. He will undergo this 
 transformation without any repentance, tears, remorse, 
 sorrow, self-reproach, penitence, or lamentations of a sin- 
 ner, but comfortably, gradually, and smoothly. In course 
 of time, Mr, Percival Brooke West will, I dare say, inherit 
 his mother’s property. He will not return to town, where 
 his late reception inspired him with a dislike for Clubland, 
 but will remain in the country, and will become an author- 
 ity on whist; he will be popular among many as he grows 
 older, on account of his strange experiences and his varied 
 stories of travel and adventure; and though in course of 
 
A GLORIOUS RORTUKU. 
 
 119 
 
 time there may come into the country rumors of wild youth 
 and excesses, followed by trouble, no one will believe that 
 he was ever anything but an honorable gentleman, with as 
 fair a record as falls to the lot of most, though perhaps he 
 lost his money, and had to go abroad for a time to make 
 more. 
 
 But Milly and her husband abide by the banks of the gen- 
 tle river Lea, and are contented, and he hopes to do such 
 great things in the future as will lead him to the gate of 
 honor and the way of wealth. 
 
 THE E HD. 
 
 The Difference. 
 
 Sweet Boston Girl : 
 
 O Papa, I’ve a new 
 conundrum for you.” 
 
 Fond Papa “What 
 is it, my daughter ?” 
 
 S. B. G. : “What is 
 the difference between 
 the dollar you paid for 
 Hood’s Sarsaparilla 
 and the good the med- 
 icine did me?”; 
 
 F.: P. “Can’t tell, 
 
 I’m sure.” 
 
 S.B. G. “Well, Pa- 
 pa, the cost is a nomin- 
 al fee, and the good 
 is phenomenal.” 
 
 THERE IS A TRUTH in the above worth considering. Hood’s 
 Sarsaparilla is a highly concentrated extract of Sarsaparilla and 
 other valuable vegetable remedies, and each bottle contains one, 
 hundred doses — enough to last a month, if taken according to direct 
 tions. Thousands testify to the phenomenal benefit derived from a 
 single bottle of Hood’s Sarsaparilla. It is the “King of Medicines’* 
 for impure blood, that tired feeling and dyspeptic troubles. Why 
 not try it ? 
 
 

Taking Things Easy 
 is simply taking Pearline 
 to do your work. In the 
 laundry or about the house 
 it is a servant in itself. It 
 takes away drudgery as well 
 as dirt ; it brings comfort 
 as well as cleanliness. Y ou 
 can use it on anything with safety; you can 
 use it on everything with profit. 
 
 Millions use it. 
 
 ty of imitations which are being peddled from door 
 
 rSeW2T0 to d°o r * First quality goods do not require such 
 desperate methods to sell them. PEARLINE sells 
 >n its merits, and is manufactured only by 
 
 *o 4 JAMES PYLE, New York. 
 
 R. H. M ACY & CO. 
 
 Sixth Avenue, 13th to 14th Street, N. Y. 
 
 In UPHOLSTERY DEPARTMENT we 
 are showing a full line of Lace Curtains 
 from 99c. to $77.99 per pair. 
 
 Chenille Curtains in rare colorings, rich dado, 
 etc., $4.99 to $49.99 per pair. 
 
 ALSO A RARE COLLECTION OF 
 
 ORIENTAL RUGS and EMBROIDERIES 
 
 of beautiful designs and colorings at Popular 
 Prices (which mean a saving of from 20 to j.q 
 per cent.), , 
 
LIBIA E. PMIK’S VEGETABLE COMPOUND 
 
 Is a Positive Cure for all those painful Complaints 
 and Weaknesses so common to our best 
 female population. 
 
 It will cure entirely the worst form of 
 Female Complaints, all Ovarian troub - 
 les, Inflammation, Ulceration, Falling 
 and Displacements of the Womb and the 
 consequent Spinal Weakness, and is par- 
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 It will dissolve and expel Tumors from 
 the uterus in an early stage of develop- 
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 and relieves weakness of the stomach. 
 It cures Bloating, Headaches, Nervous 
 Prostration, General Debility, Sleepless- 
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 ^hat feeling of bearing down, causing 
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 cured by its use. 
 
 will at all times and under all cir- 
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 laws that govern the female system. 
 For the cure of Kidney Complaints of 
 either sex, this Compound is unsur- 
 
 LYDIA E. PINKHAM’S VEGETABLE COMPOUND is prepared at Lynn, Mass. Price, $i. 
 
 Six bottles for $5. Sent by mail in the form of Pills, also in the form of Lozenges, 
 on receipt of price, $1 per box, for either. Send for pamphlet. All letters of inquiry 
 promptly answered. Address as above. 
 
 CANDY 
 
 CANDY 
 
 Send $1.25, $2.25, 
 $3.50, or $5.00 for a 
 sample retail box, by 
 express, prepaid, of 
 the Best CANDIES 
 in America. Strictly 
 pure, and put up in 
 elegant boxes, suit- 
 able for presents. 
 Refers to all Chicago. 
 Try it. Address, 
 
 C. F. GUNTHER, 
 
 Confectioner, 
 
 212 State St. and 
 78 Madison St., 
 
 CHICAGO. 
 
 HOSTETTEITS 
 
 STOMACH BIJTERS 
 
 HAS FOR 35 Y«ARS BEEN 
 
 Adopted by Physicians and invalids 
 
 AS A REMEDY FOR 
 Indigestion, Dyspepsia? 
 
 Fever and Ague, Malaria, 
 Neuralgia, llbeumatism. 
 General Debility, 
 And other KINDRED DISEASES, 
 
 AS CONFIRMED BY 
 
 THOUSANDS OF TESTIMONIALS 
 IN OUR POSSESSION. 
 
 Ask your druggist for it, and take none but 
 HOSTELER'S STOMACH BITTERS, 
 
 $500 to $30(1 
 
 AYEAR! 
 I undertake 
 to briefly 
 'teach any per* 
 son of either sex, who can read and write, and 
 who, after instruction, will work industrious- 
 ly, how to earn FIVE HUNDRED to THREE 
 THOUSAND DOLLARS A YEAR in their own 
 localities, wherever they live. I will also fur- 
 nish the employment at which you can earn 
 that amount. No money for me unless suc- 
 cessful. Easily and quickly learned. I desire 
 but one worker from each district. I have 
 
 already taught and provided with employ- 
 ment a large number, who are making over 
 $3000 a year each. It’s NEW and SOLID. Full 
 particulars FREE. Address at once, 
 
 STINSON & CO., P.O.Box770, Portland, Me. 
 
 DRINK HIRES’ ROOT BEffl 
 
 Write the Charles E. Hires Co., 117-119 Arch 
 St., Phila., Pa. giving your name and address, 
 and you will receive oy mail a copy of a beau- 
 tifully illustrated picture-book and. picture 
 cards free. 
 
EPPS’S 
 
 CRATEFUL-COMFORTINC 
 
 COCOA 
 
 New Process DOG BISCUIT 
 
 is entirely different from any 
 other. Does not cause diar- 
 rhoea. Dogs eat it in prefer- 
 ence to other brands, and it 
 costs 
 pound 
 tritive 
 for fr 
 
 of dogs in health and disease. 
 
 Retail price 10c. per lb. Samples sent by 
 mail for 5 cents. „ 
 
 ASSOCIATED FANCIERS, 400 N. Third St., 
 Philadelphia,, Pa. 
 
 no more, id contains 
 for pound twice the nu- 
 quauties of any other 
 ee book on management 
 
 FREE SILVER SPOONS S3 r. 
 
 will forward your name and address to pub- 
 lishers, manufacturers and dealers in Agents' 
 Goods, who will send you valuable samples 
 of Books, Newspapers, Music, Works of Art, 
 and circulars offering permanent business, 
 where $50 per week can be made. One Doz. 
 Heavy Silver-plated Spoons cau be obtained 
 FREE if you write now. 
 
 Directory Co., Box 50, Montclair, IT. J. 
 
 Positive Cure. By Mail. 
 Sealed book free. Address 
 W. S. RICE, Box L., Smith- 
 ville, Jefferson Go., N. Y. 
 
 RUPTURE 
 
 SUPERFLUOUS FAT A DISEASE ! 
 
 n 
 
 A F|P IZ" 13 You can reduce your 
 
 Ja JukA Jc weight from 10 to 
 
 without injury, without starving, without anyone be- 
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 ; OLD DR. CLARKE’S HOME TREATMENT. 
 
 Established 1851. 
 
 | Perfected in over 40 years special practice. Send for proofs and testimonials. 
 
 Y A T\T iy Cj suffering from Profuse Perspiration, Sweating 
 JLJJljL Feet, Offensive Breath, etc., you can be re* 
 licvud by a simple method. Particulars free. 
 
 Address F. O. CLARKE, *!8S S. Jlark Street, Chigaqo, lu 
 
VALUABLE TO EVERY LADY. 
 
 No AMERICAN HOUSEKEEPER should bs without 
 
 The American Analyst, 
 
 The only Journal published in the interest of 
 PURE FOOD. 
 
 Ah entertaining and instructive adviser for fhe Kitclien, tlie Dining 
 Hoorn, and tlio Houseliold. 
 
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 Published Weekly at $1.00 per year. Address 
 
 THE AMERICAN ANALYST, 
 
 1© PARK PLACE, NEW YORK. 
 
 Copyrighted 1890 by Zum Smith's Agents' JZerald^ Philadelphia^ Pa. 
 
 SPECIAL BILL POSTERS WANTED. 
 
 Advertisers, Patentees, Manufacturers, etc., are continually request- 
 ing us to supply the addresses of reliable circular distributers, bill 
 posters, etc. Brunn’s success is marvelous, and will open up in 200,000 
 Heralds nextmonth, to be mailed to business firms, a new, profitable 
 and permanent business to one man, woman or youth in every 
 town in the U. S. and Canada. “The early bird catches the 
 worm.” We want a few such ads.” as Brunn’s to start with. 
 in next month’s Mammoth editions of the Agents’ Herald. 
 Brunn paid $2.10 to insert 4 lines, June, ’90. He began during summer. 
 That ad. paid then ; is paying now. He has been kept constantly 
 busy, employs three men to assist him, clearing on their labor from. 
 $10 to $15 a day distributing circulars at $2 per 1000 for many firms 
 who saw his ad. in the Herald. It costs every firm at least $10 in 
 postage alone to mail 1000 circulars. YOU advertise to HAND THEM 
 out for $2 per 1000. A saving to each firm who employs you of $8 per 
 1000. PARENTS make your boys a present. Start them in this grow- 
 ings business. Begin this neat business before some one in your 
 county gets the start of you. “Come in on the ground floor.’* 
 ! lines as below (Brunn’s) in 200,000 Heralds costs $2.10 ; 3 lines 
 as below (Foster’s) $1.80 ; 2 lines as below (Best’s) $1.20 ; cash, 
 or postage stamps. Instructions FREE to such advertisers only. 
 
 All firms 
 
 a® 
 
 < 1 53a i£ 
 
 DEIRj A| nails up signs, distributes circulars, papers’ wanting the 
 , tun i© samples, etc., throughout Blackhawk and I addresses ofi 
 'surrounding counties. Charges moderate. rlictrihntar* 
 
 Address, W. H. BRUNN, Waterloo, la. Ishniild an- 
 
 5c. a copy or 50c. a year. Send 
 — DIRECTORY. Dkee- 
 
 ; ily for a copy of Herald. _ _ 
 
 ! 35 cents for your address in THE 
 
 tory of all a dvertisers wanting agents. Sample copy of this or 
 next month’s Herald, 5 
 
 Cents. The best advertis- 
 ing medium on earth for any 
 business. Try one month. To 
 eecure immediate attention ad- 
 dress HeraltUiox 13006, Hula., fa. 
 
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 or tax-payers of this (Adams) Co. $2. | 
 per 1000. A. H. FOSTER, Natchez, Miss, j 
 
 CIRCULARS orp T I 
 
 srs distributed $1.00 per 1,0007] 
 BK8T, New Cumberland. Pa. I 
 
THE SANITARIAN. 
 
 1873 A. N. BELL, A.M., M.D., editor. 1891 
 
 Based at the outset upon Naval service and extensive observation 
 of the effects of climate and locality on health in different quarters of 
 the world and large experience in dealing with epidemic diseases : 
 
 •‘The Sanitarian is the best sanitary publication in America” ( Mississippi 
 Valley Medical Monthly) ; 41 Easily maintains its superiority over all similar publi- 
 cations ” {Medical World) \ and u Has accomplished more good than all of the 
 other Sanitary papers put together” {Hydraulic and Sanitary Plumber .) 
 
 “The Sanitarian sustains its reputation for warfare in the cause of preven- 
 tive medicine. Intelligent and conscientious physicians are using more and more of 
 nature’s health-giving remedies. Pure air, water, and sunlight are potent agencies 
 in the armamenta medicorum . To parody Carleton, physicians, those deserving 
 of the name, 
 
 Open the blinds when the day is bright, 
 
 And God gives their patients the bright sunlight J 
 They open the windows when the day is fair, 
 
 And God gives their patients the pure, fresh air. 
 
 •‘Such journals as The Sanitarian are most valuable to non-professional 
 readers in showing how in a thousand ways disease may be prevented; and, when 
 it does come, the intelligent physicians will be all the better appreciated by those who 
 are conversant with the facts such a publication disseminates ” {The Living Church.) 
 
 The Sanitarian will continue in its present form, 96 pages text 
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 THE MARYLAND FARMER, 
 
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 The oldest , best known and most influential Agricultural 
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 To each new subscriber, sending direct to our Office in Baltimore, $i for a year’* 
 subscription, we will give as premiums the following 8 Books : 
 
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 ment, ..... .23 
 
 Complete Book of Amusements, .25 
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A GOOD RECORD. 
 
 It was The Educational Courant , of Louisville, Ky., which so 
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 and educators all over the country to the good record made by the 
 American Journal of Education y and its splendid and immediate 
 practical results. 
 
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 intelligent person will deny.” 
 
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4 ' 
 
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No Man Who Shoots 
 
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 1467 A New Lease of Life 20 
 
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 1345 Aunt Hepsy’s Foundling 20 
 
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 388 Addie’s Husband ; or, Through 
 
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 504 My Poor Wife * 
 
 1046 Jessie 20 
 
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 1550 Random Shots 20 
 
 1569 Elbow Room 20 
 
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 246 A Fatal Dower 20 
 
 372 Phyllis’ Probation * 
 
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 829 The Actor’s Ward 20 
 
 1373 The Story of an Error 20 
 
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 483 Betwixt My Love and Me * 
 
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 244 A Great Mistake . . 20 
 
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 961 A Hidden Terror 20 
 
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 189 Valerie’s Fate * 
 
 229 Maid, Wife, or Widow? * 
 
 236 Which Shall it Be? 20 
 
 339 Mrs. Vereker’s Courier Maid. . * 
 
 490 A Second Life 20 
 
 564 At Bay * 
 
 794 Beaton’s Bargain 20 
 
 797 Look Before You Leap 20 
 
 805 The Freres. 1st half 20 
 
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 806 Her Dearest Foe. 1st half 20 
 
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 814 The Heritage of Langdale 20 
 
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 900 By Woman’s Wit 20 
 
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 1054 Mona’s Choice 20 
 
 1057 A Life Interest 20 
 
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 1199 A False Scent * 
 
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 1571 Blind Fate 20 
 
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 1848 A Terrible Legacy 20 
 
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 759 In Shallow Waters 20 
 
 T. S. Arthur’s Works. 
 
 1337 Woman’s Trials 20 
 
 1636 The Two Wives 20 
 
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 533 Eight YearsWandering in Cey- 
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 776 P&re Goriot 
 
 1128 Cousin Pons 
 
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 787 Court Royal 
 
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 1122 Eve 
 
 1201 Mehalah: A Story of the Salt 
 
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 1697 Red Spider 
 
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 1763 John Herring 
 
 1779 Arminell 
 
 Frank Barrett’s Works. 
 
 986 The Great Hesper 
 
 1138 A Recoiling Vengeance 
 
 1245 Fettered for Life 
 
 1461 Smuggler’s Secret 
 
 1611 Between Life and Death 
 
 1750 Lieutenant Barnabas 
 
 Basil’s Works. 
 
 344 “ The Wearing of the Green ”. 20 
 
 547 A Coquette’s Conquest 20 
 
 585 A Drawn Game 20 
 
 By G. M. Bayne. 
 
 1618 Galaski 20 
 
 Anne Beale’s Works. 
 
 188 Idonea 20 
 
 199 The Fisher Village * 
 
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 146 Love Finds the Way,and Other 
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 230 Dorothy Forster 20 
 
 324 Iu Luck at Last * 
 
 541 Uncle Jack * 
 
 651 “ Self or Bearer ” * 
 
 882 Children of Gibeon 20 
 
 904 The Holy Rose * 
 
 906 The World Went Very Well 
 
 Then 20 
 
 980 To Call Her Mine 20 
 
 1055 Katharine Regina 20 
 
 1065 Herr Paulus: His Rise, His 
 
 Greatness, and His Fall 20 
 
 1143 The Inner House 20 
 
 1151 For Faith and Freedom 20 
 
 1240 The Bell of St. Paul’s 20 
 
 1247 The Lament of Dives. 20 
 
 1378 They Were Married. By Wal- 
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 1413 Armorel of Lyonesse 20 
 
 1462 Let Nothing You Dismay * 
 
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 273 Love and Mirage ; or, The Wait- 
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 579 The Flower of Doom, and Other 
 
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 594 Doctor Jacob 20 
 
 1023 Next of Kin— Wanted 20 
 
 1407 The Parting of the Ways 20 
 
 1500 Disarmed 20 
 
 1543 For One and the World , 
 
 1627 A Romance of the Wire 20 
 
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 Bjornstjerne Biornson’s Works. 
 
 1385 Arne. * 
 
 1388 The Happy Boy * 
 
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 1 Yolande 20 
 
 18 Shandon Bells 20 
 
 21 Sunrise : A Story of These 
 
 Times 20 
 
 23 A Princess of Thule 20 
 
 39 In Silk Attire 20 
 
 44 Macleod of Dare 20 
 
 49 That Beautiful Wretch 20 
 
 50 The Strauge Adventures of a 
 
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 70 White Wings: A Yachting Ro- 
 mance * 
 
 78 Madcap Violet 20 
 
 81 A Daughter of Heth 20 
 
 124 Three Feathers 20 
 
 125 The Monarch of Mincing Lane 20 
 
 126 Kilmeny 2* 
 
 138 Green Pastures and Piccadilly 20 
 265 Judith Shakespeare : Her Love 
 Affairs and Other Adventures 20 
 472 The Wise Women of Inverness * 
 
 627 White Heather 20 
 
 898 Romeo and Juliet: A Tale of 
 
 Two Young Fools 
 
 962 Sabina Zembra. 1st half 
 
 962 Sabina Zembra. 2d half 
 
 1096 The Strange Adventures of a 
 
 House-Boat 
 
 1132 In Far Lochaber 
 
 1227 The Penance of John Logan . . 
 1259 Nanciebel : A Tale of Stratford- 
 
 on-Avon 
 
 1268 Prince Fortunatus 
 
 1389 Oliver Goldsmith 
 
 1394 The Four Maccicols, and Other 
 
 Tales 
 
 1426 An Adventure in Thule 
 
 1480 Cruel London 
 
 1505 Lady Silverdale’s Sweetheart. 
 
 1506 Mr. Pisistratus Brown, M. P. . 
 
 1725 Stand Fast, Craig-Royston ! . . . 
 
 R. D. Black more’s Works. 
 
 67 Lorna Doone. 1st half 
 
 67 Lorna Doone. 2d half 
 
 427 The Remarkable History of Sir 
 Thomas Upmore, Bart., M. P. 
 
 615 Mary Anerley 
 
 625 Erema; or, My Father’s Sin.. 
 
 629 Cripps, the Carrier 
 
 630 Cradock Nowell. 1st half 
 
 630 Cradock Nowell. 2d half 
 
 631 Christo well. A Dartmoor Tale 
 
 632 ( lara Vaughan 
 
 633 The Maid of Sker. 1st half. . . 
 
 633 The Maid of Sker. 2d half. . . . 
 
 636 Alice Lorraine. 1st half 
 
 636 Alice Lorraine. 2d half. 
 
 926 Springhaven. 1st half 
 
 926 Springhaven. 2d half 
 
 1267 Kit and Kitty. 1st half 
 
 1267 Kit and Kitty. 2d half 
 
 By Isa Blagden. 
 
 705 The Woman I Loved, and the 
 Woman Who Loved Me 
 
 By C. Blatherwick. 
 
 151 The Ducie Diamonds 
 
 By Frederick Boyle* 
 
 356 The Good Hater 
 
 Miss M. E. Braddon’s Works, 
 
 35 Lady Audley’s Secret 
 
 56 Phantom Fortune 
 
 74 Aurora Floyd 
 
 110 Under the Red Flag 
 
 153 The Golden Calf . 
 
 204 Vixen 
 
 211 The Octoroon 
 
 234 Barbara ; or, Splendid Misery. 20 
 
 263 An Ishmaelite 20 
 
 315 The Mistletoe Bough. Christ- 
 mas, 1884. Edited by Miss M. 
 
 E. Braddon 21 
 
 88*888 8 * * ggggggSggSgggggg 88 8**8** *88 888 888 
 
4 
 
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 434 Wy Hard’s Weird 20 
 
 478 Diavola; or, Nobody’s Daugh- 
 ter. Part 1 20 
 
 478 Diavola; or. Nobody’s Daugh- 
 ter. Part II 20 
 
 480 Married in Haste. Edited by 
 Miss M. E. Braddon 20 
 
 487 Put to the Test. Edited by Miss 
 
 M. E. Braddon 20 
 
 488 Joshua Haggard’s Daughter... 20 
 
 489 Rupert Godwin 20 
 
 495 Mount Royal 20 
 
 496 Only a Woman. Edited by Miss 
 
 M. E. Braddon 20 
 
 497 The Lady’s Mile 20 
 
 498 Only a Clod 20 
 
 499 The Cloven Foot 20 
 
 511 A Strange World 20 
 
 515 Sir Jasper’s Tenant ... 20 
 
 524 Strangers and Pilgrims 20 
 
 529 The Doctor’s Wife 20 
 
 542 Fenton’s Quest 20 
 
 544 Cut by the County ; or, Grace 
 
 Darnel * 
 
 548 A Fatal Marriage, and The 
 Shadow in the Corner. * 
 
 549 Dudley Carleon ; or. The Broth- 
 
 er’s Secret, and George Caul- 
 field’s Journey * 
 
 552 Hostages to Fortune 20 
 
 553 Birds of Prey 20 
 
 554 Charlotte’s Inheritance. (Se- 
 
 quel to “ Birds of Prey ”) 20 
 
 557 To the Bitter End 20 
 
 559 Taken at the Flood 20 
 
 560 Asphodel 20 
 
 561 Just as I am ; or. A Living Lie 20 
 
 567 Dead Men’s Shoes 20 
 
 570 John Marchmont’s Legacy 20 
 
 618 The Mistletoe Bough. Christ- 
 mas, 1885. Edited by Miss M. 
 
 E. Braddon 20 
 
 840 One Thing Needful; or, The 
 
 Penalty of Fate 20 
 
 881 Mohawks. 1st half 20 
 
 881 Mohawks. 2d half 20 
 
 890 The Mistletoe Bough. Christ- 
 mas, 1886. Edited by Miss M. 
 
 E. Braddon 20 
 
 943 Weavers and Weft; or, “ Love 
 
 that Hath Us in His Net ” 20 
 
 947 Publicans and Sinners; or, 
 
 Lucius Davoren. 1st half 20 
 
 947 Publicans and Sinners; or, 
 
 Lucius Davoren. 2d half 20 
 
 1036 Like and Unlike 20 
 
 1098 The Fatal Three 20 
 
 1211 The Day Will Come 20 
 
 1411 Whose Was the Hand? 20 
 
 1664 Dead Sea Fruit 20 
 
 By Annie Bradshaw. 
 
 706 A Crimson Stain * 
 
 Works by Charlotte M. Braeme, 
 
 Author of “ Dora Thorne.” 
 
 19 Her Mother’s Sin 20 
 
 51 Dora Thorne 20 
 
 54 A Broken Wedding-Ring 20 
 
 68 A Queen Amongst Women * 
 
 69 Madolin’s Lover 20 
 
 73 Redeemed by Love; or, Love’s 
 
 Victory 20 
 
 76 Wife in Name Only; or, A 
 
 Broken Heart 
 
 79 Wedded and Parted 
 
 92 Lord Lynne’s Choice 
 
 148 Thorns and Orange-Blossoms. 
 
 190 Romance of a Black Veil 
 
 220 Which Loved Him Best? 
 
 237 Repented at Leisure. (Large 
 
 type edition) 
 
 967 Repented at Leisure 
 
 249 “Prince Charlie’s Daughter;” 
 
 or, The Cost of Her Love 
 
 250 Sunshine and Roses; or, Di- 
 
 ana’s Discipline 
 
 254 The Wife’s Secret, and Fair 
 
 but False 
 
 283 The Sin of a Lifetime ; or, Viv- 
 ien’s Atonement 
 
 287 At War With Herself 
 
 923 At War With Herself. (Large 
 
 type edition) 
 
 288 From Gloom to Sunlight; or. 
 
 From Out the Gloom 
 
 955 From Gloom to Sunlight; or, 
 From Out the Gloom. (Large 
 type edition) 
 
 291 Love’s Warfare 
 
 292 A Golden Heart 
 
 293 The Shadow of a Sin * 
 
 948 The Shadow of a Sin. (Large 
 
 type edition) 20 
 
 294 The False Vow; or, Hilda; or, 
 
 Lady Hutton’s Ward * 
 
 928 The False Vow; or, Hilda; or. 
 Lady Hutton’s Ward. (Large 
 
 type edition) 20 
 
 294 Lady Hutton’s Ward; or, Hilda; 
 
 or. The False V o w * 
 
 928 .Lady Hutton’s Ward; or, Hilda; 
 or, The False Vow. (Large 
 type edition! 20 
 
 294 Hilda; or, The False Vow; or, 
 
 Lady Hutton’s Ward * 
 
 928 Hilda; or, The False Vow; or, 
 Lady Hutton’s Ward. (Large 
 type edition) 20 
 
 295 A Woman’s War * 
 
 952 A Woman’s War. (Large type 
 
 edition) 20 
 
 296 A Rose in Thorns 20 
 
 297 Hilary’s Folly; cr, Her Mar- 
 
 riage Vow * 
 
 953 Hilary’s Folly; or, Her Mar- 
 
 riage Vow. (Large type edi- 
 tion) 20 
 
 299 The Fatal Lilies, and A Bride 
 
 from the Sea * 
 
 300 A Gilded Sin, and A Bridge of 
 
 Love * 
 
 303 Ingledew House, and More Bit- 
 
 ter than Death * 
 
 304 In Cupid’s Net * 
 
 305 A Dead Heart, and Lady Gwen- 
 
 doline’s Dream * 
 
 306 A Golden Dawn, and Love for 
 
 a Day * 
 
 8 * 88*8 8 * 8 8 * 8 * 8 * 888 
 
THE SEASIDE LIBRARY— Pocket Edition 
 
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 807 Two Kisses, and Like no Other 
 
 Love * 
 
 308 Beyond Pardon 20 
 
 322 A Woman's Love-Story 20 
 
 323 A Willful Maid ‘ 20 
 
 411 A Bitter Atonement 20 
 
 433 My Sister Kate * 
 
 459 A Woman’s Temptation. 
 
 (Large type edition) 20 
 
 951 A Woman’s Temptation * 
 
 460 Under a Shadow 20 
 
 465 The Earl’s Atonement 20 
 
 466 Between Two Loves 20 
 
 467 A Struggle for a Ring 20 
 
 469 Lady Darner’s Secret 20 
 
 470 Evelyn’s Folly 20 
 
 471 Thrown on the World 20 
 
 476 Between Two Sins; or, Married 
 
 in Haste * 
 
 516 Put Asunder; or. Lady Castle- 
 
 maine’s Divorce 20 
 
 576 Her Martyrdom 20 
 
 626 A Fair Mystery; or, The Perils 
 
 of Beauty 20 
 
 741 The Heiress of Hilldrop; or, 
 The Romance of a Young Girl 20 
 745 For Another’s Sin; or, A Strug- 
 gle for Love 20 
 
 792 Set in Diamonds 20 
 
 821 The World Between Them 20 
 
 822 A Passion Flower. 20 
 
 853 A True Magdalen 20 
 
 854 A Woman’s Error 20 
 
 922 Marjorie 20 
 
 924 ’Twixt Smile and Tear 20 
 
 927 Sweet Cymbeline 20 
 
 929 The Belle of Lynn; or, The 
 
 Miller’s Daughter 20 
 
 931 Lady Diana’s Pride 20 
 
 949 Claribel’s Love Story ; or, Love’s 
 
 Hidden Depths 20 
 
 958 A Haunted Life ; or, Her Terri- 
 ble Sin 20 
 
 969 The Mystery of Colde Fell; or, 
 
 Not Proven 20 
 
 973 The Squire’s Darling 20 
 
 975 A Dark Marriage Mom 20 
 
 978 Her Second Love 20 
 
 982 The Duke’s Secret 20 
 
 985 On Her Wedding Morn, and 
 The Mystery of the Holly-Tree 20 
 988 The Shattered Idol, and Letty 
 
 Leigh 20 
 
 990 The Earl’s Error, and Arnold’s 
 
 Promise 20 
 
 •95 An Unnatural Bondage, and 
 
 That Beautiful Lady 20 
 
 1006 His Wife’s Judgment 20 
 
 1008 A Thom in Her Heart 20 
 
 1010 Golden Gates 20 
 
 1012 A Nameless Sin 20 
 
 1014 A Mad Love 20 
 
 1031 Irene’s Vow 20 
 
 1052 Signa’s Sweetheart 20 
 
 1091 A Modern Cinderella * 
 
 1134 Lord Elesmere’s Wife 20 
 
 1155 Lured Away; or, The Story of 
 a Wedding - Ring, and The 
 Heiress of Arne 20 
 
 1179 Beauty’s Marriage 
 
 1185 A Fiery Ordeal 
 
 1195 Dumaresq’s Temptation 
 
 1285 Jenny 
 
 1291 The Star of Love 
 
 1328 Lord Lisle’s Daughter 
 
 1415 Weaker than a Woman 
 
 1628 Love Works Wonders 
 
 By Fredrika Bremer. 
 
 187 The Midnight Sun 
 
 Charlotte Bronte’s Works. 
 
 15 Jane Eyre 
 
 57 Shirley 
 
 944 The Professor 
 
 II ho da Broughton’s Works. 
 
 86 Belinda 
 
 101 Second Thoughts 
 
 227 Nancy 
 
 645 Mrs. Smith of Longmains 
 
 758 “ Good-bye, Sweetheart!” 
 
 765 Not Wisely, But Too Well 
 
 767 Joan 
 
 768 Red as a Rose is She 
 
 769 Cometh Up as a Flower 
 
 862 Betty’s Visions 
 
 894 Doctor Cupid 
 
 1599 Alas ! 
 
 By Iiouise de Bruneval. 
 
 1686 Sceur Louise 20 
 
 Robert Buchanan’s Works. 
 
 145 “ Storm-Beaten:” God and The 
 
 Man 20 
 
 154 Annan Water 20 
 
 181 The New Abelard * 
 
 398 Matt : A Tale of a Caravan ... * 
 
 646 The Master of the Mine 20 
 
 892 That Winter Night; or, Love’s 
 
 Victory * 
 
 1074 Stormy Waters 20 
 
 1104 The Heir of Linne 20 
 
 1350 Love Me Forever * 
 
 1455 The Moment After 20 
 
 By John Bunyan. 
 
 1498 The Pilgrim’s Progress 20 
 
 Captain Fred Burnaby’s Works. 
 
 375 A Ride to Khiva 20 
 
 384 On Horseback Through Asia 
 
 Minor 20 
 
 By John Bloundelle-Burton. 
 913 The Silent Shore; or, The Mys- 
 tery of St. James’ Park. . . . . . 20 
 
 By Beatrice M. Butt. 
 
 1354 Delicia 20 
 
 By the Author of “ By Crooked 
 Paths.” 
 
 430 A Bitter Reckoning . . * 
 
 E. Easseter Bynner’s Works. 
 
 1456 Nimport 30 
 
 1460 Tritons 3$ 
 
 By Lord Byron. 
 
 719 Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage... * 
 
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 521 Entangled 20 
 
 538 A Fair Country Maid 20 
 
 I5y Mrs. Caddy. 
 
 127 Adrian Bright 20 
 
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 445 The Shadow of a Crime 20 
 
 520 She’s All the World to Me * 
 
 1234 The Deemster 20 
 
 1255 The Bondman 20 
 
 By Mona Caird. 
 
 1699 The Wing of Azrael 20 
 
 By Ada Cambridge. 
 
 1583 A Marked Man 20 
 
 Mi’s. H. Lovett Cameron’s Works. 
 
 595 A North Country Maid 20 
 
 796 In a Grass Country 20 
 
 891 VeraNevill; or, Poor Wisdom’s 
 
 Chance 20 
 
 912 Pure Gold 20 
 
 963 Worth Winning 20 
 
 1025 Daisy’s Dilemma 20 
 
 1028 A Devout Lover ; or, A Wasted 
 
 Love 20 
 
 1070 A Life’s Mistake 20 
 
 1204 The Lodge by the Sea 20 
 
 1205 A Lost Wife 20 
 
 1236 Her Father’s Daughter 20 
 
 1261 Wild George’s Daughter 20 
 
 1290 The Cost of a Lie 20 
 
 1292 Bosky Dell 20 
 
 1549 The Cruise of the Black Prince 20 
 1782 A Dead Past 20 
 
 By Lady Colin Campbell. 
 
 1325 Darell Blake 20 
 
 Rosa Noucliette Carey’s Works* 
 
 215 Not Like Other Girls 20 
 
 396 Robert Ord’s Atonement 20 
 
 551 Barbara Heathcote’s Trial. 1st 
 
 half 20 
 
 551 Barbara Heathcote’s Trial. 2d 
 
 half 20 
 
 608 For Lilias. 1st half 20 
 
 608 For Lilias. 2d half 20 
 
 930 Uncle Max. 1st half 20 
 
 930 Uncle Max. 2d half 20 
 
 932 Queenie’s Whim. 1st half 20 
 
 932 Queenie’s Whim. 2d half 20 
 
 934 Wooed and Married. 1st half. 20 
 934 Wooed and Married. 2d half. 20 
 936 Nellie’s Memories. 1st half. . . 20 
 936 Nellie’s Memories., 2d half... 20 
 
 961 Wee Wifie 20 
 
 1033 Esther: A Story for Girls 20 
 
 1064 Only the Governess 20 
 
 1135 Aunt Diana 20 
 
 1194 TheSearchforBasilLyndhurst 30 
 
 1208 Merle’s Crusade 20 
 
 1545 Lover or Friend? 30 
 
 William Carleton’s Works. 
 
 1493 Willy Reilly 20 
 
 1552 Shane Fadh’s Wedding. ...... * 
 
 1553 Larry McFarland’s Wake * 
 
 1554 The Party Fight and Funeral. * 
 
 1556 The Midnight Mass * 
 
 1557 Phil Purcel * 
 
 1558 An Irish Oath * 
 
 1560 Going to Maynooth * 
 
 1561 Phelim O’Toole’s Courtship. . . * 
 
 1562 Dominick, the Poor Scholar. . * 
 
 1564 Neal Malone * 
 
 By Alice Comyns Carr. 
 
 571 Paul Crew’s Story * 
 
 Lewis Carroll’s Works. 
 
 462 Alice’s Adventures in Wonder- 
 land. Illustrated by John 
 
 Tenniel 20 
 
 789 Through the Looking-Glass, 
 and What Alice Found There. 
 Illustrated by John Tenniel. . 20 
 
 By Cervantes. 
 
 1576 Don Quixote 30 
 
 By L. W. Champney. 
 
 1468 Bourbon Lilies.. 20 
 
 By Erckmann-Chatrian. 
 
 329 The Polish Jew. (Translated 
 from the French by Caroline 
 A. Merighi.) * 
 
 By Victor Cherbuliez, 
 
 1516 Samuel Brohl & Co 20 
 
 By Mrs. C. M. Clarke. 
 
 1801 More True than Truthful 20 
 
 By W. M. Clemens. 
 
 1544 Famous Funny Fellows 20 
 
 J. Maclaren Cobban’s Works. 
 
 485 Tinted Vapours * 
 
 1279 Master of His Fate 20 
 
 1511 A Reverend Gentleman 20 
 
 By John Coleman. 
 
 504 Curly: An Actor’s Story * 
 
 C. R. Coleridge’s Works. 
 
 403 An English Squire 20 
 
 1689 A Near Relation 20 
 
 By Beatrice Collensie. 
 
 1352 A Double Marriage 20 
 
 Wilkie Collins’s Works. 
 
 52 The New Magdalen 
 
 102 The Moonstone 
 
 167 Heart and Science 
 
 168 No Thoroughfare. By Dickens 
 
 and Collins 
 
 175 Love’s Random Shot, and 
 
 Other Stories 
 
 233 “ I Say No or, The Love-Let- 
 
 ter Answered 20 
 
 50S The Girl at the Gate * 
 
 591 The Queen of Hearts 20 
 
 613 The Ghost’s Touch, and Percy 
 
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 623 My Lady’s Money * 
 
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