hing when even this poor substitute for
nourishment would be exhausted. He delayed that moment. He gave himself
a long fast this time. The half-inch of candle which he held in his hand
was a sacred thing to him. It was his last defence against death.

Finally, with such a sinking at heart as he had not known before, he
raised it to his lips. Then he paused, then he hurled the fragment
across the tomb, then the oaken door was flung open, and Philip, with
dazzled eyes, saw M. Dorine's form sharply defined against the blue sky.

When they led him out, half blinded, into the broad daylight, M. Dorine
noticed that Philip's hair, which a short time since was as black as a
crow's wing, had actually turned gray in places. The man's eyes, too,
had faded; the darkness had dimmed their lustre.

"And how long was he really confined in the tomb?" I asked, as Mr.
H------ concluded the story.

"_Just one hour and twenty minutes!_" replied Mr. H------, smiling
blandly.

As he spoke, the Lilliputian sloops, with their sails all blown out
like white roses, came floating bravely into port, and Philip Wentworth
lounged by us, wearily, in the pleasant April sunshine.

Mr. H------'s narrative haunted me. Here was a man who had undergone a
strange ordeal. Here was a man whose sufferings were unique. His was no
threadbare experience. Eighty minutes had seemed like two days to him!
If he had really been immured two days in the tomb, the story, from my
point of view, would have lost its tragic value.

After this it was natural that I should regard Mr. Wentworth with
stimulated curiosity. As I met him from day to day, passing through
the Common with that same introspective air, there was something in his
loneliness which touched me. I wondered that I had not read before
in his pale, meditative face some such sad history as Mr. H------ had
confided to me. I formed the resolution of speaking to him, though
with no very lucid purpose. One morning we came face to face at the
intersection of two paths. He halted courteously to allow me the
precedence.

"Mr. Wentworth," I began, "I"--

He interrupted me.

"My name, sir," he said, in an off-hand manner, "is Jones."

"Jo-Jo-Jones!" I gasped.

"No, not Joseph Jones," he returned, with a glacial air--"Frederick."

A dim light, in which the perfidy of my friend H------ was becoming
discernible, began to break upon my mind.

It will probably be a standing wonder to Mr. Frederick Jones why a