Grand Rapids Herald-Review Newspaper, August 6, 1904, Page 6

By Tom Gallon A Woman mm OF Crait DOOOOOCOOOOOOoDoOoOooooOooD CHAPTER XV.—Continued. The sash of the upper window was lifted, with a little creaking of wood rubbing on wood; then an untidy head was thrust out. While Roger Hawley waited the light in that upper room was extinguished, a leg was put over the window sill, and a figure came scrambling down, in the maddest fash- ion, with arms and legs clinging to the thick roots of ivy against the wall. “There’s going to be fun!” whis- pered Roger Hawley, ecstatically, to himself. The man was scrambling down the ivy, as actively as a cat, though he missed his footing, and his grip, once or twice, and slid a yard or two before he could recover himself. When at last his feet touched solid earth he glanced back once at the house, and then started off, in a sort of stagger- ing, blind, halting fashion, and appar- ently with no definite direction in his mind. Roger Hawley, having nothing better to do, went aft@ him. It was a dark night, with neither moon nor stars showing; but, as the pursuec made a sort of moaning, chanting noise as he ran, the purs@er had no difficulty in tracing him. He ‘was not prepared, however, for the unknown one halting in the first belt of trees to which he came, so. that Roger Hawley found himself clutching hold of the man desperately, and liter- ally falling over him, before he knew that he was near him at all. And the pursued one was evidently in such a scared condition that he fought des- perately, crying out incoherent ‘things as he did so. It was David Yarwood. He had been locked in that room by Joyce Bland after the memorable interview in which he had come face to face with said Roger Hawley. his own daughter; and he had satur- ated himself in his drug for one long night and one long day—with dreams to break in between. But not all his dreams could wholly banish from his mind the remembrance of the pleading face of the girl as he had seen it last; not all the opium he smoked could drive away the remembrance of his own treachery. Every dream he had had seemed to take that shape, which showed him gradually sinking lower and lower, with Grace always beside him; always striving, through many vicissitudes and in many lands, to save him and to help him. Now she was a child, with the grave, unchild- like face which sorrow had giyen her; now she had grown to be a woman, and was wandering with him in wild parts of the earth, always tender, al- s sympathetic, always helpful. He awoke fully at last, with his small stock of opium fully exhausted, and with the bitter, awful remem- ‘rance of what he had done fully upon him. He plunged his face and hands into water and strove to still the rack- ing pains in his head and limbs, but all to no purpose. He staggered to the door and tried it, but found he could not get it open. Thence to the window, with darkness and the great world outside to swallow him up and hide him. So he had managed, in a break-neck fashion, to scramble down the ivy, and had set off, certain in his own mind that he was safe from; pursuit. His feelings may be imagined, therefore, when he was suddenly pounced upon, as it were, in the wood like that, and held in a vigorous grasp despite his struggles. “Let me go! let me go!” cried old Yarwood, as he bit and struck savage- ly at the man who held him, and whom he could not, of course, see in the darkness. “I won't go back; I won’t be fastened up in that place again! Why did she ever bring me down here at all? Let me go!” “Steady; steady!” said the other, giving him a shake. “Do you think I want to hold you longer than is neces- sary? I’m only curious to know why you come dropping out of windows at this hour of the night and scuttling off across country. Come out where it’s a bit lighter and let’s have a look at you.” Roger Hawley half led and _half- dragged the trembling old creature out into the open, where a faint light fell upon his face. “Now—who are you?” he asked. «“J—J—it doesn’t matter,” whined the other. “Only let me go away; let me hide myself somewhere where her face won’t haunt me, and her voice ring in my ears.” “You're in a pretty bad way, old man, I’m thinking,” said Rager Haw- fey, looking at him curiously. “Whose yoice are you talking about?” “My daughter Grace—so good and kind and true to me—and she has lived to be cast off by me! My dear daughter Grace—whom I robbed and left to die.” “Why, you surely don’t mean—” be- gan the other, and took him by the shoulders and stared hard into his eyes. ““What’s her other name? What’s your name?” “Yarwood—David Yarwood. Only let me go, and I'll never trouble any one again; they shall all forget that I ever lived. Don’t stop me; she’s coming at me now through the trees there; she’s weeping and wringing \ner hands; she’s looking for something she will never find—something I stole from her! Can’t you see her? There!” “Poor old beggar!” exclaimed Roger Hawley, falling back a little and look- ing at the other man with some pity. “I little thought I should ever meet Uncle David Yarwood like this. Now, one question: Where’s your daughter —the Grace Yarwood we.all want to see? Is she up there?” He pointed a rigid arm toward the great house showing above the trees. “No, not there; that is the woman who: stole everything from my daugh- ter,’, said old Yarwood, eagerly. “My daughter—my Grace—was driven away by me. She is poor; this other woman has taken her place.” “This is absolutely magnificent!” ex- claimed Roger Hawley, softly, to him- self. “Gad! she’s more clever than I could have tmagined. She steals the fortune; then she steals you to back up the lie. Did you say she was Grace Yarwood?” “Heaven forgive me—yes!” whis- pered the old man, with his face in his hands. “Delightful!” exclaimed the other, with a laugh. “And now you are afraid of what you have done and you are running away, eh? Well, I'll help you; I'll get you out of the way, and I’ll see that you’re not mixed up in this busi- ness any more. Come along!” “You will really help me?—I am so weak and old that I can’t help myself. Where will you take me?” “Don’t ask too many questions,” “You’ve got your- self into trouble, old man; trust to me to get you out of it. Come along!” Half afraid, and yet feeling it neces- sary, in his weakness and _helpless- ness, to cling to some one stronger than himself, David Yarwood allowed himself to be led away through the woods. Once or twice he stopped and hung back, and begged to know where the other man was taking him; but Roger Hawley, with a grim laugh, as- sured him that it would be all right, and hurried him on again. ‘And so they came together at last to the camp of the gipsies; and Roger Hawley drew his reluctant prisoner into the circle of tents and caravans. The only people visible in the camp were Neal Ormany, who was lying flat on the ground with his head leaning on one hand, smoking, and Enoch Flame. Enoch was sitting, as doubt- less he had sat many and many a night in wilder places, staring into +the camp fire; he raised his head slowly as the two men came into the circle of light, then sat more upright and fixed his gaze. upon old Yarwood. “Pray excuse me, I am in search of a lady,” said Roger Hawley, in his easy, captivating tones. “The gentle man whose collar I hold is a repentant father, returning to his long-lost daughter; 1 am the humble instrument which haé brought about that return. Permit me.” He made an elaborate bow, and jerked David Yarwood for- ward. “This is the repentant father.” “I want to see my daughter—my child Grace,” mumbled, old Yarwood. She will forgive me, I know, and I can explain how a poor old man forgot what he should have said and what he should have done. I want to see my daughter Grace.” “Heaven in its mercy has sent you back to us,” said Enoch Flame, rising to his feet. ‘All will be well now. Grace shall come into her own at last. We can afford to forget the mistakes and blunders of the past. Come with me; you shall see Grace at once.” Evidently Grace had heard me voices; they saw her, a slight, gray figure, coming down the steps of a caravan, with the light from the open door of it behind her. Yarwood hesi- tated for a moment, and then, drawn forward by Enoch Flame, went toward the girl trembling, and fell upon his knees. Grace, with a great cry, ran down and raised him to his feet and held him close. There was no néed for any words at that moment. “Very pretty, quite touching,” said Roger Hawley. “I think, however, that I will go,” he added, for he had no wish to meet Lydia just then, espe- cially in the presence of the man he rightly judged to be her father. Just as he was moving away, however, Neal Ormany, raising himself on his elbow, called him back. “Where’s the ‘urry, guv’nor?” he asked, with a glance about him, to be certain he was not overheard “An’ wot’s the game ’ere—this bringin’ all sorts o’ people to the place, an’ dis- turbin’ a man at all hours of the night or day? Ain’t I goin’ to get anything out o’ this ’ere; or is a man to see a gent like you walk away again without so much as showin’ the color of ’is money? Wot’s it all about, I say?” he added, with suppressed fury, as he sat upright and spat fiercely into the fire. “My good man, you are evidently something of a humorist,” said Roger Hawley, with a laugh and an uneasy glance about him, “or you wouldn’t ex- pect to see the color of my money. If you want to know anything about the business, and about the little game that is going on, with my humble and occasional assistance, go up to the big house and ask Miss Grace Yarwood. It she doesn’t set the dogs on you, owing the lady, I should wager on the dogs. _ Good night!” “The darkness swallowed him up and Neal Ormany, leaning on one hand, stared after him for a moment or two in silence; then, somewhat disgusted- ly, he summed up the situation. “Gents don’t come to a place like this an’ talk about fortunes an’ estates for nothin’. They’re keepin’ it away from me—that’s wot they’re doin’. I'll precious soon learn ’em that I’m not to be left outside. There’s money in this, or there ought to be, an’ I'll see if I can’t stand in. ranger they call Flame ought to know something ‘about it; an’ by the same token, ’ere ’e comes. Enoch Flame came slowly back to the fire, smiling gravely to himself. This new turn of events was so won- derful that he felt no hesitation in speaking, even to Neal Ormany, about it. “Just shows,” he said, slowly, as he seated himself again by the fire, “that right must always win in the long run, only give it time enough. This wom- an, who stole what was nct hers, has triumphed for a long time; the time of her fall is at hand. Even the man —poor weak, broken creature that he was—that she drew to her side to help her story, has turned from her and is going to do the right thing. We thought we had failed’ because the one witness who knew all about it had disappeared.” “You mean the man they called Jaggard?—the man who came ’ere an’ told ’em ’e was on their side, eh?” said Ormany. . “Yes, that was the man,” said Flame. “He failed to keep his word, and when we went to the house to see this woman the father of the real Grace Yarwood was there—and denied her; so that we were lost again. Now to-night he comes back to us, and he’s going to speak the truth, without fear or favor—and everything will be well.” “Then you mean to say that this other lady—the one up at the ’ouse— stole the fortune an’ means to stick to it?” asked Ormany, after a pause. “Means to try,” said Flame, with a laugh. “But the game is up for her; she’s run the length of her tether.” Neal Ormany lay a long time in the firelight, turning over things in his slow mind. That slow mind showed him two sides of the question, and showed him those two sides in a crude enough fashion. On the one hand, a woman already in possession, who had hitherto defied any one to oust her; on the other hand, a woman who was nothing but a beggar, surrounded by a little crowd of adventurers, all equal- ly poor with herself. Working grad- ually, the slow mind showed him an- other thing—that the little crowd of adventurers had at last secured a pow- erful ally, to all appearances, and that powerful ally had been stolen, as it were, from the woman in possession. Going on in the same slow groove, a natural question suggested itself to the mind of Neal Ormany: How much was it worth to the lady in possession to know what was happening, suppos- ing that the very future of that wom- an depended on the knowledge? He determined to act upon that idea at once, and inwardly congratulated himself upon his astuteness. It being a secret mission, he get about it in a secret way and got out of the camp and started through the woods, so as to make a circuit round the house and not be seen approaching it from the front. And that circuitous route took him of necessity deep down into those woods which dropped sheer away from the neglected end of the old gar- den, where the disused fountain stood. He knew his way well; probably had had some idea of approaching the place for other reasons, which would have necessitated his selecting any but the front entrance. Be that as it may, he knew what part of the woods to seek, and stood at last straight un- der the broken fence and looked up to find a way. He moved forward slowly, keeping his eyes fixed on the top of the sert of cliff beneath which he had arrived, and suddenly stumbled over some- thing soft lying right in his path, and went headlong. The instinct of the man told him that it was neither a stone nor the trunk of a tree-nothing so hard; he lay still for a moment, listening, and thinking desperately. Hearing no sound, he turned on hands and knees and crept back to it. He touched clothing; felt along until his hand touched another hand that was warm. Still very cautiously he felt about till he touched a face— warm also, but with something wet upon it. He dried his hand on the grass upon which he knelt and then softly struck a match and held it to the face. “The chap they call Jaggard—the missin’ witness!” he whispered. “An’ lyin’ down ’ere, underneath ’er grounds. I must ’ave a look at you again, mate,” he muttered, as he struck another match. The result -of that second examina- tion showed him that the man had a murderous blow on the head and had apparently fallen from _a_ height. Brutally enough he shook Jaggard, and whispered to him huskily to. wake up; Jaggard neither spoke nor moved. After kneeling beside him in a -per- plexed way for a minute or two, Neal Ormany got up and glanced again at the top of the cliff. , “Seems to me there’s summick to be got out o’ this,” he muttered softly. I wonder if anythink might be. found at the top there?” he added, glancing up again. In the house itself, toward which his thoughts were directed, Joyce Bland Jay thinking over what she had done. The madness of that moment when she had been faced by the man who could ruin every chance she possessed of establishing herself had passed away; she had nothing to remember That old bush-! by all proba- him. She knew nothing, of course, as to how far he had fallen, or whether his body was hidden, or had yet been discovered; she had no idea whether there was any chance that suspicion would fall upon her. At first, while she lay on the sofa in her room and thought about it, with her hands pressed to her temples, she derided the idea that any oné could connect her with the business at all; the next, she remembered that the man_ had been to the house, and had been turn- d away again; more than that, that he had been in the company of Roger Hawley at the cottage. . That thought again brought with it a wild feeling that she might put the thing upon Roger Hawley; the two men had been together, and might have quarreled. Or, again, was it not possible that he had been set upon by some tramp or poacher and knocked on the head for what he might be worth? At all events, she must know what was happening. That instinct of the murderer to go back to the scene of the crime was full upon her; the deso- late end of the garden among the trees and by the ruined fountain drew her like a magnet. She must see where he was or how far he had fallen; in any case she could not stop in the house. . : She threw a cloak round her shoul- ders and went out at that little door she had used before. Just before starting she glanced at the clock upon her dressing table; it wanted a few minutes of ten. She left her light burning. She paused once as_ she went down the stairs to listen. There was not a sound to be heard. More than once she hesitated and half made up her mind to go back. When she got into that dim avenue, with the branches so thick overhead that she had almost to feel her way, it wanted all her strength of will to enable her to go on at all; she broke at last into a feverish run the better to get over the intervening distance. And so, half running, and stopping now and then to listen and look back at the house; she came to where the trees suddenly seemed to close in and where the undergrowth was thick and tangled. She went forward cautiously, feel- ing her way; she parted the branches at the spot where she guessed the old fountain stood. And _ there, leaning carelessly upon it, with a white face scarcely more than a foot from her own, stood a man! There could be, of course, but one man, or the uneasy spirit of him, at that place at that time; he stood, too, just in the attitude in which she had found him that afternoon, leaning against the fountain, befgre she had struck him down. In terror she start- ed back and fell upon her knees and covered her face with her hands. “No, no, not like that!” she cried, aloud. “I never meant to kill you—it was all done in a moment! Owen Jaggard, for the love of heaven—” A heavy hand had dropped upon her shoulder; even while she shrank from it, with a shudder, a voice sounded in her ears. “I’ve been lookin’ for you, miss; you an’ me will ’ave quite a lot to say to each other, won’t we? An’ it seems I've come in the nick of time like.” As she got stupidly to her feet and advanced nearer to the man to look at him, she saw that he was an utter stranger to her and that he was grin- ning insolently down into her eyes. CHAPTER XVI. To Be Hunted Down. The appearance of the man in that | lonely place and at that hour would have been startling enough in any case; but Joyce recognized that he came, as it were, from the place where the dead man lay. She knew, with that one glance at him, that he confronted her with the assurance of one who knew something, and with that knowledge held a power over her. Whatever bravery she might have felt, or might have been able to assume, was gone out of her; she stood trem- bling before him, at that first moment, like a frightened child. “Who are you?” she gasped out at last. “A friend,” replied the man, with a surly nod. “A friend as has made up ’is mind to do a friend’s work and ‘elp you. You ’ave no cause to be afraid of me; you’ve every cause to be mighty thankful that I’ve come "ere to- night.” He guessed, from the fact that she was well dressed and wore no hat, that she was the person he had come to seek. Being a bully himself, in every sense of the word, the fact that she trembled before him gave him an add- ed feeling of assurance—a patronizing air of insolence he would not have dared to assume under any other cir- cumstances, Even his slow mind traced her hand in connection with the maimed and probably dead man lying below them in the woods; the confession she had babbled out in that first moment of terror was further evidence were needed. “what are you doing here at this hour?” she panted. He advanced, ‘with a slouch, nearer to her, and then glanced over his shoulder for a moment towards the fountain. “I’m ’ere,” he said, slowly, his brain, quickening to the work be- fore it—‘‘I’me ‘ere to cover up things, and to ‘de ’em; that’s wot I’me ’ere for.” e “To cover up— “Yes. Comin’ along through the wood I was, without so much as think- in’ of anything at all, when I finds—a man. An’,aslma sinner”—he laugh- \ed and shook his head slowly for a | monient—"blessed if I dou t know that man! Aye—know ’n, as if ’e’d bin my‘own.” “I don’t know what you're talking about,” she began, drawing away a little and remembering suddenly her own safety. , “What is any man in the woods to do with me?” “Oh! so that’s the game, is it?” he blustered, heavily. ‘What if I tell you, Miss Grace Yarwood, that that man is dead—murdered by the looks of it? What if I tell you that that man, that I know as I might one of my own, isa Mr. Owen Jaggard?” “T never heard the name in my life,” she broke én. “You lie. W’en you went on your knees over there, not five minutes back, you cried out that name to me an’said you never meant to kill ‘im. You lie, I tell you.” She was slowly and gradually get- ting her courage back in sheer desper- ation. It was, perhaps, fortunate at that-moment for Mr. Neal Ormany that she had not a weapon in her hand; probably, as he watched her, he thought so, too. She moved rest- lessly backward and forward for a moment or two, keeping her eyes fixed on the ground, and fighting a hard bat- tle with herself to get back her nerve. When presently she raised her eyes to his the man reluctantly acknowledged to himself that whatever advantage he might hold, the woman was the stronger, and had certain subtle arts of defense of which he knew nothing. “You have found a man whom you think you know in the woods here,” she said, slowly. “In the blundering way that belongs to menof your stamp you imagine, becuse he is dead, that the first person you meet must have murdered him. You startled me just now when I found you trespassing on my ground, and you thought I cried out something which was probably in your own mind. This—I forget the name—this man who is dead, what have you done with him?” (To Be Continued.) SETTING A CLOCK FAST. In Nearly Every Home the Clock Is Ahead of Time. It is a common thing to find the clocks in nine out of every ten house- holds either fifteen minutes or half an hour fast, and should you happen to be in a hurry or mention the fact that you have to be going, you are at once reassured by the fact that you have no cause to hurry, as the clock is so much ahead of the time. Has it ever occurred to you why clocks are usually put ahead? Some physicians have said that it is due to laziness, for it is such a satisfaction to the lazy man to find when he has to get up at 7 in the morning and strains his half-closed eyes to look at the clock that it is a little fast. Said a watchmaker when asked about the subject: “Yes, it is a peculiar thing with most people to put their clocks fast, and, while there may be some satisfaction in it when it comes to dozing a little longer, there is really no advantage in it, for when you wake up, say at 6, and glance at the clock and it registers | 6, the fact remains that it is half an hour fast.: While this may make you feel easier, knowing that you still have half an hour to doze, I confess I don’t see much advantage in it. “Why not have the clock right? It is the same thing in the end. “Suppose railroads were to put this into practice, how many trains do you think people would miss thereby? This putting clocks fast is really only a pleasant form of deception which people like to practice on themselves, but it does more harm than good.”— New York News. Irrelevancies. The diplomat is the man who can The Wonderful Growth of Calumet Baking Powder Is due to its Perfect Quality and Moderate Price Used in Millions of Homes An Example of Enterprise. A well-known novelist told the fol- lowing story the other evening at an author dinner: An Irishman who had been out of a job many weeks found in the river that flowed through his town the body of the keeper of the railroad draw- bridge. He immediately betook him- self to the superintendent of the divi- sion and applied for the job, saying that he had seen the body of the for- mer keeper in the river. “Sorry,” said the superintendent, briefly, “the place has been filled. We gave it to the man who saw him fall in.—Harper’s Weekly. Choice of Words. “I see,” remarked the man who reads the foreign papers, that the dear old Baroness Burdett-Coutts has just celebrated her ninetieth birthday, and that reminds me that it was,at one time, years ago, of course, currently reported that the great duke of Well- ington wanted her for a wife. When this rumor reached the hero of Water- loo he made this comment: “What I said was that Miss Angelia Burdett-Coutts deserved to be a duch- ess. I did not say that I would make her one.’ “Of course this reply was carried back to the lady in question. Said she: * ‘. “I think his grace should have said “could” instead of “would.” ’”—Phila- delphia Press. Important to Mothers. Examine carefully every bottle of CASTORTA, a safe and sure rémedy for infants and children, and see that it d Bears the Signature of LAS led Ia Use For Over 30 Years, The Kind You Have Always Bought, Covering Up Truth. A certain man in Philadelphia, who goes fishing two or three times a year and brings home more stories than smile at a story he has heard 216 times before and give the narrator no ink- ling of the grief that gnaws his vitals. The expression “boy’s size” means quite a different thing when applied to a Sunday dinner from what it does when it refers to a suit of clothes. Riches have their drawbacks. Some- times they are nearly at the altar and take an unaccountable resolution to quit the game. Though she is reputed unrivaled in face and form, I am sure I once saw her double. It was at Monte Carlo and she was trying to recoup a lost bet by that method—New Orleans Times. Democrat. History Repeats Itself. * Boston had just finished celebrating another anniversary of the battle of Bunker Hill. “What were the casualties?” asked the reporter. “Thus far,” said the chief of police, “the number of persons injured by toy pistols, fire crackers and other explo- sives foots up 304.” “Ha!” exclaimed the reporter, eager- ly jotting it down. ‘Don’t count any more! That’s the exact number of soldiers that were wounded in the orig: inal battle.!”—Chicago Tribune. Tact. “Has your mother finally consented to your marriage with Dick?” “She dotes on him just because she pities him. I don’t for a minute think that he is as short-sighted as he pre. tends to be, but he rushed in Sunday evening, kissed mother twice, and apologized beautifully by telling her that he thought he wa skissing me.”— Detroit Free Press. Only a Sewer Pipe. “Look here,” said the city editor tc the municipal reporter, “the opposi-| | tion sheet says that the new sewer is i a drain on the treasury.” “Oh,” replied the municipal report-| ' er, “that’s only a pipe story.”—Cleve land Leader. fish, was talking to a friend not long after his last trip. “And what did your wife say,” in- quired the friend, “when you told her you had caught fifty-five fish, none less than a pound weight?” “That wife of mine is a queer wom- an,” was the reflective response. “You know the statue of Truth we had there in the parlor without any clothes on?” “Yes.” “Well, do you know, when I told her what I had caught, she didn’t say a word, hut went right over to that statue with tears in her eyes and wrapped a rug around it. Now, what do you suppose she meant by that?” and his friend assured him that it was entirely beyond his explanation. On the Wrong Side. Miss Elsie Whelan, the Philadelphia girl who is to marry Robert Goelet has an alert and humorous mind. A Philadelphian said recently that Miss Whelen in her childhood was re- peatedly urged by her governess to exercise. “Nothing,” the governess said one day, “is so good for the young as an abundance of exercise in the open air, Miss Elsie. The youths of Rome, you will remember, swam three times across the Tiber every morning be- fore breakfast. The little girl laughed. “Well, why are you amused?” said the governess. “I was thinking,” said Miss Whelen, “that the youths of Rome must have left their clothes on the wrong bank at the end of their swim."—New York Tribune. Gle’s @rbolisalve Instantly stops the pain.of Burns and Scalds. Sana a iivnan beste miesont ecare. peloe by S.W. Golet Os. Black iver Fale Wis ~ ‘Wuemes KEEP A BOX HANDY BEGGS’ BLOOD PURIFIER catarrh of the stomach.