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blunt, sympathetic and unsuspicious, leaned his fellows last night; but Lawrence declares he will head on his hand and reflected.

"He was here about midnight, and met Lawrence at Shaft No. 3. They walked off up the break water, and on my honor we have never seen trace of him since."

unearth that fiendish piece of work, and Lawrence always keeps his word."

The prints of white-heat rage came and went faster. Oscar grew more sullen in aspect. Strangely enough, his eyes shifted uneasily under "Who did you say was in the company of Ravenel's careless, unseeing glance. That one Colonel Chandos ?" inquired Oscar. man's threat against the perpetrator of the in

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EASTER HYMN.- FROM THE PAINTING BY THEODORE GRUST.

"Lawrence was with him," was the answer. "Ah, yes, Lawrence; and he has never been seen since. Pray what explanation does Lawrence give of this inexplicable disappearance ?" Oscar conveyed a sinister significance in the tones, quite lost upon honest Ravenel.

"He don't explain it at all. He can't any more than the rest of us, or any more than we can explain who let the water in on those poor

iquitous outrage at the Silver Shafts thrilled him with a mighty fear.

Oscar knew that, as Ravenel said, Lawrence always kept his word, and a faint consciousness of being already a "suspect" roused a wild apprehension. Oscar dared not risk meeting Lawrence again.

"It's a strange affair, and stranger still that Lawrence can't explain it."

He walked out of the cabin as he dropped the suggestive observation. This was no place for him among those wailing women and angry men, ready to spring upon and tear him to pieces at so much as a hint from Lawrence.

tion. All had a purpose to serve, and meant to achieve it, despite the suffering it brought her. "I have heard your papa talk of you so often,” went on Mr. Bland.

"He was not her papa. She is a come-by

He rode away to the manor house in a sullen, chance," broke in Mrs. Melvern, in acrid rudewrathful mood.

"Dear, dear, is it you, Oscar?" exclaimed Mrs. Melvern, when he unceremoniously threw open the library door. "Take care of my carpet! Don't scratch my chair with your whip!"

Still enveloped in her hideous wraps, the old dame sat at the table under the chandelier. A legal paper lay before her. The legal man sat opposite her.

"Have you heard of my poor brother George, my dear Oscar? Have you roused the country?" she exclaimed, in a gush of feigned feeling, while her eyes returned to the document in her hand. "This is the will devising me the legacy. How fortunate that the child wasn't found! George did very well without a child, and the girl upstairs is nobody's child-he! he !-how good and wise Providence is! This is Mr. Bland, poor George's lawyer."

ness.

"Colonel Chandos never pretended that she was his child," added Marion, in fierce vivacity. "I am sure it's a pity he spoiled her.”

"By Jove, I don't think she's spoiled; I think she's just the loveliest person I ever saw !" interpolated Oscar, devouring the exquisite face with his eager gaze.

A flash of fiery temper shot into Marion's eyes. She despised Oscar, but she never meant Oscar to despise her nor admire Flora.

"I don't know what you mean, Oscar, when you know that in her palmy days she never deigned to look at you; besides, she's not lovely, she hasn't color enough, and she's too small. For my part, I don't consider looks; they are just nothing. I want to be good. Looks don't count."

"Guess you'd better hang to looks, then, for you come out confoundedly short in the good"I suppose the legacy takes it all?" remarked ness," retorted Oscar, in rough jocularity. Oscar.

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now.

It's all stuff; it's no concern of hers." The concluding words, aimed at Flora, were answered by Marion: "Well, if Mr. Bland wants her she can come, aunt. Here she is."

The faintest color tinged Flora's cheek. She glided in with that poetic grace of motion peculiar to her. Some instinct seemed to warn her that here were enemies, triumphant over her fallen fortunes. The one stranger cast a more kindly glance toward the fair, golden-haired girl.

"I know you better than you do me, my dear young lady."

The lawyer held out his hand, touched by her friendless loveliness. Drawn by the compassionate deference of his manner, Flora sat down be side him. Three pairs of eyes fronted her. Two Two pairs of eyes gloated over her ill-concealed misery. One pair of eyes watched her in selfish admira

"You naughty wretch, you think I don't see your game!" Mrs. Melvern tapped his arm with her veined, freckled hand in an offensively patronizing way. "What do you think, Mr. Bland, of my catching him with that young person in his arms? Eh, you naughty wretch!"

Oscar forbore to answer. A vivid perception of the advantage she threw into his hands held him meanly silent. Flora's haughty little head, with its hair of burnished gold, grew perceptibly more haughty in its poise at a charge from which she declined to defend herself.

"I have known Colonel Chandos for years. I knew his wife, and your resemblance to her is startling. It is wonderful.”

Mr. Bland's even, businesslike tone hushed the taunts of these women.

"Eh! what did you say, Mr. Bland? I'm so deaf in this left ear. I have been out in the wind. I can't hear. What did you say ?”

"I remarked upon the resemblance to the wife of your brother," calmly repeated the lawyer. "It is very surprising."

"Papa always said so," softly replied Flora, lifting her long lashes and turning her wonderful eyes upon him.

"It's a ridiculous idea. My brother was always full of whims," eagerly responded Mrs. Melvern, a viperish look on her repellent visage. "Pray proceed with your business, Mr. Bland. It must be disagreeable to her to hear talk of her family.

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It don't bear mention. My poor dear brother is missing, and he will never be found again-never in this world!"

The effort at distress was meant to be dramatic. It might have been so if the eyes, shrunken back in their sockets, had not something in them approaching a cunning leer. It might possibly still have been so if the face had been kindly soft or young, instead of the hard, withered lineaments of an aged woman.

"He is not here to hand over the property to his favorite sister-poor George! You must excuse me, Mr. Bland, but he always looked up to me, and now I will never see him again-never see my poor brother. Do you think there are any other pieces of property, sir, out of which I could make the balance of my money? or do you think that he might have absconded with my money in his pockets?"

The glitter of avarice and greed seemed to glower in her eyes. The miserly, unscrupulous soul was legible to the most indifferent beholder. "No, madam; your brother was amply able to make good this money when he used it. Your brother never willingly occasioned loss to you. With a little time he might have arranged his affairs to far more than pay the legacy," decisively answered the lawyer.

accident. He only desired the boon of time; failing to get that, I think he has gone away. Papa could not face such utter ruin."

"If you think that, you must know where he is!" screamed Mrs. Melvern, wildly excited, as she flung the papers on the floor and shook her fist belligerently at Flora. belligerently at Flora. "I say it's a conspiracy to defraud me-yes, it is! I won't be swindled by him. I'll set the detectives after him and get my money. I am defrauded of thousands, and I won't be robbed-no, I won't! If George ran away he went with his pockets full, and I'll empty them-it's every penny mine. He thinks I am an old fool to be swindled out of all that money, but I am not-no, I am not!" Mrs. Melvern stamped her foot in fury. She was as boisterous in her anger as in every other phase of feeling. Tears of baffled avarice rolled down her cheeks. "That girl knows where he is hiding. She knows he has my money, that he has robbed me of thousands thousands. She sha'n't leave this house until I catch him. She, that creature there, is helping him to rob me--yes, she is-yes, she is !" violently reiterated the infuriated woman, rushing frantically across the room and ringing the bell. Flora started from her chair with a cry of passionate distress.

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Papa is not hiding. He has no money. Oh, The flush reddened in Flora's cheek; a sus will you disgrace him? Will you kill him-kill picious moisture blinded her eyes. him?" Flora grasped her arm in a vain effort to stay the pealing bell. She was very white. Her tone seemed to ring out above the rasping, shrill voice in a vehement entreaty. "You will not send anyone to hunt and hound him? Oh, for the dear God's sake, have some mercy on my poor ruined father!"

The subtle, cunning expression became more unpleasant on the countenance enveloped in a checkered calico handkerchief and dingy flannel hood.

"If I had only known he wanted time, if he had hinted at it, he might have taken a lifetime," was the hypocritical response, with a furtive glance at Flora.

"How can a dead man care for time or carry away money?" demanded Oscar. "I tell you there's been foul play with the colonel. He was last seen at the Silver Shafts. He was traced there, and never traced back."

The old woman easily shook her off, and rang a startling peal.

"I'll show you how I'll stand being robbed! Think of all that money I am to lose-think of it-thousands, thousands! Oh, me! I won't lose it; I'll hunt that thief to the end of the world, and I'll not let you get out of my sight. It's a

"My dear Miss Chandos, do you take this view conspiracy to rob me!-Ride into town this inof it?" inquired the lawyer.

"What does she know of it? Pray, do you think she made away with him ?" scornfully broke in Marion.

"Flora, don't put your hand on that tassel; you will soil my cushions," reminded Mrs. Melvern, in her sharpest tone.

The lawyer waited for a reply.

"Could papa do more than sacrifice everything he owned ?" she asked, in those liquid, plaintive tones of hers.

"No, my child."

stant and bring an officer here-I'm robbed !" she shrieked, as the servant hurried into the room. "Go to the nearest magistrate; bring him here. Go, you gaping idiot!-he'll get off! But I'll catch him. Run!"

"Madam," interrupted the lawyer, "this is unwise; you have no grounds for your complaint."

"She said he was not dead; she said he had hidden himself that viper! that accomplice! She knows he has the money--yes, yes; and the Lord knows what she staid behind for-just to

"Then I do not think papa has met with any gather up more plunder. Yes, you did - don't

Answer me back" blued the enraged woman throngs her clitesed teeth.

Flora strone to gain a nearing for the minglei prayers and entreaties breaking from ner intolane tarily. All in vain : the possiblity of more gain maddened Chandog's sister.

The sordid avarice born within her was frel by the thought of regaining some of the deficit of her legacy.

**I've missed Sister Metella's linen alleets. I'd know them anywhere; they had five darns, four holes and six patches, and a piece torn off of one side; and I've missed my two handkerchiefs, the only two I had. She is gathering up pinnder; she's left me nothing but this ;" and Mrs. Melvern drew out a red bandanna handkerchief and

teman.

I'm

fouriated in renommaly in the face of the gen-
"I won't buy another handkerchief
wille there are bleres under this roof.
robbed, and George Chanise stall answer for it.
Se alle came back from the Crevasse."
"I did not."

The high. Ene accents became almost sharp. Fora covered Ler face with her handa. Hot tears g.latened between the leader Engers.

"Come up to the study, Mr. Band. You shall see for yourself that not a penny is left."

Mrs. Melvern drew her staff elak closer, and clutched the papers on the table with suspicious eagerness.

"Have these lights turned out, Marion-I won't be rained-but come along with me.” To be continued.,

DAMASK ROSES.

BY MINNA IRVING,

TAKE away the ruby necklace, for it burns my breast to-night!
Leave me, in this chamber flooded by the young moon's mellow light
Dreaming of the mossy garden where the skies were ever blue,
And the spiders spread their laces, and the damask roses grew.

Never yet the lip of seashell stranded on a silver shore,
Or a filmy cloud at morning, such a tender color bore!
By the russet thorns depended, in a veil of pearly dew,
Blushing at their own sweet beauty-so the damask roses grew!

There the bee, an ardent lover, to their petals kissing clung,
Or a-drowse with amber honey in their satin cradles swung,
And the spotted lark enraptured, when the summer day was new,
Poured his heart in merry music where the damask roses grew.

I was but a simple maiden when the earl came riding down
With a clash of golden harness from his mansion in the town,
And the rarest of my treasures was a knot of ribbon blue,
Or the fragrant buds I gathered where the damask roses grew.

I was dazzled by the diamond that he slipped upon my hand,

And the dresses, and the dances, and the wedding that he planned.
Now I'd give the marble splendor of my palace, fair to view,
For the green and sunny corner where the damask roses grew.

In the ballroom's glare and glitter still they haunt my burning brain;
Cool, and pink, and spangled over with the drops of crystal rain.
Heaven itself-or so I fancy-is the garden that I knew,
With its deep and tangled grasses where the damask roses grew.

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''I SAT BOLT UPRIGHT, TO BEHOLD THE FORM OF MY WIFE BENDING OVER THAT ANCIENT CHEST.'

THE PORTRAIT.

BY NORA KINSLEY MARBLE.

HIS companions and fellow artists called him Rossetti, though that was not the name by which his pictures were known upon the walls of the National Academy, nor the weird, mystical poems which appeared at frequent intervals in the magazines of the day.

Notwithstanding his success in art and letters, the man grew daily more melancholy and morose, his dark Italian face reminding his associates more and more forcibly of that unhappy, strangely imaginative poet-writer Dante Gabriel Rossetti, whose name and mantle they conceived he so fit tingly wore.

"Twas because of this gloom in his soul, perhaps, that he surrounded himself with all the beauty and comforts which his purse could afford. No atelier in the region of Washington Square showed more taste and elegance in its arrangements, I venture to say, than his. Warm crimsons and maroons prevailed in its general furnishings. Quaintly carved brackets in every nook and corner held gems of art and beauty; Clytie in marble, Pallas Athene in bronze; wood carvings from Oberammergau, ivory ones from Japan; slender vases of crystal and silver exhaling deli

Vol. XXXVII., No. 4-30.

cate perfumes; a bull desk inlaid with gilt, a Vernis Martin cabinet, rare pictures, unfinished sketches, bits of armor, ancient weapons, castsin short, all the numerous trifles and works of art dear to the artist's soul.

Upon the easel, one night in December, an unfinished picture stood, over which the flickering light of the blazing logs threw fantastic shadows here and there. A limitless plain, a sky black in its depth of color, innumerable stars gazing down. upon an image, colossal, dim, mysterious. In the foreground a man, kneeling, with outstretched appealing arms, face white and haggard, hair in wild masses, black as traditional sin.

One of the three artists lounging before the fire arose and critically examined it.

"Why, old fellow," he exclaimed, turning to his host, "the face is yours, by all that is good! and you seem to be-indeed, you are

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"Questioning the Sphinx," finished Dante, gloomily; "not an original idea, you know, Brown, by any means."

"The flickering light of the fire," said one of the others, thoughtfully, "lends to those story eyes a strange meaning. Viewed upon the walls

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