"Calm thyself," he said, "we share at least the danger between us. Behold I scream not!"

"It's not your danger I am screaming for," cried poor Flora; it's my own." And then she screamed louder than ever.

Another jerk half upset the sledge, and Flora disappeared into one of the heaped-up snowdrifts by the roadside.

"My beloved!" exclaimed the Lieutenant, who forgot all caution in his despair, "I can die with thee!" and away he went head-foremost after his too lovely "Mees."

It was no time for the other passengers to pay much attention, though, to the wild words of the Lieutenant, for a sudden turn of the road brought matters to a climax. Over went the sledge at last, and the Captain, Florence, and Edward were prostrate on the ground.

"Not hurt, Florence?" inquired the Captain eagerly, as he got upon his feet.

"No," she replied; "where is Mr. Chalmers ?"

"Here he is," said the Captain. "By Jove, I'm afraid he is hurt."

Florence rushed up and knelt down by his side. His face was white, and blood was trinkling from his forehead. "Mr. Chalmers !" she cried frantically. Heaven, he is dead! and it is all my fault. that I should help to kill him!"

"Speak to us! Oh, What did he ever do

"He is not

"Hush, for mercy's sake," said the Captain. dead; he is coming round. How are you, Mr. Chalmers? Better

"I think I am not hurt; only a little stunned by the fall. Where is Miss Huntingdon. I shall never forgive myself if she has come to any harm."

"She's all right,-Not hurt, are you, Florence?"

"Not in the least," replied the girl, who had recovered her usual manner. "If Doctor Schlagen weit and Flora and Lieutenant Eberstein are not injured, it is hardly worth talking about.”

"Here comes my father, and behind them Eberstein and Miss Masterton," cried Edward. "Your next Shakespeare reading, father, should be, All's Well that's Ends Well!'"

"The end is not yet," replied the Doctor solemnly. "Much will be said about this unfortunate affair when we reach home, and it will not be said to the abominable horses but to me! I shall not forget this night in a hurry. It is easy for you to talk; you are single. Alas, the married are not permitted to forget!"

CHAPTER XXIV.

CONFESSION.

A WEEK after the sleighing party Captain Draper rejoined his friends, the Huntingdons at Berlin. He dined with them on the day of his return, and when Mrs. Huntingdon had retired, Geoffrey said, "Where have you been, Draper, if it is not a secret?"

"I've been thinking it over, Huntingdon, and I believe I had better tell you; for there is a secret, and a very disagreeable one for all parties. What I have to say may lead to all sorts of unpleasantness; but it must be said."

"What on earth are you driving at, Draper? You have not seen any more ghosts, have you?"

"Ah, Geoffrey, you laughed at ghosts, and said the past never came back; but you were wrong-it is coming back now!"

Nonsense, old fellow, take some more wine. I never saw you so low-spirited before-what on earth has frightened you?” "I am afraid, Huntingdon; but it is not on my own account. I fear for you."

"Good Heavens! "You shall hear.

What do you mean?"

You and I have been old friends, Geoffrey, and I don't forget, and won't forget, that once you saved me from despair, and perhaps disgrace, in that wretched gambling business when I first joined the regiment. Never mind that, I don't want to quarrel with you; but you have treated me badly!"

"Speak out, Draper, let us get it over and have done with it. What do you complain of?"

if

"You remember that when I came over to Berlin I asked you you had taken my name when you were away in New Zealand, and you acknowledged that you had done so, and you begged my pardon; Geoffrey, you denied that you had sullied it! You told me you knew nothing of any person of the name of Chalmers !"

"I did. In one sense the denial was not true, but I answered as any accused person has a right to answer - I pleaded 'Not guilty.' Don't mistake me, Draper, if you only were aggrieved, I might have been more open with you; but there were others to consider, I could not act differently, and I would do so again. I would repeat, 'Not guilty.' Please, tell me what are your reasons for thinking I acted dishonourably?"

"Don't use that word, Huntingdon-it would break off all between us if I asserted and you resented a want of honour; I want to remain your friend, and to help you if I can. I only say you behaved badly to me when you only told me half the truth about your change of name in New Zealand. It is on my own

account I speak. If you are guilty I can forgive you; but I want to serve you, and I shall find it difficult without you confess the whole truth."

"Tell me, Draper, what has brought the subject up again. Where have you been-what have you heard?"’

"I have been to Eichelskamp, and this is what took me there," replied the Captain, as he handed Geoffrey his daughter's letter. He read it, and then remained very quiet for more than a minute with his head resting on his hand.

"Did you ever meet this Mr. Fortescue?" he asked, after a pause. "Was it he that first told you about Alice Chalmers?" His voice was hoarse and husky, and he spoke in a half whisper. 'No," replied Captain Draper. "I heard the story first from the Doctor down at Silverbeach, although he never mentioned your name."

66

"Please tell me, Draper, what he said?" and then the Captain repeated the Doctor's narrative.

"Yes," said Geoffrey, slowly, as he raised his head and looked Draper steadily in the face; "he has not exaggerated much. Hear what I have to say, I drifted into this evil just as Alice did. I am not excusing myself. I know what the world would say what you will say. I was a married man, and she was but a simple, childish thing. I knew the world and she did not, and I should have spared her! It is all true-I did not spare her. How could I? You know, Draper, why I left England, how all my faith was shaken at that time in one whom I really loved; but you cannot guess how my trouble hardened me. I was a reckless, desperate man when I met Alice Chalmers. I had no home, no country, no place in society, and no faith in God or man. I had done with civilisation, and I acted like a savage; but I never plotted nor planned her ruin--that is the whole truth, Draper, so far as I know it. Are you still my friend ?"

"Yes. You behaved badly, but God knows whether any of our set would have behaved differently. If you are to suffer for the past, I, for one, will stand by you." Huntingdon held out his hand, which Draper took.

"I intended to stand alone," said Geoffrey; "but I am glad you know all."

"Not quite all yet, Geoffrey. This Mr. Fortescue and Dr. Sharper both insist upon it that you married Alice--is it so ?"

"Yes, it is true: I thought she was dying, and I could not refuse her! so I ruined myself."

But, good Heavens, Geoffrev! suppose they can prove this?" "They cannot, the marriage was performed in a private house, by a clergyman who has long been dead; and if Alice kept the

certificate, it was lost when she perished on her voyage home. What does this Edward Chalmers want, Draper ?"

"He wants to meet the real Horace Draper face to face, and make him confess or deny the marriage."

"How very strange that he should ask Florence to assist him!" said Geoffrey.

Yes; but how much more strange that you should have met this Mr. Fortescue, and that he should be a friend of young Chalmers; and then to think of her showing him that water.colour drawing of you."

"Has Florence got a likeness of me?"

"Yes, a sketch taken when you were a young man."

"There is a fate in this," groaned Geoffrey. "I remember that Fortescue, who was a fellow-passenger in the ship I went to New Zealand in, did take a likeness of me. I thought I had destroyed it years ago."

"I wish you had," sighed Draper; "for I have had to tell more stories about this business than I ever told before in all my life. I told Florence that other Horace Draper was my own brother, and begged of her not to get him transported! Then we persuaded young Chalmers to stop for a sleighing party until we knew this Fortescue must have left England, and the young fellow returned the likeness; and so all danger is over for the present." Geoffrey gave a sigh of relief.

"Where does this young fellow live?" he inquired, after a pause. "Is he always at Eichelskamp ?"

"No, very seldom; he has been brought up in a merchant's house in London, and in a few months he starts to manage a branch house in New Zealand. It looks as if all danger was over, and yet I cannot get it out of my head that mischief is brewing somewhere."

"I cannot see where," replied Mr. Huntingdon-"I suppose you mean from Dr. Sharper; but he is not the man to take such a revenge as that. He cursed me once to my face for a villain, and I had to bear it; he had his revenge then, and he knew it. Besides, I have spoken to him since. I saw him privately for a minute at Greylings, and the man has forgiven me; he almost looked as if he pitied me. Draper, if he knew all he might. I told you once that I defied the past-it was an idle boast. I thought it had done its worst long ago, when it nearly broke my heart. I have never recovered the effects of that mad act. It was not the siu, nor the wrong, no, nor Alice's death that broke me down. Other men sin and get no punishment-other girls are weak and die young; but I was fool enough to break the law, and make myself a criminal, to please that girl. I did not think there was much risk: she seemed on the point of death, and then, when I had done a good

action, the devil stepped in, and she recovered! Years passed away before I became satisfied that Alice had perished and had left no proof of our marriage in existence, and in all those years I was haunted by the dread of exposure and disgrace. That fear stepped in between me and Emily, and poisoned our reconciliation. 1 shrunk from her, while I most loved her, for very dread that some one should suddenly appear with the proof of the second marriage. I have long known that such proof can never be forthcoming, and I said I could defy the past. I thought it had done its worst-it had spoilt my life, and, worse still, it had made an unhappy woman of my wife; but Draper, if I have nothing else to live for I have Florence-she is my only child, and she believes in me and loves me. It is for her sake that I dread even an allusion to that wretched time in New Zealand. I can defy the world, now that all proof of my crime is lost; but, Draper, Florence must never learn that her father sinned."

"Well, Geoffrey, if you have erred you have repented. You are sorry for your sin ?"

Sorry, Draper? Yes, and no. Sorry that I and Alice ever met, sorry for her suffering and early death? Yes; but sorry for my sin? I might have been had I been treated like other men ; and what have I done more than hundreds of others, so far as God's laws are concerned? No, I am not sorry; I have been punished more than enough——"

"What a time you have been!" said Mrs. Huntingdon, as the two gentlemen re-entered the drawing-room. "I have played this piece over twenty times since I sent to tell you that coffee was ready."

"What is it?" asked Geoffrey, carelessly.

"It's a song without words, suggested by those lines in Longfellow's translation-you remember them."

"Though the mills of God grind slowly, yet they grind exceeding small; Though with patience He stands waiting, with exactness grinds He all.

SUMMER had followed winter, and Captain Draper had returned to his old lodgings in Jermyn Street. Among the host of letters, papers, and cards, which had accumulated during his absence in Berlin, two bits of pasteboard particularly attracted his attention, and he stood them up against the milk-jug as he sat at breakfast and gazed at them thoughtfully. They bore respectively the names of Frank Lumsden and of Mr. Gregory.