Strange Stories

ssion station at Effuenta. There were two Methodist missionaries stationed ther

naked, barefooted, and inspired with an overpowering emotion, he threaded his path through the darkness among the creepers and lianas of the forest in true African fashion. Stooping here, creeping on all f

sly. "What do you want?" he asked in Fantee of the bar

eedy," the bare-legged savage answered, al

letter?" asked

him in a few words how the Butabué people had pillaged John's hut at night and stolen hi

Felton died three days ago of the fever. You can

rd at him, and fancied he had seen his face before, but he never eve

hes, and the bare-limbed man took it in his arms and

the lonely missionary. "Won't you ta

t himself for the moment, and answered, "Thank you" in English. The missionary stared, but thought it was only

he open space outside the village of Butabué. There he stayed awhile, and behind a clump of wild ginger, he opened the bundle and arrayed himself once more from head to foot in English c

ooked at his watch, which stood hard by on the little wooden table. "Sixty miles in fourteen hours," he said aloud. "Better time by a

her eyes?" he a

the woman. Till last night she

out four o'clock; then Ethel's eyes began to alter their expression. He saw the di

ry. "John," she exclaimed, with a sort of awakening hopefuln

d, Ethie dearest, to ask such a question now. At Standen's, in the High at O

s a dream, a horrid dream, John, or a terr

ie darling," he said, "you are wandering, I'm afrai

ear a Fantee dress, and dance with a

a terrible delirium

ind if I die now." And she sank back e

solemnly, in Fantee, "you will have to answer

you think, you negro wench, I wouldn't give my poor, miserable, black soul to eternal torments a thous

er like a woman, doing everything that was possible for her in the bare little hut, and devouring his full heart with a horrible gnawing remorse too deep for pen or tongue to probe and fathom. For civilization with John Creedy was really at bottom far more than a mere veneer; though the savag

my way back to England as a common sailor, and send her home by the mail with my remaining money. I will never inflict my presence upon her again, for she cannot be persuaded, if once she recovers, that she did not see me, as she did see me, a bare-limbed heathen Fantee brandishing a devilish tom-tom. But I shall get work in England-not a parson's; that I can never be again-but clerk's work,

is prayer was about to be fulfilled. "John," she said feeb

eaven, splendide mendax, answer

ut her eyes. It was

ristians, the catechist and his wife: Ethel was too holy a thing for their African hands to touch. Next he put on his white surplice, and for the first and only time in his life he read, without a quaver in his voice, the Church of England burial service over the open grave. And when he had finished he went back to his desolate hut, and cried with a loud voice of

er who comes up the river which one, among a crowd of dilapidated negroes who lie basking in the

TREX'S E

fic distinction, for he is now barely forty; but to look at his tall, spare, earnest figure, and his clear-cut, delicate, intellectual face, you would scarcely imagine that he had once been the hero of a singularly strange and romantic s

ollege boat, and was a fine, athletic young man of the true English university pattern. Handsome, too, then and always, but with a more human-looking and ordinary handsomeness when he was young than in these latter times of his scientific eminence.

e whole course of modern physics. But, as often happens with young men of twenty-five, there was another subject which divided his attention with the grand theory of his life: and that subject was the pretty daughter of his friend and instructor, Dr. Abury, the eminent authority on the treatment

d run smooth; and yet it seems somehow as if ours was wonderfully smoothed over for us by everybody and everything.

the course of our love run any the rougher; for certainly we do seem to have every happiness laid out most temptingly before us

ty put in hastily. "It sounds

bout signs and portents!" And he kissed her wee hand tenderly, and went home to his bachelor lodging wi

e girl that ever lived; and she's as good as she's sweet, and as loving as she's beautiful. What a dreadful thing it is for a man in love to have to read up medicine for his next examination!" and he took a medical book down from the shelf with a sigh, and pretended to be deeply interested in the diagnosis of scarlet fever till his cigar was finished. But, if

managed to hear it through, and even take in the greater part of its import. As he left the room to go down the hospital stairs, he had his mind fairly distracted between the premonitory symptoms of insanity and Hetty Abury. "Was there ever such an unfortunate profession as medicine for a man in love?" he

faces at Arthur Greatrex. Arthur was so much preoccupied at the moment, however, that he hardly had time to notice the eccentric stranger; and, as he took him for one of the harmless lunatic patients in the mental-diseases ward, he would have passed on without further observing the man but for an odd circumstance which occurred as they both reached the great central landing together. Arthur happened to drop the book he was c

en down those steps a hundred times before: nothing but a big mirror, which reflected and doubled the one-sided flight from top to bottom. It was only his moment

most horrible and ghastliest grimaces-grimaces such as he had never seen equalled save by the monkeys at the Zoo, and (horridest thought of all!) by the worst patients in the mental-disease ward. He pulled himself up in speechles

to pucker up his mouth and draw down the corners of his lips into one-sided grimaces. As he passed down the streets, he watched his own image faintly reflected in the panes of the windows, and saw that he was maintaining outward decorum, but only with a conscious and evident struggle. At one doorstep a little child was playing with a kitten; Arthur Greatrex, who was a naturally kindly man, looked down at her and smiled, in spite of his preoccupation: inste

ll, Hetty would be expecting him; Hetty would be disappointed if he didn't come; he certainly mustn't break his engagement with dear little Hetty. After all, he began to say to himself, what was it but a mere twitching of his face, probably a slight nervous affection? Young doctors are always nervous about themselves, they say; they find all the

lightful; and long before Arthur went away the twitching in his face had altogether ceased to trouble him. Once or twice, indeed, in the course of the afternoon he happened to glance casually at the looking-glass above the drawing-room fireplace (those were the pre-Morrisian days when overmantels as yet were not), and he saw to his great c

he street boy stuck his tongue into the corner of his cheek and uttered derisive shouts from a safe distance, Arthur concluded he was only doing after the manner of his kind out of pure gratuitous insolence. He went home to his lodgings and sat down to

sjunctive nature of electric energy; Joule was wrong here, because he had failed to understand the real antithesis between potential and kinetic. He laid down the books, paced up and down the room thoughtfully, and beheld the whole concrete theory of interrelation embodying itself visibly before his very eyes. At last he grew fired with the

midnight. The whole theory had come up so distinctly before his mind's eye, under the exceptional exaltation of first love, and the powerful stimulus of the day's excitement, that he wrote it off as though he had it by heart; omitting only the mathematical calculations, which he left blank, not because he had not got them clearly in his head, but because he would not stop hi

when suddenly in the mirror before him he saw the same horrible mocking face which had greeted him so unexpectedly that morning on the hospital staircase. It was a face of inhuman devilry; the face of a medi?val demon, a hideous, grinning, distorted ghoul, a very caricature and insult upon the features of humanity. In his dismay he dropped the frame and the photograph, shivering the glass that covered it into a thousand atoms. Summoning up all his resolution, he looked again. Ye

e he knew the real meaning of the horro

Then at last he rose nervously from his seat, and reached down a volume from the shelf behind him. It was Prang's "Treatise

r semi-conscious tendency to produce a series of extraordinary facial distortions. At times, the sufferer is not aware of the movements thus initiated; at other times they are quite voluntary, and are accompanied by bodily gestures of contempt or derision for passing strangers.' Why, that's what must have happened with that boy this morning!

clearer in my life. I couldn't have done a piece of good work like that, bristling with equations and figures and formulas, if my head was really giving way. I seemed to grasp the subject as I never grasped it in my life before. I never worked so w

chapter, till at last a few words in the title struck his eye, and he hurried on to the paragraph the

s new truths crowding upon him with the most startling and vivid objectivity. He perceives intimate relations of things which he never before suspected. He destroys at one blow the Newtonian theory of gravitation; he discovers obvious flaws in the nebular hypothesis of Laplace; he gives a scholar's-mate to Kant in the very fundamental points of the 'Critique of Pure Reason.' The more serious the attack, the more utterly convinced is the patient of the exceptiona

tia, acute dementia; nothing but acute dementia ahead of me, whichever way I happen to turn. Oh, this is too horrible! I shall never be able to marry Hetty! And y

een his teeth, tossing them with a gesture of impatient disgust into the waste-paper basket; "how could I ever have deluded myself into thinking I had hit off-hand upon a grand truth

merely pulled off his boots, lay down in his clothes upon the bed, and hastily blew out the candle. For a long time he lay tossing and turning in unspeakable terror; but at last, after perhaps two hours

t it over once more, the conviction forced itself afresh upon him that he was right upon the matter after all, and that if he was going mad there was at least method in his madness. So firmly was he convinced upon this point now (though he recognized that that very certainty might be

sentation to a learned society. But he did not mean now to offer it to any society: he had a far deeper and more personal interest in the matter at present than that. He wanted to settle firs

physical philosopher in all England. To him, then, Arthur Greatrex-a far deeper and clearer thinker-took in all humility the first manuscript of his marvellous discovery; not to ask him whether it was true or not, but to find out whether it was physical science at all or pure insanity. The professor received him kindly; and when Arthur, who had of course his own reasons for attempting a little modest concealment, asked him to look over a friend's paper for him, with a view to its presentation to the Royal Society, he cheerfully promised to do his best. "Though you will admit, my dear Mr. Greatrex," he said with his blandest smile, "that your friend's manuscript certainly does not err on the

t you may ward off this threatened danger. Society, amusement, relaxation, complete cessation of scientific work, absence, as far as possible, of mental anxiety in any form, may enable you to tide over the turning point. But that there is danger threatened, it would be unkind and untrue not to warn you. I

brain swimming and reeling. "Absence of mental anxiety!" he said to himself bitterly. "How calmly they talk about mental anxiety! How can I possibly be free from anx

e leave of Hetty for ever. For, deeply as Arthur Greatrex loved her, he loved her too well ever to dream of marrying her if the possible shadow of madness was to cloud her future life with its perpetual presence. Better she should bear the shock, even if it killed her at once, than that both should live in ceaseles

on of its chances for presentation to the Royal Society. He was sitting at his breakfast-table, in his flowered dressing-gown and slippers, when Arthur

talent. "You see I have been reading your friend's paper, as I promised. Well, my dear sir, not to put too fine a point upon it, it won't hold water. In

in as unconcerned a tone as possible, "Well, to tell you the truth

cal thinking, but there's no real meaning in it of any sort. It's gassy, unsubstantial, purely imaginative." And the professor waved his hand in the air to indicate its utter gaseousness. "If you were to ask my own opinion about it, I should say it's the sort of thin

eyes almost bursting with the tears he would not let come to the surface. "It will be

inions, and think you a perfect fool for disagreeing with them. Mark my words, Mr. Greatrex, your friend will still go on believ

to him at that moment more obviously true and certain in all its deductions than it had e

ay blindly through the passage to the front door and out into the square. Thence he staggered home wearily, convin

oung's theory of undulations, and had since used them about every new discovery from that day to the one on which he th

more that awful face-his own-distorted and almost diabolical, which he had learnt so soon to hate instinctively as if it were a felon's and a murderer's. He rushed away wildly into

ancing at the title. "You don't mean to say that you've finally writt

h to heaven I hadn't, for it's all mad

g in physics I ever listened to. Let me have the manuscript to look over, and see how

I'm not left alone I shall break down and cry before you." And a

n and there: he grasped his friend's arm gently with his hand, spoke never a word, and, taking up his hat and the manuscript, walked quietly out into the passage. T

ith evident grief; but there was no mistaking the firm purport of his intentions. Conferring this morning with his professional friend Warminster, a case had been mentioned to him, without a name, which he at once recognized as Arthur's. He recalled certain symptoms he had himself observed, and his suspicions were thus vividly aroused. Happening accidentally to follow Arthur in the street he was convinced that his surmise was correct, and he though

pa so cruel as not to tell her the reason? He couldn't have done anything in the slightest degree dishonourable, far less anything wicked: of that she felt sure; but, if not, what could be this horrible, mysterious, unknown barrier that was so suddenly raised between them? "Do write, dearest Arthur, and relieve me from this terrible, incomprehensible sus

et

not see the doctor; he was engaged with two other doctors in a consultation about Miss Hetty. What was the matter with Miss Hetty, then? What, didn't he know that? Oh, Miss Hetty

great shock-a great shock to her affections-which, he added in a lower voice, "you yourself can p

y," said Arthur to his friend. "I can

you had told me all this before. If you had done so, we might have saved Miss Abury a shock which may perhaps be fatal. You are no more going mad than I am; on the contrary, you're about the sanest and most clear-headed fellow of my acquaintance. But these mad-doctors are always findin

g from. I shall tell you all about them some other time. However, as you say, what we have to think about

unconscious on the sofa in her own boudoir; but Freeling's opinion that it might po

was very white, and her hands pale and bloodless. He took one hand in his: the pulse was hardly perceptible. He laid i

e to time that his face was again twitching horribly. However, he had only thoughts for one thing now: would Hetty die or would she recover? The servants brought t

ook her hand in his gently. Her staring gaze fell upon him for a mo

ll my heart and soul, as

le wine in a teaspoon, and she drank it quietly. Then s

aid that if he was with her, she was happy. When Freeling came to inquire after the patient, he found her so much stronger, and Arthur so worn with fear and sleeplessness, that he insisted upon carrying off his friend in his b

side with human patients; but this particular monkey fascinated him even in his present shattered state of nerves, because there was a something in its face which seemed strangely and horribly familiar to him. As he looked, he recognized with a feeling of unspeakable aversion wha

r might it be one more delusion, showing that his brain was now giving way entirely? He rubbed his eyes, steadied his attention, and look

frightened tone, "look at thi

voice, "you have really got madness on the brain at present. No, he isn't mad at

s doing. He's grimacing and contorting hi

ey?" Harry Freeling answered coolly. "Tak

mace like this one,

ve got him here. I'm going to operate upon him f

ed. "Operate upon him, cure him!" he cried

ction carried ad absurdum. You don't mean to say you object to operations upon a monkey for his own benefit, do you? If I don't cu

atter with the monkey? Fo

the ailments of a tame monkey, and at such a moment, too! "Well," he answered slowly, "the monkey has got facial distortions due to a slight local paralysis of the inhibitory nerves supplied to the buccal and pharyngeal mu

in human beings?"

ozens of cases. Why, goodness gracious, Arthur, it's po

. "Do you think this twitching of mine is due to a loca

eally do look so absurdly comical. No, I d

was wrong in taking it for a

mean to tell me, Arthur, that that was the sole ground on wh

cribed it to him, and he drew his inference from what I told him. But the real question is

an hour. I've done it dozens of times before, and know the t

he said bitterly, "this terrible m

ack to the Aburys'. When he got there he learned from the servant that Hetty was at l

h Greatrex's face has never since been liable to these curious contortions, the consequent relaxation of the muscles has given his features that peculiarly calm and almost impassive expression which everybody must have noticed upon them at the present day, even in moments of the greatest animation. The difficulty was how t

re Hetty and Arthur were sitting together, and threw a letter with a French official stamp on its face down up

her tone, "Ah, Dr. Freeling, that subject has been far too

othing in it. Thereupon your future husband, who is a modest and self-depreciating sort of fellow, was minded to throw it incontinently into the waste-paper basket. But a friend of his, Harry Freeling, who flatters himself that he can see an inch or two beyond his own nose, read it over, and recognized that it was a brilliant discovery. So what does he go and do-here comes in the apologetic matter-but get this memoir quietly translated into French, affix a motto to it, put it in an envelope, and send it

eeling," she said with brimming eyes. "I owe Arthur to you; and Arthur owes me to

into German; but to this moment, happy as they both are, you can read in their faces the lasting marks of that one terrible anxiety. To many of their friends it seemed afterwards a mere la

CH

n, the cleverest literary hostess at this moment living in London. Herself a well-known novelist, she collects around her all the people worth knowing, at h

man's rights; and if there is a person on earth who can make it absolutely unendurable, that person is Miss Amelia Hogg. So I let her speak on placidly in her own interminable manner about the fortunes of the Bill-she always talks as though her own pet Bill were the only

on the "Physiology of Perception" is one of the most masterly pieces of analytic work I have ever met with in the whole course of my psychological reading. It was to me, I confess, who approac

le a look round the corner to see who my philosophic neighbour might happen to be. An Oxford don, no doubt, I said to

the official amber silk robe and purple slippers of a mandarin of the third grade, and the silver button. My curiosity was so fully aroused by this strange discovery that I determined to learn something more about so curious a product of an alie

of taste for European literature. Introduce you?-of course, this minute." And she led the way back to where my Oriental phenomenon was still sitting, deep as ever in philosophical problems with Profes

ctly European tastes, he had early passed all his examinations in China, and had been selected by the Celestial Government as one of the first batch of students sent to Europe to acquire the tongues and the sciences of the Western barbarians. Chung's billet was to England; and here, or in France, he had lived with a few intervals ever since he first came to man's estate. He had picked up our language quickly; had taken a degree at London University; and had made himself thoroughly at home in English literature. In fact, he was practicall

quiringly after a time. "You could never endure life among y

not reflect what my position actually is. My Government may recall m

d not like Ch

red civilized habits and modes of thought to live among such a set of more than medi?val barbarians as my countrymen still remain at the present day. Oh no; God grant I may never have to return there permanently, for it would be more than I could endure.

t patriotic," I

ask me if I could live in China. No, I couldn't; and for the best of all possible reasons-they wouldn't let me. You don't know what the furious prejudice and blind superstition of that awful country really is. Before I had been there three months they would accuse me either of foreign practices or, what comes to much the same thin

t with all the terrible things that one had read in books about the prisons and penal laws of China. That a graduate of London University, a philosopher learned in all the political wisdom of Ricardo, Mill, and H

ntment I would of course be an utter failure, a manifest impossibility. But there is really no accounting for the wild vagaries and caprices of the Vermilion Pencil. For aught I know to the contrary, I might even

ation grafted on an immemorial Eastern stock; and I had read enough of China to know that what he said about his probable fate if he returned there

person I had found him, they were both inclined rather to laugh at me for my enthusiastic description. Effie, in particular, jeered much at the notion of an intelligent and earnest-minded Chinaman. "You k

nswered; "it is an amiable w

are cheap," said Effie, "horribly cheap of late years-a perfect drug in the market; but a Chinaman is still, thank Heaven, at a social premium." Now, though I am an obedient enough husband, as husbands go, I don't always accede to Marian's wishes in these matters; but everybody takes it for granted that Effie's will is law. Effie, I may mention parenthetical

f the evening they were both quite as much taken with his delightful personality as I myself had originally been. One link leads on to another; and the end of it all was that when we went down for our summer villeggiatura to Abbot's Norbury, nothing would please Marian but that Mr. Chung must be inv

dent on the small feet of Chinese ladies. I had often noticed that Chung was very reticent about China; he did not like talking about his native country; and he was most pleased and most a

you bring her to London. I suppose one of these days, on one of your f

gnity; "I shall never marry-that I

mistake. They become so selfish, and frumpish, and old-bachelorish." Dear Marian has a high idea of the servic

, I could never marry a Chinawoman; I am too thoroughly Europeanized for that; we should have absol

le are all heathens. Why, goodness gracious, Mr. Chung, if i

answered to the lady who asked him what religion he professed? 'Madam, the religion to w

me back to the future Mrs. Chung. I'm quite disappointed you won't

opean, of course

ung echoed with true Or

showed in itself that she instinctively felt the gulf as much as any of us. If Chung had been a white man instead

at is not all. You must remember that I am still a subject of the Chinese Empire, and a member of the Chinese Civil Service. I may any day be recalled to China, and of course-I say 'of course' this time advisedly-it would be absolutely impossible for me to take an English wife to Pekin with me. So I am placed in this awkward dilemma. I would never care to marry anybody except a Euro

ing, as we sat smoking in the arbour after the ladies had retired, I said to him quietly, "Tell me, Chung, if you really dislike China so very much, and a

d never willingly let me become a naturalized Englishman; and if I tried to manage it against their will they would demand my extradition, and would carry their point, too, as a matter of international courtesy, for one nation could never interfere with the accredited representative of another, or with any of his suite. Even if I were to abs

a Chinaman is human. And when a Chinaman happens to have perfect manners, noble ideas, delicate sensibility, and a chivalrous respect for English ladies, it is perhaps just within the bounds of conceivability that at some odd moments an English girl might for a second partially forget his oblique eyelids and his yellow skin. I was sometimes half afraid that it might be so with Effie; and though I don'

, and in coming home happened to walk above the little arbour in the shrubbery by the upper path. A seat let into the hedge bank overhung the summer-house, and here we both s

s saying, with a softly regretful cad

other voice was Effie's. "What

alled to China; I got the letters o

nd you never told us! Why di

ld interest yourselves

as a deep air of rep

so kind as you have all shown yourselves to be. No; my real reason was that I did

ly-

ent forward, Marian held my wrist with an imploring gesture, and earnestly put her finger on my lips. I was overborne, and I regret to say I stopped and listened. Marian did not utter a word, but speaking rapidly on her fingers, as we all had learnt to do for poor Tom, she sai

" Effie

not leave without telling you how deepl

ng," she asked earnestly; "why h

ther not

ins

gn tastes and habits, which have been repo

will do to you. They may kill you on some absurd charge

all on my own account-we Chinese are an apathetic race, you know-but I should b

me the tone was one

ay come to no harm; at any rate, it will not matter much to any one but myself. Now let us go ba

ust understand more about this. There is plenty of

ght you out here, and I am quite sure I ought not to s

I must hear all about this. Mr. Chung, why don't you s

ll you why," he answered slowly; "because I cannot. I am a servant o

ldn't enforce

Your Government

and hide for a while, and then come ou

naman couldn't get work in England as a clerk or anything

s. Both were evidently thinking it

think they will real

hink it; I

kno

es

you. But I see you are sorry for me, and now-Chinaman as I am, I must speak out-I can't leave you without having told you all I feel. I am going to a terrible end, and I know it-so you will forgive me. We shall never meet again, so what I am going to say need never cause you any

d Effie, with wo

kne

here; and I liked you for it. But of course it was imp

horrible thing it is. I am so human in everything else, but there is that one impassable barrier between us,

have said to Effie, "Take him!" but the thing was too impossi

ught to have said, and I am ashamed of myself for having done so. Yet, in spite of the measureless

," said Effie; "it

rrified to know what I ought to do. I can't grasp it and take it all in so quick

ars European clothing, is too marked a person ever to escape. The only chance wo

l me. I can't let a fellow-creature die for a mere prejudice of race

ce than any woman ought to make for a

d only heard you, I t

any longer. I have done what I ought not to have done, and I shall go this minute. Just once, before I go, shut your

ngly have chosen him for Effie's husband. But a Chinaman! Reason about the prejudice as you like, there it is, a thing not to be got over, and at bottom so real that even the very notion of getting over it is terribly repugnant to our natural instincts. On the other hand, was poor Chung, with his fine delicate

or dinner, but we did somehow; and when we went down into the little drawing-room at eight o'clock, we were not surprised to hear that Miss Effie had a headache and did not want any dinner that evening. I was more surpr

Mr. Wa

town immediately. Shall write more fully t

rs e

hu

. After all, Chung had the true feelings of a gentleman. He could not meet Effie

etty incisive handwriting. It contained copious excuses for his hasty departure, and a few lines to say that he was ordered back to China by the next mail, which started two days later. Marian and

ever met such a nice man as Mr. Chung. I believe he is really a

ks; till at last one morning I found a letter on the table bearing the Hong Kong postmark. I opened it hastily. As I supp

Prison, Pe

ear F

I can tell; and I have very little doubt that I shall be brought to trial and executed within a few weeks. I write now begging you not to let Miss Effie hear of this, and if my name happens to be mentioned in the English papers, to keep my fate a secret from her as far as possible. I trust to chance for the opportunity of ge

ours gr

hu

uch as even a Chinaman might easily have performed? But it was no use regretting now. The impassable gulf was fixed between us; and it was hardly possible even then to realize that this amiable young student, versed in all the sci

ad got from Mudie's all the books about China that she could hear of, and that she was reading up with a sort of awful interest all the chapters that related to Chinese law and Ch

y she gave a cry of horror, flung down the paper with a gesture of awful repugnance, and fell from her chair as stiff and white as a corpse. I knew instinctively what had happened, and I took her up in my arms and carried her to h

tunate member of the Civil Service has been accused of witchcraft and executed at Pekin by the frightful Chinese method known as the Heavy Death. Chung Fo Tsiou was w

r even to hear of it. But Effie knew it all, and I did no

great for her easily to cast it off. Even I myself did not sleep lightly for many and many a day after I heard the terrible truth. But while Effie was still ill, a second letter reac

ing spoken to her. Will you forgive me? It was the weakness of a moment:

ill marry; but as long as she lives she will bear the impress of what she has suffered about poor Chung. An English girl could not conceivably marry a Chinaman; but now that Chung is dead, Effie cannot help admiring th

TE OF CH

leek; there were trellis-work porches up which the scented dog-rose and the fainter honeysuckle clambered together in sisterly rivalry; there were pargeted gable-ends of Elizabethan farmhouses, quaintly varied with black oak joists and moulded plaster panels. At the end of all, between an avenue of ancient elm trees, the heavy square tower of the old church closed in the little vista-a church wit

lutter when she sees you coming-all these are delicate little morsels to be rolled daintily on the critical palate, and not to be swallowed down coarsely at one vulgar gulp. Poor child, she is on tenter-hooks of hesitation and expectancy all the time, I know; for I'm sure she loves me now, I'm sure she loves me; but I must wait a week yet: she will be grateful to me for it hereafter. We mustn't kill the goose that lays the golden eggs; we mustn't eat up all our capital at one extravagant feast, and then lament the want of our interest ever afterward. Let us live another week in our fi

"If ye plaze, Maister Dene," she said in her native west-country dialect, "our Nully would

thing, Mrs. Long, is your Nellie, and I hope she may yet be spared to you.

ement with its diamond-leaded panes, so as to let in the fresh summer air, and picked a few sprigs of sweet-briar from the porch, which he joined with the geranium from his own button-hole to make a tiny nosegay for the

set it in a mould without any trouble; while as for the soup, some tinned mock-turtle and a little fresh stock makes a really capital mixture for this sort of thing. It costs so little to give these poor souls pleasure, and it is a great luxury to oneself undeniably. But, after all, what a funny trade it is to set an educated man to do! They send us up to Oxford or Ca

eared between the elm trees; "and he do love the poor and the zick, the same as if he was the

certain courtly and graceful chivalry. "An exquisite day, Miss Eliot," he said; "such a depth of sapphire in the sky, such a faint undertone of green on the clouds by the horizon,

y are, I fancy, Mr. Dene. Any one who finds so much beauty in the world as you do can hardly think life poor or meagre. You seem to catch the loveliest poi

hurry over them too lightly, Miss Eliot; we ought to linger on them lovingly, and make the most of their potentialities; we ought to dwell upon them like "linked sweetness long drawn out." It is the mistake of the world at large to hurry too rapidly over the pleasantest episodes, just as children pick

d at once, "Yes, of course one feels that with the higher pleasures at least; but there are others in which the interest of plot is greater, and then one

fore or what comes after; just as you, for your part, like to sketch a beautiful scene for its own worth to you, irrespective of what may happen to the leaves in autumn, or to the cottage roof in twenty y

's finished now, and, to tell you the tru

always your own harshest critic." And he turned in at the little

Indeed, on that head at least, Walter Dene's veracity was unimpeachable, however lax in other matters; nothing on earth would have induced him to praise as good a picture or a sculpture in which he saw no real merit. He sat a little while criticizing and discussing it, suggesting an improvement here or an alteration there, and then he rose hurriedly, remembering all at once his forgotten promise to little Nellie. "Dear me," he said, "your daughter's

fellow talk about his artistic feelings, and so on, that he's just a trifle selfish, or a

flattery of manner about him that's all pure kindliness; and he's always thinking what he can say or do to please you, and to help you onward. What you say about his dwelling on enjoyment so much is really only his artistic sensibility. He feels things so keenly, and enjoys beauty so deeply, that he can't help talking en

conversation. I'm something of a connoisseur, after all, and no more likely to be deceived in a woman than I am in a wine or a picture. And next week I shall really propose formally to Christina, though I know by this time it will be nothing more than the merest formality. Her eyes are too eloquent not to have told me that long ago. It will be a delightful pleasure to live for her, and in order to make her happy. I frankly recognize that I am naturally a little selfish-not coarsely and vulgarly selfish; from that disgusting and piggish vice I may conscientiously congratulate myself that I'm fairly free; but still selfish in a refined and cultivated manner. Now, living with Christina and for Christina will correct this defect in my n

ll. "Will you be kind enough to give those things to Carter, John?" he said in his bland voice; "and tell her to put the jelly in a mould, and let it set. The soup mu

old servants at his uncle's-"the vicar have gone over by train to Churminst

see him o

. I took his portma

o himself. "Very well, John," he went on aloud: "I shall

llon on the bookshelf, peered out of the dulled glass windows with the crest in their centre, and finally drew a curious bent iron instrument out of his waistcoat pocket. With it in his hands, he went up quietly to his uncle's desk, and began fumbling at the lock in an experienced manner. As a matter of fact, it was not his f

lf, "I'm above such nonsense as that"-and sat down leisurely to read it in the big, low, velvet-covered study chair. As he did so, he did not forget to lay a notched foot-rest for his feet, and to put the little Japanese dish on the tiny table by his side to hold his cigar ash. "And now," he said, "for the important question whether Uncle Arthur has left his money to me, or to Arthur, or to both of us equally. He ought, of course, to leave at least half

w, Arthur Dene," he said to himself slowly: "Oh, this will never do." "And I give and bequeath to my said nephew, Arthur Dene, the sum of ten thousand pounds, three per cent. consolidated annuities, now standing in my name."-"Oh this is atrocious, quite atrocious! What's this?" "And I give and bequeath to my dear nephew, Walter Dene, th

ness to attempt it now and here; I want a little practice first. At the same time, I mustn't keep the will out a moment longer than is necessary; my uncle may return by some accident before I expect him; and the true philosophy of life consists in invariably minimizing the adverse chances. This will was evidently drawn up by Watson and Blenkiron, of Chancery Lane. I'll write to-morrow and get them to draw up

ic," he said to himself as he read it over for correction, "but I'm not sure that I haven't plagiarized a little too freely from Montaigne and dear old Burton. What a pity it must be thrown away upon a Churnsid

took the will once more deliberately from the desk, removed the obnoxious letters with scrupulous care, and wrote in his own name in place of Arthur's, so that even the engrossing clerk himself would hardly have known the difference. "There," he said to himself approvingly, as he took down quiet old George Herbert from the shelf and sat down to enjoy an hour's smoke after the business was over, "that's one good deed well done, anyhow. I have the calm satisfaction of a clear conscience. The vicar's proposed arrangeme

his way to minimize. Any day his uncle might take it into his head to read over the will and discover the-ah, well, the rectification. Walter was a man of too much delicacy of feeling even to think of it to himself as a fraud or a forgery. Then, again, the vicar was not a very old man after all; he might live for an indefinite period, and Christina and himself might lose all the best years of their life waiting for a useless

world at large, on strict utilitarian principles, that he should go at once? True, such steps are usually to be deprecated; but the wise man is a law unto himself, and instead of laying down the wooden, hard-and-fast lines that make conventional morality so much a rule of thumb, he judges every individual case on its own particular merits. Here was Christina's happiness and his own on the one hand, with many col

little tasteless powder into a cup of coffee and let a man sleep off his life quietly was really nothing more than helping him involuntarily to a delightful euthanasia. "I wish any one would do as much for me at his age, without telling me about it," Walter said to himself seriously. But then the chances of detection would be much increased by using poison, and Walter felt it an imperative duty to do nothing which would expose Christina to the shock of a discovery.

. It was very rusty, but it would be safer to sharpen it privately on his own hone and strop than to go asking for a new knife at a shop for the express purpose of enabling the shopman afterwards to identify him. He sharpened it for safety's sake during sermon-hour in the library, with the door locked as usual. It took a long time to get off all the rust, and his arm got quickly tired. One morning as he was polishing away at it, he was stopped for a moment by a butterfly which fl

e said, with a smile, as his glance fell upon

ger lightly along the edge of the blade to test its keenness. What a lucky thing that it was the vicar himself, and not the gardener! If he had been caught by anybody else the fact would have be

y their aid discovered exactly under which ribs the heart lay. A little observation of the vicar, compared with the plates in Quain's "Anatomy," showed him precisely at what point in his clerical coat the most vulnerable interstice was situated. "I

out trembling, strolled across the garden, and then made the short cut through the copse, so as to meet the vicar by the gate. On his way he heard the noise of the Dennings in the farm opposite, out rabbit-shooting with their guns and ferrets in the warren. His very soul shrank within him at the sound of that brutal sport. "Great heavens!" he said to himself, with a shudder; "to think how I loathe and shrink from the necessity of almost painlessly killing this one selfish old man for an obviously good reason, and those creatures there wil

e could, accurately measuring the spot on the vicar's coat wit

my boy, and an exquisite glimpse

dry ditch beneath. Walter knelt trembling on the ground close by, felt the pulse for a moment to assure himself that his uncle was really dead, and having fully satisfied himself on this all-important point, proceeded to draw the knife neatly out of the wound. He had let it fall in the body, in order to extricate it more easily afterward, and not risk pulling it out carelessly so as to get himself covered needlessly by tell-tale drops of blood, like ordinary clumsy assassins. But he had forgotten to reckon with little King Charlie. The dog jumped piteously upon the body of his master, licked the wound with his tongue, and refused

y to persuade himself his duty to Christina demanded that he should go away at once, and never mind the sufferings of a mere spaniel; but his better nature told him the next moment that such sophisms were indefensible, and his humane instincts overcame even the profound instinct of self-preservation. He sat down quietly beside the warm corpse. "Thank goodness," he said, with a slight shiver of disgust, "I'm not one of those weak-minded people who are troubled by remorse. They would be so overcome by terror at what they had done that they would want to run away from the body immediately, at any price. But I don't think I could feel remorse. It is an incident of lower natures-natures that are capable of doing actions und

you." Then he wrapped the handkerchief deftly around it, without letting any blood show through, pressed the dog close against his breast, and picked up the knife gingerly by the reeking handle. "A fool of a fellow would throw it into the river," he thought, with a curl of his graceful lip.

e the dog to the veterinary at once, or the poor little fellow might bleed to death incontinently. "One's best efforts," he thought, "are always liable to these unfortunate contretemps. I meant merely to remove a superfluous person from an uncongenial environment; yet

rs. "Tom," he said boldly, "have you seen anything of the vicar? I'm afraid he's go

, 'arf an hour zince, and I

hen; I'm afraid he has fallen and hurt himself. I must take the

, and Walter Dene turned immediately with the