CHAPTER XI.

SOME three or four miles out from St. John, on the Nerepis road, stood a deserted house, with a ghostly reputation. Now, notwithstanding the exceeding popularity of ghosts, and the intense interest that attaches to their history, I am going to assert my utter and entire disbelief in the whole fraternity, including the whole round of signs, and warnings, and mysterious lights, etc., that make up such a delightful novelty in this prosaic world. But this house was certainly a fixed fact. I saw it with my own eyes one lovely May morning, and I will admit this much, that it perfectly answered my ideal of what a real, bona-fide, haunted house should be. It was a square, three-story wooden house, with an unusual number of windows in it, every individual pane of which was cracked or broken. And this was the mystery. Once, twice, thrice the house had been repaired, and the windows newly-set, and each time, before the rising of another sun, every single pane was broken, from basement to attic. No sound of hammer or shivered glass was ever heard, but silently and surely the work was done. There was no trace of footsteps about the yard, and the doors and windows all remained closely bolted. certain awe attached to the place, and for a long time the house had been untenanted. There was a forsaken look about the place that made me shudder, even in the bright sunshine, and, notwithstanding my skepticism, I wouldn't have cared to take lodgings in it. It was nearly midnight of the evening in which our last chapter closed, when a covered carriage drove cautiously into the desolate yard, and a tall, heavy-limbed man alighted therefrom, bearing in his arms an unconscious burden. He thrust his hand through the side-light, and slipping the bolt, the door swung open with a dull creak. He entered quickly, ascended the long stairs, one pair after another, until he reached the third story. There he deposited his burden on a pile of straw in one corner of the room, and, taking a dark lantern from his pocket, turned its rays full on the temple from which the blood

A

had trickled down to the heavy black beard, and one arm hung limp and powerless at his side. But the man's breathing was regular and heavy-too heavy to be altogether natural. He took an old blanket from a chair and threw it over the man; then he went to a little closet and took out a pitcher of water, a loaf of bread, and some meat. These he placed in the chair, and drew them up beside the sleeping man. Then he cast a quick glance around the room, and a look of satisfaction lighted up the deep-set gray eyes. As he turned the light about the apartment, it revealed the fact that there was not a single window in it. It was a curious, octagonshaped room, nearly in the centre of the building, and had doubtless been originally used as a store-room, as an aperture above, now boarded over, showed there had once been a scuttle window there, which probably served the double purpose of sunning and airing the room. The man was evidently satisfied with his scrutiny, and after taking one more look at his sleeping prisoner, passed out of the room and locked the door, and then slipped a heavy bar of iron across it.

It was a grave, troubled face, that, the morning following, pored absently over the law volumes in Mr. Vanstone's office. Arthur St. Orme was by no means a vain man, but he was not hardly obtuse enough to misunderstand the nature of Miss Livingston's sentiments towards himself. The interview of the evening previous had been extremely embarrassing to him; first, from the circumstance that the lady had lost a large sum of money, and papers, which, she said, with ill-concealed agitation, were of much greater value to her than money, during her absence in town that afternoon. The house had been entered, and the money abstracted from her private writing-desk in her own room. Of course she would not wish to implicate the Wallaces, but it was a little strange that no one but Annie knew of the secret spring that opened it. She had once shown it to her as a matter of curiosity, the box having been brought with her from England.

He could not forget the strange glitter in

her eyes when he warmly resented the imputation cast upon Annie. Neither could he forget how she had gone even further, and boldly declared that John Randolph was on the point of leaving for the States, and very plainly intimated that Annie was to be his companion. He had no heart to combat her statements, for had he not seen her, a few moments before, drive away with him? He had covered his face with his hands and sank into a chair. And now came the most humiliating part of it. He could not forget the white, jewelled, fingers that had fluttered caressingly over his hair-or the glowing, passionate face, with the soft fire in the languid eyes, into which he had looked, yet with eyes that saw not, because of his great pain. But he could not help feeling her warm breath on his cheek as with lips close to his ear she whispered softly:

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Forget her, Arthur; she is not the only woman in the world."

"But she loved me!" he had answered, sadly.

"But does not now," was the passionate reply. “O Arthur! do you not know—can you not see that-my God! Arthur St. Orme, are you utterly blind! must I?—”

But now a studden perception of the truth dawned upon him, and he hastily interrupted her with:

"Yes, Miss Livingston, I am blind to the attractions of every other woman in the world, while Annie Wallace lives! I have loved her with my whole heart and soul for more than fifteen years. There is no other woman in the world for me!" And seizing his hat, he rushed down the steps, and somehow, he hardly knew himself, reached home.

There was but one thing that he remembered distinctly. As he came down the steps of Lindenwold, he ran full against a tall, heavy-limbed man, who, with a muttered malediction, slouched stealthily away.

He copied some law business in the course of the day, in a sort of mechanical way. There were only two things that roused him out of the mental paralysis that hung like an incubus upon him. Once he saw Miss Livingston drive by with Paul Russel. The lady looked up, and smiled and bowed graciously, but he was vaguely conscious of a peculiar glitter in her eyes that he never saw there before. The other thing, and which moved him far more, was seeing Annie Wallace and John Randolph walking in the direction of North Wharf. "Could it be possible," he wondered, "that

Annie was going with Randolph ?" and then he despised himself for the thought. It was doubtless a mere accident-her meeting with Randolph; and he resolved to watch closely, and when she returned, to go out and join her, even if Randolph was with her. But though he watched all day, refusing to go down to his dinner, for fear he might lose her, and then, hoping against hope, did the same thing at supper time, yet she never

came.

In the early evening Mr. Vanstone came home from a three days' absence at Fredericton, whither he had been on some important business. A gentleman from England, a distant cousin of Mrs. Vanstone's, accompanied him. The gentleman's name was Wayne, and after the greetings were over, in reply to a question of Mrs. Vanstone's as to how he had ever thought he could leave England, he said:

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"Well, perhaps I had better confess. I came on rather a visionary errand. I once had a very dear little cousin, whom I loved, I am afraid, even better than a cousin. But she only saw 'Cousin Paul' in me, and foolishly enough fell in love with, and married, a younger son of a high and wealthy family. He was a miserable fellow, and deserted her and her three year old boy, for the unholy wiles and blandishments of an accursed actress. She struggled on the best way she could for a year or two, and then sailed for some American port. I was absent on the continent at the time, and for several years after. The husband has since died, but not till after he had married the actress, by whom he had two children. I know you will say it is a very foolish and romantic thing for a man of my years, but I doubt if romance ever quite dies out of the heart of ever so practical a man, and I was always a little visionary; and so, to cap the climax, I have set out on this quixotic expedition in search of my little Mary. I have already been in New York and Boston, and spent weeks in examining hotel registers and passenger lists-as far as they had been preserved-of twenty-five years ago. Two weeks ago I came down to Halifax, and running by chance across your husband, we discovered a mutual surprise, etc., that we were, by marriage, fourth cousins!"

"I am just as glad to see you as though I had always known I had such a cousin, which, I am sorry to say, I did not.”

There was a loud and hurried rap at the door, and almost immediately the voice of

William Wallace, asking excitedly, for Arthur St. Orme.

A sudden presentiment that something had happened to Annie came over Arthur, startling him from the half-conscious reverie in which he had listened to the story of Mr. Wayne. He reached the door with two hasty strides, and met the pained, terrified face of Mr. Wallace.

"Annie?" he gasped.

"O my God! then you haven't seen her!" he said, in a tone of utter despair.

"I saw her this morning," Arthur faltered, with a sinking heart.

"Where did you see her? speak quick!"

"I saw her pass this house with John Randolph, and though I watched till dark, she did not go back."

"Yes, yes, I know that. Randolph has gone to the States, went in the 'Admiral' this morning. Annie came into town between seven and eight this morning. Miss Livingston came over very early and wanted her to come in for some special errands for her; some sort of fancy stuff, that she daren't trust Asa to get; and she had a terrible headache, she said, and indeed she did look wretchedly." "But I saw Miss Livingston in town this afternoon."

"Yes, I know. Annie had only three places to go to, they were written down on a paper so she would make no mistake. We expected her back by ten; we waited till one, and then Miss Livingston rode in herself, and I could not wait, and so came too. We have searched for her all the afternoon, but cannot find the least trace of her, save one shop on Duke street where the clerk says she came about eight o'clock, and purchased some worsteds. Miss Livingston is feeling dreadfully about it, and blaming herself for sending her. She suggested that possibly you might know something about her," he said, despairingly.

Arthur reproached himself bitterly for the coldness which he had allowed to spring up between them, and thought, with a sudden fear, that perhaps it had troubled her as much as it had him, and maybe she had-poor child! he dare not finish the sentence, but he shuddered as he remembered the dark, deep waters that skirted the wharves.

"You must go home with me, Arthur," Mr. Wallace said, “I dare not face her mothercoward that I am! unless I carry back her child."

"Certainly, father, I shall go with you; and

who knows but we may find our darling safe at home?"

But they did not. And one, and two, and three days slipped away, and still no tidings came of the missing girl. Miss Livingston was untiring in her efforts to discover her, although it was very evident that she believed she had gone away with Randolph; and, after a few days, it grew to be the generally received opinion, that what was at first regarded as an abduction, was simply an elopement. How much of this belief took its coloring from Miss Livingston's opinion, I cannot say, but there were three persons who never believed it; perhaps their anguish would have been more bearable if they had. Her father and mother, and Arthur, mourned her as dead, or perhaps worse than dead. One thing seemed a little strange to Arthur. Miss Livingston made no further mention of the loss of her money and papers, and set about speedy measures for the disposal of her property, preparatory to a return to England.

CHAPTER XII.

AMY CLAIR stood folding up the last pair of pants, that completed the first bundle of work she had done since Alice had died. The poor have little time for grief, and Amy's nerveless fingers had been compelled to take up the burden of toil, and stitch her tears and sighs into the senseless garments. But to-night she had completed her work, and after taking it home, was going out to Alice's grave. Timmy Bryne had brought her some chrysanthemums, and the quick tears came into her eyes as she remembered how she had loved them. It was rather late before she started; the days were short, too, but to-morrow would bring its work, and to-night was all the leisure she had. However, there was a young moon, and it was but a trifle over a mile out, on the Nerepis road. After leaving her bundle at Breen & Son's, she hurried out of the city. It was beginning to grow quite dusky when she came in sight of the cemetery. She almost wished she had asked Timmy to come with her; but she had somehow felt as if, this first time, she had rather be alone.

It was quite dark when she arose from her knees, where, for awhile, she had been unconscious of everything save her own loneliness, and the dear senseless dust beneath the fresh mold. Her eyes were blinded with tears, and unconsciously she took quite another path from the one she had entered by. It came

out a little higher up the road, and led by an old, unused tomb, under the shadow of two gloomy hemlocks. She felt a trifle nervous as she approached it, and was hurrying by with quickened steps, when a faint groan, issuing directly from the tomb, sent the blood in icy waves to her heart. She tried to run, but her strength utterly forsook her, and she could only gaze in a sort of fixed horror on the door of the tomb.

The first sight that met her eyes did not at all serve to reassure her. A face, ghostly in its pallor, with a white cloth bound about the temples, upon which, by the light of the moon, she could distinctly see stains of blood. O, if she could only fly, or cry out!

"Do not be alarmed, lady," said a faint, pained voice. "I am not a ghost, however much I may look like one, or however circumstances might warrant the belief. I am in great pain though, and do not know how soon I may be a ghost, if I do not get relief." Amy's fear vanished on the instant. If any one was in pain or trouble it was recommendation enough to her; and so she came quietly and fearlessly up to the door of the tomb, and looked with pitying eyes into the dark, pallid face, with the heavy black beard matted with blood. Then she touched the limp, nerveless

arm.

"You are wounded, and your arm is broken, I think; how did it happen?"

"It is a long story, and I-I believe I am faint." And in his effort to steady himself, he dislodged a loose stone, and fell prone at her feet.

She raised his head to her lap, and tried to fan him with her hood which she had caught off. He opened his eyes with a faint groan. "I think my ankle is broken too," he whispered.

“Then you can't walk," she said, despairingly. "What am I to do with you? I never can go away and leave you here, for you would be sure to die, and I can think of no way to get you to the city."

"You are a tender-hearted little thing," he said, softly. "Are you afraid to sit here while I tell you my story ?"

"Afraid? no. But if I could get you where you would be more comfortable first. You are in too much pain to talk."

"What, are you willing to help me, without knowing anything more about me?"

"I know you are suffering, that is enough. If you can lay back here, and try to be patient, I will go to the city as quick as I can,

and I have a friend who I think will come out here, and take you wherever you ŝay."

"Alas, I have nowhere to go! Little girl, I have nowhere, in all the wide world, one single friend!"

Something in the plaintive tone, as well as in their kindred circumstances-only that she was better off-touched her heart.

"I will be your friend, then," she said, softly, folding the shawl for him to lie upon. "See here, child, let me look in your face. Are you quite sure you are mortal, and not an angel?"

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Quite sure," she answered, brightly, smiling down into the wan face. "And now, if I am going to be your friend, you must do precisely as I tell you. You must be very still for-well, maybe an hour. I will see what I can do for you."

"Stop a moment, little one. I have an enemy-one who should, by the ties of nature, be my friend. I think if she knew that I was alive, and in 'St. John, that my life would not be worth the little it is."

"I will try to take care of that; but you must tell me who it is."

"Olive Livingston." "What!" sharply, stooping and grasping his arm in her excitement.

"It is true, young lady, strange as it may seem to you. She has sworn never to acknowledge me, and because I have proofs that imperil her claims upon the Lindenwold property, she has had me confined in an old house-a dreary, desolate place, uninhabited save by a man who does her diabolical work." In his excitement he tried to rise on his elbow, but fell back fainting. Amy waited a moment till he rallied; and forbidding him to speak again, started on a swift pace for the city.

In less than an hour a light hack, with a bed inside, and Timmy Bryne's honest face outside, drew up alongside the ruined tomb under the hemlocks.

"Any poor divil here with a broken head, what wants a hack?" sang out a cheery voice.

A faint groan was the only reply.

"O don't go to takin' on now! It's worth havin' half a dozen broken heads and arms to be nussed by such a swate young lady as come to me, and with tears in her purty eyes, said, 'Now, Timmy, if you love me, go out to the cemetery, and bring home to your own house, a poor divil of a ghost, which you will find there in a tomb,' only she didn't say it in

the same words, but it all amounted to the same thing. Well, she knew I loved her, and would go through purgatory hunting up ghosts, to save her; and so you see, here I am, and if you want a ride in one of the most ilegant hacks in the province, just jump aboard. Easy there, my jewel!" he cried, as the poor fellow tried to steady himself on his feet. "I always waits on my passengers ;" and lifting him in his strong arms as he would an infant, he laid him carefully on the pillows which Amy had arranged, and before ten o'clock, he lay snugly tucked up in good Nanny Bryne's best bed, his broken arm set and bandaged, his sprained ankle pulled in place, and the blood washed from his temple and beard, and his hair brushed softly away from the pallid face.

The little lodging room in Germain street was closed, and the bundle of work still lay on the shelves at Breen & Son's untouched; and in the humble cottage of Nanny Bryne, a human soul lay, for days and days, in a balance which a feather's weight might turn! Never had son or brother tenderer or more faithful care, than the poor fellow who "had not a friend in the world." One day he opened his eyes to the sweet truth. He lay a moment looking about him; he took in the humble home, the quiet restfulness and homely comfort of the place, and the sweet face sitting contentedly by his bedside, and remembering all they had done for him, a sense of his own wickedness and unworthiness came up before him so vividly that he burst into a sudden and uncontrollable fit of weeping. You see, he was very weak, and O, so unused to kindness!

Amy was terribly frightened, and thought, in his critical state, that it would prove fatal to his recovery.

"Please don't," she said, bending over him, her own eyes filling with ready sympathy. “You have been so ill, and it will make you worse, I am sure."

"Do you care?"

"To be sure I care! Didn't I say I would be your friend?”

A fresh burst of tears followed this reply, and then he said, in a weak, broken voice:

"Let me cry, child; perhaps it will wash some of the stains from my soul. I have not shed a tear before for twenty years!"

And old Nanny said:

"Let the lad cry, it will ease his heart." "Little girl," he said, one day, when he was able to sit bolstered up in bed, "I want

to tell you about myself. I have been wanting to do it ever since that day when I wept some of the blackness and hardness out of my heart. But I have dreaded doing it, for fear you would scorn me and hate me, when you knew what a wicked, miserable fellow I was; and, O, it would kill me if you turned from me! It I had had a sister like you, little one, I shouldn't have been so bad; but all the women I ever knew were so different from you! But I don't say this in excuse for my sins; they are black enough, and enough of my own doing, God knows. I have been all my life a dissolute, reckless fellow.' I suppose I tried Olive, who was always terribly proud, and who, as I said before, hated me, and scorned all my attempts at reformation. Our father was the younger brother of Sir Thomas Livingston, and truth compels me to say that he was a more reckless and dissolute man than I have ever been. He broke one woman's heart, which, thank God! I have never done. By some chance Olive discovered-I think she accidentally came across it in a newspaper advertisement-that the Livingston property was without an heir. She was taken suddenly ill and died; that is, that was the report, and even I believed it for awhile. But by some strange chance I also came across one of this Vanstone's advertisements, and the whole secret of her sudden death flashed upon me in an instant. It was a well-planned ruse to deceive me, and and in that way effectually, as she supposed, rid herself of me. But fate, or I think now, Providence, ordained that her schemes should be frustrated; for I, by another strange chance, discovered that neither of us was the true heir, but that the true heir still lived, though in utter ignorance of the fact. With this secret I went to Lindenwold, promising to keep it if she would share the property with me. You see how destitute I was of right principle, even then; but I deluded myself with sophistries that it was as much mine as his. I see the right way now, and only wait for strength to set matters right. But I have not told you how I came in the strait you found me.

"One afternoon, when I knew she was away, I went to Lindenwold and went over the whole house; at first, with no other motive than curiosity to see how she lived, and how many of the old Livingston relics still existed. I found nearly all the ancient furniture packed away in one room, covered with dust and cobwebs. But everywhere else the most