University of Virginia Library

LUCY HOSMER,
OR THE
Guardian and Ghost.

1. CHAPTER I.

The summer's sun was throwing his parting beams over the
circular range of high, detached hills that enclosed a small village
situated near the mouth of one of the Green Mountain tributaries
of the Connecticut river. Long, wavy lines of thin, blue
smoke becoming visible in the absence of the sun, lay stretched,
with their delicate aerial tracery, from hill to hill above the
shaded hamlet, beneath which the piteous bleat of the hungry
calf, the lowing of the returning cow, the joyous shouts of children,
with other various sounds of congregated life, rose loud and
distinct, in the growing denseness of the evening air, and mingled
with the sharp, peeping cries of the night-hawk loftily careering
in the expanse above, the low, sweet trill of the retiring wood-bird,
and the clear, hurried notes of the whip-poor-will, now beginning
to burst from the woody sides of the surrounding heights.
The field-laborers were seen, with shouldered implements, leisurely
coming in from the adjoining meadows, mechanics and
other men of business leaving their shops, and all quitting their
various avocations for the day, and quietly taking their different
ways to their respective abodes.

Among these there was one personage, a man of about fifty,
on whom, as he was seen passing on horse-back up a lane to his
house, a large ancient looking building, standing aloof from all

others, many an eye was turned with anxious or envious glances;
for his movements more or less involved the interests of a great
portion of this little community. He was the rich man of the
village. But it should have been enough for those inclined to
envy Jude Hosmer his wealth, and secretly repine, that they
could not change situations with him—it should have been
enough to cure the foolish wish, in this, as in a thousand instances
of the kind, to have scanned for a moment but his outward
appearance, to say nothing of the unknown elements of misery
within—to have noted his wasted frame, his head, prematurely
gray, dropped in deep study, his thin, sharp features, combining
in an expression of countenance, in which keen anxiety, intense,
corroding thought, and eager, grasping desire, were stamped on
every lineament, and betrayed in every glance, the whole unrelieved
by a single warming touch which spoke of sympathy, or a
single relaxing smile that betokened inward happiness.

We have termed him the rich man of the village; for he had
been so reputed ever since the death of his brother, who had been
dead about ten years, and who was known to be his full equal
in wealth. Indeed he and that brother, Colonel James Hosmer,
were the principal founders of the village, having come here
nearly thirty years before, purchased the fine water-privilege
the stream here furnished and the valuable tract of meadow land
contiguous, built mills, engaged largely, at first, in the lumbering
business, and finally in merchandise; one, as was agreed between
them, keeping a store for groceries and hard-ware, and
the other a dry goods store. And they both, in the course of
about twenty years, amassed what are considered in the country
handsome fortunes. But their fortunes were made by means as
different as their characters, which, excepting their common traits,
enterprise and industry, were as opposite as light and darkness:
Jude, the elder, the person whom we have introduced, was cold,
selfish and to the last degree grasping; while James was warm
hearted, generous and scrupulously honest. Jude never gave
anything for any purpose, had confidence in none, trusted no one
without security, and knew no mercy in the collection of his
debts. James, on the contrary, was public spirited, confiding, trusted
largely, and very rarely sued anybody. And yet Jude, with all
his parsimony, caution and exaction, found it impossible to advance

in wealth faster than his brother, who, against all the predictions
of the other, scarcely ever had the confidence he reposed
in individuals abused. People would make extra exertions to
pay one who had used them so fairly and kindly, and failing
debtors would come secretly and first secure him, leaving Old
Jude, as he was called, to pounce upon the remnant of their
property by legal process. In short, he prospered wonderfully,
and, in his noble and fortunate career, strikingly exemplified the
trite but golden maxim, “Honesty is the best policy.”

Yes, honesty is, in truth, the best and only safe policy, even
in the accumulation of wealth. Far less tact and talent are necessary
to ensure riches with honesty than success with knavery.
And we have often wondered how our young men of business,
when they cast about them among the men of millions,
the Lawrences and Astors of the land, all noted for undeviating
honesty, and then look at the Rathburns, or hundreds of others,
who have succeeded, perhaps, to considerable extent without
that great virtue, but who, with keener foresight and greater capabilities
than the former, it may be, have failed to attain a tithe
of their wealth, we have wondered how our young men could
ever shut their eyes to the fact, that, though trickery and unfair
dealing may flourish awhile, yet no great and permanent wealth
can be obtained by dishonest and unfair courses—wondered how
they can avoid seeing, that, if the latter class ever gain success
by dishonest ingenuity and overreaching, their success, with the
same capacities, would have been doubled had they pursued a
course of upright integrity, which alone can long secure that
general confidence indispensable to the acquisition of extensive
wealth.—All young men of any observation must see and acknowledge
a fact, so often and fully demonstrated in the business
community around them. And this, we should think, would be
sufficient, if no worthier motive actuated them, to induce all,
however inclined, to adopt at their outset in life, the rigid rule,
that exact honesty in dealing, with all classes, whatever slight
advantages may for the time be lost, be always religiously maintained.

At length Colonel Hosmer, to the sincere grief of all clases,
was taken away by an acute disease, leaving a widow and an
only child, a daughter of eight or nine years of age, to inherit

his property. Jude Hosmer became administrator on his brother's
estate, and guardian of his child, on the bonds of the widow,
who in a year or two followed her husband to the grave, and
thus left the whole of the property of the deceased to his unchecked
control. Soon after this, Jude Hosmer quitted trade,
and commenced the business of usurious money-lending, buying
up mortgaged securities, disputed titles, or anything else, in
which he saw a prospect of doubling his outlay. His rapacity seemed
to increase with his age; and he was even suspected by many
of having recourse to unlawful practices to increase his wealth.
Indeed the State's Attorney of the county, at one time, thought
he had identified him as the secret vender of an immense amount
of counterfeit money, which had been saddled on community,
or found in the possession of the smaller villains arrested for
attempting to pass some of it. But before the time appointed
for the trial of the latter, part of whom, on promise of exemption
from punishment, had agreed to turn state's evidences, and
not only testify themselves to the allegations they had privately
made against Hosmer, and several of his agents still at large,
but put the government in possession of other and sufficient
proof, the whole gang escaped, having broke jail by means of
implements furnished them evidently from without, by unknown
confederates, as was said by some, while others shook their
heads but thought it prudent to keep their suspicions to themselves.
Old Jude was also twice charged before the grand jury
with the crime of procuring false witnesses in his law-suits.
And here, too, he strangely escaped by the absconding of some
witnesses and the unexpected testimony of others. But though
he thus triumphed over all, who had attempted to make him
amenable to the criminal law, and though, for awhile, he bore
all down before him in civil litigation, yet, at length, the general
suspicion that his movements had created in the public mind
began to count to his disadvantage. The current of his luck in
the law turned against him; and he lost in rapid succession,
three or four important suits, in which he had been engaged, and
with them large sums of money. It was known also that his
property must have suffered deeply in several heavy speculations,
into which, goaded on by his avarice, he had gambler-like
rashly entered by way of retrieving the bad fortunes that had latterly
attended him. Still he was supposed to be immensely rich
in his own property, besides having the use of that of his ward.
As to the latter, however, he had given out, especially since his
own reverses, that his brother's property had been strangely
overrated; and that in consequence of large debts, that had
been unexpectedly brought against it, and the failure of securities,
little or nothing, after meeting the expenses of settling the
estate and defending titles, would be left for the heir over what
had been expended in her maintenance and education.

Such had been the history—as far as could be known to the
public of the affairs of one, who so closely kept his dark counsels
to himself,—such the history and ungenial character of Jude
Hosmer, whom we will now accompany to his abode, which had
been anything but a blest one: For most of his children had
died early, a son, who arrived at maturity, became a drunkard
and died miserably, and his only remaining child, a married but
childless daughter had become insane. And his family, at this
time consisted only of his wife, a weak, sickly, querulous woman,
her nurse nad maid of all work, a blear-eyed old thing
with just sense enough to make a good drudge, a deaf, surly
looking servant boy, nearly grown, and lastly, Miss Lucy Hosmer,
the niece and ward already mentioned, a lovely and high-minded
girl, now in the first fresh bloom of womanhood, and
standing here in singular contrast with the ill-assorted inmates
of this cheerless domicil.

2. CHAPTER II.

As Old Jude now rode into the yard his restless eyes at once
fell on the partially disclosed forms of his niece and a young
gentleman occupying two windows opening from the parlor towards
the garden, and immediately his usually severe and bitter
countenance assumed an expression of unwonted asperity.
Leaping from his horse with an air of nervous irritation, he
made a few rapid strides towards the barn and began to bawl
loudly and angrily to the servant boy we have named, who stood
leaning over the fence heedlessly gazing at the yarded cows.

“Shack! I say, Shack! Shack Rogers! do you hear, you
deaf booby?—come here, then, and take care of this horse.”

“Um?—what?—oh, yes,” replied the other, at length rousing
up and coming forward.

“Shack,” said the old man going up closely to the other, as
he handed him the bridle-reins, and speaking in his ear, “do
you know who that is in the parlor with Lucy?”

“Um?—what?—Oh—why, yes—Lot Fisher, the young lawyer—guess—an't
sartin—the one that used to live with 'Squire
Stacy down in the street, you know.”

“How long has he been here?”

“Um? Oh 'bout two hours, guess—took tea—may be three.”

“Has he ever been here before, when I was away?”

“Um? Oh, yes, think likely, but not so long, guess.”

“What does the fellow want here?”

“Um? Oh,—don't know—may be Lucy does,” added the
speaker, with a knowing wink of the off eye.

“Look here, Shadrack,” said the old man complaisantly addressing
the other by his true name, instead of the usual contraction,
“I want you should tell me if that fellow comes here
again in my absence. Be still about it; but keep a little eye on
their movements, and I'll do what is right—I'll pay you something
extra.”

“What's right, hey?” muttered Shack to himself, as he led
the horse away to the stable—“Do what is right, hey, old head
—'twould be plaguy strange if you should do any thing that's
next door neighbor to right. Extra pay for keeping an eye on
them, hey? Yes, I'll keep an eye on them, old chap, without
pay, but in a way you don't think of, may be.”

With knitted brow, Old Jude took his way towards the kitchen
where he encountered the old house-maid, before described,
shaking a fine damask table cloth at the door. “So Tabby,
you have been getting tea for those parlor gentry, eigh,” said he,
sneeringly.

“Why, la!—why, yes, Sir,” replied the other turning up her
great white eyes deprecatingly to the angry face of her master.

“And you made a great parade, I'll warrant it?” resumed the
former, in the same tone.

“Why, goodness, now! Why, Lucy ordered tea in the dining-room
with the reg'lar company things—be sure she did; and
I didn't know you'd got objections, or I'd never done it in the
born world, Mr. Hosmer,” said the girl in a fluster.

Old Jude made no further remark, but after musing a moment
made his way directly for the parlor, and unceremoniously entered
the room, where the lovers, for such they might in truth
be called, were sitting happy in the interchange of congenial
thought and feeling, and wholly unconscious of the domestic
storm that was about to burst upon them.

“I didn't know that you was going to have company, this afternoon,
Lucy,” said the old man in a voice tremulous with suppressed
passion, as he turned abruptly on the astonished girl,
without deigning a look or word to her companion.

“Nor did I, myself, scarcely,” she responded with some confusion—“But
if I had,” she continued with increasing firmness,
and spirit, “if I had known certainly that Mr. Fisher was to
call this afternoon, I should have not considered it necessary,
perhaps, to apprise you of the fact, Uncle.”

“Mr. Fisher?” said the former tauntingly, without pretending
to heed what she said, except the name of the person she mentioned,—“Mr.
Fisher?—who is Mr. Fisher?”

“Why, you certainly have not forgotten Mr. Fisher, Uncle—
the young gentleman that studied law with Squire Stacy,” answered

the girl, turning on the other a searching and reproachful
look.

“Fisher!” pursued the old man with a disdainful snuff. “Lot
Fisher, the illegitimate boy that Stacy got from a poor-house
down south somewhere?”

“Yes, Sir, the same!” promptly said the young man elevating
a head that might have served as a model for an Appollo, and
turning his clear, frank, self-possessed countenance full on the
other.

“O, is it,” returned the former, in the same sneering tone,
without looking up,—“I was not aware, that I ever invited you
here, Sir.”

“Mr. Hosmer,” rejoined the young man, still courting the
averted gaze of the old man, “this is very hard to bear, but as it
is in your own house, I will try to do it without losing temper.
I am here without invitation from you, it is true, for I did not
suppose you would expect me to wait for one, if I desired to
come. But I wish to make no secret of my business here, Sir,—
It was to address Miss Hosmer with the view to a future connection
with me, and with the intention, if she did not discourage
my suit, of consulting you early on the subject.”

“Consulting! umph! really! It would'nt require much consulting
to get my mind on that matter. If Lucy can't look anywhere
but among illegitimates and town-paupers for a future
connection, as you call it, I think she better not form one at all.”

So saying the old man turning hastily on his heel, shuffled
out of the room and slammed the door after him, leaving the
distressed and deeply offended girl in tears, and her insulted
companion pacing the room in silence, and struggling hard to
maintain the mastery over his outraged feelings.

“Miss Hosmer,” said the young man pausing before her after
quelling his emotions in a good degree,—

The girl raised her tearful eyes to the face of the other with
a look full of tenderness and respect, when, with a softened and
less formal tone, he resumed.

“Lucy, when I offered you my hand, at our former interview,
it was done with much hesitation, and the openly expressed
fears, that the circumstances, of which your uncle has so harshly
taken advantage, would be made, in case you accepted me, a

source of pain and mortification to you by the evil minded. The
trial, as you now see, is already begun,—to be repeated, I know
not how often, through life. And if, from this foretaste, you begin
to wish it, Lucy, I will relinquish my suit from this hour,
and with it, of course, all hopes of that union, to which I have
been looking forward with so many sweet anticipations of happiness.”

“I was not looking for such an appeal from you, Lot,” responded
the other again looking up with an expression of disappointment
and regret. “I remember what you said at the interview,
to which you allude; and I remember, also, you added, that, as
for yourself, you should never be disturbed by those circumstances;
for those who were worthy your esteem would never, in
thought or word, disparage you on that account; and that no
others would have the power to wound you. To this I assented,
as a just remark, and assured you, that if you could thus reason
and endure, I certainly ought not, and should not, allow such a
thing to disturb me. Has any thing now occurred, Lot, to lead
you to discredit the sincerity of my assurances, or doubt my consistency
and firmness?”

“No, Lucy,” replied the young man with a breast swelling
with emotions of gratitude and admiration,—“No, noble—noble
girl; but when I saw you in tears”—

“It was not that,”—quickly interposed the other,—“nothing of
that kind, Lot. I indeed felt wounded—deeply wounded—insulted
by my uncle; for I was insulted, as much as you, by his
treatment of company, whom I chose to receive, and whose respectability
he knew as well as myself—ay, insulted by my uncle,
my only near surviving relative, whom I so wished to love! It
was a bitter thought!—I could not have believed he would ever
have treated his dead brother's daughter so shamefully.”

“Then, dear girl, I am to feel assured, that, for aught that has
now happened, I stand with you as before?”

“As well, most certainly—perhaps I should say better—your
forbearance and manly conduct under such trying circumstances
should raise you in my esteem,—at all events it will be highly
appreciated. But I must not allow you to infer from this, any
final answer to your proposals. I would first have you received

here as you should be. My uncle, as you must know, has great
faults and peculiarities; but I would preserve his character in
spite of himself, and induce him to take a course that will be for
the credit and happiness of us both. In short, I would have his
consent to any union I may form.”

“His consent to a union with me, I fear, you will never have,
Lucy,” said Lot despondingly.

“We do not know that,” rejoined she, “he may have other
objections to you than those he has led you to infer. He is a
man, I am sorry to say, whose motives are often deeply masked.”

“It may be,” said the former, “that I have been misrepresented
to him; and when disabused, he may consent. And if he
should?—you have not yet said what you should then do,
Lucy.”

“Why how dull you are!” she playfully responded with reddening
cheek.

“Ay, but the words,” persisted the lover, “the comforting
words, Lucy,—what should you do then?”

“Why—why, of course, I should submit to my Lot,” she replied,
as blushing and laughing at her inadvertent pun, she dropped
her head on that fondly, proudly throbbing bosom, which,
at that moment, a moment ever fearfully important to the sex,
she had thus virtually chosen for weal or for wo,—that bosom,
on which—such is woman!—she must now depend for the only
talisman of her earthly happiness in the allotted calm and sunshine
of life—her only refuge in its never failing storms and
reverses.”

The lovers, not deeming it expedient to attempt any more interviews
in this house at present, agreed on a future correspondence
by letter, or perhaps such occasional meetings at the house
of a mutual friend in the village, as opportunity should permit;
and having settled this, they were on the point of separating,
when Old Jude, not satisfied with the abuse he had already offered
Fisher, or irritated that he still presumed to linger, hastily
reentered the room, and began to repeat his insults in terms even
more aggravating than before. But failing to elicit this time a
single word of reply from the young man he seemed to lose all

his patience, and, suddenly pointing to the outer entrance, exclaimed,

“There is the way out, Sir—there is the door; and while I
live here don't let me see you darken it again.”

The young man deliberately took his hat, and bowing an
adieu to Miss Hosmer, departed in silence.

“Well, well,” said the old man, in an attempted jocular tone,
as he turned to his niece with the air of one ready to apologize
or conciliate.

But his niece, without paying the least attention to his words
or manner, brushed by him with an air of chilling dignity, and
immediately quitted the room, leaving the nonplussed old man
to digest his spleen and enjoy his reflections by himself.

As to Lot, he soon found his way into the street, but he scarcely
knew how he had done so; for now, when he came to be
alone, and relaxed the curb of self-control which he had so successfully
imposed upon himself, his bosom became a perfect
turmoil of conflicting emotions. Although his heart had been
made to bound with happiness by the gratifying proofs he had
received of the niece's love, and the noble traits of character on
which he might rely for its continuance, yet that cup of happiness
had been sadly dashed by the treatment of the uncle. That
delicacy, which he had naturally felt before his mistress, had
been rudely shocked, his pride humbled, and his whole feelings
outraged; and chagrin, vexation and resentment, in all their
mingled power, took possession of his breast, for awhile over-mastering
all the better feelings of his heart, which usually so
strongly predominate there, and driving him almost to curse
those who had been the instruments of an origin, which now,
for the first time in his life, perhaps, he was ready to pronounce
a reproach.

While struggling under the influence of such feelings, as he
was slowly pursuing his way, with drooping head and abstracted
mien, towards the inn where he had left his horse, the hand
of some one, who had overtaken him unperceived, was laid
familiarly on his shoulder, with a good-natured,

“Hurra to you, Lot!—is this you, moping along with a gait
so unlike your usual one?—what has happened to you?”

“Squire Stacy!” exclaimed the other, starting, “You have
fairly taken me by surprise.”

“Ay,” rejoined the former, a very plain, but well favored,
keen eyed man of the middle age, “Ay, doubtless, but that don't
answer my question.—You look disturbed; something is wrong
with you, Lot,—where have you been?”

“Why, really, Squire Stacy,” said Lot, with a half offended,
remonstrating air, “you really press me very hard about”—

“About that which is none of my business, eigh?” interrupted
the Squire with good natured bluntness—“true enough, I presume;
but what other than a friendly motive do you suppose I
have for so particular an enquiry, Lot?”

“None, none, certainly,” replied the former relaxing. “And
you are right; for who is so well entitled to my confidence, as a
consulting friend, as you, Squire Stacy. You shall know:—I
have been to visit your fair favorite, Miss Lucy Hosmer.”

“I suspected so, Lot. And your reception has not been such
as you had hoped, I suppose?”

“From Lucy herself it has been—even more—but her uncle,
unexpectedly obtruding himself, insulted me beyond bearing;
and not content with that, finally turned me out of doors.”

“Indeed?—Do you mean to be understood literally?”

“Yes.”

“Well, I should hardly thought that of Old Jude. What could
be his motive in taking that foolish course to break off the match?
I confess I don't now see, though I very well understand why
he will oppose it. But stay—did you lose your temper and retort
upon him?”

“No, I governed myself perfectly, though I wonder how I
did.”

“That is well—very well—thanks to my training, eigh, Lot?”

“I confess it—otherwise I must have all but struck him.”

“Ay, and defeated yourself with both uncle and niece. But
one serious question to you, Lot. Why do you seek a union
with Lucy Hosmer? Do you want her for herself, or for her
money?”

“For herself, certainly. You surprise me by the question; for
I have understood she would have no property, or very little

Indeed, she once incidentally told me herself, that her uncle
had notified her to that effect. And were it otherwise, I had
hoped you entertained such opinions of my general motives as
would render that question unnecessary.”

“Well I do Lot, as far as you are aware yourself of your
leading motives in a given case, but we are all so constituted,
that we do not always realize what influences most contribute to
form our motives, or rather what our wishes would be, in a case,
if certain influences did not—perhaps unconsciously, operate on
us. But one question more—does Lucy love you?”

“I flatter myself it is so. Indeed I can no longer doubt it.”

“Well, Lot, I am now satisfied with your motives towards
that noble girl, the lovely inheritor of all her father's sterling
worth. I believe, also, you are worthy of her; and I think I
can promise you success.”

“You? you promise me success?”

“Yes, I—for I think I can. This doubtless sounds strange to
you, but it will appear less so when you hear certain developments,
which it is now expedient, perhaps, that I should make
to you.”

“It may be so; but I doubt it. She will not marry me without
her uncle's consent, which I have every reason to believe
will be withheld. And besides every means will doubtless be
employed to destroy me in her present good opinion, and I fear
with eventual success.”

“Poo! Lot, faint heart, eigh? I see you have not so high
an opinion of the girl as I have, after all. But come, let us go
into my office, where we can be free from intrusion. I have,
as I just intimated, some confidential disclosures to make to
you.”

But before following them to the proposed conference, we
will glance at the character and previous career of Stacy, together
with so much of the early history of our hero, as may
serve to explain the nature of the connection between them, and
the unpleasant circumstances attending the origin of the latter
to which allusion has already been made.

3. CHAPTER III.

Squire Stacy, as he was always called, who was the village
lawyer, was very generally acknowledged to be a strictly honest,
and in his way, a good hearted man. But as he was eccentric
and never did anything like other people, his acts and motives
were not always rightly appreciated, except by those who
intimately knew him. He was also so shrewd in reading the
characters and motives of others, and in detecting their weaknesses
and faults, that he was more dreaded than loved generally
by the villagers, who usually kept aloof from him, unless they
desired his professional services, on which they very justly placed
the utmost reliance: For many of the very traits that had prevented
him from being a favorite in social life, had contributed
doubtless, to success in his profession, in which he had acquired
an honest fame and a fair competence. But we need not enlarge
on his peculiar traits, for they will be shown sufficiently
for our purpose in that characteristic act of his life which involved
the fortunes of the young friend in whom we have seen
him take so great an interest.

About a dozen years before the period of our story, as Stacy,
one day, was returning on horseback from a neighboring town,
where he had been to attend a justice's court he stopped at a watertrough
by the side of the road near two or three poor looking dwellings.
And while awaiting the slow and dallying motions of
his horse in drinking, he amused himself in watching the motions
of a group of boys playing near the spot, and in indulging
in what, to him, was always a favorite employment, that of trying
to read their individual characters, present and prospective.
His eye first fell on a boy much larger than the rest, who was
unfeelingly domineering over a little timid fellow, wholly unable
to defend himself.

“Everything there shows the brute and coward for life, and his
actions confirm it,” said the Squire to himself. “Now for another.

And his eye next rested on a straight, compactly built little
fellow, standing on a flat rock, with no other clothing on him
than a coarse, ragged shirt, and a still more ragged pair of trowsers,
with one of the legs entirely torn off as high as the knee.

“Ah! now there is something worth studying in that boy,
ragged as the little Lazarus is,” said the Squire with interest---
“head, face, features, all faultless! and that expression! Why,
an almost perfect model of promising indications! But let us
look now for some exhibition of character.”

And with increasing interest he watched the boy's countenance,
which with alternating expressions of indignation and
pity, was keenly bent on the scene enacting between the hectoring
big boy and his distressed little victim.

“Zeke Doty!” presently exclaimed the ragged subject of the
Squire's observations, leaping from his stand on the rock, and
advancing a step towards the bully, “Can't see that any longer!
—can't have it!”

“Hoo!” sneeringly replied the other, “Seems to me, if I was
one of the town's poor, and a come-by-chance to boot, I should n't
crow quite so loud. I will do as I please, for all you, sir.”

“No you won't!” rejoined the former. “You let that little
fellow alone, and stop calling me names, or I'll fight you!”

The great boy, however, only jeered the more, and was beginning
to worry his victim again; when the other flew at him
with such resolution, and followed up his blows with so much
effect, in spite of the hard knocks he received himself, that his
antagonist, though of nearly twice his size, soon yielded and
took to his heels.

“Well done!” exclaimed the Squire. “Ah! I was right---all
the elements of a firm and noble nature stand revealed in that
single act, and intellect I know he has. If I could but have
the training of that boy---and why not? I want a boy, and he
may want a place. Let's talk with him a little.”

“Well, my lad,” said he, riding up to the boy, who was wiping
the blood from his nose, “you have got pretty badly hurt, haven't
you?”

“Some, but not so much as he did, I guess,” coolly answered
the boy.

“What is your name?”

“Lot Fisher.”

“Who is your father?”

“Don't know, sir. My mother's name was Hannah Fisher;
but she is dead now; and I live with Mr. Bean, who makes
shoes in that house, there.”

“Would you like to come and live with me, at the village?”

“Don't know but I should---what do you do when you are at
home?”

“I am a lawyer.”

“But they say lawyers do lie so---”

“That is a story you got from those who had lost their cases.
I don't lie, and I would not have a boy that would.”

“I'll go then, if Mr. Bean will let me.”

“Very well, we will go and talk with him,” said the Squire,
riding up and calling the shoemaker to the door.

“Well, what about this boy, Sir?” he asked, as the man
made his appearance, “have you any claims to him?”

“Why not in particular, Squire Stacy, I believe it is. The
boy being one of the town's poor, I bid him off, you see, about
three years agone to keep at a quarter of a dollar a week, besides
what I could get out of him; and so have kept him till
this year, when the selick men said he was old enough to earn
his way, and if I didn't want him, I must get a place for him,
which, seeing he didn't seem to take to my trade, I thought I
should.”

“That you can do easily. I'll take him off your hands.”

“What, for yourself? I don't know but I oughter tell you
the boy was kinder unfortunate about his birth.”

“So much the better—he will then know he must depend on
himself. But can he go now?”

“Why, yes, s'pose so.”

“Well, let him on with his hat and jacket, then.”

“He did have a hat,” said the man, “though I guess he has
lost it. But where's your jacket, Lot?”

“Why 'twant good for nothing,” replied the boy, “and when
I laid it down 'tother day, the hogs tore the last sleeve off.”

“Never mind,” said the Squire, “leap up here behind me and
we'll off in a tangent for home.”

Lot was accordingly mounted, in his scanty rags, without hat

or coat, behind the eccentric Squire, who, in this manner, proceeded
on his route, entered and rode through the village, heedless
of the wonder or sly looks of the villagers, and, landing the
boy at his house, installed him at once in his new home.

Stacy had judged correctly of the native character of the boy,
but he soon perceived that much must be done for him in the
way of instruction and guidance, else the strong traits of disposition
and intellect he possessed, which, under judicious management
might make him a useful and perhaps a distinguished
man, would make him very likely, if left to the guidance of
chance, a curse to the community, of which he should be an ornament.
The Squire, therefore, in pursuance of his own notions
on such matters, commenced his system of training; and
his first step was to inspire the boy with self-respect, by dressing
him as well as any of the boys of the village—by always treating
him with respectful kindness, and by never failing to praise
every good action, and only to express regret and sorrow at his
misbehavior and faults. This course, with the instruction constantly
accompanying it, transformed him, in a very few years,
from the wild, impulsive creature he was at first, into the most
obedient and docile of boys. In the mean time, he was allowed
the advantages of schools—the common schools till he was well
grounded in the rudiments of learning, and then the classical;
but of the latter, only enough to whet the intellectual appetite,
to teach him how to learn—to study on his own strength, and in
short, to think for himself. And such was his progress, and general
improvement in every thing, that at eighteen he was permitted
to enter on a regular course of studies in the law office,
at twenty one he was admitted as a practitioner at the bar, in
the county, with acquisitions both scientific and legal far superior
to many a graduate from college and law schools; when,
with the advice of his master, he settled, under the most flattering
auspices, in a neighboring village. Let us now return to
the thread of our narrative where we left it.

“Now Lot,” said the Squire, after they had taken a seat by
themselves in the office, “what do you imagine to be the true
cause of Old Jude's opposition to your proposed union with his
niece?”

“I certainly do not know, unless, as he led me to suppose, it
be the circumstances connected with my origin.”

“Not by any means: He cares not two straws for that; and
if the blind god had not made your eyes a little filmy, when
you look in that direction, I think your usual sagacity would
have enabled you to see that such a cause would be wholly
without effect on such a man as Old Jude, who as regards the
social relations, or any of the claimed proprieties and distinctions
in society, not involving the matter of dollars and cents, has no
more moral perceptions than a horse.”

“True, and I confess I was surprised to be called to meet objections
of that kind in him. It was then as I had partly anticipated,
want of wealth, was it?”

“No—as closely as the old man hugs money bags for himself,
that, if I read his dark character aright, is not the true secret
here.”

“Why, what can be his objection, then?”

“It is because you are a lawyer.”

“A lawyer!”

“Yes, a lawyer—such an one, at least, as he probably thinks
you will make, and especially one who stands in the relation
you do to me.”

“Your words are still too much of a riddle for my comprehension.”

“I presume so, and will be till you hear my story, which you
shall now have:—

Colonel Hosmer, when, in his last sickness, he found he could
not recover, sent for me, who had ever been his friend and legal
adviser, and earnestly requested me to accept the trust of administering
on his estate after his decease, and of becoming the
guardian of his daughter; his wife, he said, being too feeble in
health, and otherwise unequal to the management of so large a
property. I apprised him that his brother, in such a case, could
by our statute, claim those trusts; and I thought he would never
consent to forego his right and suffer a rival estate to go into
other hands. He then proposed making a brief will and me the
executor. That place I, also, firmly declined, knowing how
much Old Jude's persecutions, were to be dreaded by those who
crossed him where he concieved he had interests at stake. The

Colonel, who appeared disappointed at my refusal, then remarked,
by way of explaining the reason of his request, that though
his property would probably be safe in his brother's hands, should
the latter continue to be prospered, yet should he meet with any
great reverses in his own affairs, temptations might arise, to
which it were better for all parties that he should not be exposed.
The Colonel then asked, and finally drew from me a solemn promise
that if his brother took charge of his property, as he supposed
he must, that I would keep an observant eye on the manner the
trust was discharged, see that his wife and daughter were never
wronged, and in all things, act towards them as a friend and
father. He then handed me what he assured me was an exact
inventory of all his property, together with an appended schedule
of all debts honestly due from him, duplicates of which, it
seems he had prepared and kept for an emergency like the present
one. With these papers, which I have kept under lock and
key ever since, I left my dying friend, who, as I understood sent
immediately for Old Jude, proposed to him the same trusts he
had offered me, and, in the last words he ever uttered, charged
him to be kind and just to the widow and fatherless. So you
see now, Lot, why I should interest myself in all that concerns
the family of my lamented friend.”

“I do. But have you contrived to keep up all the while this
supervision of their affairs without the fact being known? As
long as I lived with you I never knew or suspected anything of
the kind.”

“No, nor any others, I presume. Yes, I have kept it up with
anxious vigilance. At the time I accepted this secret, and certainly
very unusual trust, and for several years after, I had not,
it is true, but little expectation of ever being called to exercise
it, except in the mere offices of friendship. But it was not long
before I began to have reasons to think otherwise. And my suspicions
being thus early aroused, I have traced Old Jude, from
that time up to the present, through all his secret and subtle
windings of iniquity, not only respecting his brother's afairs, but
his own, which, in the way he was managing, I thought it part
of my duty to investigate.”

“Do you then think him guilty of managing to defraud his
niece and ward of a portion of her property?”

“If he claims any af the property that now passes for his, I
do,—not only a portion, but the whole.”

“What, Sir! how am I to understand you, Mr. Stacy?”

“That, if Lucy was paid off all that justly belongs to her,
Old Jude would not be left with a shilling in the world!”'

“You astonish me! and I can scarcely realize this of the so
generally accounted rich Jude Hosmer; nor can I conceive how
it can be, that with his sharpness, with his extreme economy in
family expenses, and with no vices to impoverish him, he has
not even gained instead of losing property.”

“True he has sharpness in deal, even to the most unconscionable
exaction,economy to pinching, and none of what you mean
by vices; but instead of the latter, he has pursued, instigated
by his insatiable thirst for gain, a course of secret crimes,
and it was this which, at length, proved the principal source and
means of his impoverishment and losses. He began at first by
bribing witnesses in his law-suits; and his success for awhile,
as is often the case with those who enter on a career of crime,
blinded him to the final consequences. These bribed men under
threats of exposing him, or of volunteering to those seeking
new trials in important suits, to do away or explain their former
testimony, have continued to make fearful drafts on his purse.
Besides this, the public became so generally impressed with a
belief in his foul practices, that after a while he stood not even
a fair chance of obtaining his just rights before our courts and
juries; and he consequently lost several heavy suits, when he
ought to have recovered. He next went into the purchase and
sale of counterfeit bank bills, of which you recollect, there were
suspicions afloat at the time. Well, Sir, the story of those prisoners
whom he doubtless helped to escape was all true; and yet
it embraced only one branch of his extensive operations, in
which, finally to save himself from infamy and a prison, he had
to silence a combination of his accomplices and agents, who found
it safer and easier to plunder him than the public, by paying them,
in all enormous sums of money. And having had quite enough
of this, and become almost desperate by his losses, he lastly, in
seeming exemplification of the noted adage “whom God would
destroy he first makes mad,” plunged into heavy speculations in
the paper cities, then just got up, as a test on human gullibility,

one would think, and this gave the finishing blow to his own
private property.”

“But is it not generally understood,” asked Lot, “that his
brother's estate, at the same time, has turned out badly through
unexpected indebtedness and defective titles?”

“Yes, but that story all come from Old Jude, and has been
given out from time to time, during the past half dozen years, to
prepare the public mind for a quiet accomplishment of his designs
on the estate.”

“What first led you to suspect any such designs on this
estate?”

“Why, I was not quite satisfied, at the outset, that he should
have taken out letters of administration and guardianship on the
bonds of the widow alone, and I think the court should have
required further bonds, in so large an estate; but he declining
to procure other signers, the court, knowing him to be very
wealthy, appointed him on the bonds he offered. I did not like
the aspect of the thing, however, at the time, I remember; for it
looked to me, as if he was glancing at the probability of his wishing
some day to appropriate a portion of this estate to himself,
and was thus guarding himself against the troubles that might
arise in being watched and called to account by bondsmen.”

“But at the death of the widow was he not required to give
new bonds, and by that time, also, to settle the estate?”

“Yes, he was notified to that effect, and here the Judge of
Probate was clearly delinquent in duty in not enforcing its requirements.
But as he appeared so willing to give new bonds
when the subject was named to him, though he always had some
plausible excuse for not doing it then, and as every one considered
him so rich that it could only be necessary as a matter of
form, he has been always suffered to pass on without any bond
but his own. And so he has managed with regard to a-settlement
with the court. The great bulk of the estate was in notes
and mortgaged securities, of which he never returned any inventory,
and having pretended to sell the real estate to pay debts
and expenses, the amount and situation of the estate were, as he
supposed, known only to himself. Well, though he was several
times told by the different judges, that he ought to settle, yet as
he seemed always willing, though never quite ready, he was

permitted to glide along, as with his bonds, partly through the
negligence of the judges, there being no one interested that could
call him to an account, and partly through their fears of attempting
to enforce the law on a man of his influence: For in addition
to the power incident to wealth, Old Jude was often a warm
politician, when he could make anything by it, and always contrived
to exercise so much influence in the election of the judges,
that they were made to feel that their term of office was in a
great measure in his hands. Thus in regard to the management
of this estate. I have sometimes thought I could see an almost
literal fulfillment of the significant words of one of the old prophets
respecting the approaching corruptions of the Hebrew government—
The great man uttereth his mischievous desire, and so
they wrap it up.”

“All this looks, indeed, like a forearming for the excution of
some such design as you alledge; but how far has he proceeded
in fact?”

“So far that little remains to be done. About the time he
met with the first serious reverses in his own fortune, which I
have named, he commenced changing the notes and securities of
his brother's estate into his own name; and I soon found, that
just about in proportion as he lost his own property, he prepared
the way for embezzling that of his ward. And thus, in realization
of his brother's fears, he has gone on till he has destroyed,
as he believes, all evidence, by which any parcel or portion of
that property can be identified. These acts, with many more I
could name, when taken in connection with what he has latterly
declared to his niece and others about the failure of the estate,
afford sufficient proof not only of the intention, but the act, of
embezzling the whole of his brother's extensive property, or at
least turning its rightful owner off with some paltry setting out
in furniture. But with all his precautions, he will be afraid of
the investigation his course might have to undergo, in case his
niece married one whom he could not hope to blind.”

“And has he never suspected you in the part you have been
secretly acting?”

“I think he has; but he is by no means aware how much I
know of him. And not suspecting my motives and the moral
obligations I am under to ferret out his misdeeds, he probably
thinks what I do know will only be made use of in making up

a bad opinion of him. But he evidently fears me; and he has
much more reason to do so than he dreams of; for in following
him in matters that really concerned me to know, I have become
possessed, as I before intimated, of most, if not all, of the dangerous
secrets of his dark, tortuous and plotting career. And I
tell you, Lot Fisher, that Old Jude Hosmer, as much as he is
feared and courted by others, and as firmly and as strongly as he
thinks he has planted himself, stands tottering on a precipice,
from which I think I have the power to hurl him to destruction.”

“This is as new to me as it is surprising,” said Lot, thoughtfully,
“but how do you propose to make use of this power?”

“To compel him to do justice to his niece. If he will do this,
his crimes against the State, as the occasion has passed by, shall
be kept still secret, if he offends no more. But should he refuse
the condition I shall place before him, and attempt to stand out,
he must then be overthrown by every means that can be brought
to bear upon him And you, Lot, must be the man, as the husband
of Lucy Hosmer, to take the lead in fighting the great battle
which will then ensue.”

“If I was the husband of Miss Hosmer, I should probably
take proper measures to secure her rights; but as I am not, and
have not the least authority to act for her, how do you propose
that I should avail myself of the knowledge you have imparted?”

“I would lay the whole case before her. She will keep the
secret; and she will, also, have the sense to perceive, that her
interest and her happiness alike require, that she make you, as
soon as she is of age, her legal protector, whether her uncle consent
or not.”

“No,” said Lot, after a thoughtful pause, “I can never do that
All that I could say would be but to tell her, in effect, that she
was entitled to a fortune—that I would prosecute her uncle and
recover it, if she would marry me. No, never! It would carry
with it an air of mercenary calculation, that I will never have
associated with my name.”

“I spoke as a lawyer, you have spoken as a lover. And perhaps
it is well for us, in this mercenary world, that there is one
passion devoid of selfishness. I am not surprised that you take
this view of the subject. Still the emergency seems to require

that some step to apprise Lucy of her rights should be taken soon
—before she is of age, which is some time this year, I think. It
would probably alter her resolution about waiting for her uncle's
consent to her marriage. And besides this, there is danger that
Old Jude, as soon as she can legally act for herself, will be coaxing
her into a settlement, which, unless she is previously informed
of her rights, he will have in his own way. Perhaps I had
better see her myself.”

“You should be the one, if any body; but remember I can
give you no authority; nor do I wish you, when communicating
with her, to connect my name, in any way, with the subject.”

“Certainly not; for I can appreciate the delicacy of the circumstances
under which you are placed. But if I should conclude
to have a talk with Old Jude, as I may, I should directly
urge his consent to her union with you, hinting enough of what
I know, if I could not get along without, to bring him to a compliance.
For I can see, that no strong steps can be taken to secure
Lucy's estate, which is greater than you even now dream
of, till your union with her. Then, if you and she wish it, I
shall be ready to act, not only with all my skill as a lawyer, but
with all my good will as a friend to you both.”

“You know, Squire Stacy, how certainly I should retain you
in any case which I could strictly call my own; and I doubt not
Lucy would as certainly do the same. But, at present, I can
only thank you for your kind intentions.”

“Ay, Lot, but you may expect I shall be acting a little in anticipation
of the only legal authority under which I can ever act;
for no such authority, you are aware, could be conferred in the
secret trust I accepted from Lucy's father. But whatever move
I may make, it will be done with the utmost caution, and in a
manner, perhaps, that you may not, at the time, comprehend;
for expedients of no common character may be required to meet
the doublings of my subtle opponent, who is really more to be
dreaded, in a contest of this kind, than any three lawyers in the
land. And here, before we part, let me enjoin the same caution
and vigilance on you, not only in keeping all I have told you a
profound secret, but by placing a double guard on your whole
conduct. I know you have the best of all shields against the
shafts of enemies and opponents of all kinds, a good moral character.
But Old Jude is no ordinary opponent, and you know not

what means he may resort to by way of preventing a connection,
in which he doubtless sees much to fear.”

The conference here ended and the parties rose to leave the
place; when their attention was attracted by a slight ruffling
noise, as of hastily moved paper, in the back room of the office,
the door between the two rooms being sufficiently ajar to admit
the sound. The Squire instantly went into the room, and, drawing
up the paper curtain, which hung down over an open window
in the rear of the building, and which had doubtless occasioned
the noise, looked out, but discovered no person, though an
eaves-dropper, owing to a line of shrubbery, that stood near the
building, could have easily escaped undetected.

“I was careless in leaving that door ajar, and still more so in
not shutting down that window,” said the Squire, as they now
left the office; “but I think it could have been only some slight
puff of wind that ruffled the curtain, so our secret is still with
ourselves, I presume.”

4. CHAPTER IV.

The night which followed these agitating events, was not,
as may be easily imagined, one of very calm repose to either of
the lovers: For as they retired to their respective rooms, now
many miles apart, and laid their heads on their solitary pillows,
the occurrences of the day, so deeply interesting to the feelings,
and so important to the future destinies of both, were made to
pass again and again in review before them. And while the
blissful sensations, flowing from their own and the consciousness
of each other's love, grew more rapturous in the retrospect, the
unprovoked treatment they had received, now that the feeling of
resistance, with which the bosom is apt to arm itself to meet the
infliction of a wrong, had passed away, was felt with double
poignancy. Lot's feelings, in respect to this treatment, it is true,
had been somewhat modified by Stacy's developments, which
were calculated to lessen the effect of Old Jude's conduct on one
of his character; but, as much as these developments had quieted
his feelings in some respects, they added to his uneasiness
in others. He now felt himself placed in a new and somewhat
embarrassing position. He knew not what fierce battles for
property, and, perhaps, for character, in which his motives would
doubtless be impugned, were about to be fought over his head.
And besides this, the beautiful girl he had wooed in the confidence
arising from supposed equality in pecuniary circumstances,
now stood before him as a wealthy heiress; and he could not
prevent new doubts and fears from arising in his mind, lest, when
this should be known, his humble claims would be made to give
place to more advantageous offers. The consciousness, however,
of pure motives—of the fact, that he had offered her his hand
when he supposed her destitute of wealth, together with his faith
in her character and constancy, at length, in a good degree, prevailed
over his doubts and conquered his uneasiness in this respect.

But though he might be able to quell these lover-like
troubles by the deep trust which he felt he could place in Miss
Hosmer, so long as she should be left to follow the dictates of her
own unbiased judgment, yet doubts and fears far less easily disposed
of now arose for the effect of the machinations which this
new insight into the motives and character of her uncle assured
him would be put in train to prejudice or deceive her, and break
off the connection. And the more he looked forward to the
probable difficulties in his path, and reviewed the slender, silken
thread of love, which led to the desired consummation, and
which, in all cases, is so easily snapped asunder, the less was
his hope that it could withstand the many rude shocks that it
was doubtless destined to receive.

With Lucy the case was considerably varied. She, having,
by this time, no suspicions that the situation and extent of her
property was any different from what her uncle had, for so many
years, been artfully preparing her to believe, and consequently
being ignorant of the deep motives he had to drive away the
suitor of her choice,—she could not bring herself to believe that
his opposition, whether grounded on the inadequate reasons he
had held out, or any other prejudice, would long be persevered
in. Although, sooner than she intended, she had been brought
virtually to engage herself, in her sympathy for her lover under
his ill usage, and in admiration of his manly conduct on the occasion,
yet she did not regret the step she had taken. Entertaining
neither a doubt nor a fear, that her own feelings and
purposes or those of her lover would ever be estranged or shaken,
she saw no clouds in the future. And the happiness she felt, in
now, for the first time, permitting her gushing affections to flow
unrestrained, and in looking through the brightening vista before
her, was only alloyed by the annoying sense of the wrongs and
insults with which this new and interesting era of her life was
associated. These, for a while, she thought she could never
forget or forgive. But resentment could never long find harbor
in a bosom so beautifully harmonized as that of Lucy Hosmer,
who possessed the enviable faculty of making the good in every
picture so prominent as to overshadow the bad, and even of extracting,
like the bee, some portion of sweet from every bitter

flower she found in her path. She soon resolved, therefore, to
cast away anger and endeavor to conquer her uncle by kindness.
And this resolution was strengthened by the unusual cordiality
with which the latter responded to her smiling salutations, when
they met the next morning. But she little knew what was
passing in the breast of him whom she thought thus to move
from his purposes. He, himself, had been the first to perceive
the error he had committed, and his plotting brain was already
at work devising new and more effectual measures to estrange
and separate the lovers; when he somehow became apprised of
the existence of other dangers, which were so much more immediately
threatening to his interests, as to engross his whole
attention, and cause him, for the following week, to be almost
wholly absent from home.

Esquire Stacy, in the meanwhile, not only in fulfillment of
his promise to his deceased friend, but in furtherance of the prospective
rights and happiness of the lovers, in whom, now he
had discovered them to be such, he took a double interest, was
anxiously deliberating with himself respecting the first step to
be taken in their affairs; and it was not till after the lapse of
many days, so critical did he perceive the ground on which he
stood to be for any active movement, that he could come to any
definite conclusion on the subject. Although, however, he made
up his mind first to have an interview with Old Jude, broach
the subject of the proposed union of his niece with young Fisher,
and then proceed as circumstances should dictate; and with
this view, he went out several times intending to accost him,
but each time found, on enquiry, that he was absent from the
village. Wondering what could cause the old man, who was
so generally about home, to be absent so much, just at this time,
and growing a little impatient to put his project into execution,
Stacy continued on the look-out several days longer; when, one
morning he was gratified to see the object of his thoughts making
his appearance in the street. The Squire immediately approached
him, and, when near, began to pause in his walk to intimate
his inclination to hold some conversation. But the other, without
heeding the intimation, brushed by him with a look of peculiar
significance and passed on in silence.

“Now what can that manner towards me, and especially that
expression mean?” said Stacy glancing after Old Jude, marching
stiffly on his way. “It is the same look of malicious triumph
which I have often seen him slyly assume in courts and
other places, when he had discovered some hidden advantage
over an opponent; and it must now be meant for me. Ay, and
if I have not read that masked face of his, for twenty years, in
vain, he thinks he has made a discovery through which he anticipates
a triumph over me in some matter of consequence. But
what can it be?”

And he thought over his own private affairs, and even the various
law-suits of which he had the charge for others, but soon
decided it could be none of these. It must be that he had got wind
of his disclosures to Lot—but how? Lot himself, surely, after
the cautions he had received, would not have even hinted the
matter to any, except Lucy; and her, it was quite certain Lot
had not seen; and he must have known better than to have
trusted such a secret in a letter to her. But by what other
means could the old fox have got at the secret? “Stay—stay!”
at length exclaimed the Squire, in alarm, as now for the first
time, the truth glanced through his mind—“that noise we heard
in the back window of the office! He or some dirty minion
sent for the purpose, must have been there, and listening to our
whole discourse, perhaps. Well, it does seem, as if the Old Evil
One himself told him what was going on, else how should he
have the thought of being there with such an object?”

The secret of the old man's continued absence during the past
week was now explained. Although Stacy, in the disclosures he
made to Lot had not while stating what he could prove of Hosmer's
misdeeds, named any of the persons on whom he relied for evidence,
yet he knew the old man would use every effort to discover
them, and that, if successful, he would scruple at no means
to corrupt or intimidate them. No longer doubting that his subtle
opponent, in his alarm at what he had probably overheard,
had been abroad solely for the purpose of trying to ascertain the
sources of his danger, the Squire at once resolved to lose no
time in visiting the most important of his secret witnesses, in order
to ascertain whether any of them had been discovered or suspected
to be such, and to take such measures with them, by inducing
them to commit themselves on paper or otherwise, as

should be best calculated to secure them against the tampering
arts to which they might now be subjected. Accordingly, the
next morning he saddled his horse and set forth on his projected
expedition, with some apprehensions, certainly, but, after all,
with no serious expectation that anything of consequence had
been discovered, much less that anything could have been effected.
But he soon began to perceive traces of his opponent, and
as he continued his rounds, he became fully satisfied that, where-ever
he went, the crafty and persevering Old Jude had been there
before him, making use of all the means that wealth, artifice or
intimidation could effect, in repairing the breaches, which, with
the clues he had received, he had, to his great alarm doubtless,
found open and unguarded in the wall of defences, with which
he supposed he had so strongly entrenched himself:—One man
by whom Stacy expected to show a bold fraud in the sale of real
estate in which that person, in a pretended public sale had been
employed to bid in, as he did for a mere song and then redeed
to Old Jude, the most valuable piece of Colonel Hosmer's property,
now produced a receipt from the administrator to apply
for the amount of the value of the premises except interest, and
pretended that what he had before said, respecting the sale was
only to gratify a momentary spleen and not intended to be in
earnest. Another person, by whom was to be proved a collusion
in the compromise of what is usually termed a trumpped
up claim, brought against the estate, in which Old Jude, on the
payment of some small sum, and taking receipts for the amount
claimed, had charged the estate several thousand dollars, had
now, like the other man his false answer, feigning to have forgotten
all about the affair, except, that it was, as the papers
showed, a fair and honest transaction. And nearly thus did the
vexed and chagrined Squire find every case which related to
the frauds he once could have proved, he felt sure to have been
committed on the estate. Nor was he any more successful with
those, from whom had, directly or indirectly, been entrusted,
in confidence, with secrets respecting the old man's criminal offences,
by which it was supposed he could be sent to the State's
prison. One had just bought a piece of land of Hosmer, on trust
and now knew nothing to his disadvantage. Another had suddenly,
the past week, gone off for some unknown part of the
western country, having some how been helped to the pecuniary
means of doing so, as he had long wished, but never before had
the ability; while another boldly denied a communication formerly
made to Stacy in private, and challenged him to prove
it.

“Outwitted and outdone! ay, completely outdone, at least for
the present,” exclaimed the baffled lawyer, as he now relinquished
the further prosecution of his object in dispair, and rode thoughtfully
homeward. “But we will see if there be no other field of
action in which to give battle to the slippery old rascal. If human
ingenuity can devise the means of bringing him to justice, it shall
now be done with a vengeance; for now that he has seen so much
of my hand in this strange game, he will never rest on the defensive,
even as regards me personally, but soon be hatching his
plots to destroy me. So he or I must fall in the contest, which
I can no longer avoid, if I would.”

One morning, several days subsequent to Stacy's signal failure
in respect to that power, which he thought he possessed over
Old Jude, and in which he so much trusted to bring the other
to terms, as the former was sitting in an open window of his office,
deeply engrossed in the subject, that now principally occupied
his thoughts, he suddenly started and called to his wife
who was out training some shrubbery, in the pleasant little yard
enclosed between the house and office—

“Wife, how old is Lucy Hosmer?—do you know exactly?”

“Yes,” replied the comely and intelligent looking matron,
turning round with a surprised and enquiring expression, “yes,
I know, and by reckoning a little, I can tell to a day.”

“Well, reckon away then—I want to know exactly.”

“I will, Mr. Impatience,—how long have we been married—
eighteen years, is it not?”

“Yes, this June.”

“Very right, Sir, but what day of June is it now?”

“To day is the 20th.”

“Well, Lucy was of age, that is eighteen, then, yesterday.”

“Are you sure of that, wife?”

“Yes, and will make you so in a dozen words:—You will remember,
that you depended on having Colonel Hosmer, your
great friend, at our wedding; and do you not also remember,
that he was prevented from attending by the confinement of his
wife, that day, of their first and only child?”

“I do—yes, I do recall the circumstance now, but what day of
the month was that?”

“The 19th, as you will find by consulting our bible record.”

“You are right, woman, though I did not dream that she was
of age so soon. It is strange,” he continued, slapping together
the book in his hands with an air of vexation—“it is plaguy
strange, I cant keep up with anything! This must be seen to
immediately.”

“What must be seen to, my dear Sir? I do not see to what
all this can tend.”

“I didn't mean you should, Mrs. Curiosity, (there, that
makes us even.) It is an office secret, which women must not
know.”

“Well, I was not aware that office secrets embraced so particularly
the ages of the ladies. But to be serious, if your enquiry
relates to any move you are about to make respecting Lucy's
property, I hope you will go on; for I have long suspected, that
great wrong would be done that amiable girl.”

“Ay, but don't guess it aloud; and look here, wife—if Lucy
comes into the street to-day, I want you should ask her into the
house, if not, contrive up some way to get her from home where
I can see her; for I must not let that sun go down without having
a talk with her.”

But all Stacy's inducement to see his fair young friend was
destined to be destroyed by the unexpected occurrence of the
next moment. Even before he and his wife had finished all that
would probably have been said, they were interrupted by the
appearance of Old Jude's servant, Shack Rogers, who entered
the office holding a paper in his hand, which he presented, saying
in his usual gruff and unconcerned manner,

“Mr. Hosmer wants you should read that, Squire, and tell him
whether or no it is good in law.”

With considerable surprise at so unexpected a request, Stacy
took the paper, and that surprise soon changed to a feeling bordering
on consternation as he read it as follows:—

“In consideration of three hundred dollars, rec'd to my full
satisfaction of Jude Hosmer, in his note payable in clothing or
furniture, I hereby fully acquit, release, and discharge the said
Hosmer from all claims, rights and demands of every kind I
have or may have on him for any and all the property personal

and real that came into his hands as my guardian, or as the administrator
of my father's estate”—which instrument, bearing
date of that day, was signed by Lucy Hosmer, sealed and witnessed
by Shadrack Rogers and Tabitha Talbot, all in due
form.

When the Squire, on a second perusal, became fairly convinced
that this strongly written instrument was genuine, he could
scarcely restrain his indignation from bursting forth in open execrations: For he saw, at once, that the settlement and discharge
into which the injured orphan had been so artfully drawn by
the wretch who should have protected instead of plundering her,
must give a finishing blow to her expectations, unless it could be
proved,—which was not very probable—that the paper was
obtained by fraudulent representations; and he saw also very
clearly that it had been sent there, not for the purpose of advice,
as the old man, who had not consulted him for a dozen
years, now pretended, but in the spirit of insulting defiance, and
only to show the completion of his triumph. And if ever the
conscientious attorney was tempted to do a wrong act, it was to
tear the paper to pieces on the spot. But a second thought corrected
the inclination, and he said to himself in a low tone,

“No—no—that won't do, nor perhaps anything else; but I
cannot, and will not, believe, that Providence will permit such
a monstrous wrong to go unpunished.”

As the Squire finished the sentence, he happened to glance at
Shack's countenance, and found it, to his surprise, beaming with
an expression of pleasure and intelligence. And the long, scrutinizing
look, which he instantly turned on the other, convinced
the penetrating lawyer, that the fellow possessed feelings and
intellect that he never had credit for; and that, though he was
formerly very deaf, in consequence of a severe scarlatina, his
deafness now, for some shrewd motive, must be partially or
wholly assumed. This circumstance, which scarcely would
have been noticed by an ordinary observer, or if noticed, passed
over as of no consequence, was eagerly seized on by Stacy as a
new clue to possible advantages of much importance, and he at
once determined to follow it up by putting Shack to further trial.
With this object in view he raised his voice and said—

“Yes, the paper is good enough.”

“Umph—what?” said Shack through habit or design.

“Tell your master it is good in law,” bawled the squire; “but”
he added letting his voice fall to a very low key, “but shall you
tell him also what I said to myself about his cheating Lucy?”

Shack again looked knowingly, and without making any
direct reply to the question, observed:

“One of my ears, somehow has got a notion of hearing, when
any thing is going on against Lucy, who has treated me kinder
than all the rest put together there, but it won't hear any more,
Squire, if you tell what I sorter mistrust you have guessed about
it.”

“I will keep your secret till you tell mine,” said the Squire,
regarding the fellow with increasing interest.

“It is safe then,” said Shack; “and if you feel as I do about
certain things, perhaps I may tell you what you don't know,
and help on matters some.”

“Ah! that is it, my good fellow,” exclaimed Stacy eagerly
and with brightening eye, “that is what I want—we understand
each other, do we? Lucy—her property,—and the one she
would like to marry, eigh?”

“Exactly, but I must go now, or some bird will be carrying
news to the old man.”

“Stay! are you no hoeing corn, these days, down in his meadow,
by the river there?”

“Yes, and it is out of sight of the house where the old chap
stays, mostly.”

“Well, suppose I should stroll along down there with my fishpole,
this afternoon,—could you show me where I might catch
a few good trouts for a breakfast?”

“Yes, oceans of 'em—I saw a whacker there, yesterday,” replied
Shack, with a significant wink, as he hurried out of the
office.

5. CHAPTER V.

Leaving the persevering Squire, still undiscouraged by his
repeated defeats, to devise, by the expected disclosures and assistance
of his freshly discovered ally, new schemes on the ruins
of the old, for the accomplishment of his object, which however
hopeless the case might seem to one less fertile in expedients, he
had no notion of yet relinquishing, we will now return to the
abode of his opponent, through whom most of the remainder of
our story will be, perhaps, the best developed.

After Old Jude had succeeded in consummating his baseness
towards his niece, in the settlement we have described, and sent
off Shack to carry the evidence of his iniquitous triumph to Stacy,
he, being then left alone in his room, sat some minutes immersed
in deep thought; when arousing himself, with the air of one
who has run through some calculation and found every thing
satisfactory, he began to soliloquize:—

“Yes, as far as I can see, every bar is now put up, and all is
safe, at last, which makes my property as good as in my best
days,—perhaps a little better. Well, I would'nt have been so
frightened for any small sum! But I have headed the meddling
rascal cleverly, blast him! and I want he should know it, which
will be both a caution and a punishment to him, till I can safely
punish him more effectually. I wonder what he will say, when
he reads the paper—I should like just to get a peep at his face,
at the time, to see him wince under the bitter pill?” And the
old man chuckled aloud with inward exultation at the thought
of having outdone one of the shrewdest lawyers in the country,
and thus secured to himself a fortune. “Well, he and his young
prig of a lawyer, won't be quite so fierce to get the girl now, I
guess, seeing they can't get the property, in which they were to
go snucks, I suppose. But if the hateful young dog should persevere,

he must be stopped—'twont do to let him marry her—he
may be digging up something. No, Lucy must be cured, but in
some different way from the one I tried—though if I could have
provoked him to strike me. But stay, I forgot to watch Shack!
—no knowing who can be tampered with—perhaps it ain't too
late to see to it now,” he added jumping up and passing out at a
back door to the top of a sharp little hill near the house embowered
with fruit trees, where, unseen himself, he could obtain a
view of the road even to Stacy's office door—being the post of
observation which he had used a fortnight before in dogging Lot
and Stacy to the office, when, in his jealousy and meanness, he
stole round to the rear of the building and played the eavesdropper
as already intimated.

“Ah! there, Shack is just entering the office,” he resumed,
peering through the shrubbery—“I will allow him five minutes
to do the business in and be out.”

So saying the suspicious old man took out his watch and noted
the minute hand till the allotted time had expired; when,
looking up and seeing nothing of Shack, he became uneasy, and
his cold, grey eye began to gleam with distrustful glances. In
less than another moment, however, the servant emerged from
the office door and struck out directly for home.

“All right—even if he had tried to tamper, he couldn't have
made the stupid booby understand anything, in so short a time,”
said Old Jude, with relaxing countenance, as he put up his
watch, and retraced his steps back to his room, where Shack, in
a short time made his appearance, and, with his usual air of
careless indifference, delivered the paper, with which he had
been despatched, to its owner.

“What did he say, Shack,” eagerly asked the latter.

“Um?—what?”

“What did he say, I ask you, when he read the paper?”

“Um?—O, not much, but what was in it, that made him look
so queerish about it?”

“No matter—what did he say and do?”

“Um?—what?—O, he said 'twas good enough in law, he
s'posed, then had something over to himself and acted kinder
maddish.”

“Then it made him mad, did it, Shack?”

“Um?—what?—O, yes,—grumbled, and made faces, like.”

“Ha! ha! ha! he! he! he! Good!” again chuckled the
old man in his dry, hyena-like laughter—“There, Shack, you
may go back now, to your hoeing in the meadow.”

For the remainder of the day Old Jude gave himself almost
wholly up to the enjoyment of his fancied triumph. The scheme
had employed all his powers of cunning and contrivance for
years; and he now, for a while, felt a pleasure and exultation,
not only in proportion to the magnitude of the object, but to the
anxious study, the constant fears, and especially the recent
alarms, he had experienced, in accomplishing it. But the human
mind has been so constituted by a just and wise Providence
that it can never long receive happiness from the success, or from
any of the fruits of fraud and injustice. The excitement of the
chase, the employment of the faculties in devising, and the energies
in executing a scheme of iniquity, may, indeed, for the
time, stifle the voice of conscience; and the final achievement
of the object may, at first, bring a sort of savage pleasure to the
bosom. But when those faculties and energies cease their exertion,
when the attendant excitement dies, and the short-lived
pleasure of the triumph passes away, the mind reacts, the conservative
principle we have named begins its office, and soon
brings the heart to long and painful repentance or plants within
its core the thorn of enduring remorse.

And so it was with this execrable wretch, in the execution of
his flagitious plot for robbing his orphan niece of her inheritance.
As the excited feeling attendant on the pursuit of his
object, and the almost fiendish glee he had felt in its accomplishment,
subsided, other and unwelcome thoughts began to obtrude
themselves on his mind. He could not, with all the sophistry,
with which, villain-like, he essayed to appease the annoying
suggestions of awakening conscience,—he could not help seeing
that his was not, in fact, a triumph over a hated opponent, but
over an innocent, defenceless girl. He could not prevent the
promise he made to his dying brother, to be just to the fatherless,
from recurring again and again to his remembrance, which
seemed strangely to grow more vivid in this particular, the
more he attempted to deaden it. And he went to his lone bed
that night with thoughts and feelings which he tried in vain,
and which he cursed himself for not having the power to banish,

from his disturbed mind with thoughts and feelings, in short,
which none but the guilty can know.

Sometime in the night, he was suddenly awakened by a
strange noise,—he could hardly tell what, though it seemed to
him like a human groan, coming from beneath, or some place
not greatly distant, as far as he could attach any definite idea to
it, in his confusion. But it chimed in so well with a troublous
dream, which he now recalled as having just disturbed him, that
he soon concluded the supposed noise must have been part of it;
and, uttering a peevish psha! he tried to compose himself again
to sleep. And in this he had nearly succeeded, when the same
hollow groan, issuing from below, and seemingly struggling upward,
as if though the opening of a rending tomb, rose distinctly
on his startled ears, and died away, moaningly uttering, as he
thought, “My brother, Oh, my brother why hast thou disturbed
me?”

The confused and frightened old man sprang bolt upright in
his bed, and, with glaring eyes, peered over on to the floor, and
round the dimly seen corners of his room; but he could discover
nothing. He then, with palpitations so wild and audible as almost
to disturb his own hearing, sat some moments listening intently
for a repetition of the dreaded but expected sound. He
was unable, however, to distinguish even the slightest noise.
All within and around was as silent as the grave. Still not satisfied
to let the mystery rest here, he arose and groped his way
out of his room and round into that of his servant, who slept in
the next adjoining apartment. But Shack was snoring loudly
and evidently had not been disturbed. The old man then came
out into the long hall, that ran by their rooms, and again listened
for some movement in other parts of the house. He would
have felt almost thankful to have heard the stealthy steps of
thieves, of whom he usually stood in much fear; for it would
have relieved him of an awe and dread far more terrible. But
he could not hear any thing; and he soon returned to his bed,
and, after an hour's turning and tumbling, varied only by fitful
starts and turns of intense listening, was lucky enough to fall
asleep.

The next morning Old Jude arose with a perplexed and
troubled brow, and made anxious enquiries of all the members of
the family, whether they had heard any unusual noises during

the night. Uniformly answering him in the negative, they, in
their turn, became curious to know why he had made such enquiries;
and, it was easy to see, that although he evaded their
questions, or turned them off with some false account, his conduct
and appearance had not a little excited and disturbed them.
But they were left to indulge in such conjectures as they chose
to make, for he studiously avoided any further conversation on
the subject.

“It could'nt have been any thing but a dream, after all—Psha!
what a fool to be so disturbed!” muttered the old man to himself
with an effort to shake off the impression, as he seated himself
at his writing desk and began the business he had allotted for
the day.

But notwithstanding these efforts to deceive himself and quiet
his disturbed feelings, he was far from being at ease through the
day; and, at night, as the family retired, he was observed to go
round and carefully lock, or bar up inside, the doors, and all
possible avenues of ingress to the house. For the three succeeding
nights, the old man neither heard nor saw any thing to disturb
him. By this time he had so far succeeded in making himself
believe, that he had been the dupe of his imagination, sleeping
or waking, as to enable him to divest himself mostly of his
fears of a repetition of the strange occurrence. And, as he rose
on the fourth morning following the mysterious event, after hooting
at himself awhile for his folly in ever having bestowed a
serious thought on the subject, he resolved to go on, as if nothing
had happened, with that part of his grand scheme, which,
now that the property was secured against any ordinary event,
only remained to be completed, that of causing his niece to discard
the young lawyer, for whom, he doubted not, she still
cherished an affection, that, if not destroyed, would result in
their union. Having previously meditated attempting secretly
to undermine Lot's character, as a method of accomplishing this
object, he went out, after breakfast, for a walk to some of the
public resorts of the place, where he might meet with some of
that despicable class, who are the curse of country villages—the
retailers of slander, into whose ears he could whisper his insinuations
with a certain prospect, that they would soon grow into
stories sufficiently damning to subserve his purposes, or where,
perhaps, he would meet with opportunities of effecting his purpose

by other and more direct means. And he had been out
but a short time, before he unexpectedly met with an occurrence,
out of which, with his usual cunning, he soon contrived a plot
that was singularly well calculated to favor, if not wholly effect
the general object he had in view. He encountered in the road,
a poorly clad, vagrant young woman, who asked his charity to
buy food and clothing for herself and the small child she carried
in her arms. At first the old man turned away with his habitual
snuff of contempt at such objects; but musing a moment, he
turned round and asked her a few rapid questions, by which he
gathered, that she was from an adjoining town—had been deserted
by a suitor on the eve of a promised marriage, and was
now an outcast, with the fruits of her imprudence on her hands,
a male child, now nearly a year old.

“Well, woman,” said Old Jude, after listening attentively to
her various replies, “if you will let me name your boy, and then
do as I say, I will give you something.”

“My child has already been named,” replied the woman.

“Ah? well, you may call him by it after you leave this place;
but while you are here, if you will call him Lot Fisher in the
hearing of all you speak with, and give no explanations, I will
give you a dollar.”

“I don't see what good that can do you, Sir; but as it won't
hurt the child”—

“No—not in the least; so here is your dollar. But don't forget
the name, Lot Fisher, nor the condition—there, you may go
now—stay, do you see that house yonder,” added the speaker
pointing to his own house,—“well, call there, and you will find
a young lady, who is partial to that name, they say, and she will
give you something, I presume.”

The woman, after balancing the coin in her hand a moment,
in evident hesitation, finally put it up and moved on in the direction
indicated by Old Jude, who kept his eye on her, and soon
had the satisfaction of seeing her enter his house.

6. CHAPTER VI.

After sauntering about the village till noon, here and there
dropping insinuations calculated to confirm the story which he
expected the woman would be the means of raising to the disparagement
of the young lawyer, the old man returned to his
house and entered with an air of apparent indifference and abstraction,
while secretly he was trembling with the most eager
curiosity to hear something to apprise him of the result of his infernal
contrivance; nor did he have to wait long in suspense.
Tabby, hearing the footsteps of her master on the floor, the next
moment, came hurrying from the pantry, flourishing a plate in
one hand and a spoon in the other in her fluster, and broke
forth—

“Don't you think—O don't you think, Mr. Hosmer, what a
flare up we have had here, to be sure!”

“Why, what has happened—what has happened, Tabby?”
asked the old man, in affected surprise and alarm.

“Why, a woman with a young 'un come in and asked Lucy
for money to buy things for her little Lot, she said. But Lucy
did n't seem to hear her call it Lot; for she went out and brought
and gin the creter a whole half dollar!—(fore I'd done that!—)
and asked, in a kind of pitying way, how she come to be so
needy. The woman answered she'd been misfortunit. Lucy
then told her she hoped she'd make good use of the money, and
asked her what her child's name was; and the woman blabbed
it right out afore us both—Lot Fisher! Lor! how beat Lucy
did look, to be sure! But she soon kinder plucked up and asked
the woman, why she called it by that name. Well the creter
hung her head a little, and said she had got good reasons for it.
Jist at that minit I looked up, and Lucy was as white as a cloth
and enymost quite fainted away! So I made a spring for the
camphor bottle, but trod on the dog's tail, who up and bit this
little finger, I done up here, to the bone. Well, I yelled, and

fainted too, I do 'spose, clean away; for whin I come to, Lucy
had got over it enough to get to her room, and the pesky woman
and all had cleared out, leaving me,” she added dolefully, “like
some dead lady laid out for the cold grave.”

“That all?” said the old man contemptuously. “Poo! what
a fuss!—and all kicked up by finding out what every body, but
Lucy and you, knew before about the fellow you made such a
parade for, a week or two ago here at tea.”

“Yes, ony think! But if I'd knowed it then,—fore I'd touch
to do a thing!”—replied the beauty, shaking her head with
clenched teeth and a look that was meant to carry out the sentence
more forcibly than any words she could find for expressing
it.

“Well, but about Lucy,” resumed the former, “it has n't made
her sick, has it?”

“No, 'spose not, but”—

“But what?—have you been up to see her since?”

“O yes a few minits ago, to tell her dinner was 'bout ready,
and kinder talk it over a little; but she was in a taking still,
and said she should n't want any dinner. Fore I'd cry to be
obleeged to give up such a fellow!” she added as she left the
room to resume her work.

“It has pretty much done the business, I guess,” muttered Old
Jude to himself, with a lip curling with inward exultation;
“and the stories which she will now soon hear to confirm the
impression that has evidently been made, will give the finishing
blow.”

And the old man was not mistaken. While the heart-stricken
Lucy was striving to hope against conviction, that the inference
the woman's words and conduct had compelled her to draw, did
not apply to her lover, the village gossips, one after another
dropped in, full of mysterious hints concerning a certain discovery
they just made, which they would not, at first, for the world tell
Mr. Hosmer's family, but which they finally did tell with many
regrets, that Miss Lucy did not feel well enough to appear, that
they might console her in her grief and disappointment. These
communications, all, in some shape or other, making established
facts of what was before a matter of inference, continued to be
repeated to Lucy, by the officious Tabby, till the former supposed
there could no longer be a doubt about the former disgraceful

conduct of her lover; and, though ready to sink with grief and
mortification, she soon was enabled to summon the stern resolution
to tear his image from her heart, and have no further communication
with him forever.

O, ye, who tamper with the loves of united hearts, especially
those of the softer sex, who with keener sensibilities to cause suffering,
are more helplessly your victims, the terms brute and
fiend are appellations too mild for your deserts! Your offences
may not, indeed, be punishable under any human code; but so
long as your acts implant wounds in the heart, to which the
blows of the steel dagger were a mercy, your doom in another
world will be that of the assassin and murderer!

“I now stand on firm ground, at last,” said Old Jude to himself,
as he retired to bed that night under the full persuasion that,
by his last cruel and contemptible trick, he had brought his
whole plan of operations to a successful close, and might now bid
defiance to every threatened danger. But the memorable saying
of the Apostolic philosopher, “He that thinketh he standeth let
him take heed lest he fall,” is generally no less applicable to our
temporal than spiritual condition. The old man's guiding maxim
had always been, steer clear of the law and seize every advantage;
when, therefore, he had shielded himself against its meshes, as
his cunning and experience had generally enabled him to do, it
never seemed to have entered into his calculations that any
other power or circumstance could affect him. And the occurrence,
consequently, by which he had been so startled a few
nights before, and by the less questionable repetition of which,
he was destined now again to be humbled, and soon to be overthrown,
found him wholly unprepared and helpless, it being
something against which his system of tactics had made no provision.

About midnight, the same unearthly groan, which he had
heard before, struck on his slumbering senses and instantly
aroused him to consciousness.

“Just as I feared—that voice again!” hurriedly mumbled the
old man in troubled accents, as he sprang up in bed, and with a
beating heart awaited the expected repetition. The sound however
was not repeated; but instead of it, a tall figure, in white,

seemingly rising slowly through the floor and standing in frightful
outline before him, greeted his appalled vision, and rooted
him speechless and spell-bound to the spot! After remaining
stationary a moment, looking down upon him, as the guilty old
man conceived, with a look of mingled sorrow and indignation,
the figure raised one of its shrouded arms, and silently and solemnly
pointed upwards; then slowly receding, it passed through
the open door and disappeared.

Old Jude had not been much of a believer in ghosts; and, but
for his guilty conscience, he would not probably have lost his self
possession. And even as it was, when he saw the apparently
tangible object retreating through the door, a gleam of hope shot
through his mind, that it might be a personage of flesh and
blood; and the relieving thought so far restored his prostrate
spirit and strength, that he soon found voice to cry for help.

“Shack! Shack! Shack!” he screamed with desperate energy.

But he was answered only by the echo of his own husky voice.
No response came from the room of the sleeping servant. The
old man then mustered courage enough to scramble off the bed
and run round to Shack's room; when finding the latter snoring
loudly, he seized him by the shoulder and shook him rudely,
while with chattering teeth he exclaimed:

“Shack! Shack!—did you hear it—did you see it, Shack?”

“Um? What?—wha—wha—what is it?”

“The shape—that is I mean the man or something that has
been in my room and has just gone out.”

“Um? Was there one? My Gorry! I wish I had a club!
but I ain't afraid—we'll go down and light a candle, and then
I'll help you catch him.”

So saying, Shack hastily slipped on his pantaloons, and, followed
by the old man, hurried down stairs and struck a light;
when they both went over the whole house, but found every
door and window fastened, while no indications of house-breakers
were anywhere discoverable within or without. Long before
this was accomplished, the alarmed females were dressed and
out to ascertain what was the matter. Old Jude tried hard to
allay their fears, and quiet the tumult he had occasioned, by attributing
the cause of his disturbance, if in fact he was not
wholly mistaken in supposing he heard or saw something, to
the jumping of a rat or the cat; but his restless and excited manner

wholly belied his assertions and only increased their apprehensions.
He, however, was quite willing to have a light kept
burning in his own and each of their rooms during the remainder
of the night, and that Shack should walk the halls as a
watch. The next morning the old man charged the family to
keep secret everything which had happened. But notwithstanding
all his precautions, the whole village had the story before
night, that the house was haunted, and Old Jude had seen
a ghost, and strange and various were the comments that were
made on the occasion.

During that day the old man struggled hard, but in vain, to
banish this strange, and more strangely repeated visitation from
his mind. Sometimes he would almost convince himself, that
it was some person whose design was either to rob or to frighten
him. But the question which he could not answer, constantly
arose—how did he get into the house—if robbery was the object
why did he not effect it, and steal off in silence, instead of making
a noise, and showing himself? And what object could any
one have in merely firightening him, without making known
any wish or demand? Thus he was met in every attempt to
solve the mystery on natural principles; which his conscience
failing not to remind him, that each of these visitations followed
a heinous wrong towards his niece,—the first the finishing act
of his fraud on her property, and the last his attempt on her happiness,—his
guilty conscience whispered, “thou knowest,” and
completed his confusion. And yet he determined to yield not
to its promptings.

“Folly!” he would exclaim, “to think a man, who has been
dead ten years, can come up to upbraid the living! A ghost!
what is a ghost? The mere thing of the imagination, which
cannot be seen by the natural eye. But this I did see with my
natural eyes; and it must be something real—something tangible;
and, whether I can tell how it came there or not, it must
be something that I can exclude from my room and I will do
it!”

Taking courage from this view of the subject, he began to
contrive how he could best secure his room against the further
intrusion of the dreaded apparition. And with this object in
view, he went up to his garret and overhauled a parcel of old
hardware and cutlery, left on hand when he quitted trade. Here

he found a door lock of unusual size and strength; and he instantly
resolved to fit it to the door of his sleeping room. Accordingly,
selecting corresponding screws and staples, and providing
himself with suitable tools, he proceeded to his room and
went to work.

“There!” said he with a sort of gleeful but forced bravado, as
he completed the adjustment of the massive implement and
brought the rusty bolt to play in its place. “There, let me turn
this key, thus, on the inside here, when I go to bed, and I will
defy the Devil himself to get in!”

But although Old Jude had in this manner succeeded in fortifying
his feelings, in some measure, against the contingencies of
the night, yet it was not without many fears and forebodings,
that he retired to his chamber. He would gladly have had
Shack, or some other one, sleep in his room; but his fears, that
the ghost, or whatever it was that had appeared to him, might
communicate his guilty secret, were so strong as to overcome
his desire to be attended; and he therefore resolved to trust to
his precautions, and once more nerve himself to brave the result
alone. Accordingly, after turning the key of his ponderous
lock, and carefully examining the fastenings of the windows,
and inspecting every part of his room, even under his bed, he
trimmed his lamp to burn through night, and went to bed, when
favored by his exhaustion and loss of sleep the previous night,
his troubled spirit was soon wrapt in forgetfulness.

7. CHAPTER VII.

The last strokes of the house-clock, telling the solemn hour of
midnight, awoke the old man from his uneasy slumbers. The
lamp had gone out, and all was dark and silent. In a moment,
however, the same prolonged, sepulchral groan, that heralded
the apparition of the preceding night, resounded through the
room; and the next instant, the same fearful figure was dimly
seen standing in the middle of the floor, looking grimly down on
its affrighted victim.

“Obdurate mortal!” it at length said, in low, deep, accents,—
“thinkest thou to elude the spirit thy misdeeds have called up,
by guarding thyself with bolts and doors? Twice hast thou
disregarded my coming;—now I am permitted to speak to thee
and utter my last warning. Know then, guilty wretch, that yet
forty days are allowed thee to cause the wrong to be righted—
the stricken heart to be restored to happiness. Heed the condition
of mercy, else I then come again to take thee hence!”

The apparition then gradually fell back towards the door, the
grating bolt flew back, the door opened and the figure vanished
in the entrance, leaving the old man, sitting mute on the bed,
with his eyes starting from their sockets, his hair bristling up
on his head, and his hands desperately clutching the bed clothes,
in the overpowering fear that had seized him; nor did the disappearance
of the dreadful object this time bring the accustomed
relief. His spirit, at the thought of what he had seen and
heard, died within him, his strength was gone, and for some
time all power of utterance was denied him. After a while,
however, feeble and distressed cries began to break from his lips,
and he shrieked out the names of his servant and the other
members of the family by turns. But all slept too soundly or
were too far distant to hear him. And the poor wretch was
compelled to remain alone, sprawling helplessly on his bed and

moaning in his fear and distress, or crying in vain for help, till
the long and eagerly desired morning light appeared and ended
his night of horrors.

Shack was the first one to discover the situation of his master.
As the former rose and came out from his bed room, his
attention was arrested by the sounds of moans and deep sighs,
coming from the apartment of the latter; and he at once turned
in that direction, and perceiving the door standing open, concluded
he would go in to see what was the matter. But he stopped
short at the very entrance, in surprise and alarm, at the spectacle
that there met his eyes. The old man sat crouching on the
bed amidst the deranged and twisted bed clothes, with a cold
sweat standing in drops on his haggard face, and with a countenance
exhibiting the very picture of misery and despair. His
grizzled hair, during the night, had changed to milky whiteness,
his strained eye-balls were bloodshot, his cheeks sunken, and
his whole appearance, indeed, so altered, that his servant, in
any other place would have scarcely recognized him.

“Oh, Shack!” exclaimed the old man, piteously.

“What is the matter, Mr. Hosmer, what has happened?” asked
the other, in evident concern, as he approached the bedside.

The old man made no reply, but attempted to adjust the bed
clothes around him.

“Master is sick,” resumed Shack, after awaiting a moment for
an answer,

“Shan't I call the folks up, and then go for the doctor?”

“No, no,” said the old man, feebly, resuming his wonted caution
and making an effort to arouse himself, “no, don't do it, nor
ask any questions, nor say anything to any body about what
you have seen. I have had a bad night, but shall be better soon.
Help me on with my clothes that I may get out of this accursed
room.”

Shack then assisted him to dress, supported him down stairs,
and placed him in an armed chair in the common sitting room,
where the family soon assembled around him, with manifestations
of wonder and alarm at his strangely altered appearance.
He, however, carefully concealed from them the true cause of
his condition, and pretending to attribute all to a sudden fit of
illness, of which he was now better, sunk into his usual reserve.

But common observation taught them, that something extraordinary
had happened to him, and his appearance through the
day, during which he continued feeble, nervous and dejected,
confirmed their opinion, and convinced all who saw him, that,
in some mysterious way, the old man had received a shock, both
in body and mind, from which he would not speedily recover.
And they were right in their conjectures: From that night Old
Jude Hosmer was an altered man. The impossibility that his
door could have been unlocked by any one from the out side,
and the equal impossibility, he conceived, after his close examination
of his room, that aught of flesh and blood could have got
there in any other way, had, from the first sight of the apparition,
destroyed all his hopes that his nocturnal visitant might be
an earthly one; and yielding to the dreadful thought, which, in
spite of the warnings of conscience, he had twice rejected, that
his monitor was the shade of an injured brother from the grave,
he listened to the supernatural message as to a doom that was
neither to be questioned nor avoided.

“All that a man hath will he give for his life:”—Old Jude
Hosmer, as well he might be, was always afraid to die; and as
he had gone on increasing in years and crimes, the fear of death
had been sinking deeper and deeper in his heart. From the first
of his three fearful warnings, conscience, as before intimated, had
secretly interpreted the Mene Tekel of the mystery to mean the
relinquishment of his ill gotten possessions to the rightful owner,
but he had tried hard to blind himself to the interpretation and
struggled fearfully to avoid the sacrifice. Now, however, when
he had, at last, been smitten and humbled to the dust, in view
of the dreadful alternative, which was placed before him, and
which he was made to feel there was no way of escaping, every
motive and feeling, even the great ruling passion of his life, gave
way before this controlling terror. And goaded by his fears,
rather than any sincere penitence, he now, although he neither
received, or looked for, any further visitations, at present, from
his supernatural monitor,—he now, every day and hour, grew
more and more anxious to fulfill the condition which alone could
relieve him from his agonizing apprehensions of the menaced
doom.

As soon, therefore, as his strength, and the shattered condition

of his nerves would permit, which was not until several days
had elapsed, he commenced, in earnest, the work of unraveling
the web of iniquity, which had cost him so much time and plotting
to weave. And, as the first step, he sought out his niece
when alone, and gave up to her the acquittance he had obtained
from her in the manner before described, merely telling her, he
had discovered an error in his reckoning, much in her favor,
which, as he had concluded to make a new arrangement of his
affairs, would now soon be adjusted to her satisfaction.

With this deceptive announcement, for he could not be frank,
even in good work, he left her, greatly surprised, as well as
puzzled to comprehend the true reason, (the alleged one not being
fully credited by her) of the unexpected act, though she could
not help believing it in some way connected with the late mysterious
occurrences, which had so much disturbed him. Having
effected this first, and, as he conceived, the most important step
in righting the wronged one, without any exposure of his former
wickedness, which he seemed nearly as anxious as ever to
conceal, his mind became a little more tranquil; for the papers
having always been carefully kept in his own hands, he could
now complete the restoration of the embezzled property, by transfers
and conveyances, very easily, and with all the secrecy he
desired. But though he could thus easily restore the wronged
one to her rights of property, yet there was another part of the
requirement,—that of restoring her to the happiness he had destroyed—which
he had more difficulty in deciding how to perform.
He believed that Lucy would hold no communications with her
lover, even if she was requested, so long as she was under her
present impressions; and he could think of no way of removing
those impressions from her mind without confessing, or at least
betraying, his own agency in causing them. This he could not
bring himself to do. And in the dilemma, he soon resolved, that,
without consulting her at all on the subject, he would himself
write directly to Fisher such a letter as would naturally bring
him to the house, trusting, that when the lovers were brought
together, explanations would follow and a reconciliation soon be
effected. Accordingly he wrote a respectful note to the young
man, apologizing for his late treatment, which arose, he falsely
affirmed, wholly out of a misapprehension of the character of
the other, who, now that all objection was removed, was at full

liberty to resume his visits. Having thus written, Old Jude
secretly dispatched the letter to its destination, and awaited the
result with as much trembling solicitude as he ever did the
event of a lawsuit in which he had thousands at stake.

Lot, in the mean while, totally ignorant of all that had occurred
at Hosmer's, began to grow very uneasy at the failure of his
accustomed letters from Lucy, from whom he had not received
a syllable for nearly a fortnight; and he was meditating a trip
to the village of her residence to ascertain, if possible, whether
anything had there happened to cause the delinquency; when,
one morning, the newspaper-carrier, who had returned from that
section, late the evening before, handed him a double sealed
letter. Not remembering the hand writing, and supposing it
some message on professional matters, he threw it by, to be taken
up in the order of business. In the course of the forenoon, however,
it came up; when, carelessly breaking the seals, he read
and re-read, with feelings of mingled astonishment, and doubtfully
admitted delight, the unexpected contents. In twenty
minutes his fleet-footed poney stood saddled and pawing at his
door; while the master was seen within hastily plying his
brushes on coat, hat and boots, which, it seemed to him, in his
impatience, were never before so reluctant of polish. Within
three hours more, he dismounted his reeking horse at the office
door of his old friend and patron.

“Do you own that horse, Lot?” asked Stacy, poking his sarcastic
phiz from the window.

“Yes—how do you do?”

“Well—but if the beast is your own, who, in your village lies
at the point of death whom, it is supposed, one of our doctors
can save?”

“Do be serious, Squire,” said Lot now entering the office. “I
have called to consult you, before going somewhere else,—
There,” he added, taking out and handing the other Old Jude's
letter—“read that, and tell me whether it is genuine, and if so,
what has produced the unexpected change.”

“Genuine enough,” answered Stacy, after musing over the
letter a few moments—“It is his, clearly, and I rather guess,
under the circumstances, he is acting in earnest and without
trick, this time.”

“Why, what hold have you got of him?” asked Lot, eagerly—
“done any thing by way of legal proceedings?”

“Nothing,” replied the other, “nothing at all, since I saw you.
I have been worsted by the old fox, who doubtless overheard our
conversation from the back window there—completely worsted,
at every point; and, to crown all, he has settled off with Lucy,
already of age, I find, and coaxed her to give him a strong and
absolute discharge, on his giving her his note for the paltry sum
of two or three hundred dollars, and even that payable in cats
and dogs—Old Jude all over!”

“Outrageous! but has he contented himself with doing that?
Lucy has discontinued her letters to me wholly, and without
explanation, and yet I receive this letter from him inviting me
to resume my visits! What can it all mean?”

“I won't decide now. But something unusual has certainly
happened over there. It is reported in town, that the old man
has been haunted by a ghost. Some say—among whom is our
good old deacon, who has visited him, that he has been converted,
or is about to be—others have it, that he has had fits; and
all agree, that he is feeble, and has grown old, in appearance, ten
years within the last week.”

“This sounds very strangely—what is your version?”

“I have none to give you—I am waiting myself to see what
it will result in. But there is probably a relenting in the old
man towards you, Lot; and I would go and improve the advantage
he has given you to the utmost, lest it prove, as I fear, a
temporary one.

8. CHAPTER VIII.

That afternoon Old Jude, who had contrived to have his
niece take a seat with him in the parlor, sat for hours at the
window, anxiously gazing down the road, as if on the watch
for some expected visitor. At length his countenance brightened.
A person, who was evidently the object of his solicitude,
was seen approaching; when, after watching him till he turned
in towards the house, the old man, without apprising his companion
of the fact, rose and quietly stole out of the room. The
next moment Lucy looked up, and Lot Fisher stood on the
threshhold before her. Surprise and embarrassment kept her
mute till the other spoke.

“I hardly know whether I was expected by you, Miss Hosmer,
to-day, or not,” he said, with some hesitation.

“You were not, Sir,” she replied, with reserve.

“It may be right, then, to show you my warrant for appearing
before you,” he rejoined, approaching and handing her Old
Jude's letter.

With a tremulous hand she took the letter, and though she
evidently read its contents with the deepest surprise, yet she
merely remarked,—

“This, as regards my uncle, is certainly sufficient; and I will
go and apprise him, Sir, that you have called.”

“Miss Hosmer!”

“Sir!”

“Both the discontinuance of your letters and your present
manner, make it evident, that you have heard some thing to affect
the position which I supposed I occupied in your esteem.
In mercy, and in justice to me, will you not tell me what it
is?”

The same delicacy, which had before prevented Miss Hosmer
from communicating to her lover the reasons that had decided

her to drop her correspondence and reject him, still strongly
revolted against the solicited explanation. But her sense of
justice, under his renewed and earnest entreaties, at length prevailed;
and she reluctantly related all the essential circumstances
connected with the vagrant woman's call at the house, as
they took place, simply adding that no one could be at loss in
drawing the inference, which so obviously followed.

Lot was thunderstruck at a disclosure so strange and unexpected;
but soon rallying from his surprise, he asked if it was
known where the woman could then be found, and being answered
in the negative, he, with an air of disappointment, resumed,—

“Oh, why could you not have communicated this to me immediately,
that I might have had the chance, which is probably
now lost, of refuting the insinuation from the woman's own
lips?”

“Perhaps I ought to have done so as a matter of form,” replied
she, greatly embarrassed—“perhaps I should have done
so, or have concluded my construction a wrong one, and let the
affair pass unnoticed, had not my impression been confirmed by
the same story or those of a similar character coming from several
other sources.”

“If Miss Hosmer's confidence in my character was so small
as to permit her to condemn me unheard on such evidence,” rejoined
Lot, with an air of deep mortification not unmingled with
offended pride, “I know not, that it would now avail me, if I
felt myself called to the humiliating task, to trace out the slanders,
which this worthless vagrant or others may have disseminated
concerning me. I had hoped I had a standing in her
opinion not so easily to be shaken. As it is, it only remains for
me to bid her farewell.”

Before the confused, and now relenting girl, could find words
to delay her impetuous lover, or qualify the sentence he had so
hastily assumed against himself, he had bowed and was gone.
Feeling herself justly obnoxious to her lover's charge of precipitancy
in condemning him unheard, and half convinced of his
innocence, though he had scarcely affirmed it, she rose in great
agitation and went to the window. With sensations, which it
would be difficult to analyze, she saw him hurriedly mount his

horse at the gate, and depart without one backward glance towards
her. Her riveted eyes followed him, as avoiding the village,
he rode with desperate speed towards home, till his receding
form was lost to view; when she turned, and murmuring,
with a sigh “O, why could he have not said he was innocent,”
burst into tears and hurried to her appartment.

Old Jude, who had witnessed Lot's hasty departure, from
which he argued that no reconciliation could have taken place,
watched anxiously, but in vain, during the remainder of evening,
for Lucy's appearance, that he might question her respecting
the result of the interview. And, after a night made restless
by his growing anxieties on the subject, he seized the first
opportunity, the next morning, for a private conversation with
her. Female pride, by this time, had come to the perplexed and
wretched girl's aid; and it was with feelings bordering on resentment
towards her lover, for not longer persevering in clearing
himself and reconciling her, that she replied to her uncle's
enquiries. And this wayward mood, partly felt, but more assumed
to conceal the deep and troubled feelings of her heart,
caused her so to color her representations and to make the case
so hopeless of reconciliation, on her part, that the old man become
greatly alarmed for the eventual result. Indeed he actually
shed childish tears of vexation and disappointment, and
accused her of perverseness. Disturbed, and astonished beyond
measure, at her uncle's conduct, which had all along appeared
to her very extraordinary, and which had now become wholly
inexplicable, Lucy, in her turn, was aroused to expostulation at
his inconsistency; while she defended herself by intimating the
stories she had heard. The old man admitted the existence of
such rumors, and falsely attributed his former opposition to his
belief in them, but asserted that he now knew them to be without
foundation. Growing more and more excited and earnest
the maiden bent a searching look on the other, and demanded
of him whether he knew the origin of those stories, and by
what means he had discovered them to be false, at the same
time declaring, that she would not marry a prince, whose character
stood under such imputations. The other made several
attempts to evade those questions; but she constantly brought
him back to the point, and persisted with so much determination
that the conversation was at length brought to a dead stand.

Conscious that he had gone too far to recede without arousing
her suspicions, and perceiving he could not even stop where he
was and gain any credit for his assertions, the humbled old man,
impelled by his fears and anxieties for the event, reluctantly admitted
himself to have been the cause of all the trouble, though
not without much prevarication, and concealment of the motives
which had actuated him.

For the first time, the mind of the disabused girl began to
catch glimpses of the secret history of the old man's heart, in all
the recent transactions in which her different interests had been
involved; and her grieved soul revolted at the dark picture she
there saw delineated. That part of it only, however, which lay
nearest her heart, called forth the exclamation—

“Oh, Uncle, Uncle, what wretchedness you have made me!—
what injustice you have caused me to do towards another!”

The conversation, which now ensued, was brief and mutually
embarrassing. But where all parties are equally anxious to
bring about an object, their purposes are soon accomplished. In
the course of the forenoon, Shack, mounted on Old Jude's fleetest
horse, rode up to the door, and, taking a letter from the hand of
his respected young mistress, bore it off rapidly towards its destination.

Lot, who in the mean time had condemned himself for the
manner in which he had terminated his last interview, which,
if prolonged, he felt, might have resulted more auspiciously, and
who now, on the receipt of Miss Hosmer's letter, was overjoyed
to learn that her mind was completely disabused. Lot, we say,
was not slow to respond to the frank invitation she had conveyed
him to renew their intimacy; and another day brought him
to her side.

So great was Old Jude's delight to see the man, whom, one
month before, he had driven from his house with insults and
scorn, now again there, and there, too, successfully prosecuting
the very object he had taken so much pains to defeat, that it
would have been difficult, perhaps, to decide, whether he, or the
reunited lovers, were the most gratified party on the occasion.
But the old man had construed the supernatural behest to extend,
not only to the undoing of the mischief he had done in
separating the lovers, but to the perfecting of their union, which,
to avail him in purchasing his immunity from the threatened

doom, he felt he must see accomplished within the allotted time
of his probation. It was no wonder, therefore, that while that
awful warning was constantly sounding in his ears, and while
the days of that fearful probation were rapidly rolling away, that
he was filled with anxiety to have the happy event consummated
with the least possible delay. And no sooner had the
long and happy interview been brought to a close, and Lot seen
to depart, than the disquieted old man again sought out his niece
alone, and eagerly asked her if they had fixed on a day for the
wedding? And being told they had not, nor even agitated the
question of the time, he appeared much disappointed, and earnestly
proposed to the wondering girl, that the union should be
consummated immediately, or within a week or two, at the farthest;
and, having drawn from her the day on which she expected
Lot to repeat his visit, he expressed great solicitude that
the time should then be appointed, and that too on as early a
day as would be consistent with the ordinary arrangements of
such occasions. But Lucy's delicacy shrunk at the thought of
such indecent haste, and such a business-like manner of disposing
of her, even to the man of her choice; and, knowing nothing
of the secret motives that urged her uncle, whose conduct,
in the affair, grew more and more inscrutable to her mind, she
inwardly resolved, she would not consent to so immediate an
union, and least of all would she be the first to hint the matter
in the future meetings which were expected to occur.

Another interview between the lovers soon came and passed
off as the former one; and again was the now almost persecuted
girl instantly beset and importuned by her uncle to tell him
what had been done in compliance with his wishes. When he
was informed of the fruitless result, he absolutely groaned with
anguish, and seemed so distressed at the disappointment, that
the other, touched and disturbed at his obvious concern, and beginning
to suspect he must have something of moment depending
on the event, at length promised she would not resist any
proposal on the subject which should come from her lover.

Lot's visits now became frequent; and cordially meeting the
advances which he perceived Old Jude timidly attempting to
make towards him, he soon, and with a delighted heart, learned
the wishes of the former for an immediate union, which he himself,
through delicacy had foreborne to urge. The ardent lover,

as will readily be imagined, was not backward to act on the hint
thus unexpectedly received; and he united his entreaties with
those of his new found coadjutor with such effect, that the fair
girl was compelled to yield, and agree, as, with blushful hesitation,
she at last did, to the great relief of the old man, on a day
for the nuptial ceremony—the very day, as it ominously happened,
which closed the mysterious period, within which the
wronged were to be righted, or the wrong doer called to meet
his doom.

It was a new thing to the wondering inhabitants of the village
to witness, at this hitherto dull and unsocial mansion, the lively
bustle of preparation that now ensued—the liberal outlays, that
were made for dresses and ornaments to be worn on the coming
occasion, and for luxuries for the entertainment of company—
the repairs and garnishing of rooms, that took place, and the
purchasing of costly articles to take the place of the former meagre
and niggardly furnishing of the house—in all which the different
inmates, with animated movements and smiling faces,
were seen to engage, and none with more alacrity and obviously
gratified feeling than the lately cold and churlish, but now transformed
master and still accounted owner of the establishment.
We must linger no longer, however, to give a detailed description
of all that was said and done in anticipation of the happy
event, but hasten on to the catastrophe of our story, which was
now close at hand.

9. CHAPTER IX.

The eventful day at length arrived. The numerous guests,
comprising nearly the whole adult population of the place, assembled
to witness the ceremony, which was to dispose of their
fair and almost worshipped neighbor to one, who, in spite of all
the disadvantages attending his origin, had gained, by his rare
qualities of head and heart, a scarcely less enviable place in their
esteem. Old Jude, who had awaited the day with a feverish
anxiety and impatience, which was nearly alike unaccountable
to the family and all others cognizant of his late singular conduct,
now seemed to hail the hour of consummation with almost
puerile delight; though it was observed, and afterwards remembered,
that as he moved restlessly round among the company,
with his enfeebled gait, and thin, pale, and ghastly features
peering from the snow-white locks which hung trembling over
them, he was frequently lost in deep fits of abstraction, from
which he would arouse himself with a forced glee, and that a
sort of unnatural excitement marked his appearance in all his
conversation and movements on the occasion. At the appointed
hour, the bride and bridegroom made their appearance; when,
amidst the blessings and kind wishes of all, the lovely orphan
was united with her handsome and gifted lover. The ceremony
and the congratulations, that immediately followed, were scarcely
over, before Old Jude came forward and presented Lot with
a thick, heavy package of papers, consisting as he averred, and,
as in truth, it afterwards appeared, of deeds, transferred notes
and other legal evidences of all the property to which Lucy was
entitled, accompanied with a written statement acknowledging
that it took all he possessed to make good her fortune, and
throwing himself wholly on the generosity of the young couple
for the future support of himself and family. Lot courteously

received the package, and without examining it, carelessly placed
it on the sill of the open window beside which he was sitting;
while the old man, fetching a deep sigh, as if some fearful load
was removed from his mind, took a seat by the side of his niece,
and appeared more tranquil and happy than he had done for
many weeks before—a circumstance which the former noticed
with heartfelt pleasure, and drew from it an augury of what she
so ardently desired, that her uncle was indeed about to settle
down a better and happier man. But all her pleasing anticipations
and kindly wishes were destined to be repaid the next hour
only with disappointment and aggravated sorrow. As the gratified
guests, after partaking the sumptuous entertainment with
which they had been regaled, and spending a short time in innocent
hilarity, were beginning to depart, Old Jude went out into
the yard to look to his servant, who was engaged in bringing up
to the door, as fast as they wanted, the horses and carriages of
the company. Shack, who had thus far performed his duties
with great alacrity and cheerfulness, now, as his master appeared
in the yard and began to order him about, suddenly became
so dilatory, sullen and perverse as to exhaust the old man's patience,
and cause him at last to break out, as was his former
wont, in abusive epithets, which the other seemed in no humor
to bear; for he retorted with great boldness, plainly intimating,
that he was a slave no longer. Astonished at such words and
bearing from one, who was an indented servant, and who had
ever before borne his petulance and abusive language submissively,
the enraged master turned fiercely upon him and exclaimed:

“Impudent scoundrel, begone! from this moment, you quit my
house and employment forever!”

“It's a bargain!” cried Shack, bluntly, and with dogged composure,
while he looked round on the company, now mostly
drawn to the door by the collision, as if appealing to them to
witness the compact, “it's a bargain—exactly what I wanted—
so now, old man, we are quits in law as well as friendship. But
before I go, jest for the fun of the thing, I'll whisper a word in
your ear.”

He then walked deliberately up to the other, and, as he had

proposed, whispered something in his ear; when he sprang back,
and, with a look of malicious triumph, awaited the effect of his
secret communication.

And that effect was soon visible. The old man, after standing
mute an instant with a staggered and perplexed expression,
suddenly started, like one on whose mind some exciting truth has
unexpectedly broken, and a look of overpowering chagrin settled
on his countenance, but was quickly succeeded by one of unmitigated
wrath and maddening concern. Hurling with fury his
cane at the head of the devoted Shack, he turned eagerly towards
the window on which the package he had given Lot was still
lying:—

“The papers—the papers!” he gasped, rushing forward
towards the object of his concern with one hand extended out for
the grasp.

But just as his half clutched fingers were fastening on the
desperately coveted prize, he suddenly stopped short,—a change
passed over his countenance,—his arm sunk nerveless by his
side, and straightening back and glaring horridly around him, he
pitched forward to the earth with the blood gushing from his
mouth and nostrils. The violence of his emotions had ruptured
a blood vessel, and the next moment the spirit of Old Jude Hosmer
had winged its flight to its doubtful destination in another
world.

We must task the imagination of the reader to picture the
scene which followed among the family and guests on the awful
dispensation that had thus turned their festivities into mourning
—the painful sensations of the young couple, when all that could
be known and inferred, respecting the situation of the property
and its connection with the old gentleman's death, was discovered—the
great stir made by the event on the community around
—the wild stories that naturally arose out of it among the ignorant
and superstitious, and the baffled attempts of the intelligent
to account for a great part of what had happened: For,
after all the circumstances, attending Old Jude's strange conduct
before and at the time of his death, were known, much still remained
enveloped in mystery which none could penetrate. Shack
who had been seen to whisper to the deceased the secret communication

which produced such instant effect on him, was
often asked what he had communicated on that occasion, and
whether he could throw any light on the subject, but always in
vain: He would either doggedly refuse all explanation, or turn
off the subject with some odd evasion. And thus the whole affair,
after having been, for some months, the talk of the country
around as one of the greatest wonders of the day, at length passed
into a legend of the marvelous and supernatural, whose foundation
in fact none were ever found to gainsay. Lot, now that the
fear of the old man's power was removed by his death, was soon
furnished with all the evidence which would have been required
to substantiate his wife's claim to all the property, had such been
needed. But it was not. The deeds and other instruments
made out and left by the deceased were found to convey legally
the whole estate, which now, by common consent, after a liberal
provision was made for the widow and her insane married
daughter before named, passed into the hands of the young
couple—the business and all transactions connected with it at
length resumed their wonted channel, although the public at
large soon had reason to rejoice in the change of the ownership
and possession of a property, by the management of which so
many interests were affected.

CONCLUSION.

It was something like seven years after the concluding incidents
of our story, that Shadrack Rogers, who had been retained
in the employment of Lot Fisher and his wife, and who had
been so generously rewarded by them for his good conduct, as to
enable him to buy a farm for himself, announced his intention of
emigrating to the far West. And on the morning of his departure,
after he had bid adieu to his still almost idolized young mistress,
and slung his knapsack for the start, he sought her husband,
who was writing in his library—

“Well, Squire Fisher,” he said in his usual independent manner,
as he entered the room, “now for the few words you said
you wanted with me in private, before I started; for you see I
am all equipped for over the hills and far away.”

“Ay, ay, but be seated, Shadrack; for as I said, I wish for a
little talk with you,” said Fisher, “and in the first place let me
ask what you propose to do out west?”

“Get rich, and then be judge or something”—replied Shack
very gravely—“Perhaps if they keep you in Congress long
enough—say twenty years—and I guess they will by the strong
way they have just given you your first election—perhaps I'll
meet you there.”

“On my word, Shack, I don't think you will ever have to regret
not having set your mark high enough,” responded Fisher,
laughing heartily. “But after all, if you go on picking up information
and improving as fast as you have since living with
me, you may yet be found in public life. I have no doubt you
have native capacities enough for almost anything—Squire Stacy
has often said you were one of the shrewdest chaps he ever
knew.”

“The squire and I are tolerable friends,” said Shack composedly.

“Yes,” rejoined the other, “and that remark brings me to the
question which I would ask you in confidence, and which, as
you are now going out of the country, I hope you will candidly
answer.”

“What is it?” asked Shack, looking a little uneasy.

“It relates,” replied Fisher, “to the singular change in old Mr.
Hosmer's conduct, which so speedily brought about my marriage
with his niece, and the no less singular circumstances attending
his death. Now I was always satisfied, Shack, that you could
throw some light on this mystery, if you chose; and your answer
to one question, very probably, may explain the whole. What
was it you whispered to him, that produced such a terrible revulsion
of feeling, the violence of which, in his then weakened
state, it was thought, occasioned the rupture that killed him?”

“Why, you can't have any suspicions, Esquire Fisher, that I
intended it should, or supposed it could, have any such effect?”
answered Shack with an air of concern.

“O, certainly not; but what was it?”

“You don't intend to make use of it against me, no how?”

“No, no,—go on.”

“And you wont tell of it—not even to your wife?”

“I am as anxious as you, Shack, that the matter should be
buried in oblivion. But I wish to know for other reasons than
mere curiosity—fear nothing and proceed.”

“Well, I just hinted to him who the Ghost was, that's all.”

“Ah!—the ghost—who was it?”

“That can't be spoken—but I can guess how it was, perhaps,
if that will do.”

“I will hear it and then judge.”

“Well you know that the old man and I slept in rooms that
joined, and our beds stood abreast against opposite sides of the
petition, in which there was a door, that had long been nailed
up, right between us. Now the ghost might have found out,
somehow, that the lower panel of that door had become so
shrunk that it could be pinched out with a jack-knife, leaving a
hole under the beds, where a chap—say of about my size—could
have crept through, put back the panel, risen up from the floor
with a sheet round him, delivered his message from the other
world, unlocked the old man's door, and have been off to bed

and a snoring, before a frightened man would be apt to rally to
try to catch him.”

“I see—I see—The ghost stands revealed. But perhaps you
can guess, also, what that message was, which you think it
might have delivered?”

“Well, I fancy it didn't say much, the first time, but only
groaned and complained of being disturbed in the grave at a
brother's doings. The second time it did the same, and made its
appearance, without saying anything, trusting that would be
enough. But finding it want, and that the old man was kinder
defying it by fixing on the big lock, it came again and talked
like a book, giving him forty days to make all right in, or he
would be called for. Well, I don't know which was the most
scart and worried about this last visit, the old man or the ghost,
for it was that which turned the old man's hair so white, and so
nearly upset him. But it fixed him about right, and the business
moved after that to some purpose, as you yourself know.”

“A strange and cunning plot,” said Fisher thoughtfully; and
I can hardly wonder that it produced, with the operation of a
guilty conscience, such an effect. But what induced you to divulge
this to the old gentleman?”

“Why,” replied Shack, “I had got a peep into that bunch of
papers he gave you, and found all right. Well, as you was married
and had the papers in your pocket, as I supposed, I thought
every thing placed beyond a rip up; and when the old man called
me names, and ordered me to quit, I was tempted to humble
him on the spot; so I up and told him—sooner than I intended,
for it was agreed I should tell him before long, lest it should
shorten his days.”

“Agreed! agreed with whom?” eagerly asked the other,
catching at that word.

“Why, I didn't say anything about any whom,” said Shack, a
good deal disconcerted.

“No,” persisted Fisher, “but you used a word that has given
me a clue to another part of the secret, which I was particularly
anxious to learn. And you need not deny, Shack, that you have
had the assistance of a well-known, shrewd manager, in this affair.”

“Well, well,” replied Shack, with the chagrined air of one
who has unintentionally committed himself; “suppose a certain

man did help at the planning, and perhaps write off the words
for the ghost to use on the occasion, it only proves that two heads
were better than one, if one was a sheep's head, as the old man
used to call me. But you needn't ask me to say another word
about this last part of the story; for I promised to keep it forever
in the dark.”

Fisher now rose and paced the room a moment in deep thought;
when he turned to the other and said,

“Shadrack, though you have unintentionally been the means
of having my fortunes associated with a painful event, yet there
is no denying your agency in making them. Here,” he added,
pulling out a hundred dollar bank bill, “take this in addition to
what we have already done for you, and with it my best wishes
for your success and happiness in life.”

The same day Fisher executed a deed to 'Squire Stacy, and
sent it to him enclosed with the following note—

“I send you herewith a deed of the little farm and cottage of
mine down the river, which I have heard you praise frequently,
I think.

Shack left this morning for the west; and before I suffered
him to depart, I succeeded in drawing from him, for the first time,
the secret of the “Ghost,” though he only left me the means of
conjecturing, as I know well enough I have done correctly, who
was the main planner of the singular experiment, which had a
so successful but melancholy termination. Please accept the
gift; for, however you or I may look upon that affair, you are entitled
to receive from me, for other and earlier benefits, this memorial
of my gratitude. Yours, &c.

LOT FISHER.”