in possession of the empty house. I never saw him again; I never heard more of him or of his wife. Out of the dark byways of villany and deceit, they had crawled across our path-into the same byways they crawled back secretly, and were lost. In a quarter of an hour after leaving Forestroad, I was at home again. But few words sufficed to tell Laura and Marian how my desperate venture had ended, and what the next event in our lives was likely to be. I left all details to be described later in the day; and hastened back to St. John's Wood, to see the person of whom Count Fosco had ordered the fly, when he went to meet Laura at the station. The address in my possession led me to some "livery stables," about a quarter of a mile distant from Forest-road. The proprietor proved to be a civil and respectable man. When I explained that an important family matter obliged me to ask him to refer to his books, for the purpose of ascertaining a date with which the record of his business transactions might supply me, he offered no objection to granting my request. The book was produced; and there, under the date of "July 29th, 1550," the order was entered, in these words: 66 Brougham to Count Fosco, 5, Forest-road. Two o'clock. (John Owen)." I found, on inquiry, that the name of "John Owen," attached to the entry, referred to the man who had been employed to drive the fly. He was then at work in the stable-yard, and was sent for to see me, at my request. "Do you remember driving a gentleman, in the month of July last, from Number Five, Forest-road, to the Waterloo-bridge station ?" I asked. say "Well, sir," said the man; "I can't exactly I do." 66 Perhaps you remember the gentleman himself? Can you call to mind driving a foreigner, last summer-a tall gentleman, and remarkably fat ?" The man's face brightened directly. "I remember him, sir! The fattest gentleman as ever I see and the heaviest customer as ever I drove. Yes, yes-I call him to mind, sir. We did go to the station, and it was from Forestroad. There was a parrot, or summut like it, screeching in the window. The gentleman was in a mortal hurry about the lady's luggage; and he give me a handsome present for looking sharp and getting the boxes." Getting the boxes! I recollected immediately that Laura's own account of herself, on her arrival in London, described her luggage as being collected for her by some person whom Count Fosco brought with him to the station. This was the man. "You remember her name!" "Yes, sir. Her name was Lady Glyde." "How do you come to remember that, when you have forgotten what she looked like ?" The man smiled, and shifted his feet in some little embarrassment. C "Why, to tell you the truth, sir," he said, I "I hadn't been long married at that time; and my wife's name, before she changed it for mine, was the same as the lady's-meaning the name of Glyde, sir. The lady mentioned it herself. Is your name on your boxes, ma'am?' says I. Yes,' says she, my name is on my luggage-it is Lady Glyde. Come!' I says to myself, I've bad head for gentlefolks' names in generalbut this one comes like an old friend, at any rate. I can't say nothing about the time, sir: it might be nigh on a year ago, or it mightn't. But I can swear to the stout gentleman, aud swear to the lady's name." a There was no need that he should remember the time; the date was positively established by his master's order-book. I felt at once that the means were at last in my power of striking down the whole conspiracy at a blow with the irresistible weapon of plain fact. Without a moment's hesitation, I took the proprietor of the livery stables aside, and told him what the real importance was of the evidence of his orderbook and the evidence of his driver. An arrangement to compensate him for the temporary loss of the man's services was easily made; and a copy of the entry in the book was taken by myself, and certified as true by the master's own signature. I left the livery stables, having settled that John Owen was to hold himself at my disposal for the next three days, or for a longer period, if necessity required it. I now had in my possession all the papers that I wanted; the district registrar's own copy of the certificate of death, and Sir Percival's dated letter to the Count, being safe in my pocket-book. With this written evidence about me, and with the coachman's answers fresh in my memory, I next turned my steps, for the first time since the beginning of all my inquiries, in the direction of Mr. Kyrle's office. One of my objects, in paying him this second visit, was, necessarily, to tell him what I had done. The other, was to warn him of my resolution to take my wife to Limmeridge the next morning, and to have her publicly received and recognised in her uncle's house. I left it to Mr. Kyrle to decide, under these circumstances, and in Mr. Gilmore's absence, whether he was or was not bound, as the family solicitor, to be present, on that occasion, in the family interests. I will say nothing of Mr. Kyrle's amazement, or of the terms in which he expressed his opinion of my conduct, from the first stage of the investigation to the last. It is only necessary to mention that he at once decided on accompanycalling us to Cumberland. "Did you see the lady ?" I asked. "What did she look like? Was she young or old?" "Well, sir, what with the hurry and the crowd of people pushing about, I can't rightly say what the lady looked like. I can't nothing to mind about her that I know of—excepting her name.” We started, the next morning, by the early train. Laura, Marian, Mr. Kyrle, and myself in tical contradiction which facts offered to the assertion of Laura's death. This I submitted to Mr. Kyrle, before I read it, the next day, to the assembled tenants. We also arranged the form in which the evidence should be presented at the close of the reading. After these matters were settled, Mr. Kyrle endeavoured to turn the conversation, next, to Laura's affairs. Knowing, and desiring to know, nothing of those affairs; and doubting whether he would approve, as a man of business, of my conduct in relation to my wife's life-interest in the legacy left to one carriage; and John Owen, with a clerk from Mr. Kyrie's office, occupying places in another. On reaching the Limmeridge station, we went first to the farm-house at Todd's Corner. It was my firm determination that Laura should not enter her uncle's house till she appeared there publicly recognised as his niece. I left Marian to settle the question of accommodation with Mrs. Todd, as soon as the good woman had recovered from the bewilderment of hearing what our errand was in Cumberland; and I arranged with her husband that John Owen was to be committed to the ready hospitality of the farm-to Madame Fosco, I begged Mr. Kyrle to exservants. These preliminaries completed, Mr. Kyrle and I set forth together for Limmeridge House. My last labour, as the evening approached, was to obtain "The Narrative of the Tombstone," by taking a copy of the false inscription on the grave, before it was erased. The day came-the day when Laura once more entered the familiar breakfast-room at Limmeridge House. All the persons assembled rose from their seats as Marian and I led her in. A perceptible shock of surprise, an audible murmur of interest, ran through them, at the sight of her face. Mr. Fairlie was present (by my express stipulation), with Mr. Kyrle by his side. His valet stood behind him with a smelling-bottle ready in one hand, and a white handkerchief, saturated with eau-de-Cologne, in the other. cuse me if I abstained from discussing the subject. It was connected, as I could truly tell him, with those sorrows and troubles of the past, which we never referred to among ourI cannot write at any length of our inter-selves, and which we instinctively shrank from view with Mr. Fairlie, for I cannot recal it to discussing with others. mind, without feelings of impatience and contempt, which make the scene, even in remembrance only, utterly repulsive to me. I prefer to record simply that I carried my point. Mr. Fairlie attempted to treat us on his customary plan. We passed without notice his polite insolence at the outset of the interview. We heard without sympathy the protestations with which he tried next to persuade us that the disclosure of the conspiracy had overwhelmed him. He absolutely whined and whimpered, at last, like a fret ful child. "How was he to know that his niece was alive, when he was told that she was dead? He would welcome dear Laura, with pleasure, if we would only allow him time to recover. Did we think he looked as if he wanted hurrying into his grave? No. Then, why hurry him?" He reiterated these remon- I opened the proceedings by publicly appealstrances at every available opportunity, until I ing to Mr. Fairlie to say whether I appeared checked them once for all, by placing him firmly there with his authority and under his express between two inevitable alternatives. I gave him sanction. He extended an arm, on either side, his choice between doing his niece justice, on to Mr. Kyrle and to his valet; was by them my terms-or facing the consequences of a assisted to stand on his legs; and then expressed public assertion of her identity in a court of himself in these terms: Allow me to present law. Mr. Kyrle, to whom he turned for help, Mr. Hartright. I am as great an invalid as told him plainly that he must decide the ques-ever; and he is so very obliging as to speak for tion, then and there. Characteristically choosing me. The subject is dreadfully embarrassing. the alternative which promised soonest to release him from all personal anxiety, he announced, with a sudden outburst of energy, that he was not strong enough to bear any more bullying, and that we might do as we pleased. Please hear him-and don't make a noise!" With those words, he slowly sank back again into the chair, and took refuge in his scented pocket-handkerchief. My disclosure of the conspiracy followedMr. Kyle and I at once went down stairs, after I had offered my preliminary explanaand agreed upon a form of letter which was to tion, first of all, in the fewest and the plainest be sent round to the tenants who had attended words. I was there present (I informed my the false funeral, summoning them, in Mr. Fair-hearers) to declare first, that my wife, then sitlie's name, to assemble in Limmeridge House, on the next day but one. An order, referring to the same date, was also written, directing a statuary in Carlisle to send a man to Limmeridge churchyard, for the purpose of erasing an inscription-Mr. Kyrle, who had arranged to sleep in the house, undertaking that Mr. Fairlie should hear these letters read to him, and should sign them with his own hand. I occupied the interval-day, at the farm, in writing a plain narrative of the conspiracy, and in adding to it a statement of the prac ting by me, was the daughter of the late Mr. Philip Fairlie; secondly, to prove, by positive facts, that the funeral which they had attended in Limmeridge churchyard, was the funeral of another woman; thirdly, to give them a plain account of how it had all happened. Without further preface, I at once read the narrative of the conspiracy, describing it in clear outline, and dwelling only upon the pecuniary motive for it, in order to avoid complicating my statement by unnecessary reference to Sir Percival's secret. This done, I reminded my audience of the date of off Laura herself and the assembly slowly withdrew. It was late in the day before the whole inscription was erased. One line only was afterwards engraved in its place: "Anne Catherick, July 28th, 1850." "Lady Glyde's" death, recorded on the inscrip- last fetters of the conspiracy had been struck tion in the churchyard (the 28th of July); and confirmed its correctness by producing the doctor's certificate. I then read them Sir Percival's letter announcing his wife's intended journey from Hampshire to London on the 29th, and dated from Blackwater on the 28th-the very day when the certificate asserted her decease in St. John's Wood. I next showed that she had actually taken that journey, by the personal testimony of the driver of the fly; and I proved that she had performed it on the day appointed in her husband's letter, by the evidence of the order-book at the livery stables. Marian, at my request, next added her own statement of the meeting between Laura and herself at the mad-us "Mr. Fairlie's best congratulations," and house, and of her sister's escape. After which, I closed the proceedings by informing the persons present of Sir Percival's death, and of my marriage. I returned to Limmeridge House early enough in the evening to take leave of Mr. Kyrle. He, and his clerk, and the driver of the fly, went back to London by the night train. On their departure, an insolent message was delivered to me from Mr. Fairlie-who had been carried from the room in a shattered condition, when the first outbreak of cheering answered my appeal to the tenantry. The message conveyed to requested to know whether we contemplated stopping in the house." I sent back word that the only object for which we had entered his doors was accomplished; that I contemplated Mr. Kyrle rose, when I resumed my seat, and stopping in no man's house but my own; and declared, as the legal adviser of the family, that that Mr. Fairlie need not entertain the slightest my case was proved by the plainest evidence he apprehension of ever seeing us, or hearing from had ever heard in his life. As he spoke those us again. We went back to our friends at the words, I put my arm round Laura, and raised farm, to rest that night; and the next morning her so that she was plainly visible to every one-escorted to the station, with the heartiest enin the room. 66 Are you all of the same opinion?" thusiasm and good will, by the whole village I asked, advancing towards them a few steps, and by all the farmers in the neighbourhoodand pointing to my wife. we returned to London. The effect of the question was electrical. Far down at the lower end of the room, one of the oldest tenants on the estate, started to his feet, and led the rest with him in an instant. I see the man now, with his honest brown face and his iron-grey hair, mounted on the window-seat, waving his heavy riding-whip frantically over his head, and leading the cheers. "There she is alive and hearty-God bless her! Gi' it tongue, lads! Gi' it tongue!" The shout that answered him, reiterated again and again, was the sweetest music I ever heard. The labourers in the village and the boys from the school, assembled on the lawn, caught up the cheering and echoed it back on us. The farmers' wives clustered round Laura, and struggled which should be first to shake hands with her, and to implore her, with the tears pouring over their own cheeks, to bear bravely and not to cry. She was so completely overwhelmed, that I was obliged to take her from them, and carry her to the door. There I gave her into Marian's care-Marian, who had never failed us yet, whose courageous self-control did not fail us now. Left by myself at the door, I invited all the persons present (after thanking them in Laura's name and mine) to follow me to the churchyard, and see the false inscription struck off the tombstone with their own eyes. up They all left the house, and all joined the throng of villagers collected round the grave, where the statuary's man was waiting for us. In a breathless silence, the first sharp stroke of the steel sounded on the marble. Not a voice was heard; not a soul moved, till those three words, "Laura, Lady Glyde," had vanished from sight. Then, there was a great heave of relief among the crowd, as if they felt that the As our view of the Cumberland hills faded in the distance, I thought of the first disheartening circumstances under which the long struggle that was now past and over had been pursued. It was strange to look back and to see, now, that the poverty which had denied us all hope of assistance, had been the indirect means of our success, by forcing me to act for myself. If we had been rich enough to find legal help, what would have been the result? The gain (on Mr. Kyrle's own showing) would have been more than doubtful; the loss-judging by the plain test of events as they had really happened - certain. The Law would never have obtained me my interview with Mrs. Catherick. The Law would never have made Pesca the means of forcing a confession from the Count. II. Two more events remain to be added to the chain, before it reaches fairly from the outset of the story to the close. While our new sense of freedom from the long oppression of the past was still strange to us, I was sent for by the friend who had given me my first employment in wood engraving, to receive from him a fresh testimony of his regard for my welfare. He had been commissioned by his employers to go to Paris, and to examine for them a French discovery in the practical application of his Art, the merits of which they were anxious to ascertain. His own engagements had not allowed him leisure time to undertake the errand; and he had most kindly suggested that it should be transferred to me. I could have no hesitation in thankfully accepting the offer; for if I acquitted myself of my commission as I hoped I should, the result would be a permanent engage- "After all that we three have suffered together," she said, "there can be no parting between us, till the last parting of all. My heart and my happiness, Walter, are with Laura and you. Wait a little till there are children's voices at your fireside. I will teach them to speak for me, in their language; and the first lesson they say to their father and mother shall be-We can't spare our aunt!" My journey to Paris was not undertaken alone. At the eleventh hour, Pesca decided that he would accompany me. He had not recovered his customary cheerfulness, since the night at the Opera; and he determined to try what a week's holiday would do to raise his spirits. not know you had a friend with you till I saw No friend," said Pesca, eagerly. "We can't return, I am afraid, before the afternoon," I replied. "Would you like to come out with me, in the mean time ?" "No, my friend; I will wait here. But let us go back to-day-pray let us go back." I left him, with the assurance that he should leave Paris that afternoon. We had arranged, the evening before, to ascend the Cathedral of Notre-Dame, with Victor Hugo's noble romance for our guide. There was nothing in the French capital that I was more anxious to see—and I departed, by myself, for the church. Approaching Notre-Dame by the river-side, I passed, on my way, the terrible dead-house of Paris-the Morgue. A great crowd clamoured and heaved round the door. There was evidently something inside which excited the popular curiosity, and fed the popular appetite for horror. I should have walked on to the church, if the conversation of two men and a woman on the outskirts of the crowd had not caught my ear. They had just come out from seeing the sight in the Morgue; and the account they were giving of the dead body to their neighbours, described as the corpse of a man-a man of immense size, with a strange mark on his left arm. I performed the errand entrusted to me, and drew out the necessary report, on the fourth day from our arrival in Paris. The fifth day, I arranged to devote to sight-seeing and amuse-it ment in Pesca's company. Our hotel had been too full to accommodate The moment those words reached me, I stopus both on the same floor. My room was on ped, and took my place with the crowd going the second story, and Pesca's was above me, on in. Some dim foreshadowing of the truth had the third. On the morning of the fifth day, I crossed my mind, when I heard Pesca's voice went up-stairs to see if the Professor was ready through the open door, and when I saw the to go out. Just before I reached the landing, I stranger's face as he passed me on the stairs of saw his door opened from the inside; a long, the hotel. Now, the truth itself was revealed delicate, nervous hand (not my friend's hand to me-revealed, in the chance words that had certainly) held it ajar. At the same time, I just reached my ears. Other vengeance than mine heard Pesca's voice saying eagerly, in low tones, had followed that fated man from the theatre and in his own language: "I remember the to his own door; from his own door to his name, but I don't know the man. You saw refuge in Paris. Other vengeance than mine at the Opera, he was so changed that I had called him to the day of reckoning, could not recognise him. I will forward the and had exacted from him the penalty of his report-I can do no more." "No more need life. The moment when I had pointed him out be done," answered a second voice. The door to Pesca, at the theatre, in the hearing of that opened wide; and the light-haired man with stranger by our side, who was looking for him, the scar on his check-the man I had seen follow-too-was the moment that sealed his doom. I ing Count Fosco's cab a week before-came out. He bowed, as I drew aside to let him pass-his face was fearfully pale-and he held fast by the banisters, as he descended the stairs. I pushed open the door, and entered Pesca's room. He was crouched up, in the strangest manner, in a corner of the sofa. He seemed to shrink from himself-to shrink from me, when I approached him. "Am I disturbing you ?" I asked. "I did remembered the struggle in my own heart, when he and I stood face to face-the struggle before I could let him escape me-and shuddered as I recalled it. Slowly, inch by inch, I pressed in with the crowd, moving nearer and nearer to the great glass screen that parts the dead from the living at the Morgue-nearer and nearer, till I was close behind the front row of spectators, and could look in. III. THE summer and autumn passed, after my return from Paris, and brought no changes with them which need be noticed here. We lived so simply and quietly, that the income which I was now steadily earning sufficed for all our wants. There he lay, unowned, unknown; exposed-His life was one long assertion of the rights to the flippant curiosity of a French mob-there of the aristocracy, and the sacred principles of was the dreadful end of that long life of de- Order-and he died a Martyr to his cause." graded ability and heartless crime! Hushed In the sublime repose of death, the broad, firm, massive face and head fronted us so grandly, that the chattering Frenchwomen about me lifted their hands in admiration, and cried, in shrill chorus, "Ah, what a handsome man!" The wound that had killed him had been struck with a knife or dagger exactly over his heart. No other traces of violence appeared about the body, except on the left arm; and there, exactly in the place where I had seen the brand on Pesca's arm, were two deep cuts in the shape of the letter T, which entirely obliterated the mark of the Brotherhood. His clothes hung above him, showed that he had been himself conscious of his danger-they were clothes that had disguised him as a French artisan. For a few moments, but not for longer, I forced myself to see these things through the glass screen. I can write of them at no greater length, for I saw no more. The few facts, in connexion with his death which I subsequently ascertained (partly from Pesca and partly from other sources), may be stated here, before the subject is dismissed from these pages. His body was taken out of the Seine, in the disguise which I have described; nothing being found on him which revealed his name, his rank, or his place of abode. The hand that struck him was never traced; and the circumstances under which he was killed were never discovered. I leave others to draw their own conclusions, in reference to the secret of the assassination, as I have drawn mine. When I have intimated that the foreigner with the scar was a Member of the Brotherhood (admitted in Italy, after Pesca's departure from his native country), and when I have further added that the two cuts, in the form of a T, on the left arm of the dead man, signified the Italian word, "Traditore," and showed that justice had been done by the Brotherhood on a Traitor, I have contributed all that I know towards elucidating the mystery of Count Fosco's death. The body was identified, the day after I had seen it, by means of an anonymous letter addressed to his wife. He was buried, by Madame Fosco, in the cemetery of Père la Chaise. Fresh funeral wreaths continue, to this day, to be hung on the ornamental bronze-railings round the tomb, by the Countess's own hand. She lives, in the strictest retirement, at Versailles. Not long since, she published a Biography of her deceased husband. The work throws no light whatever on the name that was really his own, or on the secret history of his life: it is almost entirely devoted to the praise of his domestic virtues, the assertion of his rare abilities, and the enumeration of the honours conferred on him. The circumstances attending his death are very briefly noticed; and are summed up, on the last page, in this sentence: In the February of the new year, our first child was born-a son. My mother and sister and Mrs. Vesey, were our guests at the little christening party; and Mrs. Clements was present, to assist my wife, on the same occasion. Marian was our boy's godmother; and Pesca and Mr. Gilmore (the latter acting by proxy) were his godfathers. I may add here, that, when Mr. Gilmore returned to us, a year later, he assisted the design of these pages, at my request, by writing the Narrative which appears early in the story under his name, and which, though the first in order of precedence, was thus, in order of time, the last that I received. The only event in our lives which now remains to be recorded, occurred when our little Walter was six months old. At that time, I was sent to Ireland, to make sketches for certain forthcoming illustrations in the newspaper to which I was attached. I was away for nearly a fortnight, corresponding regularly with my wife and Marian, except during the last three days of my absence, when my movements were too uncertain to enable me to receive letters. I performed the latter part of my journey back, at night; and when I reached home in the morning, to my utter astonishment, there was no one to receive me. Laura and Marian and the child had left the house on the day before my return. A note from my wife, which was given to me by the servant, only increased my surprise, by informing me that they had gone to Limmeridge House. Marian had prohibited any attempt at written explanations-I was entreated to follow them the moment I came back-complete enlightenment awaited me on my arrival in Cumberland-and I was forbidden to feel the slightest anxiety, in the mean time. There the note ended. It was still early enough to catch the morning train. I reached Limmeridge House the same afternoon. My wife and Marian were both up-stairs. They had established themselves (by way of completing my amazement) in the little room which had once been assigned to me for a studio, when I was employed on Mr. Fairlie's drawings. On the very chair which I used to occupy when I was at work, Marian was sitting now, with the child industriously sucking his coral upon her lap-while Laura was standing by the wellremembered drawing-table which I had so often used, with the little album that I had filled for her, in past times, open under her hand. "What in the name of heaven has brought |