med to be that he
would never live to reach Washington. Then the mutterings of the thunder
grew deeper and deeper, and some disruption seemed inevitable, evident
to us far away, while you at home, it seemed, were eating and drinking,
marrying and giving in marriage, holding gala-days and enjoying
yourselves generally, on the brink of an arousing volcano from which the
sulphurous smoke already began to ascend to the heavens! So time passed
on; autumn became winter, and December was rolling away.

'I was sitting with half-a-dozen friends in the chess-room at Very's,
about eleven o'clock on the night of the twentieth of December, talking
over some of the marvelous successes which had been won by Paul Morphy
when in Paris, and the unenviable position in which Howard Staunton had
placed himself by keeping out of the lists through evident fear of the
New-Orleanian, when Adolph Von Berg came behind me and laid his hand on
my shoulder.

''Come with me a moment,' he said, 'you are wanted!'

''Where?' I asked, getting up from my seat and following him to the
door, before which stood a light _coupe_, with its red lights flashing,
the horse smoking, and the driver in his seat.

''I have been to-night to the Rue la Reynie Ogniard!' he answered.

''And are you going there again?' I asked, my blood chilling a little
with an indefinable sensation of terror, but a sense of satisfaction
predominating at the opportunity of seeing something more of the
mysterious woman.

''I am!' he answered, 'and so are _you_! She has sent for you! Come!'

'Without another word I stepped into the _coupe_, and we were rapidly
whirled away. I asked Adolph how and why I had been summoned; but he
knew nothing more than myself, except that he had visited the sorceress
at between nine and ten that evening, that she had only spoken to him
for an instant, but ordered him to go at once and find his friend, _the
American_, whom he had falsely introduced some months before as the
English baron. He had been irresistibly impressed with the necessity of
obedience, though it would break in upon his own arrangements for the
later evening, (which included an hour at the Chateau Rouge;) had picked
up a _coupe_, looked in for me at two or three places where he thought
me most likely to be at that hour in the evening, and had found me at
Very's, as related. What the sorceress could possibly want of me, he had
no idea more than myself; but he reminded me that she had h