rd none to her. They will charge on her maturer mind
the whole responsibility, paint her in the colors of ingratitude, and
find in her greatest poverty the principal motive. Yes, they may be
wicked enough to say she compassed the death of my father by my hands,
to get his property.'

"I had proceeded thus far when the terror of our position became
luminous like the coming fire on a prairie, which shows everything but a
way of escape. 'Where is your father?' they would ask of me in
Kensington. 'He is drowned.' 'How drowned?' 'He shot himself.' 'Why did
he shoot himself?' 'Because I had married his ward.' 'But his partner is
gone too.' 'He is murdered.' 'Why murdered?' 'Because he interceded for
me.' 'Where is your witness?' 'He has disappeared.' I saw the wild
improbability of this tale, and thought of past notorious quarrels with
my father ended by my voluntary absence. There were but two points that
seemed to stick in my nervous mind: 'It never would do to tell our
marriage at that moment, and I must find that sailor, who might still be
living.'"

"He found me, sure enough, begorra!" exclaimed Mike Donovan, giving the
relief of laughter to that intense narrative.

"Cowardly as you may call my resolution, gentlemen, it was all the
resolution I had left. To partake of the inheritance left me by both
partners in our house I feared to do. 'Let us do the penance of
suspicious separation,' I said to Agnes; 'as your husband I command you
to let me go!' She yielded like a wife, and stood my hostage in
Kensington for all those melancholy months. I had just learned the place
for which the bark which passed us on that eventful night had cleared,
when the two bullet-pierced bodies were discovered in the ice. That
night I sailed for Wilmington, North Carolina. When I arrived there the
bark was gone for the Mediterranean, but I heard of my sailor, wounded,
in her hospital. I sailed from Charleston for Cuba, and from Cuba to
Cadiz, and thence I embarked for Trieste. At Trieste I found the ship,
but Donovan had sailed for Liverpool. From Liverpool I tracked him to
the River Plate, and thence to Panama. You will ask how I lived all
those months? Ask him."

He turned to Duff Salter.

"Mr. Magistrate," spoke Duff Salter, a little confused. "I sent him
drafts at his request. He knew me to be the resident executor, and wrote
to me. I did it because of the pity I had for Agnes, and my faith in her
assurance that he was innocent."

"