hanged
New Amsterdam into New York, Jan Mannin became John Manning--and I am
his direct descendant, and the first of my blood to return to Venice
to get the goblet Giovanni Manin ordered and left behind."

"Well, I'm damned!" said Larry, pensively.

"And now," continued John Manning as they took their seats in the
gondola, "tell the man to go to the church where the picture of Mary
Magdalen is. I want a good look at that woman!"

* * * * *

In the evening, as John Manning sat in a little _caffe_ under the
arcades of the Piazza San Marco, sipping a tiny cup of black coffee,
Larry entered with a rush of righteous indignation.

"What's the matter, Larry?" was John Manning's calm query.

"There's the devil to pay at home. South Carolina has fired on the
flag at Sumter."

* * * * *

Three weeks later Colonel Manning was assigned to duty in the Army of
the Potomac.

II.

IN THE NEW WORLD.

In the month of February, 1864, a chance newspaper paragraph informed
whom it might concern that Major Laurence Laughton, having three
weeks' leave of absence from his regiment, was at the Astor House. In
consequence of this advertisement of his whereabouts, Major Laughton
received many cheerful circulars and letters, in most of which his
attention was claimed for the artificial limb made by the advertiser.
He also received a letter from Colonel John Manning urgently bidding
him to come out for a day at least to his little place on the Hudson,
where he was lying sick, and, as he feared, sick unto death. On the
receipt of this Larry cut short a promising flirtation with a
war-widow who sat next him at table and took the first train up the
river. It was a bleak day, and there was at least a foot of snow on
the ground, as hard and as dry as though it had clean forgot that it
was made of water. As Larry left the little station, to which the
train had slowly struggled at last, an hour behind time, the wind
sprang up again and began to moan around his feet and to sting his
face with icy shot; and as he trudged across the desolate path which
led to Manning's lonely house he discovered that Rude Boreas could be
as keen a sharpshooter as any in the rifle-pits around Richmond. A
hard walk up-hill for a quarter of an hour brought him to the brow of
the cliff on which stood the forlorn and wind-swept house where John
Manning lay. An