o mad.'

"'Then I will believe her, too. I am so slightly tied to this world that
has deceived me, that I will trust on a little while longer, even if my
trust lands me in my grave. I had rather die than discover deceit where
I had looked for honesty and gratitude.'

"I was a coward, perhaps, but I did not try to dissuade her. Though she
was fatherless and motherless, and loverless and friendless, I let her
grasp at this wisp of hope and cling to it, though I knew it would never
hold, and that her only chance for happiness was passing from her.

"'If he were not poor,' she now breathed rather than whispered, 'I would
find it easier to rend myself free. But he has nothing but what lies in
my future, and if I should make a mistake and do injustice to a man that
is merely suffering under a temporary intoxication, I should rob him of
his only hope, without adding one chance to my own.'

"I bowed, and made a movement toward the door. I could not stand much
more of this strain.

"'You are going?' she cried. 'Well, I cannot keep you. But that dagger!
You will promise me to throw it away? You do not need it in defense, and
you do not want to kill me before my time.'

"No, no; I did not want to kill her. Grief was doing that fast enough;
so I thought at that time. Shuddering, but resolute, I drew the tiny
steel from my breast and laid it in her hand.

"'It is all I can give you to show you my appreciation of your
goodness.' And not trusting myself to linger longer lest I should take
it again from her hand, I went out and walked hastily from the house.

"If you asked me what road I took, or through what streets I passed, or
whose eye I encountered in my next hour's walking through the town, I
could not tell you. If jeers followed me, I heard them not; if I was the
recipient of sympathizing looks and wondering conjectures, they were all
lost upon eyes that were blind and ears that were deaf. I did not even
feel; and did not realize till night that I had been wandering for hours
without my cloak, which I had left in the carriage and forgotten to take
again when I went out. The first knowledge I had of my surroundings was
when I found an obstruction in my path, and looking up, saw myself in
front of my own door, and not two feet from me, Edwin Urquhart."

CHAPTER XII.

EDWIN URQUHART.

[Illustration: I]

In that moment Mark Felt paused and cast a glance toward the Hudson far
below us. Then he resumed his narrat