Tracy Park: A Novel

AT THE PARK.

Frank Tracy had at first grown faster than his wife, and the change in his manner had been more perceptible; for with all her foolishness Dolly had a kind heart, and a keen sense of right, and wrong, and justice than her husband. She had opposed him stoutly when he raised his own salary from $4,000 to $6,000 a year, on the plea that his services were worth it, and that two thousand more or less was nothing to Arthur; and when he was a candidate for the Legislature she had protested loudly against his inviting to the house and giving beer and cider to the men whose votes he wanted, and for whom as men he did not care a farthing; but when he came up for Congress she forgot all her scruples, and was as anxious as himself to please those who could help him secure the nomination and afterward the election. It was she who had proposed the party, to which nearly everybody was to be invited, from old Peterkin, with his powerful influence among a certain class, and Widow Shipleigh with her four sons, to Mr. and Mrs. St. Claire, from Grassy Spring, Squire Harrington, from Collingwood, and Grace Atherton, from Brier Hill. Very few who could in any way help Frank to a seat in Congress were omitted from the list, whether Republican or Democrat, for Frank was popular with both parties and expected help from both. Over three hundred cards had been issued for the party, which was the absorbing topic of conversation in the whole town, and which brought white kids and white muslins into great requisition, while swallow-tails and non swallow-tails were discussed in the privacy of households, and discarded or decided upon according to the length of the masculine purse or the strength of the masculine resistance, for dress coats were not then the rule in Shannondale. It was said that Mr. St. Claire and Squire Harrington always wore them to dinner, but they were the nobility par excellence of the town, and were expected to do things differently from the middle class, who had their bread to earn. Old Peterkin, however, whom Frank in his soliloquy, had designated a canal bummer, had become a rich man, and was resolved to show that he knew what was au fait for the occasion; a new suit throughout, in the very latest style, was in progress of making for him, and he had been heard to say that 'Tracy should have his vote and that of fifty more of the boys to pay for his ticket to the doin's'. This speech, which was reported to Mrs. Tracy, reconciled her to the prospect of receiving as a guest the coarsest, roughest man in town, whose only recommendation was his money and the brute influence he exercised over a certain class.

Dolly has scarcely slept for excitement since the party had been decided upon, and everything seemed to be moving on very smoothly and in order. They were to have music, and flowers, and a caterer from Springfield, where a lovely party-dress for herself of peach-blow satin was making, and nothing occurred of any importance to disturb her until the morning of the day appointed for the party, when it seemed as if every evil culminated at once. First, the colored boy who was to wait in the upper hall came down with measles. Then Grace Atherton drove round in her carriage to say that it would be impossible for her to be present, as she had received news from New York which made it necessary for her to go there by the next train. She was exceedingly sorry, she said, and for once in her life Grace was sincere. She was anxious to attend the party, for, as she said to Edith St. Claire in confidence, she wanted to see old Peterkin in his swallow-tail and white vest, with a shirt-front as big as a platter. There was a great deal of sarcasm and ridicule in Grace Atherton's nature, but at heart she was kind and meant to be just, and after a fashion really liked Mrs. Tracy, to whom she had been of service in various ways, helping her to fill her new position more gracefully than she could otherwise have done, and enlightening her without seeming to do so on many points which puzzled her sorely; on the whole they were good friends, and, after expressing her regret that she could not be present in the evening, Grace stood a few moments chatting familiarly and offering to send over flowers from her greenhouse, and her own maid to arrange Mrs. Tracy's hair and assist her in dressing. Then she took her leave, and it was her carriage Mrs. Tracy was watching as it went down the avenue, when little Harold Hastings appeared around the corner of the house, and, coming up the steps, took off his cap respectfully as he said:

'Grandma sends you her compliments, and is very sorry that she has rheumatism this morning and cannot come to-night to help you. She thinks, perhaps, you can get Mrs. Mosher.'

'Your grandmother can't come, when I depended so much upon her, and she thinks I can get Mrs. Mosher, that termagant, who would raise a mutiny in the kitchen in an hour!' Mrs. Tracy said this so sharply that a flush mounted to the handsome face of the boy, who felt as if he were in some way a culprit and being reprimanded. 'She must come, if she does nothing but sit in the kitchen and keep order,' was Mrs. Tracy's next remark.

'She can't,' Harold replied; 'her foot and ankle is all swelled and aches so she almost cries. She is awful sorry, and so am I, for I was coming with her to see the show.'

This speech put a new idea into Mrs. Tracy's mind, and she said to the boy:

'How would you like to come anyway, and stay in the upper hall, and tell the people where to go? The boy I engaged has disappointed me. You are rather small for the place, but I guess you'll do, and I will give you fifty cents.'

'I'd like it first-rate,' Harold said, his face brightening at the thought of earning fifty cents and seeing the show at the same time.

Half-dollars were not very plentiful with Harold, and he was trying to save enough to buy his grandmother a pair of spectacles, for he had heard her say that she could not thread her needle as readily as she once did, and must have glasses as soon as she had the money to spare. Harold had seen a pair at the drug-store for one dollar, and, without knowing at all whether they would fit his grandmother's eyes or not, had asked the druggist to keep them until he had the required amount. Fifty cents would just make it, and he promised at once that he would come; but in an instant there fell a shadow upon his face as he thought of Tom, his tormentor, who worried him so much.

'What is it?' Mrs. Tracy asked, as she detected in him a disposition to reconsider.

'Will Tom be up in the hall?' Harold asked.

'Of course not,' Mrs. Tracy replied. 'He will be in the parlors until ten o'clock, and then he will go to bed. Why do you ask?'

'Because,' Harold answered fearlessly, 'if he was to be there I could not come; he chaffs me so and twits me with being poor and living in a house his uncle gave us.'

'That is very naughty in him, and I will see that he behaves better in future,' said Mrs. Tracy, rather amused than other wise at the boy's frankness.

As the mention of the uncle reminded Harold of the telegram, he took it from his pocket and handed it to her.

'Mr. Tracy said I was to bring you this. It's from Mr. Arthur, and he's coming to-night. I'm so glad, and grandma will be, too!'

If Mrs. Tracy heard the last of Harold's speech she did not heed it, for she had caught the words that Arthur was coming that night, and, for a moment, she felt giddy and faint, and her hand shook so she could scarcely open the telegram.

Arthur had been gone so long and left them in undisputed possession of the park, that she had come to feel as if it belonged to them by right, and she had grown so into a life of ease and luxury, that to give it up now and go back to Langley seemed impossible to her. She could see it all so plainly—the old life of obscurity and toil in the little kitchen where she had eaten her breakfast on winter mornings so near the stove that she could cook her buckwheats on the griddle and transfer them to her own and her husband's plates without leaving her seat. She had been happy, or comparatively so there, she said to herself, because she knew no better. But now she did know better, and she ate her breakfast in an oak-paneled dining-room, with a waitress at her elbow, and her buckwheats hot from a silver dish instead of the smoking griddle. She had a governess for her two boys, Tom and Jack, and a nurse for her little Maude, who, in her ambitious heart, she hoped would one day marry Dick St. Clair, the young heir of Grassy Spring.

It never occurred to Dolly that they might possibly remain at the park if Arthur did come home. She felt sure they could not, for Arthur would hardly approve of his brother's stewardship when he came to realize how much it had cost him. They would have to leave, and this party she was giving would be her first and last at Tracy Park. How she wished she had never thought of it, or, having thought of it, that she had omitted from the list those who, she knew, would be obnoxious to the foreign brother, and who had only been invited for the sake of their political influence, which would now be useless, for Frank Tracy as a nobody, with very little money to spend, would not run as well, even in his own party, as Frank Tracy of Tracy Park, with thousands at his command if he chose to take them.

'It is too bad, and I wish we could give up the party,' she said aloud, forgetting in her excitement that Harold was still standing there, gazing curiously at her. 'You here yet? I thought you had gone!' she said, half angrily, as she recovered herself a little and met the boy's wondering eyes.

'Yes'm; but you ain't going to give the party up?' he said, afraid of losing his half-dollar.

'Of course not. How can I, with all the people invited?' she asked, questioningly, and a little less sharply.

'I don't know, unless I get a pony and go round and tell 'em not to come,' Harold suggested, thinking he might earn his fifty cents as easily that way as any other.

But, much as Mrs. Tracy wished the party had never been thought of, she could not now abandon it, and declining the services of Harold and his pony, she again bade him go home, with a charge that he should be on time in the evening, adding, as she surveyed him critically:

'If you have no clothes suitable, you can wear some of Tom's. You are about his size.'

'Thank you; I have my meetin' clothes, and do not want Tom's,' was Harold's reply, as he walked away, thinking he would go in rags before he would wear anything which belonged to his enemy, Tom Tracy.

The rest of the morning was passed by Mrs. Frank in a most unhappy frame of mind, and she was glad when, at an hour earlier than she had reason to expect him, her husband came home.

'Well, Dolly,' he said, the moment they were alone, 'this is awfully unlucky, the whole business. If Arthur must come home, why couldn't he have written in advance, and not take us by surprise? Looks as if he meant to spring a trap on us, don't it? And if he did, by Jove, he has caught us nicely. It will be somewhat like the prodigal son, who heard the sound of music and dancing, only I don't suppose Arthur has spent his substance in riotous living, with not over nice people; but there is no telling what he has been up to all these years that he has not written to us. Perhaps he is married. He said in his telegram, "Send to meet us." What does that mean, if not a wife?'

'A wife! Oh, Frank!' and with a great gasp Dolly sank down upon the lounge near where she was standing, and actually went into the hysterics her husband had prophesied.

In reading the telegram she had not noticed the little monosyllable 'us,' which was now affecting her so powerfully. Of course it meant a wife and possibly children, and her day was surely over at Tracy Park. It was in vain that her husband tried to comfort her, saying that they knew nothing positively, except that Arthur was coming home and somebody was coming with him; it might be a friend, or, what was more likely, it might be a valet; and at all events he was not going to cross Fox River till he reached it, when he might find a bridge across it.

But Frank's reasoning did not console his wife, whose hysterical fit was succeeded by a racking headache, which by night was almost unbearable. Strong coffee, aconite, brandy, and belladonna, were all tried without effect. Nothing helped her until she commenced her toilet, when in the excitement of dressing she partly forgot her disquietude, and the pain in her head grew leas. Still she was conscious of a feeling of wretchedness and regret as she sat in her handsome boudoir and felt that it might be for the last time—that on the morrow another would be mistress where she had reigned so long.

It was known in the house that Arthur was expected, and some one with him, but no hint had been given of a wife, and Mrs. Tracy had ordered separate rooms prepared for the strangers, who were to arrive on the half-past ten train. How she should manage to keep up and appear natural until that time Mrs. Tracy did not know, and her face and eyes wore an anxious, frightened look, which all her finery could not hide. And still she was really very handsome and striking in her dress of peach blow satin, and the bare arms which had once been more familiar with soap-suds and dishwater than lace and gold bracelets, looked very fair and girlish when at last she descended to the drawing-room and stood waiting for the first ring which would open the party.

THE COTTAGE IN THE LANE.

It was called thus because it stood at the end of a broad, grassy avenue or lane, which led from the park to the entrance of the grounds of Collingwood, whose chimneys and gables were distinctly visible in the winter when the trees were stripped of their foliage. At the time when Mrs. Crawford took possession of it its color was red, but the storms and rains of eleven summers and winters had washed nearly all the red away; and as Mrs. Crawford had never had the money to spare for its repainting, it would have presented a brown and dingy appearance outwardly, but for the luxurious woodbine, which she had trained with so much care and skill that it covered nearly three sides of the cottage, and made a gorgeous display in the autumn, when the leaves had turned a bright scarlet.

Thanks to the thoughtfulness of Arthur Tracy, the cottage was furnished comfortably and even prettily when Mrs. Crawford entered it, and it was from the same kind friend that her resources mostly had come up to the day when, three years after her marriage, Amy Hastings came home to die, bringing with her a little two-year-old boy, whom, she called Harold, for his father. Just where the father was, if indeed he were living, she did not know. He had left her in London six months before, saying he was going over to Paris for a few days, and should be back almost before she had time to miss him. Just before he left her he said to her, playfully:

'Cheer up, petite. I have not been quite as regular in my habits as I ought to have been, but London is not the place for a man of my tastes—too many temptations for a fellow like me. When I come back we will go into the country, where you can have a garden, with flowers and chickens, and grow fat and pretty again. You are not much like the girl I married. Good-bye.'

He kissed her and the baby, and went whistling down the stairs. She never saw him again, and only heard from him once. Then he was in Paris, and had decided to go for a week to Pau, where he said they were having such fine fox hunts. Weeks went by and he never wrote nor came, and Amy would have been utterly destitute and friendless but for Arthur Tracy, who, when her need was greatest, went to her, telling her that he had never been far from her, but had watched over her vigilantly to see that no harm came to her. When her husband went to Paris he knew it through a detective, and from the same source knew when he went to Pau, where all trace of him had been lost.

'But we are sure to find him again,' he said, encouragingly; 'and meantime I shall see that you do not suffer. As an old friend of your husband, you will allow me to care for you until he is found.'

And Amy, who had no alternative, accepted his care, and tried to seem cheerful and brave while waiting for the husband who never came back.

At last when all hope of seeing him again was gone, Arthur sent her home to the cottage in the lane, where her mother received her gladly, thanking Heaven that she had her daughter back again. But not for long. Poor Amy's heart was broken. She loved her husband devotedly, and his cruel desertion of her—for she knew now it was that—hurt her more than years of suffering with him could have done. Occasionally she heard from Arthur, who was still busy in search of the delinquent, and who always sent in his letter a substantial proof of his friendship and generosity.

And so the weeks and months went by; and then, one day, there came a letter in the well-known handwriting. But it was Mrs. Crawford who opened it and read that Harold Hastings was dead: that Amy was free, and that Arthur Tracy, who through all had loved her just as well as when he first asked her to be his wife, now put the question again, offering to make her the mistress of Tracy Park and surround her with every possible comfort.

'Say yes, darling Amy,' he wrote, 'and we may yet be very happy. I will be a good husband to you and a father to your child, who shall share my fortune as if he were my own. Answer at once, telling me to come, and, before you know it I shall be there to claim you for my wife.'

With a low moan, Mrs. Crawford hid her face in her hands and sobbed aloud, for the Amy who might have been the honored wife of Arthur Tracy lay dead in her coffin; and that day they buried her under the November snow, which was falling in great sheets upon the frozen ground. What Arthur felt when he heard the news no one ever knew, for he made no sign to any one, but at once gave orders to Colvin that a costly monument should be placed at her grave, with only this inscription upon it:

AMY

Aged 23.

Of course the low-minded people talked, and Mrs. Crawford knew they did; but her heart was too full of sorrow to care what was said. Her beautiful daughter was dead, and she was alone with the little boy, the child Harold, who had inherited his mother's beauty, with all her lovely traits of character. Had Mrs. Crawford consented, Arthur would have supported him entirely; but she was too proud for that. She would take care of him herself as long as possible, she wrote him, but if, when Harold was older, he chose to educate him, she would offer no objection.

And there the matter dropped, and Mrs. Crawford struggled on as best she could, sometimes going out to do plain sewing, sometimes taking it home, sometimes going to people's houses to superintend when they had company, and sometimes selling fruit and flowers from the garden attached to the cottage. But whatever she did, she was always the same quiet, lady-like woman, who commanded the respect of all, and who, poor as she was, was held in high esteem by the better class in Shannondale. Grace Atherton's carriage and that of Edith St. Claire stood oftener before her door than that at Tracy Park; and though the ladies came mostly on business, they found themselves lingering after the business was over to talk with one who, in everything save money, was their equal.

Harold was his grandmother's idol. For him she toiled and worked, feeling more than repaid for all she did by his love and devotion to her. And Harold was a noble little fellow, full of manly instincts, and always ready to deny himself for the sake of others. That he and his grandmother were poor he knew, but he had never felt the effects of their poverty, save when Tom Tracy had jeered at him for it, and called him a pauper. There had been one square fight between the two boys, in which Harold had been the victor, with only a torn jacket, while Tom's eye had been black for a week, and Mrs. Tracy had gone to the cottage to complain and insist that Harold should be punished. But when she heard that Dick St. Claire had assisted in the fray, taking Harold's part, and himself dealing Tom the blow which blackened his eye, she changed her tactics, for she did not care to quarrel with Mrs. Arthur St. Claire, of Grassy Spring.

Harold and Richard St. Claire, or Dick, as he was familiarly called, were great friends, and if the latter knew there was a difference between himself and the child of poverty he never manifested it, and played far oftener with Harold than with Tom, whose domineering disposition and rough manners were distasteful to him. That Harold would one day be obliged to earn his living, Mrs. Crawford knew, but he was still too young for anything of that kind; and when Grace Atherton, or Mrs. St. Claire offered him money for the errands he sometimes did for them, she steadily refused to let him take it. Had she known of Mrs. Tracy's proposition that he should be present at the party as hall-boy, she would have declined, for though she could go there herself as an employee, she shrank from suffering Harold to do so. That Mrs. Tracy was not a lady, she knew, and in her heart there was always a feeling of superiority to the woman even while she served her, and she was not as sorry, perhaps, as she ought to have been, for the attack of rheumatism which would prevent her from going to the park to take charge of the kitchen during the evening.

'I am sorry to disappoint her, but I am glad not to be there,' she was thinking to herself as she sat in her bright, cheerful kitchen, waiting for Harold, when he burst in upon her, exclaiming:

'Oh, grandma, only think! I am invited to the party, and I told her I'd go, and I am to be there at half-past seven sharp, and to wear my meetin' clothes.'

'Invited to the party! What do you mean? Only grown up people are to be there,' Mrs. Crawford said.

'Yes, I know;' replied Harold, 'but I'm not to be with the grown-ups. I'm to stay in the upper hall and tell 'em where to go.'

'Oh, you are to be a waiter,' was Mrs. Crawford's rather contemptuous remark, which Harold did not heed in his excitement.

'Yes, I'm to be at the head of the stairs, and somebody else at the bottom; and they are to have fiddlin and dancin'; I've never seen anybody dance; and ice-cream and cake, with something like plaster all over it, and oranges and grapes, and, oh, everything! Dick St. Claire told me; he knows; his mother has had parties, and she's going to-night, and her gown is crimson velvet, with black and white fur in it like our cat, only they don't call it that; and—oh, I forgot—they have had a telegraph, and I took it to Mrs. Tracy, who looked mad and almost cried when she read it, Mr. Arthur Tracy is coming home to-night.'

Harold had talked so fast that his grandmother could hardly follow him, but she understood what he said last, and started as if he had struck her a blow.

'Arthur Tracy! Coming home to-night!' she exclaimed. 'Oh, I am so glad, so glad.'

'But Mrs. Tracy did not seem to be, and I guess she wanted to stop the party,' Harold said, repeating as nearly as he could what had passed between him and the lady.

Harold was full of the party to which he believed he had been invited, and when in the afternoon Dick St. Claire came to the cottage to play with him, he felt a kind of patronizing pity for his friend who was not to share his honor.

'Perhaps mother will let me come over and help you,' Dick said, 'I know how they do it. You mustn't talk to the people as they come up the stairs, nor even say good-evening, only;

'"Ladies will please walk this way, and gentlemen that!"

And Dick went through with a pantomime performance for the benefit of Harold, who, when the drill was over, felt himself competent to receive the Queen's guests at the head of the great staircase in Windsor Castle.

'Yes, I know,' he said, '"Ladies this way, and gentlemen that;" but when am I to go down and see the dancing and get some ice-cream?'

On this point Dick was doubtful. He did not believe, he said, that waiters ever went down to see the dancing, or to get ice cream, until the party was over, and then they ate it in the kitchen, if there was any left.

This was not a cheerful outlook for Harold, whose thoughts were more intent upon cream and dancing than upon showing the people where to go, and it was also the second time the word waiter had been used in connection with what he was expected to do. But Harold was too young to understand that he was not of the party itself. Later on it would come to him fast enough, that he was only a part of the machinery which moved the social engine. Now, he felt like the engine itself, and long before six o'clock he was dressed, and waiting anxiously for his grandmother's permission to start.'

'I'll tell you all about it,' he said to her. 'What they do, and what they say, and what they wear, and if I can, I'll speak to Mr. Arthur Tracy and thank him for mother's grave-stone.'

By seven o'clock he was on his way to the park, walking rapidly, and occasionally saying aloud with a gesture of his hand to the right and the left, and a bow almost to the ground.

'Ladies this way,' and 'gentlemen that.'

When he reached the house the gas-jets had just been turned up, and every window was ablaze with light from the attic to the basement.

'My eye! ain't it swell!' Harold said to himself, as he stood a moment, looking at the brilliantly lighted rooms. 'Don't I wish I was rich and could burn all that gas, and maybe I shall be. Grandma says Mr. Arthur Tracy was once a poor boy like me; only he had an uncle and I haven't. I've got do earn my money, and I mean to, and sometimes, maybe, I'll have a house us big as this, and just such a party, with a boy up stairs to tell 'em where to go. I wonder now if I'm expected to go into the kitchen door. Of course not, I've got on my Sunday clothes, and am invited to the party. I shall ring,'

And he did ring—a sharp, loud ring, which made Mrs. Tracy, who had not yet left her room, start nervously as she wondered who had come so early.

'Old Peterkin, of course. Those whom you care for least always come first.'

Peering over the banister Tom Tracy saw Harold when the door was opened, and screaming to his mother at the top of his voice, 'It ain't old Peterkin, mother; it's Hall Hastings, come to the front door,' he ran down the stairs, and confronting the intruder just as he was crossing the threshold, exclaimed:

'Go 'long; go back. You hain't no business ringin' the bell as if you was a gentleman. Go to the kitchen door with the other servants!'

With a thrust of the hand he pushed Harold back and was about to shut the door upon him when, with a quick, dextrous movement, Harold darted past him into the hall, saying, as he did so:

'Darn you, Tom Tracy, I won't go to the back kitchen door, and I'm not a servant, and if you call me so again I'll lick you!'

How the matter would have ended is doubtful, if Mrs. Tracy had not called from the head of the stairs:

'Thomas! Thomas Tracy! I am ashamed of you! Come to me this minute! And you, boy, go to the kitchen; or, no—now you are here, come up stairs, and I'll tell you what you are to do.'

Her directions were much like those of Dick St. Claire, except that she laid more stress upon the fact that he was not to speak to any one familiarly, but was to be in all respects a machine. Just what she meant by that Harold did not know; but he hung his cap on a bracket, and taking his place where she told him to stand, watched her admiringly as she went down the staircase, with her peach-blow satin trailing behind her, and followed, by her husband, who looked and felt anxious and ill at ease.

Tom had disappeared, but his younger brother, Jack, who was wholly unlike him, came to Harold's side, and began telling him what quantities of good things there were in the dining-room and pantry, and that his Uncle Arthur was coming home that night, and his mother was so glad, she cried; then, with a spring he mounted upon the banister of the long staircase and slipped swiftly to the bottom. Ascending the stairs almost as quickly as he had gone down, he bade Harold try it with him.

'It's such fun! and mother won't care. I've done it forty times,' he said, as Harold demurred; and then, as the temptation became too strong to be resisted, two boys instead of one rode down the banister and landed in the lower hall, and two pairs of little legs ran nimbly up the stairs just as the door opened and admitted the first arrival.

THE PARTY.

The invitations had been for half-past seven, and precisely at that hour Peterkin arrived, magnificent in his swallow-tail and white shirt front, where an enormous diamond shone conspicuously. With him came the second Mrs. Peterkin, whose name was Mary Jane, but whom her husband always called May Jane. She was a frail, pale faced little woman, and had once been Grace Atherton's maid, but had married Peterkin for his money. This was her first appearance at a grand party, and in her excitement and timidity she did not hear Harold's thrice repeated words, 'Ladies go that way,' but followed her husband into the gentlemen's dressing-room, where she deposited her wraps, and then, shaking in every limb, descended to the drawing-room, where Peterkin's boisterous laugh was soon heard, as he slapped his host on the shoulder, and said:

'You see, we are here on time, though May Jane said it was too early. But I s'posed half-past seven meant half-past seven and then I wanted a little time to talk up the ropes with you. We are going to run you in, you bet!' and again his coarse laugh thrilled every nerve in Mrs. Tracy's body, and she longed for fresh arrivals to help quiet this vulgar man.

Soon they began to come by twos, and threes, and sixes, and Harold was kept busy with his 'Ladies this way, and gentlemen that.'

After Mrs. Peterkin had gone down stairs, leaving her wraps in the gentlemen's rooms, Harold, who knew they did not belong there, had carried them to the ladies' room and deposited them upon the bed, just as the girl who was to be in attendance appeared at her post, asked him sharply why he was in there rummaging the ladies' things.

'I'm not rummaging. They are Mrs. Peterkin's. She left them in the other room, and I brought them here,' Harold said, as he returned to the hall, never dreaming that this little circumstance, trivial as it seemed, would be one of the links in the chain of evidence which must for a time overshadow him so darkly.

Now, he was eager and excited, and interested in watching the people as they came up the stairs and went down again. With the quick instinct of a bright, intelligent boy, he decided who was accustomed to society and who was not, and leaning over the banister when not on duty, watched them when they entered the drawing-room and were received by Mr. and Mrs. Tracy. Unconsciously he began to imitate them, bowing when they bowed, and saying softly to himself:

'Oh, how do you do? Good evening. Happy to see you. Pleasant to-night. Walk in. Ye-as!'

This was the monosyllable with which he finished every sentence, and was the affirmation to the thought in his mind that he, too, would some day go down those stairs and into those parlors as a guest, while some other boy in the upper hall bade the ladies go this way and the gentlemen that.

It was after nine when Mr. and Mrs. St. Claire arrived, with Squire Harrington, from Collingwood. Harold had been looking for them, anxious to see the crimson satin trimmed with ermine, of which Dick had told him. Many of the guests he had mentally criticised unsparingly, but Mrs. St. Claire, he knew, was genuine, and his face beamed, when in passing him, she smiled upon him with her sweet, gracious manner, and said, pleasantly:

'Good evening, Harold. I knew you were to be here. Dick told me, and he wanted to come and assist you, but I thought he'd better stay home with Nina.'

Up to this time no one had spoken to Harold, and he had spoken to no one except to tell them where to go, but had, as far as possible, followed Mrs. Tracy's injunction to be a machine. But the machine was getting a little tired. It was hard work to stand for two hours or more, and Mrs. Tracy had impressed it upon him that he was not to sit down. But when Mrs. St. Claire came from the dressing-room and stood before him a moment in her crimson satin and pearls, he forgot his weariness and forgot that he was not to talk, and said to her, involuntarily:

'Oh, Mrs. St. Claire, how handsome you look! Handsomer than anybody yet, and different, too, somehow.'

Edith knew the compliment was genuine, and she replied:

'Thank you, Harold,' then, laying her hand on the boy's head and parting his soft, brown hair, she said, as she noticed a look of fatigue in his eyes, 'are you not tired, standing so long? Why don't you bring a chair from one of the rooms and sit when you can?'

'She told me to stand,' Harold replied, nodding toward the parlors, from which a strain of music then issued.

The dancing had commenced, and Harold's feet and hands beat time to the lively strains of the piano and violin, until he could contain himself no longer. The dancing he must see at all hazards and know what it was like, and when the last guests came up the stairs there was no hall boy there to tell them, 'Ladies this way, gentlemen that,' for Harold was in the thickest of the crowd, standing on a chair so as to look over the heads of those in front of him and see the dancers. But, alas, for poor Harold! He was soon discovered by Mrs. Tracy, who, asking him if he did not know his place better than that, ordered him back to his post, where he was told to stay until the party was over.

Wholly unconscious of the nature of his offence, but very sorry that he had offended, Harold went up the stairs, wondering why he could not see the dancing, and how long the party would last. His head was beginning to ache with the glare and gas; his little legs were tired, and he was growing sleepy. Surely he might sit down now, particularly as Mrs. St. Claire had suggested it, and bringing himself a chair from one of the rooms he sat down in a corner of the hall and was soon in a sound sleep, from which, however, he was roused by the sound of Mr. Tracy's voice, as he came up the stairs, followed by a tall, distinguished-looking man, who wore a Spanish cloak wrapped gracefully around him, and a large, broad-brimmed hat drawn down so closely, as to hide his features from view.

As he reached the upper landing he raised his head, and Harold, who was now wide awake and standing up, caught a glimpse of a thin, pale face and a pair of keen, black eyes, which seemed for an instant to take everything in; than the head was dropped, and the two men disappeared in a room at the far end of the hall.

'I'll bet that's Mr. Arthur. How grand he is! looks just like a pirate in that cloak and hat,' was Harold's mental comment.

Before he had time for further thought, Frank Tracy came from the room and hurried down the stairs to rejoin his guests.

Five minutes later and the door at the end of the long hall which communicated with the back staircase and the rear of the house, opened, and a man whom Harold recognized as the expressman from the station appeared with a huge trunk on his shoulder and a large valise in his hand. These he deposited in the stranger's room and then went back for more, until four had been carried in. But when he came with the fifth and largest of all, a hand, white and delicate as a woman's, was thrust from the door-way with an imperative gesture, and a voice with a decided foreign accent exclaimed:

'For heaven's sake, don't bring any more boxes in here. Why, I am positively stumbling over them now. Surely there must be some place in the house for my luggage besides my private apartment.'

Then the door was shut with a bang, and Harold heard the sliding of the bolt as Arthur Tracy fastened himself in his room.

ARTHUR.

All the time that Frank Tracy had been receiving his guests and trying to seem happy and at his ease, his thoughts had been dwelling upon his brother's telegram and the ominous words, 'Send some one to meet us.' How slowly the minutes dragged until it was ten o'clock, and he knew that John had started for the station to meet the dreaded 'us.' He had told everybody that he was expecting his long-absent brother, and had tried to seem glad on account of it.

'You and he were great friends, I believe,' he said to Squire Harrington.

'Yes, we were friends,' the latter replied; 'but when he lived here my health was such that I did not mingle much in society. I met him, however, in Paris four years ago, and found him very companionable and quite Europeanized in his manner and tastes. He spoke French or German altogether, and might easily have passed for a foreigner. I shall be glad to see him.'

'And so shall I,' chimed in Peterkin, whose voice was like a trumpet and could be heard everywhere. 'A first-rate chap, though we didn't use to hitch very well together. He was all-fired big feelin', and them days Peterkin was nowhere; but circumstances alter cases. He'll be glad to see me now, no doubt;' and with the most satisfied air the half millionaire put his hand as if by accident to his immense diamond pin, and pulling down his swallow-tail, walked away.

Frank saw the faint smile of contempt which showed itself in Squire Harrington's face, and his own grew red with shame, but paled almost instantly as the outer door was opened by some one who did not seem to think it necessary to ring; and a stranger, in Spanish cloak and broad-brimmed hat, stepped into the hall.

Arthur had come, and was alone. The train had been on time, and at just half-past ten the long line of cars stopped before the Shannondale station, where John, the coachman from Tracy Park, was waiting. The night was dark, but by the light from the engine and the office John saw the foreign-looking stranger, who stepped upon the platform, and felt sure it was his man. But there was no one with him, though it seemed as if he were expecting some one to follow him from the car as he stood for a moment waiting. Then, as the train moved on, he turned with a puzzled look upon his face to meet John, who said to him, respectfully:

'Are you Mr. Arthur Tracy?'

'Yes; who are you?' was the not very cordial response.

'Mr. Frank Tracy sent me from the park to fetch you,' John replied. 'I think he expected some one with you. Are you alone?'

'Yes—no, no!' and Arthur's voice indicated growing alarm and uneasiness as he looked rapidly around him, 'Where is she? Didn't you see her? She was with me all the way. Surely she got off when I did. Where can she have gone?'

He was greatly excited, and kept peering through the darkness as he talked; while John, a good deal puzzled, looked curiously at him, as if uncertain whether he were in his right mind or not.

'Was there some one with you in the car?' he asked.

'Yes, in the car, and in New York, and on the ship. She was with me all the way,' Mr. Tracy replied. 'It is strange where she is now. Did no one alight from the train when I did?'

'No one,' John answered, more puzzled than ever.... 'I was looking for you, and there was no one else. She may have fallen asleep and been carried by.'

'Yes, probably that is it,' Mr. Tracy said, more cheerfully, 'she was asleep and carried by. She will come back to-morrow.'

He seemed quite content with this solution of the mystery, and began to talk of his luggage, which lay upon the platform—a pile so immense that John looked at it in some alarm, knowing that the carriage could never take it all.

'Eight trunks, two portmanteaus, and a hat-box!' he said, aloud, counting the pieces.

'Yes, and a nice sum those rascally agents in New York made me pay for having them come with me,' Arthur rejoined. 'They weighed them all, and charged me a little fortune. I might as well have sent them by express; but I wanted them with me, and here they are. What will you do with them? This is hers,' and he designated a black trunk or box, longer and larger than two ordinary trunks ought to be.

'I can take one of them with the box and portmanteau, and the expressman will take the rest. He is here. Hallo, Brown,' John said, calling to a man in the distance, who came forward, and, on learning what was wanted, begun piling the trunks into his wagon, while Arthur followed John, to the carriage, which he entered, and, sinking into a seat, pulled his broad-brimmed hat over his face and eyes, and sat as motionless as if he had been a stone.

For a moment John stood looking at him, wondering what manner of man he was, and thinking, too, of the woman who, he said, had been with him in the train, and who should have alighted with him. At last, remembering suddenly a message his master had given him, he began:

'If you please, sir, Mr. Tracy told me to tell you he was very sorry that he could not come himself to meet you. If he had known that you were coming sooner, he would have done different; but he did not get your telegram till this morning, and then it was too late to stop it. We are having a great break-down to-night.'

During the first of these remarks Arthur had given no sign that he heard, but when John spoke of a break-down, he lifted his head quickly, and the great black eyes, which Harold noticed later as peculiar, flashed a look of inquiry upon John, as he said:

'Break-down? What is that!'

'A party—a smasher! Mr. Tracy is running for Congress.' was John's reply.

And then over the thin face there crept a ghost of a smile, which, faint as it was, changed the expression wonderfully.

'Oh, a party!' he said. 'Well, I will be a guest, too. I have my dress-suit in some of those trunks. Frank is going to Congress, is he? That's a good joke! Drive on. What are you standing there for?'

The carriage door was shut, and, mounting the box, John drove as rapidly toward Tracy Park as the darkness of the night would admit, while the passenger inside sat with his hat over his eyes, and his chin almost touching his breast, as if absorbed in thought, or else not thinking at all. Once, however, he spoke to himself, and said:

'Poor little Gretchen! I wonder how I could have forgotten and left her in the train. What will she do alone in a strange place? But perhaps Heaven will take care of her. She always said so. I wish I had her faith and could believe as she does. Poor little Gretchen!'

They had turned into the park by this time, and very soon draw up before the house, from every window of which lights were flashing, while the sounds of music and dancing could be distinctly heard.

Something like Frank's idea came into Arthur's mind at the sight.

'It makes me think of the return of the prodigal, only I have not wasted my substance and my father does not come to meet me,' he said, as he descended from the carriage and went up the broad steps to the piazza, on which a few young people were walking, unmindful of the chill night air.

'I need not ring at my own house,' Arthur thought, as he opened the door and stepped into the hall; and thus it was that the first intimation which Frank had of his arrival was when he saw him standing in the midst of a crowd of people, who were gazing curiously at him.

'Arthur!' he exclaimed, rushing forward and taking his brother's hand. 'Welcome home again! I did not hear the carriage, though I was listening for it. I am so glad to see you! Come with me to your room;' and he led the way up stairs to the apartment prepared for the stranger.

He had seen at a glance that Arthur was alone, unless, indeed, he had brought a servant who had gone to the side door; and thus relieved from a load of anxiety, he was very cordial in his manner, and began at once to make excuses for the party, repeating in substance what John had already said.

'Yes, I know; that fellow who drove me here told me,' Arthur said, throwing off his coat and hat, and beginning to lave his face, and neck, and hands in the cold water which he turned into the bowl until it was full to the brim, and splashed over the sides as he dashed it upon himself.

All this time Frank had not seen his face distinctly, nor did he have an opportunity to do so until the ablutions were ended and Arthur had rubbed himself with, not one towel, but two, until it seemed as if he must have taken off the skin in places. Then he turned, and running his fingers through his luxuriant hair, which had a habit of curling around his forehead as in his boyhood, looked full at his brother, who saw that he was very pale and thin, and that his eyes were unnaturally large and bright, while there was about him an indescribable something which puzzled Frank a little. It was not altogether the air of foreign travel and cultivation which was so perceptible, but a something else—a restlessness and nervousness of speech and manner as he moved about the room, walking rapidly and gesticulating as he walked.

'You are looking thin and tired. Are you not well?' Frank asked.

'Oh, yes, perfectly well,' Arthur replied: 'only this infernal heat in my blood, which keeps me up to fever pitch all the time. I shall have to bathe my face again,' and, turning a second time to the bowl, he began to throw water over his face and hands as he had done before.

'I'd like a bath in ice water,' he said, as he began drying himself with a fresh towel. 'If I remember right, there is no bath-room on this floor, but I can soon have one built. I intend to throw down the wall between this room and the next, and perhaps the next, so as to have a suite.'

He was asserting the ownership at once, and Frank had nothing to say, for his brother was master there, and had a right to tear the house down if he chose. The second washing must have cooled him, for there came a change in his manner, and he moved more slowly and spoke with greater deliberation, as he asked some questions about the people below.

'Will you come down by-and-bye,' Frank said, after having made some explanations with regard to his guests.

'No, you will have to excuse me,' Arthur replied. 'I am too tired to encounter old acquaintances or make new. I do not believe I could stand old Peterkin, who you say is a millionaire. I suppose you want his influence; your coachman told me you were running for Congress,' and Arthur laughed the old merry musical laugh which Frank remembered so well: then, suddenly changing his tune, he said: 'When does the next train from the East pass the station?'

Frank told him at seven the next morning, and he continued:

'Please send the carriage to meet it. Gretchen will probably be there. She was in the train with me, and should have gotten out when I did, but she must have been asleep and carried by.'

'Gr-gr-gretchen! Who is she?' Frank stammered, while the cold sweat began to run down his back.

The 'us' in the telegram did mean something, and mischief, too, to his interests, he felt intuitively.

Instantly into Arthur's eyes there stole a look of cunning, and a peculiar smile played round his mouth as he replied:

'She is Gretchen. See that the carriage goes for her, will you?'

His voice and manner indicated that he wished the conference ended, and with a great sinking at his heart Frank left the room and returned to his guests and his wife, who had not seen the stranger when he entered the hall, and thus did not know of Arthur's arrival until her husband rejoined her.

'He has come,' he whispered to her, while she whispered back:

'Is he alone?'

'Yes, but somebody is coming to-morrow; I do not know who; Gretchen, he calls her,' was Frank's reply.

'Gretchen!' Mrs. Tracy repeated, in a trembling voice. 'Who is she?'

'I don't know. He merely said she was Gretchen; his daughter, perhaps,' was Frank's answer, which sent the color from his wife's cheeks, and made her so faint and sick that she would have given much to be alone and think over this evil coming upon her the next day in the shape of the mysterious Gretchen.

Meantime when left to himself, Arthur changed his mind with regard to going down into the parlors to see his brother's guests, and, unlocking the trunk which held his own wardrobe he took out an evening suit fresh from the hands of a London tailor, and, arraying himself in it, stood for a moment before the glass to see the effect. Everything was faultless, from his neck-tie to his boots; and, opening the door, he went out into the hall, which was empty, except for Harold, who was sitting near the stairs, half asleep again. Most of the guests were in the supper-room, but a few of the younger portion were dancing, and the strains of music were heard with great distinctness in the upper hall.

'Ugh!' Arthur said, with a shiver, as he stopped a moment to listen, while his quick eye took in every detail of the furniture and its arrangement in the hall. 'That violinist ought to be hung—the pianist, too! Don't they know what horrid discord they are making? It brings that heat back. I believe, upon my soul, I shall have to bathe my face again.'

Suiting the action to the word, he went back and washed his face for the third time; then returning to the hall, he advanced toward Harold, who was now wide awake and stood up to meet him. As Arthur met the clear-brown eyes fixed so curiously upon him, he stopped suddenly, and put his hand to his head as if trying to recall something; then going a step or two nearer to Harold, he said:

'Well, my little boy, what are you doing up here?'

'Telling the folks which way to go,' was Harold's answer.

'Who are you?' Arthur continued. 'What is your name?'

'Harold Hastings,' was the reply; and instantly there came over the white, thin face, and into the large, bright eyes, an expression which made the boy stand back a little as the tall man came up to him and, laying a hand on his shoulder, said, excitedly:

'Harold Hastings! He was once my friend, or, I thought he was; but I hate him now. And he was your father, and Amy Crawford was your mother? N'est ce pas? Answer me!'

'Yes, sir—yes, sir; but I don't know what you mean by "na-se par,"' Harold said, in a frightened voice; and Arthur continued, as he tightened his grasp on his shoulder:

'Don't you know you ought to have been my son, instead of his?'

'Yes, sir—yes, sir; I'll never do so again,' Harold stammered, too much alarmed now to know what he was saying, or of what he was accused.

'No, you never will do it again. I hated your father, and I hate you, and I am going to throw you over the stair railing!' Arthur said, and seizing Harold's coat-collar, he swung him over the banister as if he had been a feather, while the boy struggled and fought, and held onto the rails, until help appeared in the person of Frank Tracy, who came swiftly up the stairs, demanding the cause of what he saw.

He had been standing near the drawing-room door, and had caught the sound of his brother's voice and Harold's as if in altercation. Excusing himself from those around him, he hastened to the scene of action in time to save Harold from a broken limb, if not a broken neck.

'What is it? What have you been doing?' he asked the boy, who replied, amid his tears:

'I hain't been doing anything, only minding my business, and he came and asked me who I was, and when I told him, he was going to chuck me over the railing—darn him! I wish I was big; I'd lick him!'

Harold's cheeks were flushed, and the great tears glittered in his eyes, as he stood up, brave and defiant, and resentful of the injustice done him.

'Are you mad, Arthur?' Frank said.

And whether it was the tone of his voice, or the words he uttered, something produced a wonderful effect upon his brother, whose mood changed at once, and who advanced toward Harold with outstretched hand, saying to him:

'Forgive me, my little man. I think I must have been mad for the instant; there is such a heat in my head, and the crash of that music almost drives me wild. Shall it be peace between us, my boy?'

It was next to impossible to resist the influence of Arthur Tracy's smile, and Harold took the offered hand and said, between a sob and a laugh:

'I don't know now why you wanted to throw me down stairs.'

'Nor I, and I will make it up to you some time,' was Arthur's reply, as he took his brother's arm and said: 'Now introduce me to your guests.'

The moment the gentlemen disappeared from view Harold's resolution was taken. He was of no use there any longer, as he could see. It was nearly midnight. He was very tired and sleepy, and his head was aching terribly. He could not see the dancing. He had had nothing to eat; he had stood until his legs were ready to drop off, and to crown all a lunatic had tried to throw him over the banister.

'I won't stay here another minute,' he said.

And leaving the hall by the rear entrance, and slipping down a back stairway, he was soon in the open air, and running swiftly through the park toward the cottage in the lane.

Meanwhile the two brothers had descended to the drawing-room, where Arthur was soon surrounded by his friends and old acquaintances, whom he greeted with that cordiality and friendliness of manner which had made him so popular with those who knew him best. Every trace of excitement had disappeared, and had he been master of ceremonies himself, at whose bidding the guests were there, he could not have been more gracious or affable. Even old Peterkin, when he came into notice, was treated with a consideration which put that worthy man at ease, and set his tongue again in motion. At first he had felt a little overawed by Arthur's elegant appearance, and had whispered to his neighbor:

'That's a swell, and no mistake. I s'pose that's what you call foreign get up. Well, me and ma is goin' to Europe some time, and hang me if I don't put on style when I come home. I'd kind of like to speak to the feller. I wonder if he remember that I was runnin' a boat when he went away?'

If Arthur did remember it he showed no sign when Peterkin at last pressed up to him, claiming his attention, as Captain Peterkin, of the 'Liza Ann, the fastest boat on the canal, and by George, the all-tiredest meanest, too, I guess, he said: 'but them days is past, and the old captain is past with them. I dabbled a little in ile, and if I do say it, I could about buy up the whole canal if I wanted to; but I ain't an atom proud, and I don't forget the old boatin' days, and I've got the old 'Liza Ann hauled up inter my back yard as a relict. The children use it for a play-house, but to me it is a—a—what do you call it? a—gol darn it, what is it?'

'Souvenir,' suggested Arthur, vastly amused at this tirade, which had assumed the form of a speech, and drawn a crowd around him.

'Wall, yes; I s'pose that's it, though 'taint exactly what I was trying to think of,' he said. It's a reminder, and keeps down my pride, for when I get to feelin' pretty big, after hearin' myself pointed out as Peterkin the millionaire, I go out to that old boat in the back yard, and says I, ''Liza Ann,' says I, 'you and me has took many a trip up and down the canal, with about the wust crew, and the wust hosses, and the wust boys that was ever created, and though you've got a new coat of paint onto you, and can set still all day and do nothing while I can wear the finest broadcloth and set still, too, it won't do for us to forget the pit from which we was dug, and I don't forget it neither, no more than I forgit favors shown when I was not fust cut. You, sir, rode on the 'Liza Ann with that crony of yours—Hastings was his name—and you paid me han'some, though I didn't ask nothin'; and ther's your brother—Frank, I call him. I don't forgit that he used to speak to me civil when I was nobody, and now, though I'm a Dimocrat, as everybody knows me knows, and everybody most does know me, for Shannondale allus was my native town, I'm goin' to run him into Congress, if it takes my bottom dollar, and anybody, Republican or Dimocrat; who don't vote him ain't my friend, and must expect to feel the full heft of my—my—'

'Powerful disapprobation,' Arthur said, softly, and Peterkin continued:

'Thank you, sir, that's the word—powerful, sir, powerful, powerful,' and he glowered threateningly at two or three young men in white kids and high shirt collars, who were known to prefer the opposing candidate.

Peterkin had finished his harrangue, and was wiping his wet face with his handkerchief, when Arthur, who had listened to him with well-bred attention, said:

'I thank you, Captain Peterkin, for your interest in my brother, who, if he succeeds, will, I am sure, owe his success to your influence, and be grateful in proportion. Perhaps you have a bill you would like him to bring before the House?'

'No,' Peterkin said, with a shake of the head. 'My Bill is a little shaver, eight or nine years old; too young to go from home, but'—and he lowered his voice: a little—'I don't mind saying that if there should be a chance, I'd like the post-office fust-rate. It would be a kind of hist, you know, to see my name in print, Captain Joseph Peterkin, P.M.'

Here the conversation ended, and the aspirant for the post-office, who had tired himself out, stepped aside and gave place to others who were anxious to renew their acquaintance with Arthur. It was between one and two o'clock in the morning when the party finally broke up, and, as the Peterkins had been the first to arrive, so they were the last to leave, and Mrs. Peterkin found herself again in the gentlemen's dressing-room, looking after her wraps. But they were not there, and after a vain and anxious search she said to her husband:

'Joe, somebody has stole my things, and 'twas my Indian shawl, too, and gold-headed pin, with the little diamond.'

Mrs. Tracy was at once summoned to the scene, and the missing wraps were found in the ladies' room, where Harold had carried them, but the gold-headed shawl-pin was gone and could not be found.

Lucy, the girl in attendance, said, when questioned, that she knew nothing of the pin or Mrs. Peterkin's wraps either, except that on first going up to the room after the lady's arrival, she found Harold Hastings fumbling them over, and that she sent him out with a sharp reprimand. Harold was then looked for and could not be found, for he had been at home and in bed for a good two hours. Clearly, then, he knew something of the pin; and Peterkin and his wife said good-night, resolving to see the boy the first thing in the morning, and demand their property.

When the Peterkins were gone, Arthur started at once for his room, but stopped at the foot of the stairs and said to his brother:

'Don't forget to have the carriage at the station at seven o'clock. Gretchen is sure to be there.'

'All right,' was Frank's reply.

While Mrs. Tracy asked:

'Who is Gretchen?'

If Arthur heard her he made no reply, but kept on up the stairs to his room, where they heard him for a long time walking about, opening and shutting windows, locking and unlocking trunks, and occasionally splashing water over his face and hands.

'Your brother is a very elegant-looking man,' Mrs. Tracy said to her husband as she was preparing to retire. 'Quite like a foreigner, but how bright his eyes are, and they look at you sometimes as if they would see through you and know what you were thinking. They almost make me afraid of him.'

Frank made no direct reply. In his heart there was an undefined fear which he then could not put into words, and with the remark that he was very tired, he stepped into bed, and was just falling into a quiet sleep when there came a knock upon his door loud enough, it seemed to him, to waken the dead. Starting up he demanded who was there and what was wanted.

'It is I,' Arthur said. 'I thought I smelled gas, and I have been hunting round for it. There is nothing worse to breathe than gas, whether from the furnace, the pipes, or the drain. I hope that is all right.'

'Yes,' Frank answered, a little crossly. 'Had a new one put in two weeks ago.'

'If there's gas in the main sewer it will come up just the same, and I am sure I smell it,' Arthur said. 'I think I shall have all the waste-pipes which connect with the drain cut off. Good-night. Am sorry I disturbed you.'

They heard him as he went across the hall to his room, and Frank was settling down again to sleep when there came a second knock, and Arthur said, in a whisper:

'I hope I do not trouble you, but I have decided to go myself to the station to meet Gretchen. She is very timid, and does not speak much English. Good-night once more, and pleasant dreams.'

To sleep now was impossible, and both husband and wife turned restlessly on their pillows, Frank wondering what ailed his brother, and Dolly wondering who Gretchen was and how her coming would affect them.

WHO IS GRETCHEN?

This was the question which Mr. and Mrs. Tracy asked of themselves and each other many times during the hours which intervened between their retiring and rising. But speculate as they might they could reach no satisfactory conclusion, and were obliged to wait for what the morning and the train might bring. The party had been a success, and Frank felt that his election to Congress was almost certain; but of what avail would all this be if he lost his foothold at Tracy Park, as he was sure to do if a woman appeared upon the scene. Both he and his wife had outgrown the life of eleven years ago, and could not go back to it without a struggle, and it is not strange if both wished that the troublesome brother had remained abroad instead of coming home so suddenly and disturbing all their plans. They heard him moving in his room before the clock struck six, and knew he was getting himself in readiness to meet the dreaded Gretchen. Then, long before the carriage came round they heard him in the hall opening the windows and admitting a gust of wind which blew their door open, and when Frank arose to shut it he saw the top of Arthur's broad-brimmed hat disappearing down the stairs.

'I believe he is going to walk to the station; he certainly is crazy,' Frank said to his wife, as they dressed themselves and waited with feverish impatience for the return of the carriage.

Arthur did walk to the station, which he reached just as the ticket agent was unlocking the door, and there, with his Spanish cloak wrapped around him, he stalked up and down the long platform for more than an hour, for the train was late, and it was nearer eight than seven when it finally came in sight.

Standing side by side Arthur and John looked anxiously for some one to alight, but nobody appeared and the expression of Arthur's face was pitiable as he turned it to John, and said:

'Gretchen did not come. Where do you suppose she is?'

'I am sure I don't know. On the next train, may be,' was John's reply, at which Arthur caught eagerly.

'Yes, the next train, most likely. We will come and meet it; and now drive home as fast as you can. This disappointment has brought that heat to my head, and I must have a bath. But, stop a bit; who is the best carpenter in town?'

John told him that Belknap was the best, and Burchard the highest priced.

'I'll see them both,' Arthur said. 'Take me to their houses;' and in the course of half an hour he had interviewed both Burchard and Belknap, and made an appointment with both for the afternoon.

Then he was driven back to Tracy Park, where breakfast had been waiting until it was spoiled, and the cook's temper was spoiled, too, and when Frank and Dolly met him at the door, both asked in the same breath:

'Where is she?'

'She was not on this train. She will come on the next. We must go and meet her,' was Arthur's reply, as he passed up the stairs, while Frank and his wife looked wonderingly at each other.

The spoiled breakfast was eaten by Mr. and Mrs. Tracy alone, for the children had had theirs and gone to their lessons, and Arthur had said that he never took anything in the morning except a cup of coffee and a roll, and these he wished sent to his room, together with a time-table.

After breakfast Mrs. Tracy, who was suffering from a sick headache, declared her inability to sit up a moment longer and returned to her bed, leaving her husband and the servants to bring what order they could out of the confusion reigning everywhere, and nowhere to a greater extent than in Arthur's room, or rather the rooms which he had appropriated to himself, and into which he had had all his numerous boxes and trunks brought, so that he could open them at his leisure. There were more coming by express, he said, boxes which came through the custom-house, for he had brought many valuable things, such as pictures, and statuary, and rugs and inlaid tables and chinas, with which to adorn his home.

The house, which was very large, had a wing on either side, while the main building was divided by a wide hall, with three rooms on each side, the middle one being a little smaller than the other two, with each of which it communicated by a door. And it was into this middle room on the second floor Arthur had been put, and which he found quite too small for his use. So he ordered both the doors to be opened and took possession of the suite, pacing them several times, and then measuring their length, and breadth, and height, and the distance between the windows. Then he inspected the wing on that side of the house, and, going into the yard, looked the building over from all points, occasionally marking a few lines on the paper he held in his hand. Before noon every room in the house, except the one where Dolly lay sick with a headache had been visited and examined minutely, while Frank watched him nervously, wondering if he would think they had greatly injured anything, or had expended too much money on furniture. But Arthur was thinking of none of these things, and found fault with nothing except the drain and the gas fixtures, all of which he declared bad, saying that the latter must be changed at once, and that ten pounds of copperas must be bought immediately and put down the drain, and that quantities of chloride of lime and carbolic acid must be placed where there was the least danger of vegetable decomposition.

'I am very sensitive to smells, and afraid of them, too, for they breed malaria and disease of all kinds,' he said to the cook, whose nose and chin both were high in the air, not on account of any obnoxious odor, but because of this unreasonable meddling with what she considered her own affairs. If things were to go on in this way, she said to the house-maid, and if that man was going to poke his nose into drains, and gas-pipes, and kerosene lamps, and bowls of sour milk which she might have forgotten, she should give notice to quit.

But when, half an hour later, some boxes and trunks which had come by express were deposited in the back hall, and Arthur, who was superintending them, said to her, as he pointed to a large black trunk, 'I think this has the dress patterns and shawls I brought for you, girls; for though I did not know you personally, I knew that women were always pleased with anything from Paris' her feelings underwent a radical change, and Arthur was free to smell the drain and the gas fixtures as much as he liked.

He was very busy, and though always pleasant, and even familiar at times, there was in all he said and did an air of ownership, as if he had assumed the mastership. And he had. Everything was his, and he knew it, and Frank knew it, too, and gave no sign of rebelling when the reins were taken from him by one who seemed to be driving at a break-neck speed.

At lunch, while the brothers were together, Arthur announced his intentions in part, but not until Frank, who was anxious to get it off his mind, said to him:

'By the way, I suppose you will be going to the office this afternoon, to see Colvin and look over the books. I believe you will find them straight, and hope you will not think I have spent too much, or drawn too large a salary. It you do, I will—'

'Nonsense!' was Arthur's reply, with a graceful shrug of his shoulders. 'Don't bother about that there is money enough for us both. What I invested in Europe has trebled itself, and more too, and would make me a rich man if I had nothing else. I am always lucky. I played but once at Monte Carlo, just before I came home, and won ten thousand dollars, which I invested in—But no matter; that is a surprise—something for your wife and Gretchen. I have come home to stay. I do not think I am quite what I used to be. I was sick all that time when you heard from me so seldom, and I am not strong yet. I need quite a rest. I have seen the world, and am tired of it, and now I want a house for Gretchen and myself, and you too. I expect you to stay with me as long as we pull together pleasantly and you do not interfere with my plans. I am going to take the three south rooms on the second floor for my own. I shall put folding-doors, or rather a wide arch between two of them, making them almost like one, and these I shall fit up to suit my own taste. In the smaller and middle room, where I slept last night, I shall have a large bow window, with shelves for books in the spaces between and beneath, and by the sides of the windows. I got the idea in a villa a little way out of Florence. Opposite this bow window, on the other side of the room, I shall have niches in the wall and corners for statuary, with shelves for books above and below. I have some beautiful pieces of marble from Florence and Rome. The Venus de Milo, Apollo Belvidere, Nydra and Psyche, and Ruth at the Well. But the crowning glory of this room will be the upper half of the middle window of the bow. This is to be of stained glass, bright but soft colors which harmonize perfectly, two rows on the four sides, and in the centre a lovely picture of Gretchen, also of cathedral glass, and so like her that it seems to speak to me in her soft German tongue. I had it made from a photograph I have of her, and it is very natural—the same sad, sweet smile around the lips which never said an unkind word to any one—the same bright, wavy hair, and eyes of blue, innocent as a child—and Gretchen is little more than that. She is only twenty-one—poor little Gretchen!' and, leaning back in his chair, Arthur seemed to be lost in recollections of the past.

Not pleasant, all of them, it would seem, for there was a moisture in his eyes when he at last looked up in response to his brother's questioning.