ith the paper, "but we have
been so much occupied that I have never found the occasion. It must
seem curious in your eyes that I, who am quite a stranger to you,
should have been in your company for some weeks, and should not have
told you more than my name. As the thing stands, you have been kind
enough to make no inquiries; if I am an impostor, you do not care to
know it; if I am a rascal hunted by the law, you have not been willing
to help the law; you do not know if I have money or no money, a home or
no home, people or no people, yet you have made me--shall I say, a
friend?"

He asked the question with such a gentle inflexion of the voice that I
felt a softer chord was touched, and in response I shook hands with
him. After that he continued to speak.

"I am very grateful for all your trust, believe me, for I am a man that
has known few friends in life, and I have not cared to go out of my way
to seek them. You have given me your friendship unasked, and it is the
more prized. What I wanted to say is this, if I should die before three
days have passed, will you open this packet of papers I have prepared
and sealed for you, and carry out what is written there as well as you
are able? It is no idle request, I assure you; it is one that will put
you in the place where I now stand, with opportunities greater than I
dare to think of. As for the dangers, they are big enough, but you are
the man to overcome them as I hope to overcome them--if I live!"

The sun fell over the lifeless scene without as he ceased to speak. I
could see a crimson beam glowing upon a crucifix that stood on the
wayside by the hill-foot yonder; but the cheerless monotony of plough
land and of pasture, stretching away leafless, treeless, without bud or
flower, herd or herdsman, church or cottage, to the shadowed horizon,
looming dark as the twilight deepened, was in sympathy with the gloom
which had come upon me as Martin Hall ceased to speak. I had thought
the man a fool and witless, flighty in purpose and shallow in thought,
and yet he seemed to speak of great mysteries--and of death. In one
moment the jester's cloak fell from him, and I saw the mail beneath. He
had made a great impression upon me, but I concealed it from him, and
replied jauntily and with no show of gravity--

"Tell me, are you quite certain that you are not talking nonsense?"

He replied by asking me to take his hand. I took it--it was chill with
the icy cold as of death; an