seen him. Kenneth, forgive me! I am very weak, perhaps, and very vacillating! But I have done you no wrong!" "None. You have simply made me worship you, and . . and given yourself, before my sight, to a man for whom you care nothing.' Celia's eyes filled with tears, and she stretched forth a hand, letting it rest on the head of Solarion. And now occurred a thing which was to Kenneth fraught with unutterable repulsion. "Here is a friend," said Celia, "who seems to me as if he might counsel me in my doubt and perplexity, had only speech been given him. Oh, Kenneth, I sometimes feel that just to live unwedded till I die, with this dear, faithful creature to crouch at my feet as he is doing now, would mean for me the greatest human happiness! I have such strange fancies about Solarion! I look into his beautiful, limpid eyes and am thrilled by a certainty that there is a soul, a spirit, behind them. After all, if one cannot love, what is one to do? If Solarion could speak, I imagine that he might tell me to let his devoted service and guardianship stand in the place of what my own curious coldness has made me miss! ... Ah, this will sound strange to you, Kenneth, and yet "It sounds worse than strange," cried Kenneth, rising; "it sounds brutish." Then he added, with a bleak, hard laugh, "as brutish as Solarion himself!" Celia looked at him with her dark eyes widened by astonishment. The hand with which she had been caressing Solarion's noble head fell at her side again. "I.. I do not understand you," she faltered. "Perhaps," replied Kenneth, with another burst of his ironic laughter, "you do not understand yourself." Celia shook her head in a puzzled way. "Now you are still more vague," she said. Just then a servant entered the room, and, approaching Celia, said a few words to her in a low tone, while at the same time offering a card. "I must see her, Mary, of course," soon came Celia's reply. Then she turned toward Kenneth. "You remember old Mrs. Leveridge? She knew both my father and my step-mother very intimately, and I'm sure that she has come to talk with me about the.. the disaster. I will meet her in the sitting-room, with your permission, and afterward . . .” "We can talk about the other disaster," said Kenneth. "I fear you are incorrigible," she said, going toward the door. "Shall you remain, then, till Mrs. Leveridge goes?" "I don't know; I'm not sure." His voice had so sullen and moody a ring that Celia started and looked at him alarmedly. "You seem so very unhappy," she said, with a sigh. "Yes," he answered, "I am very unhappy; I am even more than that." He had now fixed his eyes upon Solarion, who still sat as motionless as though he were cut in marble. Again Celia sighed. "Your manner is very strange, Kenneth," she said. Then she tried to speak in a brighter and less concerned way. "I shall hope to see you again in a little while. Mrs. Leveridge will probably not stay long; she's an invalid, and rarely continues out of doors more than an hour or two at a time." Celia disappeared. There are some trifling events which produce the most gigantic results. Kenneth, as he sat with folded arms and grim-knit brows, told himself now that the mere temporary absence of Celia from this chamber which she had just left might precipitate a dire calamity. And yet he was inflexibly determined, in so far as concerned his own future course. 'It is for Solarion to decide,' he had already said to his own thoughts; 'not for me.' Dead silence reigned for several minutes after Celia had gone. Then Kenneth spoke. "You disobeyed me." "I did," Solarion replied. His voice, intensely familiar to his hearer, nevertheless dealt Kenneth a shock as it sounded through that silent room. Outside, the vines on the veranda were flapping and pulsating their leaves in the pleasant summer breeze. Here the light was moderate, falling on book and ornament, on drapery and picture, while all betokened so much of the placid usualness of life that these tones, heard in their new surrounding, struck a note of piercing discord. "You have resolved, then, to defy me?" Kenneth pursued. "I am hers; I belong to her; you gave me to her." "But I had no suspicion, however remote, of what has since occurred." "Nor had I." "Very well," said Kenneth. He rose and went somewhat near to the majestic, immobile shape. "You now realize everything quite as clearly as I. What would be the outgrowth of your remaining under this roof, even if I were willing you should do so, which I am very positively not? In some foolish moment you would betray yourself. Perhaps if Celia were to hear a human voice issue from you the shock might unseat her reason. But in any case the thought of your being here at all is detestable, execrable. It is insult to her; it is worse; no language can convey just what it is, Solarion, for such an instance as yours has no earthly parallel. You must leave here with me when I myself depart. You have become aware of her determination to marry. If you suffer, so, too, will I suffer. The excuse for taking you with me I will invent. And I will forget all that has proved so distressful in our recent intercourse. Your secret shall be held sacred forever; have no fear of that. Come, now, decide. Decide,-and consent!" "No, I will not consent. I will stay here. That is my decision." "You must change it!" "Must?" came the low answer, full of deep scorn. change it if you dare." "Force me to "Oh, I shall dare," said Kenneth, almost whispering the words, though with eyes that fiercely kindled. "I have no fear of your threats. I see you in a new light; you are me, the merest self-loving tyrant. You have put this curse of mind upon and now you wish to make me your slave, your cringing minion. I demanded of you that you should tell her what I really am. Well, you have refused, and let it pass. But I shall not leave her. I shall be near her always till I die. Who knows from what danger I may guard her? If, as you say, I should ever betray myself, the shock might not be so terrible, after all. Perhaps it would be best that she should know the truth. But take these words from me as the expression of a great resolve. I will never leave her while I live and she lets me remain. You want me to grovel at your feet; I prefer hers." Kenneth shook his head rapidly several times. His right hand had gone to his breast. "You shall never do it," he said. "This thing shall not be. I foresee only unnamable horror in your mere presence at her side. Once more, Solarion, and for the last time, will you come with me?" Solarion slowly rose. His eyes were blazing; they looked like two great purple diamonds. The sinews of his lion-like form visibly quivered. He was sublime, terrifying. But Kenneth did not falter. "Your answer," he went on. "Reflect before you make it. You must agree to my wishes. I shall give her up forever; remember that. I shall go away and never set eyes on her again. You must come with If you do not... me. "If I do not?" said Solarion. His voice was faint, and yet it had somehow the effect of a distant roll of thunder, while it seemed also packed with wrath and disdain. "You must die, then," returned Kenneth, and he drew swiftly backward. At the same instant he took something from his breast. Solarion stood towering in fury. There was a report; Kenneth had fired, but the bullet did no mortal work. Then Solarion gave one mighty spring. Kenneth fell to the floor, and great fangs rent his face. But in some way, prone as he was, he had power to lift his weapon and fire again. It was a wild and random shot, this time, but it fatally told. Solarion, without a sound, sank. The bullet had entered his brain. Frightfully mutilated and bleeding, Kenneth rose just as Celia, followed by Caryl Dayton, hurried into the room. A shriek rang from Celia. Kenneth was staggering, but he lifted one hand with a gesture of reassurance. He could scarcely discern Celia; one eye had been torn from its socket, and the other was almost wholly blinded by blood, which also flowed from another shocking wound in his thigh. "He-he showed signs of madness, and I shot him," came Kenneth's gasped words. "Don't fear; he's dead. . . I—I think I shall soon be dead as well," he added, falling heavily just as Caryl Dayton darted toward him. But, as we already know, Kenneth did not die. At the end of his long illness the faithful Hilda, who had nursed him as devotedly as his own dead mother would have done, sailed. with him for Europe. There, in Switzerland, we have seen him, and have had some knowledge, as well, of the sombre, secluded life that he lived. He would never let Celia look on his face after the healing of its dire wound, though she made several efforts to see him. When he had been absent from America about three months her marriage with Caryl Dayton took place. He may or may not have learned of this event, though most probably the news of it reached him. And thus it befell that poor Conrad Klotz, the little Strasburg philosopher, asleep in his humble Alsatian grave, had been sternly and solemnly avenged. If all human treachery were equally sure of the expiating hours destined to follow it, a few of our sublunar experiences might be less peaceful than present conditions find them. THE END. RECOLLECTIONS OF GEORGE W. CHILDS. IV. You ask me to show you "the treasures" of my library. There they are,―several thousand of them; many of them notable books indeed. The presentation-copies alone, I suppose, contain enough interesting autograph inscriptions of their authors to amuse you. There are many curios in the collection,-many valuable manuscripts. Here, bearing the date of May 17, 1703, written in a small, compact, but legible hand, is the original of a sermon by Cotton Mather. To set it off, here are two volumes that were once in the library of Charles Dickens, one the Poetical Works of Leigh Hunt, with an autograph inscription to "Charles Dickens, from his constant admirer and obliged friend, Leigh Hunt," the other a copy of Hood's "Comic Annual" for 1842. It contains these characteristic lines in Hood's handwriting: Pshaw! away with leaf and berry Here's success to all his antics, As the best among his works! A manuscript I prize is the translation of the first book of the Iliad by my friend William Cullen Bryant. Not less interesting is the manuscript of Edgar A. Poe's remarkable story of "The Murders in the Rue Morgue." It is written in a fine close hand on seventeen pages of large legal-cap paper, and has quite a history. The late Mr. J. W. Johnston, from whom I secured it, wrote me that it was in the spring of 1841, at the time he was an apprentice in the office of Barrett & Thrasher, printers, in Philadelphia, that the manuscript came into his possession. It was at this office that Graham's Magazine, in which the story first appeared, was printed. After the tale had been put in type and the proof read, the manuscript found its way into the waste-basket; but Mr. Johnston picked it up, and, obtaining permission to keep it, took it home to the residence of his father. He then, it seems, lost sight of the manuscript for years. His father removed from Philadelphia to York County, Pennsylvania, thence to Maryland, and thence to Virginia, and in these several pilgrimages, unknown to |