frightened
voice:--

"You are bearing MY BROTHER'S name. But it was a name that the unhappy
boy had so shamefully disgraced in Australia that he abandoned it, and,
as he lay upon his death-bed, the last act of his wasted life was
to write an imploring letter begging me to change mine too. For the
infamous companion of his crime who had first tempted, then betrayed
him, had possession of all his papers and letters, many of them from ME,
and was threatening to bring them to our Virginia home and expose him
to our neighbors. Maddened by desperation, the miserable boy twice
attempted the life of the scoundrel, and might have added that blood
guiltiness to his other sins had he lived. I DID change my name to my
mother's maiden one, left the country, and have lived here to escape the
revelations of that desperado, should he fulfill his threat."

In a flash of recollection Flint remembered the startled look that had
come into his assailant's eye after they had clinched. It was the same
man who had too late realized that his antagonist was not Fowler. "Thank
God! you are forever safe from any exposure from that man," he said,
gravely, "and the name of Fowler has never been known in San Francisco
save in all respect and honor. It is for you to take back--fearlessly
and alone!"

She did--but not alone, for she shared it with her husband.

THE GHOSTS OF STUKELEY CASTLE.

There should have been snow on the ground to make the picture seasonable
and complete, but the Western Barbarian had lived long enough in England
to know that, except in the pages of a holiday supplement, this was
rarely the accompaniment of a Christmas landscape, and he cheerfully
accepted, on the 24th of December, the background of a low, brooding
sky, on which the delicate tracery of leafless sprays and blacker
chevaux de frise of pine was faintly etched, as a consistent setting
to the turrets and peacefully stacked chimneys of Stukeley Castle. Yet,
even in this disastrous eclipse of color and distance, the harmonious
outlines of the long, gray, irregular pile seemed to him as wonderful
as ever. It still dominated the whole landscape, and, as he had often
fancied, carried this subjection even to the human beings who had
created it, lived in it, but which it seemed to have in some dull,
senile way dozed over and forgotten. He vividly recalled the previous
sunshine of an autumnal house party within its walls, where some
descendants of its old caste