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                            THE LAST CALL.






                            THE LAST CALL.


                              A Romance.



                                  BY

                           RICHARD DOWLING,

       AUTHOR OF "THE MYSTERY OF KILLARD," "THE WEIRD SISTERS,"
                         "SWEET INISFAIL," ETC.





                         _IN THREE VOLUMES_.

                               VOL. I.




                               LONDON:
             TINSLEY BROTHERS, 8, CATHERINE ST., STRAND.
                                1884.
                       [_All rights reserved_.]






                      CHARLES DICKENS AND EVANS
                        CRYSTAL PALACE PRESS.






                            THE LAST CALL.


                              * * * * *


                               Part I.






                            THE LAST CALL.


                              CHAPTER I.


The sun was low behind a bank of leaden cloud which stood like a wall
upon the western horizon. In front of a horse-shoe cove lay a placid
bay, and to the westward, but invisible from the cove, the plains of
the Atlantic.

It was low water, and summer. The air of the cove was soft with
exhalations from the weed-clad rocks stretching in green and brown
furrows from the ridge of blue shingle in the cove to the violet
levels of the sea.

On the ridge of shingle lay a young man, whose eyes rested on the sea.
He was of the middle height and figure. Twenty-seven or twenty-eight
seemed to be his age. He had a neat, compact forehead, dark gray eyes,
ruddy, full cheeks, a prominent nose, full lips, and a square chin.
The face looked honest, good-humoured, manly. The moustaches were
brown; the brown hair curled under the hat. The young man wore a gray
tweed suit and a straw hat.

He lay resting on his elbow. In the line of his sight far out in the
bay a small dot moved almost imperceptibly. The lounger knew this dot
was a boat: distance prevented his seeing it contained a man and a
woman.

Dominique Lavirotte, the man in the boat, was of the middle height and
figure, twenty-four years of age, looking like a Greek, but French by
descent and birth. The eyes and skin were dark, the beard and
moustaches black. The men of Rathclare, a town ten miles off, declared
he was the handsomest man they had ever seen, and yet felt their
candour ill-requited when their sweethearts and wives concurred.

With Dominique Lavirotte in the boat was Ellen Creagh. She was not a
native of Rathclare, but of Glengowra, the small seaside and fishing
town situate on Glengowra Bay, over which the boat was now lazily
gliding in the cool blue light of the afternoon.

Ellen Creagh was tall and slender, above the average height of women,
and very fair. She had light golden-brown hair, bright lustrous blue
eyes, and lips of delicate red. The upper lip was short. Even in
repose her face always suggested a smile. One of the great charms of
the head was the fluent ease with which it moved. The greatest charm
of the face was the sweet susceptibility it had to smile. It seemed,
when unmoved, to wait in placid faith, the advent of pleasant things.
During its moments of quiet there was no suggestion of doubt or
anxiety in it. To it the world was fair and pleasant--and the face was
pleasant and wonderfully fair. Pleasant people are less degraded by
affectation than solemn people. Your solemn man is generally a
swindler of some kind, and nearly always selfish and insincere. Ellen
Creagh looked the embodiment of good-humoured candour, and the ideal
of health and beauty. She was as blithe and wholesome as the end of
May; she was a northern Hebe, a goddess of youth and joy.

The name of the young man lying on the shingles was Eugene O'Donnell.
He lived in the important seaport of Rathclare, where his father was
the richest and most respected merchant and shipowner. There had James
O'Donnell been established in business for many years, and they now
said he was not worth less than a quarter of a million sterling. Mrs.
O'Donnell was a hale, brisk, bright-minded woman of fifty-seven, being
three years her husband's junior. The pair had but one child, Eugene,
and to him in due time all the old man's money was to go. The
O'Donnells were wealthy and popular. The father had a slow, methodical
way, which did not win upon strangers, but among those who knew him no
one was more highly respected. Without any trace of extravagance,
James O'Donnell was liberal with his money. He was a good husband, a
good father, and a good employer.

He had only one source of permanent uneasiness--his son Eugene was not
married, and showed no inclination towards marriage. The old man held
that every young man who could support a wife should take one. He
himself had married young, had prospered amazingly, and never for a
moment regretted his marriage. He was prepared to give his son a share
in his business, and a thousand a year out of the interest of his
savings, if the young man would only settle. But although Eugene
O'Donnell was as good-humoured and good-hearted a young fellow as the
town of Rathclare, or the next town to it, could show, and although
there was not in the whole town one girl who would be likely to refuse
him, and although there were plenty of handsome girls in Rathclare,
Eugene O'Donnell remained obdurate. It was lamentable, but what could
anyone do? The young man would not make love, the father would not
insist upon his marrying whether he loved or no, and there being at
Rathclare little faith in leap-year, no widow or maiden of the town
was bold enough to ask him to wed her.

While the young man lying on the shingle was idly watching the boat,
the young man in the boat was by no means idle. The sculls he was
pulling occupied none of his attention. He swung himself mechanically
backward and forward. His whole mind was fixed on the face and form of
the girl sitting in the stern.

"And so, you really must go back to Dublin?" he said ruefully.

"Yes," she answered with a smile. "I must really go back to Dublin
within a fortnight."

"And leave all here behind," he said tenderly.

"All!" she exclaimed, looking around sadly. "There is not much to
leave besides the sea, which I always loved, and my mother, whom I
always loved also."

"There is nothing else in the place, I suppose, Miss Creagh, you love,
but the sea and your mother?"

"No," she answered, "nothing. I have no relative living but my mother,
and she and the sea are my oldest friends."

"But have you no new friend or friends?"

She shook her head, and leaning over the side of the boat, drew her
fingers slowly through the water.

"The Vernons," she said, "are good to me, and I like the girls very
much. But I am only their servant--a mere governess."

"A mere queen!" he said. "I have known you but a short time. That has
been the happiest time of my life. _I_ at least can never forget it.
May you?"

Suddenly a slight change came over her. She lost a little of her
gaiety, and gathered herself together with a shadow of reserve.

"I do not think, Mr.. Lavirotte, I shall soon forget the many pleasant
hours we have spent together and the great kindness you have shown to
me."

"And you do not think you will forget _me?_"

"How can I remember your kindness and forget you?" she asked gravely.

"Yes, yes," he said eagerly, "but you know what I mean, and are
avoiding my meaning. Perhaps I have been too hasty. Shall I sing you a
song?"

"Yes, please, if you will row towards home."

Then he sang:


    "The bright stars fade, the morn is breaking,
       The dew-drops pearl each flower and leaf,
     When I of thee my leave am taking,
       With bliss too brief.
     How sinks my heart with fond alarms,
       The tear is hiding in mine eye,
     For time doth chase me from thine arms:
       Good-bye, sweetheart, good-bye."


The boat was now well inshore.

"Lavirotte! Lavirotte's voice, by all the gods!" cried Eugene
O'Donnell, raising himself into a sitting posture. "Doing the
polite--doing the lover, for all I know. Why has he stopped there? He
will begin again in a moment."

"When you go, Ellen, will you give me leave to bid you adieu in these
words?"

"Mr. Lavirotte," she said, in doubt and pain, "I am exceedingly sorry
that----"

"It is enough," he said. "Say no more. I am a ruined man."

"He will not finish it," said O'Donnell. "He is ungallant. I will
finish it for him.


    "The sun is up, the lark is soaring,
       Loud swells the song of chanticleer;
     The leveret bounds o'er earth's soft flooring:
       Yet I am here.
     For since night's gems from heaven did fade,
       And morn to floral lips must hie,
     I could not leave thee though I said,
       Good-bye, sweetheart, good-bye."


The girl raised her head and listened for a moment, and then bent her
head in some confusion. There was to her a sense of surprise in
feeling that this song had, bearing its present associations, been
completed by an unknown voice.

Lavirotte noticed the look of disquietude on the girl's face, and said
lightly and bitterly: "You need not be uneasy, Miss Creagh. I know the
man who finished my song for me, when there was no use in my going on
with it. He and I are rival tenors. I will introduce you to him when
we get ashore. We are the closest friends. He is the best of good
fellows, and reputed--ah, I envy him--to be a woman-hater."

At length the boat glided slowly through the green channel that led
from the plain of the violet bay to the ridge of blue shingle.

Lavirotte handed the girl out as soon as they reached the beach, and,
as he did so, said: "You have no objection to know my friend?"

She was anxious to conciliate him in any way she might. "No," she
whispered. "What a lovely voice he has."

"Better than mine?" he asked abruptly and harshly.

"I--I," she hesitated, "am but a poor judge."

"Which means," he said bitterly, "that you are a good judge, and
decide against me."

By this time they were close to where O'Donnell was. He was standing,
and looking out to sea.

"Comrade," said Lavirotte, touching him on the shoulder, "I am
delighted to see you. I am in sore need of a _friend_. Miss Creagh has
admired your singing very much. Mr. O'Donnell--Miss Creagh."

"Am I dreaming," thought O'Donnell, "or is this beauty real?"




                         CHAPTER II.


There was around Dominique Lavirotte an air of mystery which kept the
good simple folk of Glengowra at bay. Although, theoretically,
Frenchmen have always been popular in Ireland, this applies rather to
the mass than to the individual.

There was nothing repulsive about Dominique Lavirotte. On the
contrary, he had attractive manners, and although he spoke English
with a broken accent, he spoke it fluently and faultlessly. He was
agreeable in company, well-read, and possessed a shallow
encyclop[ae]dic knowledge, by means of which he was enabled to give
great brilliancy and point to his conversation.

Yet at certain moments he was taciturn, and if one attempted to break
in upon his reserve he turned swiftly and snarled even at his best
friend.

According to his own account, he was descended from Louis Anne
Lavirotte, medical doctor, born at Nolay, in the diocese of Autun,
somewhere about a hundred years ago, who was a most skilful physician,
and one well versed in the English language. This dead doctor of a
hundred years ago had devoted much of his attention while on earth to
more or less obscure forms of mental disease, and had written a
treatise on hydrophobia.

Dominique was very proud of this learned ancestor, and paid his
relative of the last century the compliment of devoting some of his
own time to the consideration of abnormal mental developments. Indeed,
some of those who knew him best said that there was a twist in his own
mind, and that under extreme provocation, mental or physical, the
brain would give way.

Lavirotte and O'Donnell were as close friends as it is possible for
men to be; and, notwithstanding the ten miles which separated their
homes, they saw much of one another. Each was young and enthusiastic,
each sang tenor, and sang uncommonly well.

In the town of Rathclare, no young man was more popular than Eugene
O'Donnell, and the people there thought it a thousand pities that he
should select as his favourite friend a man who was not only not a
resident of Rathclare, but a foreigner, with mysterious ways and an
uncertain temper. O'Donnell laughed off all their expostulations and
warnings, and said that in so far as his friend was a stranger and
afflicted with a bad temper, there was all the more reason why someone
should do him any little kindness he could.

But the people of Rathclare shook their heads gravely at the young
man's temerity, and prophesied that no good would come to O'Donnell of
this connection. They did not like this foreigner, with his strange
ways and mysterious retirements into himself. They were free and
open-hearted themselves, and they liked free and open-hearted souls
like O'Donnell. They did not like swarthy skins; and now and then in
the newspapers they read that men with swarthy skins drew knives and
struck their dearest friends; that foreigners were treacherous, and
not to be trusted with the lives, into the homes, or with the honour
of law-abiding folk. They knew, it being a seaport, that foreigners
spoke a gibberish which they affected to understand, and which was in
reality no better than the language of Satan. Once a Greek, an
infamous Greek, had been hanged in their town for an intolerable crime
of cruelty committed on board ship; and somehow, ever since then, all
foreigners, particularly swarthy foreigners, seemed in their eyes
peculiarly prone to atrocious cruelties.

What a luxury it must have been for this swarthy man of uncertain
temper to meet and speak with Ellen Creagh, who was the very
embodiment of all that is fair in the rich, warm sense of fairness in
the North; and free in the sense of all that is open and joyous, and
full of abounding confidence, in the North!

During the fortnight in which he had been admitted to what he
considered the infinite privilege of her society, he had fallen
helplessly, hopelessly, madly in love. He had drunk in the subtle
poison of her beauty with an avidity almost intolerable to himself.
All the poetry and passion of his nature had gone forth ceaselessly
towards that girl, as only the poetry and passion of southern blood
can go forth. The violence of his feelings had astonished even
himself. These feelings had grown all the more intense by the fierce
repression in which he had kept them. For until that day in the boat
he had never seemed to take more than a passing, polite interest in
Ellen. Even then, in his dark and self-restrained nature, he had given
no indication of the struggle within. The frenzy of his worship found
no expression, and he took his dismissal with as much apparent
indifference as though he had put the question to her merely out of
regard to the wishes of others.

Yet when he said the words, "I am a ruined man," he meant the words,
or rather he meant that he was determined to take an active part in
his own destruction.

"If I die," he thought, "what is death to me? The sun is dead, the
moon is dead, the stars are dead, earth is dead, and perdition will be
a release from this valley of phantoms. When life is not worth living,
why should one live? I will not live. I have no cause against her, but
I have cause against myself, for I am a failure."

He had determined to make away with himself; he had made up his mind
that he would not survive this terrible disappointment; he would go
home that night and take some painless and swift poison, and so pass
out of this vain world to the unknown beyond; he would not declare his
intention to anyone, least of all to O'Donnell, whose voice he
recognised in the second stanza of the song; he knew where he could
get the poison--from a friendly apothecary. They would hold an inquest
on him, no doubt, and discover that he had done himself to death. Her
name might even get mixed up in the affair, but he could not help
that. He meant to do her no harm; he simply could not and would not
endure.

When that meeting took place on the beach, whereat he introduced Ellen
to O'Donnell, he had noticed the latter's start of amazed admiration.

"What," thought Lavirotte, "is he hit too; he, the invincible! he, the
adamantine man, who has hitherto withstood all the charms of her
lovely sex? It would be curious to watch this. Will he too make love,
and fail--succeed? Ah."

When this thought first occurred to Lavirotte he paused in a dim,
dazed way. Of all men living he wished best to O'Donnell, now that he
might regard himself as dead.

"If I am to die and she is to love, would it not be best that she
should love him?"

And while he was thinking thus, and as he was mentioning his friend's
name to her, he saw her, too, start and seem for a moment confused. He
could easily understand why it was O'Donnell had started. Such beauty
as hers appeared potent enough to infuse the Belvidere Apollo with
action. But why should she start? Woman is not overwhelmed by the
beauty of man, as man is by the beauty of woman. Here it was that the
demon of jealousy first entered the soul of Dominique Lavirotte; here
it was he first inhaled the mephitic breath of jealousy, destined to
poison all his life and to embitter the last moment of his existence.

As the three turned away and left the blue shingle for the yellow
road, the sun fell behind them, and almost imperceptibly the gray dusk
of twilight gathered in the east. Overhead the blue of day was
becoming fainter and fainter, making way for the intenser blue of
night.

Neither of the men seemed disposed to speak. The heart of each was
full of new emotion--one of love, the other of jealousy; one of the
first rapturous buoyancy of dearest hope, the other of degrading cark.

Nothing but the most ordinary commonplaces were uttered that night;
and after the leave-taking each went a different way--she to the
modest lodging where she spent her brief holiday with her mother;
Lavirotte to his quiet room, and O'Donnell back to Rathclare by the
latest train leaving the village that night.

When the last-mentioned got home, he astonished his father and mother
by walking into the room where they were sitting, and saying abruptly:

"Sir, you have often advised me to marry, and I have put the matter
off. Are you still of your former mind?"

"God bless my soul!" cried the father in astonishment. "God bless my
soul, Eugene, what's the matter?" He could get no further than this
with surprise, and the question he asked was put merely as a matter of
form, and not from any desire to ascertain the condition of his son's
mind.

But the mother was quicker--took in the whole situation at once,
plunged at the heart of things, and asked breathlessly: "Eugene, who
is she?"

He  slightly and drew back. His father was too slow, and his
mother too quick for him. He preferred his mother's mode of treating
the matter. The word "she" brought back to his enchanted eyes the
vision he had seen on the beach. He said to himself: "My mother has no
right to be so quick. For all I know to the contrary, she may be
engaged to Lavirotte." Then aloud he said: "Mother, I assure you,
there is no 'she.' I never said two civil words to any girl in all my
life."

"Eugene," she said, dropping into her lap the woollen stocking she
was knitting for him, "no young man ever yet thought of marriage until
thinking of some girl had put the thought into his head."

He felt in a way flattered and fluttered. It was pleasant even for a
moment to fancy that his mother, although she knew nothing of Miss
Creagh, had suggested the notion he might marry her. He laughed and
shook his head, and laughing and shaking his head became him.

His mother looked at him half sadly, and thought: "No girl in all the
world could refuse my boy--my handsome boy, my noble boy. And now one
of them is going to take him away from me, who reared him, and have
known him every hour since he was born."

"Eugene," said the father deliberately, "do I understand that you wish
me to give you my opinions on marriage?"

The young man burst into a loud laugh. He had got far beyond the
theoretic aspect of the affair now, and his father's opinion would
have made very little impression indeed when compared with the
impression Ellen Creagh had left upon his heart.

After this the three talked upon the subject of Eugene's possible
marriage, he telling them no more about the adventure on the beach
than that the notion of marriage had been put into his mind by the
sight of a most estimable young lady, in every way suited to him, but
of whom he had only the slightest knowledge up to this.

That night, when Ellen Creagh found herself in her own room, no
thoughts of love were in her head. A feeling of pity for the fair
young man she had met was uppermost in her head. It was not
sentimental pity, but pity of a much more substantial and worldly
kind.

She had a letter to write, and sat down to write it. It began, "My
dear Ruth," and continued to narrate certain trivial matters connected
with seaweed and shells. Then it went on to say: "I have seen young
Mr. O'Donnell, son of your father's great friend, here. I was quite
startled when I heard the name. I was introduced to him by a friend
who had told me of him before." When she had finished her letter, she
addressed it to Miss Vernon, Fitzwilliam Square, Dublin. She added a
postscript, saying: "I hope you will soon get out of Dublin. You must
be weary of it this lovely weather. I shall write again in a few
days."

Then she stood awhile at the table, musing over the events in the
boat. "He could not have been serious," she thought. "I daresay if I
had looked at his face I should have seen him smiling. Anyway, he took
it very quietly."

That night Dominique Lavirotte slept little.

"Though he were my friend over and over again," he cried passionately,
"he shall not. No! Not if I were to----" Here he covered his face with
his hands. "What a horrible thought! I can see his white face now in
the moonlight. Why is it white? Why is it moonlight? Oh, God! was
beauty ever such as hers?"




                             CHAPTER III.


It was in the full height of summer, and by the bland sea, and while
gathering a bouquet of wild flowers for a girl clad in white, and
sitting on a mound hard by, that Eugene O'Donnell had for the first
time the courage to tell himself he was in love. A minute before and
he had stood in great fear of this said love--it had seemed silly,
childish, unworthy of a full-grown man in the perfect possession of
all his faculties. And now, all at once, even while his back was
towards her, and he was not under the glamour of her eye, the magic of
her touch, the mysterious fascinations of her motions, when,
apparently, nothing was going on in the bare daylight but the tranquil
ripple of the waves on the shore below, this fear left him, and all at
once he confessed to himself his love, and began to glory in it.

Once the flood-gate was broken down his nature knew no pause, saw no
obstacle, appreciated no difficulty. Turning round hastily, with the
flowers in his hand and a laugh upon his lips, such a laugh as he had
never laughed before, for now the whole nature of the man was stirred,
he cried: "What a fool I have been, Ellen." It was the first time he
had called her by her name, and yet it seemed old and familiar to him.
"What a fool I have been," he said, "to bother about these flowers."

She blushed, and looked up timidly, and looked down bashfully, and
smiled, and moved as though to rise, and then sat still. She was not
familiar with her name upon his lips. "Eugene," to her mind, seemed
familiar, for from one reason or another, perhaps the love of brevity,
she so called him when she thought of him. But to hear him call her
Ellen was as though her secret had been penetrated, and the fact that
she called him Eugene laid bare.

"What a fool I have been to gather these idle flowers," he repeated.
"They are but the symbols of what I could say so much better in words.
May I speak?"

She grew red, and then deadly pale, and seemed about to faint. Her
lips opened, but no sound came.

"Whether you give me leave or not," he said, "I must. Ellen," he went
on, "I think there is at this moment but one thing I believe
impossible, and it is that I could ever go away from you. I never was
in love before, and I don't exactly know the regular thing to say, but
I'll tell you how I feel. If you were to get up off that mound now and
walk away, supposing back to Glengowra or to the world's end, I'd
follow you. And I'd never cease to follow you, even beyond the world's
end, until you turned back and put your hand in mine. That's better
than these flowers," he said, tossing the bouquet from him. "It's
straighter, anyway, Ellen. Will you give me your hand, dear?"

He called her "dear," and after a little while her hand was raised
slightly from where it lay, and he took it, and she let it bide with
him.

So the stupid flowers lay--nowhere; and two pure hearts, sweet with
God's goodliest graces, were opened to the understanding of one
another.

Then came moonlight nights to make the rich completion of the full
day. He sang to her among the rocks, with the cool fresh sea washing
beneath their unwearied feet. She sat clasped to him, and glad to be
so clasped; and he sat strong beside her, and conscious of his
strength. There was no worshipping on his part, no bowing down before
a golden image. He took her to his heart in the beauty of her
wholesome girlhood, as one takes a melody or a flower, without
question and without any exaggeration of dearness beyond the
exaggeration compelled by all beautiful things.

These moonlit nights amid the rocks were the dearest things which had
been, up to that, with him. There was no impediment in the course of
his true love; his father was affluent; he had explained the whole
matter at home; he had brought his sweetheart home, and there had
she been approved of. Her mother saw no reason why the handsome,
good-natured, good-humoured, well-off young man should not marry her
beautiful daughter; and the daughter, on her part, saw all the reasons
between heaven and earth, and several others which had no existence in
heaven or earth or the region between, why she should marry him.

It was their custom in these moonlight nights to stroll down to that
cove where their first meeting had taken place, and where the glamour
of her beauty had first fallen upon him. Here, of nights, were
privacy, the moon and the sea, and the perfections lent to the moon
and the sea by the cliffs and the rocks and the sounds of the sea
(that are subtler than any voice); and now and then the sounds of the
land, which take away the aerial perspective of the sea and bring to
the soothed eye visions of homesteads and fallows, of sleeping woods
and gentle useful beasts, of pious folk at rest by night and pious
folk at rest for ever; and, over all, the limitless quiet of night.

Here on several occasions they sat for hours, from the late sunset,
through the late dusk, into the dark. And once or twice, when he bade
her good-bye at her mother's gate, he stole back again to the cove
which had been the theatre of the magic drama in which he was acting.
He now lived in the village, and often sat at the cove until the blue
dawn blotted out the bluer night, and the seagulls awoke, and the
sails of the fishing-boats out in the bay were trimmed for home.

All this time, though he knew it not, a shadow dogged him, an evil
shadow, a morally misshapen shadow, a pitiless dark shadow, that hid
here and there where it could, behind wall, or tree, or rock, and ever
glared unwholesomely.

The shadow of a swarthy man, of a man that showed his teeth in the
moonlight and fumbled something in his pocket; a sinister stealthy
shadow, that boded good to no one, lurked, and dodged, and followed in
the footsteps of the lovers like the evil genius of their career.

When all had been settled between the lovers, Ellen had written to
Mrs. Vernon and obtained release from her duties in that household. A
month had now gone by since that meeting on the shingle, and it was
arranged that in another month the wedding was to take place. The
course of true love was running as smooth as the planets in their
orbits. The happiest man and woman in Ireland were Eugene O'Donnell
and Ellen Creagh. As the days went by that cove grew dearer to his
heart; and even now, when the moon was making moonlight for lovers
somewhere else, he, Eugene O'Donnell, could not keep away from it, nor
could he sleep.

One night he left her at her mother's gate and walked slowly down the
road to the cove. It was dark for a summer night. Yet still there was
light enough to see a large object, say the figure of a man, fifty
yards off. He knew the ground as a farmer knows his farm. Following
the declivity of the road he soon arrived at the broken ground. Here
was a high rock on the right, high enough to conceal a man; and here,
behind this rock, was hidden a man with gleaming teeth, and in his
right hand a gleaming blade.

As O'Donnell drew near the rock the man sprang forth, seized the other
by the throat with the left hand, and, whirling up his right,
whispered: "You shall never marry her."

"Lavirotte! Lavirotte! My God, Lavirotte, are you mad?"

"Yes, and you are dead."

The hand holding the knife descended swiftly.




                             CHAPTER IV.


Instinctively O'Donnell shot his left hand upward and seized the
descending wrist. But the force in Lavirotte's arm was too great to be
overcome. The blow was diverted; but the long, keen blade tipped the
shoulder, tore through the cloth of the coat, and buried itself in the
flesh, just above the shoulder-blade.

"Heavens and earth, man! What's the matter?" cried O'Donnell, rendered
almost powerless, more by astonishment than pain.

"Death!" cried the infuriated man--"your death!--that's what's the
matter." And, withdrawing the knife, lie raised his arm once more
aloft.

O'Donnell now plainly saw that he was indeed dealing with a madman,
or, at least, with a man who seriously intended taking his life.

Still retaining his hold on the right wrist, he seized Lavirotte by
the throat and shook him violently. The pain in his shoulder was
nothing. It was no more than if he had been touched by a piece of iron
just uncomfortably hot. Yet he felt confused and queer in his head, as
though he had received the blow on his head, rather than on his
shoulder.

Lavirotte now seized O'Donnell by the throat, and for a while, with
the two hands raised in the air--the one holding the knife, the other
the wrist of the hand that held it--the two men struggled fiercely.

It was a matter of life and death. O'Donnell had now lost all care for
the cause of the attack, and was simply engaged in a brute attempt to
defend his life against a brute attack. Both men were mad. Both men
had now lost everything but the instinct of victory. All the faculties
of each were concentrated upon the muscles each used--upon the
advantages each gained--upon the chances each afforded. Each now meant
to kill, and to kill speedily--to kill with all the force, all the
power, all the devices of his body.

One was armed and whole; the other was unarmed and hurt. Both were
sensible that this conflict could not last many minutes.

The two twisted and writhed and struggled abroad on the open way. Now
they swayed this way, now that. Now, as though one were about to fall;
now, as though the other. Now one strove to throw the other by the aid
of mere weight and muscle; now the other sought to win by the force of
strangulation. Meanwhile, above the heads of both rose the two
upstretched arms--one hand clasped around a wrist, one hand holding a
bloody knife.

The two men's faces were livid. They breathed only now and then, and
with terrible difficulty. Their eyes were dilated and protruding, the
nostrils wide set and quivering.

For some time, he knew not how long--he never knew how long the fight
lasted--O'Donnell had felt something warm trickling down his back. He
was bleeding freely. He was half suffocated. He felt he must succumb.
For an instant everything was dark. Suddenly he saw once more; his
vision, his senses were restored, but only to reveal to him the fact
that his powers were failing swiftly.

The two men rocked and swayed in the broad roadway leading towards the
cove. Neither knew nor cared which way he went, so long as he might
cling to the other. At the moment when O'Donnell's faculties returned,
after that instant's unconsciousness, the two men were struggling a
few feet from the rock behind which Lavirotte had hidden.

"Now," thought O'Donnell swiftly, "for one last effort; if I fail he
will kill me."

Suddenly relaxing his knees, he stooped so as to bring his head on a
level with the shoulder of his antagonist; then, loosing his hold of
Lavirotte's throat, he seized him by the ankle, and, putting all his
strength into his right arm and back, he sought to lift and throw the
other. But his strength was gone; his head was dizzy; his eyes grew
dim. Finally, all was dark once more. He lurched heavily forward,
striking his antagonist in the chest with his head.

Lavirotte stumbled and fell backwards. O'Donnell struggled for a
moment to regain his upright position, but his strength was spent; he
was unconscious, and subsided in the middle of the road.

Now was Lavirotte's opportunity. O'Donnell could not have resisted a
child. The most cowardly cut-throat that ever lifted steel need have
no fear of him.

The darkness increased as the night went on. By this time it had grown
so great that it was impossible to see an arm's length. The sky, for
all the light it gave, might as well have been the solid earth. No
sound stirred the profound silence save the mellow washing of the
waves upon the shore. It was sultry and suffocating. Now and then the
air panted, beating this way and that in little hot gusts that brought
no freshness and left no coolness behind. Although the murmuring of
the sea filled the night with a low plaintive music, the silence
seemed to deepen as the minutes went by.

At length a form began to stir. For a while the man did not seem to
know where he was, or the circumstances which had led to his
condition. It was only by feeling around him he was able to know he
was in the open air. He felt the road, the stones, the sunbaked clay
of the road. Then he listened intently awhile, and by his hearing
confirmed the notion that he was in the open air. That was the murmur
of the sea. These little puffs of wind that beat against his face
showed he was not between walls.

Ah! Now something of it came back. There had been a struggle of some
kind, a fight with someone. What was it exactly? This was the road to
the cove. Of course it was. The sea lay beyond there somewhere. To the
right, to the left, no matter where, the sea was somewhere near. It
would be good to get down to the sea and lie down in its cool waters,
for he was aching and burning. What a fearful thirst! His tongue was
parched, baked dry as the baked clay on which he sat. He had been
hurt, how or why he could not recollect. There had been a fight. That
was all right. But why he had fought or with whom, these were the
mysteries.

Oh! why did they not bring him some water? He was dying of thirst, and
no one would come. He didn't remember going to bed. He never felt so
sleepy in all his life before. It was a kind of deathly sleep, a sleep
with no mercy in it, a sleep that promised no ease, no repose, no
alleviation of the torturing uncertainties. Such a bed, too; it was as
hard as iron. What did they mean by giving so sleepy a man such a bed?

What nonsense it was for his mother to sing a lullaby. He was a grown
man, and needed no such inducement to sleep. Oh, this terrible,
tyrannical sleep that brought no ease, no repose.

How strange that the cathedral organ should be booming away in the
dark! If service was going on, why not have lights?

Lights! Was it magic? No sooner did he think of them than the whole
cathedral blazed out for one brief moment, and then fell back into
darkness again. It was marvellous, incredible; and the cathedral
seemed so vast, vaster than the reason could believe, although the eye
had seen it. And, then, there was the music once again. Why did the
organist play only when the lights were out? That was the swell organ.
It was the loudest organ he had ever heard. What seemed most
incredible of all was the organ was big enough to fill the church, and
did fill it, until it made the windows, the pillars, ay, the very
ground itself tremble.

Ground! Ay, surely it was the ground. How extraordinary that he should
be lying on the ground!

What was this so delicious and cool? Cool and refreshing after that
horrible dream of fighting with someone, and then waking on a road.

And yet there was something in that dream, for this was a road.

He sat up.

It was very extraordinary. It was the most extraordinary thing that
had ever happened to him in his life. Was he alive, in the old
familiar sense of that word? Of course he was, for this was a road,
and he knew it was a road, and----

Lightning--thunder--rain.

What was that he had seen beside him? The rain was refreshing. It was
cooling his head, collecting his thoughts.

What was that he had seen beside him?

More lightning--thunder--rain.

What was that beside him?

Lavirotte--dead.




                              CHAPTER V.


Lavirotte dead! Absurd.

Now he remembered how it had been.

Lavirotte had sprung upon him out of the shadow of that rock, and
seized him and sought to kill him, because Lavirotte was mad with
jealousy, or with southern blood, or with something else or other, no
matter what--mad anyway. And there was that burning sensation in his
shoulder, and the fever in his blood, and that--ugh!--clammy feeling
down his back, But Lavirotte dead?

No; the very notion was preposterous.

Now he remembered the struggle.

Another flash. Another roar of thunder. Another deluge of rain.

He looked wonderfully like death in that blue light. And yet in that
struggle he (O'Donnell) did not remember having struck the other. It
was a common tussle, an irregular wrestle, with the supreme interest
of a knife added by Lavirotte. That was all. Yet he lay there
motionless, and it must have been a considerable time since he fell.

With great difficulty and a sense of oppression, O'Donnell rose
partly, and crawled towards the prostrate man.

"Dominique," he whispered, "Dominique, what is the matter? Rouse up."

There was no response. The form of the Frenchman lay there motionless,
inert, nerveless. O'Donnell raised an arm; it fell back again into the
mud of the road, unsustained by any trace of vitality.

"What can it be?" thought O'Donnell, straightening himself, as another
flash of lightning revealed the pallid face of Lavirotte. He waited
for the thunder to pass, and then, putting his hands around his mouth,
shouted with all the strength that was left in him:

"Help! Help! Help!"

The storm had not been unnoticed in the village, and many were awake.

James Crotty, boatman, had been roused by the first peal of thunder,
had filled a pipe, undone the door of his cottage, and come out to see
how the night went. His boat was moored in the cove, but as there was
no wind his mind was easy about her. His wife and little ones were
safe asleep in the cottage, and his mind was easy about them. At the
best of times he was a light sleeper and a great smoker, and took a
boatman's interest in the weather, fair or foul, but had a particular
interest in the great conflicts of nature.

While he was standing in the doorway he was within a few hundred yards
of the two men below near the cove. His cottage was about half-way
down the road, and it was quite possible to hear an ordinary speaking
voice from where the men now were.

When O'Donnell's loud cry for help rang out in the stillness, Crotty
started, and then listened intently. No other sound followed. There
was no mistaking the nature of that cry. He had heard the word as
distinctly as though it were spoken in the dark room behind him. "It
can't be any of the men," he said, meaning the fishermen of the place.
"It is too early for any of the boats to be back, and too late for
them to be going out. What can have brought anyone down there at this
hour? I'd better go and see, anyway."

He went down the little garden in front of his cottage, and gained the
road. He turned to the left. Then he went on slowly, cautiously,
keeping to the middle of the road.

"Who's there?" he called out. "What's the matter?"

"Here," cried O'Donnell faintly, "This way. Help."

The rain had now ceased, and the silence was intense. Far out there in
the darkness was the soft washing of the wavelets on the shore. No
other sound burdened the night.

Guided by O'Donnell's voice, Crotty now walked on with decision.

"What's the matter?" he called out again. "Who is it?"

O'Donnell's voice answered from the darkness. "It is I, O'Donnell."

"Oh, Mr. O'Donnell, is it you? What's the matter?"

"I'm hurt, badly I think, and here is Mr. Lavirotte insensible. I know
how I got my hurt." Crotty was now close to the speaker. "That makes
no difference; but I don't know how Mr. Lavirotte was hurt."

"Maybe 'twas a fight," said Crotty, in a tone of interest. A fight is
always an interesting thing, but a fight here and on such a night as
this was something which Crotty did not feel himself justified in
treating with anything but the greatest respect.

"Never mind what has been," said O'Donnell feebly. "The thing is to
get him to the village and call a doctor. I can't be of much help. I
am quite weak. Come now, Crotty, look sharp. Knock them up at Maher's,
tell them to put a horse in, and be back here in no time, and let
there be a doctor at hand by the time we get back. Run now. Don't lose
a minute."

"And leave you here by yourself, hurt? Aren't you strong enough to
walk as far as Maher's, or my place even?"

"No. Be off. Every second you wait is killing us."

Crotty started at the top of his speed, and in less than half-an-hour
returned with a car from Maher's hotel. He had brought a lantern, and
he and the driver carried Lavirotte to the car, and sat him up on it.
Then Crotty got up and held the insensible man. O'Donnell got up on
the other side, and thus they drove to the hotel.

Here the doctor was awaiting them.

"What's this, O'Donnell?" he said. He knew the two men thoroughly.
"You two have been quarrelling. What is the meaning of this? Blood on
both! Nasty scalp wound. Don't think the bone is broken. Clear case of
concussion. What did you hit him with?"

"Nothing," said O'Donnell. "Is it dangerous?"

"Dangerous! I should think it is dangerous. Dangerous enough to mean
manslaughter, it may be."

"Good heavens!" cried O'Donnell, faintly. "I assure you I never struck
him."

"All right. Stick to that. It never does to make admissions. What's
the matter with you? Blood and mud all over. Cut off his coat. Here,
give me the scissors. No bleeding except here. Ugly cut."

"Is it much?" said O'Donnell, very weak now.

"Yes, it's a good hit."

"Will it do for me?"

"I don't think so, if you have luck. He has a much better chance of
going than you. What _did_ you hit him with, O'Donnell? It was a
terrible blow. Something blunt--a stone, or something of that kind.
It's a downright shame that two young fellows like you, of good
education, and so on, should fall to hacking and battering one another
in this brutal way, and at midnight, too. It's more like assassination
than fighting. A woman in the matter, eh?"

"For heaven's sake, hush, O'Malley."

"All right. I'm not a magistrate. My business is with the bruises, not
with the row, or the cause of the row; but I'm sure it's a woman. Men
don't go ripping one another open for anything else nowadays."

"I swear to you, O'Malley, as far as I am concerned, there was no row,
and that I did not strike him."

"Who else was with you?--although I'm not in the least curious. That
was a tremendous blow. I can't make it out. If he had stabbed you
first, I don't think you could have struck that blow. I can't make it
out. I can't do any more for you now. You mustn't lie on it, you
know."

"O'Malley," said O'Donnell, "I want you to do me a great favour."

"Oh, my dear fellow, you needn't be afraid that I'm going to swear an
information. It's nothing to me if two fellows go hacking and slashing
at one another. I shouldn't like to see either of you killed outright
for the finest woman in creation."

"Do stop, O'Malley, like a good fellow. I'll tell you what you must do
for me. I want you to break the matter to her to-morrow morning the
first thing."

Suddenly the manner of the glib doctor changed. "My dear fellow, I
have been very impertinent, very thoughtless, very rude, and as soon
as you are quite well you shall punch my head, and welcome. I had
clean forgotten that you are going to be married. When you do punch my
head, I hope it won't be quite so terribly as poor Lavirotte's. I'll
do anything in the world I can for you. What am I to say? She's at her
mother's, I suppose."

"Yes; she's at her mother's. The fact is, I don't exactly know what to
say. I can't tell her the truth."

"And you want me to tell her a lie, eh?"

"No, no; I would not be so rude as to ask you to do anything of the
kind. The fact of the matter is, I can tell and trust you----"

"Stop, O'Donnell, don't. Don't tell me anything you want to keep
quiet. If you told me now 'twould be known in China at breakfast-time.
I'm dying to know all about it, but, as your friend, I recommend you
not to tell me a word of it. What shall I tell her?"

"That I have been a little hurt."

"Lie No. 1. You are a good deal hurt."

"That I shall soon be all right."

"Lie No. 2. For a man who wouldn't be so rude as to ask me to tell a
lie, you are getting on marvellously."

"And that you do not know how I got the hurt."

"Truth this time, by Jove, for a change. And most unpleasant truth,
too, for I really am most curious to know."

"Then you shall know."

"No; as your friend I decline to listen. There, I promised to do the
best for you. I'll lie as much as ever I choose, and confound your
politeness for not asking me. There, now, you mustn't speak any more.
You must keep as quiet as possible." And after a few words more of
instruction the busy, talkative little doctor left O'Donnell.

Lavirotte had been put in another room. O'Malley went to him, and
again examined his condition, and then left the hotel.

When O'Donnell was alone, he thought to himself: "I suppose if
Lavirotte recovers, we may be able to hush the matter up. But if he
dies--great heavens, what a thought!--there will be a trial, and how
will it go with me? I can prove nothing. I know nothing of how he came
by this hurt. It will seem to anyone that we fought. It may seem that
I was the aggressor. That I attacked him foully, and killed him
ruthlessly while he was trying to defend his life. This is a terrible
thought. It will drive me mad. Why, they may bring in a verdict of
Murder! They may hang me. Innocent men have been hanged before. Hang
me on the very day that I was to have been married. What can I do for
you, Nellie? What better can I do for you, Nellie, than die here?"




                             CHAPTER VI.


The next morning after the encounter on the road, all nature seemed
refreshed, rehabilitated. The grass sparkled green with rain, the
trees glittered in the sun, the air was pure and cool and sweet. Not a
cloud darkened the sky. The whole world seemed full of joy and lusty
health. One felt that something had occurred, some burden had been
withdrawn from the earth, some portentous influence had retired.

Early bathers were hurrying towards the strand before Dr. O'Malley
was stirring. When he awoke, the events of the previous night at
once flashed into his mind. "Here's a nice pickle," he thought.
"Mysterious event--two men half-killed--both deserve to be killed, no
doubt--eminent medical man called in--eminent medical man treats with
the utmost skill--no confidence beyond confidence in his professional
ability reposed in medical man--medical man entrusted with a
Mission--Mission to console Beauty--infernal nuisance!--infernal
nuisance, Tom O'Malley! I suppose there's nothing for it but to keep
your word, and do half-an-hour's clever lying to this Miracle."

Between seven and eight o'clock the post was delivered in Glengowra.

"I'll wait till I see if there are any letters," said O'Malley to
himself. "My appointment as Surgeon-General to the Forces may at this
moment be the property of Her Majesty's Postmaster-General. I suppose
if they do offer I must accept. Oh, dear! why didn't I think of making
love to this Paragon? Poor girl! It's no laughing matter for her this
morning."

The post brought no letter for Dr. O'Malley, and as soon as the
carrier had gone by, O'Malley put on his hat and set out for the house
where Mrs. Creagh lived.

The postman was still in the street, and O'Malley gradually overtook
him. At the rate the two men walked, allowing for time lost by the
postman in delivering letters, the doctor would arrive at Mrs.
Creagh's half-an-hour before the other. He found all stirring at the
widow's place.

He had some doubt as to whether he should tell the mother first; but,
on second consideration, he decided that Miss Creagh was entitled to
the earliest news. He knocked at the door and was shown in. "When
Nellie entered the room she was dressed in white, the same dress she
had worn that day he threw away the flowers and used words instead. Of
all the things looking fresh to the doctor's eyes that morning she
seemed freshest. The bloom of perfect health was on her cheek, the
light of perfect health was in her eye. She wore no ornament but her
engaged ring and a rose in her hair.

"It's a pity," thought the little doctor, "that such a glorious
creature as that should ever be troubled or grow old. What are kings
and princes and all the powers and vanities of the world--what are all
your Roman triumphs--compared to such amazing perfection?"

"A very early call," he said, "but I was up and I thought I'd look in.
It would be impertinence to ask you how you are. I had a little
business this way, and, as I said, I thought I'd look in."

The girl smiled. Her face remained unclouded.

"I know a call at this hour is not convenient or considerate, but I
had a little thing to say to you."

"Something to say to me?" she said, with a look of gentle surprise.
What could he have to say to her so early? She smiled faintly as
though to encourage him; for now it struck her suddenly that what he
had to say was not pleasant.

"The fact is, a little accident has occurred. I am a doctor, and know
what I am saying. It is the merest scratch. You must not be alarmed.
There now, sit still."

She had risen. All the bloom had now left her cheeks. A little still
lingered at her lips. "You may tell me, Dr. O'Malley. I know he is not
dead. I can see that by your face. Where is he?"

"Sit down. My dear young lady, you are going too fast. Dead! Why he's
nearly as well as ever, and will be better than ever in a short time."

"Tell me all," she said. "May I go to him?"

"I haven't seen him this morning yet. Better wait till after
breakfast."

"Where is he?"

"At Maher's."

"Dr. O'Malley, tell me exactly what has happened."

Something strained and rigid in her voice warned him that he must be
quick if he meant to be merciful. "There was a stupid quarrel of some
kind," he said, "and he got a slight wound--I assure you not in the
least dangerous."

"With whom was the quarrel?"

"With Mr. Lavirotte."

"Mr. Lavirotte--Mr. Lavirotte! Did Mr. Lavirotte _stab_ Eugene?"

"Yes, a mere nothing, though, a pin-hole. You will be angry with me
for causing you any uneasiness when you know how slight it is."

"Why did Lavirotte stab Eugene?"

"Because there was some foolish quarrel; I really don't know what.
It's ridiculous to call the thing a stab; it's a mere scratch."

"Is Lavirotte hurt?"

"Yes; he is more hurt than O'Donnell. But putting the two hurts
together, I assure you they're hardly worth talking of."

The straightforward calmness of this girl was terrifying him. He was
becoming fidgety, and not well able to gauge the value of the words he
used.

"You know the cause of the quarrel?"

"Upon my honour I do not."

"You know the cause of the quarrel. We need not mention it now. You
see how calm I am. You must tell me the truth. Are you sure _neither_
of these men will die?"

"I--I----"

"Mind, _sure?_"

"I am as sure as man can be O'Donnell will not die."

"But Lavirotte will?"

"Lavirotte may. It is impossible to say. I left him unconscious. He is
unconscious still."

"I will not wait till after breakfast. I will go now. Stay a moment--I
must tell mother, and get my hat; I will not keep you long."

As the girl left the room, the postman turned into that street. As she
came into the room again, with her hat and gloves on, the postman
walked up the little garden and handed in a letter. It bore the Dublin
postmark, and was addressed to "Miss Creagh." Her mother, who was in
the hall, took the letter into the room where the doctor and the girl
were standing. "A letter for you, Nellie," the mother said. "Will you
keep it until you come back? It's from Ruth, I think."

"I'll take it with me," said the girl, and put the letter in her
pocket. "Ruth," she said, in the same calm, unmoved voice, "is one of
my pupils in Dublin. Now, Dr. O'Malley, if you are ready, let us go."

"She will not let me go with her," said the mother, in a tone of
concern.

"I am better alone, mother," said the girl, and she turned and moved
out of the room.

O'Malley followed her, and in a few minutes, which were passed in
silence, they were at the hotel. O'Malley went upstairs to the room
where O'Donnell lay.

"All going on well?" he said briskly to the patient. He went through
the ordinary formalities. "Yes," he said, "all going on well. Very
little fever. We shall have you all right in time for your wedding.
You can go away then and pick up strength, amuse yourself for a month
or two."

"Have you seen her?" asked O'Donnell. "How did she take it?"

"Yes, I've seen her. She took it like an angel, like a heroine. I gave
her leave to come and see you later."

"When do you think she'll be here?" asked the invalid.

"Oh, at some reasonable time. Young ladies don't visit at eight
o'clock in the morning. You'll promise to keep yourself quiet when she
does come?"

"Very quiet. Did she get a great shock?"

"Not so much a shock as a turn. Will you promise to be very quiet if I
let her come soon? The fact is, O'Donnell, she will be here in a few
minutes. There, of course, you guessed it; she is here already; she
came with me. Now I'll go down, and she may come up and see you, but
you must not talk too much."

While the brisk little doctor was preparing O'Donnell for the visit of
Nellie, the latter took out her letter and began to read it. Suddenly
her face, which had been pallid ever since she heard the bad news,
flushed, and she uttered an exclamation of dismay. "Such news," she
cried, "and on this morning!" The letter ran as follows:

"My dear Nellie, I told you I would write you if there was any news.
There is news, and very bad news, I am sorry to say. Papa came home in
the middle of the day quite unexpectedly, and told mamma that all was
over and we were ruined. I don't think it's known in town yet, but
mother told me everyone would know it to-morrow. This is dreadful.
Mamma and papa are awfully cut up. I write you this news at once,
because, of course, dear, you are greatly interested in Mr. O'Donnell,
and his father is in some way mixed up with papa. I hope it will not
hurt your _friend_." Then followed an account of some family matters,
and the signature, "Ruth Vernon."

"I must not say a word of this to Eugene now," she thought. "He told
me his father was very largely mixed up with Mr. Vernon. Of course I
could not tell Eugene. I feared there was something wrong there, but I
was bound in honour, and by my promise to Ruth, not to speak of it to
anybody living. When I met him first on the beach, and Lavirotte
introduced us, I was greatly struck by the coincidence that I should
meet him, knowing as I did, that he might suffer greatly if anything
happened to Mr. Vernon."

In a few minutes O'Malley came down and said she might go up. "He is
getting on well," he said cheerfully, "and there's nothing in the
world to fear."

That day went over quietly at Glengowra. Early in the afternoon
Lavirotte recovered consciousness. The police had got scent of the
affair, and were making inquiries.

In the afternoon news reached the village that the great banking-house
of Vernon and Son had failed for an enormous sum. It was kept from
O'Donnell, but Lavirotte heard it. "I must telegraph to London," he
said. "Someone must write the telegram for me." The body of the
message ran as follows:

"Vernon and Son bankrupt. See about your money at once. Am ill, and
cannot go over."

When the telegram reached London it was delivered to a young woman of
twenty years of age, who grew pale and flushed, and flushed and pale
again, upon reading it. "What?" she cried, "Dominique ill. My darling
suffering and I not near him. I will leave to-night for Glengowra.
Stop! I must get money somewhere first. I have none, not a penny--the
attorney told me he would have my money to-day. These people are
pressing me for the rent. They are hateful creatures. I will go
to the solicitor at once. I can pay what I owe then, and go over by
to-night's mail."

She put on her things. The landlady was waiting in the hall. The
landlady would feel obliged if Miss Harrington would give her the rent
now, before going out. She really must insist on being paid now. She
could not afford to give six weeks' credit, and she had had an
application for the rooms. There were six guineas for the rooms and
ten guineas for meat and drink, sixteen in all. Would Miss Harrington
pay or leave, please?

Miss Harrington would pay upon her return from her solicitor.

Oh, that old story about the solicitor! People could not go on
believing this old tale for ever. If Miss Harrington did not bring the
money with her, she need not come back that day. Whatever she had
upstairs would not pay half the bill, and indeed Miss Harrington ought
not to go out with her watch and chain and leave struggling people so
pressed for money.

The tears were now falling fast from the young girl's eyes. She was
alone, friendless, in London. She had not a coin in her possession.
She took off her watch and chain and laid them silently upon the hall
table. She made a great effort at self-control, and said, pointing to
the third finger of her left hand: "I have nothing else of value but
this. Shall I leave it also? It was given to me by one very dear to
me."

"It would help," said the landlady, "and I have my husband and
children to think of."

Then she took off the ring--his ring--the ring he had given her to
wear until he gave her a simpler one with a holier meaning. She put
the ring down on the table beside the watch and chain. Then her heart
hardened against this woman, and no more tears came, and bowing
slightly she said good-bye and left the place, meaning never to
return.

She went to her solicitor's. He was away. Would his managing clerk do?

Yes, anyone who could give her information about her affairs.

The managing clerk had bad news--it was terrible news indeed. They had
not been able to get the money from Vernon and Son. Vernon and Son
were bankrupts according to to-day's reports, and all her money was
gone.

Would there be none of it coming to her?

No. Owing to the way in which the money was lent there was no chance
of getting any back.

Then she left the office, homeless, friendless, penniless. She had not
even a shilling to telegraph to him--her Dominique. Whither should she
go? Where should she turn?

To the river.




                             CHAPTER VII.


Dora Harrington found herself in the Strand, in the full light of a
summer's day, homeless, friendless, penniless. Her last chance was
gone. Vernon and Son, who held all the money she owned in the world,
had failed, and failed in such a way as to leave no prospect of her
ever getting a penny out of the five thousand pounds confided to them.

She was an orphan, and had spent much of her life out of these
kingdoms. She knew nothing of business. Mr. Kempston, her solicitor,
had been appointed her guardian, with full discretionary powers as to
the disposal of her property. She and he had not agreed too well, for
she had wished to marry Lavirotte, and he had opposed her desires. She
had wished to get control of her property, and had been denied, and
the relations between her guardian and herself had of late been most
straitened. Only for his good-humour in the matter there would have
been an open rupture. He had politely, but firmly, refused to agree to
either of her suggestions. She had impulsively, warmly protested
against what she called his interference in her affairs.

Two years ago she had first met Lavirotte. She was then a young girl
of eighteen. She met him at a concert of amateurs in London. He made
love to her, and she fell in love with him. He proposed, and she had
accepted. Then he explained his position.

He was not rich enough to marry. She told him she had a little
money--she thought about five thousand pounds. He laughed, and said
that might be enough for one, but was no good for two, adding,
bitterly, that he did not know how he could possibly advance himself
in the world. He was then the only photographer in the small town or
village of Glengowra, and the chance of his getting into any better
way of making money did not seem likely to him.

"You sing very well," she said. "You have a good voice, and you know
music. Have you never thought of music as a profession?"

He had never thought of music as a profession until then. He was only
twenty-two at the time. He knew very well he could not afford to go to
Italy or even to the Conservatoire. He had no money laid by, nor was
there any likelihood of his having money to lay by.

Then she suggested that he should borrow some of her. To this he would
not listen. If he were not able to attain a competency himself, he
would never put it in the power of fools to say that he had climbed
into a profession aided by anyone, least of all by his future wife.

After much talk and expostulation on her side, he was induced to agree
to accept the loan of a few hundred pounds. Then it was that she went
to her solicitor and guardian, told him she had made up her mind with
regard to her future, and that the man of her choice was a Frenchman,
by name Lavirotte, and by profession a photographer in the town of
Glengowra, in Ireland.

The solicitor was considerably surprised, and said he should not be
able to come to any decision for a few days. Mr. Kempston was a
bachelor, and had no means of taking care of his ward beyond the
ordinary appliances of his profession. He could not invite her to his
bachelor home, and her income was not sufficiently large to warrant
him in appointing a lady companion or chaperon of any kind; all he
could do in her interest was to find her moderately comfortable
lodgings, and see that she regularly received the dividends on her
shares in the banking concern of Vernon and Son.

Mr. Kempston was the sole surviving executor and trustee to her
father's will, and in the exercise of his discretion he had invested
her five thousand pounds in shares of Vernon and Son, Unlimited. She
knew nothing whatever of business, and Mr. Kempston's managing clerk,
in alluding to her money as lent to the bankrupt firm, was simply
using popular language, and attorning to the ignorance of business
inherent in the female mind. He knew very well that she, being a
shareholder, had not only lost all the money she owned, but was liable
to the very last shred of her possessions for any further demands
which might be made upon her with regard to this failure. He had felt
himself fully justified in telling her she had lost all her fortune,
that she was, in fact, a pauper; but he had not felt himself called
upon to explain that later on she would appear in the light of a
defaulter.

Dora Harrington, now an outcast from home, and fortune, and friends,
found herself in the great city of London absolutely without resources
of any kind. Her money was gone, she knew. Her guardian and she were
no more than business correspondents. Her lover's position in
Glengowra forbade the hope he might ever be able to marry her, and she
had within herself no art or knowledge by which she could hope to earn
a living.

What was now to be done? Where should she eat that evening? Where
should she sleep that night?

Nowhere!

Where was nowhere?

The river.

And yet to be only twenty years of age, and beautiful, as she had been
told, and still driven to the river by the mere fact of a few pounds
this way or that, seemed terribly hard to one who knew she had done no
harm.

If he were but near her! But he was poor and hurt, and it would only
help his pain if he knew that she had been cruelly hurt by fortune.
And yet, how could she live? Where could she go? Whither should she
turn? The world of life seemed closed against her, and only the
portals of death seemed fit for her escape.

To be so young, to love and be loved, and yet to have no avenue before
one but that leading to the ghastly tomb, appeared hard indeed.

It is true that of late her Dominique had seemed less eager in his
haste to write to her, less fervent in his expressions, less tender in
his regard. But this may have been owing to his sense of inability to
face the future with her maintenance added to the charges upon his
slender means. There was no prospect of his advancing himself to any
substantial result. He had written her, saying he had devoted much of
his time lately to the cultivation of his voice and the art of music.
That, in fact, he was now leading tenor in the choir of the church.
But he was careful to explain to her that this meant no financial
advancement, and that in fact it was to him the source of some small
losses of time and money. Besides, there was no one in Glengowra who
knew much of music save the two organists, and the knowledge of even
these was not of much use to anyone who had to think purely of voice
culture as opposed to instrumentalism.

In the present there seemed no germ of hope. The future was a blank,
or worse than a blank. And to-day, now, this hour, was an intolerable
burden which could not be endured.

And yet how was she to remove it? How was she to get from under this
crushing sense of ruin? It was plain to her that the ardour of his
affection was cooling, not owing to any indifference on his part to
herself, but owing to the fact that he recognised, even with the
prospect of her five thousand pounds a year hence, the impossibility
of their union.

Now that five thousand pounds had vanished wholly, and the possibility
of their marriage had been reduced to an almost certain negative.

What should she do? What was there to be done? The answer to this
question did not admit of any delay. Between this moment and the
moment of absolute want was but an hour, two hours, three hours, a
condition which must arise absolutely by sunset. She could do nothing.
It was possible to walk about the streets, no doubt, until death
overtook her; but why should she wait for death. If Death were coming,
why should she not go and meet him half-way?

Still it was hard to die. To die now in the full summer, when one was
young and full of health, although bankrupt in hope, when the sun was
bright, and the air was clear, and great London at its most beautiful.
To die now without even the chance of communicating with him,
Dominique?

He, too, was ill, dying perhaps. Yes, he was dying. His affection
towards her seemed waning. He had no worldly prospect, and her little
fortune was wholly gone. If death would only come in some pleasant
shape she would greet it gladly; but the notion of wooing death was
cold and repugnant. The waters of the river were chill, and full of
noises and foul contagion. People had not willed themselves into life;
why should they not be allowed to will themselves out of it?

For hours she walked along the crowded streets of London. Moment by
moment faintness and the sense of dereliction grew upon her. The
active troubles of the morning had passed away, and were now succeeded
by a dull numbing sense of hopelessness. She had no longer the energy
to protest against her fate. She moved through the crowded ways
without hope, without fear, without anticipation, without
retrospection. She had the dull, dead sense of being an impertinence
in life, nothing more. She wished that life were done with her. Life
was now a tyrannical taskmaster, who obliged her to walk on endlessly,
with no goal in view; who compelled her to pass among this infinite
multitude, debarred of all sympathy with them, of all participation in
their joys.

At length the sun fell, and minute by minute the busy streets grew
stiller. The great human tide of London was ebbing to the cool and
leafy suburbs.

She found herself in a neighbourhood which she had never before
trodden. She had passed St. Paul's, going east, and then turned down
some dark, deserted way, until she found the air growing cooler and
the place stiller.

"I must be near the Thames," she thought. "Fate is directing my steps.
The future is a blank. Let the present be death."

She was now beginning to feel faint from physical exhaustion. She had
sought that solitary way because she found she could no longer walk
steadily. She had eaten nothing that day.

It was now close to midnight. This place seemed so sequestered, so far
away from the feet of men, that she felt she might lie down and sleep
until the uprousing of the great city. But she thought:

"If I sleep here, I shall wake here, and what good will that be to me?
If I sleep in the river, I shall wake--Elsewhere."

She found herself under a square tower. She leaned against the wall,
irresolute or faint. She moaned, but uttered no word. In a few moments
she placed her hand against the wall and pushed herself from it, as
though repelling a final entreaty. Then she staggered down the street
and into a narrow laneway that led to the river.




                            CHAPTER VIII.


It was midnight, and as silent as the grave. The quality of the
silence was peculiar; for although no sound stirred the air close at
hand, there was, beyond the limits at which the ear could detect
individual sounds, from minute to minute a tone of deep murmur, which
would have been like the noises of a distant sea but that it was
pulseless.

Overhead hung an impenetrable cloud of darkness. There was no moon, no
star, no light from the north. Looking right overhead, one saw
nothing, absolutely nothing. The eyes of the living were, when turned
towards the sky, as useless as the eyes of the dead. But casting the
eyes down, one could see roofs, and towers, and spires, and domes, dim
and ghastly in the veiled underlight, glowing upward from the streets
of a vast city.

No wind stirred. The broad river, with its radial gleams of light
shooting towards the lamps, moved no more than an inland lake into
which no stream whispers, from which no stream hurries forth. It was
high water.

Looking down from the giddy height, no moving forms could be seen, a
policeman had passed under a little while ago, and none would pass
again for a little while more, except some thief on his way to plunder
the living, or some poor, troubled, outcast brother on his way to the
river to join the silent confraternity of the dead.

The leads were slippery with dew and green slime; the battlements were
clammy and cold. To look straight down one should raise himself
slightly on the parapet of the embrasure. Then he saw a perpendicular
chasm, two hundred feet deep on his side, a hundred feet deep on the
side opposite. On the four sides of the leads were four such chasms,
and in all of them lay the dark heavy gloom of that summer night, save
where once in each cleft there burned a fiery point--the gas-lamp--to
scare the unlawful and light the harmless through the silent
ways--part of the mighty city-labyrinth lying below.

On the leads it was impossible to see anything. From parapet to
parapet, from battlement to battlement, from embrasure to embrasure
was to the eye a purposeless void. It was impossible to guide the
movements except by the sense of touch; for although when one gazed
downward on the roofs below, the chequered glow hanging above the
street gave the eye purpose, when one drew back from the parapet all
was dark, the dull reflection of the city's light did not reach upward
far enough to illume the open space within the four walls.

Yet there was life and motion on those leads, in that darkness set in
the solitude. A heavy, slow tread could be heard now and then, and now
and then groans, and now and then words of protest and anger, bitter
reproach, tremulous entreaty, fierce invective, and passionate
lamentation. The voice was high and quavering like that of a woman
overwrought, or a man overwrought or broken down by sorrows or by
years. Then these sounds would cease, the footsteps, the groans, the
words, and the silence of a blind cave in which no water dripped, and
which harboured only the whispering and confounded echoes of a far-off
stream, fell upon the place and filled out the measure of its
isolation.

The slow measured tread of the policeman broke in once more upon the
listening ear, gained, reached its height, and was lost in the still
ocean of darkness.

"I am accursed. Nothing favours me. All is against me. No wind! No
rain! Wind and rain are my only friends. They are the only things
which can now be of service to me, and for a week there has been
neither."

The querulous, complaining voice was hushed. The shuffling feet moved
rapidly across the leads. Then all was still once more. Stop! what is
that? In the street below an echo to the wail above? No words can be
heard, yet the purport of the voice is unmistakable.

The listener catches the import of those tones. He has heard similar
sounds before.

"It is a woman," he says. "Men never whine here, and at this hour,
going that way! In a quarter of an hour it will be all over with her.
A quarter of an hour! How long have I been here, slaving and toiling
day and night, carrying away bit by bit what lies between me and
affluence, and to think that in a quarter of an hour, from one bell of
the clock of St. Paul's to the next, I might find an end to all my
hopes, and fears, and labours, and lie at peace, as far as this world
is. Hark! Why does she pause beneath? She cannot suspect, no one can
suspect why I am here. All the dreary months of terror and sweat that
I have spent here never drew from me one word, one sign which could
give a clue."

The figure of a woman in the street below could be seen dimly on the
other side of the way. She leaned against the wall, irresolute or
faint. She moaned, but uttered no word. In a few moments she placed
her hand against the wall and pushed herself from it as though
repelling a final entreaty. Then she staggered down the street and
into a narrow laneway that led to the river.

"She is gone," said the voice in the darkness. "She is taking all her
troubles with her to the greasy Thames. Why should not I, too, take
all my troubles thither and end my care? A quarter past! Before the
half-hour strikes, I and my secret, my great secret, might be gone for
ever. Has she a secret, or is it only the poor want of bread and
shelter, or is it unkindness, a hope destroyed, love outraged,
affection slighted? Why should I inquire?"

From the narrow lane into which she had struck, a moan reached the
listener's ears.

"She is in no great haste. This is not the despair of sudden ruin to
life or hopes. Her misfortunes have crawled gradually upon her, with
palsied feet and blows that maddened because they never ceased--not
brave blows that drive one furious and to swift despair. _I_ am the
victim of this slow despair. Why should I drag out wearily, toilfully,
in terrors that I make myself, the end of my old life?"

Again the woman groaned.

"Curse her! Can she not go? Who minds a woman more or less in the
world? The world is overstocked with them. No one is here to pity her.
Why should she pity herself? It would be a mercy to her to take her
and lead her to the brink and push her in. Why, it would shorten all
her pains. Curse her, there she groans again. No rain, no wind to help
me, and only these groans for a goad to my despair. I will not hear
them any longer. My own troubles are more than I can bear. Stay! That
is a lucky thought. I'll go down and tell her that the police are
here, coming for her, and that she has not a moment to spare."

Again the woman's voice was heard.

"Forty years ago I could not take that voice so coldly, for all women
were then to me the sisters of one; my sweetheart then, my wife, the
mother of my children, now the tenant of the neglected grave miles and
miles and miles away out there. Now all the children dwell in houses
such as hers, and with her and them went out the life of me. I never
cared to see the younger brood, for when my wife died it seemed to me
that all who loved me, or whom I loved, came to me but to die, and so
I steeled my heart against the new brood and slunk into myself, shut
myself out from them and all the world, and took to lonely ways and
solitude until I came to this."

For a while no sound reached the ear. At last there was a sob, not a
woman's voice this time, but a man's.

"I hardened my heart against them, and the world seemed to have
hardened its heart against me. I am lonely and alone. There is no
wind. There is no rain. There has been no wind or rain for weeks. For
weeks I have been ready for either, and either will not come. Twice a
day the river gains its full height, asking me to go with it out of my
loneliness and my toil. Heaven will not send rain or wind to me.
Heaven took my wife and happiness. Heaven sent the river to me. I have
often thought of going. I cannot leave this place and live. I cannot
stay in this place and live. Hark! I hear the first rippling of the
river as it turns its footsteps towards the sea. What sound is that?
She! Five minutes by the clock and all will be over with her. What?
Striking half-past? Idiot that I am! Why should I burden myself with
the despairs of another hour? I shall await the five minutes. For
I should not care to be--disturbed. I should not care to hear or
see--anything of her. I am alone. I would go alone. I am in no humour
for company. I am too big with my own griefs to care for those of
others. I have feasted on sorrow until I have grown enormous,
colossal, distended beyond human shape. Let my great secret die with
me. Let me die alone. I am a giant in the land of woes. I am Giant
Despair. She has closed the door behind her ere this. It is time for
me to knock. I have no farewells to take. That is lucky. Not one heart
in all London will beat one beat more or one beat less when I am
gone."

The feet trod the leads more vigorously than before. Then a step was
heard descending the ladder.




                             CHAPTER IX.


St. Prisca's Tower stands alone in Porter Street, hard by the Thames,
on the Middlesex side, and between Blackfriars Bridge and the Tower of
London. It is all that now remains, all that remained on that night,
of St. Prisca's Church. City improvements had swept away the main
portion of the building, and on that silent summer night, when that
man descended from the leads of the tower, this square structure rose
up, a mighty isolated shaft, two hundred feet above the pavement of
the street and the three small alleys which skirted its other sides.

In a short time after the voice ceased finally on the roof, the figure
of a man--Lionel Crawford--emerged from the gloomy darkness of the
tower door, and stood in the light of the lamp.

Lionel Crawford was a man of sixty-five years of age, bent in the
shoulders, and a little feeble in the legs. His walk was shuffling and
uncertain, but still he seemed capable of great physical effort, if he
chose to exert himself. His face was dark, and of a leathery colour.
His eyes were dark, almost black, and protruded a little. His mouth
was large, the lips full and heavy, the teeth still white and sound.
The forehead was broad and high, and strongly marked with wrinkles,
perpendicular and horizontal, dividing the forehead into four parts.
Two smooth, wide, arch-shaped spaces stood up over the brows, and
above them, slightly retreating, two smooth convex expanses. His hands
were large, ill-made, knotty. In the lamp-light he took off the soft
felt hat he was wearing and disclosed a head bald to the apex, but
having still around its lower edges and behind a thick covering of
curly black hair. He was dressed in clothes which had been those of a
gentleman at one time, but were now nothing more than the meanest
device for covering the body and keeping it warm.

When Lionel Crawford had stood in the light of the lamp for a short
time he drew himself up to his full height, inflated his lungs, and
looked around defiantly. To judge by his face, defiance was an
attitude familiar to his mind. But here was no one to see it, only the
callous walls, the imperturbable night.

From the top of the tower he had marked the way taken by the woman. It
was a continuation of the narrow alley into which the door of the
tower opened. It led directly to the river, and in order to reach it
from where he stood it was necessary to cross Porter Street.

Once more the measured tread of the policeman was heard approaching.
Lionel Crawford drew himself back into the deep doorway of the tower,
and waited until the footsteps had passed the end of the alley and
died away in the distance. Then he issued forth, turned to his left
out of the doorway, crossed Porter Street with a brisk step, and
plunged into the narrow way the woman had taken. Before he had gone
ten yards the place became as dark as a vault; it was impossible to
see a yard ahead, and only that he knew the place well, he could not
have proceeded without feeling his way.

No ordinary man in an ordinary state of mind would, at such an hour,
venture into that narrow, dark, forbidding way. But Lionel Crawford
was an exceptional man, in an abnormal state of mind.

From the time he left the top of the tower until he obliterated
himself in the darkness, his mind had been in a dull lethargic state.
He fully intended putting an end to his existence that night. That was
his only thought. He should walk down to the end of that narrow lane.
At the end of that narrow lane was a wharf, and from the edge of this
wharf to the surface of the water he had only a few feet to fall. Then
all would be as good as over, for he could not swim, and it was not
likely--the chance was one to a thousand--there would be anyone there
to attempt a rescue.

Notwithstanding his familiarity with the place, he abated his pace a
little and walked more with his old shuffling gait than when he had
the light to guide him. All at once he stumbled and fell.

"What is this!" he cried, as he tried to rise. His feet were entangled
in something soft, which yielded this way and that, and for a while
hindered him from rising. At last he rose, and leaning against the
wall for breath, rubbed the sweat from his forehead. His faculties
were numbed, and for a few moments he scarcely knew where he was or
whither he had been going. The first thing he clearly recalled was
that he had entered Winter Lane. Then he realised the fact that in the
dark he had tripped over something now lying at his feet.

"But," he thought, "what can be here? What can be lying here at such
an hour? I was down here to-day and the place was clear. Now I
remember I had intended going to the river. I had calculated on no one
being at hand to prevent me. Fool that I was! How could I have
forgotten the watchman of the wharf. I dared not throw into the river
the stones I get up with so much labour, lest he might hear me and
hand me over to the police."

He now was standing over what had tripped him. He stooped down and
felt carefully, slowly, around him. His hand touched a face--a smooth,
beardless face--the hat of a woman.

What was this? A woman lying prostrate here, and at such an hour. He
seized the form by the shoulders, and shook it.

"What are you doing here?" he said. "Wake up. What are you doing
here?"

There was a slight motion in the form of the woman. She made an effort
to rise. He helped her.

"What do you mean, woman," he said angrily, "by going to sleep in such
a place at such a time, and tripping up an old man who is on his way
to--his Friend?"

The woman answered in a feeble voice:

"I don't remember exactly how it was. I did not go to sleep. I think I
must have fainted."

"But this is no place for you to be, woman, at this hour of night."

"I did not mean to stop here," she said. "I meant to go to--the
River."

"_You_ meant to go to the River--to my friend, the River? So did _I_.
You faint and trip me up. That may be an omen of good luck to both of
us. Come, although there is neither rain nor wind I feel in better
humour now. Are you hungry?"

"I have no friend--no money."

"Are you young?"

"Twenty years of age."

"Too young to think of death. Come with me. It cannot have been a mere
accident that brought us two together. Come with me, my child. I am
old enough to be your grandfather. Stop!" he cried, suddenly. "What is
that? Did you notice anything?"

"No," answered the woman feebly.

"Do you know it _rains?_" he said. The tone of despondency at once
left his voice, and was succeeded by one of exultation. "I told you,"
he said, "we did not meet for nothing. I have been praying and cursing
for rain. I meet you, and here the rain is. Twenty," he said, "and
tired of life! Nay, nay; that will not do. You have a sweetheart? I
was young myself once."

"Yes."

"And he is false?"

"No, no. He is ill and poor."

"I am alone, old, childless, friendless. You have stopped me on my way
to the river, and brought the rain. One day, at any hour, I may be
rich. If I live to win my gold, I shall share with you and your lad.
It would be a piteous thing that a sweetheart of twenty should die.
Come with me; cheer up and come with me." He drew her arm through his
and led her in the direction of the tower. "Sweetheart," he said, "it
makes one young again to think of saving love. I cannot see your face
or figure; but all are sweethearts at twenty. What is his name?"

"He is French," said she.

"French! What is his name?"

"Dominique Lavirotte."

"Dominique Lavirotte!"




                              CHAPTER X.


When Lavirotte returned to consciousness, the day after the encounter
on the road, he seemed to have but a hazy notion of what had occurred,
and yet to have known that caution was necessary. He found one of the
women of the house seated in the room. He asked her had he been hurt,
and how he had been hurt.

She said: "I don't exactly know. Mr. O'Donnell and you came here
together. He is hurt, too."

"Much?"

"His shoulder is cut, I believe. They tell me he is not very bad.
Maybe you know something about it?"

"My head is hurt," he said, "and I cannot remember well. There is no
danger he will die, is there?"

"The doctor says no, but that he'll want good caring."

Then for a long time Lavirotte was silent.

"What does Eugene say about it?" he asked at length. "Does he know how
he was hurt or how I was hurt?"

"They did not tell me. I do not know."

"Will you take my compliments to Mr. O'Donnell, and ask him if he
remembers what happened?"

"I don't think I'd get much for my trouble if I did. The police have
been here already trying to find out about the matter, and Mr.
O'Donnell refused to tell them anything."

"Refused to tell them anything! Dear Eugene! dearest Eugene. Most
loyal of friends! I always loved him."

Then there was another long interval of silence.

"Who is with my dear friend Eugene?"

"I don't know who is with him now. His father and mother were here
early in the day. They have bad news I am told. Some great man in
Dublin is closed."

"Some great man in Dublin. Did you hear his name?"

"No; but they say it will be very bad for old Mr. O'Donnell."

"Will you ask Mr. Maher to come this way?"

When the landlord entered, he said: "Who is the great man that has
failed in Dublin?"

"Mr. Vernon."

"Ah, Mr. Vernon. So I guessed. This will be bad for the poor
O'Donnells."

"There are other things bad for the poor O'Donnells as well," said the
landlord, bitterly.

"I am sincerely sorry for my dear friends. You know, Mr. Maher, they
are the dearest friends I have on earth."

"Ah!" cried the other sarcastically.

"I must telegraph to London. Someone must write the telegram for me."

"I will," said the landlord, grudgingly.

"You are always so kind," said the invalid; "always so kind! You Irish
are, I believe, the kindest-hearted race in all the world."

"And sometimes we get nice pay for our pains."

Then the telegram to Dora Harrington was written.

"Have Mr. and Mrs. O'Donnell left, or are they with their son yet?"

"Mr. O'Donnell is gone back to Rathclare. Mrs. O'Donnell is with Mr.
Eugene. It's a sorrowful business."

"And nobody else?"

"Eh?"

"And there is nobody else with Mr. Eugene O'Donnell?"

"I say it's a sorrowful business."

"Dreadful. I am profoundly sorry."

"Eh?"

"A sorrowful business, I say, about the failure of the bank."

"Eh?"

"My dear Maher, you are growing deaf. You ought to see to this matter
at once. Dr. O'Malley is a very clever man. You ought to mention the
matter to him."

"That'll do, now. You're bad, and I don't want to say anything to you.
But my ears are wide enough to hear what they say."

"Who are _they_ that _say_, and what do _they say?_"

"_They say_ that you stabbed Mr. Eugene O'Donnell, one of the
pleasantest gentlemen that ever put a foot in Glengowra."

"But he himself denies it."

"He doesn't."

"When the police came he would not tell them anything."

"More fool he! But there, there--I won't say any more. This is against
Dr. O'Malley's orders. He said you were not to be allowed to speak, or
excite yourself. You may say what you like now, Mr. Lavirotte; I'll
say no more. I'll obey Dr. O'Malley."

"One more question and I have done. Is there anyone but Mrs. O'Donnell
with Eugene?"

"Yes, Miss Creagh."

"Thanks; I am very much obliged to you. I will trouble you no more
now."

When the servant returned to the room, he said to her: "What a kind
man your master is. Notwithstanding his belief that I made an attack
upon Mr. Eugene O'Donnell, he was good enough to write a telegram for
me, and to tell me some of the town gossip. I hear that Miss Creagh is
in the sick room. I want you to do me a great favour, if you please.
Take my compliments to Miss Creagh, and say I would feel greatly
obliged if she would favour me with a few moments' conversation."

The attendant drew herself up. "It's not likely," she said, "Miss
Creagh would come near you. When I was coming up, Mr. Maher told me
you were not to talk or excite yourself."

"Do as I tell you, woman," he said sharply, "or I will get up out of
this bed and dash myself out of the window, and you will be the cause
of my death, and have to answer for it."

The servant was cowed. She rose timidly and left the room. Almost
immediately the door reopened, and Ellen Creagh entered, followed by
the servant. Her pallor was now gone, and although her cheeks and lips
had not the depth of bloom usually on them, she looked nearly her own
self.

She smiled faintly as she approached the bed on which Lavirotte lay.
"You wish to speak to me, and I have come."

"Yes," he said, "I wish to speak to you. May it be with you alone?" He
looked at the servant in the doorway.

She motioned the servant to withdraw, and then came close to the bed.

"Miss Creagh," he said, "they tell me he will get better. They tell me
he has given no account of what took place last night to--the police.
Has he told you what occurred?"

"He has," she said; "to me, and to me only. He said to his mother that
the secret was one concerning three only."

"He and I being two, and you the third?"

"Yes," she said. "What do you wish me to do?"

"First of all to forgive me, if you can."

"I forgive you freely. He says you must have been mad."

"I was," he said, "stark, raving mad. I was not responsible for what I
did. I am in the most grievous despair about the matter."

"He is sorry he injured you; but it was in self-defence."

"_He_ injure me! Not he. What put that into his mind? _I_ injured him.
I will not pain you by telling you what I did. It was not I did it; it
was a maniac, a demon. You must tell him quickly he did not injure me.
In self-defence, in trying to guard himself against an accursed
madman, he sought to throw me. We both fell close to a rock at the end
of the cove road, and my head struck the rock. You will tell him this,
will you not, Miss Creagh? It will relieve his mind. It will relieve
the mind of my dear friend, my dearest Eugene."

"He will be glad to hear he did not do it, but sorry to know you are
so much hurt. He does not blame you at all. He says his great anxiety
to be up is that he may come to you and shake your hand."

The tears stood in Lavirotte's eyes.

"God bless my boy," he cried. "God bless my boy, Eugene. I am not
worthy to know him. I am not worthy to know you. I am not worthy to
live. I am not fit to die. I am an outcast from earth, from heaven,
and from hell."

"Just before I left him to come and see you"--the young girl's colour
heightened slightly--"I took his hand to say good-bye to him, even for
this little time," she smiled. "I took his hand in mine; in this
hand," holding out her right. "He said to me, 'You will tell Lavirotte
I am sorry I cannot shake his hand.'"

She stretched out her right hand to his right hand lying on the
counterpane. "If I take your hand now, it will be the nearest thing to
touching his."

"Yes," said Lavirotte eagerly, "it will be touching a hand that is
dearer to him than his own." He took the warm white hand in his, and
raised it to his lips reverentially. "Now, the favour I have to ask of
you is this: it far exceeds in magnitude the one I first thought of
asking you."

"What is it?" she said, briskly. "I am sure I shall be able to grant
it."

"You will ask him to let me be his best man at your wedding."

Again the young girl .

"I will, if you wish it, and I am sure he will consent."

"Will you ask him, for then I shall have something to say to you?"

She left the room and returned in a few minutes.

"Nothing will give him greater pleasure. He is delighted at the
notion. He would have asked you only----" Here she paused.

"I understand," he said. "Only for what occurred once between you and
me. I am told there is bad news, the worst news, of Vernon and Son
to-day. Do you believe in fate?"

"I do not believe in fate."

"I do," he said, "implicitly. I believe it was fated that you and I
should never be more than friends, and that you and he should be
everything to one another. And now fate appears to me in a new aspect.
There is a chance--a very slender one, I admit--nay, a wonderful,
foolish chance that I may one day come into some money, not in the
ordinary way of succession, but by a romantic event. I will be
perfectly frank with you. I will make a confession to you which I have
made to no one else here. It will damage me more in your opinion than
it could in the opinion of anyone else living. When I said those words
to you that day in the boat, I was engaged to be married to someone
now in London."

The girl started. "You--you were not serious that day, you know. You
only meant to pay me a compliment."

"No, no," the wounded man cried quickly. "I meant ten thousand times
more than I said. But there--let us drop that subject for ever. I am
only too glad to think of it no more. I offered you my hand when it
was not mine to give, and when you promised to give yours to another I
tried to kill him. No man could have been baser or more unworthy than
I. And yet there is a use in my baseness, for has it not given him an
opportunity of forgiving me--fine-hearted gentleman as he is--and you
of showing me that you are the noblest as well as the most beautiful
woman alive?"

"You are too hard upon yourself, and too generous to--us," the girl
said, colouring. "I must not stay if you will talk in this fashion."

"Yes, stay by all means," he said, "for I have not done speaking yet.
I will say no more on that topic. I have another secret to tell you.
It will take some time. It is not unpleasant. It is, in fact,
connected with the only property I own, and the possible consequence
of my owning it. It is situated in London. It is only the tower of an
old church--St. Prisca's, in Porter Street, by the Thames. I own that
tower. It was built many hundred years ago. The rest of the church has
been pulled down----"

"Here is Dr. O'Malley," said the girl.

"Miss Creagh," cried the doctor in astonishment. "You here!"




                             CHAPTER XI.


Mr. William Vernon was a venerable, benevolent-looking man of seventy
years of age. His hair was white, his figure slightly stooped, his
manner gentle, kindly, plausible.

Until the crash came, everyone believed he was the most prosperous man
in the city of Dublin. He had three fine private houses--one in
Dublin, a seaside residence at Bray, and a castle in Monaghan. His
income was believed to be somewhere between twenty and forty thousand
a year, and it was believed that he lived well within it. His savings
were said to be enormous, and the general conviction was that he could
retire in splendour on his money, invested at home and abroad.

Now all was confusion and dismay among those connected with him in
business. So great was the excitement, two policemen had to be told
off to guard the door of the bank. Men and women, too, who were
depositors or shareholders, refused to believe the news, and came down
to the bank to see with their own eyes confirmation of the report.
There, sure enough, were the massive oak, iron-studded doors closed in
their faces, never again to be opened.

As the hours rolled on, the depth and breadth of the calamity
increased steadily. People who were supposed to have had nothing
whatever to do with the bank divulged, in the excitement of the
moment, the secret that they were shareholders or depositors. The
credit of the whole city was shaken. Who could be safe when the great
house of Vernon and Son had collapsed?

Before nightfall three other large houses had suspended payment. They
had gone down into the vortex. Then it began to be realised that not
only had the shareholders lost all their money invested in shares, but
that every man who, as principal or trustee, held even one of these
shares, was liable to the last shilling he had in the world.

It had over and over again been suggested by outside shareholders that
the business should be formed into a limited company. William Vernon
always shook his head at this, and said that if you limit the
responsibility you limit the enterprise, and so reduce the profits.
They were paying twelve per cent. on capital--did they want to cut
down the earnings to eight? He assured them it would <DW36> the whole
concern seriously, and he, for one, would retire from any
responsibility if such a course were urged upon him. It had been
suggested to him, in advocacy of this scheme, that limiting the
company would enormously diminish the risk of the shareholders in case
disaster should overtake the bank. He had replied to this with a shrug
of his shoulders, a smile of half pity, half amusement, and said: "If
you have any fear, why not sell out? If you have any confidence in my
word of honour, you need have no occasion for fear."

Mr. William Vernon had the reputation of unblemished honour. He was,
moreover, an exceedingly pious man, belonging to one of the most rigid
forms of dissent. No one questioned his word; no one sold out; and now
all were ruined.

Mr. Vernon had married late in life. Mrs. Vernon was twenty-five years
his junior. His elder daughter, Ruth, was now fifteen years of age;
his younger, Miriam, twelve. He had but these two children.

Mrs. Vernon was a large, florid, comely woman, who, twenty years ago,
when she was married, had been considered a beauty. She was now no
longer beautiful. She was a well-favoured matron of forty-five, with
an exaggerated notion of the importance of her husband, her children,
and herself. He was courteous, insinuating, with a dash of
infallibility. She was dignified, not to say haughty, with a great
notion of the high position she occupied in the social world. She was
not harsh or cantankerous with servants, but she never for one moment
allowed them to think they were anything but servants--that is to say,
beings of an immeasurably inferior order.

During the time Miss Creagh had been in Mrs. Vernon's house as
resident governess to her two daughters, the mistress had shown the
governess respect in the form of conscious condescension. She had
never for a moment allowed anyone to slight Nellie, and even she
herself had never slighted her. But, then, she never was by any means
genial or cordial, or anything but rigidly polite; and rigid
politeness is the perfection of rudeness.

Nellie had not, however, been unhappy in that house. She had conceived
a great respect for Mr. Vernon, and had grown to love the two
children. Ruth was her favourite. The elder girl was flaxen-haired,
blue-eyed, fair and pink, with a tendency to sentimental poetry and
enthusiasm, and with a most excellent heart. Miriam, on the other
hand, was a brunette, brown-haired, brown-eyed, vivacious, invincibly
loquacious, with a thorough contempt for everything that was not
material to comfort, and with a heart which beat so fast for its own
excitements, that it rarely had time to concern itself with anything
else.

Mr. Vernon had that summer postponed their going to their house at
Bray a month beyond the usual time. The crash had not come upon him
unexpectedly. He and a few others knew for some time that it could not
be avoided, but it might be put off. He was loath to leave Dublin; and
as his family never went to Bray without him, he thought it better
they should not go now, as if they did it might cause talk. Bray is
but half-an-hour or so from Dublin; but he did not like to sleep so
far away from the bank, for now important telegrams were coming at all
hours of the day and night, and the delay of an hour might hasten the
disaster.

The immediate cause of the ruin was the failure of a trader in
Belfast, who owed the bank considerable sums of money, and had been
encouraged by Mr. Vernon to play a risky business on the chance of
making large profits. In fact, the relation between the Belfast and
Dublin houses would not bear the light of day, and the large profits
which, it was said, enabled the Belfast house to pay a fancy price for
money, had all been taken out of the capital lent by the bank.

The Belfast house had, some years ago, an extraordinary stroke of
luck. It legitimately doubled its income in a year. It depended almost
wholly on its export trade. It sent most of its goods to India and the
Colonies. During the good year it could not manufacture as quickly as
it could sell. Then it borrowed in order to increase its manufacturing
powers. It built and set up new machinery. It exported more than it
had orders for and stored abroad. This went on for some years, the
output being in excess of the demands of the prosperous year, the
sales less than before the prosperous year. The result of this could
be seen--bankruptcy.

Nothing else was talked of in Dublin all that day, all that night, in
the clubs, in the hotels, between the acts at the theatre, in the
private houses, in the tramcars, in the streets. No class seemed to be
unaffected by the gigantic catastrophe. Widows and orphans were
ruined, trustees rendered penniless. Commercial fabrics which had cost
generations to build up, were now tottering to the fall.

All this dreadful day Mr. Vernon sat in his study, a large back room
on the first floor of his Fitzwilliam Square house. He now fully
realised his own position. He had directly ruined hundreds, and
indirectly, through them, thousands. For years the bank had
practically been in a bankrupt state. For years the fact had been kept
secret by means of false balance-sheets. For years the pious, bland
William Vernon had been the author of a gigantic fraud.

What was coming now to him? An indictment? Imprisonment? Were a common
prison and common prison diet coming to him in his seventieth year?
All this time that he had been issuing false balance-sheets he had
lived in splendour. He had kept his three houses, his horses, his
domestic servants, his gardeners, his grooms, his coachmen. He
had given dinners which were the talk, the admiration, the envy of
Dublin. His wines were the finest. He had a French cook; he had
footmen of the shapeliest forms and politest manners. Was he about to
have, instead of his three stately houses--the city jail? Instead of
his dining-room--a prison cell? Instead of his courteous footman--a
gruff turnkey? Instead of cliquot--gruel? Instead of respect, honour,
reverence--contumely, scorn, and curses?

The present was bad enough. The future looked much worse. He did not
allow himself to waste any of his energies in grieving for those who
had lost through him. He said to himself: "They speculated and lost.
They only lost money. I have lost all the money I once had, all the
reputation, and now in my old age it is not unlikely I may lose my
liberty. I have done the best I could. Had I reduced my establishment,
suspicion would have been aroused at once, and the blow would have
come much sooner. If I had earlier exposed the position of the bank,
ruin would have come then just as now. If after the first loss in
Belfast I sanctioned wild, mad speculation, it was in the desperate
hope of recovering what had already been sunken. What I did, I did for
the best. O'Donnell will, of course, be the heaviest sufferer, but he
has had his twelve per cent. for many years. I dare say he will not be
able to save a penny out of his whole fortune. Neither shall I out of
mine."

Just as he came to the end of these self-justification reflections,
these comfortable sophisms, Mrs. Vernon entered the room, dressed for
going out.

"Going out, Jane?" he cried all in astonishment.

"Yes," she said. "The house is so dull, I thought I'd take the
brougham and call upon the Lawlors."

"Take the _brougham_," he cried, "and call upon the Lawlors! Don't you
know the Lawlors are shareholders in the bank, and that they, too, are
ruined?"

"But," said Mrs. Vernon, drawing herself up, "the Lawlors were old
friends of mine. I knew them before you did. We were children
together. They will be glad to see me, although you have been
unfortunate in business."

"Glad to see you! Woman, they would thrust you out of doors with
curses. When people are ruined they do not pay much heed to
friendship, nor are they over nice in the way they express their
anger. As to the brougham," he said, "I have been stupid not to tell
you, but I cannot think of everything. We could never with decency use
the brougham, or anything of the sort, again." He threw himself back
in his chair and laughed harshly for a few seconds.

"I see nothing to laugh at in this disgrace and worry," said his wife,
who thought herself the most injured person of all. "I am sure I am
very sorry for you, William, when I consider the respectable position,
the eminent position you held. I am sure you cannot say I was
extravagant, or that I brought up the children extravagantly. You told
me yesterday that my five thousand pounds are secured by the marriage
settlement. Why should I lose my old friends any more than the money
my father gave me when we were married?"

"Because," he said, laughing harshly again, "you married what the
world will agree to call a fraudulent scoundrel. When I laughed a
moment ago at the thought of the brougham, the idea which occurred to
me was--it is rather painful. Shall I tell you?"

"Yes, you had better tell me, I suppose. _Everything_ is painful now."

"Well," he said, "I thought that the next member of the family likely
to drive would be myself, and the next vehicle in which I was likely
to drive would be a Black Maria."

"Black Maria, William," she said. "I do not understand you."

"Black Maria, my dear," he explained, "is slang for a prison van. What
is the matter, Jane? You seem weak. Help, outside there, Mrs. Vernon
has fainted."

The door opened. A footman entered.

"If you please, sir, the brougham is at the door."

The old man started and looked up, became suddenly pallid. "What did
you say, James?"

"I said, sir, that the brougham was at the door."

"Ha! ha! ha! As I live, James, I thought you said the Black Maria.
Fetch Mrs. Vernon's maid instantly. The mistress has fainted."




                             CHAPTER XII.


When, on the night after the failure of Vernon and Son, Lionel
Crawford heard from Dora Harrington the name of Dominique Lavirotte,
and repeated it after her, he was filled with amazement. "This is the
most extraordinary thing," he said, "that ever happened to me in all
my life. Dominique Lavirotte," he repeated for the second time. "I am
amazed!"

"Do you know him?" the girl asked.

"Well! Why, he owns the place I am taking you to. It isn't much of a
place. It is only the tower of an old church. They are always talking
of buying it from him and taking it down. But you see it isn't big
enough to give room for building a warehouse or store on the ground it
occupies, and it is impossible to take in any other building with it.
But come, sweetheart," he said; "when did you eat last?"

"I--I had some breakfast."

"But breakfast is a long way since. You are young, and must be hungry.
Here is the door of the tower." He took out a large key, and having
turned the lock, thrust the door into the darkness. "Now," he said,
leading her in, "be very careful; there is a hole here. Stand where
you are until I find the lantern and matches."

He groped about, and in a few seconds had lighted the candle in the
lantern. Then he took the young girl by the hand, and said: "This
way."

By the light of the lantern she could see that they were walking on
two planks, which together were not more than eighteen inches wide.
Beyond the planks was a hole, the depth of which she could not guess.

"Don't be afraid," he said. "Keep close to the wall and you are all
right."

The girl shuddered. She, who a few minutes ago was on her way to the
river, now shrank from the notion of death. Had she not met someone
who knew her lover, someone who knew Dominique, her darling Dominique?
This was to get a new lease of life, a new interest in worldly things,
a fresh-filled cup from the fountain of hope.

She clung closely to the wall, and followed the old man through the
gloom. They reached a corner, and here found a ladder.

"Up this ladder," he said; adding, "What shall I call you? What is
your name?"

"Dora," she said. "Dora Harrington."

"Then, Dora, my dear child," he said, "keep close to the wall on this
ladder, too, for there is no hand-rail, as you see."

They mounted the ladder. It ran along two sides of the tower. Then
they found themselves on the first loft. The head of the ladder was
unprotected by any rail. Two other lofts they reached in a similar
manner, she clinging closely to the wall.

"This is my sitting-room," he said, with a laugh. "It is not very wide
or long, but it is lofty, airy, and, although there is not much
furniture, and the little I have is the worse of the wear, it will
have a great interest for you, for it belongs to him, Mr. Lavirotte.
Sit down here, now, on this couch. The spring is not so good as it
once was. You will have a cup of tea and some nice bread-and-butter.
That little table over there is my kitchen. See," he said, "we do not
take long to light the fire, and we shall have boiling water in a few
minutes. Boiling water," he said, "and the prospect of a nice cup of
tea is better for you, sweetheart, than the cold Thames. The prospect
of--of--ugh! Let us forget that unpleasant folly of ours."

He had kindled the lamp in a small oil-stove, and set the kettle on
the stove. "And now," he said, "while the water is boiling you shall
tell me as much as you please about yourself."

She was very tired, and for the present the mere rest was food and
drink to her. It was pleasant to sit there, half-tranced with fatigue,
to sit upon this couch which belonged to him, in the presence of
someone who knew him, and with the prospect of succour from a friendly
hand.

The furniture in the loft was not, indeed, handsome. It never had
been. When Lavirotte lived in London he had furnished a couple of
rooms, and upon leaving them found that he could get little or nothing
for the furniture. So he carted it away to St. Prisca's Tower in
Porter Street, and there it was when, at the request of Lionel
Crawford, he let the tower to him.

In the loft where Dora Harrington now found herself there were three
ordinary chairs, one arm-chair, a couch, and two tables, besides the
"kitchen." The walls were rough, unplastered brick. The roof of the
loft was unceiled. Under the table was a small piece of carpet.

"My own room," said the old man, "is above this, and this shall be
yours for to-night, and as long as you wish after, until you get a
better one, or until he comes for you."

"How can I thank you for your kindness? May I ask your name?"

"Lionel Crawford," said the old man. "I live in the room above this,
because my business requires me to be near the roof by night."

"Your business requires you," she said, "to be near the roof by
night." By this time he had made the tea, and she had drunk a little,
and begun to be refreshed. "Can it be you are an astronomer?"

"No, no," he said. "I am no astronomer, and yet all the matters of
weather interest me greatly. The rain to-night may be worth a fortune
to me."

"You are a farmer, perhaps," she said. "Or no, that cannot be; but you
own land?"

"Not a rood. Although I say I am much interested in the weather, I am
neither interested in growing anything, nor in meteorology beyond the
winds and the rains. By day I get as far away from the sun as I can,
as close to the rich centre of the earth as I may. By night I aspire,
I seek the highest point I can reach, and there I worship the clouds
and the winds that they may befriend me."

The old man was now sitting in the easy-chair, leaning forward, his
eyes fixed on vacancy. He had a weird, possessed expression. He seemed
to be looking at things far off, and yet clearly within the power of
his vision. He seemed like one in a dream, and yet his words were as
consequential and coherent as the reasoning in Euclid. His might have
been the head of an alchemist, or of some other man who dwelt with
unascertained potentialities, with mystic symbols and orders and
rites, with things transcending the ken of vulgar flesh, with
subtleties of matter known to few, rare drugs, rich spices, the
virtues of gems, the portents of earth and air, the mystic language of
the stars, the music of the spheres.

"And when it is winter," asked the girl, "you wish, I suppose, for
sunshine and calms?"

"No," he said. "Never. Always for rain and wind; wind and rain. Wind
in the daytime, and rain by night, winter and summer; all the year
round."

"And may I ask you," said the girl, timidly, "what you are?"

"When I met you this evening," he said, in the same tone as he had
employed since he became abstracted, "I was Giant Despair."

"And now," she said, "what are you?"

"The rain and you have come," he said. "I am now the humble Disciple
of Hope."

"And, sir, may I ask, have you no friends, no relatives?"

"None that I know of," he said. "All my children are, I think, dead.
My wife is dead. My best friends are the dead."

"But surely, sir," she said, "there is among the living someone in
whom you take an interest?"

"No; no one. I am a client of the dead. If any good ever comes to me
in life it will be out of the buried past. I doubt if good will ever
come. I am too old and spent. I was too old and spent when I began my
labours here. For years I had my great secret hidden in my breast. I
nursed it, I fed it, I dreamed over it. For years I lived in this
neighbourhood hoping some day or other to gain admission to this
tower. I could not find out who owned it. It pays no rates or taxes.
It is not registered in any name that I could ever find out. I had
begun to think I should never get any nearer the goal, when one day as
I was without the walls I saw a young man come up, thrust a key into
the lock of the great door, and try in vain to move the rusty bolt. I
watched him with consuming eagerness----"

"This was some time ago?"

"Years, two or three years. I drew up to the young man and said: 'I
fear, sir, it is a tougher job than you bargained for.' I offered to
get him a locksmith, and in less than an hour we got in. The young man
told me he had come from abroad----"

"What was the young man's name?" asked the girl.

"Dominique Lavirotte," said the old man, in the voice of a seer busy
with things remote.

"My Dominique," she whispered; "my darling Dominique."

The old man went on without heeding the interruption. He had forgotten
the connection between the girl and the man.

"The stranger told me," said old Crawford, "that although he had lived
some time in England, he had now been for years abroad. This was all
the property he had in the world, and he had never seen it before. He
understood it was absolutely valueless, and he had merely come to see
it now out of curiosity. 'For,' he said, 'is it not strange that in
the City of London, where the rent of land is six shillings a square
foot, I should own some for which I cannot get a penny the square
yard? I wish I could get someone to buy it,' he said.

"'You must not think of selling it,' said I. 'I have been waiting here
years in the hope of meeting you.'

"'Why?' he cried in astonishment. 'Do you want to buy?'

"'No,' I said. 'May I speak to you a while in private?' The locksmith
was standing by. Then I took this handsome young man aside, and having
made him swear he would not reveal the matter to anyone----"

"What?" cried the girl, leaning forward eagerly.

"That is _my_ secret," said the old man.




                            CHAPTER XIII.


Foe a while Dora Harrington and Lionel Crawford were silent, he still
with the look of an enraptured visionary on his face, she perplexed,
wondering, disturbed.

What could this secret be which he, the man to whom she was engaged,
never told her? One thing appeared plain to her, it was not a secret
in which Dominique was directly concerned. It was the old man's
secret, communicated by him to her lover. Yet it was not pleasant to
think that Dominique, who seemed so candid, so outspoken, so open,
should have something which he had concealed from her. The notion of a
secret was cold and dire. He had one: he might have many, as he had
never even told her that he owned this queer tower, standing all alone
in those dark, forbidding ways by the river.

Of late Dominique had not written to her as often or as affectionately
as of old. True, he was not in good spirits about his worldly
prospects. She had told him over and over again, when he asked her,
that she would marry him on anything or nothing. Who or what was this
old man, that he should be mixed up with Dominique's affairs long ago;
that he should have stood between her and the Thames to-night? Was it
possible this old man would tell her nothing more? He had excited in
her curiosity, vague fears. Would he do nothing to allay either? Thus
to be saved from the fate she intended for herself that night, to find
in her protector a friend of his, and then to be confronted with a
mystery in which Dominique had a part, were, surely, enough things to
make this night ever memorable.

"Mr. Crawford," said the girl, "I can never forget the service and the
kindness you have done me. Will you not do me an additional favour by
telling me something of this secret which affects him?"

The girl had finished the tea and eaten some bread by this time.

"Take off your hat," he said. "Lean back and rest yourself, and I will
tell you something more.

"Ten years ago I was as lonely a man as I am now. All my family had
drifted away from me. Most of them were dead. Some of them had
married, I know not whom. My studies always occupied me, and after the
death of my wife, whom I tenderly loved, I went deeper than ever into
my books.

"Most of my children left me when they were young, and went abroad. I
had six children in all. From time to time one left me until all were
gone, and ten years ago I had no more clue to the whereabouts of any
than I have to-day, except that I knew some were in the grave.

"I was then better off than I am now; but I have still enough to live
on, and to buy a book now and then. My books are all above. All my
interest lies in one direction, all my books treat of the same
subject--the history of the past, the history of the men and women and
places of old times. My interest in the present closed with the death
of my wife. But, somehow or other, since the time of which I speak,
ten years ago, I think I have grown less exclusively devoted to my
favourite pursuit than I was at the time of the dispersion of my
family.

"I do not often speak to anyone except to those of whom I want to buy;
but I cannot help thinking there is a link between you and me, for are
you not betrothed to him who owns this tower, and has not this tower
for ten years been the chief object of my attention, of my solicitude?
Was it not to him I first told the secret which I had carried with me
eight years? Is he not now the only person who knows my secret, and
when the time comes for divulging that secret to a few, are not you to
be the first to hear it?

"Well, ten years ago I was, as I have said, as much alone in the world
as now. I had always a notion that something was to be discovered in
connection with this Porter Street. Here and there in my books there
were vague hints, misty statements, that in this street had taken
place something of the greatest importance, something which might in
the greatest degree excite the interest of an archaeologist. But you
see, the street is long, a mile long, I dare say, and to search every
inch of a street a mile long would be altogether out of the question.

"At that time I was living close by. There were certain old
book-shops, between Longacre and the Strand, which I visited almost
daily. Here, one evening, I picked up a battered old volume for a few
pence. It was dated 1625. It turned out to be of no great interest;
but on bringing it home, I was struck by two facts--first, that the
book, although battered, was complete; and, second, it contained some
memoranda in manuscript, one bearing these startling words: 'A great
fire has broken out, and is spreading towards us. There is not a
minute to be lost. What can be removed is to be removed to Kensington.
_What cannot be removed is to be left where it now is_.'

"This memorandum was dated: 'Daybreak, 3rd September, 1666.'

"It was, of course, in the spelling of the period. Underneath this
memorandum appeared the words and figures: 'Speght's Chaucer, page 17,
lines 17 to 27.'

"I have told you already that I had something like a hint of what I
wished to find out. I am not free to tell you why the first of these
memoranda interested me profoundly, and shone before me like a
revelation. I seemed to be on the point of a great discovery, a
discovery of the utmost importance to me, a discovery which had
fascinated my imagination for years.

"I am free to tell you why the second memorandum filled me with
despair. It was essential that the book referred to in memorandum
number two should be found. The clue in my possession was absolutely
of no value without a copy of Chaucer. Before giving way to despair, I
had looked over the passage in the reference. I had read over twenty
lines above and below without being able to find the slightest hint to
a clue. It was evident from this fact that the text of the poet threw
no light on the subject, and that the intention of the man who had
written the memorandum was that reference should be made, not only to
the particular edition specified, but to an individual copy of that
edition.

"My despair was all the greater because I seemed to be half-way
towards success. I could not rest indoors. I wandered forth into the
streets without any definite object in view. To the average student of
history, the discovery of this volume containing a reference to the
Great Fire, written at the very moment it was raging, would have been
inestimable; but to one who was in quest of a particular object, and
had come within a measurable distance of it, without being able to
touch it, this book was a curse.

"Before I knew where I was I found myself standing in front of the
identical shop where I had bought the volume. I went listlessly over
all the other books exposed for sale in front of the window. I saw
nothing corresponding to the object of my search.

"Then suddenly a thought struck me. The book I had bought was
valueless. A copy of this particular edition of Chaucer would fetch
money. I went inside, and asked the man if he had any other books
belonging to the lot among which the one I had purchased was.

"He told me he had several; that he bought the lot in an old,
tumble-down house in Wych Street, where the books had lain for ever so
long, and that they were reputed to be salvage from the Great Fire.

"Imagine my excitement, my delight, when I found a copy of Speght's
edition, and upon opening the volume, and referring to the passage
indicated, I discovered writing on the margin. This writing was
briefer than that in the former volume. It was simply: 'St. Prisca's
Tower. See Mentor on Hawking, 1625.' This was the book I had bought a
short time previously. The chain was now complete. The area of inquiry
was absolutely limited to the ground upon which this tower now stands.
In the Great Fire of Charles's reign the church and tower of St.
Prisca had been attacked by the flames, and the church had been
completely destroyed. The lower portion of the tower, however, was
found by Wren to be sufficiently good for the purposes of rebuilding,
and so, about ten feet above the ground of these walls belong to the
old tower. Later on the modern church was pulled down; but for some
reason, I cannot find out, the tower has never been interfered with
since.

"These books had evidently been carried away from the region of the
fire to the fields where Kensington now stands; and then, when the
fire was subdued, carried back to Wych Street, where they had remained
until the bookseller who sold them to me had bought them about ten
years ago."

Here the old man finished his narrative, which had been delivered in a
monotonous tone. His eyes were fixed, staring intently before him, and
he seemed to be wholly oblivious of the fact that Dora was listening
to him. He was not, however, unmindful of her presence; for no sooner
had he concluded, than he looked at her directly and said: "I have
told you all I can; all I may. Dominique Lavirotte and I are the only
persons who know the rest, and you know more than anyone else in the
world except him and me. You must be tired now. I never told this
story before, and, in all likelihood, I never shall again."

It was now close to two o'clock in the morning. To the opening words
of the old man Dora had given little attention. In fact the events of
that night, until she had begun to feel refreshed by the rest and tea,
had left a very weak impression on her mind, and she would have found
it hard to say whether the occurrences had been real or figments of
her brain. As the story advanced, she had felt a more lively interest
in it, and towards the end she found that she was listening with
awakened curiosity.

The old man said: "I will bring you down a rug, and then you must try
and get a little sleep. I shall have to work a couple of hours yet in
this welcome rain."

He brought the rug and spread it over her, and then emerged once more
upon the roof.




                             CHAPTER XIV.


When Crawford reached the roof it was still dark. The intense darkness
of a few hours ago had passed away, and it was possible on the roof to
see dimly the figure of the old man, the parapet, and the lead.

Towards each of the four corners of the lead the roof sloped gently,
and in each corner was a shoot leading to a pipe. In each of the four
corners, but so placed as not to obstruct the shoot wholly, and yet to
impinge upon it, lay a heap of something.

To each of those heaps the old man went in succession, moving the
heaps so as to make them impinge a little more upon the gutter. When
this was done he put down his spade, resting it against the parapet,
and leaned out of one of the embrasures.

All was still as death below. The darkest hour is the hour before the
dawn; the most silent hour is the hour before the reawakening.

It was raining heavily now. The old man did not heed the rain. His
eyes were turned vacantly towards the east. He was watching for the
dawn, not with eyes busily occupied on the dim outline of the huge
stores and warehouses before him. His gaze was directed to the east
simply because he knew that in the east the sun would rise, and that
as the light grew broad, and the top of the tower was overpeered by
lofty buildings on higher ground, he must, soon after daylight,
intermit his work on the roof if he would keep his secret.

When the gray had moved up in the east, the old man went his rounds
once more, spade in hand. The rain still continued.

When he had finished, he paused and leaned once more at the embrasure
he had formerly occupied. "I always," he thought, "take care to keep
the clay heaps about the same size. Rain is very good, no doubt. It
works off more than wind, except the wind is very high. The worst of
the rain is that when the clay gets soaked through and cakes, I have
to take it down to dry the minute the weather gets fine, and bring up
more sieved earth, for the wind would have no effect on the hardened
clay. At first I thought of putting all I excavated on the lofts; but
I found them so old, and weak and shaky, that I durst not trust them
beyond a little each. There, I have put all the large stones too big
to carry out and leave quietly here and there. There are tons and tons
of stones upon the lofts, and I am afraid the floors will bear very
little more. It would never do to overload the lofts and have the
labour of my two years all undone. The rain has stopped. It will help
me no more. Heaven send the wind. Here is the day."

It was now bright enough to see that the roof of the tower was covered
all over with a coating of thin mud, washed into streaks here and
there by the rain. In each corner lay a heap of clay. There were a
basket and a large pail also on the roof. The old man now began to
work energetically. He filled the pail with the mud, and in four
journeys down to the first loft, succeeded in removing all that
had been on the roof. Then he carried up four large baskets of
finely-sifted clay, and put one basket in each corner near the shoots,
so that those who had seen the roof of the tower from afar off the
previous day would notice very little, if any, difference, even with
the aid of a glass; for the nearest building that overlooked the tower
was a mile distant.

It was now broad daylight, and as the old man stood, his work
completed, all round him rose the muffled murmurs of awaking day. He
was wet through, but he did not care for this. He was used to it. The
rain and the wind were his great friends, and he hailed their advent
with delight.

It was plain what his object was. By day he worked in the base of the
tower, at which the ground stood now twelve feet higher than at the
time of the Great Fire, and twelve feet below this was the foundation
of the tower.

For two years Lionel Crawford had slaved in the daylight digging down
towards the foundation. He had a pickaxe and shovel and sieve. When he
had dug up some earth and rubbish, he sifted this on a piece of old
carpet and carried the sittings up to the top loft, there to dry and
become friable for the purpose of being got rid of on the roof.
Everything that would not go through the sieve, he carried out with
him, and dropped here and there as occasion offered, and the larger
stones, which he never put on the sieve at all, he carried up to the
lofts.

When he had wind instead of rain he stood on the tower in the dark,
and when all was quiet, threw away the sifted earth to leeward,
handful by handful. So that although he might thus in a night get rid
of several hundred pounds weight of earth, no trace whatever of it
appeared below the tower. When he was not helped by rain or wind he
could not dispose of more than fifty or sixty pounds weight a night,
without drawing attention to his operations. This quantity he got rid
of by throwing handful after handful out of the embrasure all round
the tower.

When he found himself on the loft where he slept he took off his wet
clothes, hung them up, and then lay down and slept.

It was late in the forenoon when he awoke. He dressed himself and went
down to what may be called the sitting-room. Here he found Dora awake.
"If it would amuse you, child," he said, "you may light the fire and
make the tea. It may be a novelty to you, and it will surely be a
novelty to me if you do."

Dora arose with alacrity and busied herself about the simple
preparations for breakfast.

"It is a long time," said he, "since I had anyone--man, woman, or
child--at a meal with me. Sometimes I go out and have my dinner or
supper or breakfast in the poor eating-houses around here; but that is
not often. I have learned to shift for myself as well as Robinson
Crusoe did in his time."

When the breakfast was ready, Dora said: "I am sure you will forgive
me, but the excitement and confusion of last night have made me forget
your name. Yet I remember that when you mentioned it, it seemed
familiar to me."

"Lionel Crawford, my dear; Lionel Crawford is my name."

"Crawford," she said, musingly resting her chin upon her hand. "I do
not know how I could have forgotten that name, for Crawford was my
mother's name before her marriage. It is not a very uncommon name in
England, is it?"

"Not very," he said. "There are several families of the name in London
alone."

They were now sitting at breakfast. No contrast could be much stronger
than that between the young, soft, gentle, beautiful girl and the
leather-hued, gnarled-browed old man. The bright sunlight fell through
two long, narrow windows high up in the thick walls of the tower. It
tinged the white hand of the young girl lying listlessly on the table.
It lit up from behind the rich curve of her cheek. It touched with
gleaming, grave bronze the outline of her dark hair. The old man sat
at the other side of the small table, looking with abstracted eyes at
the partly illumined head of the young girl opposite.

"Ay," said the old man, "Crawford is not an uncommon name. There were
several of us brothers when I was young. I was the only one that
married, and I believe all my children are dead by this time. Their
mother was sickly. She was everything to me while she was alive. No,
Crawford is not an uncommon name."

"We used not to consider it a common name in Canada," the girl said.

The sunlight was gradually encroaching upon the mass of dark hair.

"Ah," he said, still with the abstracted air, "you were in Canada. One
of my daughters when she was young, a child of fourteen or fifteen,
went to the United States."

"How strange," said Dora, shifting her position, and bringing all her
head under the influence of the summer sunlight.

"No," he said, "not very strange. A great lot of people from these
parts go to the United States, and, as I tell you, Crawford is not an
uncommon name."

"What I meant," said the girl, with a somewhat puzzled look on her
face, "was that it is strange your daughter, whose name was Crawford,
should have gone to the United States when young. My mother went to
the United States when young. She married there and then moved up to
Canada."

"And you tell me your name is Harrington, Dora Harrington? My girl's
name was Dora, too, and I heard she married a man named Harrington.
What was your mother's Christian name?"

"Dora was her name," said the girl, rising. "What do you think, sir,
of all this?" The girl was now standing, so that from crown to heel
the full sunlight shone upon her.

"It is extremely strange," said he, still in his absent-minded way,
"for I heard that my daughter moved up after her marriage." Suddenly
the old man's eyes fixed themselves upon the illuminated figure of the
girl. "I had not a good look at you before, child, and my eyes are dim
with overmuch study. Yes! As heaven hears me, there is a look of my
dead wife about you, child. Did they ever tell you you were like your
mother? Do you remember your mother?"

"I remember her very little, sir. I was very young when she died. They
told me I was not like her."

"Ay, ay. That is all in favour of my hopes, my child, for Dora was not
like my wife, and you are. Marvellously like! I seem to feel the coil
of forty years falling away from me." His eyes once more took the
abstracted, faraway look of the lions. "Forty years ago," he said, "I
was young and blithe, strong-limbed, and not repulsive as I am now. I
wooed my Dora then, not in smoky London, but amid the green fields,
and when the primroses were fresh with the early spring weather, and
all the air was sweet with moist dews and fresh songs of birds. The
leaves were all unsheathed, and each pulse of the wind brought a new
perfume of the season. My Dora!"

"And you think me like her?" said the girl. "Oh, if it should be,
sir!"

Suddenly the old man lost his abstracted look. He rose and stretched
out his arms towards her, looking keenly at her the while. "You are
she," he cried. "You are my Dora, my dead darling's grand-daughter.
For her own daughter, whose child you are, was like me, all said."

"Oh, sir," cried the girl, "it is too much happiness for me to believe
this true."

"I want some happiness now, my child," said he, "and no happiness
greater than this could come to me, for I am tired of loneliness. Come
to me, Dora."

The illuminated figure of the girl moved, passed out of the sunlight
into the gloom of the room--into the gloom of the old man's arms.




                             CHAPTER XV.


The police of Glengowra were very inquisitive about the affair of that
night. The town was exceedingly quiet, as a rule, and the fact that
two well-dressed men had been engaged at midnight in a deadly
encounter was unique and fascinating to the police mind. There was no
doubt in the town or village, for it was indifferently called either,
that the two men had fought, and that jealousy was at the bottom of
the encounter. But both O'Donnell and Lavirotte held impregnable
silence on the matter. Neither would make any statement. Lavirotte
said they might ask O'Donnell, and O'Donnell said they might ask
Lavirotte; and it was known that no matter what may have occurred the
previous night, the friendship of the men was now re-established.

This last fact was gall and wormwood to the police. It was sheerly the
loss to them of a golden opportunity. To think that the biggest crime
which had been committed for years in the town should not be made the
subject of a magisterial inquiry, was heartbreaking. What was the good
of having crimes and policemen cheek by jowl, if they were not to come
into contact?

A policeman lounged all day about the door of Maher's hotel, affecting
to take an interest in the cars and carts passing by, and in the warm
baths opposite, and to be supremely unconscious of the existence of
Maher's. Nothing came of this.

Supposing each man should say his hurt was the result of an accident,
there would be no evidence to prove the contrary, and the police would
only get into trouble and be laughed at if they stirred in the affair.

A fussy and blusterous Justice of the Peace made it his business to
call at the hotel, see Maher, and impress upon him the absolute
necessity of doing something.

Dr. O'Malley absolutely forbade any "justices of the peace, policemen,
or such carrion," entering either of the sick rooms.

He said to the magistrate: "Don't you bother about this affair. I
promise you, on the word of a man of honour, to let you know if either
of the men is in danger of death, so that a deposition may be taken;
and I promise you my word, as a man of the world, that if anyone goes
poking his nose into this affair, one or both of these young men will
have something unpleasant to say to that nose when they get about."

This speech made the worthy magistrate extremely wroth. He stamped and
fumed for a while, and muttered something about puppies, and left the
hotel in dudgeon.

Still later in the day the sub-inspector of the district, who was a
friend of O'Malley's, and happened, by a miracle in which few will
believe, to be a man of gentlemanly instincts and manners--called at
O'Malley's house, spoke of the weather, the regatta, the price of
beasts at the last horse fair, the desirability of building a pier for
the fishing-boats in the cove, the hideous inconveniences of not being
able to get ice in Glengowra in such roasting weather, the interesting
case at the last Quarter Sessions, and finally, he said: "By-the-way,
O'Malley, if you do know anything about what occurred last night on
the Cove Road, and if you can do so without any breach of good faith,
tell me what you know?"

"I don't know all about it," said O'Malley, briskly; "and what I do
know I am bound to keep to myself. The part of the case about which I
am game to speak is the medical aspect of it, and of that I am free to
tell you there is no cause to fear either of the men will die. Now,
that is all you want to know, because you're a good sort of fellow;
you're not more than a thousand years old yourself. Boys will be boys.
Have a cigar."

Thus the young sub-inspector left O'Malley's house scarcely any wiser
than he came. In the phrase, "Boys will be boys," O'Malley had
conveyed to him an unmistakable impression that the theory of the
fight was the correct one, and at the same time he recognised the
skilful way in which O'Malley avoided any breach of confidence.

Directly opposite Maher's hotel were the warm baths, and a little to
the right of these a shop, famous in the history of Glengowra, and
called by the pretentious name of the Confectionery Hall.

This title was ludicrously out of proportion with the appearance of
the place. The "Hall," that is, the place open to the general public,
was not more than twelve by fifteen feet. Here were displayed on a
counter, presided over by a thin-featured maiden lady of long ago
ascertained years, cakes of various kinds and sorts and ages,
sweetmeats of universal dustiness and stickiness, ginger-beer,
lemonade, and bottled Guinness and Bass. Sherry might, too, be
obtained here in genteel quantities out of a cut-glass decanter, but
the inhabitants of Glengowra had a national antipathy to the spirit
known as sherry and when they wanted anything stronger than Bass or
Guinness, they asked for whisky.

Now, the great feature of the Confectionery Hall, as opposed in
principle to a mere public-house, was that whisky could not be
obtained at the counter. If a man wanted that form of mundane
consolation, he was obliged to enter an inner penetralia, where not
only could he have the "wine of the country," but an easy-chair to sit
in and tobacco for his perturbed mind.

Towards the close of the evening of the day following the occurrence
on the Cove Road, two young men were seated in this cave of nicotine
discussing the event of the day, nay, of the year. Both were out from
Rathclare for the cool evening by the sea, and in order to enjoy the
most perfect coolness of the sea, they had retired to this back room,
which was heavier to the senses and less open to the air than the
stuffiest back slum of Rathclare.

Both had of course heard the great Glengowra news, and the great
Dublin news of the day. It happened that one of these young men was in
the employment of the State--to wit, the Post Office, and the other in
that of a public company--to wit, the railway.

"I can't make it out," said the Railway, "how it is that Lavirotte
should have fought O'Donnell about Nellie Creagh, because a fellow
told me that a good while ago--a couple of years, I think--when
Lavirotte was over in London, he had made it all right with some other
girl there."

"I don't like Lavirotte, and I never did," said the Post Office; "but
this I am sure of--that he had some great friend in London, and that
his friend was not a man. Of course I don't wish this mentioned, and I
tell you it in confidence. I remember his coming over here. We make up
the bags from Glengowra at Rathclare, and when he came here first, and
I met him and knew his writing, I saw a letter from him to a Miss
Somebody (I will not tell you her name) in London, and this letter
went two or three times a week."

"Who was she?" inquired the others, inquisitively.

"I won't tell. I have already told you more than I should. You must
not mention the matter to anyone. I know you so long, old fellow, I am
sure I may rely on you."

"Well," said the other, "I don't want to seem prying. In all
likelihood I shall never see Lavirotte or O'Donnell again. I am off
next week."

"I am very sorry to lose you; but you're sure to come back to see the
old ground shortly."

"I don't think I shall," said the other, carelessly. "It costs a lot
for the mere travelling, and you know none of my people live here
about. Anyway, when I get to London, supposing I am curious, which I
am not, I can find out all about it; for I know an artist there who
told me all about Lavirotte and the girl."

"How on earth did you find anything out about one man in such a big
place as London?"

"My dear fellow, London is at once the biggest and the smallest place
in the world. You have never been there?"

"No, never."

"Well, you see, most of the nationalities and arts and professions
live in districts, chiefly inhabited by themselves; and when they do
not, they have clubs and other places of resort where they meet. So
that, in the case of Lavirotte, who was then thinking of being a
figure-painter, but hadn't got the talent, there was nothing unlikely
in his meeting other men of similar ambition, and so it was he came
across there the artist I know, who happened to have a studio in the
house I lodged in."

"I have often looked at the map of London and wondered how it was
anyone ever found out where anyone else lived, even when he had the
address. But I cannot understand how two friends can fall across one
another accidentally in such a tremendously large place."

"You have never been in Dublin even, I believe?" said the Railway.

"No, never," said the other.

"Well, then, all I can tell you is, that if you walk from the College
of Surgeons in Stephen's Green to the Post Office in Sackville Street
three times a day, you will meet any stranger who may happen to be in
the city."

For a little while both men were silent. Then the Post Office said:

"Well, as there is but a week between you and finding out all about
this girl and Lavirotte, I may as well tell you, in strict confidence,
that her name is Miss Harrington. I forget her address. She changed it
often, but it did not seem a swell address to me. At first he wrote to
her two or three times a week; but of late his letters have not gone
nearly so often, although some one in London, I suppose this Miss
Harrington, wrote him twice a week regularly. Within the past two
months I don't think he has written to her at all."

While this conversation was going on in the back parlour of the
Confectionery Hall, the policeman, who had during the day devoted most
of his attention to the vehicles passing in front of Maher's hotel and
to the warm baths opposite, was relieved, and came over to the "Hall"
for a small bottle of Guinness. It so happened that he had overheard,
through the glass-door from the shop to the parlour, most of the
conversation which had passed between the two friends.

He heard the two friends rise to leave. Before the handle of the door
turned he was out of the shop. In a few minutes he was back in the
police-station.

"Well, any news?" said the sergeant, gloomily.

"I have heard something that may be useful," said the constable; and
he detailed the conversation.

"And we have found something which may be useful," said the sergeant.
"After a long search among the stones we came upon the knife Lavirotte
stabbed O'Donnell with. Here it is, with Lavirotte's name and
O'Donnell's blood upon it. It will go hard with us if we can't get
Lavirotte seven years on this alone."




                             CHAPTER XVI.


In the vast pile of buildings owned by James O'Donnell in Rathclare,
by day several hundred men were employed, by night several score; for
the steam mills were kept going day and night, and got no rest from
year's end to year's end, save from twelve o'clock on Saturday night
to six o'clock on Monday morning.

In the portion of the buildings devoted to milling operations most of
the night-men were employed. In fact, so far as active employment was
concerned, no men were engaged anywhere else in the place. There were,
however, three watchmen for the other portions of the building. One of
these was outside in the yard fronting the river, another was on the
ground-floor of the granaries, and it was the duty of the third to
wander about the upper lofts and corridors.

Of late these men had been cautioned to observe greater vigilance. It
was well known in Rathclare that the strong-room of James O'Donnell
always contained a large sum of money, and sometimes a very large sum.

The man whose duty it was to examine the lofts passed along the
corridor leading to the private office. All was right, so far. He
always made it a habit to pause and listen at the door of the private
room; for if an attempt was to be made upon the safe it should be from
this place. The man went on in a leisurely way, ascended the next
ladder he met, strolled along the lofts, ascended another ladder, sat
down on a pile of empty sacks, and lit his pipe. Smoking was not, of
course, allowed, but then there was no one to see him.

When he had finished his pipe he ascended to the top loft and walked
all round from one end of the building to the other, pausing now and
then to listen at the head of a ladder or at a trap-door, or to look
out of a window into the deserted street below. This took a long time,
for there was no need of haste. It was an understood thing among the
watchmen that each should speak to the other two about once an hour.
Thus it would be known each hour that all was well throughout the
building.

The watchman now began to descend. He went down more rapidly than he
came up. It was quite dark, and the silence was unbroken save by the
noise of the machinery and the swirl of the river as it swept past the
wharf and quays and ships below, and whispered among the chains and
ropes.

The three men generally met in fine weather such as this on the wharf.
It was pleasant to the two men, whose business lay indoors, to breathe
for a few moments the cool air by the river. From the wharf no portion
of the offices could be seen. They looked into the great quadrangle
round which the granaries were built.

When the three men had stood and interchanged a few words they
separated, each of the two going in his own direction, the third man
remaining on the wharf. The man whose duty lay on the upper floors
passed into the large quadrangle, round which the granaries stood. At
first he noticed nothing remarkable; but when his eyes fell on the
windows of James O'Donnell's office he started visibly, and uttered an
exclamation of surprise under his breath.

The windows were full of light!

What should he do? What could this mean?

He had, of course, heard of the misfortunes which had fallen upon his
master's house that day, but he made no connection between that fact
and this extraordinary appearance. The warning against possible
burglars was uppermost in his mind. Although he was nearly sure no one
was then in that office for an honest purpose, still he resolved to
proceed with the greatest caution, and give no unnecessary alarm.

He went out on the wharf and told the other man what he had seen. They
both agreed that it would now be useless to try and overtake their
other comrade, and that it would be best for the two of them to go to
the office at once and see how matters stood there.

When they got indoors they took off their boots and proceeded
cautiously to the foot of the stairs leading to the offices. Each
carried a stout stick in his hand, and each man was physically
qualified to take care of himself in a scuffle.

They agreed it wouldn't do to get some more of the hands from the mill
and proceed to the office as though they were sure of finding burglars
there; for how could they tell that it was not the manager, or their
employer himself, who had been obliged to come back owing to some
urgent business?

They crept cautiously up the stairs and found themselves in the
corridor, upon which the office door opened. Here all was dark and
silent. Here they were confronted by a difficulty they had not
anticipated. If it should be that the manager or the proprietor had
come back at this unseasonable hour, the proper thing would be, of
course, to knock at the door and ask if all were right.

But supposing there were burglars inside, knocking at the door would
be simply to put them on their guard, and enable them to take up a
defensive or offensive position before the others could enter:

What was to be done?

As if by a common instinct, the two men retired to the further end of
the passage to hold a brief council.

There was no means of escaping from that room except by this passage
or the window. That window was not barred, and nothing could be easier
than to get from it by a ladder or a rope. The first thing, therefore,
to be ascertained was--did a ladder or a rope lead from that window to
the ground of the quadrangle?

It was then agreed between the two that one of them should go down and
examine the window from the outside, while the other waited in the
passage here and watched, the door until his fellow came back.

One of the men descended to the ground-floor, got out into the
quadrangle, and looked at the window, and the ground near the window.
It was a dark night, and one could not see small objects distinctly.
The man was not content with the evidence of his eyes alone. He stole
over under the window, and placing his hand against the wall, walked
forward and backward, ascertaining by touch that neither ladder nor
rope connected the window with the yard. When he was satisfied on this
point, he stole back to his companion and communicated the fact to
him.

So far all was well. They had not now to think of any means of exit
but the one before them. Still it was not easy to know what to do. Now
it occurred to them for the first time that it was not at all
consistent with the belief burglars were at work that the gas should
be fully ablaze. Although there never had been an attempt to rob the
mill on a large scale, or by violence, and the watchmen had no
personal experience of burglars yet, it was their business to know
something about how that predatory tribe carry on their operations.
It was not likely such men would attempt to force the door of a
strong-room, made on the very best principles, with the light turned
fully up. A dark lantern and silent matches were more the manner of
the midnight thief than the great openness and defiance of gas.

It must surely be someone connected with the business. It was well
they had not made a fuss about the matter, and now it would be well
that they should delay no longer to prove their diligence by showing
they had observed the unusual fact of the gas being burning.

Yes, there could be no longer any doubt their manager or employer was
behind that door. There would be something absurd in the fact of two
fine strapping fellows like them going up to that door in their vamps.
It would show they had suspected someone was there who had no right to
be there, and this might give offence. It would be best for them to
put on their boots before knocking; besides, if they knocked as they
were now, whoever was inside might think they had been prying.

When they reached the open air they put on their boots quickly. Then
it occurred to them that, as they were now quite certain it was
someone belonging to the business who was in the office, it would
never do for two of them to appear at the door simultaneously. The
duty of one man was to be on the wharf, and of the other to be on the
lofts or in the passages, and if they had no suspicion wrong was going
forward, why should the wharfman desert his post?

They, therefore, agreed that the loftman alone should go back and
prove his vigilance by knocking and saying that he had observed the
light.

The two parted. The loftman, starting with his usual measured tread,
crossed the quadrangle, entered the dark passages, ascended the
stairs, and knocked at the door.

Two minutes after he rushed out upon the wharf, exclaiming in an
undertone:

"Do you know who's there?"

"No. Who?"

"No one. Come back with me and see if I am right. I can't believe my
eyes. There isn't a soul there as far as I can see, in the office or
in the passages."

The two men went back to the passage, entered the private office,
found the gas at full cock, and the place empty!




                            CHAPTER XVII.


Mr. O'Donnell, towards the close of that unlucky day, found himself
once more in his comfortable home at Rathclare. Within twenty-four
hours, the life of his only son, the hope of his age, had been placed
in danger; and all the earnings of a long and laborious life had been
scattered to the winds by one tremendous blast of ill-fortune. He was
not a communicative or demonstrative man. He took his pleasures
soberly, gravely, and with little exterior show of delight. Outside
his business, which was large and engrossing, he cared for little save
his wife, and son, and home. He had few wants, and a limited mind;
but, like all men with few wants and a limited mind, he must have what
he wanted, or life would not be worth living.

He did not sigh or burst into exclamations when the bad news reached
him. He was reading a newspaper at the time. He put down his
newspaper, and asked his managing man, who brought him the news, to
repeat his words. Then, merely saying, "That is very bad news," he
took down an account-book, and, having looked at how his affairs stood
with the bank which had failed, put up the book in the safe, walked
out of his office, and took the train to Glengowra, where his son lay
hurt, and where his wife was already in attendance on the injured man.

Now, he was back once more in his home alone. His wife was to stay
that night at Maher's hotel. In the present condition of his business
affairs he did not feel himself justified in absenting himself from
head-quarters.

Up to this he had very rarely been separated from his wife, even for a
day. He seldom left his native town for more than a few hours, except
when he went away for a week or so and took her with him.

He sat in the deserted dining-room all alone. He always carried in his
coat-pocket a small memorandum-book, in which he had jotted down the
net results of all his business transactions, so that at any moment,
and in any place, he could see pretty well how he stood. He seated
himself in a large easy-chair, and having pulled down the gasalier,
took out this book, and sat silently consulting the pages for a long
while.

By this time he had received full information from Dublin. He knew now
the case of Vernon and Son was absolutely hopeless. He was going over
his book, not in the hope of finding out anything cheerful about his
own affairs, but just merely to convince himself through his sight of
what he was already convinced through his reason.

When he had reached the end of the written pages, and had made a few
figures with his pencil and arrived at a total, he tore out the page
on which he had made this last calculation, and then carefully and
delicately tore the page into little bits.

He put down his pocket-book on the table at his elbow, and then sat
for a long time arranging and re-arranging the fragments of the paper
into various figures on the table at his side.

When it was about eleven o'clock, a servant came and asked him if he
wanted anything.

No, he wanted nothing. They might all go to bed.

When the servant had retired, he re-began his work with the fragments
of paper.

At twelve o'clock he seemed to have made up his mind that there was no
good in trying any longer to arrange the pieces in a satisfactory way.
He pushed all the bits together, swept them into his hand, and placed
them on a tray, on which were some glasses, which he had not used.

He took up the pocket-book again, and quietly tore out all the blank
leaves. "These may be of use to someone else," he said. "They can
never be of any use to me." He placed the blank leaves on the table,
far in from the edge. "The books at the office will show how my
affairs stand. This can interest no one. It was only on account of the
money I considered myself worth, over and above my liabilities. I'll
burn it;" and then forgetting that it was summer time, and that there
was no fire, he threw the book into the grate, and rose. He felt in
his pocket, and found that he had his keys. Then he went into the
hall, put on his hat, and left the house.

He took his way to his principal place of business--the vast
storehouse, wharf, and steam mill all combined. He opened a small
postern in the main gate, trod a dark flagged passage, and reached the
foot of a flight of stairs that led to the chief offices. This he
ascended, and having reached his private room, lit the gas.

For a while he stood in the middle of the room, looking vacantly round
him. The office was luxuriously furnished; and in the wall opposite to
the table at which Mr. O'Donnell usually sat, and facing him, was the
door of the strong-room.

He could hear the murmur of the water as it went by, if the engines
had stopped. But the engines were going on at full speed, making money
now--making money now for whom? That morning these twenty sets of
stones had been whirling round, and at every rotation of each stone
he, James O'Donnell, was the richer.

These stones were going round still, making money still; but for whom
now?

It was a dismal thing to stand there realising the fact that the
fruits of his forty years' hard work, sagacity, enterprise, thrift had
all been squandered by someone else--had all been squandered by this
Vernon, in whom he had reposed implicit confidence; who was so pious,
so sleek, so plausible, and yet had led him on into this horrible
position.

He sat down in his chair, and his eyes fell upon the door of the
strong-room. He had destroyed his pocket-book; his interest in his own
private affairs was at an end. From what he had heard there was no
chance of his saving a sixpence out of his large fortune. Some other
man would work the mill no doubt, for it would be a valuable asset in
the affairs of Vernon and Son.

It was hard to think of this fine mill, for which he had made the
trade, and which he had built up from the foundation, passing away
from him, now that he was too old to begin life again.

In that strong-room opposite him there were the books. They were all
in perfect order. _They_ had never been made the slaves of a false
balance-sheet. They were the fair records of blameless transactions.
Every line in them could be verified. Every shilling of expense could
be accounted for.

Soon, very soon, he knew not exactly when, strangers would come and
examine these books, and go through all the vouchers, but they should
find nothing in that strong-room of his except flawless records of
honest trade--and----

The vacant look left his eyes. All at once an intense, eager light
burned in them. He grasped the back of the chair, and rose stealthily,
as though to avoid the attention of someone acting as sentinel over
him, and who was half asleep.

He stole noiselessly in the bright gaslight across the room. With
elaborate caution he took the keys out of his pocket and fitted one to
the lock.

With a dull, heavy sound the bolts fell back. He drew himself a foot
away, as though he expected that door to be pushed open, and something
to issue forth and seize him and do him deadly hurt.

He paused, breathing heavily. The door did not stir.

He stretched forth his arm and drew the door towards him. It yielded
slowly and swung out into the bright, handsomely furnished office,
until it stood at right angles to the wall.

Again he paused, and peered into the dark cavity before him. He seized
the outer edge of the door and steadied himself by it, leaned against
it slightly so that it swayed slowly to and fro a little.

His face was now flushed and covered with sweat. His hands clutched
the door feverishly, frantically. His knees trembled so that he seemed
in danger of sinking to the floor.

"It would be a fit ending to my life. My life is of no further use to
me or to those I love, or to the business I have made, nor even would
it be any use to those whom I shall not be able to pay. For although
no one could work the business as well as I, if things had not come to
this pass, I am too old now to work for others where I have so long
worked for myself."

He let go the door and stood unsupported for a while.

"If they should find in the strong-room of James O'Donnell nothing but
the unimpeachable records of his honest life, and his bones!"

He seemed to gather strength from the thought. He drew himself up to
his full height. The look of intense excitement gradually faded from
his face. The tension of his hands relaxed, and he looked around with
something like majesty in his gaze.

He was a lion at bay, but indifferent.

He walked up and down the room two or three times calmly,
deliberately, as if he were disturbed by a thought greater than the
hourly commonplaces of a busy day.

He ran the matter carefully over in his mind. When in thinking of this
deed first, and saying to himself his creditors would find nothing in
that place but books, papers, and--he had paused at the word revolver.
It was occasionally necessary for some of his clerks to carry large
sums of cash a distance from Rathclare, and when doing so the
messenger always took with him his revolver.

The lock by which the strong-door was finally secured could be turned
only from the outside, but there was a strong latch of three large
bolts which caught and kept the door closed when it was slammed.

There were two keys to this door, but he had made it a rule never to
entrust the second to anyone in his employment. When unable to be at
his office at ten o'clock in the morning, or at closing time in the
evening, he had always given the key he now carried with him to his
manager, and had it left at his house the same night. The second key
he had hidden behind some books in a bookcase which he always kept
locked.

But the three bolts which kept the door fast during the working hours
of the day could be shot back from the outside by means of a key, a
duplicate of which the manager had.

In the strong-room that night there was a sum in cash of more than two
thousand pounds.

If he went into that strong-room and used that revolver, the sound
would, in all likelihood, reach the ears of no one in the place, and
nothing would be discovered for several days, as no one would suspect
the main bolts were not shot, since he had been seen to lock the safe
that day, and no one else could unlock it.

He made up his mind that, come what might, he would end his life where
his fortune had begun, and where now his ruin was complete.

And still he could not think of bidding adieu for ever to the scene of
his life-long labours without one more look at the books which had
been so honestly kept, and which he had hoped to hand down unblemished
to his son Eugene.

He took up a lamp which lay on one of the side tables, lit it, stepped
into the strong-room, and drew the door sharply after him.

There was a loud bang. The three bolts shot into their places.

He was now in the strong-room with the records of his honest life, a
revolver, his power of retreat cut off, and the determination not to
survive the night of ruin.

He had forgotten to put out the gas in his office.




                            CHAPTER XVIII.


The strong-room was about ten feet by fifteen, and no more than eight
feet high. There were presses in it for the books, and an iron safe in
which the cash and securities were kept. This safe, standing on
tressels in a corner, was the one used by the house before the
business expanded to its present dimensions. Upon it the old man set
his lamp, and putting two deed-boxes one on the other, he placed them
near the safe for a seat. Then he opened the safe, and taking out some
of the securities it contained, placed them beside him. He adjusted
his spectacles, and turned over the deeds and shares somewhat
listlessly.

The documents here represented a vast sum of money. Here were deeds on
which he held mortgages, title-deeds, stocks, and shares.

He did not undo the tapes. He knew them all by sight, when and how he
had acquired them. This was the result of one speculation, that of
another. In his will this and this were left for life to his wife, and
afterwards to his son and his son's children. This and this and this
were to go absolutely to his son.

He went on thus through all the documents in the safe. There was no
hurry. It was still many hours to daylight. If all were over with him
before people were stirring, all would be well. He had cut off his
retreat. He could not now get out of that room even if he wished it.

He felt glad that he had come in here. This was a kind of antechamber
to the other world. There was no going back now, and if he could
derive any consolation from the contemplation of the past by the light
of these records, he might do so without injuring anyone.

Ay, these were for Eugene. What would be his boy's fate? No doubt he
would recover from the hurt, for he was young and hearty. But then how
would he get a living? All his life he had been used to good things,
and looking forward to a career of remarkable prosperity. Now he was a
beggar, an outcast from fortune. These properties and moneys had been
intended for him. Now they would go to the greedy creditors of Vernon
and Son.

It was too bad that just at the very moment his boy had made up his
mind to marry, everything should be swept away from them. For some
years the only anxiety he had felt was that his boy should marry some
good amiable girl, and settle down in Rathclare, so that he (the
father) might feel that the successor to his business was at hand in
case anything should happen to himself.

He had not wished for money with the wife of his son. He had not
wished for any social advancement. He was not a man who believed in
family or society advancement. He wished his son to be an honest and
prosperous trader in his native town, and when that sweet girl had
been to their home a few times, he began to regard her as already his
daughter. He had intended making her a wedding-present independent of
what he was to do for Eugene. Here was what he had intended for her.
These were the title-deeds of Rose Cottage, Glengowra, which would do
the young people for their summer home. It was a famous cottage for
flowers, and there was grass for a cow, and there was a paddock, and a
little lawn, and a large garden. Just the thing altogether for a young
couple in the summer time.

Let him look at what the property consisted of. He read over slowly
the recital of all the things that went with Rose Cottage, the
measurements of the land, and so on, as though he were about to buy,
and it was necessary to be careful. Then he folded up the paper
softly, and tied it with the tape, and set it by him on the ground.

He was not an imaginative man, but the few images which had visited
him seemed all the more brilliant, because of their rareness. And one
of the visions which had come to him lately, and which pleased him
more than any other he had known for years, was that of Eugene and
Nellie living in this Rose Cottage, and he and his wife coming out in
the cool evening and having tea with them in the little arbour
overlooking the sea.

It would be strange and delightful, now that the vigour of his youth
and the strength of his manhood had passed away for ever, to be the
guest of his own son; to hear his son say, "Welcome, father," and to
see this tall, fair girl, who had such bright and pleasant ways,
tending to his good-hearted, kindly old wife, Mary. To see her placing
the chair of honour for her, and making much of her, would be a thing
to live for and enjoy. And then, later, there would be children who
would call him grandfather, and, with their fresh young voices and
gallant spirits, take away the feeling of toil and the weariness of
years.

What would Mary do? Mary, whom he had married long ago; and yet, now
that he had come to the end of his life, it seemed but yesterday. He
could see every event of their marriage-day more clearly than he could
see what had happened yesterday; for his eyes had grown dim since
then, and the magic charm of memory is that it forgets so well what it
does not wish to retain.

Bah! It would never do to think of those times, and of his old Mary
left alone and poor upon the world. It would take the resolution out
of him to think of her. It would rob him of his manhood to picture her
destitute in the face of unsympathetic men. No. It would rob him of
the last remains of vigour to fancy her standing alone and deserted,
without a home or a meal. He had come into that room for the purpose
of closing his life with his business career. Eugene was young and
full of spirits, and had many friends, and would soon get something to
do, and be able to give his mother a little, and to marry.

He must not take a gloomy view of the future for those he was leaving
behind. If he wanted to keep up his resolution he must think of the
future he was losing in this great crash. It was of Eugene and
Eugene's wife he must think. The fact that he could be of no further
use to his son, or his wife, or his son's wife, was the thought to
keep him to his resolution. If things had gone otherwise with him he
could have made those young lives so happy as far as worldly gear was
concerned. What further use was he on earth? Let him leave all at
once. Why should he confront this trouble and disgrace--trouble
unearned, disgrace unmerited?

He took up the documents from the floor and replaced them all
carefully in the safe. It was in this safe the money was kept. He
pulled out the drawer containing it. A week ago he would have thought
this a comparatively small sum. Now it seemed very large indeed. If it
had been only so managed that this two thousand pounds could have been
honestly saved from the wreck, it would have been sufficient to
provide, in an humble way--but there! Let the thought go. Nothing
could be saved--not a shilling.

He closed the drawer, and then drew out the one next to it.

This contained the revolver.

The light of the lamp so fell that when the drawer was fully out only
the barrel of the weapon was in the light.

The old man stood looking at that glittering barrel. It was as though
that barrel was a deadly snake slowly issuing from the darkness, and
he was powerless to move, to avoid it.

Once more all his strength forsook him. His face flushed, his limbs
trembled; he clasped his hands convulsively. He drew back a pace and
almost fell against the opposite side. He put his hand before his eyes
and groaned.

"Has it come to this with me," he said, "in my old age? Can it be
possible, I, who never did a dishonest act, must fly from life because
of the dishonesty of another?"

He put his hand up to his neck and tore his shirt open. He dropped his
hands, threw up his head and looked around him. "Great God! what is
this?"

The lamp was burning blue. His head was giddy. He was suffocating!




                             CHAPTER XIX.


Suffocating? Yes; there could be no doubt about it!

Up to this, James O'Donnell had forgotten that the strong-room was
almost air-tight, and that the air required by him and the lamp was
about what should have been exhausted since he entered the room. For
years he had been familiar with the great safe, and it had never
before occurred to him that to shut any man up in it for a lengthened
period would be almost certainly death.

Was he to die of suffocation, and under the circumstances of his
present position?

Already his thoughts were becoming obscured. There was the revolver
gleaming at him from the drawer. But his thoughts had taken a
circuitous route; and although he knew that a short time ago the
revolver had formed the main portion of an important design, he now
could not connect it clearly or coherently with that intention. He was
altogether occupied with the thought of suffocation, and but partially
able to concern his mind with any other idea.

How would it be if he died here, and of the death that threatened him?
How would it be?

He could not answer. He did not know.

He felt a tightness across his forehead, an oppression upon his chest.
The tightness and the oppression were little more than uncomfortable.
He had scarcely a pain. In fact, he felt a pleasant languor out of
which it would be a decided inconvenience to raise himself.

Then for a moment it came forcibly home to him that he was dying, and
would die before succour of any kind could reach him.

The motives which had led him to come there at such an hour, and which
induced him to shut himself up and cut off all retreat, were now
obscure. By a great effort he could dimly perceive that something was
wrong with his business concerns.

What was that?

A noise without! A noise at the other side of the heavy iron door. Who
or what could make a noise outside there in the private office at such
an hour? It was within the duty of no one to be in his private office
at this hour. No one could now be there for any honest purpose.

The propinquity of the material sounds enabled them to appeal to his
reason more forcibly than the murmur of the mill or the river, or the
tumultuous, distracting echoes of disaster beating through his brain.

All at once the sounds, his physical and financial position, converged
and were focussed upon a single relic of memory. Long ago, in some
book he had read of a famous cave called "The Cave of Dogs," somewhere
in the south of Europe, where, when men and dogs entered together, the
dogs were suffocated by the exhalation lying close to the ground,
while the men, because of their greater stature, moved on unharmed. He
knew at this brief moment of active memory the same substance which
now threatened his life proved fatal to these dogs.

If he now raised himself higher in his suffocating chamber, was there
any likelihood of prolonging his life by seeking air as high up as
possible in the room? It is true he had no great desire to prolong his
life. He had by this time forgotten he had had any desire to destroy
it. Yes, he would see if any virtue of life lay in the air above his
head.

He mounted upon the deed-boxes and thrust his head up.

Now he had pains and a tingling sensation, but the dimness and dulness
of the intellect gradually diminished.

The noise was repeated without. What could it be? His mind had by this
time become comparatively clear. He now knew he had come to that place
for the purpose of destroying his life, with the intention of
obliterating the world from his perception simultaneously with the
destruction of his fortune.

But what were those noises which again broke in upon his ear?

Now he remembered. There was a considerable sum of money in cash in
the strong-room. Some thieves had got scent of this fact, and were now
in the outer place with designs upon the gold and notes lying in the
safe?

If these wretches broke in when he was dead and carried off the money,
and his dead body was found later there (his head was so stupid, that
he could not see exactly what the inference would be), would it not
seem in some way or other that he had applied the two thousand pounds
to his own purposes--given them to his wife or son, say--and then
destroyed himself?

Although he felt relieved from the suffocation he had endured in the
lower air, he knew now that this relief could not last long, and that
the air he now breathed would soon become as tainted as that which he
had lately left.

What should he do?

To die in the midst of his commercial troubles--to die, leaving behind
him an unblemished reputation, and to die the seeming thief of a
paltry two thousand pounds, were widely different things.

And yet he did not appear to have much room for choice, for should he
continue as he now was and make no sign, he would, beyond doubt, die
of suffocation; and if he made any sign and these men had the means to
break in, and did break in before assistance came, they would no doubt
sacrifice his life rather than forego their design of plunder.

He paused for a moment in thought. Then, holding his breath, he
stepped down, took the revolver out of the safe, and got up on the
deed-boxes once more.

"I shall sell my life dearly," he said to himself, "if they force that
door."

Standing bolt upright on the deed-boxes, he fixed his eyes steadily on
the only means of ingress to that room.

"It is not likely," he thought, "there are more than two or three of
these ruffians, and I have six shots here. But how long will this air
last? How long is it possible for a man to live on the eighteen inches
more air I have gained since I mounted these boxes? For a man and--a
lamp? I don't want the lamp. I have seen here all I desire to see. If
they break in I will have no difficulty in seeing them, for my eyes
will be accustomed to impenetrable darkness, while they must carry a
light of some kind, which will enable me to make them out. I and the
lamp. It is as though there was food in a ship for a certain time for
two people. If the one dies the other will have the double share. If
the lamp or I die now the survivor will have the double share. In this
case the choice is easily made."

He filled his lungs and blew down the chimney of the lamp.

The darkness of the strong-room was now so intense that it was
absolutely impossible to see any object, however large or however
near. For all the purposes of sight the space enclosed by the four
walls was an absolute void. The old man, of course, knew he was
standing on two deed-cases in the strong-room of his business place;
that he held a revolver in his hand; that there were burglars without
and money within, and that he was threatened with suffocation. The
question now was, whether they would succeed in bursting open that
door before the rising tide of poisonous gas reached his nostrils.

The lamp being now extinguished, and there being some ventilation to
the safe, the deadly gas, which would be sufficient to destroy life,
was rising at a greatly diminished rate. A little of the heavy
carbonic acid succeeded in exuding through the lower portion of the
slight spaces between the door, threshold, and jambs; a little of the
pure exterior air infiltrated through the upper portion of the slight
spaces between the door, lintel, and jambs.

James O'Donnell had no means of knowing at what rate the deadly gas
was now rising, or whether it had ceased to rise at all, or whether it
was declining. It was not impossible, nay, it was not improbable, that
the deadly vapour might rise no higher than it had stood when he put
out the lamp.

It would not do for him to make the least noise, for the gas might
still be rising, and in case he made a noise the burglars might be
scared away for a time, only to return when he had succumbed to the
deadly vapour, break open the room, and so blast his character for
ever.

It was now necessary for him to stand bolt upright in that ebon
darkness, with his eyes fixed on what he knew to be the position
occupied by the door. Then, as soon as anyone opened that door, it
would be his duty to fire, and to fire with as deadly an effect as
possible, for he was an old man, no longer strong or active, and could
not hope to succeed against even one man who would undertake such an
enterprise, and the chances were there would be more than one in this.

He had no means of computing time. In the disordered condition of his
mind it was impossible to tell how the minutes went by. Now for some
minutes the sounds in the outer room had ceased. Any moment they might
be renewed. There would, of course, be a sound of hammering, although
the sound would be very dull. He had once seen a burglar's hammer. It
was made of lead, the face of it being covered with leather soaked in
oil. The wedges used were always of wood. But no matter how muffled
the blow, or how little noise the progress of the wedge made, the
sound could not escape his ear.

He took out his watch and listened to it. He counted the ticks, but
found they conveyed no idea of time. The very sound of the watch
confused his senses, and threw him into new perplexities. Holding the
watch to his ear, and the revolver in his right hand down by his side,
he stood motionless for what seemed to him a very long time.

It was strange, but still he heard no sounds of hammering. Could it be
that the first effect of the poisonous gas upon him had been to
disturb his senses, and that the noises he fancied he heard had been
the offspring of imagination?

Ah! They were beginning at last. He caught the sound of their first
attempts. He knew it would take a considerable time to break in that
door, and mentally he groaned at the notion of delay in his present
perilous condition.

Suddenly he started as though he had been shot.

The door swung open rapidly on its hinges. The full light of the
office sprang with dazzling effect into the darkness where he stood.
He was paralysed.

"Seize him!" cried a voice from without.

Then all at once, and before he had time to raise the arm in which he
held the weapon, he was in the clutches of two men, who dragged him
out ruthlessly into the glare of the office, and then started back
from him.

"It is the master himself!"

James O'Donnell staggered for a moment, dazed by the gaslight and the
perception that the men who held him were no burglars, but the
watchmen of the place, and that behind the door, as it now stood fully
open with the day-key in it, was the manager of all his business,
Corcoran.

When the watchmen made up their minds what to do they sent for Mr.
Corcoran. He brought the key with him; and then all three, having
taken off their boots, stole into the private office, and finding no
clue there, the manager, with little hope of discovering anything, put
his day-key into the lock, turned the bolt swiftly, and, to his
astonishment, pulled open the door. His astonishment rose to perfect
amazement when he found a man inside, and when that man turned out to
be no less a person than James O'Donnell.



                            END OF VOL. I.




                         * * * * * * * * * *

           CHARLES DICKENS AND EVANS, CRYSTAL PALACE PRESS.








End of Project Gutenberg's The Last Call (Vol. 1 of 3), by Richard Dowling

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