CHAPTER I.

      TWO MEN sat together in a room in one of the finest residences on a fashionable New York street, one Summer night. One of them was a well-preserved gentleman of perhaps fifty-five years, and from his air and dress it was easy to tell that he was used to moving in the higher circles of society.

      The other was of nearly the same age, but there was something in his face, and a sort of dry atmosphere clinging to him, like that indescribable influence which always seems to surround a book from a library, that told he was a man whose years had been spent among bills and ledgers.

      The careless observer would have told you that his life had settled down into such a routine that he had no ambition beyond the careful keeping of his books, that his ideas were confined to bill and invoice and casting up long columns of figures.

      But the careful reader of men's faces would have told you that there was a peculiar look of waiting for something in his face. He was biding his time.

      John Warfield, merchant prince and host, poured out two glasses of wine from the glittering decanter on the table, and motioned John Warne, clerk, and visitor — by express and urgent invitation — to drink with him. And they drank silently.

      Then there was a long and painful silence. John Warfield was pale with whatever thoughts were at work in his bosom. Very pale. He was restless, and paced two and fro for many, minutes, while John Warne waited patiently for whatever was to be said.

      Suddenly the merchant stopped before the clerk.

      "You have sworn, by your hope of heaven, by all you consider binding upon your soul, to never reveal one word of the conversation that takes place between us to-night?"

      "Yes," answered Warne; "I have sworn."

      "There is no use in beating round the bush," cried Warfield, his hands working nervously, and his face growing paler, as if he were drawing near to something frightful.

      "I am on the brink of financial ruin, Warne — you know that."

      "Yes, I know it," answered Warne.

      "There is only one way out of it," said Warfield, ghastly white now.

      He was very near the hideous thing that frightened his very thoughts.

      "And that way?"

      "Is death!" answered the merchant, hoarsely.

      "You don't mean to take your own life!" cried the clerk, startled for a moment out of his usual composure.

      "Of course not," answered Warfield. "You know that my brother left a large fortune to his only child. She stands between me and that fortune to-day. If she were dead, I should come into possession of it immediately. You begin to understand, I think?"

      "I think I do," answered the clerk, a trifle pale. "It is her death that you refer to?"

      "Exactly, Warne. If she were to die, I am saved. She must be got out of the way. You must do it for me. For years I have kept your secret. No one in the world, save you and I, know who forged those drafts twenty-five years ago. No one but you and I will know how Catherine Oran goes out of the world. I will give you ten thousand dollars when the deed is done. Is it a bargain?"

      "It is murder!" cried Warne, pale as death. "I can't do it. Get some one else."

      "I can trust no one else," said Warfield, desperately. "Do you want to spend the remainder of your life in a prison cell? You shall, so help me God, if you refuse to help me now! If I go to ruin, you shall go to the punishment I have shielded you from. There is no risk to run. She is at school with my daughter — at a private institution on the seashore, fifty miles out of town. You can go down there — and get her out of the way easily enough, without being detected. I have heard you say, time and again, that you believe in no hereafter. What is there so dreadful in doing this, then? It is merely sending her to her grave sooner than she would otherwise go. She will be better off dead than living."

      "She is there with your daughter, you say?"

      Warne's voice sounded strange to himself, and far away. His face had lost some of its old apathy.

      "Yes; it is a wild, lonely place. You will know her by her resemblance to my daughter. Is it a bargain?"

      "It is a bargain!" answered John Warne, hoarsely, rising from his seat. His eyes were full of a strange fire; the time he had waited for for five and twenty years was near at hand at last.

      "The wine seems to have got into your head," laughed Warfield, nervously. "Will you have another glass, Warne?"

      "No more, thank you," answered the old clerk. "It isn't wine that has got into my head, Warfield — it is something that has been there a long time. It has roused itself to-night. Is there anything more to be said between us?"

      "No," answered Warfield. "You understand my wishes; be careful, Warne, and sure!"

      "Good-night!" and the clerk bowed himself out.

      "Revenge is sweet, they say!" he whispered, in the street. "I shall find if it be so. Oh, John Warfield, I have waited for something I scarcely know what — for years. I never dreamed of such a grand opportunity as this!"

*       *       *       *       *       *      *

      A wild, wet day. The waves screamed in mad glee against the cruel rocks, and the sky was like a pall. The gulls circled in the chill, gray atmosphere, crying harshly and discordantly.

      "I wonder if she will come?"

      The man who whispered this query to the winds peered out from behind the rock where he was hidden, anxiously

      "She got my message, I know, poor fool! she thinks she is coming to meet her lover, but she will meet — death!"

      John Warne shivered. It might have been with cold, it might have been with terror. But he thought of revenge, and his face was hard and pitiless as fate.

      She came, presently. He saw her coming down the sandy shore, with the wind blowing her yellow hair all about her face, and an expectant look in her eyes. The sight of her innocent young face, and the thought of what he was there to do, struck him to the heart with a sudden, sharp pain, like a dagger-thrust; but a face as fair as hers came between him and the sight of her, and crushed every vestige of pity out of his heart.

      She passed the rock without seeing him. He came behind her noiselessly. He threw her cloak over her head with a sudden movement, and drew it down tightly about her mouth before she could cry out; the folds of it pinioned her arms like cords.

A TERRIBLE REVENGE. — "HE CAME BEHIND HER NOISELESSLY; HE THREW HER CLOAK OVER HER HEAD, AND DREW IT DOWN TIGHTLY OVER HER MOUTH BEFORE SHE COULD CRY OUT."

      He dragged her down to the water's edge. He dragged her out into the cruel waves, and, with an iron grip upon the folds which prisoned her so securely, he thrust her down beneath the flood and held her there.

      There was a wild, fierce struggle for life and liberty; but it was a vain one. His hold was not to be shaken off. It was death to her; it was revenge to him.

      Pretty soon it was all over. He dragged the unresisting form back to the shore, and dropped it on the wet sands.

      He never stopped to look at the face beneath the dripping garment that had shut out the world for ever, but strode away across the sands, a vagabond and outcast on the face of the earth for evermore. But he had had his revenge.

---

CHAPTER II.

      "A TELEGRAM, sir."

      John Warfield clutched the paper with fingers that shook like aspen-leaves. His face was frightfully pale. He tore it open and read:

      "We have bad news for you. A terrible accident has happened. Come immediately."

      He knew whom and where it was from without looking at the signature.

      Half an hour later the southward-going train bore him out of the city.

      An hour after that, he was standing at the door of the Pensionnat des Demoiselles, where his daughter and niece had spent the last two years of their lives. He rang the bell, and stood there in the chill, gray mist of the dreary morning, waiting, with a pale and frightened face — for what?

      A hurry of footsteps in the hall. The door was opened by a girl with yellow hair and a white, tear-stained face.

      "Oh, Uncle John!" she cried, and burst into tears. "It is so terrible!"

      The man's face was ghastly with sudden terror. His teeth chattered so that he could scarcely speak.

      "I — I thought it was you!" he cried, hoarsely, at last. "Where is Cecile?"

      He clutched her arm so fiercely that she cried out with pain.

      "She is in the parlor," the girl answered, sobbing. "Do you want to see her now?"

      He put his hands to his head in a sort of dazed way. It seemed to be whirling round and round, and he was trying to stop it.

      "I — I must be a little wild," he said, as if he scarcely knew what he was saying. "Cecile is in the parlor, you say? Is she well? Does she know that I am coming?"

      "Oh, Uncle John!" cried Catherine Oran, with a great sob. "Don't you know? Cecile is dead!"

      He never answered her. He put out his hands, as if to grasp at something to steady himself by, but found nothing; and, with a gasping cry, he fell face downward to the floor.

*       *       *       *       *       *      *

      That afternoon this letter was put into John Warfield's hands:

      "I have waited for twenty-five years for revenge. You have thought that I never found out your secret; you have thought that no living person, save yourself, knew that my sister's life was ruined and her heart broken by you. But you were wrong. How I learned the fact matters not. But I swore to be revenged. You had no mercy for your victim; I have had none for mine. You thought to end an innocent life that stood between you and your selfish ambition. I have taken an innocent life, and sacrificed my soul for the revenge that I have been waiting for. When you know that I made no mistake in doing what I have done, but that I intended to do it from the first as it has been done, think of the ruin you have wrought so long ago, and say, if you can, that my revenge is not complete."

*       *       *       *       *       *      *

      To-day John Warfield looks out upon a little strip of God's green earth from behind the bars of a madman's cell; and to-day John Warne wanders up and down the world, a haunted, remorseful man. He is under the shadow of the curse of Cain; for him there is no rest here nor hereafter.

(THE END)