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an woeful want of it." It was the stay-lace by which Mrs. POTTS, from too great persistence in drawing herself up proudly, had perished in her prime. "Now come into the open air with me, and let us walk to Central Park," continued Mr. DIBBLE, shaking off his momentary fit of gloom, "I have strange things to tell you both. I have to teach you, in justice to a much-injured man, that we have, in our hearts, cruelly wronged that excellent and devout Mr. BUMSTEAD, by suspecting him of a crime whereof he is now proved innocent at least _I_ suspected him. To-morrow night we must all be in Bumsteadville. I will tell you why as we walk." CHAPTER XXVII. SOLUTION. In the darkness of a night made opaque by approaching showers, a man stands under the low-drooping branches of the edge of a wood skirting the cross-road leading down to Gospeler's Gulch. "Not enough saved from the wreck even to buy the merciful rope that should end all my humor and impecuniosity!" he mutters, over his folded arms and heaving chest. "I have come to this out-of-the-way suburb to end my miserable days, and not so much as one clothes-line have I seen yet. There is the pond, however; I can jump into that, I suppose: but how much more decent were it to make one's quietus under the merry greenwood tree with a cord--" He stops suddenly, holding his breath; and, almost simultaneously with a sharp, rushing noise in the leaves overhead, something drops upon his shoulder. He grasps it, cautiously feels of it, and, to his unspeakable amazement, discovers that it is a rope apparently fastened to the branches above! "Wonderful!" he ejaculates, in an awe-stricken whisper. "Providence helps a wretch to die, if not to live. At any other time I should think this very strange, but just now I've got but one thing to do. Here's my rope, here's my neck, and here goes!" Heedless of everything but his dread intention, he rapidly ties the rope about his throat, and is in the act of throwing forward his whole weight upon it, when there is a sharp jerk of the rope, he is drawn up about three feet in the air, and, before he can collect his thoughts, is as abruptly let down upon his feet again. Simultaneously, a sound almost like suppressed swearing comes very clearly to his ear, and he is conscious of something dimly white in the profound darkness, not far away. "Sold again: signed, J. BUMSTEAD," exclaims a deep voice. "I thought the rope was caught in a cr
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