University of Virginia Library

1. A Novel.—Part First.

1. CHAPTER I.
MR. GILLIES's FIRST LETTER.

“`J. Q. A. GILLIES, Post-Office.' Why, here's a letter for Mr. Gillies.
First one that ever I see!”

The scene was the interior of a city post-office, the speaker a carrier or postman,
who stood at one end of a long table assorting a heap of letters thrown there
for him to arrange and distribute.

The clerk whom he addressed paused a moment in his occupation of cancelling
the stamps upon a mountain of outward-bound letters and glanced at the
one in the hand of the carrier.

“For Gillies, sure enough, and as you say, the first one I ever knew of his
getting. There he is, making up the northern mail. You'd better hand it over.”

“Let's see what he'll say to it,” remarked the carrier, crossing the office and
approaching another table covered with letters and packages, where stood a
middle-aged man, with stooping shoulders and the sallow complexion peculiar
to men and plants grown in the shade.

He was busy in folding small parcels of the letters before him in wrappers,
announcing their contents at the same time in a voice whose sonorous sweetness
contrasted even grotesquely with his appearance, while a clerk opposite rapidly
entered the list thus dictated in a large volume, and two assistants tied and
“backed” or docketed the little packages.

“Barnstable, N. H., twenty-seven, nine, three.”

“Biddeford, Maine, six, two,” intoned the yellow man.

“A letter for you, Mr. Gillies,” interposed the carrier, tossing it upon the
table.

“Not for me. Never have letters. Benson, Vermont, twelve, four”—chanted
the clerk.

“You're J. Q. A. Gillies, I expect, aren't you?” asked the carrier, a little
indignantly, as he caught up the letter and thrust it under the eyes of the impassive
Gillies, who was already reciting,

“Carrington Centre, Vermont, three, twelve, three.”

As the letter was thus abruptly interposed between his eyes and the package
already completed beneath his nimble fingers, he cast a hurried glance and then
a steady look at it, while an expression of astonishment, even of alarm, crossed
his face.

“John Q. A. Gillies, yes, that's my name, but it can't be for me. I never
have letters,' said he, reluctantly.

“Three, twelve, three unpaid,” murmured the entering clerk, repeating the
last call and glancing impatiently from the long rows of unentered letters to the
clock above his head.

“You've got one now, anyway. There it is,” and the carrier tossed it again
upon the table, while Mr. Gillies hurriedly called,

“Charlestown, N. H., thirty-six, twelve, nine, I would say nine, Mr. Blodgett.”

“Nine,” echoed the entering clerk, and with one eye upon his book he cast
the other in astonishment at Vance, the “backer.” Mr. Gillies for once had
made a mistake, and Blodgett and Vance felt a natural satisfaction in the occurrence.

The entering went on, but not so serenely as before. That thick yellow letter
with its bold address lay upon the table, staring into Mr. Gillies's face so persistently
that he could not choose but return its glances, and even when the
course of operations had carried him half way down the table, his eyes travelled
incessantly to the end where it lay alone and conspicuous.

“Montpelier, Vermont, twenty-one, seven.”

“John Q. A. Gil— I beg your pardon, Blodgett. I meant Merrifield, Vermont,
six, two,” called Gillies, hurriedly.

Blodgett and Vance tittered, and the first suggested, good-naturedly,

“You're thinking of your letter, sir, aren't you!”

“It's not for me. I never have letters. Attention, Vance.”

“Rockport, Maine, six, two.”

And from this point John Q. A. Gillies no longer suffered his attention to
wander beyond the business in hand, but kept himself and his assistants so
closely to it that the northern mail on that Friday evening was made up at least five
minutes before its usual time. Gillies closed and locked the bag, and watched,
in an abstracted sort of way, the porter who took it upon his back and carried it
to the entrance, ready for the expressman.

Then he turned, still thoughtfully, and taking up the letter, studied the address
as if it had been a hieroglyph; examined the post-mark; looked for a seal,
and found none, and finally murmured,

“A drop letter. If I open it I can tell who it's for, perhaps. It isn't me.”

But yet he threw it down again, and looked about to see if his services were
not needed somewhere; if some one was not coming to speak to him; if some
other John Q. A. Gillies was not looming up from the horizon. No such deliverance
was at hand, however, and, with a sudden flutter of womanish curiosity,
the middle-aged clerk, who had hardly in his whole life seen a letter addressed
to himself, tore open this one.

The contents were brief and sufficiently clear:

“If Mr. John Q. A. Gillies will call at the rooms of Jones, Brown & Robinson,
solicitors, at his earliest convenience, he will hear of something to his advantage.”

2. CHAPTER II.
AN OLD MAN'S LAST ODDITY.

At nine o'clock of the next morning a dubious knock upon the outer door of
Messrs. Jones, Brown & Robinson's chambers elicited a gruff “Come in,” from
Robinson, who being the youngest and worst paid of the firm, was expected to
give the most time and do the most work.

“It's not for me, of course, but”—confided Mr. Gillies to the door, as he
pushed it open and stood dumb before the gruff-voiced Robinson, who was
chafing his numb fingers over the stove.

“Good morning, sir. Are you looking for one of the firm? I'm Robinson,”
announced the lawyer, concisely, for the tall yellow man with the dubious look
did not strike him as a good investment for much politeness.

“Yes, sir. I was looking for one of the firm, although I'm sorry to trouble
you for nothing—”

“Heavens! what a voice the fellow's got. A splendid baritone. Should
like to hear him try `Suoni la Tromba,”' thought Mr. Robinson, who was a bit of
an amateur in musical matters. But he said:

“No trouble; no trouble, sir. Take a seat. You were saying—?”

“I got this letter last night. It is directed in my name, but I suppose there
is some mistake. I can't think that anybody knows of anything to my advantage.
I don't.”

Mr. Robinson's professionally quick eyes traversed the face, figure, and outward
adornment of the person so quietly uttering this forlorn sentiment, and
then fell upon the letter in his hand.

“Oh, yes. Mr. Gillies, I presume?”

“My name is Gillies,” admitted the clerk, dubiously.

“Of course. And this is your address?” pursued the lawyer, rustling the
letter.

“Yes. That is, I am in the post-office, and my name is John Q. Adams
Gillies.”

“Certainly. I made a few inquiries of Mr. Postmaster — before sending
this letter. It's all right, Mr. Gillies, I assure you. Step this way.”

And Mr. Robinson led the way to the inner office, pointed to a seat beside
the desk, and disposed himself in the arm-chair before it.

John Gillies looked troubled and anxious. For five-and-forty years he had
led an existence so completely isolated, his life had been so barren of any tie or
interest beyond his own welfare that even the slight excitement of receiving a
letter could, as we have seen, unnerve and distress him, and now the matter
seemed assuming an importance that terrified him. He wished for no news, good
or bad; he wished for no meddling eyes and fingers in his affairs, even though
they promised advantage. The man felt, in the hands of this shrewd lawyer, as
an oyster should, into whose shell a lobster insists upon thrusting a claw, with
promise that the interference shall result in nothing but good.

“I don't think I'd better sit down. I am sure it is some other Gillies that
you mean.”

“No, it's not. Sit down, sit down, sir, and I'll give you the whole story in a
nutshell,” insisted the lawyer, and the clerk slipped into the designated seat as
if it had been a dentist's chair.

The lawyer opened his note book.

“Perhaps you remember, Mr. Gillies, one very icy day last winter, when an
old gentleman passing up the post-office steps in front of you, slipped, and in
falling fractured his collar-bone. You helped him up, called a carriage, and at
his desire drove with him to his hotel. You then, still at his request, sent a surgeon,
and in the evening returned to inquire for him.”

“Mr. Vaughn, you mean.”

“Reginald Vaughn, Esquire, late of—”

“He's dead then? Excuse my interruption.”

Mr. Robinson bowed stiffly, implying that he excused, but did not approve
of it, and after a significant pause, as waiting for further remarks from the client,
continued,

“You called twice afterward by Mr. Vaughn's express desire, and went with
him to the steamer when he left for Europe. He died in London six weeks ago,
and just before his death dictated an instrument bequeathing all his property to
John Q. Adams Gillies, clerk in the post-office of this city. That gentleman is
undoubtedly yourself, and you will please receive my congratulations upon your
accession of fortune.”

John Gillies leaned his sallow face upon his hand, and looked moodily into
the fire.

“It was contrary to my usual habit to make these calls. I only did it because
I was asked, and the old man said something about being lonely and deserted.
As for picking him up and taking him home, I couldn't help that, of course.”

“Why, surely, man, you're not sorry for having induced Mr. Vaughn to think
of you as his legatee?” asked Mr. Robinson, rather impatiently. “If it is your
situation in the post-office that you are regretting, I see no necessity for your
resigning it. Probably, too, you can sell the estate. Stop, I should give you
this packet forwarded with the will, and addressed to yourself. In a letter to
us, written at the same time, Mr. Vaughn speaks of it as containing important
conditions connected with the inheritance. Here it is.”

“Another letter,” muttered John Gillies, as he reluctantly took a sealed envelope
from the lawyer's hand.

The letter it contained was not a long one, but Mr. Robinson had time to
lose and regain his patience and to lose it again, before his new client, slowly
re-folding the paper, placed it in the envelope and the envelope in his pocket.

“Well!” said the lawyer at length, for Mr. Gillies, his chin buried in his
hand, seemed less and less likely to break the silence.

“Well!” echoed he, rather irritably. “But it is not well. If I accept this
property under the conditions imposed upon me the consequence will be an entire
revolution of my life. I am to make this estate of Cragness my home, and
for company—”

The lawyer waited for the next word, but John Gillies's dry lips closed over
it before it could escape, and when they unclosed it was to say,

“You were Mr. Vaughn's legal adviser, were you not?”

“Yes. Our firm has managed the affairs of the Vaughns for fifty years.”

“Probably, then, you can give me some history of the family.”

“Legal and medical advisers do not generally gossip of the affairs of their
clients,” said Mr. Robinson, drily.

“Certainly not, but if I assume this property, I assume with it a trust requiring
as minute an acquaintance with the history of the Vaughn family as I can
acquire.”

“Does the late Reginald Vaughn desire you to apply to me for this history?”
asked Mr. Robinson, cautiously.

“In so many words.”

“Will you show me the letter expressing this desire?”

“I will show you that sentence. The body of the letter is intended for my
private eye.”

“An odd man—a very odd man was the late Reginald Vaughn,” muttered the
lawyer, as John Gillies again drew the envelope from his pocket, and slowly unfolding
the letter, doubled it so as to leave only two lines fully exposed to view.

“Nothing could be odder than his putting this trust and this property upon
me, and I had far rather have been left quiet where I was,” said the clerk, moodily.
“But even though I refused the whole affair, and went back to the post-office
as poor as I left it, the mischief is done. My ideas have got a wrench that
has unfitted them for their old groove. I should always be wondering why I
didn't accept fortune when it came to me, and fancying a thousand pleasures it
might have brought with it. And then this—this trust—interests me.”

He paused rather abruptly, and the lawyer ventured,

“It is a secret trust, you say.”

“Entirely a secret trust,” assented Gillies, gravely, “and as such I accept
it, and with it the bequest of Reginald Vaughn, and the utter change of life involved
in it. Here is the letter.”

Mr. Robinson took the paper and read—

“If you wish for such help as is to be found in a history of my family, you
may obtain it from either member of the firm of Jones, Brown & Robinson, our
solicitors for many years.”

“That is quite sufficient, Mr. Gillies, and I will gladly place such knowledge
as I have at your service,” said the lawyer, returning the letter.

Mr. Gillies simply bowed with the reluctant air which had accompanied him
through the interview, and the solicitor, after a moment of thought, began the
following narrative.

3. CHAPTER III.
CRAGNESS AND BONNIEMEER.

“They are an old family, these Vaughns, and as proud of their honors as
other old and well-to-do families. They have a genealogical tree at Bonniemeer
as tall as one of those California pines, and a crest on the silver, and all that.
Something more than a hundred years ago, Egbert Vaughn, a younger son of the
English family of that name, came to this country and built the old house you
have inherited, giving it the name of Cragness. He died, leaving one son, also
called Egbert, who in due time married a cousin upon the Vaughn side, and
became father of two sons, named Egbert and Alfred. His first wife died when
these boys were twelve and fourteen years old; and he married again, but lost
his second wife in the first year of their marriage. She left one son, named Reginald,
who died in London six weeks since.”

“He was this Mr. Vaughn?” asked John Gillies, tapping with his dry forefinger
upon the letter in his hand.

“He was that Mr. Vaughn,” assented Robinson; “but while Reginald was
still a child the two elder brothers grew to be men, and very quarrelsome men,
too. At least, they could never agree with each other, or with their father, who

favored sometimes one and sometimes the other of them, but fixed all his affections
upon Reginald, whose mother he had doted on with an old man's fondness.

“Matters finally came to a crisis among them, and, after a violent quarrel,
Alfred Vaughn left Cragness, and subsequently died abroad. At the time of his
disappearance, his father came to town and executed a bill bequeathing the estate
of Cragness and the personals to his youngest son, and all the remainder of his
property, principally derived from the first wife, to Egbert, his eldest son. Alfred
was barely mentioned, and received no bequest. Soon after this, Egbert
was married; and, persuading his father to make over to him his promised
inheritance, he built a handsome house upon the property of Bonniemeer, and
settled there, keeping up but little communication with the father, who, with his
youngest son, lived for a few years at Cragness in a very secluded manner, and
then died, leaving Reginald in possession.

“He, then a young man of two or three-and-twenty, went immediately
abroad and spent many years in travel. Finally, however, he returned home,
stayed a short time at Bonniemeer, and then retired to his own estate, where he
lived a very secluded life until a year or so before his death, when he came to
town and sent for our Mr. Jones, who had an interview with him at his hotel,
and who expressed himself not surprised at Mr. Vaughn's recent disposition of
his property.”

A slight smile wrinkled John Gillies's yellow cheeks. He saw that the younger
lawyer was piqued at the preference thus shown to his partner.

“Mr. Jones desired, however, that either Mr. Brown or myself should see
you when you came,” continued Robinson, “and declined an interview on his
own part, so whatever private clue he may have to Mr. Vaughn's motives does
not seem likely to benefit your researches.”

“And what became of Mr. Egbert Vaughn?” inquired John Gillies, tenaciously
clinging to the point.

“Excuse me, Mr. Gillies, but are not you a Scotchman?”

“Excuse me in turn, Mr. Robinson, but had not we better finish the Vaughn
genealogy before we begin upon mine?”

Mr. Robinson glanced with increasing disfavor at his new client, but answered,
coldly:

“You are quite right, sir. Mr. Egbert Vaughn married, as I have said, and
became the father of several children, who all died young, except a daughter,
now married to Alfred Murray, Esq., of this city, and a son, named Frederic,
who, at his father's demise some years since, inherited the estate of Bonniemeer,
where he at present resides with his wife, a young lady from the Southern
States. He has as yet no children.”

“Then this Mr. Frederic Vaughn and his sister are the only representatives
of the family now alive?”

“So far as I know, they are,” assented the lawyer.

“How far apart are the houses of Bonniemeer and Cragness?”

“About two miles, and each of them nearly that distance from Carrick, the
nearest village. They are both secluded enough. I believe I have now given
you all the information in my possession regarding this family, Mr. Gillies. Can
we be of any further service?”

“I thank you, sir. I may very possibly require your help in this affair before
long;” and the cloud of perplexity upon the clerk's face grew still darker. “I
cannot tell—at any rate you will, if you please, take whatever legal measures are

necessary for establishing this will, and putting me in possession of the property
I shall be glad to consider your firm as my legal advisers.”

“Certainly, Mr. Gillies, if you feel inclined to honor us with your confidence,'
said Robinson, formally.

“You mean that I have not yet done so,” retorted Gillies, as drily. “You
are quite welcome to all I know of myself, which is just this. I was selected
from the inmates of a foundling hospital by a man named Gillies, a bachelor,
with not a friend or connection in the world, so far as I know. He did not seem
to care very much about me, although he treated me kindly and sent me to a
public school until I was twelve years old. At that time I entered the post-office
where Gillies was a clerk. He died soon after, and I rose through regular
gradations until I reached my present position. I am now forty-five years
old, and, as I told you before, have never been out of the city bounds except for
a country walk, which wearied and disgusted me. I am fond of only one thing
in the world—music. I dislike nothing. You have my history.”

Mr. Robinson looked at him in astonishment.

“And you are going to live at Cragness?” asked he.

“I am going there. Farther I cannot say.”

“But how will a man of your tastes and habits content himself in a solitary
sea-shore house. How will you amuse yourself?”

“I will have an organ,” said John Gillies, softly, as a tinge of color rose to
his sallow cheek, a sign in this impassive nature of rare and overpowering emotion.
“The one wish of my life has been to possess a fine organ. I will have
the best in Germany.”

“Shake hands, Mr. Gillies. I am a musical enthusiast also, and you must
come to my house to-night; we have a few friends and a little concert. I think
you will be pleased with some of the voices.”

“Thank you, but I never visit,” said Gillies, slightly touching the proffered
hand, and rising to go.

“As you please, of course; but I should have been glad to see you,” and the
lawyer showed his new client to the door, with a smile upon his lips and a curse
in his heart.

4. CHAPTER IV.
THE MERMAID'S CAVE.

The village of Carrick was a place of few excitements. The departure or
arrival of the three fishing schooners whose several firms embraced every person
of consequence in the hamlet; an occasional wreck upon the ragged reef forming
the harbor; a small jubilation on election or “Independence” day; these were
its principal public events.

A smaller but more frequent interest, however, centered in the semi-weekly
arrival of the mail coach forming the only communication between Carrick and
the outer world. Even to see it whirling down the sandy street was something,
but the knowledge that it bore the lean mail-bag, perhaps a passenger, perhaps
some dim report of news affecting, it might be, the fishing interest, it might be
the less vital affairs of state, was sufficient to attract every male idler of Carrick
to the tavern of the Mermaid's Cave, where it stopped for change of horses;
while every woman in town paused with her pies half in the oven, her baby yet
unwhipped, her coffee “on the bile,” to rush to the door and stand on tiptoe staring

down the street as if the Possibility, for whose advent most of us wait all our
lives, were booked to her by that especial coach.

Never, perhaps, had the constancy of these idlers been more severely tested
than on the afternoon of a certain dismal December day when the coach, delayed
by a furious storm of snow and hail, so far passed its usual hour of arrival that
the dinner prepared for the passengers was, as Mrs. Burroughs, landlady of the
Mermaid's Cave, remarked, “dried to a skillington, and had no more taste left in
it than last year's seaweed.”

“The worse for them as has to eat and pay for it,” retorted her lord, philosophically.
“But keep it hot, Jemima, she'll be here yet. Billings never failed
to get through somehow, and whoever he brings will be hungry enough to eat
biled hake 'thout gravy.”

“There's the supper horn for some on us,” said one of the loungers about the
bar-room stove, as the blatant tones of a fish-horn pierced the gathering darkness
without, and angrily seemed to demand an answer.

“Reckon it's mine,” remarked Reuben Brume, with a somewhat uneasy grin.
“But I'll hold on a spell for the stage. She can't be much longer, and I guess
my woman 'll keep a bite and a sup for me.”

“More like she'll give you the bite without the sup,” retorted Burroughs, who
like most magnates was fond of a joke at the expense of his courtiers.

A general laugh followed his present jibe, for Nancy Brume's proficiency as
a scold was well known throughout the village.

“What's the joke? I don't see none,” asked Brume, angrily. “Some folks
laughs as a loon squawks, jest to make a pooty noise.”

“It takes wit to see wit, Reub. You'd better jest laugh when other folks do,
'thout trying to see why,” replied the landlord, with a wink to his neighbor.

Brume, far from mollified by this suggestion, was still cudgelling his dull
brain for a retort, when the door was thrown open and a smart young fellow,
whip in hand, entered the room and strode up to the bar.

“A glass of toddy, Burroughs, as quick as you've a mind to make it. It's
cold enough outside to freeze your mermaid's tail off. Don't you hear her
screeching?”

The dismal groan of the sign vibrating upon its rusty pintles accompanied the
question, and Reuben Brume, finding the laugh diverted from himself, gave up
the desperate search for a retort, and asked, instead,

“Did you see anything of the stage, James?”

“Yes, it's lumbering into the village. I brought down a horse for Mr.
Vaughn to ride home. It wasn't worth while to try wheels nor yet a sleigh,
such going as we've got to-night.”

“Is he coming in the stage?” asked the landlady, in some excitement.

“Yes. He drove the horses up three days ago, but said if it stormed bad he
should come down in the stage and I was to meet him here with a cutter. Here
they come.”

A shout and the crack of a whip were heard at this moment, and the inmates
of the bar-room rushed in a body out upon the stoop at the front door, in time to
see the driver check his reeking horses and clamber stiffly from his box.

“It's some cold, Billings, ain't it?” suggested Burroughs.

“You put this old concern down to Wylde's to-night, and see if ye're as
chirk when you git there as you be now,” retorted the driver, grimly, while he
threw open the coach door and turned down the step.

“Carrick. Stop for dinner,” briefly announced he, and then leaving his
horses to the stable boy, and his passengers to the landlord or to fate, he pushed
through the group of idlers, and entering the deserted bar, mixed himself a stiff
glass of spirits and water.

From the coach descended first a well-formed and handsome young man, apparently
about twenty-five years old, who, nodding good-humoredly to the spectators,
followed the driver into the house. Close behind him appeared the
stooping figure, yellow face, and rounded shoulders of a tall man, who, slowly
extricating himself from the coach, and rising to his full stature, remained an instant
staring disconcertedly about him.

“Won't you walk in, sir?” asked the landlord, rubbing his hands and
shivering a little. “A nice fire in the bar, and dinner all ready.”

“This is the town of Carrick, is it?”

“Yes, sir, this is Carrick. Was you going to stop here?” And at the implied
possibility the idlers paused in their retreat toward the fire, and gazed
with revived interest upon the stranger, whom a lucky chance had perhaps delivered
over to them.

“Yes. Is this the hotel?”

“Yes, sir,” replied Burroughs, with a little hesitation. “The Mermaid's
Cave, stage tavern, post-office, and hotel.”

At this new assumption of dignity on the part of their magnate, some of the
courtiers drew themselves up with a sense of increased consequence, some
nudged each other with sly smiles, and the disaffected Brume openly remarked,

“Fust time I ever heerd the old tahvern called a ho-tel. Burroughs 'll be
setting up for `the gen'lemanly lan'lord' next.”

At this moment the discordant tones of the fish-horn sounded again through
the whirling snow, and Reuben, now left alone upon the stoop, paused a moment
in doubt of the expediency of disobeying the summons. The supper hour,
however, was already passed. To return now was to suffer all the penalties and
reap none of the advantages of further delay, and after a momentary hesitation,
Reuben, with a defiant grimace in the direction of his home, followed his comrades
into the bar-room, and joined the silent ring about the stove, every man in
it bending his entire attention to the conversation between the landlord and the
stranger. Mr. Vaughn stood a little apart, questioning his groom as to the
state of the roads, and the best mode of travelling them. At another time this
interrogatory, now reduced to by-play, would have constituted an ample evening's
entertainment for the frequenters of the Mermaid's Cave, but to attend to
more than one thing at a time was never a fashion of the men of Carrick, and
Mr Vaughn they had seen and heard before, while the stranger fell among them
as a human victim to sharks long confined to a fish diet.

“Cragness! Why that's the old Vaughn place,” said the landlord, just as
Reuben Brume edged into the circle.

“Yes. I wish for a sleigh, horse, and careful driver to take me there immediately
after dinner,” said the stranger.

“But there ain't nobody living there now. The Square went off to Europe
or somewhere last winter, and there's only an old man—old Laz'rus Graves—in
the house.”

“I know it. Can I have the sleigh?”

“Wa-al”—and Mr. Burroughs looked helplessly about the circle for competent
counsel in this unprecedented case.

The courtiers stirred each in his place as expressing sympathy and interest,
but no man yet ventured to suggest the appropriate question which should at
once arrive at the point next to be ascertained, namely, the motive of this mysterious
stranger in thus seeking conveyance to a deserted and lonely house,
haunted, too, as every babe in Carrick could testify.

“Wa-al,” repeated Mr. Burroughs, and again his rolling eyes traversed the
circle. This time they fell upon the figure of Mr. Vaughn, who, having finished
his instructions to the groom, now approached the fire. A brilliant idea illuminated
the publican's brain.

“Here's Square Vaughn can tell you all about the old place,” said he. “I
guess you don't fairly know what sort of craft you're shipping in, agoing there,
and maybe he'll give you some light. Square, this gentleman wants to go to
Cragness to-night.”

“Indeed?” And Mr. Vaughn, with somewhat cold politeness, turned to
the stranger, who, in their long day's journey, had not offered one remark to
him, or vouchsafed more than the curtest replies to his own attempts at conversation.

“I am afraid you will find the old place somewhat desolate on such a night
as this,” said he.

“Possibly. But I am not sensitive to such matters. Are there no horses
to be hired here, can you tell me?”

“Why, yes. I suppose, Burroughs, you could let this gentleman have your
own horse and a saddle, couldn't you? My man says the road is impassable for
wheels or runners on account of the drift.”

“Whitefoot ain't agoing out to-night,” whispered a sepulchral voice from the
kitchen door into the landlord's ear, who, starting a little, answered slowly,

“Wa-al, Square, I'd like to 'commodate the gentleman, of course, and I've
got my own horse in the barn as you say, but I guess he'd better stop there to-night.
I couldn't send no one to fetch him back, and like enough it'll storm
worse to-morrow, and maybe the gentleman never would get to Cragness, and
I'd be awful sorry to lose Whitefoot.”

“I suppose, then, I must stay here until the storm is over,” said the stranger,
glancing somewhat ruefully about the dingy room.

“We'll 'commerdate you the best we can, sir, though winter time, so it's
rather hard to have everything shipshape,” said Burroughs, casting a dubious
side-glance toward the kitchen door.

“I can suggest a better course, perhaps,” interposed Mr. Vaughn, with a
little hesitation, “if you will ride my servant's horse and accompany me to
Bonniemeer, I shall be most happy to offer you a bed, and so soon as the roads
are practicable, will send a man to show you the way to Cragness. Burroughs,
you will let James ride Whitefoot, won't you? I promise you shall see the old
nag safe to-morrow.”

“Yes” echoed from behind the kitchen door, and “Yes,” replied the land-land,
with some added phrase of confidence in the “Square's making it all right
if anything came to the horse.”

All eyes now turned upon the stranger. His first impulse was, evidently, to
refuse Mr. Vaughn's proffered hospitality, but a second thought held him a moment
irresolute, and he finally said,

“I thank you, sir, for your invitation, but it may make some difference to
your feelings to know that I am John Gillies, heir to your late uncle, Reginald
Vaughn.”

The listeners gasped for breath. Such a mine of interest as was opened by
this announcement sufficed to engulf all Carrick for many a day.

Mr. Vaughn smiled frankly, and extended his hand.

“Very happy to give you a neighbor's welcome, Mr. Gillies,” said he; “and
I only wish I could congratulate you on your accession to the property. But
`the home of my fathers,' as the school girls say, had never much attraction for
me, and I infinitely prefer you should be its proprietor to owning it myself. You
will come home with me, I trust?”

“Thank you. Yes,” said Mr. Gillies, almost cordially.

“Then we will set out at once and dine at Bonniemeer,” suggested Vaughn.

“But you'd best take something to keep out the cold, gentlemen,” interposed
the landlord. “The iron's in the fire, and we'll have some flip ready before you'll
get your horses round.”

“It's churlish to refuse a stirrup cup, I suppose,” said the younger gentleman,
laughingly, and Mr. Gillies gravely bowing, said not a word, but watched somewhat
curiously, while the landlord drawing a tankard of ale, mingled with it sugar,
spirits, and spices, and then pulling from the glowing coals a short iron bar fitted
with a wooden handle, stirred the compound in the tankard, until a rich
spicy odor from the heated liquid rose in clouds, and caused the souls of the
courtiers to momentarily retire from eyes and ears to centre in their noses.

Each gentleman drained a glass of the flip thus compounded, and the host
joined them in another, saying, as he raised it to his lips,

“Here's wishing you good healths, sirs.”

“A prosperous journey were more to the purpose just now, Burroughs,”
said Mr. Vaughn, gaily. “Are the horses ready, James?”

“All ready, sir,” replied the groom, rather sulkily.

“Then get your own share of the flip, and follow us,” said his master, and
the two gentlemen mounting the impatient horses held by the stable boy at the
door, rode away as rapidly as might be, while James, upon the landlord's broken-winded
nag, followed as best he could, comforting himself with several remarks
not to be here repeated. The idlers of the Mermaid's Cave attentively watched
them out of sight, and then returned to the bar-room to digest the events of the
evening, aided by Billings, who had decided the weather and the roads to be unpropitious
to farther progress that night.

5. CHAPTER V.
THE OMEN OF THE DUNES.

As the closing door of the bar-room shut off the stream of ruddy light,
which had hospitably marshalled the travellers to their saddles, John Gillies
looked about him in dismay. No such scene as this had ever entered his
experience.

The twinkling lights of the hamlet already lay behind him, in front, the dark
expanse of an angry sea, its breakers thundering on the beach, and rolling up
in great white crescents to his horses' feet, or in their retreat dragging down to
the depths the rattling pebbles the next wave was to return. To the right lay

a long range of sand dunes glimmering ghostly white through the darkness,
while the wind chasing the storm through their mimic gorges and shifting tunnels,
and up and down their treacherous slopes, shrieked and yeiled in its awful
glee. Across the scene a broad white track bordering the black waters showed
the crescent curve of the beach, a sort of terrene milky way.

The snow now turning to sleet, beat furiously into the faces of the travellers
with a feel like powdered ice. No such scene had John Gillies encountered in
all his intermural rambles, and he was inwardly strengthening himself against
an impertinent doubt of the wisdom of his own course, when his companion
shouted in his ear,

“A wild night, even for the coast.”

“Very likely,” said Mr. Gillies, curtly.

“I am taking you by the beach. It's a little more open to the storm, but
my man says the other road is drifted very badly,” continued the master of Bonniemeer.

“I leave it entirely to you, sir,” replied his guest, and neither the weather nor
his company encouraging further conversation, Mr. Vaughn relapsed into silence,
broken only by an occasional phrase of encouragement to his horse, while for
nearly an hour the three men struggled on, often reduced to a foot pace by the
violence of the storm, now directly opposed to them, and blowing at times with
such fury that the horses, restrained from their natural impulse to turn from it,
reared impatiently, as if to overleap a tangible obstacle.

The night, now fairly set in, was as dark as is ever known in the immediate
vicinity of a large body of water, and it was only by keeping close behind his
leader that the stranger was able to follow the road as it finally left the coast and
struck in among the sand dunes.

Suddenly, Mr. Vaughn's horse swerved, paused, and uttered a shrill neigh.

“What now, Thor!” exclaimed the rider, as he bent from the saddle to search
for the object of the creature's alarm or surprise.

Something like a garment partially buried in a snow-wreath, rose and fell
stiffly as a blast of wind swept through the dunes.

“Good heavens! some one is lying here, frozen perhaps. What is to be
done?” exclaimed Mr. Vaughn, throwing himself from his horse.

Mr. Gillies unclosed his lips to suggest a watchman, but recollecting himself,
was silent. James and Whitefoot were far in the rear.

“It's a woman, I should think, and she has something—yes, it's a child—
wrapped in her cloak. Do you hear me, sir; here's a poor creature and her
baby freezing to death at your horse's feet!” exclaimed Vaughn, impetuously,
as his comrade quietly began to dismount.

“I understand, but I don't know what to advise. There is no station-house
near by, I suppose, where we might apply for help.”

“Station-house! good heavens, no! My own house is the nearest; but how
are we to get her there?”

“I cannot suggest,” said Mr. Gillies, calmly, and in the darkness lost the
look of disgust bestowed upon him by his companion.

“She's gone, poor creature, I'm afraid,” and the younger man softly raised
one of the stiff hands, and then replaced it beneath the cloak.

“James! He's out of sight and hearing,” continued he, impatiently. “Well,
Mr. Gillies, if you will mount again I'll give you the child to carry, and contrive
to get the woman upon my own horse. They can't be left here.”

“I cannot carry the child. I never touched one,” said Mr. Gillies, in solemn
alarm.

“O, very well. I shall wait for my man to take it, then. I do not know
that he is more experienced than yourself, but I presume he will not refuse to
make the attempt, when life and death are at stake.”

“A plan suggests itself to me,” said John Gillies, slowly.

“Indeed; what is it?” asked his companion, with scarcely-concealed disdain.

“I will stay here with the woman until your servant comes up, when I will
direct him to place her in front of him. You, meantime, will hasten home with
the child, as every moment of continued exposure is a chance of life lost to it.”

“You will stay here? Possibly, James may not come up at all. I shouldn't
wonder if that old nag had foundered, and he walked back to town,” said Mr.
Vaughn, doubtfully.

“In that case, I shall, after satisfying myself that no life remains in this
body, leave it, and trust to the horse to carry me to his home. I have read that
their instinct in such cases is a sure guide.”

“But why not let me now put the body in front of you, and come at once?”
asked Mr. Vaughn, in a more amicable tone.

“I do not wish to touch it,” replied the impracticable Gillies.

“Then I will accept your own proposition. I dare say the horse will come
straight home, and, as you say, the life of this child depends on immediate
relief.”

Mr. Gillies, as his sole reply, seated himself in the snow at a short distance
from the body.

“Good heavens, man! you'll be asleep in five minutes, and freeze to death
in fifteen. I did not actually think of leaving you, of course; but you are so
very self-possessed I could not help a little trial to see if you were in earnest.”

“I am always in earnest,” said John Gillies, solemnly; and Vaughn, with an
imperceptible shrug, replied:

“How delightful! But here is James; now we are all right at last. Here,
James, come and put this poor creature's body in front of me, and then take the
child yourself. Who is that behind you?”

“Thomas, sir. He was sent down to Carrick just after I started, and got to
the tavern a few minutes after we left. So he came along the beach.”

“Was sent!” exclaimed Vaughn, in a changed voice. “Is anything wrong
at home?”

“Mrs. Vaughn is sick, sir,” said the groom, hesitating; “and Thomas says
Mrs. Rhee seemed a good deal frightened when she sent him.”

“Thomas! what message did Mrs. Rhee send to me?” asked the master,
impatiently.

“She said, sir, ride for life if you wanted to see your wife again,” said
Thomas, huskily.

A deep groan burst from Vaughn's lips, and, throwing himself upon his
horse, he struck spurs into his sides with an energy that made the fiery creature
plunge and rear, and then dart forward as if borne by the wind itself.

Even in that moment of agony, however, the humane and hospitable instincts
of the man asserted themselves.

“James,” cried he, “I depend upon you to bring the woman, the child, and
this gentleman safely to Bonniemeer.”

The next instant he was gone.

6. CHAPTER VI.
BONNIEMEER.

With some difficulty, the grooms succeeded in placing the body of the
woman upon one of the horses, and while one man mounted and held it there,
the other, with the little child in his arms, regained his own saddle, and, calling
upon Mr. Gillies to follow closely, they took the same road their master had
done.

The violence of the storm would have rendered communication difficult had
it been desired, and not a word was exchanged until, at a sharp turn of the road,
the servants pausing to see that the stranger was close beside them, turned in at
a gate sheltered and nearly concealed by a dense growth of evergreens.

At some distance, and a little higher than this entrance, appeared the glancing
lights of a large building dimly outlined against the stormy sky.

A few moments later the horses paused at the foot of some broad steps, and
James, with the infant, carefully dismounting, carried it in at the hall door, and
presently returned followed by two or three female servants, who, with much
outcry and many questions, helped him to take the body of the woman from the
stiffened arms of Thomas, who avowed himself “chilled to the marrow,” and
carried it into the house.

Then, and not till then, James, who had privately resented more than he
thought safe to express Mr. Gillies's resolute non-interference in this work of
humanity, said,

“Will you get off your horse, sir, and walk into the house. I will speak to
Mrs. Rhee, for I suppose Mr. Vaughn won't be able to see any one to-night.”

Mr. Gillies remained immovable.

“I will give any man here a dollar, or as much more as we may decide upon,
to show me the way to my own house of Cragness,” said he, at length.

“Cragness, sir! There isn't a man or horse about the place that could reach
Cragness to-night. There's no choice but for you to stop here. Won't you
please walk into the house,” replied James, with respectful impatience.

With undisguised reluctance, the visitor dismounted and followed his guide
up the steps.

“I had rather go to my own house,” persisted he.

To this remark James offered no reply; but, pushing open the heavy door,
ushered the guest into a hall, whose warmth, light, and the fragrance from some
large flowering shrubs, offered a charming contrast to the wild weather without.

The door of a room at the right of the entrance stood open, and James
pushed it a little wider.

“Walk into the library, sir, and sit down,” said he. “I will speak to the
housekeeper.”

“I am sorry I could not go to Cragness,” murmured John Gillies, as he advanced
into the quiet room and looked about him. The lamps were not lighted,
but a fire of bituminous coal blazed in the grate and fitfully illuminated the frescoes
of the ceiling, the rare marbles and dim, lettered bindings of volumes rarer
than any marbles, the carved blazonry above the fire-place, the moss-green carpet,
and furniture.

“A man of letters and art—a proud man and a luxurious,” commented
shrewd John Gillies, as his eyes wandered over these details. “And not a musical

instrument of any sort,” added he, with a hard smile of contempt, as he
turned his back upon the room, and stood looking into the glowing coals.

“Shall I show you to your room, Mr. Gillies?” said a voice at his elbow.

He turned, and found a woman beside him. A woman, perhaps thirty-five
years old, with one of the most singular faces he had ever seen. Not a trace of
color lay beneath the pale olive of the skin, except a deep scarlet in the lips.
The large eyes, dark and full as those of a stag, had swept one rapid glance at
him when she first spoke, but fell before his own could fairly meet them. Heavy
masses of black hair were swept away from a low forehead, and half covered the
small ears. The figure was slight and graceful, the hands small, the dress quiet,
but handsome. It was in none of these, however, that the peculiarity of this
woman's appearance lay; it was in the latent expression of the whole, a sort of
terrible intimation of something just beneath the surface, hidden for the moment
by an unnatural qulet, but ever watching for a moment of weakness in its guardian
to burst from her control.

Something of this the acute physiognomist, John Gillies, felt, but failed at
the moment to reduce the perception to thought.

“Shall I show you to your room, sir? I am Mrs. Rhee, Mr. Vaughn's
housekeeper,” said the woman, finding her first appeal disregarded.

“Thank you. I am sorry to intrude upon strangers at such a time as this,
but am informed it would be impossible to reach my own house to-night.”

“Quite, sir. It is a terrible night for any one to leave a happy home and go
all alone into the storm.”

She shivered convulsively as she spoke, and moved toward the door.

Both words and manner were strange, and catching rather at their hidden
than their obvious meaning, Mr. Gillies said,

“The woman we found to-night, will she recover?”

“She is dead,” said the housekeeper, briefly, as she began to ascend the
stairs.

“And Mrs. Vaughn?” asked Gillies, doubtfully.

Mrs. Rhee paused, and clung a moment to the banister before she answered,
in a whisper,

“She is dying.”

“A terrible night for any one to leave a happy home and go all alone into
the storm,” echoed through John Gillies's brain, but he said nothing, and the
housekeeper recovering from her sudden emotion, passed swiftly up the stairs
and threw open the door of a bed-chamber, warmed, lighted, and luxurious.

“You will find a bell at the head of the bed, sir, and dinner will be served in
half an hour,” said his attendant, briefly, as she closed the door.

The guest stood looking after her a moment, and then drawing a chair to
the blazing fire, seated himself and stared absently into its depths.

“A terrible night,” murmured he; “I wonder if what is left of those two
women will know what sort of a night it is. I wonder if that housekeeper was
very fond of her mistress, or if she is what they call nervous. I wonder if this
man sitting before this fire is the man who twenty-four hours ago had never been
out of the city where he was born, had never seen one of these curious people.
I wonder if they keep going on in this way all the time.”

Half an hour later, the servant sent to summon Mr. Gillies to dinner, found
him sitting in the same position still staring vacantly into the glowing coals.

“Mr. Vaughn begs to be excused from dinner, sir. He cannot leave his
wife,” said Mrs. Rhee's subdued voice, as the guest entered the dining-room.

The dining-room door again opened, and a small man with quick bright eyes,
and a close mouth, entered, and advanced toward the table.

“Mr. Gillies, Doctor Roland,” said the housekeeper, briefly.

The two men bowed, and seated themselves at table. Some trifling conversation
upon the weather, and upon the peculiarities of the sea-shore in winter,
ensued, but the housekeeper did not speak, except in performing the duties of
the table, nor did either food or wine pass her lips. Only as they were about to
rise, Mr. Gillies noticed that she asked for a glass of ice water, and drank it with
feverish rapidity.

Returning at last to his own room, he paused on hearing satifled grons from
a corridor just beyond, and, looking down it, was startled to see a dark shapeless
figure lying upon the floor at the farther end, and writhing to and fro as if in
agony. Cautiously approaching until he stood directly above it, Mr. Gillies
still failed in the dim light to discover more than that it appeared to be a woman
suffering intensely.

“What's the matter?” asked he, hesitatingly. “Can I help you in any
way?”

The sounds of distress became more violent, although evidently suppressed
as much as possible, but still the figure neither rose nor spoke.

Gillies, unwilling either to abandon or to urge his proffer of sympathy, stood
irresolute, when a door softly opened, and Mrs. Rhee appeared, closing it behind
her.

“Chloe!” said she, sternly, and stooping down, she whispered a few words,
and then said aloud,

“Get up, Chloe, and go to my room to wait till you are called. Mr. Gillies,
I will show you the way to your own chamber.”

“I know the way to the chamber I was in before dinner,” said Gillies, composedly.
“I came here to see what was the matter with this person.”

He paused, as he spoke, to look at the uncouth figure now standing erect before
him. It was that of an intensely black negro woman, dwarfed in stature,
and so malformed that her head, bent upon her breast, could only be turned from
side to side, forcing her in addressing any person to give them a sidelong upward
glance indescribably elfish and peculiar.

“She is Mrs. Vaughn's nurse, and she feels—”

Mrs. Rhee paused abruptly. The negro woman who had moved away a few
steps, turned impulsively, and catching the housekeeper's skirts, buried her face
in them with a dumb moan of anguish more pitiful than words. For an instant
Mrs. Rhee stooped as if to throw her arms about her, but restraining herself,
said imperiously,

“Come with me, Chloe. Mr. Gillies—”

“I have no intention of farther intrusion upon the domestic affairs of this
house, ma'am,” said Gillies, coldly. “I should not have been guilty of it in
this in this instance had not humanity—”

But Mrs. Rhee had not paused for more than his first words. Already she
had disappeared through a door at the end of the corridor, followed by Chloe.

Mr. Gillies walked meditatively to his own room, and gave no further clue
to his feelings that night, than to say as he stepped into bed. “I wish I could
have gone to Cragness.”

7. CHAPTER VII.
THE HOUSEKEEPER'S HAND.

The next morning dawned clear and cold. Mr. Gillies, arising at his usual
early hour, approached the window with some curiosity, and very few preconceived
ideas either of the situation of Bonniemeer or of scenery in general, his
experiences in this direction having been limited to half a dozen ascents to the
cupola of the State House of his native city.

Fancy the revelation to such a man of a view like that lying now beneath
his eyes!

At the right, miles of evergreen forest “clothed the wold and met the sky,”
its dense green flecked with the snow clinging to the level branches, and softened
by the snake-like tracery of the naked birches fringing its margin. To the left
abruptly rose a rocky headland, crag piled upon crag in majestic outline, tossing
scornfully from its broad shoulders the snow which gently sought to cover it, and
raising its fearless crest to meet the morning sun that paused to crown it brother
monarch, while yet the valley lay in twilight.

Across the front swept the ocean, curving broadly to the horizon line, and
giving the idea of limitless extent, the satisfaction of soul only to be obtained by
the introduction of ocean into a picture.

The satisfaction of soul! for if the horizon closes with a mountain, a plain, a
broken country, who has not felt the impulse to place himself just at the vanishing-point
and see what lies beyond? It is an unfinished continuity, and excites more
craving than content. But the gaze, which after traversing leagues and leagues
of shining water, broken only by the grand curve of the globe itself, sinks at last
into the vague brightness of the horizon line, the dissolving-point where sea is
sky and sky is sea, lingers there content. Beyond lies space, eternity, God, and
humanity quails from the encounter.

Behind that crag at the left hand, although Mr. Gillies did not know it, lay
his future home. The wood at the right sheltered the hamlet of Carrick, and the
beach lay glistening a mile from the window whence the post-office clerk took
his first look at Nature.

A servant presently summoned him to breakfast. At the head of the table

sat Mrs. Rhee, and John Gillies's first impression in looking at her was, that she
had shrunk farther into herself since he saw her last. Surely her eyes were not
so hollow, her lips so thin, her temples so sunken, the night before. Even the
hands, busy among the teacups, looked withered and pinched, and the observer
noted that a ring upon the first finger, which he had watched sparkling in the
lamplight at dinner-time, was now slipped round by the weight of the stone, as
if it suddenly had grown too large.

The table was laid for two only, and the housekeeper, motioning Mr. Gillies
to the vacant place, said, in a low voice,

“Mr. Vaughn will not come to breakfast, and the doctor has gone.”

“And Mrs. Vaughn—”

“She died at midnight.”

Mrs. Rhee turned away her face as she spoke, but Gillies could see the deadly
pallor that overspread even the slender throat and little ear, the quiver of suppressed
anguish that trembled through every curve of the graceful form, and
while he looked and wondered, the phrase of the night before went sighing
through his mind like the burden of a half-forgotten song.

“A terrible night to leave a happy home and go out all alone into the storm.”

The meal was a silent and a slight one, Mrs. Rhee merely performing the
duties of the table, while her guest, naturally abstemious, found his appetite materially
lessened not only by his situation, but by the absence of his accustomed
viands.

As they rose from the table, a servant entered with a message from Mr.
Vaughn, desiring the housekeeper to attend him, and Gillies, awaiting her return,
strode impatiently up and down the room, asking himself again and again, what
concern of his was the grief and loss oppressing this household, and how or why
it should become his own so much as it had done.

The servant quietly cleared the table, and he was left alone. Throwing himself
into a chair beside the window, he sat drumming upon the sash, when the
door opened noiselessly, and Mrs. Rhee entered. Gillies's quick glance involuntarily
searched her face for the result of her interview with her master, and
found it in a renewal of the strange expression he had noticed at their first interview.
The same concentrated firmness about the mouth, the same painful constraint
upon the brow, while the secret of the dilated eyes looked from them so
eagerly, lay so close beneath the surface that John Gillies bent his brow and held
his breath, waiting to see it fully revealed. But, conscious of his observation,
the woman turned hastily away, and approaching the fire, held her hands so close
to the blaze that it caught upon the lace about her wrists. She neither started
nor made any exclamation, and when Gillies, springing toward her, caught and
wrapped her hands in a cloth snatched from the table, she only murmured indifferent
thanks as for a courtesy that might as well have been omitted. But the
incident had diverted those searching eyes from her face, and, conscious of the
relief, she spoke hastily:

“Mr. Vaughn desires me to apologize for him. He does not feel able to see
any one, but hopes that you will make use of the house, the servants, and the
horses at your pleasure.”

“I am much obliged to Mr. Vaughn, and I should be glad of a conveyance
and a guide to my own house as soon as possible, if you will order it,” said Gillies,
with undisguised satisfaction.

Mrs. Rhee rang the bell and gave orders that James and two horses should
attend Mr. Gillies immediately.

“You will be obliged to ride, sir,” said she. “The roads are not broken for
a sleigh yet.”

“Very well, ma'am. I came here on a horse and I presume it will not be
more dangerous or disagreeable to ride to-day than it was last night. I do not
like it, but can endure it,” replied Gillies, reflectively.

“Mrs. Vaughn's funeral will be the day after to-morrow,” continued the housekeeper,
in a voice whose measured coldness betrayed the emotion it covered but
did not conceal. “The woman who was found on the beach will be buried at
the same time, and Mr. Vaughn will be gratified by your presence.”

“By no means!” exclaimed Gillies, hastily. “I never went to a funeral in
my life, and I probably never shall.”

The housekeeper replied by a look of some displeasure, and Gillies abruptly
inquired,

“Did the child die, also?”

The look of displeasure changed to one of surprise as Mrs. Rhee coldly
inquired:

“Do you refer, sir, to Mr. Vaughn's daughter?”

“Good Heavens, no!” exclaimed Gillies. “I thought—that is to say, ma'am,
I have been informed that Mr. Vaughn had no children. I was asking about the
dead woman's baby.”

“Mrs. Vaughn died in giving birth to an infant,” said the housekeeper, fixing
her ominous eyes upon him, and dropping the words from her white lips as if
they had frozen them.

“But, the other child,” persisted Gillies.

“Mr. Vaughn will keep it to be educated with his own daughter—he says.”
And with the last words the speaker's voice dropped to an accent of bitter scorn
and jealousy, as incomprehensible to her listener's ear as any other of the mysteries
surrounding this strange house and its inmates. He stood for a moment
looking her steadily in the face, and then, glancing out of the window,
said, abruptly:

“I see the man and the horses. Good morning, ma'am.”

“Good morning, sir,” replied the housekeeper, coldly, and with no more
leave-taking, Mr. Gillies hastened to the outer air, and in reply to James's respectful
salutation and remark upon the coldness of the weather, he muttered,

“Cold enough, but better than in there. Two dead women, two babies, and
a witch for a housekeeper. Ugh!”

8. CHAPTER VIII.
“CRAGNESS, SIR.”

The new proprietor looked up, and found himself at the foot of a considerable
eminence standing boldly out into the sea, which, in the high spring tides,
washed three sides of it, and had year by year encroached upon its area, until
now its farther advance was resisted by the solid granite foundations of the little
peninsula, washed bare of all disguise, and frowning defiantly down at the waters
which dashed angrily upon it, and withdrew only to return yet more vehemently.

Upon the crest of the promontory stood a low stone building of peculiar
architecture, the main body of the house describing a parallelogram of no considerable

extent, but throwing out toward the sea a long and narrow gallery,
terminating in a circular tower of only one story in height, with a domed
roof.

The thick walls and narrow windows, combined with the chill air of abandonment
hanging over all, gave the place a peculiarly gloomy appearance.

John Gillies sat on his horse perfectly quiet, and surveyed his inheritance
and future home.

A mighty struggle was going on in his mind. This dreary house, this savage
scenery, this imperative mystery, all were as diametrically opposed to any wish
he had ever formed, as to any experience he had ever known. The forty prosaic
and methodical years of his life rose up before him, each one summoning
him to turn his back upon these strange new claims, and to return to the life
that he knew, and the assured future it promised him.

On the other hand lay the obstinate pride of the man, his stubborn adherence
to any course or opinion he had deliberately adopted, and with these
mingled, though Heaven only knows whence in that sterile nature it had sprung,
an impulse to abandon himself to this mystery so unexpectedly involving him,
to plunge into the new life and new interests, alien to his habits though they
were, with the same energy and dominance of will, which had for years given
him the first place among those with whom he had been associated.

Two minutes John Gillies sat in the sharp north wind, staring up at the old
house of Cragness, and in those two minutes he had passed the crisis of his
life, and decided not only his own destiny, but that of a number of other
persons.

Or was it perhaps that his destiny decided him?

James meantime had ridden up the hill, and was now knocking vigorously at
a door in the back of the house.

“It's no good to go to the front, sir,” said he, as Mr. Gillies drew rein beside
him. “There's a door there, but it's never opened, and old Lazarus burrows
this way somewhere, I believe. Here he comes.”

Slow steps were heard approaching along the passage, and then the harsh
cry of rusty bolts withdrawn by a feeble hand. The door presently opened, and
an old man, small of stature, with long white hair, faint blue eyes, and a skin
blanched as if by long exclusion from the sun and air, stood upon the threshold.

“How are you, Lazarus Graves?” said James, heartily. “Here's the new
master of Cragness, Mr. Gillies, come to take possession. Stir yourself, old
man, and show him in from this freezing cold.”

The old man looked attentively in the groom's face until he had finished, and
then said,

“Mr. Reginald is not at home to-day. You had better call again.”

“Not at home! No, nor he won't be, old Lazarus. Don't you remember
Mr. Robinson came down here last week, and told you he was dead, and had left
the place to Mr. Gillies? This is the gentleman, and you had better let him in,
and get a fire and some dinner going as fast as possible.”

The dim blue eyes wandered painfully from one strange face to the other, and
then suddenly overflowed with tears.

“Mr. Reginald dead!” said he. “Why, I carried him in my arms when he
was a baby and I had boys of my own. O, no, he couldn't be dead, and poor
old Lazarus Graves left alive.”

“He's more broke than I thought, sir,” said James aside to Gillies, who

[ILLUSTRATION]

The castle by the sea [See the Story, "A Bit of Blue Ribbon."

[Description: 451EAF. Illustration page. A large stone castle on the side of a cliff, next to a stormy sea.]

stood staring perplexedly at the old man. “It's the news of his master's death
has been working on him. He was quite smart before that. Hadn't you better
come back to Bonniemeer, sir? I am sure Mr. Vaughn would wish it. You
can't be comfortable here.”

“To Bonniemeer!” repeated Gillies, quickly. “Certainly not, James. I
shall do very well here, I have no doubt, if this old man can be got to let us
in.”

“That's easy done,” said the self-assured groom, stepping into the passage
and taking Lazarus by the arm.

“Come, father,” said he, “take us to the fire wherever you keep it. This is
the kitchen, isn't it?”

And he pushed open the door of a cavernous brick-floored apartment, in a
corner of whose wide chimney a handful of fire withered away, leaving but small
impression upon the sepulchral air. A broken chair, and a simmering saucepan
hinted at the occupancy and uses of the place.

“Cold comfort, sir, I'm afraid,” said James, standing aside for Mr. Gillies to
enter. “But I suppose there isn't a spark of fire in the house besides.”

“Fire! There's fire in the library. Mr. Reginald might come any time
you know, so I'm always ready, and so is his dinner,” interposed Lazarus,
eagerly.

“Well, then, suppose he has come, that's all,” said James. “Here is Mr.
Reginald, a little changed by his life in foreign parts, but wanting the fire and
the dinner just the same as if you remembered him.”

The old man looked bewildered. Gillies, ill-pleased with the position, but
hesitating how to assume his proper place in his own house and in the conversation,
frowned slightly, and moved toward the fire. The eyes of the old servant
followed him, and returned dissatisfied to the smiling and assured face of the
groom, who, without being in the least superior to his condition of life, had the
art, so useful in every condition, of organization.

“It's all right, I tell you, Lazarus,” said he. “There's Mr. Reginald come
back to stay awhile, and you must just go on as you used to when he was here
before. Now bring us to the library.”

The old man shook his white head dubiously, but turned to leave the kitchen.
James approached Mr. Gillies.

“I hope you won't think me forward, sir, but I have known Lazarus Graves
a good many years, and I thought perhaps I could humor him into doing as he'd
ought to better than you could. He's so broken that I don't believe he really
knows whether you are Mr. Reginald Vaughn or not.”

“He's crazy. I don't like crazy people. It's a very irregular way of doing
business to make him think I am some one else. Besides Mr. Reginald Vaughn
is dead, and I don't like using a dead man's name,” muttered Gillies, discontentedly,
as he walked toward the door.

James shrugged his shoulders, and followed.

Pursuing the echoing foot-falls of their guide, the two men traversed a long
passage, mounted some steps, and found him unlocking a small door deep sunk
in the thickness of the wall.

“Hope you'll excuse me, sir, but I wouldn't let the old fellow keep the key
of this door,” whispered James. “He'll lock you in, and forget all about it, and
may be die in a fit and leave you to starve.”

Gillies nodded, and, the door being at last opened, followed the old janitor

into a dark passage, which he concluded to be the gallery noticed as connecting
the rotunda with the main building.

It was pierced with several windows, closed by shutters, and admitting the
light only at small openings in the form of crosses. At the end of this gallery,
Lazarus Graves unlocked another door, and, throwing it open, said in a cheery
voice,

“There, Mr. Reginald, I've kept it dusted and aired, and since the cold
came, I've had a fire in it mostly, to keep the chill off in case you came sudden.'

Without reply, Mr. Gillies passed in at the open door, and looked about
him.

The room was large and lofty. As the exterior promised, the form was circular,
the ceiling domed.

Walls and ceiling alike were panelled with a rich dark wood, and the floor
was of oak, partially covered with a heavy Eastern carpet. In the stone fire-place
smouldered a fragment of drift-wood, relic of some forgotten wreck, above
it hung rusty arms surrounding an heraldic device like that holding a similar
position at Bonniemeer. Opposite to the door the circular form of the room
was broken by a deep bay window containing a small table, a chair, and footstool.

Approaching this window, Gillies saw that it faced, and, indeed, overhung
the sea, being thrown out beyond the face of the precipice from whose verge
sprung the outer wall of the tower.

“I've kept your chair in the old place, Mr. Reginald,” piped Lazarus. “You
didn't use to like to have it moved, so I've been careful, and that's the same
book you left on the table. I'd a notion once to put it up, but thought better on
it.”

Gillies raised the little volume from the reading-desk beside him. It was
“The Philosophy of the Supernatural.” He threw it down, and shivering a
little, walked toward the fire.

“I've dusted the books once in a while, but the rats have been at them some,
I'm afraid,” pursued old Lazarus, too much engrossed in discharging his conscience
of its trust to look attentively at his recovered master. Approaching
the wall, he drew back first one panel and then another, showing that the space
between them and the outer wall had been finished in sunken book-cases, well
filled with volumes, most of them in the dark leather or ghastly vellum of the
antique bindings.

“That will do,” said Mr. Gillies, speaking for the first time. “You can go
now, both of you.”

Lazarus Graves turned, and fixed his watery eyes upon the speaker with a
startled expression, and the slow cloud of perplexity settled again upon his
face. He turned to James, who, standing respectfully near the door, waited to
be dismissed.

“What did you say about Mr. Reginald, young man?” asked he.

“Why,” said James, slowly, “what I meant to tell you was, that Mr. Reginald
isn't coming back any more, but that this gentleman is in his place. Mr.
Gillies is his name.”

The old man shook his head positively.

“He'll come back,” said he. “His last words were, `Keep everything just
as it is, old Lazarus, and I'll be back some day before you know it.' And I've

been very careful to keep everything as it was, and he'll be back, you may depend
upon it.”

“Well, till he comes, he wants you to treat this gentleman just as if it were
himself,” said James, slightly changing his tactics. “You're to do the best you
can, and treat Mr. Gillies as if he were the master.”

“Did he send that word?” asked Lazarus, hesitatingly.

“Yes, just those very words,” replied the groom, promptly.

“O well, then, its all right,” and the cloud vanished from the troubled old
face, as Lazarus hobbled out of the room, and returned to his kitchen.

“Can I do anything for you at Carrick, Mr. Gillies?” asked James, with the
door in his hand. “I shall be there with Burroughs's horse this afternoon.”

Mr. Gillies considered a moment, and then said, “You may ask the landlord
to send me some provisions at the same time with my trunks, and you may ask
if there is any person not an idiot or a lunatic who will come here and do the
necessary work of the house.”

“A man or woman, sir?” asked James, innocently.

“A man, of course,” replied Gillies, promptly, adding, under his breath, “A
woman indeed!”

“Yes, sir; I will see to it. Good-morning, sir.”

“Good-morning, and here, James, is something for yourself.”

“No, I thank you, sir. Mr. Vaughn pays me well, and never wants any of
us to take presents. Good-morning.” And James left the room with quite
the air of a Brutus.

9. CHAPTER IX.
RUYLLYE AOL OLUDLU.

Left alone, Mr. Gillies's first movement was to fasten the door, his next
to open every one of the sliding panels and narrowly examine the recess
within, to make sure that none of them covered a hidden entrance to the room.
Then he seated himself in the reading chair occupying the bay window and
looked out. It was like looking from the windows of a ship in mid ocean, for,
owing to the peculiar construction of the opening, no sign of land was visible
from it; only a world of waters stretching wide and blue to the horizon, with
the pale gold of a winter sun flecking their surface and glittering on their white-maned
crests.

John Gillies looked long and earnestly, then sadly shook his head.

“I doubt if I ever like it,” muttered he, and turned the chair with its back
to the window. Then, in a reluctant fashion, as one who approaches an imperative
but repulsive duty, he drew a note case from his pocket and selected from
its contents a paper carefully folded, and docketed

“In this room,” muttered Gillies, finishing and folding the letter. Then he
rose and surveyed the room as an athlete measures the foe with whom he is
about to grapple in deadly conflict. A room of mysteries, he felt. A room
whose every object looked at him with wary eyes and close-shut mouth, as who
should say, “I have the secret, and I shall keep it.” A look answering line for
line to the stubborn determination of his own face, and, indeed, as room and
man stood confronted, an observer could not fail to perceive one of those subtle
likenesses by no means unusual between men and things, resulting now in attraction,
now in repulsion. In the present instance, the relation threatened to
become antagonistic, for the stubborn and reticent man demanding the secret
which the equally stubborn and reticent room refused to yield, would inevitably
come to hate the thing that too successfully resisted him, and a room so personal
as this library of Cragness would be at no loss for means to make itself
odious to the man who defied it.

Some vague perception of this strange relation between himself and the
place must have stirred in John Gillies's own mind, when, with clenched hand
and frowning brow he turned his cold eyes once more to every side, and muttered,

“I'll have it yet!”

A sudden chill seemed to fall at the words from roof and walls, and in at the
broad sea-window. An involuntary shiver ran through the flesh and blood
which it assailed; but the man's will neither shook or faltered.

Striding to the fire-place, he threw another fragment of the old wreck upon
the embers, and then standing upon the hearth, his back to the room, applied
himself to seriously consider the heraldic achievement before him, an object to
which he had hitherto paid but small attention. The shield was a proud one.
Upon an azure field it bore a knight in golden armor, his lance couched for the
the onset, his left hand guiding his sable war-horse. The crest was an argent
passion-cross, upborne by angels' wings. The motto enwrought in golden letters
upon a fanciful scroll was—

The whole was surrounded by the quaint and many-colored arabesques known
to the heralds as the lambrequin.

This device John Gillies examined in detail, with the same grave attention
which he bestowed upon everything; but even here found cause of discontent.

“The knight has his face covered, and the motto is in a foreign language,”
said he, and taking a book from the mantel-shelf he resolutely began at the title-page
and read until the gathering dusk warned him that night was approaching.

Then, suffering the book to fall to the floor at his feet, and, leaning back in
the old chair, he allowed his mind for the first time to turn upon the strange
circumstances surrounding him.

The sound of footsteps and a feeble knock at the door aroused him, and
opening he found old Lazarus upon the threshold, with a broad-shouldered,
awkward fellow behind him.

“There, I told you there was no one here but Mr. Reginald,” said Lazarus,
peevishly.

“That ain't Mr. Reginald, you old simpleton—it's Mr. Gillies, the very man
I was asking for,” retorted the stranger in a loud whisper; and then, stepping

forward, he said, with the mixture of awkwardness and conscious independence
peculiar to the American rustic and to no other class of men beneath the sun:

“My name's Brume. I live down to Carrick, and see you last night when
you came in the stage. Jim Powers, that stops to Frederic Vaughn's, was down
to the tavern awhile ago, and said you wanted your things fetched up, and would
like a man to stop awhile, and sort of help along a little. So I thought, as I'd
nothing particular to do just now, and it's sort of tedious sitting round all day,
I'd fetch up the things, and, if we suited each other, I might stop.”

“As a servant?” enquired Gillies, calmly.

“O waal, cap'n, we don't need to call no names about it. I know how to
take hold of most anything; been to sea for cook and steward, and are what
they call a jack-of-all-trades. I'll do pretty nigh as you'd like to have me; but
I can't begin, going on forty, to call any man master, or myself servant.”

“So long as you perform service you are a servant,” said Mr. Gillies, positively;
“but the name under which you perform it makes no difference to me;
if it does to you, choose what suits you best. I will make enquiries about you
in Carrick, and if the answers are satisfactory I will engage you, at such wages
as we may decide upon. Do you wish to stay on these conditions?”

“Well, yes, cap'n; I expect I might as well,” said Reuben, rather doubtfully:

“I shall require very little of any one,” added Mr. Gillies, “and shall choose
to see as little as possible of any one. This old man is to stay, and be treated
with consideration.”

“Old Lahs'rus! Oh, sartin. He's one of the old stand-bys, and I shouldn't
never think of setting up agin him,” said Mr. Brume, with an approving slap
upon the shoulder of the old man, who, with one withered finger at his lips, was
staring uneasily from one speaker to the other, and again past them both into
the library, whence he seemed to expect the momentary appearance of one who
should, assuming his rightful place in the house, drive out these vexatious intruders
and reëstablish the old order of things.

“At present,” said Mr. Gillies, coldly, “I should like some dinner. You
may see, if you please, if anything is to be found in the house.”

“There, now,” said Reuben, with a sudden illumination of countenance, “I
guessed right for once, I'll bet a cent. Jim told me how matters wos up here,
and that he didn't b'lieve Lahs'rus would make out anything of a dinner for you.
So I told Burroughs he might put up a basket of vittles, and I'd fetch 'em along.
Even if you'd got something, I thought they might work in handy; for I'm
pretty hearty to eat, myself, and if you wasn't a mind to take 'em, why I told him
I'd pay for 'em out of my own pocket. I reckon 'twouldn't break me, though I
don't pretend to be a Creshus.”

“You did very well, although ordinarily I do not wish any one to make purchases
for me without orders,” said Mr. Gillies. “I will eat here. Bring in
what you have prepared, and then see about my bed and your own.”

“All right, cap'n. I reck'n we'll keep her before the wind, though we be
rather light-handed,” said Reuben, cheerily; and, taking possession of old Lazarus,
he withdrew, closing the door behind him, while his new master, returning
to the fire-place, stirred the brands until a river of sparks flowed up the broad
chimney, and great billows of light surged into every corner of the dark room,
and flashed from the oriel-window out upon the waters, so that the bewildered
mariners thought to have discovered a new Pharos upon the dangerous coast.

10. CHAPTER X.
THE GOLDEN SERPENT.

It was the day after the double funeral had taken its sad path from the gates
of Bonniemeer, and Vaughn sat alone in his study, helpless under the sense of
lonely desolation which no words can paint to him who has never known it,
which no time can efface from the memory of him who has.

One of the commonest impulses of this condition of restless misery is toward
flight—a flight terminating often like his of the song, who, fleeing from his
household demon, heard it call to the wayfarers from the loaded wain, “Aye,
we're all a-flitting!” and so turned back to wrestle with it beneath his own roof-tree,
rather than in the open world.

This impulse toward flight now possessed the widowed Vaughn, and, yielding
to it upon the moment, he rang a bell, and summoned Mrs. Rhee to his presence.

She came, and stood within the door, pale, haggard, wasted, her eyes faded
with incessant tears, her mouth tremulous with ill-suppressed emotion.

Vaughn glanced at her, carelessly at first, then with a steady scrutiny. The
housekeeper returned the look, and the Secret—the Secret that lay between
them, spoke from eye to eye, imploring, refusing, appealing, denying, until the
woman hid her face within her wasted hands, and Vaughn, springing from his
seat, trod as impatiently up and down the room as though he could thus trample
out of sight a past that would not be left behind.

Presently, commanding himself, he said, with measured calmness,

“Sit down, Anita. I wish to speak with you on matters of business alone.”

The housekeeper mutely obeyed.

“I am going abroad, it may be for some years,” pursued Vaughn, no longer
looking at her, but hastening to place his resolution in words binding upon them
both.

“I shall leave business matters in the hands of my lawyers, one of whom
will be appointed my agent here, but to you I wish to entrust the affairs of the
house and the care of the child—of Gabrielle's child. You should be a second
mother to her, Anita.”

He paused, and looked at her with strange significance and yet a strange reluctance.

She looked as steadily at him, and said,

“You may trust me. I will be a mother to the child of Gabrielle, and—you.
I, who have no child, can pity this motherless baby, can love her in place of my
own.”

The unutterable pathos of her voice reached his inmost heart and roused not
sympathy alone, but such a storm of conflicting emotions as swept his very soul
before it and bowed him to the earth. He turned from her, hiding his face, and
through the heavy silence of the room was heard a dull throbbing sound as of
some hidden clepsydra. That sound was the beating of Anita's heart, as standing
with her hands clasped above it, her figure inclined forward, her lips parted,
her eyes glowing, her color faded to an ashy pallor, she watched the man before
her—watched till the crisis should be past and the tenor of her future life declared.

Suddenly Vaughn turned and looked at her. She read his face eagerly as
one might read the page of futurity held open in a wizard's hand. She read
there pity, sympathy, and an inexorable resolution—a resolution based upon the

very foundations of the man's nature, and no more to be overthrown. She read,
and with a bitter, bitter moan she turned away, the thin hands clasping yet more
fiercely the throbbing heart whose every bound seemed like to be its last. Could
she have doubted his face, the first tones of his voice would have proved to her
that she had not deceived herself.

“If the future looks cold and barren to you, Anita, remember that it is to be
conquered by your own effort. So far as physical well-being is concerned, I can
assure it to you—the rest you must do for yourself. We all have our own fight
to make in one way or another.”

He waited, but she would neither speak nor look, and he went on, resolutely.

“I may be gone a long time. You will hear from me through my business
agent, and I shall wish you to write, through the same medium, of matters connected
with the child or the house that you may wish to communicate.”

He hesitated a moment, and approached a little nearer to where she stood
with drooping head and downcast eyes, one hand resting lightly upon a chair,
the other hanging nervelessly beside her.

“There is one thing that you must promise me, Anita. The child must
never know, must never suspect even so remotely. Can you do it?”

“I promised the same thing two years ago, when you married Gabrielle,”
replied the housekeeper, half scornfully. “Have I ever broken that promise?”

“Never, as I firmly believe. But now you will be alone, and you will love
this little child so much that it will be hard.”

“Is it the only thing in my life that is hard?” asked she, sharply.

“No. I have told you that we have all our own fight to make. If yours is
a hard one through act of mine, may God and you forgive me. Do not fear that
I shall not suffer the full penalty of my own misdoings. Do not doubt that my
own conscience has said and will say all and more than you, or Gabrielle, or even
this new-born child has a right to say. If you suffer, Anita, you do not suffer
alone. And now I will have no more of this. From this moment we speak together
in only our obvious relations. You quite understand my wishes in regard
to the child.”

“Quite, sir. Am I to address her entirely as Miss Vaughn, or will you give
her a Christian name?”

Putting aside the sarcasm without notice, Vaughn replied,

“Certainly she must be named, and she shall have a name expressing her
birthright. Call her Franc; it means free.”

“Not Gabrielle?” asked the housekeeper, impetuously.

“No; Franc, or perhaps Francia is better. Let her be called Francia.”

“Yes, sir,” said the housekeeper, her voice as coldly submissive as his was
coldly determined.

“Chloe, of course, will be her nurse, and you will guarantee Chloe's silence,
as heretofore, I presume.”

“Yes, sir.”

“I believe that is all, then. I shall see you again upon some household matters
not yet decided.”

“What is to be done with the other little girl, sir? The child of the woman
found dead on the beach.”

“Ah. I had forgotten. Is she an intelligent and well-formed child, healthy
and bright?”

“Yes, sir, I should judge so.

“Let her be educated with Francia, then, and precisely in the same manner.
Regard her as my adopted daughter, and make no difference between them in
any way. I will never commit the cruelty of rearing a child beneath my roof to
a condition of dependence and sycophancy. The finest nature must become debased
or crushed by such a life. Educate her in every respect as if she were
Francia's sister, and let her story be kept a secret from her as long as possible.
Look to this, if you please.”

“Yes, sir.”

“She must be named, also.”

“She is named already, sir. At least the word Neria is pricked into her
shoulder with Indian ink, and I take it to be her name,” said Mrs. Rhee, somewhat
contemptuously.

“Neria? The mermaids must have named her before they left her on the
shore. Well, it is a pretty name. Let it belong to her. Was there nothing
about the mother to tell who she was or where she came from?”

“Nothing, sir. She looked like a lady, although her clothes were poor and
worn. She had a wedding ring, and wore a curious bracelet, but neither of them
were marked, nor were any of her clothes. James has inquired at Carrick, but
no one saw her pass through, except an old man, who remembers that some one
asked if Mr. Vaughn lived near here, and he directed her to this house; but it
stormed so that he did not notice much how she looked, or ask any questions as
to where she came from, or anything.”

“Probably she wanted help, and had been referred to me,” said Vaughn,
quietly settling in his own mind a question that should not have been so readily
answered. “Where is the bracelet of which you speak?”

“Here, sir. I brought it to give into your own charge, as it appears very
valuable.”

She laid it in his hand as she spoke. A golden serpent, his scales delicately
wrought in the old Venetian style, and so subtly jointed as to writhe at every
motion with all the graceful convolutions of his kind. The flattened head was
set with an emerald crest and diamond eyes, while between the distended jaws
flickered a flame-like tongue carved from a single ruby.

Vaughn, who had a luxurious fancy for rare gems, looked with delight at the
exquisite toy coiled upon his hand, vibrating with every throb of its pulses, and
flashing back the sunlight from its diamond eyes with a cold glitter half diabolical
in its life-likeness.

“It must be an heir-loom of some old family,” said he. “Our paltry goldsmiths
do not conceive such exquisite fancies. And the workmanship is the
Venetian style of the last century—genuine, too; it is no modern imitation. Is
there no mark upon it of any kind?”

“No, I believe not,” replied the housekeeper, wearily, while through her mind
glanced the question,

“Can he really care more for this toy than for the anguish devouring my
heart!”

“Yet, but there is. See here.” And unheeding the swimming eyes that
sought his own, Vaughn showed where, upon the serpent's throat, one scale was
marked in tiny characters with the initials “F. V., 1650.” Upon the scale above
was traced the outline of a crest, but so faintly that Vaughn failed to make it out
by the minutest scrutiny.

“`F. V.' Why, those are my little Francia's initials,” said he, musingly.

[ILLUSTRATION]

"It must be an heir-loom of some old family," said he.--

[Description: 451EAF. Illustration page. A man, seated at a table and holding a family heirloom, and a woman, standing next to the man and holding a hand on her heart, somberly reside in a living room.]

“Who knows but this precious bracelet is actually a family jewel of our own,
You say the woman was inquiring for me. I must see the old man you speak
of before I leave.”

“He knows no more than I told you, sir. I have seen him myself. I did
not suppose you would be able to speak with him so soon—”

She glanced at him half reproachfully as she spoke, and a shadow crossed
his face.

“Yes, I know,” said he, hurriedly, “I do not forget my loss in caring for the
living. This child is now my charge, and I shall attend to her interests as carefully
as to those of my own daughter. The bracelet I shall put away until Neria
is old enough to wear it; and before leaving home I shall make all possible inquiries
concerning her mother's story. And now, Anita, good-by. I shall not
see you alone again until time has done so much for both of us that we need not
fear to meet.”

He took her hand, looked down into the dark eyes raised to his with such an
ocean of anguish in their depths, and then, half drawn by them, half impelled
by his own tender nature, he stooped and kissed her.

A vivid scarlet stained her cheeks, a wild joy lighted her eyes; and as she
slowly withdrew her hand and left the room, every line of her supple figure,
every motion of her graceful head, so expressed the new life burning in her
veins that Vaughn, watching her, muttered, as she closed the door,

“It was folly, it was inconsistent. But it is the last. Never again, Anita,
never again.”

And Fate, listening, smiled a scornful smile, whispering,

“Yet once more Frederic Vaughn, yet once more, and in your own despite.”

11. CHAPTER XI.
TIGER TAMING.

In pursuance of the intention expressed to his new retainer, Mr. Gillies took
an early opportunity of ascertaining Reuben's reputation in his native village.

“O, there ain't no harm in the fellow,” said Mr. Burroughs, to whom his first
inquiry was addressed. “I guess the worst that's to say of him is that he's sort
o' slack, and had rather luff and bear away than to keep her right up in the
wind's eye. But he's handy, Reub is, and can do first rate if he's a mind to. I
shouldn't wonder if he answered your purpose, Cap'n, as well as a better man.
But what does Nance say about it?”

“I do not know to whom you refer,” said Mr. Gillies, in his driest manner.

“Why, Reub's wife, Nancy Brume. If she hain't gi'n her consent, it won't
do no good to ship him. She'll be after him, and get him, too.”

Mr. Gillies looked puzzled and disgusted, but made no reply.

“Tell you what, Cap'n,” pursued the good-natured publican, “why don't you
jest step over there, and speak to Nance about it yourself. It seems a pity you
shouldn't have Reub, and I tell you now, Nance is skipper of that concern, and
is the one you've got to reckon with first or last. If you don't go and see her,
she'll be up to see you before many days are over.”

“Heaven forbid!” ejaculated Gillies; and after a moment of consideration,
briefly added,

“Very well, I will go. Where does she live?”

Stepping out upon the porch, Burroughs pointed to the little cottage from
whose door the fish-horn had been so vigorously blown upon the evening when
Mr. Gillies was first introduced to the village of Carrick.

“That's the house, and I guess you'll find her to home. Don't be scared if
she's kind of rough at first, Cap'n. Her bark's worse'n her bite.”

To this friendly advice, Mr. Gillies deigned no answer whatever, but stepping
off the porch, walked briskly in the direction indicated.

The door of the cottage stood open, and the visitor paused a moment before
it, in some doubt how best to make his presence known, when a sudden uproar
arose within, and a boy, dressed in a fisherman's coarse clothes and heavy boots,
fled out of the door and down the street, pursued by a tall wiry woman holding
a large fish by the gills, which novel instrument of punishment she heartily
applied about the boy's head and shoulders whenever she could reach him,
shouting at the same time,

“I'll teach ye to fetch me a hahdock agin, ye young sculpin! Didn't I tell
ye I wanted a cod, and what d'ye s'pose I care how many they took up to Fred
Vaughn's. Think I'll be put off with a hahdock while other folks eats cod?
Take that, and that, and that!”

And as little else than the head of the offending haddock now remained in
the fair epicure's hand, she seized the lad by his shock of wiry hair, and bending
his head back upon her arm, scrubbed his face with the remnant of fish, until the
luckless fellow, screaming with mingled rage and terror, broke away and rushed
down the street.

Mrs. Brume looked after him a moment, and then slowly turned toward home,
wiping her hands upon her apron, and muttering to herself invectives, mingled
with self-gratulation.

Mr. Gillies stood upon the door-step with a face of unmoved gravity.

“Does Mrs. Brume live here?” inquired he, as the virago approached.

“Yes, I'm Miss Brume,” replied she, in an uncompromising manner.

“I should like to speak to you, then, for a few moments.

“Well, you can come in.” And Mrs. Brume led the way into a vigorously
tidy kitchen, and after setting a wooden chair for her guest, retired to a back
room to remove the traces of her late encounter. While she was gone, Mr.
Gillies cast an observant glance about the room. Everything was as clean, as
orderly, and as uninviting, as hands could make it. The white floor was scoured
and sanded, the stove blackened and polished, the windows as nearly transparent
as the green and wavy glass could be made. Even the cat blinking in the sunny
corner had a wan and subdued expression, as if her natural depravity, and with
it her vitality had been nearly cleansed away.

Mrs. Brume returned, her face and hands red with ablution and excitement,
her hair, also red, smoothed, and a clean white apron tied tightly about her
waist. Seating herself in a chair opposite her guest, she opened the conversation
by saying.

“Like enough you thought strange to see me so mad with that young one,
but he hadn't no business to bring me a hahdock when I spoke for a cod, and I
ain't one of them kind as puts up with everything and never says a word. I'm
apt to speak my mind, specially if I'm a little riled, and I'd as lief one man
would hear me as another.”

To this ingenuous confession Mr. Gillies responded by a slight bow, and then
said,

“I called to let you know, Mrs. Brume, that your husband thinks of remaining
with me for the present. My name is Gillies, and I live at Cragness, the
estate of the late Mr. Reginald Vaughn.”

Mrs. Brume's color rose, and she twitched at the strings of her apron, but as
she raised her eyes they met the cold grave look steadily bent upon her, and
with a very unusual effort to suppress her rising wrath, she asked,

“How long does he think of stopping?”

“As long as I wish to employ him,” returned Gillies, coolly.

“O—h!” replied Mistress Brume, slowly, while an ominous pallor settled
about her lips, and her hands flew to her hips.

“And if I might ask without offence, Mr. Gillies, I'd just like to know how
long you calc'late to keep a honest woman's husband away from her?”

“So long as he wishes to remain,” replied Gillies, in the same imperturbable
manner, and beneath that manner and that steady gaze Nancy Brume found her
usually unfailing powers of invective mysteriously checked and subdued. She
bravely tried to rally her forces.

“O well,” said she, bridling, “I don't suppose its of no consequence to
either one of you what I think about it. A poor weak woman hain't got no
chance when the man as had ought to look out for her can get them as calls
themselves gentlemen to back him up and help him along in trampling onto
her feelings—”

But these same feelings of Nancy Brume's, denied full expression in their
usual manner, found sudden vent in another form, and she burst into tears, sobbing
from behind the white apron.

“I don't know, I'm sure, what I ever did to you, sir, that you should come
and take away my husband this way, and then set there as cold as I don't
know what, and—make from fun of me, and all.”

“Make fun of you, ma'am!” exclaimed Mr. Gillies, indignantly, and indeed
the phrase by which Dame Brume had sought to express the unsympathizing
and unassailable manner of her guest was ludicrously inappropriate, although
sufficiently significant of a jealousy almost universal in her class toward its
social superiors. Nancy, unable to defend her position, with feminine quickness
changed her base of operations.

“I'm sure I've been as good a wife to that man as there is in Carrick. His
house has been kept tidy and his vittles has been cooked reg'lar, and if his
clo's hain't always been whole and neat, it wasn't my fault, but his'n, which he
wouldn't leave 'em off—”

“Mrs. Brume! will you stop and listen to me!” interrupted Mr. Gillies, so
decidedly, that the white apron suddenly dropped into Nancy's lap, disclosing a
scarlet but attentive face.

Mr. Gillies glanced at it and then away. Poor Nancy's beauty was not of the
exceptional style to which tears are an added charm.

“What I wish to say is simply this,” continued the guest, rising to depart.
“I have taken your husband into my service for an indefinite period, and thinking
it proper you should be informed of the fact, I called here to mention it.
With your matrimonial virtues or faults I have, of course, no concern, and
merely came here to-day lest you should think it necessary to seek your husband
at Cragness.”

“I don't know but I've been kind o' ha'sh, sometimes,” pursued the wife,
more attentive to her own course of thought than to the cold words of her guest,

“but I've set more by Reub than he knowed, I guess, and though I did put him
out and lock the door t'other day I never thought he was going off for good. I
wish't you'd let him come home and have a talk 'long o' me, Mr. Gillies, 'fore
you fix it all off.”

“I have no reason to suppose he wishes for such permission,” said Gillies,
with grim humor.

“You don't think he's give me up altogether,” cried Nancy, in sudden terror,
and again the white apron went over her head, and she rocked to and fro in a
paroxysm of grief. The guest silently walked toward the door.

“Stop just a minit, please, sir,” sobbed the deserted wife, and as Gillies reluctantly
paused, she wiped her eyes, and looking up in his face with a piteous
smile upon her hard mouth, said,

“I wish't you'd take me, too, sir.”

Gillies recoiled.

“Take you, too!” exclaimed he, in solemn horror.

“Yes, I'd do all the work of your house, and keep it real nice and tidy, too.
Reub can't do that, nor—though he can cook pretty well, he can't come up to
me, and I'm a first-rate washer and ironer, too, and I'll do just as you'd like to
have me. Do take me 'long o' Reub, Mr. Gillies, for it don't seem as if I
could make up my mind to part with him. I'll come real cheap, too, it won't
hardly cost more for both than one, and I'm awful saving about a house.”

There was a pathos in the rude tones and sharp face of the wife thus pleading
for leave to work at her husband's side, to which no man could have been
quite insensible, and the shrewd arguments by which she supported her proposition
produced their full effect upon the mind of her listener.

He considered for a moment, and then said,

“But your husband came to me with the intention of separating from you.
I cannot refuse him my protection.”

“O, I'll settle with Reub,” said his spouse, with feminine confidence in her
own conciliatory powers. “He sets by me, same as I do by him, more'n either
of us let on. He kind o' calc'lates on me, too, to push him along and hold him
up straight. Reub'll agree fast enough.”

Gillies considered again.

“Your plan has its advantages, Mrs. Brume,” said he, at length, “and if I
find Reuben is satisfied with it, you may come to Cragness on trial, and under
one condition, but that a stringent one.”

“And what's that, sir?” asked Nancy, beamingly.

“That you shall never raise your voice above its present tones while upon
my premises, and that you never scold your husband in any tones. When you
find the vivacity of your temper beyond your control, I will always give you
permission to come to Carrick, and expend it either upon the fisher boy or in
any other manner you see fit, but while under my roof, I shall expect it to be
held in perfect control. I am a quiet man, and strongly object to disturbance of
any kind, especially discordant noises.”

“I'll do my best, sir,” said Nancy, meekly.

“That will not be sufficient, unless your best comes up to my requirements,”
returned Gillies, coldly. “And I wish you to come with the understanding that
unless my conditions are fulfilled, I shall expect you to retire from my house,
leaving your husband there so long as he wishes to stay.”

“I ain't used to being beat by anything, and if I once tackle my own temper,

I reckon I can get the upper hand of it same as I would of anything else,” said
Nancy, with the calm confidence of a habitual conqueror.

“Then I will speak to Reuben, and, if he wishes for your society, he may
come down to-night and tell you so. Good-morning, Mrs. Brume.”

“Good-day, sir.”

As Mr. Gillies walked away, he smiled, in his own dry fashion, and said, in
his own mind,

“Surely, no man in his senses will voluntarily place himself in that woman's
power, after having once escaped from it.”

But, probably, Reuben Brume's ideas of sanity differed from those of his
master; for the very next day saw Nancy installed in the kitchen of Cragness,
and commencing an indignant but noiseless raid upon its many crypts and by-places,
while Lazarus, seated beside the fire, watched her vigorous movements
with dire astonishment; and Reuben obeyed her numerous mandates with cheerful
alacrity.

“Looks kind o' good, arter all, to see you round, Nance, specially when
you're so good-natered,” said he, in the course of these operations; and Nancy,
womanlike, retorted:

“Yes; and I was a big fool not to let well enough alone, and leave you to
muddle along here, best way you could.”

But Mrs. Brume, besides being a woman of quick temper, was a woman of
powerful will, and the resolution she had taken in coming to Cragness she kept
as perfectly as the faulty nature of humanity would permit; and the occasions
when her husband was forced to enquire if he should “speak to Mr. Gillies”
became so rare that Reuben privately blessed the day of his emancipation, and
looked upon his master with the admiring awe due to a moral Van Amburgh.

12. CHAPTER XII.
“THE MAIDEN TO THE HARPER'S KNEE.”

The sun of a summer's day had just sunk beneath the horizon, leaving the
western sky a-flood with a golden glow unflecked by clouds, while sea
and earth lay hushed beneath the grand calm that ever falls with such a sunset.
Clouds, gorgeous though they may be, cannot but detract from this calm—cannot
but disturb the unity, the conviction of eternity, that fills the heaven and crowns
the earth in its presence. The cloudy sunset is a grand spectacle of nature—
the golden glow that seems to draw us into itself and on to Eternity, is Space
illumined by Divinity. Against this sunset the trees crowning the summits of
the western hills lined themselves almost leaf by leaf, while Mount Lion, standing
sharply out in the foreground, loomed black and forbidding as the impious
height reared by Titans who would fain clamber to that glory's source. Higher,
the gold melted through a belt of tender green into the clear blue of the zenith,
while all the East was veiled in an amethystine mist, as rare as it was lovely in
its tint.

Out of the slumberous sea rose a moon rounded to its perfect circle, and
with her splendor fell upon earth and sea a benediction:

The tide was out, and upon the grey-ribbed sands lay many a wonder of the
deep. Shells, pebbles, mosses, of every delicate dye and graceful form, quivering
jelly fish and awkward insects, lobsters, crabs, horse-shoes, and one malevolent
squid or cuttle fish, who seized upon everything within his grasp, tearing
and crushing it to atoms.

Among these marine curiosities strolled a party of four young people, three
of them girls varying in age from twelve to seventeen, the fourth a lad of sixteen,
who divided his attention pretty equally between his companions and a
fine spaniel answering to the name of Otter, who seemed to ask no better amusement
than to obey his master's many and somewhat imperious mandates, frisking
now into the water, now up the rocky shingle at the head of the beach, now
forward and now backward, as he was ordered.

“Hark! There is music, an organ, I should think; where can it be?”
asked Claudia, a glowing brunette beauty, and the eldest of the three girls.

“Why, it is Cragness! Who would suppose we had come so far?” said
Francia, looking about her. “Just round that rock you will see the library window,
Claudia, built out over the water. That is all you can see of the house
from the beach.”

“Let us go on, then, and listen to the music. Does that old scarecrow of a
Gillies play like that?” asked her cousin, in contemptuous surprise, as she led
the way onward and paused at last directly beneath the deep bay window of the
library of Cragness.

The others followed, Francia skipping along beside Claudia, narrating in a
tone of lively gossip such particulars as were current in regard to Mr. Gillies's
mode of life, and adding comment and suggestion from her own merry wit.

Behind them walked Neria, a tall, slight girl, of a face and figure promising,
through the immaturity of their thirteen years, a development of rare loveliness.
With bent head, and eyes fixed upon the ocean and the rising moon, she seemed
to care as little for the lively chat of the girls in front as the rude play of the
boy and dog behind her.

Claudia, who had the sensuous love of music befitting her temperament,
paused beneath the window, and, imposing silence upon her companion, seated
herself upon the rocks to listen. Francia wandered down upon the sands, collecting
brilliant pebbles, in the next moment to be thrown away, and about midway
between them stood Neria, her hands locked together, her head drooping,
her dreamy eyes fixed upon the water, and a faint smile stirring her sensitive
mouth.

Beneath the hands of its master, the great organ poured out its soul in music,
exalting like the archangel who soars undazzled to the foot of the throne,
piling chord upon chord in massive harmony until great billows of sound swept
out upon the breathless air and surged up to the open gates of heaven. The
solemn ecstasy reached its height, and fell, through fine gradations, to a single
silvery melody, pure and sweet as the song the shepherds sung upon the heights
of Bethlehem; then wandered on through dreamy variations until of a sudden,
perhaps because the level rays of the rising moon now shot into the great bay
window, the wandering notes changed to a well-known strain, and a fine tenor
voice rolled out the notes of “Casta Diva;” while, combining with the severe
purity of the melody, the managed instrument rendered such complicated orchestral
effects that one could hardly believe one pair of human hands the only
media between human ears and the world of harmonious melody suddenly
opened to them.

The aria ended, the organist fell again into his dreamy fantasia, and now the
great organ wailed and sobbed as if the banished peri breathed forth her longing
and her sorrow through it; and tears, not to be withheld or explained, sprang
to the eyes of the listener. A quick transition, a handful of minor chords, deep
discords resolving into strong, hard tones, and a storm of passion, an infernal
rebellion, a contest of demons, was hurled out to the summer night, and swelled
wilder and louder, faster and fiercer, until Claudia rose to her feet, her cheeks
flushed, her eyes wide and bright with emotion, her lips arched and quivering.

Neria had sunk upon her knees, her face buried in her hands, and her slender
form shaken with irrepressible sobs.

“I must see this man—now, at once,” said Claudia, imperiously. “Neria,
come with me.”

But Neria did not move or speak, and Claudia, the impetuous, hastily climbed
the tortuous path leading to the brow of the cliff, and a moment after knocked
at the same door that, twelve years before, had been opened by Lazarus Graves
to admit the new master of Cragness to his lonely home. It was now opened
by a gaunt, middle-aged woman, who eyed the visitor with surprise and distrust.

“I wish to speak to Mr. Gillies,” said the young lady, briefly.

“Do? Well, I'll tell him, but I don't know as he ll come,” replied Nancy
Brume, curtly.

“No; I will go to him; he is playing on the organ, and I wish to hear him.”

“Hear him! You don't expect he's going to play with you a setting by, do
ye? Why, if he could help it, he wouldn't let the rats and mice in the old walls
hear him. I dursn't do it,” said Nancy, with a tone of awe in her voice, engrafted
there by her twelve years' residence under Mr. Gillies's roof.

“Nonsense; show me the way directly,” retorted Claudia, imperiously. “I
will explain everything myself.”

Without further remonstrance, Nancy turned and led the way up the long
passage, muttering.

“Have your own way and live the longer; but 'tain't the way gals acted when
I was young.”

Arrived at the door of the gallery dividing the library from the house, she
paused and, with the curt direction, “Straight ahead,” waited until Claudia had
entered, and then, closing the door upon her, went back to her own domain.

The young girl hesitated a moment, and then, with heightened color, passed
on, and, softly turning the latch of the library door, entered and stood within
the gloomy chamber.

The musician turned at the sound of the opening door and sat looking in
mute wonder at the brilliant apparition so suddenly vouchsafed him. And indeed
Claudia had never looked so beautiful as now, when a touch of maiden
shame softened the lustre of her eyes, trembled on her proud lips, and bowed
her regal head. So, as she stood, her white draperies and glowing beauty
thrown forward from the dusky shadows crowding up behind her, a tremulous
half-motion vibrating through her slender figure, her whole presence instinct
with youth's beautiful enthusiasm, she might have been the spirit of music
evoked and embodied by the artist's longing soul and magic touch.

John Gillies gazed speechless, and his very consternation restored to his
guest the advantage she had for a moment lost. She laughed a little rippling
laugh, and advanced to the centre of the room.

“Indeed, I could not help it, Mr. Gillies,” began she; “and if you often
make such music here by the sea as has drawn me hither, you must be too well
accustomed to visits from mermaids and nixies, or whatever spirits haunt these
old grey rocks, to wonder that a mere mortal was unable to resist the spell. My
name is Claudia Murray, and I am niece to Mr. Vaughn, of Bonniemeer. I love
music better than I do life, and I never heard such music as has floated from
this window in the last half hour. Now please sit down again and play to me.”

She threw herself as she spoke into a great arm chair beside the fire-place,
and

on the musician.

In silent obedience, he seated himself before the organ; but now the tones
were feeble and confused, expressing as faithfully as before the emotions of the
musician's soul, and therefore painful and unsatisfying. He ceased suddenly,
and, rising, closed and locked the doors of the instrument.

“I cannot play to listeners,” said he, half in humility, half in anger, as he
came and stood before his guest.

Claudia looked up and smiled.

“But you must learn,” said she, “for I am always coming to listen to you.

If I may not come here, I will sit outside upon the cold rocks beside the sea;
but listen I must.”

Gillies stood and looked at her with the same terrible wistfulness that we
have all seen in the eyes of some dumb creature struggling for the utterance
which nature has denied him. To borrow the distinction of a subtle psychologist,
the John Gillies as his Maker knew him experienced emotions which John
Gillies as men knew him could not express, and which John Gillies as he knew
himself could only half define. So he looked at Claudia and opened his lips,
but no words came.

Again the woman drew assurance from his discomfiture.

“You won't forbid my coming to hear you sometimes?” asked she, with a
bewildering smile.

“If I know you are here, I can never play,” said Gillies, hesitatingly.

“But you might—O, Mr. Gillies, if only you would!” and the listless figure
sprang upright and stood, with clasped hands, looking up into his face.

“If I would—” repeated he, perplexed.

“If only you would try to teach me a little.”

“I teach you!” and John Gillies turned pale and trembled visibly.

“Yes. I can play on the piano pretty well, I believe, and I know about music—the
mechanism, you know—but O, I never dreamed it had a soul till I heard
you just now.”

The shadows lifted from the musician's face, as his mind reverted to his own
most usual subject of thought. He forgot the strange and beautiful vision before
him, in contemplation of a beauty fairer, higher, sweeter than anything of
earth. The passion of his life swept away the admiration of a moment.

“It is only when we learn that music has a soul that we can interpret it to
the soul of another,” said he, serenely.

“But how learn it?” asked Claudia, passionately. “I have all my life studied
music, but never felt it until to-night.”

“Probably you have all your life studied an instrument and the technicalities
of science. If you had studied music as an art, you would have found her
soul long ago,” said the musician.

“Yes, that is it. I have studied the piano, I have never studied music; I
have never found anyone to teach me this art. O, sir, will you?”

Dark eyes swimming in tears, curved lips tremulous with feeling, clasped
hands, and a face pale with genuine emotion. Powerful agents, these, to work
upon the will of a man; but the eyes of the artist fell upon them now as calmly
as upon his own reflection in the mirror.

“I will try,” said he, briefly “But if I find that you are incapable of receiving
the ideas I shall try to communicate, I shall stop. No man can do more
for another than to show him the path. Each must tread it for himself.”

“I understand,” said Claudia, humbly; “and, though I may be stupid and
unappreciative, at least you shall not find me ungrateful.”

If she hoped to extort words of flattery from those dry lips, the wily coquette
was disappointed; for Mr. Gillies did not even glance at her as he said,

“I will try. Your may come here to-morrow at four o'clock. But do not
expect too much.”

“I will come, and I do expect a great deal,” said Claudia, joyfully, and, with
a graceful gesture of farewell, took her leave.