tion, whatever you
please, and not come to myself until Thursday had passed, and I had once
more retired. Of what yesterday occurred I therefore claim to have been
the irresponsible agent, and to have become so through no fault of my
own. I am completely innocent of the misdemeanors charged against me,
and I now solemnly swear this, on my word of honor as a gentleman."

Here Dalrymple paused. The members of the committee interchanged glances
amid profound silence. On some faces doubt could be read, but on others
its veriest opposite. The intense stillness had become painful when
Dalrymple spoke again.

"I had hoped that I should escape throughout my own lifetime all
visitations of this distressing kind. My grandfather and two of my
uncles not only walked in their sleep to an alarming degree, but were
each subject to strange conditions of mind, in which acts were performed
by them that they could not possibly remember afterward." Here the
speaker paused, soon continuing, however, in a lower and more reflective
tone:

"Yes, my family have had the strange failing (that is, nearly all of
them except myself, on the paternal side) of----"

But he said no more. The tension was loosened, and a great roar of
laughter rose from the whole committee. How often every man there had
joked him about that marvelous budget of stories which he infallibly
began one way and one way only! And when the familiar formula sounded
forth, it was all the funnier to those who heard it because of the
solemn, judicial circumstances in which it again met their hearing.

The plaintiff was honorably acquitted. As for De Pommereul, as every
word that Dalrymple had said concerning his past life in France happened
to be perfectly true, the Count never reappeared at the Gramercy. His
engagement with Mrs. Carrington was soon afterward broken off by the
lady herself, and for a good while it was rumored that this lady had
repentantly made it optional with Dalrymple whether he should once more
become her accepted sweetheart.

But Dalrymple remained a bachelor. He is quite an old man now, yet he
may be found in the card-room of the Gramercy nearly every evening. He
is very willing to tell you the story of his "lost day" if you ask him
courteously for it, and not in any strain of fun-poking; but he attempts
no more voluntary recitals on the subject of his "family's" maladies or
mishaps.

A TRAGEDY OF HIGH EXPLOSIVES.

BY BRAINARD GARDNER SMITH.