ord, "Go!"

Glancing at the others to see if he might safely follow this direction,
Hannibal disappeared in the thick woods behind him. He walked with an
unsteady step. There was a strange lightness in his brain. Some distance
away he found the boat in which he had come, and entered it,
staggeringly. Pushing from the shore with a feeble touch on his paddle
he set out for his home.

* * * * *

The negroes who found his body, a week later, could not decide whether
he had perished by accident or by deliberate intention. The boat was not
capsized, but it was partially filled with water, indicating either that
he had tried to sink the craft or had leaned too heavily to one side in
something like a stupor. When his gun was discovered on the shore, new
speculations were set in motion.

Those who knew him recalled that he had been moody for a long time--in
fact, ever since he came from the north. They remembered him as a young
fellow, four or five years previous, not very different from his mates;
and they had stared in wonder when he returned with fine clothes and
money in his pocket. The dislike between him and his old acquaintances
was mutual. They could not understand him; and what an inferior mind
does not comprehend it always views with suspicion.

A grave was made near the border of the lake, and the single word
"HANNIBAL" was written on the board that marked the spot. But later some
envious hand scrawled beneath it:

"HE WANTED TO BE A GENTLEMAN!"

CHAPTER XXIX.

"THE GREATEST NOVEL."

Archie Weil and Daisy Fern were married in June. There was no need of
waiting longer. It was a case of true love sanctified by suffering and
devotion. The bright eyes and ruddy cheeks of the bride testified to her
renewed health and spirits. The news of Hannibal's death--albeit it
brought a tear to her eyes, had removed the only shadow that stretched
across her pathway.

Shirley Roseleaf did not come to the wedding, to which he was the only
invited guest. He wrote that an important mission from his magazine made
it impossible to accept the invitation, but he sent a handsome present
and a letter to Archie, congratulating him in the warmest manner.

For some time Lawrence Gouger had been urging the novelist to hasten the
wonderful story that was to make his fortune and give a new impetus to
the house of Cutt & Slashem. They had consulted together a hundred
times, and the thirty chapters a