and really was the
fragment of an old coat. Looking about to assure herself that so
unladylike an act was not observed, she thrust her jeweled hand into the
exposed breast pocket and drew out a mouldy pocket-book. Its contents
were as follows:

One bundle of letters, postmarked "Elizabethtown, New Jersey."

One circle of blonde hair tied with a ribbon.

One photograph of a beautiful girl.

One ditto of same, singularly disfigured.

One name on back of photograph--"Jefferson Doman."

A few moments later a group of anxious gentlemen surrounded Mrs. Porfer
as she sat motionless at the foot of the tree, her head dropped forward,
her fingers clutching a crushed photograph. Her husband raised her head,
exposing a face ghastly white, except the long, deforming cicatrice,
familiar to all her friends, which no art could ever hide, and which now
traversed the pallor of her countenance like a visible curse.

Mary Matthews Porfer had the bad luck to be dead.

THE SUITABLE SURROUNDINGS

THE NIGHT

One midsummer night a farmer's boy living about ten miles from the city
of Cincinnati was following a bridle path through a dense and dark
forest. He had lost himself while searching for some missing cows, and
near midnight was a long way from home, in a part of the country with
which he was unfamiliar. But he was a stout-hearted lad, and knowing his
general direction from his home, he plunged into the forest without
hesitation, guided by the stars. Coming into the bridle path, and
observing that it ran in the right direction, he followed it.

The night was clear, but in the woods it was exceedingly dark. It was
more by the sense of touch than by that of sight that the lad kept the
path. He could not, indeed, very easily go astray; the undergrowth on
both sides was so thick as to be almost impenetrable. He had gone into
the forest a mile or more when he was surprised to see a feeble gleam of
light shining through the foliage skirting the path on his left. The
sight of it startled him and set his heart beating audibly.

"The old Breede house is somewhere about here," he said to himself.
"This must be the other end of the path which we reach it by from our
side. Ugh! what should a light be doing there?"

Nevertheless, he pushed on. A moment later he had emerged from the
forest into a small, open space, mostly upgrown to brambles. There were
remnants of a rotting fence. A few yards from the trail, in the middle
of the "