"Here 's a letter for you, Loo, and a weighty one too," said Holmes, entering the room, and approaching her before she was aware. "It was charged half a dollar extra, for overweight. I trust you 'll say it was worth the money."

"Fetch a light! get me a candle!" cried she, eagerly; and she broke the seal with hands all trembling and twitching. "And leave me, papa; leave me a moment to myself."

He placed the candles at her side, and stole away. She turned one glance at the address, "To Mrs. Hawke," and she read in that one word that the writer knew her story. But the contents soon banished other thoughts; they were her own long-coveted, long-sought letters; there they were now before her, time-worn and crumpled, records of a terrible season of sorrow and misery and guilt! She counted them over and over; there were twenty-seven; not one was missing. She did not dare to open them; and even in her happiness to regain them was the darkening shadow of the melancholy period when they were written,--the long days of suffering and the nights of tears. So engrossed was she by the thought that they were now her own again, that the long tyranny of years had ended and the ever-impending shame departed, that she could not turn to learn how she came by them, nor through whom. At length this seemed to flash suddenly on her mind, and she examined the envelope, and found a small sealed note, addressed, as was the packet, "Mrs. Hawke." O'Shea's initials were in the corner. It contained but one line, which ran thus:--

"I have read the enclosed.--G. O'S."

Then was it that the bitterness of her lot smote her with all its force, and she dropped down upon her knees, and, laying her head on the chair, sobbed as if each convulsive beat would have rent her very heart.

Oh, the ineffable misery of an exposed shame! the terrible sense that we are to meet abroad and before the world the stern condemnation our conscience has already pronounced, and that henceforth we are to be shunned and avoided! There is not left to us any longer one mood of mind that can bring repose. If we are depressed, it is in the mourning of our guilt we seem to be dressed; if for a moment we assume the air of light-heartedness, it is to shock the world by the want of feeling for our shame! It is written that we are to be outcasts and live apart!

"May I come in, Loo?" said a low voice from the half-opened doorway. It was her father, asking for the third time before she heard him.

She uttered a faint "Yes," and tried to rise; but her strength failing, she laid her head down again between her hands.

[Illustration: 580]

"What is this, darling?" he said, stooping down over her. "What bad tidings have you got there? Tell me, Loo, for I may be able to lighten your sorrow for you."

"No," said she, calmly, "that you cannot, for you cannot make me unlive the past! Read that."

"Well, I see nothing very formidable in this, dear. I can't suppose that it is the loss of such a lover afflicts you. He has read them. Be it so.

They are now in your own hands, and neither he nor any other will ever read them again. It would have been more interesting had he told us how he came by them; that was something really worth knowing; for remember, Loo,--and it is, after all, the great point,--these are documents you were ready and willing to have bought up at a thousand pounds, or even more. Paten often swore he 'd have three thousand for them, and there they are now, safe in your own keeping, and not costing you one shilling. Stay," said he, laughing, "the postage was about one-and-sixpence."

"And is it nothing to cost me open shame and ignominy? Is it nothing that, instead of one man, two now have read the dark tracings of my degraded heart? Oh, father, even _you_ might feel for the misery of exposure!"

"But it is not exposure: it is the very opposite; it is, of all things, the most secret and secure. When these letters are burned, what accusation remains against you? The memory of two loose men about town.

But who 'll believe them, or who cares if they be believed? Bethink you that every one in this world is maligned by somebody, and finds somebody else to credit the scandal. Give me a bishop to blacken to-morrow, and see if I won't have a public to adopt the libel. No, no, Loo; it's a small affliction, believe me, that one is able to dispose of with a lucifer-match. Here, girl, give them to me, and never waste another thought on them."

"No," said she, resolutely, "I 'll not burn them. Whatever I may ask of the world to think of me, I do not mean to play the hypocrite to myself.

Lend me your hand, and fetch me a glass of water. I cannot meet these people tonight You must go over to the inn, and say that I am ill,--call it a headache,--and add that I hope by to-morrow I shall be quite well again."

"Nay, nay, let them come, dear, and the very exertion will cheer you. You promised that American to sing him one of his nigger melodies,--don't forget that."

"Go and tell them that I have been obliged to take to bed, father," said she, in a hollow voice. "It is no falsehood to call me very ill."

"My dear Loo," said he, caressingly, "all this is so unlike yourself.

You, that never lacked courage in your life! _you_, that never knew what it was to be faint-hearted!"

"Well, you see me a coward at last," said she, in a faint voice. "Go and do as I bade you, father; for this is no whim, believe me."

The old man muttered out some indistinct grumblings, and left the room on his errand.

She had not been many minutes alone when she heard the sharp sounds of feet on the gravel, and could mark the voices of persons speaking together with rapidity. One she quickly recognized as her father's, the other she soon knew to be Trover's. The last words he uttered as he reached the door were, "Arrested at once!"

"Who is to be arrested at once?" cried she, rushing wildly to the door.

"We, if we are caught!" said Holmes. "There's no time for explanation now. Get your traps together, and let us be off in quick time."

"It is good counsel he gives you," said Trover. "The game is up, and nothing but flight can save us. The great question is, which way to go."

She pressed her hands to her temples for a moment, and then, as if recalled, by the peril, to her old activity of thought and action, said,--

"Let Johann fetch his cousin quickly; they both row well, and the boat is ready at the foot of the garden. We can reach Rorschach in a couple of hours, and make our way over to St. Gall."

"And then?" asked Trover, peevishly.

"We are, at least, in a mountain region, where there are neither railroads nor telegraphs."

"She is right Her plan is a good one, Trover," broke in Holmes. "Go fetch what things you mean to take with you, and come back at once. We shall be ready by that time."

"If there be danger, why go back at all?" said she. "Remember, I know nothing of the perils that you speak of, nor do I ask to know till we are on the road out of them. But stay here, and help us to get our pack made."

"Now you are yourself again! now I know you, Loo," said Holmes, in a tone of triumph.

In less than half an hoar after they were skimming across the Lake of Constance as fast as a light skiff and strong arms could bear them. The night was still and calm, though dark, and the water without a ripple.

For some time after they left the shore scarcely a word was spoken amongst them. At last Holmes whispered something in his daughter's ear, and she rejoined aloud,--

"Yes, it is time to tell me now; for, though I have submitted myself to your judgment in this hasty flight, I am not quite sure the peril was as imminent as you believed it What did you mean by talking of an arrest?

Who could arrest us? And for what?"

"You shall hear," said Trover; "and perhaps, when you have heard, you 'll agree that I was not exaggerating our danger."

Not wishing to impose on our reader the minute details into which he entered, and the narrative of which lasted almost till they reached the middle of the lake, we shall give in a few words the substance of his story. While dressing for dinner at the inn, he saw a carriage with four posters arrive, and, in a very few minutes after, heard a loud voice inquiring for Mr. Harvey Winthrop. Suddenly struck by the strangeness of such a demand, he hastened to gain a small room adjoining Winthrop's, and from which a door communicated, by standing close to which he could overhear all that passed.

He had but reached the room and locked the door, when he heard the sounds of a hearty welcome and recognition exchanged within. The stranger spoke with an American accent, and very soon placed the question of his nationality beyond a doubt.

"You would not believe," said he, "that I have been in pursuit of you for a matter of more than three thousand miles. I went down to Norfolk and to St Louis, and was in full chase into the Far West, when I found I was on the wrong tack; so I 'wore ship' and came over to Europe." After satisfying, in some degree, the astonishment this declaration excited, he went on to tell how he, through a chance acquaintance at first, and afterwards a close friendship with the Laytons, came to the knowledge of the story of the Jersey murder, and the bequest of the dying man on his daughter's behalf, his interest being all the more strongly engaged because every one of the localities was familiar to him, and his own brother a tenant on the very land. All the arts he had deployed to trace out the girl's claim, and all the efforts, with the aid of the Laytons, he had made to find out Winthrop himself, he patiently recounted, mentioning his accidental companionship with Trover, and the furtive mode in which that man had escaped him. It was, however, by that very flight Trevor confirmed the suspicion he had attached to him, and so the stranger continued to show that from the hour of his escape they had never "lost the track." How they had crossed the Atlantic he next recorded,--all their days spent in discussing the one theme; no other incident or event ever occupying a moment's attention. "We were certain of two things," said he: "there was a deep snare, and that girl was its victim." He confessed that if to himself the inquiry possessed a deep interest, with old Layton it had become a passion.

"At last," continued Trover, "he began to confess that their hopes fell, and each day's discomfiture served to chill the ardor that had sustained them, when a strange and most unlooked-for light broke in upon them by the discovery of a few lines of a note written by you to Dr. Layton himself years before, and, being produced, was at once recognized as the handwriting of Mrs. Penthony Morris."

"Written by _me!_ How could I have written to him? I never heard of him," broke she in.

"Yes, he was the doctor who attended Hawke in his last illness, and it appeared you wrote to beg he would cut off a lock of hair for you, and bring it to you."

"I remember that," said she, in a hollow voice, "though I never remembered his name was Layton. And he has this note still?"

"You shall hear. No sooner had his son--"

"You cannot mean Alfred Layton?"

"Yes; the same. No sooner had he declared that he knew the hand, than they immediately traced you in Mrs. Penthony Morris, and knowing that Stocmar had become the girl's guardian, they lost no time in finding him out. I was too much flurried and terrified at this moment to collect clearly what followed, but I gathered that the elder Layton held over him some threat which, if pushed to execution, might ruin him. By means of this menace, they made Stocmar confess everything. He told who Clara was, how he had gained possession of her, under what name she went, and where she was then living. Through some influence which I cannot trace, they interested a secretary of state in their case, and started for the Continent with strong letters from the English authorities, and a detective officer specially engaged to communicate with the foreign officials, and permit, when the proofs might justify, of an arrest."

"How much do they know, then?" asked she, calmly.

"They know everything. They know of the forged will, the false certificate of death, and Winthrop has confirmed the knowledge.

Fortunately, I have secured the more important document I hastened to his room while they were yet talking, opened his desk, and carried away the will. As to the certificate, the Laytons and the detective had set off for Meisner the moment after reaching Bregenz, to establish its forged character."