the coroner. I insisted on my witnesses being summoned to the
lawyer's office, and allowed to state, in their own way, what they could
truly declare on my behalf; and I left my defense to be founded upon the
materials thus obtained. In the meanwhile I was detained in custody, as
a matter of course.

With this event the tragedy of the duel reached its culminating point. I
was accused of murdering the man who had attempted to take my life!

This last incident having been related, all that is worth noticing in
my contribution to the present narrative comes to an end. I was tried
in due course of law. The evidence taken at my solicitor's office was
necessarily altered in form, though not in substance, by the examination
to which the witnesses were subjected in a court of justice. So
thoroughly did our defense satisfy the jury, that they became restless
toward the close of the proceedings, and returned their verdict of Not
Guilty without quitting the box.

When I was a free man again, it is surely needless to dwell on the
first use that I made of my honorable acquittal. Whether I deserved the
enviable place that I occupied in Bertha's estimation, it is not for me
to say. Let me leave the decision to the lady who has ceased to be Miss
Laroche--I mean the lady who has been good enough to become my wife.

MISS DULANE AND MY LORD.

Part I.

TWO REMONSTRATIONS.

I.

ONE afternoon old Miss Dulane entered her drawing-room; ready to receive
visitors, dressed in splendor, and exhibiting every outward appearance
of a defiant frame of mind.

Just as a saucy bronze nymph on the mantelpiece struck the quarter to
three on an elegant clock under her arm, a visitor was announced--"Mrs.
Newsham."

Miss Dulane wore her own undisguised gray hair, dressed in perfect
harmony with her time of life. Without an attempt at concealment, she
submitted to be too short and too stout. Her appearance (if it had only
been made to speak) would have said, in effect: "I am an old woman, and
I scorn to disguise it."

Mrs. Newsham, tall and elegant, painted and dyed, acted on the opposite
principle in dressing, which confesses nothing. On exhibition before the
world, this lady's disguise asserted that she had reached her thirtieth
year on her last birthday. Her husband was discreetly silent, and Father
Time was discreetly silent: they both knew that her last birthday had
happened thirty years since.

"Shall we talk of the weather and th