University of Virginia Library

MARGARET DUNBAR.

34. CHAPTER XXXIV.

Among the unexplained mysteries of
city life, none are more appalling than
those we often find dimly hinted at in
the newspapers, in paragraphs like the
following:

Such paragraphs, badly worded, and as
terse as you call upon a waiter for another
plate of muffins, or as the sentence of
death pronounced in a criminal court by
a judge anxious for his dinner, frequently
appear in the papers.

What do they mean?

There is something infinitely horrible
in the manner in which the history of
the unknown deed is thus dispatched in
ten brief lines, ending with,—“verdict of
coroner's jury, thrown into the river by
resurrectionists,” and “properly interred
in Potter's Field.”

The above paragraph appeared in most
of the city papers not many years ago,
say some time in the summer of 1852.
What did it mean?

Did it embody the real story of the
unknown's fate?

Was he, indeed, nothing more than the
abandoned prey of resurrectionists,
thrown by them into the river, or was
he the victim of some unknown murderer?
Paragraphs like the above often
appear in the papers; let us take this
single one, and probe the mystery which
it hides.

On a dreary winter night in 1848—49,
there was the light of a happy hearth-side
playing about a home in Broomestreet,
half-way between Broadway and
the North River. A two-storied house,
built of dark red stone, stands a little
apart from the street, from which it is
separated by the fragment of a garden.

The garden is now buried in snow,
and the wind whirls the flakes against
the windows, through whose closely-drawn
curtains a softened ray streams
out upon the desolate night. Look
through the window-curtains, and you
will behold a scene which contrasts pleasantly
with the storm and darkness of
the drear winter evening.

A mother, whose dark hairs are veined
with the silver threads of fifty years, sits
in a rocking-chair near the fire, her
hands folded, and her eyes fixed upon
the daughter, the only child, who stands
near her. The daughter, dressed in
plain black, is a girl of some seventeen
years, a little above the medium height,
with a rounded form, clear complexion
and luxuriant brown hair. Her eyes—
dark hazel and very large—express a
noble, a passionate and stainless soul.
By no means perfectly beautiful, she is
yet a woman whose roundly developed
form, rich brown hair, and face lighted by
eyes that shine clearly and steadily,
would at once enchain your gaze, whether
you first met her among the crowds of
the sidewalk, or in the quietude of the
parlor.

And while her mother's gaze is fixed
upon her, in all the warmth of a mother's
love, her gaze is centered upon the young
man by her side, whose hand she holds
with both hers—a man in the prime of
young manhood, with bold features, a
bronzed complexion, dark hair, scattered
carelessly over his forehead, and blue
eyes, full of hope and life. He is neatly

and plainly clad in black, and a black
cravat tied loosely gives you a glimpse
of his muscular throat.

“But you may die!” are the first
words which we hear from the lips of
the young girl. “My heart trembles,
Harry, as I think of the ten thousand
dangers before you.”

“Die?” There's no such word in my
dictionary!” cries the young man in a
frank, joyous voice. “Is there mother?
The fevers on the Isthmus—the wild
life in California—the odd sort of people
I will meet in the mines—none of these
things frighten me. I will go through
all these things unscathed, and within a
year from to-night come back rich. Do
you hear me, Margaret?”

Now, although the young man called
the gray-haired woman mother, she was
not his mother, only to be his mother-in-law.
Margaret was his betrothed wife.
He was about to leave the quiet routine
of his life as a house-carpenter, and make
one bold effort for fortune in California.

“But why need you go?” said Margaret
sadly. “Why not remain? Your
wages are good; and, with what I can
make by the needle, there is no doubt
but that we can make our home happy.
Think of what agonies of suspense I
will suffer in the year of your absence.”

“Remain!” echoed Harry, patting his
hand lightly upon her brown hair. “Remain!
Drive a jack-plane and pay rent
all my life? Walk these streets all my
days the slave of two masters—`boss' and
landlord—when there is a fortune for me
in California? Believe me, Margaret, for
your sake more than mine, I'll do no
such foolish thing. Don't you think I'm
right, mother?”

“There is a Providence in California,
as well as in this city,” was the mother's
reply; “and though I dread the thought
of your going, still I think it best for us
all. You will come back with a competence—”

“Certainly I will,” cried Harry; “and
then, Margaret, darling, we will be married—”

The young girl made no reply at first;
but, placing her hand on his shoulder,
looked up silently into his face, her
cheeks all aglow, and her eyes all clear
and bright.

“Living, I will be true to you, Harry,
—and if you—you die, I will be true to
your memory!” So low was the tone
in which she spoke, that the mother did
not hear it, but the lover heard it with
his ears and heart; and, silently pressing
the hand of his betrothed, surveyed
her with his frank, earnest gaze.

A very beautiful picture—that simple
home, with its unostentatious furniture,
and cheerful hearthside flame, whose
light falls upon the faces of the mother,
the betrothed husband and wife—a picture
which it may be well for us to look
upon long and yearningly, for it may
never in their lives be seen again. That
night passed away, and the next day and
the day after. Henry Morgan, with
Margaret always by his side, made every
preparation for his California enterprise.
At length the day came; the steamer was
to leave near sunset, and Henry, with
Margaret on his arm, walked forth in
Broadway an hour before the time of his
departure.

How many vows were exchanged—how
many hopes and fears of the future, rose
to the lips in low-spoken words, as they
hurried through the ever-strolling, never-resting
current of Broadway!

His trunks were all aboard; his ticket
in his pocket; he had bidden “good-by”
to the mother; nothing remained but to
say the same to the good, beautiful girl,
who clung to his arm, and looked up into
his face.

He often said,—“Only a year—I will
come back rich!” but, somehow, he could
not say “Good-by!”

The bronzed face of the carpenter manifested
a strange mingling of emotion
and of the effort to hide it; and, at last,
an idea seemed to strike him, which, he
thought, would relieve him from many
difficulties.

He led Margaret from the glare and tumult
of Broadway into a retired street,
and up the steps of a two-story house,
and rung the bell; and was ushered into
a dimly-lighted parlor. Before Margaret
could ask the meaning of this movement,
a grave gentleman appeared in the
parlor, very short in stature, mild in face,
and very decided in the whiteness of his
cravat.

“What do you wish with me?”—in a
bland, kind voice—“Ah!” glancing at
the face of Harry, who blushed a little,
and at Margaret's, which was scarlet as a
summer rose,—“Ah! I see how it is!”

“Marry us, if you please,” said Harry
—“right away—I've got to start for California
in half an hour.”

“But Harry—” Margaret began; but
Harry put his hand on her pretty lips,
and the clergyman, after the proper preliminary
questions, went through the
ceremony, and presently pronounced
them husband and wife.

The thing was done so quickly that
Margaret and Harry, who had always
looked upon it as a matter requiring
much time and many words, could scarce
believe their senses.

But, in that dimly-lighted parlor, where
a few weak rays of sunlight came
through the faded blinds, Harry saw the
face of the blooming girl beside him,
whose mingled tears and blushes looked
like the mingled bloom and dew of some
ungathered rose—took her to his arms,
pressed his kiss upon her lips and cheek,
and with a muttered “Good-by, Margaret!
I'll be back in a year—rich—rich,”
—hurried from the room. Hurried away
from the room and house, like a thief,
leaving his young wife, weeping on the
sofa, with the kind old clergyman by her
side; hurried down the narrow street,
his hat drawn low upon his forehead, and
did not look behind him until he stood
upon the steamer's deck. (As a matter
of historical justice, it may be as well to
record the fact that, before leaving the
room, he slipped a ten-dollar gold piece
into the preacher's hand.)

And as the steamer went down the
Bay, which, in the smile of the setting
sun, showed all its “white caps” topped
with flashes of bright gold, Harry sadly
paced the deck, his hands deep in his
pockets, and his eyes turned yearningly
over his shoulder toward New-York,
which distance and shadow soon gathered
in their embrace.

As the last gleam of sunset, trembling
on fast-fading Trinity spire, met his backward
gaze, while, through the Narrows,
the ocean opened, bleak and vast and
cold before him, Harry dashed the tears
from his eyes with the knuckles of his
his sun-burnt hand, and gave some utterance
to his feelings in these words,—
“Bad papers, this! Marry a young wife,
and then quit for Californey! Bad papers!
Never mind; in a year I'll come
back from Californey, and come back
rich!”

And as the steamer went forth gallantly
into the cold black night, Harry gazed
earnestly through the gathering darkness
toward New-York, but did not see
the woman who, clasping the Battery
railing with both hands, followed the progress
of her husband with heaving bosom
and expanded eyes, glittering through
their tears.

She waited there until the cold night,
domed with countless stars, gathered
round her, and then turned sadly homeward,
murmuring oftentimes her husband's
words,—“Never mind! In a year
I'll come back from Californey, and come
back rich!”

Well! a year, a long, long year passed,
and Henry Morgan did not come
back from California rich. In fact, did
not come back at all.

In his place appeared a line among the
California news of the New-York Tub,
(a paper devoted to the adroitly mingled
worship of Good Lord! and Good Devil!)
—a line which said a good deal in a few
words,—“Died in the mines, August 29,
1849, Henry Morgan, Carpenter, from
New-York.”

Need we tell the agony of one woman
who read this line, and who, in the depth
of her despair, clung to the hope that,
like most things which appeared in the
New-York Tub—“reliable news” to-day,
and “infamous fabrications” to-morrow—
it would turn out a baseless falsehood?

For a year she clung to this hope, but
Henry Morgan did not appear. Another
weary year!—every hour spent in the anguish
of suspense, and every item of California
news devoured with straining eyes
—still no word of Henry Morgan.

1851 followed '49 and '50, and a returned
Californian, very much the color
of gamboge in face, and with much coin
of the same color in pocket, brought
word of Henry Morgan. He had seen
him on the fatal day, August 29, 1849,
propped up against a tree, friendless and
uncared for, a beautiful landscape all
about him, but the ashy color of death
upon his face. Satisfied that the man
was beyond all need or hope of help, the
returned Californian had left him there
to die. And that was the last of poor
Henry Morgan!

Time passed on, and it was November
in 1852.

As night set in upon the town—a

dreary night, full of winter, and of the
aroma of election in hand-bills—a
steamer, just arrived from the Isthmus,
lay puffing and blowing, like an exhausted
whale, at a certain pier on the North
River.

Among the many wretches who crawled
from the “Calcutta black-holes,”
which, by a strong flight of speech, are
called “berths,” was one who came
eagerly on deck and hurried ashore as
soon as the steamer was made fast to the
pier.

He left his dingy trunks (which had
escaped the robbers of the Isthmus, perchance,
to fall into the hands of the
“gold-dust Peters” of Broadway) aboard,
and made the best of his way up a dark
street toward the great thoroughfare.

As he passes through the light of an
occasional lamp you can look at him.

At first sight, he strikes with a vivid
impression of general and confirmed
“hairiness.” Tall, broad-shouldered, clad
in an old coat which might have been
worn in the ark, underneath which appeared
a shirt of dingiest red, with boots
reaching half-way to his waist, he was
as hairy as any ten reformers. Long
locks of dark-brown hair, innocent of
Phalon, swept his shoulders, and were
blown to and fro beneath his slouched
hat by the sharp November wind; and
a beard as huge as a lion's mane, and as
black—as black—as the candidate of
any political party which you don't like
—hid his throat and a portion of his
brawny chest.

He was evidently a strong man, somewhat
reduced and thinned by the Isthmus
fever.

That glimpse of his face, which his
copious hair and beard permitted to be
visible, was as yellow as a guinea, and
his dark blue eyes, although bright and
glittering, had something of the “gold-piece”
hue about each pupil. Whoever
this man was who now plunged into the
crowd of Broadway, like a bit of savage
life suddenly planted in the midst of city
civilization, one thing is certain, his own
mother would not have known him.

“There's the Park,” he muttered,
gazing about him, and much jostled by
the crowd, “and there's Stewart's, and
this is Broadway, and I'm in town again!
I have come back from Californey, and
come back rich!”

And, placing his hand beneath his
rough coat, he touched a massive gold
chain, worth some hundreds of dollars,
and curiously formed of pure ore, to
which was attached a gold watch which
he had purchased in San Francisco for
two hundred dollars. Then he felt the
gold pieces which filled his capacious
pocket.

“All safe! and then a snug fortune in
the trunks aboard the steamer is safe
too—and—I am in town, and rich!
And—and—if—” here was the hard
point to get over—“if I only find the
folks alive and well!”

And so, urged by that ugly “if!” he
made the best of his way through Broadway,
and then turned off into Broomestreet,
and did not pause until he stood
in front of a two-story house, which
stood a little apart from the street.

Through its curtained parlor windows
lights were cheerfully shining.

The Californian went through the little
garden, and up the steps, and rang
the bell. He was a strong man, but he
trembled like a leaf, as he stood in the
dark, awaiting an answer. It seemed an
age until the door opened; but, at last,
the door did open, and a face appeared.
Alas! it was a strange face—that of a
robust servant girl.

“Does Mrs. Dunbar live here?” faltered
the Californian.

“Faith, she does not. It is Misthress
Smith who lives here,”—and she made
great eyes as she beheld, by the light
which she carried, the uncouth, quite
barbarian exterior of the stranger.

“She used to live here; she occupied
the rooms on the lower floor—a widow;
her daughter was a seamstress,” faltered
the Californian.

“How long since?”

“Well—well—” hesitated he, “about
three years since.”

“Three years! Faith, a great many
things may happen in three years! Mrs.
Smith moved here two years ago, and
I've lived with her ever since.” And after
another fearful look at the barbarous
exterior of the Californian, she shut the
door in his face.

The man went sadly down the steps
muttering gloomily,—“Very bad papers.
What if they should all be dead?”

It was a thought hard to look at with
any calmness; and the Californian tried

to banish it and choke it down, as he retraced
his steps toward Broadway. It
then occurred to him, that it would be a
judicious thing, before proceeding further
in his search, to remove some of the hair
and beard which made a wilderness of
his face.

Full of this idea, the Californian proceeded
to a fashionable barber shop,
(called a saloon,) where, by the light of
gas shining into any number of mirrors,
and over countless bottles of hair oil,
about a dozen gentlemen who spoke bad
English and wore white aprons, were
doing all sorts of things to all sorts of
people's heads.

There was a red-headed man being
carefully dyed into black; a man of fifty,
with gray whiskers and bald head, being
elaborately transformed into a young
man of twenty-five, with noat black whiskers
and soft, curling, brown hair; and a
youth of nineteen, with an innocent face
and long hair, being scientifically curled
for a fancy ball. The Californian dropped
into a chair, and submitted his hair
and beard to the scissors and razors of
an august person of French origin.

This accomplished, he rose and surveyed
himself in a glass, and hair and
beard having been brought down to the
limits of city civilization, the Californian
recognized in the mirror, with evident
delight, the face of Henry Morgan—a
face very sallow and gold-colored, but
still the face of our old friend, Henry
Morgan.

“Well, Harry, you do look something
like yourself! A white shirt collar, and
a suit of black cloth, will set you up.
And”—here, Harry's attention was suddenly
arrested by a paper which fluttered
to his feet. It was a letter which had
fallen from the hands of a person near
him; Harry took it up, in order to hand
it to the person, when his eye was arrested
by its superscription,—“Margaret
Dunbar.”

“What!” he said, before taking time
for a second thought, “what do you know
about Margaret Dunbar!” and confronted
the individual who had dropped the
letter.

This individual merits a passing glance.

He was (to speak in general terms)
one of those mysterious, well-dressed
people whom you meet every day in
Broadway, and who are mysterious be
cause no one can tell where all those fine
clothes, eye-glasses, and gold chains,
come from.

To speak more specifically, he was a
man of about thirty-five years, above the
medium height, with a well-knit form,
clad in dark broadcloth; a gold chain
strayed over his red velvet vest, and on
his faultless shirt-bosom shone a very
brilliant diamond pin. As to his face,
with its short hair and whiskers, black
as jet and well oiled, it struck you at first
sight. The cheek-bones were a little too
high, the nose too sharp, the chin too
pointed, and the lips too thin; the keen
eyes, glittering under a broad, low forehead,
and poorly defined eyebrows, were
altogether too small; and yet it was a
healthy, ruddy face, with a sort of robust
manliness in every line of it.

“What do you know of Margaret
Dunbar?” said Morgan, holding the letter.

The individual smiled, disclosing teeth
whose whiteness was quite sepulchral.
“And may I ask what in the deuce do
you know about Margaret Dunbar?” he
said very pleasantly, as the stranger drew
over his shoulders a cloak richly lined
with velvet.

35. CHAPTER XXXV.

“And,” said the strange gentleman,
as he drew his velvet-lined cloak over
his shoulders,—“And what in the deuce
do you know about Margaret Dunbar?”

To which Harry, somewhat taken
aback by the cool manner of the gentleman,
replied, after a little hesitation,—
“Know about her?” Why, God bless
you! she is my wife!”

And drawing the individual a little
aside, near a mirror which reflected their
widely different faces, he told him, in his
frank, honest way, the whole story: how
he had loved Margaret—married her an
hour before his departure for California
—been delayed there by circumstances,
over which he had no control, three years
instead of simply one—how he had come
back rich, with money enough to make
Margaret comfortable all her days—
and—

“The fact is, here I am, a little yellow,
and a little broken down, but with
the rocks, you see? And I can't find

my wife! God help me! she is not
dead, is she?”

The frank manner of Harry evidently
gave the well-dressed stranger a favorable
impression of him, which perhaps
was not lessened by the story of the
trunks, (packed with gold dust,) aboard
the steamer, to say nothing of a glimpse
of the heavy gold chain which encircled
Harry's sunburnt throat. He showed
his white teeth in a pleasant smile.

“Sit down, Mr. Morgan!” and he pointed
to a sofa near the mirror. “I've often
heard Margaret speak of you. And the
fact is, I am her cousin. My name is
Burke, Stanley Burke. Now you certainly
have heard Margaret speak of
me?”

Harry was not quite sure that he had,
but still there was a floating impression
upon his mind about one Stanley Burke,
a member of a wealthy branch of the
Dunbar family. Yes! he was sure that
he had heard Margaret speak of him a
hundred times.

“Yes, I have heard her speak of you
—and—” his voice was thick, his blue
eyes moistened with something that was
very like a tear—“and she is not dead,
is she?”

How he bent forward, and looked
Stanley Burke in the face, on his eagerness
to hear his reply! That gentleman
suffered the velvet-lined cloak to drop a
little from his shoulders, as he replied,—
“Dead! bless you, no! It was only yesterday
morning I saw her, alive and well,
and —.”

Harry did not like to ask the question
which rose to his lips, “She is not married,
is she?” it choked him only to
think of it. So he blunted forth another
question,—“A rumor came home that I
was dead, I believe. Margaret never believed
it, eh?”

“She wears black for you now,” was
the response of Stanley Burke. “The
poor girl will be mad to see you; in fact,
unless properly prepared for the intelligence,
it will drive her mad to know that
you are alive—mad with joy, you understand?”

Harry leaned back upon the sofa like
a man suddenly overcome by irreparable
calamity, or overwhelming joy. For a
moment he was dim of sight; all sorts
of ringing sounds were in his ears. The
memory of three years of hard adventure
in California, in which he had seen starvation,
death, and crime, in their ugliest
shapes; the consciousness that he had
come back rich, all faded away before the
thought, “Margaret is living! Margaret
is true to me!”

And as soon as he recovered his speech
he did a very bad thing; he gave some
vent to his feelings in an oath, which
properly looked into was not so much of
an oath as a prayer.

And then he talked with Stanley
Burke for at least an hour, and the manner
of the well-dressed gentleman quite
won his confidence. It seemed as though
they had been acquainted for years.

Margaret had removed from Broomestreet,
and was living with her mother
further up town. The death of a distant
relative, who had made Margaret his
heir, placed them in very comfortable
circumstances. She was no longer forced
to strain her eyes, all day and late at
night, at her needle. She was sad and
melancholy about Harry's death, but
still young and blooming, and with a
faint hope in her heart that he would yet
return. Such was the story of Mr.
Alfred Stanley, which he told in many
words, and in the blandest manner, with
every kind of display of his white teeth,
and a steady twinkle of his small glittering
eyes.

“And this letter, which by chance dropped
from my hand,”—he quietly held the
letter before Harry's eyes,—“is one
which I wrote to her about a year ago,
giving her some hope of your return.
The fact is, I had heard some favorable
news. But, before I could send it to her,
I met her in person, and so there was no
use of giving it to her. I threw it in my
trunk; and to-day it must have been taken
by me from the same trunk, with some
legal papers which I wished to examine.
I did not know it was about me until it
dropped from my pocket. It has turned
out quite a lucky circumstance, for it has
been the means of bringing you and me
together. Would you like to look at it?”

“Not to-night—not to-night,” replied
Harry. “First of all I want to see Margaret.
You will take me at once to her
residence?”

It would have been better for Harry
—much better—had he looked into that
letter!

“The fact is, Margaret and her mother

are out of town on a visit to a relative
who lives near Tarrytown,” replied Stanley
Burke, quietly depositing the letter
in his pocket-book; “but,” he continued
as he observed Harry's down-fallen countenance,
“they'll be back to-morrow. I
can prepare them for your appearance.
By George! an idea strikes me. Why
not go up there to-night with your traps
and trunks, so as to be on hand at the
time of their return. You see, I'm not
often in town, but when I am, Mrs. Dunbar
gives me a spare room, which you
and I can occupy to-night. I have a
night-key which will let us in.”

And the well-dressed man, looking at
Harry all the while, passed his hand over
his spotless shirt-bosom, through his
well-oiled whiskers and short-cut hair, a
pleasant smile, meantime, lighting up his
masked face.

It was a good idea—capital! Harry
thought so, and lost no time in carrying
it out.

They went forth from the saloon together,
Harry in barbarian garb, leaning
on the arm of the well-dressed man, who,
as they hurried along Broadway and
down the street which led to the steamer,
kept up a continual flow of talk about
Margaret, telling a thousand anecdotes
about her which quite won Harry's
heart.

Arrived at the pier where, in the
gloomy night and under the leaden sky,
the steamer lay, Mr. Burke procured a
carriage, had Harry's luggage brought
ashore, one huge trunk lashed on behind,
one fixed on the box, and a plethoric carpet
bag put on the front seat inside; after
which, the driver being perched on
his seat, over the topmost trunk, Harry
and Stanley Burke entered, and the carriage
rolled away.

As they sat side by side on the back
seat, Stanley Burke, his face lighted up
by an occasional lamp gleam, talked
pleasantly and in his easy way about
Margaret, and Harry, his heart beating
quickly under his coarse coat, hung on
his every word.

“Decidedly, Stanley Burke is a good
fellow!” thought Harry, “and if he
wants helping along, I'm his man!”

Here the carriage stopped, in a dark
part of a street which, near the head of
Broadway, branched off toward the East
River, in front of a four-storied dwelling,
which stood silent and dark in the
shadow, its windows closed from side-walk
to roof.

“A grand kind of building!” muttered
Harry as they descended from the carriage.

“The home of Margaret,” replied
Stanley Burke. “The lower floor is, as
you see, occupied as a store; Margaret
and her mother have the rest of it to
themselves. My room is in the back
part of it, on the third floor.”

And opening the side door with a
night-key, Stanley Burke directed the
driver to unlash the trunks, and bring
them into the dark entry, which being
done, Burke left Harry and the driver
alone in the dark entry, while he went
up stairs to get a light.

He presently returned, holding the
light above his head, as he came down
the stairway, his usual bland smile playing
over his face. And he held the light
while the driver, (a pock-marked Hibernian,
who blew hard, and swore much
in a low voice,) assisted by Harry, carried
the trunks, one at a time, up three
pair of stairs, into the back room. Trunks
and carpet-bag being safely deposited
there, and the driver paid and dismissed,
Harry and Burke sat down in the room,
and looked on each other's faces by the
light of the candle.

It was a very comfortable place. A
moderate fire simmered in an air-tight
wood stove. The sofa on which they
sat was covered with red velvet. An
elegant French bedstead stood in one
corner, near a mahogany article of furniture,
which did not look precisely like a
book-case, nor yet like a bureau, but
seemed a combination of both. The
walls, covered with subdued colored paper,
were ornamented with a few choice
pictures, in slight gilt frames—pictures
very warm, Gallic and oriental.

It was altogether an elegant yet cozy
apartment.

Resting one arm on the arm of the
sofa, and seated in an attitude which
did justice to his fine apparel and muscular
frame, Stanley Burke quietly watched
his rough friend, who was gazing about
him with expanded eyes.

“A quiet little place, which Aunt
Dunbar is kind enough to let me have,
in one corner of her house. Don't you
think so?” said Mr. Burke.

'Snug as a bug in a rug,” was the unclassical
response of Harry.

“Here you can remain quietly with
me, and to-morrow morning you will see
Margaret. Ah! I had quite forgotten!”
continued Mr. Stanley Burke, as he rose
and assumed his cloak, hat and gloves.
“I have an engagement which will only
keep me for an hour. You must excuse
me for that time, my dear Morgan.
When I come back, we'll have a nice little
supper from the restaurant in Broadway.
Until then, amuse yourself with
books and papers on the table.”

“O don't mind me,” replied Harry; “I
can put in the time quite comfortably.
Have you got such a thing as a good
Havana cigar?”

Burke showed his white teeth in a
pleasant smile as he presented his cigar
case. “A present from a particular
friend in Havana.”

And as Harry lighted the fragrant
cigar, and stretched himself, red shirt,
coarse coat and all, on the velvet sofa,
Mr. Stanley Burke regarded him with a
quiet smile, and then, with the words,—
“Back in an hour, Morgan,” left the
room.

There was no light to shine upon him,
or to show the peculiar expression of his
face, as he went down the dark staircase.

“In the house where Margaret lives!”
ejaculated Harry, as he watched the
white smoke-wreaths floating to the
ceiling. “Pretty good luck, this, after
all your adventures, Harry!”

And Harry fell into a pleasant reverie,
in which he saw the form of Margaret
clad in mourning, her face not so blooming
as of old, but still beautiful in its pallor,
framed in a black bonnet, appear almost
visibly amid the smoke-wreaths
which went up from his cigar. “How
glad she'll be to see me!” And his
heart, at the thought, beat all the quicker
under his coarse coat.

All at once a new idea seemed to
strike him.

“Why not go out, and buy some decent
clothes? I can be back before
Burke returns. I should like to shake
hands with a decent coat and clean shirt,
once more.” Burke had left his night-key,
on a duplicate, on the table. Harry
secured this key, put on his slouched hat,
and went quietly down the dark stairway
and from the house. In less than
a quarter of an hour he found himself in
Canal-street, in front of one of those
stores which, in flaming signs and pictorial
handbills, offer to furnish “Cheap
Shirts” to a benighted world. The
“Only original shirt store, on the cheap
system, in the world!” was the startling
announcement which appeared in the
window, in big letters, revealed by the
dazzling gas-light. After a careful survey
of the contents of the window, Harry
resolved to enter and make a purchase;
and enter he did. Better, much
better for Harry, had he looked at the
letter which Burke had held before his
eyes; but a thousand times better for
him had he never put a foot in the Canal-street
shirt store.

26. CHAPTER XXVI

Harry entered the store, and as he
crossed the threshold—before he had
time to scan the sharp features of the
proprietor, who stood quietly leaning
over the glass case on the counter—
there passed by him a young woman,
poorly dressed, her face hidden by a
thick green veil. Her faded garments
brushed him, as he entered; and, ere he
could look around, she had passed through
the door and disappeared.

What was it about the young woman
which, even as her garments brushed
against him filled him with a sudden
and inexplicable interest? The gas-light
shone fully upon her, but did not disclose
her features—did Harry obtain a
glimpse of her countenance through the
thickly covered veil?

“Shirts, sir?” smirked the bland proprietor,
who was a little man, with sharp
nose and gold spectacles. “Shirts of all
sizes, patterns and prices—returned from
California, I presume, sir?”

“Who was that young lady?” asked
Harry, keeping one eye upon the shirt
man, and the other upon the door.

“Don't know her name—works for
me—just paid her off—pay well here,
sir, four shillings for two shirts—here
they are—best quality—take a look at
them!”

Harry did not reply to the gentleman,
but, turning on his heel, left the store,
and anxiously gazed up and down Canal-street.

He caught a glimpse of the summer

bonnet which the young woman wore,
about a hundred yards away, in the direction
of the North River. At once
he hurried after her, determined to track
her footsteps and follow her to her home.

Now, as Harry was a sound, honest
man, he could have had no improper intentions
in this pursuit, but was evidently
prompted by an indefinable
impulse, or a wild delusion. Why need
we describe in detail the wild chase which
she led him?

She entered one of the red cars which
run on West Broadway, Hudson-street,
and the Eighth avenue; Harry followed
her, but could not get a seat near her.
She sat in an opposite corner, out of the
light and in the shadow, her veil still
closely drawn over her face. The car
went on its way; the conductor, a slim
person, filled with a due sense of the
awful responsibility of his situation,
bristled along collecting fares, letting fat
gentlemen out, and nervous ladies in;
and now and then shaking up a drunken
man, who fell asleep and snored like a
trombone. The car went on its way up
Hudson-street, and into the remote regions
of the Eighth avenue, where the
night is made musical by the combined
bark of a thousand dogs; and still Harry,
very nervous and impatient, could not
obtain a sight of the unknown woman's
face.

At last the passengers were reduced
to two, Harry and the young woman,
who sat with closed veil and folded hands,
opposite him.

“I wonder if she never intends to get
out, or if she is going on to the North
Pole?” grumbled Harry to himself, when
the woman in the straw bonnet rose,
rang the bell, and, in a moment, hurried
from the car.

Harry at once followed her, and found
himself in that peculiar region which is
not above Seventieth-street, nor below
Thirtieth; where it is, precisely, isn't
any one's business.

It is a region extending from the avenue
to the Hudson River, and over its
broken surface old-fashioned country
seats vainly endeavor to maintain their
position against flimsy modern structures,
of all sizes, from a hencoop to a
barn, and built not so much with a view
to comfort or architectural beauty as for
the purpose of extracting the greatest
amount of rent from the neediest sort of
tenants.

By day this region rings with the
ceaseless thunder of blasted rocks; by
night, it alarms the distant Jersey shore
with the rich, deep notes of an army of
dogs, whose numbers cannot possibly be
told. Gazing over its varied surface,
from the height of the reservoir, you
are struck with the singular panorama
which it presents. Bogus palaces, truck
gardens, fine old country seats, perched
upon the rocks, wide streets that are by
turns miracles of dust and mud: it looks
like the sketch of a city done very hastily
by an artist who is anxious to do his
work in the least possible time.

It is from this region that, near the
break of day, emerge those mysterious
men who walk between the shafts of a
two-wheeled cart, a harnessed dog on
either hand, and a patient woman pushing
in the rear. Mysterious men, whose
apparition startles belated downtowners
(unfamiliar with the upper region) and
gives rise to the query—“Where in the
mischief do they live?”

Descending from the car, Harry followed
the unknown woman into a neighboring
grocery, whose lighted windows
looked quite cheerful in the surrounding
darkness.

The grocery was one of those kept by
taciturn persons of Teutonic descent,
who speak strong German, and very imperfect
English, never count the half cent
on the shilling in making change, and
sell everything—everything from a glass
of dubious ardent spirits to a sixpence
worth of coal or firewood. Into such a
store, Harry followed the unknown.

The proprietor, a gloomy German,
with unshaven beard, stood behind the
counter, his sad vissage giving a melancholy
hue to various articles, vegetable
and fleshy, which encircled him.

Without raising her veil, the young
woman opened her hand, laid a solitary
half dollar on the counter, and in a low
voice, inaudible to Harry, who stood
watching near the door, made her purchases.

O fashionable dames! who, softly clad
in satin and in velvet, wrapped luxuriously
in finest linen, languidly descending
from your carriages to “shop” at
Stuart's, how you would have stared
had you seen the poor seamstress do

her “shopping” in the Teutonic grocery!

A pound of coffee, a pound of sugar,
an armful of firewood, a loaf of bread,
these were her purchases. O softly clad
and fashionable dames! and yet perchance
that poor girl who gathered in
her arms those sticks of firewood, had
blood as precious in her veins as that
which gives its glow to your own lovely
face!

Her purchases made, she—firewood,
coffee and sugar in her arms—left the
store without glancing at Harry. But
Harry, who felt an unusual emotion
about his heart as she passed him, followed
her from the store, and then along
a dark street which led to the Hudson
River, displaying on either hand, under
the dull, heavy night, a large proportion
of building lots to a very small number
of houses.

Along this dreary street, where the
mud was rich and thick, and of the first
quality, Harry Morgan followed the
young woman, who once or twice stopped
and looked back, as though conscious
that she was followed. Harry, however,
kept in the shadow, and cautiously lingered
in her footsteps.

At length she turned from the street
into an open field, from whose distant
extremity a feeble ray struggled from the
window of a miserable tenement. Along
a footpath, soft with mud, and winding
among piles of timber and broken
rocks, the young woman hurried rapidly,
until she came to the narrow door of
the solitary house which stood alone in
a bleak space—where she lingered for a
moment to look back, and then disappeared.

Harry advanced from the shadow to
the window, and, shrouded by the dark
night, looked through an aperture of the
window-curtains. He saw the young
woman standing in a wretched apartment,
light in hand, her darkly attired
form thrown strongly into view by the
bare white walls and uncarpeted floor.
A small sheet-iron stove, a table of unpainted
wood, and two chairs, constituted
the furniture of the place. She
stood there, still veiled, light in hand,
and Harry could mark the pulsations of
her bosom by the movement of her
faded shawl.

After a moment she opened a door,
and disappeared into a second room, and
all was dark.

Certainly Harry's heart thumped and
thumped again, as leaning against the
window-sill he waited for her reappearance.

After a pause she came again, and,
light in hand, knelt before the stove,
and proceeded to make a fire. In doing
this, she lifted her veil and laid her bonnet
on a chair. The candle on the floor
shone upward into her face.

“O my God!” was the ejaculation
which came from Harry's heart as he
leaned against the window-sill, trembling
in every limb as that face was revealed
to him.

37. CHAPTER XXXVII.

O my God!” cried Harry, who at the
sight of that face grew suddenly weak as
a child; “it's Margaret!” The woman
who knelt before the stove, her face revealed
by the upcast light of the candle,
had seen twenty years of life. Her brown
hair relieved a pale countenance, lighted
by large hazel eyes. There was great
loveliness and much suffering conjoined
in every line of that countenance—deep
suffering, that does not relieve itself in
tears or wild ejaculations, but seats
itself at the heart, and slowly gnaws the
life away.

Poor Margaret! when we saw you
last, you were so blooming on lip and
cheek; there was such joyousness in
your eyes—not a pulse of your young
bosom but swelled with the inspiration
of hope and love—and now, so sorrow-stricken
and heart-broken, with the
fever of an irreparable calamity burning
in your large beautiful eyes! It's a
world of change, Margaret—of sad, terrible
change—of friendships that betray
with a kiss—of loves that are bought and
sold, like merchandize in the marketplace—of
hopes that are nourished
through long years, and that ripen to
fulfilment only to be gathered by the
hand of death—physical death, killing
the body, or that unutterable moral
death which ossifies the soul; a world,
Margaret, which no one in the dawn of
manhood or womanhood, seeing, as with
prophetic sight, all the way of the future,
plain as day, would have the courage to
live in for a single hour.

And if, since last we saw you, Margaret,
you have sinned; if the pure blossom of
your virgin soul has been trampled into
the mire of temptation and crime, why,
God be merciful to you, and may you
rather be dealt with by His justice than
by the tenderest mercy of man!

On the window-sill Harry leaned,
stricken into child-like weakness by
that sight.

“And so Burke lied to me,” he muttered.
“But he spoke so smooth and
fair, I could'nt help believe him! This
is livin' on your means, is it? A
half a dollar, a pound o' sugar and coffee,
an' a home like this! Such means and
such livin'!”

Again Harry laid his face against the
window-pane, with a faint hope that it
might not be his Margaret whom he
saw thus reduced to the lowest stage of
destitution—but no! His eyes did not
deceive him. That pale woman, kneeling
on the naked floor, was his Margaret—
his wife!

“But I'll make it all right yet; for
every day of want that you have suffered,
you shall have a thousand of peace and
comfort, and—”

Harry went from the window, put his
hand upon the door, and entered the
miserable room, pausing a short space
from the threshold, so that the candlelight
lit up his sunburnt face.

Margaret raised her eyes with a nervous
movement of surprise, and then her
eyes expanded, her face grew paler, and
with a wild scream she stretched forth
her arms. God help me! It is his
ghost!” And fell forward upon her face
like a dead woman.

Henry knelt on the floor beside her,
and took her to his bosom tenderly with
his toil-hardened hands, pushing her unloosened
hair aside from her face, and
more than once pressing his lips to her
cold forehead and colder lips. All the
while the light which shone upward upon
his face showed every feature working,
spasm-like, as though the man could not
speak, to tell in words the emotions
which swelled his chest.

“I am back again, and rich—rich do
you hear me, Margaret?” he said, again
and again, holding her in his arms, and
gazing upon her face with all the tenderness
of a rude-looking but kind-hearted
nurse soothing a sick child.

“Rich! rich! Not so rich as Astor,
but rich enough for both of us!”

Alas! brave Harry! there are some
evils which gold, holy and beautiful as
it is—gold, so devoutly worshipped every
where, cannot cure!

It was a long time before her cheek
glowed with the color of life again; and
a long time even after she unclosed her
eyes, and saw his face and heard his
voice, that she could realize that it was
her husband who held her in his arms.

“God help me! Harry, it is you, indeed!”
was her first exclamation, as she
surveyed that honest face, which was
changed, in some respect, but still glowed
with old love for her. “I've thought
you as dead so long—seen you dead
awake and in my dreams so long, that—”
tears came to her relief and she bent her
head and wept upon his breast; wept, as
though every fibre of her heart was
breaking, and put her arms couvulsively
about his neck, as if she were drowning
in some dark river, and in his arms was
her only hope of life.

At length she rose, and glancing rapidly
(with a singular look, which did not
escape Harry,) first at the door which
led out in the dark night, and then at
the door, which opened into the second
room, she sat down and motioned Harry
to take a seat beside her. Her eyes
were downcast, and she picked at the
ends of her shawl in an absent way.

“Why do I find you here, Margaret,”
said Harry, “in such poverty?—” The
name of Stanley Burke, and the story
which Stanley had told him, rose to his
lips; but he thought he would not mention
either, until Margaret spoke of her
cousin. “And mother, how is she?”

“Hush! She is very sick there,” and
Margaret pointed nervously to the door
of the next room. “She is sleeping for
the first time in a long while. Do not
speak loud, Harry,”—how odd the old
name sounded from her lips!—“do not
speak loud!” And a shudder like an
ague-chill pervaded her frame.

“But why, Margaret, darling? Oh!
how often I've thought of you in the rain
and heat and cold, in the mines and on
the sea, and when they left me, as they
thought, dyin' at the foot of the tree, I
saw your face and heard your voice, even
in my fever. Oh! Margaret! you can
never know how dear to me you've been!

Why do I find you and mother in such a
miserable place as this?”

She looked up into his face, long and
eagerly, as though the sight of it was life
to her. “It is a long story, Harry, and
to-night is not the time to tell it; and
to-morrow I will tell you all!”

“But you must leave this place to-night;
you shall not sleep another night
under such a miserable roof.”

“You forget that mother is very sick,
and cannot be moved; to-morrow, Harry,
will be time enough.”

And they talked together of the past
and future, Harry gazing earnestly upon
his wife, and she now looking up in his
face, and now casting that nervous glance
from one door to the other.

How his heart rolled forth in his pictures
of the future! And how often,
after a yearning gaze in his face, she
would turn her face away from the light,
as if to hide its sudden pallor, and the
quick, involuntary quivering of the lips.

“Leave me, Harry, to-night;” she said
at last, “mother is very ill, and I am
worn with work and watching. To-morrow
I will tell you how we came to
live in this miserable place. Yes,” she
said with a singular brightening of her
gaze—“to-morrow we will talk of our
future life!”

And she rose from her chair, and Harry
rose, but it was not until he had taken
her once more to his bosom, pillowed
her head upon his shoulder, and pressed
upon her lips a kiss—we will not assert
decisively that there was only one kiss
—which seemed to bear with it a whole
lifetime of hope and love, condensed into
a single moment, that Harry could be
induced to think of leaving her.

At last he stood ready to depart. “To-morrow!
early to-morrow!” he said.
“To-morrow!” echoed Margaret; and,
after another kiss, she watched the form
of Harry as he moved to the door—oh!
the strange, mad intensity of her gaze!
At the door, Harry paused and looked
back. Margaret stood like a statue in
the centre of the room, and while her
face had grown paler, her eyes were all
the brighter.

“Harry!” the name came from her
lips in a thick and broken voice, and she
bounded to his arms and hung there,
sobbing and trembling on his breast.
“Go, now,” she said, “and to-morrow—
to-morrow!” The words died on her
lips, and she wrung Harry's hands within
her own as she followed him over the
threshold.

“Good-night! to-morrow, darling!”
She heard his voice, even after the shadows
of the night had taken his form from
her sight. And she stood in the doorway
a long time, looking after him, as
though her gaze could pierce the darkness
round her.

As for Harry, he went on his way,
muttering, “And now, Mr. Stanley
Burke, I guess you and I will have a talk
together. These trunks aint safe in your
clutches. By Jove! why did not I think
of mentionin' the matter to Margaret?”
And with the thought of Stanley Burke's
falsehood, and the consciousness that
Margaret was still the Margaret of other
days, occupying his mind by turns, he
went on his way. But the words which
he uttered, as he thought, to the air
alone, were overheard by a listener whose
form was hid by the shadows around the
path.

Turning from the door, Margaret
closed it, and approached the light. A
sudden change had come over her. Her
face, pale enough before, was now livid
and ashy. She trembled in every limb.
As she took up the candle and went to-wards
the next room, you could see the
light shake and quiver, as if in sympathy
with the terror which pervaded her
frame. She entered that room, and
gazed around it with a look that was
nervous, wild, almost mad—a small
chamber, miserably furnished, with a bed
in one corner. There was no one there;
the face of the mother did not meet the
rays of the candle. No mother there
for, alas! the mother of Margaret had
been in her grave two years.

Margaret advanced to the bed, and
held the light over the patched coverlet,
and drew that coverlet gently from the
pillow. Upon that pillow rested a babe,
who, perchance, had seen three months
of life; and its rosy face was touched by
a smile as it slept all calmly and gently
there.

“O my God!” burst from the heart
of Margaret, as she fell weeping on the
pillow beside the child—her child! “O
my God! why did I not tell him all?”

38. CHAPTER XXXVIII.

Let us leave Margaret for a little
while, and return to Stanley Burke.

When that gentleman left Harry in his
room, and went down the dark stairway,
there was no light to reveal the peculiar
expression of his face; but, as he passed
along Broadway, walking rapidly through
its crowd, his velvet-lined cloak dangling
from one shoulder, and brought under
his left arm, the gas-light shone fully
upon him, and in spite of the shadow of
his down-drawn hat, lit up his visage,
and showed the peculiar look in palpable
hideousness.

The tightly compressed lips, the small
eyes glittering beneath the knit brows,
the expanded nostrils, and broad, low
forehead, covered with sudden wrinkles,
all revealed the singular agitation which
now moved the man.

And now and then the gentleman
would smile—such a smile! It lit up
his high cheek-bones into a flush, gave
a fiercer twinkle to his small eyes, and
showed his white teeth in ghastlier
whiteness—(Burke, like Dickens' Carker,
had white teeth, but he was totally
a different man from Carker, and we
didn't steal the teeth from Dickens)—
and even suffused his broad low forehead
with its sinister glow.

What was the man thinking about?

Why had he inveigled Harry Morgan
to his room?

Why filled the honest mechanic with
the falsehood that Margaret and her
mother lived in the house of which his
room was a part?

Had he designs upon Harry, and if he
had designs upon Harry and his well-filled
trunks, how did he intend to carry
them out?

Grave questions and full of meaning;
but, as we cannot look into the heart of
Stanley Burke, and note clearly the
emotions that grapple there, it is not
possible to answer them. The truth is,
Stanley, having seen Harry and his
trunks safely lodged in his room, had
come forth to take the fresh air, and to
think.

It might have frightened you to have
seen his thoughts, could they have taken
palpable shape. And while he goes up
Broadway, unconscious of the crowd
through which he passes, now scowling
and now smiling, now twirling his gold
en chain, and now drawing his cloak
closer round him, let us take a glimpse
at the real character of Stanley Burke.

He was a character. It is a great
mistake to suppose that there are no
savages but those who go naked and paint
their faces, and eat their slain. Broadcloth
drapes many a savage, fiercer and
more completely infernal than any that
ever sat down to a cannibal feast in the
wilds of Van Dieman's Land.

The externals of a gentleman, fine apparel,
the graces of education, may mask
the real nature of such a savage, but
still, at heart, he is more remorseless—
more completely defiant of all the ties
which bind man to man and humanity
to God than his tatooed brother of the
war-club and jungle.

Stanley Burke was a man of the world
in the intensest form.

To live well, to gratify all his appetites,
without one effort of honest work,
of hand or brain, and without coming
within the reach of the iron hand of the
law, was the religion of his life.

For years he had made money, and
much of it, in various ways, and always
kept up a good appearance, and yet
somehow, he was always in want of
money. To say that he was a gambler
would but poorly describe him.

All men of the world are gamblers, in
some sense or other—at faro, in stocks,
in trade, in their own reputation, or in
the reputation of other people—but the
mere gambler at cards is the smallest of
his tribe; he only injures and affects a
very silly and limited class.

The man is dangerous who, to the
character of a gambler—a lottery broker
of chance and huckster of destiny—adds
other qualities, which mask and ornament
his real nature. Stanley Burke
was such a man.

For years he had lived well, appeared
in elegant plumage, kept the company of
that genteel class who, polluted with the
moral assassination of womanhood, are
yet received with the best society—but
where the means came from, was a secret
known only to a few.

Stanley had gambled at faro and at
bank-stock. He had lived by turns in
all the large cities of the Union. Now,
he was (or seemed to be) a cotton broker
in New-Orleans; now, a fancy stock
man in Wall-street; now, a planter in

Charleston; now, a commission merchant
in Cincinnati; now, a gentleman of leisure
in Washington; but he always
made money, and was always in want of
money.

He had seen every phase of the savage
life, which is but poorly hidden by the
glittering tinsel-cloak of large city civilization,
and that life had taken possession
of him, and moulded him in every fibre.

It was this man who now walked
Broadway—thinking—and Henry Morgan
and his well-filled trunks were the
matters which occupied his thoughts.
Thus occupied he reached Union-square,
and pausing for a moment, looked up to
the leaden sky.

“It may be a good plan”—he muttered,
as if speaking of some secret purpose—“and
it may not! Anyhow, the
opportunity is golden, and I must not
let it slip. And I must decide upon it
anyhow, before I return to my room and
confront Morgan.”

And he smiled, and his small dark
eyes emitted a light that was not pleasant
to look upon, as he—for the moment
forgetting his usual composed demeanor
—raised his clenched hand to the darkened
sky.

“To my room—the plan is good; or,
if it won't do, I must and can find a better—to
my room, and confront Morgan.”

He little deemed that Morgan was no
longer in his room, but far away in a
far different apartment.

Return we to the miserable home of
Margaret, where she bends over her
babe, her tears moistening the pillow on
which it rests.

“My God!” was the exclamation,
often repeated—wrung from a heart torn
by its agony—“My God! Why did I
not tell him all?”

And, rising, she held the candle over
the face of the babe, and looked at it,
with a look most strange to see upon a
woman's face—remorseless hate and
yearning love were in her straining eyes.
A part of her being— the blossom of her
life—it slumbered there, and yet it was
the external symbol of a fact, which, but
to think upon, made her existence a hell.

Sad mother! Innocent child! There
is a blot upon your life, mother, which
cannot be washed away—a future before
you, child, that has no ray of hope upon
its darkened brow.

Margaret went into the next room,
placed the candle on the table, and sat
down in the chair, where Harry had
lately sat, and folding her hands on her
knees—her foot moving nervously all the
while—gazed at the blank wall with
great glaring eyes. But she did not see
the wall—the word “to-morrow!” seemed
painted on the air, even as it was
stamped upon her brain—“to-morrow!”

She saw, or seemed to see, this word
quivering there in letters of fire; and it
held her gaze, or if she turned her eyes
away, it was still before her.

“To-morrow! How shall I meet
him! How shall I tell him all! How
tell him that the woman he loves—his
wife—who promised to be true to him
while living and to his memory when
dead—who, to-night, saw him start up
as if from the grave, and hang upon his
breast as in other days—that she is—”

Her lips could not speak the word,
but she put both hands over her eyes at
the very thought.

And the light of the candle fell upon
the bare department, and upon the woman,
who sat trembling there, the very
embodiment of hopeless misery.

All at once the door opens, and a form
appears on the threshold. It is Harry
come back! Margaret starts up at the
thought; but, when she sees the face of
the intruder, sits down again, and
crouches against the wall, as though he
were some savage animal.

“Well, wife! you see I've come!”

It was Mr. Stanley Burke who spoke.

“Wife!” she echoed, and crouched
closer to the wall. “Yesterday I found
you out, and told you I'd come to see
you to-night,” continued the gentleman,
dropping into a chair. “D—n the
place, how cold it is!” and he drew his
velvet-lined cloak closer around his
shoulders. “You don't seem glad to see
me? Here's a sweet, dear huzzy of a
wife, who runs away from a husband,
hides herself from him for six months or
more, and when he finds her out and
comes to see her, meets him with the
look of an enraged cat that would like to
bite, but—is afraid!”

Margaret made no reply, but crouching
closer to the wall, looked at him over
her shoulder; her eyes alone seemed
living in her face.

Don't be surprised at Stanley's rough

language. The man who can bow the
lowest on Broadway, and show his teeth
in the blandest manner, is very often
the same man who, within four walls,
insults, taunts—sometimes beats—a defenceless
woman.

Do not believe all that you see in
Broadway, or at the opera, or at a pleasant
social party; behind all these, there
is a dark background of homes whose
secrets would appall you, whose miseries
would strike you dumb.

“There we were, the very models of
perfection,” continued Stanley, shutting
one eye, as he gazed upon her with an
insolent leer, “man and wife in our two
rooms; how we loved each other! As
if our happiness was not complete, a
pledge of our love, (that, I believe, is the
true novel style,) was about to appear,
when you must run away and hide, and
plunge yourself up to the neck in misery
and shirt-making. How is shirt-making,
pet?”

No reply from Margaret. Crouching
even closer to the wall, her face turned
over her shoulder, she looked at him
with that corpse-like face and those great
glaring eyes.

“If you don't like me, why did you
marry me?” he said, as insolently as you
can imagine a smoothly-dressed brutal
man to speak. Without changing her
position, Margaret replied. She did not
start, and call down thunders, and burst
into those torrents of epithets and adjectives
with which some lady-novelists
make lurid their pages; for she was
not the kind of woman you find in some
specimens of lady-literature, but a real
woman! much tried, deeply suffering—
may be, somewhat fallen—but still a
woman and not a tornado in petticoats.

Margaret replied in a low voice, so low
that it scarcely rose above a whisper.
“I was upon a sick bed. Mother was
dead, and the expenses of her funeral exhausted
all my store of money. I was
sick, and friendless, and penniless.”

“Did the thought of that dead lover
of yours make you sick?” brutally interrupted
Stanley.

But, without changing her position, or
noticing his remark, Margaret went on.
“You appeared. You were kind to me.
You know I wouldn't say it, if it wasn't
true, but you were kind to me. You
supplied me with money, procured a
nurse to watch over me while I was
wild with fever. I thought you did all
this because we were cousins; I did'nt
know when a man like you treats a woman
kindly he always does it with a
purpose; he is kind, that he may pollute,
betray, and—sell!

“Well! why did you marry me?”
again interrupted Stanley, with a wicked
light in his eye.

“I recovered, and was grateful. Need
I tell you how the thousand attentions
with which you surrounded me deceived
me as to your real character.”

“Yes, I remember,” and Stanley laughed.
“I used to sit by you praising your
dead lover, the defunct carpenter. It's a
sure way to touch a woman's heart.”

She went on. “Alone in the world—
friendless—all that I loved in the grave
—in an evil hour, telling you that I
could not give you love, simply esteem,
I consented to become your wife. I
might find a thousand excuses for this—
might say that long-indulged grief and
sickness had weakened my will and
dimmed my perception—but I make no
excuse. I married you. There is no
excuse for me. And I bear the suffering
which that marriage has cost me as my
just due. The truth is, that I cannot
suffer too much for it.”

Her eyes dropped; a single tear rolled
down her colorless cheek. And she
shuddered as she had shuddered every
time Burke alluded to her lover, Harry
Morgan.

“Why did you run away from me?”
asked Stanley, the same devil's look in
his eye.

She looked at him as though he were
a reptile which she did not know whether
to despise most or fear, and her pale
face grew scarlet. “Don't ask me, Stanley.
You know why I left you. And
you know that rather than be near you,
or have you in my sight for an hour, I
would—I would—” She had no word
to express the loathing which flashed
from her eyes. Stanley, whose face
during this strange interview was unusually
flushed—whose eye shone with
even an unusual wickedness—replied:

“Well, pet! like me or not, you must
live with me. The law you know gives
a husband a very decided power over an
unruly wife. You must live with me.
You cannot hide yourself where I wont

find you. And to-morrow I'll come to
bring you from this wretched place to a
very comfortable home. You'll think
better of it, darling.” And he rose,
drawing the velvet-lined cloak closer
about him, and advanced a step toward
her. There was a certain wildness in
his manner which she had never seen before.

O how she longed to say a word which
would humble all his schemes into dust!
“Harry lives! I am not your wife, even
if I never can be wife to him! You have
no power over me in law!”

The words were on her lips, but she
lid not utter them.

“How's the baby, Maggy, dear!” and
he advanced a step nearer. “Think of
it! It was only yesterday that I first
beheld the face of my only child! And”
—rapidly advancing, he seized her in his
arms, and put his kiss upon her lips, ere
she had the most remote idea of his intentions.
Struggling in his embrace, as
though his very touch was pestilence,
she tried to avoid his kisses, by burying
her head upon his hated bosom, but his
strong arm held her in a clutch that was
like that of death to the pale, quivering
woman.

“Here's an affectionate wife” he
laughed, and released her. She sank
into the chair, pale and panting for
breath, her hair (loosened in the struggle)
streaming over her shoulders.

Then with a laugh, and a look of
taunting insolence, he said,—“To-morrow,
pet! you remember! To-morrow!”
and showing his white teeth he moved to
the door. “To-morrow I will come and
bring you. Good-night, pet!” he laughed
again, opened the door, and was gone.

She breathed freer, like one suddenly
taken from a plague-infected room into
open air.

“To-morrow!” she echoed; “little
does he know of to-morrow!”

As she spoke, her eye was attracted
by something on the floor. It glittered
in the light. She took it up—it was a
gold chain—and had fallen from the neck
of Stanley in the late struggle. It was
not the gold chain he usually wore, but
a gold chain curiously formed of pure ore;
the chain which she had seen glittering
not an hour before around the neck of
Harry Morgan.

There was something in the sight of
it which seemed to paralyze Margaret in
every limb, and deprive her for the moment
of the power of speech. Her eyes
were riveted to the chain, and she remembered
that, even as Stanley held her
in his arms, there was a livid bruise
upon his right hand.

39. CHAPTER XXXIX.

We left Margaret, gazing in dumb
horror upon the gold chain, which was
curiously fashioned of links of pure ore.

It was late on the next afternoon that
Stanley Burke, picking his way amid the
rocks and timbers which obstructed the
winding path, again stood before the
door of her miserable home.

As Stanley came along, with an even
stride, and cloak drawn gracefully over
his shoulder, you might see that he was
dressed with his usual nicety; his hat
was of the glossiest, his shirt-collar of
the whitest, and he stepped carefully
along the miry path, to avoid soiling his
well-polished boots with mud. A well-dressed
gentleman taking a walk in the
rural districts to collect his rents, or to
take a mouthful of fresh air, was (or
seemed to be) Mr. Stanley Burke.

He smiled often, revealing his ivory
teeth, and yet his face was a little haggard,
his eyes feverish in their restless
twinkle, as though he had not slept well
on the previous night.

At the door of Margaret's miserable
home he paused and looked around.

A November sun, shining over a bank
of dreary, leaden clouds, that were piled
up in the west, over the Hudson heights
—crowned with farm-house or country
seat, appearing among leafless trees—
gave its light to a cheerless, wintry
scene, in the midst of which the Hudson
rolled and glittered with a broad belt of
sunshine on its waves.

Stanley's eye was not much taken by
the grand, sullen beauty of the scene; it
simply traversed the space between him
and the river—an open space, broken
with rocks, bounded on the north by a
deserted country-seat, and on the south
by a cluster of leafless trees, which rose
bare and bleak against the river and the
sky. Stanley's glance was quick, searching
and nervous, as his eye traversed
this space, but no spoken word betrayed
the real nature of his thoughts.

“Well, and now for my pet!”

He pushed open the door, and entered
the bleak room, over whose naked floor
the declining sunshine redly fell.

An oath burst from his lips. The
room, at all times bare enough, was now
without stove, table, chair or furniture
of any kind. Stanley hurried into the
next room, and pushed open the closed
shutters. The bed had disappeared; it
was completely stripped of the miserable
furniture which it had held yesterday.

“Escaped, by —!” cried Stanley
Burke; and then followed a torrent of
curses; and then Stanley stood silent in
the centre of the room, buried in
thought.

Where had Margaret gone?

Could Harry Morgan have taken her
from this miserable place?

It was after a long pause that Stanley
walked cautiously up and down the deserted
rooms, carefully peering into every
nook and corner.

“It is not here,” he said at length.
“I must have dropped it in some other
place.” And presently went slowly
from the house.

You may watch him as he goes; and,
as his shadow is thrown long and black
over the rocks, you may notice that his
head is turned over his shoulder toward
the river, until he is out of sight.

The next three were busy weeks with
Mr. Burke.

He searched for Margaret in every
nook and corner of New-York, and of
the adjacent cities, but in vain.

By a fortunate speculation, he came
into possession of a considerable sum of
money; paid off some debts; removed
from his single apartment to an elegantly
furnished mansion farther up town;
appeared often in Wall-street, seeming
like a man possessed in every fibre with
the insatiate devil of stock speculation;
and once or twice gave “splendid” evening
parties to a select number of friends
at his new residence.

Could he have discovered Margaret's
retreat, he could have been quite at ease.

And as to Harry Morgan. Where was
Harry Morgan? Stanley never met him
in his walks. But New-York is a large
city, and you can easily lose sight of a
man there.

Of course, while the three weeks passed
away, many things took place, such as
murders, suicides, robberies, coroner's
inquests, of which Stanley, engaged in
business or pleasure, could take no cognizance.

He had scarcely time to read the papers.

There was an item which caught his
eye as he sat one evening in a cushioned
chair of the very saloon in which he had
first met Harry Morgan; an item which
appeared in the closely printed columns
of a western paper. And while the barber
(one of those gentlemen who speak
imperfect English and wear white
aprons) was oiling his hair and whiskers
Stanley read:

Stanley was a man of iron nerves, but
the paper dropped from his hand. He
rose hastily from the chair, and went
into a part of the saloon where the gas-light
did not shine so brightly. As he
stood arranging his cravat before a mirror,
he was startled by the sudden pallor
of his face.

“D—n her, she's gone, anyhow! But
what was she doing west? What put
it into her head to go to St. Louis?”

Hastily assuming his hat and cloak, he
left the saloon, and hurried homeward,
muttering oftentime,—“Well! she is out
of the way, anyhow!”

A few days after this, Stanley gave a
supper to a few select friends, whom he
assembled in a cozy back room of his
new residence.

Supper being over, and the cloth removed,
the wine was brought in, and
from his place at the head of the board
Stanley gazed over the faces of his
guests, who numbered nine in all.

There was a merchant and a lawyer,
both staid in aspect, three gentlemen of
leisure, dressed in the last agony of fashion,
who had known Stanley for years,
and had been with him perchance in
many a nice enterprise; two real-estate
men, from whom he had lately purchased
property and paid them cash; and

three other persons, well dressed, and
having a rich flavor of Wall-street in
every word and action.

You can see nine such men at any time
in Broadway, and it is not worth while
to describe them in detail. The room
in which they were seated was a pleasant
place, warmed by a bright coal fire; just
the place for nine men, who feel comfortable,
to chat quietly and enjoy their
champagne.

“Well, gentlemen,” said Stanley, filling
his glass—a solitary servant stood
near his shoulder—“As I am telling you,
I contemplate a southern trip. My estates
in Charleston, (into which, as I
have told you, I have lately come by the
death of my uncle,) need looking after.
Possibly, I may go as far south as New-Orleans—”

“Well! here's success to you where-ever
you go!” interrupted one of the
gentlemen of leisure, and drained his
glass, the rest of the company chorusing
the sentiment.

“And when I come back”—continued
Stanley, holding a brimming glass of
champagne before his eyes—“And when
I come back —”

His sentence was broken by the abrupt
opening of the door. And to the great
astonishment of the company a lady entered—a
lady very pale in face and clad
in black, as if in mourning for a dead
husband. The sight, which simply astonished
the company, paralyzed Stanley
Burke.

“By —! my wife!” he ejaculated,
and made a movement as if about to rise
from his chair, but fell back again. And
a silence like death prevailed as the lady
advanced, and, resting her hand upon the
back of a chair, stood like a ghost, in her
dark apparel and pale face, in the centre
of that festival scene.

“I wish to speak with you—alone, Mr.
Burke!” said the lady in a low voice.
And as she spoke, over the dark dress
which she wore—upon her bosom, whose
heavings were perceptible—a gold chain,
curiously fashioned, of the pure ore, glittered
in the light. Stanley's gaze was
riveted to that chain. But he made a
desperate effort to recover his composure.

“My wife, Mrs. Burke, gentlemen,” he
said, rising from his chair, and scarcely
aware of the words which fell from his
lips. “My wife, Mrs. Burke, gentlemen
—” and his face was white and scarlet
by turns.

The lady, without changing her position,
said in a calm, even voice, “Mr.
Burke, I wish to speak with you alone,”
and the gold chain, as she spoke, glittered
into light with every throb of her
bosom.

In a confused way, Stanley begged the
gentlemen to excuse him for a few moments;
and then followed the lady from
the supper room down stairs into the parlor,
where a solitary lamp was burning.
It was not until he stood in that parlor,
whose glaring furniture, rich carpet, massive
mirrors, luxurious sofas—all had a
gloomy look in the dim light—that Stanley
could recover even a portion of his
usual presence of mind.

Margaret, whom he had thought of as
dead—dead with her dead babe still
clutched in her arms—now stood before
him, living, yet still looking very much
like a dead woman. Her black dress
made her face seem even more unnaturally
pale, and her eyes shone with a
steady, clear, yet feverish light. It was
Margaret, but she was indeed sadly
changed.

She did not take a seat, but confronted
Stanley, who, for once in his life terribly
agitated, could not take his gaze
from her face.

“I thought you were dead!”—hesitated
Stanley. “The fact is, I saw it in
the papers—”

“The papers told only a part of the
truth,” replied Margaret. “As you see.
I am not dead, but living. I have just
arrived from the West. I wish to say a
few words to you. The papers, as you
know, tell a great many falsehoods, but
sometimes tell hard truths, although in
a mysterious shape. Now, can you tell
me, what truth there is in this paragraph?”

And she placed in Stanley's hands a
newspaper which contained the paragraph
with which we commenced this
sketch, and which we now quote again:

Stanley took the paper, glanced over
the paragraph—his hand shook a little—
but all at once his gaze recovered its
usual steadiness.

“Well, Madam! what of this?” he
said, quite calmly, handing back the paper
with a gleam of the old wickedness
in his look. “That paragraph may be
true, or may not be true. I know nothing
about it.”

Margaret with her eyes fixed on him,
replied, “But the dead man of whom the
paragraph speaks—do you know anything
about him? The `abrasion of the
skin on the right temple' not the result
of contact with some object floating in
the river, but the result of a blow from
a slung-shot or loaded cane wielded by
an assassin's hand—do you know anything
about that?”

As she spoke Margaret advanced, and
Stanley fell back a single step. Stanley
was pale, but the malignity of the master
fiend burned in his eyes. His hand
was clenched; he grated his teeth.

“And,” said Margaret, as, with that
pale face and lifted finger, she advanced
yet nearer to the enraged but shrinking
man—“And do you know anything about
the assassin himself—the assassin who
followed his victim, when that victim,
mistaking his way in the darkness, wandered
towards the river, followed him
even to the water's edge, and in the dark
crept close to him, and without warning
struck him one strong and fatal blow?—
the assassin who, when he found his victim
dead at his feet, rifled him of everything
that was valuable, made his clothes
into a bundle, to which he attached a
heavy stone, and then flung clothes and
corpse into the river?”

Stanley retreated another step, but
did not reply; his clenched hands and
eyes, lit with infernal light, looked as
though he was about to spring upon and
throttle the woman before him.

“The assassin who, with the atmosphere
of murder all about him, and the
livid mark which the murdered man, in
one brief struggle for his life, had printed
on his hand, came to the home of his
victim's wife, and dared to pollute her
with his kiss, and, as she struggled in
his grasp, dropped on the floor a gold
chain which he had rifled from the dead.
This”—her eyes flashed, and she lifted
the chain which hung upon her breast.
“This gold chain! Do you know anything
of this, assassin? Or do you know
anything of a poor laboring man who
chanced to be wandering on the river
shore at the fatal hour; who came upon
the murderer as he was engaged in rifling
the dead; who, even in the dim light of
that autumn night, saw the body hurled
into the river, himself all the while very
near, but unperceived—and who silently
traced the murderer to my home; and
then, through the city, to the murderer's
own residence, where he charged him
with the crime, and was, by a large sum
of gold, induced to swear that, on the
morrow, he would leave New-York for
ever? Do you know anything of this
witness, sir?”

The rage which had convulsed Stanley
Burke for the last five minutes now
broke forth in words. A man of greater
muscular power, he now advanced upon
her with clenched hands, and his small
eyes flashing, and expanding in their
sockets.

“You are not a woman, but a devil!”
he said in a low voice. “You have seen
this man—this Hoffman—but I'll yet
foil you—even if I have to —” His
look alone completed the sentence. There
was murder in his eyes. He sprang upon
the brave, pale woman, with all the
ferocity of his brutal nature—but a
strong arm intervened, and a form as
muscular as his own, was suddenly interposed
between him and Margaret.

“I took your money, but there was
blood upon it, and as soon as a few little
matters are settled, you can have it back.
Don't strike that gal! You struck a man
once, not long ago, behind his back—
strike me to the face, now, if you
dare!”

It was a rough but manly face, and
the speaker was the “poor laboring
man,” of whom Margaret had spoken
rudely clad in work-day apparel, but
with a muscular frame, hands hardened
and knotted by labor, and a sunburnt
face, overspread with wrinkles, the result
not of time, but of hard work. At
sight of him, Stanley staggered back;
and, in his surprise, suffered these words
to escape him: “I thought you were in
St. Louis—in the West—anywhere but

in New-York! How came you back?
You swore to me —”

But Margaret, leaning her hand on the
arm of Hoffman, now spoke. “When I
fled from my miserable home, I sought
refuge with a poor woman in the neighborhood.
Her husband had left that
morn'ng for the West. And it was from
this woman that I wrung the secret of
the husband's departure, which he had
told her the moment before he left, torn
as he was by conflicting emotions. I
need not tell you that she was the wife
of this witness; nor relate how, with
my child in my arms, and with means
derived from the sale of a portion of this
gold chain, I followed him—found him,
and induced him to return. And now, I
am here; my only purpose—she spoke
with a changing countenance and violent
effort—“to consign to justice the man
who is at the same time the murderer
of my husband and the father of my
child.”

The strong excitement which had upheld
Margaret for the last half hour now
broke down all at once, and overcome by
the violence of her emotions—say her
anguish—she dropped immediately to
the floor.

Hoffman, the rude working man, caught
her up and bore her to the sofa, and in
that moment Stanley Burke hurried to
the door, opened it, and closed it, crossed
the threshold, and locked the door
after him. Then seizing his hat and
cloak, which hung upon a rack in the
hall, he—with a face corrugated and
livid with despair—went with an uneven
step from the house, purchased with his
ill-got gold, into the cold, bleak wintry
night. What emotions filled the breast;
what purposes thronged the brain of this
bad, desperate man, as he thus hurried
forth, no mortal man can ever certainly
know.

Had he given up the battle as lost, irrevocably
lost, or was there yet some
new game to be played, some new crime
to be committed, in order to patch up
the bloody record of the past? Or had
the brain of the strong, bad, cunning
man, been bewildered by the apparitions
which had started up suddenly on his
path?

No pen can picture, no mortal can ever
know, the thoughts of this man as thus
he went forth alone into the night.

Meanwhile, his guests up stairs much
wondered at his long absence.

“Strange!” cried one. “Odd!” another.
“Queer!” a third. And then
they drank, and there was a long pause
followed by another chorus of ejaculations,
and another round of champagne.

“Strange! odd! queer!” but still the
host did not return. The guests waited
for him deep into the night, and sacrificed
themselves in the effort to exhaust
his champagne; and at last, very much
exhausted, and in some degree drunk—
no Stanley Burke appearing—they hurried
on their cloaks and overcoats, and went
on their various ways surlily home.

Meanwhile, what of Margaret? Awaking
from her swoon, and discovering that
Burke had indeed left the house, she
took the arm of Hoffman, and went with
him to the humble home of himself and
wife; and fevered and sleepless upon a
miserable bed—her child, which was also
Stanley's child, sleeping beside her—this
woman, the real owner of Henry Morgan's
wealth—of Stanley Burke's grand
house—muttered in her half-delirious
dreams the words “to-morrow! to-morrow!”

The night passed on, and passed away,
and yet Stanly Burke had not returned
to his mansion. But a morning paper
had this brief item:

And that was the last of Stanly Burke.

For it was Stanley Burke who, by accident
or with the idea of self-murder,
had met his death in the river which
only a month before had received the
body of his victim.

Here our sketch comes to a close.

Who buried the unfortunate man!
who came into possession of his estate!
(in reality the estate of Morgan) what
became of Margaret? are matters upon
which it is not well to speak plainly, as
the most important events which are detailed

in this narrative are of recent occurrence.

—On some sunny day when Broadway
is thronged with a current of fashion,
youth and beauty, (and, for that matter,
rags, old age and ugliness too,) when the
sky is full of spring, and the spire of old
Trinity rises clearly into the cloudless
blue, you may note among the crowd of
faces a woman who is dressed in mourning;
that face, framed in a dark bonnet,
wears yet upon its colorless cheek, and
in its large feverish eyes, some traces of
early loveliness, but it is stamped with
the inevitable prophecy of a death by
consumption, of a broken heart, of an
untimely grave.

Alas!—would we might conclude with
some words of good cheer! but the truth
affords us only this,—Alas! poor Margaret
Dunbar!