"What cause have I given you to suspect me of this?" retorted Doctor Rane, in a harsh tone.

"Only this-that I don't see where the paper could have come from but out of your own pocketbook," replied Mrs. Gass, frankly. "I have no other cause to suspect you; I'd as soon suspect myself. It's a mystery, and nothing else."

"Whatever the mystery may be it is not connected with my pocketbook, Mrs. Gass," he emphatically said. "Did you mention this to Richard North ?"

the garden wall. Above, in the roof, were two other rooms, both three-cornered.

The ante-room had no furniture, unless some curious-looking articles lying on the floor could be called such: jars covered in dust, and other things pertaining to chemistry. But if this ante-room was not furnished, Doctor Rane's chamber was, and well, too.

The entrance door was in the middle of the beautifully-papered wall of white and gold; the dressing-table and glass stood No; nor to anybody else. It was not a pleasant thing to opposite before the window. The fire-place was on the left; a speak of, you see."

66

"Not a pleasant thing for me, certainly, to be suspected of having dropped that paper. The culprit, an innocent one, no doubt, must have been Molly Green."

"I never was so brought up in all my life," cried the puzzled woman. "As to Molly Green-it must be just a fancy of yours, doctor, for it never can be fact."

Oliver Rane drew his chair a little nearer to Mrs. Gass, and whispered a word of the doubt touching Mrs. North. He only spoke of it as a doubt--a hint at most; but Mrs. Gass was not slow to take it.

handsome white Arabian bedstead, picked out with gold, on the right, its hangings, of green damask, matching the window drapery, and in color the soft carpet. Other furniture stood about, all very good of its kind, and the whole in harmony.

Doctor Rane had but just come in, and it was now one o'clock, his ordinary dinner-hour. Hanging up his hat in the small hall, leaving his cane in the corner-a pretty little thing with a gold stag for its head-he was making straight for the stairs when the servant, Phillis, came out of the kitchen-a little woman of some five-and-fifty years, with high shoulders, and her head poking forward. Her chin and nose were sharp now, but the once good-looking face was meek and mild, the sweet dark

"Heaven help the woman, if it's her work!" "But this must not be breathed aloud," he said, taking eyes were subdued, and the hair, peeping from beneath the close alarm. "It may be a false suspicion."

"Don't fear me; it's a thing too grave for me to mix myself up in," was the reply; and to give Mrs. Gass her due, she did look scared in no slight degree. "Doctor Rane, I am sorry for saying what I did to you. It was the impossibility, as I took it, of anything's having left it here but that flutter of papers from your pocketbook. Who ever would have gave a thought to Molly Green?"

Doctor Rane made no answer.

"She put her basket down by the door there, and came up the room to look at my geraniums; I held the candle for her. I remember she caught her crinoline on the corner of the iron fender, and it gave her a twist round. The idiots that girls make of theirselves with them big crinolines! Perhaps it dropped from her then."

"You

white cap, was gray. She wore a dark cotton gown and check
apron, and her arms were bare to the elbow. A tidy-looking,
respectable woman, in spite of her unfashionable appearance.
"Is that you, master? Them folks have been over from the
brick-kilns, saying the woman's not so well to-day, if you'd
please to go to her."

Doctor Rane nodded his head. He went on up the stairs and into his own room, the door of which he locked. Why? Phillis was not in the habit of intruding upon him, and there was no one else in the house.

The first thing he did was to take the paper received from Mrs. Gass out of his pocketbook, and read it attentively twice over. Then he struck a match, set fire to it, and watched it consume away in the empty grate. The task over, he lapsed into thought. He was dwelling upon the death at Dallory

"Well, let us bury it in silence, Mrs. Gass; it is but a doubt | Hall, and what it might bring forth. at best," said the prudent but less eloquent physician. will allow me to take this?" he added, alluding to the paper. "I should like to examine it at leisure."

"Take it, and welcome," she answered; "I'm glad to be rid of it. As to burying it in silence, we had better, I expect, both do that."

"Even to Richard North," he enjoined, rather anxiously. "Ever to Richard North. I have kept secrets in my day, doctor, and can again."

Doctor Rane put the paper in his pocketbook, deposited that in the breast pocket of his coat, and took his departure. But now, being a shrewd man, a suspicion that he would not have given utterance to for the whole world, lay on Doctor Rane that it was more likely, more in accordance with probability, the paper had dropped out of his pocketbook than from Molly Green's petticoats, seeing that they were not finished off with fishhooks.

A heavy weight, lying there on his breast! And he went along with a loitering step, asking himself how the paper could have originally come there.

CHAPTER IV.-ALONE WITH THE NAKED TRUTH.

OLIVER RANE was in his bedchamber; a front apartment facing the road. It was a very large landing-place, the boards white and bare, with a spacious window looking full to the side of the other house, as the dining-room beneath it did. Wide, low, and curtainless was this landing-window, imparting, in conjunction with the bare floors and walls, a staring, bleak appearance to the place. Doctor Rane could not afford luxuries yet, or, indeed, superfluous furniture. The stairs led down nearly close to this window, so that in coming from any of the bedrooms or upper floor to descend below, you had to face it. To get into Doctor Rane's chamber-the best in the house-an ante-room had to be passed through, whose door was opposite to the large window. Two chambers opened from the back of the landing; they faced the back lane that ran along beyond

Hepburn, the undertaker, was right. There was to be no inquest. So much Doctor Rane had learned from Richard North. The two Whitborough doctors had given the certificate of death apoplexy-and nothing more was required by law. From a word spoken by Richard, Doctor Rane gathered that it was Madame (as Mrs. North was very generally called) who had set her veto against an inquest. And quite right, too; there was no necessity whatever for one, had been the answering comment made by Oliver Rane to Richard. But now-now when he was alone with himself and the naked truth, no eye upon him save God's, he could not help acknowledging that had he been Mr. North-had it been his son who was thus cut off from life, he should have called for an inquest to be held, if by that means he might have traced the letter home to its writer.

Never in his whole life had anything so affected him as this death; and it was perhaps natural that he should set himself to see whether or not any kind of excuse might be found for the anonymous writer.

He began by putting himself in idea into the writer's place, and argued the point for him—for and against. "What cause had Edmund North to fly into a dangerous passion?" ran the self-argument. Only a madman would have been expected to do so. There was nothing in the letter that need have excited him, absolutely nothing. It was probably written with a very harmless view; certainly the writer never could have dreamt that it might have the effect of destroying a life."

Destroying a man's life! A flush passed into Oliver Rane's face at the thought, dyeing neck and brow with crimson; and with it came back the words of Hepburn-that the writer was a murderer and might come to be tried for it. A murderer! There is no other self-reproach under heaven that can bring home so much anguish to the conscience.

tention to murder? Let us suppose it was-Mrs. North-who |
wrote the letter? Alexander suspects her, at any rate. Put it
that she had some motive for writing it. It might have been
a good motive, that of stopping Edmund North in his down-
ward career, as the letter intimated, and she fancied this might
be best accomplished by letting his father know of what he, in
conjunction with Alexander, was doing. According to Alexan-
der, she does not interfere openly between the young men and
their father; it's not her policy; and she may have considered
the means she took were legitimate, under the circumstances.
Well, could she for a moment imagine that any terrible conse-
quences would ensue? A rating from Mr. North to his son, and
the matter would be over. Just so; she was innocent of any
other thought. Then, how can she be deemed guilty? Or,
take Alexander's view of the letter, that it was written to
damage him with Mr. North and the neighborhood generally.
Madame, say again, had conceived a dislike to Alexander,
wished him dismissed from the house, but had no plea for do-
ing it, and so took that means-the sending of a letter to her
husband. Could she suspect that the result would be fatal to
Edmund North! Then, under these circumstances, how can a
man-I mean a woman-be responsible, legally or morally, for
the death? It would be utterly unjust to charge her with it.
Edmund North is alone to blame. Clearly so. The case is little
better than a case of unintentional suicide."

Having arrived at this view of the subject, so comforting for the unknown writer, Doctor Rane arose briskly, and began to wash his hands and smooth his hair. He took a notecase from his pocket, in which he was in the habit of dotting down his daily engagements, to see at what hour he could most conveniently go to the brick-fields, in compliance with the message just received.

The sick woman was in no danger, as he knew, and he might choose his own time.

But Doctor Rane passed on as though he had not heard her, and shut the door with a bang. He turned into his mother's house.

Mrs. Cumberland sat at the open dining room window, just as he had seen her from the staircase landing; a newspaper lay behind her on a small table, put out of hand when read. Ellen Adair, as might be heard, was at the piano in the drawingroom, playing, perhaps from unconscious association, and low and softly, as it was her delight to play, the "Dead March in Saul." The dirge grated or the ears of Doctor Rane.

"What a melancholy drawl!" he involuntarily exclaimed; and Mrs. Cumberland looked up, there was so much irritation in the tone. "You are a stranger, Oliver," she said. "What has kept you away?''

"I have been busy-to-day especially. They had an accident at the works-two men nearly drowned, and I have been with them all the morning."

"I heard of it. Jelly brought me in the news; she seems to hear everything. How fortunate that you were at hand!'' He proceeded, rather volubly, to give the particulars of the accident, and of the process he adopted to recover the menvoluble for him. Mrs. Cumberland looked and listened with silent, warm affection; but that she was a particularly undemonstrative woman she would have shown it in her manner. In her partial eyes, there was not so fine, and handsome, and estimable a man in all Dallory as this, her only son. "Oliver, what a dreadful thing this is about Edmund North! I have not seen you since. Why did you not come and tell me the same night?” He turned his eyes on her for a moment to express surprise, and paused.

"I am not in the habit of coming in to tell you when called out to patients, mother. How was I to know you wished it ?'' "Nonsense, Oliver! This is not an ordinary thing. The Norths were something to me once. I have had Edmund on my knee when he was a baby, and I should have liked you to

"Phillis!" he called, putting his head out on the landing-pay me the attention of bringing in the news. Only to put it "Phillis !''

"Now, look you here!" he cried, angrily; "if you sweep out a room again, when I tell you it is not to be swept, I'll keep every place in the house locked up. Some of the glass here is valuable, and I'll not run the risk of having it broken with brooms and brushes."

Down went Phillis, taking the reproof in silence. As Doctor Rane crossed the landing to follow her, his eyes naturally fell on his mother's house through the large window. The answering window opposite, Mrs. Cumberland's, was being cleaned by one of the servants; at the window of the dining-room underneath, his mother was sitting. It put Doctor Rane in mind that he had not been in to see her for nearly two days; not since Edmund North

ter.

All in a moment, induced perhaps by the name, a sense of the delusive nature of the sophistry he had been indulging, flashed into his brain, and the truth shone out distinct and bare. Edmund North was dead-killed by the anonymous letBut for that fatal letter he had been alive and well now. A sickening sensation, as of some great oppression, crowded over Oliver Rane, and his nerveless fingers dropped the jar. Out ran Phillis, lifting her hands at the crash of glistening mites lying in the passage.

on the score of gossip, it would have been welcome," she added, with a half-smile at the words.

Doctor Rane made no rejoinder, possibly not having any sufficient excuse to offer for his carelessness. He stood looking dreamily from a corner of the window. Mrs. Cumberland resumed:

"They say,

first."

Oliyer, there has been no hope of him from the

"There was very little."

"And who wrote the letter? With what motive was it written?" proceeded Mrs. Cumberland, her pale gray face leaning slightly forward, as she waited for an answer.

"It is of no use to ask me, mother. Some people hold one opinion, some another; mine would go for little."

They are beginning now to think that it was not written at all to injure Edmund, but Mr. Alexander." "Who told you that?" he asked, a sharp accent discernible in his tone.

'Captain Bohun. He came in this morning to apprise me of the death." "I entertain a different opinion," he observed, referring to the point in discussion. "Of course it is all guess-work, what the writer's motive was, or what it was not. There's no profit in discussing it, mother. And I must be going, for my dinner's waiting. Thank you for sending me that fowl." "A moment yet, Oliver," she interposed, touching his arm "He has broke one himself now," thought she, referring to as he was passing her to move away. Have you heard that the reproof about the glasses.

"The jar

"Just sweep the pieces carefully into a dustpan, and throw them away," said her master, as he passed on. slipped out of my fingers."

Phillis stared a minute, getting rid of her surprise, and then turned to fetch the dustpan. The doctor went on to the front door, instead of into the dining-room, as Phillis expected.

Alexander is going to leave?"

66

'Yes; I was talking with him about it this morning."

If ever a glow of hope, of light, had been seen lately on Mrs. Cumberland's marble face, it was seen then. The tightlydrawn skin on the features had lost its gray tinge.

"Oliver, I could go down on my knees and thank heaven for it. You don't know how grieved I have been all through these past two years, because you were put in the shade by that man, and it was I who had brought you here! It will be all right New houses are to be built, they say, at the other end of

I now.

Ah, how do you do, Miss Adair?" he said, turning back and offering his hand. "Forgive my haste-I am so busy to-day." And before she had time to say an answering syllable, he was gone, leaving an impression on her mind, she could not well have told why or wherefore, that he was ill at ease-that he had hastened away, not from pressure of business, but because he did not care to stay to talk.

If that feeling was pervading Doctor Rane, and had reference to the world in general, and not to the young lady in particular, it might not have been agreeable to him to encounter an acquaintance as he turned out of his mother's house.

Mr. Alexander was swiftly passing on his way toward home from the lower part of the Ham, and stopped.

"I wish I never said a syllable about my going away till I was off," cried he, in his free, off-hand manner-a pleasanter manner and more sociable than Doctor Rane's. "The news has been noised abroad, and I've got the whole place upon me, asking this, questioning that. One man comes and wants to know if I'll sell my furniture; another thinks he'd like the house as it stands. My patients are up in arms; say I'm doing it to kill them. I shall have some of them in a fever before the day's over."

66

Perhaps you'll not go, after all," observed Doctor Rane. "Not go! How can I help going? I am elected to the post. Why, it's what I have been looking out for ever so long, almost ever since I've been here. No, no, Doctor Rane; a short while and Dallory Ham will have seen the last of me."

He hastened across the road to his house on the run, like a man who has the world's work on his busy shoulders. Doctor Rane's thoughts, as he glanced after him, reverted to the mental argument he had held in his chamber, and he unconsciously resumed it, putting himself in the place of the unknown, miserable writer, as before.

"It's almost keener than the death itself-if the motive was to do Alexander injury in his profession, or drive him from the place to know that he, or she-Mrs. North-might have spared her pains! Heavens! what a remorse it must be!-to commit a crime and then find there was no necessity for it!"

Doctor Rane wiped his brow with his white handkerchiefthe day was very warm-and turned into his house. Phillis once more put the dinner on the table, and he sat down to it.

But not a mouthful could he eat; his throat was like so much dried chip, and the food would not go down. Phillis, who was coming in for something or other, saw him leave his plate, and rise from the table.

"Take the things away," said he.

"I wonder what's come to him?" mused the woman, as his quick steps receded from the house, and she was left alone with the rejected dishes. "The jar slipped from my fingers." "I've had as much as I want. I must go to see a patient." It was quite out of the common order of routine for Doctor Rane to be explanatory to his servant on any subject whatever, and perhaps it was his having been so in these two instances that took hold of Phillis.

"How quick he must have had his dinner?"

Phillis nearly dropped the dish of fowl. The words were spoken close behind her, and she had believed herself alone in the house. Turning round, she saw Jelly, standing half in, half out at the window.

"Well, I'm sure!" cried Phillis, wrathfully. "You needn't come startling a body in that way, Mrs. Jelly. How did you know but the doctor might be here at his dinner?''

"I've just seen him go down the lane," returned Jelly. "Has he had his dinner? It's but the other minute he was in at our house."

lis.

'Look here, Phillis; you have been breaking something. It's uncommonly careless to leave the pieces about."

"Is it?" retorted Phillis. "You've got your eyes in everything. I thought I took 'em all up," she added, looking on the ground.

a bit like himself to-day; it's just as if something had come to him."

"Did you happen to hear how the doctor found Ketler?” said Jelly.

"As if I should be likely to hear!" was Phillis's retort. "He'd not tell me, and I couldn't ask. My master's not one of them you can put questions to."

A silence ensued. The gossip apparently flagged to-day. Phillis had it chiefly to herself, for Jelly vouchsafed but a brief answering remark now and again. She was engaged in the mental process of wondering what had come to Doctor Rane.

CHAPTER V.-RETROSPECT.

THERE must be some retrospect to make things intelligible, and it may as well be given at once.

Mr. North, now of Dallory Hall, had got on entirely by his own persevering industry. Of obscure, though in a certain way very respectable, parentage, he had been placed as working apprentice to a firm in Whitborough. It was a firm in extensive work, not confining itself to one branch. They took contracts for public buildings, small and large; they did mechanical engineering; they had planned one of the early railways. John North-plain Jack North he was known as then-remained with the firm when he was out of his time, and got on in it. Thrifty, steady, and plodding, he arose from one step to another, and at length, in conjunction with one who had been in the same firm, he set up for himself. This other was Thomas Gass.

North and Gass, as the new firm called itself, began business near to Dallory, quietly at first-as all people, who truly look to get on, generally do begin. They rose rapidly. The confined premises grew into great ones, the small contracts into larger. People said luck was with them-and, in truth, it seemed so. The Dallory works became of note in the county, employing quite a colony of people; the masters were respected and sought after. Both of them lived at Whitborough-Mr. North with his wife and family, Mr. Gass a bachelor.

Thomas Gass had one brother, a clergyman. Their only sister, Fanny, a pretty young girl, had her home with him in his rectory, but she came often to Whitborough on a visit to Thomas. Suddenly it was announced to the world that she had engaged herself to be married to a Captain Rane, entirely against the wish of her two brothers. She was under twenty. Captain Rane, a poor naval man on half pay, was nearly old enough to be her grandfather. Their objection lay not so much to this as to him. For some cause or other, neither liked him. The Reverend William Gass forbid his sister to think of him; Mr. Thomas Gass, a fiery man, swore he would never afterward look upon her as a sister if she persisted in thus throwing herself away.

Miss Gass did persist. She had the obstinate spirit of her brother Thomas, though without his fire. She chose to take her own way, and married Captain Rane. They sailed at once 'He has had as much as he means to have," answered Phil- for Madras, Captain Rane having obtained some post there con"It was the same thing at breakfast." nected with the government ships.

"Perhaps he is not well to-day," said Jelly.

Whether Miss Gass repented of her ill-assorted marriage, her "I don't know about his being well; he's odder than I ever brothers had no means of learning, for she, cherishing anger,

VOLCANO OF ANTUJO, CHILE.-PAGE 186. never wrote to them during her husband's life. It was a very short one. Barely a twelvemonth had elapsed after the knot was tied when there came a pitiful letter from her. Captain Rane had died just as her little son Oliver (named after a friend, she said) was born. Thomas Gass, to whom the letter had been specially written, gathered that she was left badly off, though she did not absolutely say it. He went into one of his fumes, and tossed the epistle across the desk to his partner. "You must do something for her, Gass," said John North afterward between her and her brothers: she cherished resentwhen he had read it.

Whom he had married, beyond the fact that she was the widow of Major Bohun, he did not know from Adam. For all she disclosed about her own family, in regard to whom she maintained an entire reticence, she might have dropped from the moon; but, from the airs and graces she put on, Mr. North might have concluded they were dukes and duchesses at least. Her late husband's family were irreproachable, both in character and position. The head of it was Sir Nash Bohun, representative of an ancient baronetcy, and elder brother of the late major.

Before the wedding tour was over, poor Mr. North found that his wife was a cold, imperious, extravagant woman, not to be questioned by any means if she chose not to be. When her fascinations were in full play, while she was only the widow of Bohun, Mr. North had been ready to think her quite an angel. Where had all the amiability flown?-he rubbed his mental eyes as he asked it. People do change after marriage, somehow.

dia's burning climate? He went out in the blaze of the midday sun, and was brought home dead!"

And nothing more, then or afterward, did Mr. North learn. Her manner rendered it impossible that he could press the subject. He might have applied to Sir Nash for information, but an instinct prevented his doing so.

After all, it did not signify to him what Major Bohun had died of, Mr. North said to himself, and determined to forget the matter. But that some mystery must have attended Major Bohun's death, some painful circumstances which could blanch his wife's face with sickly terror, remained on Mr. North's mind as a fact not to be contraverted.

Mrs. North effected changes. Almost the very day she was taken home to Whitborough, she let it be known that she should rule with an imperious will. Her husband became a very reed in her hands, yielding passively to her sway, as if all the spirit he ever owned had gone out of him. Mrs. North professed to hate the very name of trade; that one with whom she was so nearly connected should be in business, brought to her a sense of degradation and a great deal of talk of it.

A little circumstance occurred one day that, to put it mildly, had surprised Mr. North. He had been given to understand by his wife that Major Bohun died suddenly of sunstroke; she had certainly told him so. In talking at a dinner-party at Sir Nash Bohun's with some gentleman not long from India, he and Mr. North being side by side at the table after the ladies had retired, the subject of sunstrokes came up. "My wife's former husband, Major Bohun, died of one," in- of grandeur out of doors and in, combined with the haughty, nocently observed Mr. North.

The quiet, modest, comfortable home of Whitborough was at once given up for the more pretentious Manor Hall at Dallory Ham, which happened to be in the market. And they set up there in a style that might have more properly pertained to the lord lieutenant of the county. Perhaps it was her assumption

imperious manner, the like of which had never before been seen

'Died of what?" cried the other, putting down his claret- in the simple neighborhood, that caused people to take to call glass, which he was about to convey to his mouth.

her "Madame ;'' or it might have been to distinguish her from the first Mrs. North.

In proportion as Mrs. North made herself hated and feared by her husband, his children, and the household, so did she become popular with society. Madame put on all her attractions when out of doors; she visited, and dressed, and dined, and

Why, what did he die of, if it was not sunstroke?" asked spent, and gave fêtes again at Dallory Hall, utterly regardless of Mr. North, with curiosity.

“Well—I—I don't know. I'd rather say no more about it," was the conclusive reply; "of course, Mrs. North must know better than I."

expense.
borhood.

Little wonder was there that she swayed the neighNot the immediate neighborhood. With the exception of the Dallory family, and they did not live there now, there was

And no other words would he speak, save, as Mr. North saw, not a single person she would have visited. Some gentlepeople

evasive ones.

They were staying at this time at Sir Nash Bohun's. In passing through London after the Continental wedding-trip on their way to Whitborough, Sir Nash had invited them to make his house their resting-place. Not until the day following his conversation at the dinner table had Mr. North an opportunity of questioning his wife, but that some false representation, intentionally or otherwise, had been made to him on the subject of her late husband's death, he felt certain.

resided at Dallory Ham; Mrs. North did not condescend to know any of them. Report ran that, when they left cards on her on her first coming to the Hall, she had returned them in blank envelopes. People living at a greater distance she made friends with, but not these around her, and with as many of the county families as would make friends with her. The pleasantest times were those when she would betake herself off on long visits, to London, or elsewhere-they grew to be looked for.

Mr. Gass was a very wealthy man now, and had built himself a handsome and comfortable residence in Dallory.

They were alone in her dressing-room. Mrs. North, who had a mass of beautiful purple-black hair, was standing before the glass. doing something to a portion of it when her husband suddenly accosted her. He called her by her Christian name in those first married days. It was a very fine one. "Amanda, you told me, I think, that Major Bohun died of old bachelor, had married his housekeeper-not one of your sunstroke."

But, as the years went on, he was doomed to furnish food himself to all the gossips within miles. Dallory rose from its couch one fine morning to hear that Thomas Gass, the confirmed

"lady-housekeepers," but a useful, good, hard-working damsel, who had passed the first bloom of youth, and had not much of beauty to recommend her. It was a nine-days' wondernearly a rebellion.

The new Mrs. Gass, who had glided so easily into her honors, shook as easily down in them. She made an excellent wife to her ailing husband. She turned out to be a thoroughly capable woman of business; she was very good to the sick and suffering, caring for the poor, ready to give a helping hand wheresoever and whensoever it might be needed. In spite of her fine clothes, which sat ludicrously upon her, and of her mode of speech, which she did not attempt to get out of-above all, in spite of their own prejudices, Dallory grew to like and respect Mrs. Gass, and its small gentlepeople to admit her to their houses on an equality.

And so, time and years wore on, Mr. North withdrawing himself more and more from personal attendance on the business, which seemed to have grown utterly distasteful to him. His sons had become young men. Edmund was a civil engineer, by profession, at least, not much by practice. Never of strong