As they thus chatted, a light post-carriage rolled into the inn yard, and Dr. Layton and Alfred hastily got out and made for the apartment of their friends.

"Just as I said,--just as I foretold,--the certificate forged, without giving themselves the trouble to falsify the register," broke in Layton.

"We have seen the book at Meisner, and it records the death of a certain serving-woman, Esther Baumhardt, who was buried there seven years ago.

All proves that these people, in planning this knavery, calculated on never meeting an opponent."

"Where is this Mr. Trover?" said Alfred. "I thought we should find him here in all the abandonment of friendly ease."

"He dined at the cottage with his other friends," said Winthrop, "for the which I owe him all my gratitude, for I own to you I had sore misgivings about sitting down with him."

"I could n't have done it," broke in the old doctor. "My first mouthful would have choked me. As it is, while I wait to denounce his guilt, I have an uneasy sense of complicity, as though I knew of a crime and had not proclaimed it to the world."

"Well, sir," said Quackinboss, and with a sententious slowness, "I ain't minded like either of you. _My_ platform is this: Rogues is varmin; they are to the rest of mankind what wolves and hyenas is to the domestic animals. Now, it would not be good policy or good sport to pison these critturs. What they desarve is to be hunted down! It is a rare stimulus to a fellow's blood to chase a villain. Since I have been on this trail I feel a matter of ten years younger."

"And I am impatient to follow up the chase," said the doctor, who in his eagerness walked up and down the room with a fretful anxiety.

"Remember," said Alfred, "that however satisfied we ourselves may be on every point of these people's culpability, we have no authority to arrest them, or bring them to justice. We can set the law in motion, but not usurp its action."

"And are they to be let go free?" asked Quackinboss. "Is it when we have run 'em to earth we 're to call off the dogs and go home?"

"He's right, though, Colonel," said Winthrop. "Down in our country, mayhap, we 'd find half a dozen gentlemen who'd make Mr. Trover's trial a very speedy affair; but here we must follow other fashions."

"Our detective friend says that he'll not leave them till you have received authority from home to demand their extradition," said the doctor. "I take it for granted forgery is an offence in every land in Europe, and, at all events, no State can have any interest in wishing to screen them."

While they thus talked, Alfred Layton rang the bell, and inquired if Mr.

Trover had returned.

The waiter said, "No."

"Why do you ask?" said the doctor. "It just occurred to me that he might have seen us as we drove up. He knows the Colonel and myself well."

"And you suspect that he is off, Alfred?"

"It is not so very unlikely."

"Let us down to the cottage, then, and learn this at once," said Quackinboss; "I 'd be sore riled if he was to slip his cable while we thought him hard aground."

"Yes," said the doctor. "We need not necessarily go and ask for him; Winthrop can just drop in to say a 'good-evening,' while we wait outside."

"I wish you had chosen a craftier messenger," said Winthrop, laughing.

And now, taking their hats, they set out for the Gebhardts-Berg.

Alfred contrived to slip his arm within that of Quackinboss, and while the others went on in front, he sauntered slowly after with the Colonel.

He had been anxiously waiting for a moment when they could talk together, and for some days back it had not been possible. If the others were entirely absorbed in the pursuit of those who had planned this scheme of fraud, Alfred had but one thought,--and that was Clara. It was not as the great heiress he regarded her, not as the owner of a vast property, all at her own disposal; he thought of the sad story that awaited her,--the terrible revelation of her father's death, and the scarcely less harrowing history of her who had supplied the place of mother to her. "She will have to learn all this," thought he, "and at the moment that she hears herself called rich and independent, she will have to hear of the open shame and punishment of one who, whatever the relations between them, had called her her child, and assumed to treat her as her own."

To make known all these to Quackinboss, and to induce him, if he could, to regard them in the same light that they appeared to himself, was young Layton's object. Withoat any preface he told all his fears and anxieties. He pictured the condition of a young girl entering life alone, heralded by a scandal that would soon spread over all Europe.

Would not any poverty with obscurity be better than fortune on such conditions? Of what avail could wealth be, when every employment of it would bring up an odious history? and lastly, how reconcile Clara herself to the enjoyment of her good fortune, if it came associated with the bitter memory of others in suffering and in durance? If he knew anything of Clara's heart, he thought that the sorrow would far outweigh the joy the tidings of her changed condition would bring her; at least, he hoped that he had so read her nature aright, and it was thus that he had construed it.

If Quackinboss had none of that refined appreciation of sentiment which in a certain measure is the conventionality of a class, he had what is infinitely and immeasurably superior, a true-hearted sympathy with everything human. He was sorely sorry for "that widow-woman." He had forgotten none of the charms she threw around their evenings at Marlia long ago, and he was slow to think that these fascinations should always be exercised as snares and deceptions, and, last of all, as he said, "We have never heard _her_ story yet,--we know nothing of how she has been tried."

"What is it, then, that you propose to do?" asked the Colonel, at the end of a somewhat rambling and confused exposition by young Layton.

"Simply this: abandon all pursuit of these people; spare them and spare ourselves the pain and misery of a public shame. Their plot has failed; they will never attempt to renew it in any shape; and, above all, let not Clara begin the bright path before her by having to pass through a shadow of suffering and sorrow."

"Ay, there is much in what you say; and now that we have run the game to earth, I have my misgivings that we were not yielding ourselves more to the ardor of the pursuit than stimulated by any love of justice."

While they were thus talking, the others had passed the little wicket and entered the garden of the cottage. Struck by the quietness and the unlighted windows, they knocked hastily at the door. A question and answer revealed all, and the doctor called out aloud, "They are off!

They are away!"

Young Layton pressed Quackinboss's hand, and whispered, "Thank Heaven for it!"

If Winthrop laughed heartily at an escape that struck him as so cleverly effected, the doctor, far more eager in pursuit than the others, passed into the house to interrogate the people,--learn when and how and in what direction they had fled, and trace, if so it might be, the cause of this sudden departure.

"See," cried he, as the others entered the drawing-room,--"see what a sudden retreat it has been! They were at their coffee; here is her shawl, too, just as she may have thrown it off; and here a heap of papers and letters, half burned, on the hearth."

"One thing is clear enough," said Alfred; "they discovered that they had lost the battle, and they have abandoned the field."

"What do I see here?" cried the doctor, as he picked up a half-burned sheet of paper from the mass. "This is my own writing my application to the Patent Office, when I was prosecuting my discovery of corrugated steel! When and how could it have come here?"

"Who can 'My dear father' be?" asked Quackinboss, examining a letter which he had lifted from the floor. "Oh, here's his name: 'Captain Nicholas Holmes'--"

"Nick Holmes!" exclaimed the doctor; "the fellow who stole my invention, and threw me into a madhouse! What of him? Who writes to him as 'dear father'?"

"Our widow, no less," said the Colonel. "It is a few lines to say she is just setting out for Florence, and will be with him within the week."

"And this scoundrel was her father!" muttered the old doctor. "Only think of all the scores that we should have had to settle if we had had the luck to be here an hour ago! I thrashed him once in the public streets, it's true, but we are far from being quits yet Come, let's lose no time, but after them at once."

Alfred made no reply, but turned a look on Quackinboss, as thongh to bespeak his interference.

"Well, sir," said the Colonel, slowly, "so long as the pursuit involved a something to find out, no man was hotter arter it than I was; but now that we know all, that we have baffled our adversaries and beaten 'em, I ain't a-goin' to distress myself for a mere vengeance."

"Which means that these people are to go at large, free to practise their knaveries on others, and carry into other families the misery we have seen them inflict here. Is that your meaning?" asked the doctor, angrily.

"I can't tell what they are a-goin' to do hereafter, nor, maybe, can you either, sir. It may be, that with changed hearts they 'll try another way of livin'; it may be that they 'll see roguery ain't the best thing; it may be--who's to say how?--that all they have gone through of trouble and care and anxiety has made them long since sick of such a wearisome existence, and that, though not very strong in virtue, they are right glad to be out of the pains of vice, whatever and wherever they may be. At all events, Shaver Quackinboss has done with 'em, and if it was only a-goin' the length of the garden to take them this minute, I 'd jest say, 'No, tell 'em to slope off, and leave me alone.'"

"Let me tell you, sir, these are not your home maxims, and, for my part, I like Lynch law better than lax justice," said the doctor, angrily.

"Lynch law has its good and its bad side," said Quackinboss, "and, mayhap, if you come to consider the thing coolly, you 'll see that if I was rejecting rigid legality here, it was but to take the benefit of Judge Lynch, only this time for mercy, and not for punishment."

"Ah, there is something in that!" cried the doctor. "You have made a stronger case for yourself than I looked for; still, I owed that fellow a vengeance!"

"It's the only debt a man is dishonored in the payin', sir. You know far more of life than I do, but did you ever meet the man yet that was sorry for having forgiven an injury? I'm not sayin' that he mightn't have felt disappointed or discouraged by the result,--his enemy, as he'd call him, mightn't have turned out what he ought; but that ain't the question: did you _ever_ see one man who could say, after the lapse of years, 'I wish I had borne more malice,--I'm sorry I was n't more cruel'?"

"Let them go, and let us forget them," said the old man, as he turned and left the room.

Young Layton grasped the Colonel's hand, and shook it warmly, as he said, "This victory is all your own."