er for me? I don't wish to dismiss the fellow without
good reason, but of course I could not think of permitting him to be
engaged to my niece until these charges are entirely disproved.

With kind remembrances to your father,

I am, yours faithfully
HENRY CRICHTON-MORLEY.

MY SEVENTH STAGE

Yet on the dull silence breaking
With a lightning flash, a word,
Bearing endless desolation
On its blighting wings, I heard;
Earth can forge no keener weapon,
Dealing surer death and pain,
And the cruel echo answered
Through long years again.

A. A. PROCTER.

Curiously enough, I must actually have started for Russia on the same day
that Sigismund Zaluski was summoned by his uncle at St. Petersburg to
return on a matter of urgent business. I learnt afterwards that the
telegram arrived at Muddleton on the afternoon of one of those sunny
September days and found Zaluski as usual at the Morleys. He was very
much annoyed at being called away just then, and before he had received
any reply from Gertrude's uncle as to the engagement. However, after a
little ebullition of anger, he regained his usual philosophic tone, and,
reminding Gertrude that he need not be away from England for more than a
fortnight, he took leave of her and set off in a prompt, manly fashion,
leaving most of his belongings at Ivy Cottage, which was his for another
six weeks, and to which he hoped shortly to return.

After a weary time of imprisonment in my envelope, I at length reached my
destination at St. Petersburg and was read by Dmitry Leonoff. He was a
very busy man, and by the same post received dozens of other letters. He
merely muttered--"That well-known firm! A most unlikely story!"--and
then thrust me into a drawer with other letters which had to be answered.
Very probably I escaped his memory altogether for the next few days:
however, there I was--a startling accusation in black and white; and, as
everybody knows, St. Petersburg is not London.

The Leonoff family lived on the third storey of a large block of
buildings in the Sergeffskaia. About two o'clock in the morning, on the
third day after my arrival, the whole household was roused from sleep by
thundering raps on the door, and the dreaded cry of "Open to the police."

The unlucky master was forced to allow himself, his wife, and his
children to be made prisoners, while every corner of the house was
searched and every book and pap