merciful to suppose it insanity. There are such characters, we know, in history, who delighted in torture for its own sake. His seemed one of those natures that at a certain point had to go wholly and irremediably to the bad." "But how, but why did such a dreadful mistake ever arise?" exclaimed Barclay excitedly. "I suppose I chose with a young girl's want of reflection. I must have been very thoughtless, even for my age. Truly, I had formed but a dim conception of what it was to be married, and of the need of a true affection. Varemberg interested and dazzled me. He told me, too, that no one could ever love me as much as he, and I think I allowed myself to believe it." "And yet it ought not to have been so difficult to love you, in those times," broke in Barclay, with a sad sort of bitterness. "I sometimes used to wonder that everybody who knew you did not do it." He had yielded momentarily to an emotion against which he vainly struggled. Surely it was evident now that her father had never told her of his proposal, and she had never known the true state of his feelings. Such naïveté of statement, as unconscious as her former flippancy, would otherwise have been impossible. She turned towards him a look of genuine surprise. "Truly," she said, "you have come back an accomplished flatterer. Once, praise from you was praise from Sir Hubert, to be esteemed indeed." "Whatever I have come back, it is no flatterer." "Then it only remains to set you down as misguided. I was far from certain in my own mind about this marriage," she went on presently, "but my father reassured me, and laid my scruples at rest." "Your father?" "Yes, alas! he too was deceived." Paul Barclay's surmise, to which so many indications had pointed, was confirmed. Her father had been the author of the match, she only a consenting party. He groaned in spirit, but too late, to think that all his agony had passed even unnoted, and to recall his own words of consuming passion unspoken, when it appeared how easily the glib sophistries of the foreigner had prevailed with her. "Bear with me," he resumed, after some one of those casual interruptions from the sights and scenes around them that occur in such out-of-doors jaunts. "And after all this, they tell me, you will not avail yourself even of the poor remedy of the law." 66 Oh no, not that; never ! ulated, in a sort of horror. "And why?" she ejac "There is but one thing for a woman to do in a situation like mine, and that is to accept the consequences of her folly gracefully, and conceal them from the public eye as far as possible. No new trials, no further experiments for me!" "But even apart from further experiments," he reasoned with her, grieved at the terms, "is it not irksome to drag a ball and chain, as it were, some five or ten thousand miles long?" "There are international aspects to the case, and it is not certain that release could be obtained, valid in both countries, did I desire it never so much. And where is the great harm in a ball and chain, if one does not wish to dance?" with a melancholy smile. "I have not heard it was dancers only to whom those appendages were hateful. One would always like to walk unimpeded, even at the slowest pace." "No, I have firm convictions against what you suggest," she persisted. "And so have I had till now. Or rather, I fear my attention has never been closely turned to it. But surely the step was never better justified." "Whom God hath joined together, he only can put asunder. That is what I have always been taught to believe. That is what my father believes, with me. Alas! in many things I no longer know what my convictions are. Varemberg shook my faith, in our early days, with his brilliant, hateful skepticism; that harm he did me with the rest. But, in all my uncertainties, on this point I have never wavered." Barclay abandoned the argument with a sigh. He afterwards felt greatly his temerity in entering on it. He sighed over his companion in many ways. A week after this, the statement was current that a new partner had gone into the management of the StampedWare Works with Maxwell. The news was brought into the Johannisberg House, which stood at no great distance from Barclay's Island, on the main land, by the South Side letter-carrier, Peter Stransky. It was a quiet afternoon at that respectable caravansary. There were visible a collection of shells and a fullrigged ship, behind the bar of the long, neatly sanded room. A little platform crossed one end of this room, on which a quartette of Tyroleans with zither accompaniment, sometimes sang the national yodel. The wall behind it was painted with a mammoth Alpine scene, with a door in the centre; so that the performers, on taking leave, seemed to disappear into the heart of the mountain, like a species of kobolds. Christian Idak, grown older and confirmed in that important air of the small landlord who is better off than most of his guests, still VOL. LVIII.-NO. 345. 3 moved about in his shirt-sleeves. Frau Idak sat knitting in a corner, and a child by her side was doing sums on its slate. The same marine gossips, or their like, were at their posts, recounting hair-breadth escapes and curious happenings, which are even more common, perhaps, in the lake navigation than that of the salt ocean. One had told of cruising amid floating ice-fields, twenty feet thick, in Lake Superior, in June. Another had told that, once, when wrecked, he had seen the ghost of a former captain swimming by him in the water. The mysterious questions of a tide and subterranean outlets for the lakes had been touched upon. "What I know is," said a tug-man, on this latter subject, "that a precious sight more water goes down that Saint Lawrence River than ever gets out o' the lakes fair and above-board." "Most anywhere out Waukesha way, where I hail from," added a skipper, corroborating him, "if you bore down into the solid rock you get water comin' up, with live fish in it. And 'cisco,' which is a Lake Superior fish, and nothin' else, appears in Genevy Lake a few days every year, and then disappears again, so you can't find one for love nor money. Now what does all that mean if it ain't that there's underground channels?" The "hard times," supposed to be existing, next came in for their fair share of attention. An engineer of the Owl Line complained that they did not get one trip now where they formerly got a dozen. try 'll never see a well day again till it gets a poor man's currency, and makes it ekil to the wants o' trade.” It was about this time that the South Side letter-carrier came in, from his swift rounds, with his leather satchel slung over his shoulder. "The Stamped-Ware Works is one place where they don't show much signs o' hard times," said he, pausing a moment, in his thirst imbibing a glass of Keewaydin's excellent beer. "I've just been there. They 've got in a new partner; they're puttin' on a new lot of hands, and everything 's boomin'." "Who?" "What?" "How?" greeted the announcement, from all sides, with a lively interest. "Who's the new partner?" "Name's Barclay, a New York feller, with loads o' money; same one what his father used to own the island afore him." And he was off again, on his route, down to the remote precincts of Windlake Avenue and Muckwonago Road. The little notary public, Kroeger, who spent much of his time here, having little to detain him at his own office, and who obtained a repute for wisdom and insight by a policy of cynical smiling and disparagement, commented sagely : "I guess Maxwell he got bigger ideas as what he know how to do business." Akins, the foreman of the Works, came in presently, with a hard-pressed air, and confirmed the intelligence, with additions. "Of course the concern was solid," said he, "and no need o' changin', but a little more money don't never do no harm. Mr. Barclay, he was lookin' round for a job, and bein' as we suited him, and the island was his, any way, what more natural than that we should strike up a bargain?" Mrs. Varemberg derived her first authentic information from Barclay him self. Some rumor of it had already reached her. She received it with an open enthusiasm. "You are going to stay?" she exclaimed. "Yes, I am going to stay." "It seems one of those things really too good to be true." "It appears that the too-good-to-betrue sometimes happens," he replied, smiling. He surprised himself in a certain tremor, at her pleasant excitement, but quickly dismissed it. She had had really nothing to do with his staying, he assured himself. She was in the place, it is true, and was weak and suffering, and he might be of some small solace and assistance to her, as he should be glad to be to any friend in like situation in whom he felt an interest, but that was all. "Maxwell put the matter in such a light that I could not decline his offer," he explained. "If I were in earnest in my ideas, - and I assure you I was, here was an opening just suited to my peculiar case, and, strangely enough, ready to my hand. Why should I search further? And so indeed he thought. He had yielded to that subtile warping by inclination and sympathy which sometimes has its way even with the clearest of consciences. He had not the faintest notion in the world of being that equivocal figure, the masculine consoler of an unhappy wife. He was endowed with an excellent Anglo-Saxon common sense, and he felt himself to be, now, with his ample experience, a person of a sturdy temperament, upon which the imagination could play but few of its tricks. Was he not heart-whole? And have we not seen lovers meeting in after years, and even exchanging congratulations on their fortunate escape from each other? It was his general purpose in life to set his face resolutely against all those courses of conduct re quiring extenuation or apology, and he had no intention of departing from it in this instance. When David Lane returned, after the absence we have noted, he found Paul Barclay fairly settled in Keewaydin. "What does this mean?" he demanded of his daughter, with a face of ominous and rigid severity, of which she by no means comprehended the occasion. "What could it mean, papa? I do not understand you," she responded, in strong astonishment. "This young man must needs follow us about the world, and now he comes hither, and even makes a pretext of engaging in business." "And why should he not go into a business here? I do not understand you, papa. As to his following us about the world, surely you remember that it is a good four years since we have seen him, and it was but by the merest accident he knew I was here." David Lane, in his first access of consternation, bad made a very false step. He hastened to repair its consequences as best he could. "I was only thinking, dearest," he began, in a confused way, "if it should be said that a former admirer had followed you here, at this particular time" "But he is not my 'former admirer,' she interrupted, impatiently. "He was a very staunch friend, whom I should like to keep. At the worst, we hardly have the right to turn out of Keewaydin all those who have been my admirers, -if we can suppose any so misguided. I do not understand you at all. not Paul Barclay, at Paris, one of our most esteemed acquaintances?" "I-I have nothing against him," stammered the wretched man. "Only, your position, just at this time, requires a great deal of circumspection." Was Under the influence of her brother, Mrs. Clinton, in her turn, offered a feeble counsel, on the same subject. "TAUGHT BY MISFORTUNE, I PITY THE UNHAPPY." At an early day after taking the important step described, Barclay went to New York to settle up certain of his affairs awaiting him there, and finally conclude, by a brief visit to his family, his long tour round the world. He found himself glad, on reaching New York again, to have chosen Keewaydin as his field of action. The great metropolis would have been too vast, its influence too discouraging for his simple experiment. An individual like himself would have been swallowed up in its Babel of conflicting interests, and could not have hoped to make the faintest impression. The city had changed much, even during the few years of his absence. The great apartment-houses, for one thing, had then begun to tower up newly above the level of ordinary life, some even surpassing the tops of the churches. His own family, meantime, had moved far up town, near Central Park, choosing their new abode in a quarter that had been in his day but a waste of desert lots, and abandoning the old one on Fifth Avenue before the encroachments of trade. His sisters came in, one day, and told mournfully how they had made purchases over the counter in the chambers sacred to the most intimate memories of their childhood. Old acquaintances, whom he met at some clubs, where he still kept his membership, and elsewhere, were inclined to joke him about the remote precinct where, they understood, he had taken. up his new habitat; but they were respectful about it, too, identifying it more or less with the cattle ranches of Dakota and Montana, to which various friends, "swell" young Englishmen and the like, had taken lately, and they asked him questions about stock-raising, and begged him to bear them in mind if he should meet with opportunities for money-making he himself might not be able to use. Paul Barclay returned to Keewaydin, and took up his quarters in the spacious residence of his kinsfolk, the Thornbrooks, a pleasant old couple, quite free from the crabbedness of age, who insisted upon it with a pressing hospitality. They had their own primitive ideas and habits, they said, but these should in no way be allowed to interfere with his convenience. They promised him an exaggerated liberty. They insisted that there was room enough, and to spare, for all; and so indeed it seemed, when Barclay came to inspect the large, comfortable chambers placed at his disposal. The Thornbrooks proceeded forthwith to give a large entertainment, with the view of introducing him to the society of the place, and nearly everybody of note assembled to do him honor. There came, among the rest, his traveling-companions, Jim De Bow, who rose once more on his heel, and Miss Justine De Bow, who this time asked him to come and see her at her home. in active earnest. Establishing a regular routine, he rose and breakfasted early; then drove, in a buggy he had set up, or sometimes walked, for the benefit of the more active exercise, down to the Works, where he spent a long, busy day. He crossed the Chippewa Street Bridge, where Ludwig Trapschuh soon came to add him to the large list of acquaintance he claimed "by sight." It was the purpose of Barclay to post himself thoroughly in all parts of his enterprise before he should set out upon any novel schemes. Accordingly, he studied the great books of account, the systems of sales and credit, the character and source of supply of the raw materials, then the processes of manufacture, and finally the shipment of the completed product to many and distant markets. His "office " was a small wooden house, with platform-scales beside it. It had worn cocoa matting on the floor; it contained a great iron safe, a low desk and another high one; to sit beside this latter it was necessary to mount on a high stool. On the wall was a capacious frame filled with specimens of the smaller wares turned out by the factory, with their price-list attached. The hum of a distant planing-mill rose unceasingly on the ear, like some homely song forever celebrating the plodding industries of the quarter. The main buildings were partly of brick and partly of wood; their roofs were covered with a preparation of asphalt, which, with the tan-bark, from a not far distant tannery, laid on the road of approach, gave out distinctive odors when heated by the sun. Over the principal doorway was the legend: "No Admission Except on Business." All around was a litter of piece-moulds, old castings, and general débris, and against the walls leaned some mammoth gearwheels, still so long from their swift revolutions that the slow rust and cob But he began his labors immediately webs had overtaken them. |