The Dynamiter
by RL and Fanny VDG Stevenson
Hypertext Meanings and Commentaries
from the Encyclopedia of the Self
by Mark Zimmerman

TO MESSRS. COLE AND COX, POLICE OFFICERS

GENTLEMEN, - In the volume now in your hands, the authors
have touched upon that ugly devil of crime, with which it is
your glory to have contended. It were a  waste of ink to do
so in a serious spirit. Let us dedicate our horror to acts
of a more mingled strain, where crime preserves some features
of nobility, and where reason and humanity can still relish
the temptation. Horror, in this case, is due to Mr. Parnell:
he sits before posterity silent, Mr. Forster's appeal echoing
down the ages. Horror is due to ourselves, in that we have
so long coquetted with political crime; not seriously
weighing, not acutely following it from cause to consequence;
but with a generous, unfounded heat of sentiment, like the
schoolboy with the penny tale, applauding what was specious.
When it touched ourselves (truly in a vile shape), we proved
false to the imaginations; discovered, in a clap, that crime
was no less cruel and no less ugly under sounding names; and
recoiled from our false deities.

But seriousness comes most in place when we are to speak of
our defenders. Whoever be in the right in this great and
confused war of politics; whatever elements of greed,
whatever traits of the bully, dishonour both parties in this
inhuman contest; - your side, your part, is at least pure of
doubt. Yours is the side of the child, of the breeding
woman, of individual pity and public trust. If our society
were the mere kingdom of the devil (as indeed it wears some
of his colours) it yet embraces many precious elements and
many innocent persons whom it is a glory to defend. Courage
and devotion, so common in the ranks of the police, so little
recognised, so meagrely rewarded, have at length found their
commemoration in an historical act. History, which will
represent Mr. Parnell sitting silent under the appeal of Mr.
Forster, and Gordon setting forth upon his tragic enterprise,
will not forget Mr. Cole carrying the dynamite in his
defenceless hands, nor Mr. Cox coming coolly to his aid.

Robert Louis Stevenson
Fanny Van De Grift Stevenson

A NOTE FOR THE READER

IT is within the bounds of possibility that you may take up
this volume, and yet be unacquainted with its predecessor:
the first series of NEW ARABIAN NIGHTS. The loss is yours -
and mine; or to be more exact, my publishers'. But if you
are thus unlucky, the least I can do is to pass you a hint.
When you shall find a reference in the following pages to one
Theophilus Godall of the Bohemian Cigar Divan in Rupert
Street, Soho, you must be prepared to recognise, under his
features, no less a person than Prince Florizel of Bohemia,
formerly one of the magnates of Europe, now dethroned,
exiled, impoverished, and embarked in the tobacco trade.

R. L. S.

NEW ARABIAN NIGHTS

A SECOND SERIES

THE DYNAMITER

PROLOGUE OF THE CIGAR DIVAN

IN the city of encounters, the Bagdad of the West, and, to be
more precise, on the broad northern pavement of Leicester
Square, two young men of five- or six-and-twenty met after
years of separation. The first, who was of a very smooth
address and clothed in the best fashion, hesitated to
recognise the pinched and shabby air of his companion.

'What!' he cried, 'Paul Somerset!'

'I am indeed Paul Somerset,' returned the other, 'or what
remains of him after a well-deserved experience of poverty
and law. But in you, Challoner, I can perceive no change;
and time may be said, without hyperbole, to write no wrinkle
on your azure brow.'

'All,' replied Challoner, 'is not gold that glitters. But we
are here in an ill posture for confidences, and interrupt the
movement of these ladies. Let us, if you please, find a more
private corner.'

'If you will allow me to guide you,' replied Somerset, 'I
will offer you the best cigar in London.'

And taking the arm of his companion, he led him in silence
and at a brisk pace to the door of a quiet establishment in
Rupert Street, Soho. The entrance was adorned with one of
those gigantic Highlanders of wood which have almost risen to
the standing of antiquities; and across the window-glass,
which sheltered the usual display of pipes, tobacco, and
cigars, there ran the gilded legend: 'Bohemian Cigar Divan,
by T. Godall.'  The interior of the shop was small, but
commodious and ornate; the salesman grave, smiling, and
urbane; and the two young men, each puffing a select regalia,
had soon taken their places on a sofa of mouse-coloured plush
and proceeded to exchange their stories.

'I am now,' said Somerset, 'a barrister; but Providence and
the attorneys have hitherto denied me the opportunity to
shine. A select society at the Cheshire Cheese engaged my
evenings; my afternoons, as Mr. Godall could testify, have
been generally passed in this divan; and my mornings, I have
taken the precaution to abbreviate by not rising before
twelve. At this rate, my little patrimony was very rapidly,
and I am proud to remember, most agreeably expended. Since
then a gentleman, who has really nothing else to recommend
him beyond the fact of being my maternal uncle, deals me the
small sum of ten shillings a week; and if you behold me once
more revisiting the glimpses of the street lamps in my
favourite quarter, you will readily divine that I have come
into a fortune.'

'I should not have supposed so,' replied Challoner. 'But
doubtless I met you on the way to your tailors.'

'It is a visit that I purpose to delay,' returned Somerset,
with a smile. 'My fortune has definite limits. It consists,
or rather this morning it consisted, of one hundred pounds.'

'That is certainly odd,' said Challoner; 'yes, certainly the
coincidence is strange. I am myself reduced to the same
margin.'

'You!' cried Somerset. 'And yet Solomon in all his glory - '

'Such is the fact. I am, dear boy, on my last legs,' said
Challoner. 'Besides the clothes in which you see me, I have
scarcely a decent trouser in my wardrobe; and if I knew how,
I would this instant set about some sort of work or commerce.
With a hundred pounds for capital, a man should push his
way.'

'It may be,' returned Somerset; 'but what to do with mine is
more than I can fancy. Mr. Godall,' he added, addressing the
salesman, 'you are a man who knows the world: what can a
young fellow of reasonable education do with a hundred
pounds?'

'It depends,' replied the salesman, withdrawing his cheroot.
'The power of money is an article of faith in which I profess
myself a sceptic. A hundred pounds will with difficulty
support you for a year; with somewhat more difficulty you may
spend it in a night; and without any difficulty at all you
may lose it in five minutes on the Stock Exchange. If you
are of that stamp of man that rises, a penny would be as
useful; if you belong to those that fall, a penny would be no
more useless. When I was myself thrown unexpectedly upon the
world, it was my fortune to possess an art: I knew a good
cigar. Do you know nothing, Mr. Somerset?'

'Not even law,' was the reply.

'The answer is worthy of a sage,' returned Mr. Godall. 'And
you, sir,' he continued, turning to Challoner, 'as the friend
of Mr. Somerset, may I be allowed to address you the same
question?'

'Well,' replied Challoner, 'I play a fair hand at whist.'

'How many persons are there in London,' returned the
salesman, 'who have two-and-thirty teeth? Believe me, young
gentleman, there are more still who play a fair hand at
whist. Whist, sir, is wide as the world; 'tis an
accomplishment like breathing. I once knew a youth who
announced that he was studying to be Chancellor of England;
the design was certainly ambitious; but I find it less
excessive than that of the man who aspires to make a
livelihood by whist.'

'Dear me,' said Challoner, 'I am afraid I shall have to fall
to be a working man.'

'Fall to be a working man?' echoed Mr. Godall. 'Suppose a
rural dean to be unfrocked, does he fall to be a major?
suppose a captain were cashiered, would he fall to be a
puisne judge? The ignorance of your middle class surprises
me. Outside itself, it thinks the world to lie quite
ignorant and equal, sunk in a common degradation; but to the
eye of the observer, all ranks are seen to stand in ordered
hierarchies, and each adorned with its particular aptitudes
and knowledge. By the defects of your education you are more
disqualified to be a working man than to be the ruler of an
empire. The gulf, sir, is below; and the true learned arts -
those which alone are safe from the competition of insurgent
laymen - are those which give his title to the artisan.'

'This is a very pompous fellow,' said Challoner, in the ear
of his companion.

'He is immense,' said Somerset.

Just then the door of the divan was opened, and a third young
fellow made his appearance, and rather bashfully requested
some tobacco. He was younger than the others; and, in a
somewhat meaningless and altogether English way, he was a
handsome lad. When he had been served, and had lighted his
pipe and taken his place upon the sofa, he recalled himself
to Challoner by the name of Desborough.

'Desborough, to be sure,' cried Challoner. 'Well,
Desborough, and what do you do?'

'The fact is,' said Desborough, 'that I am doing nothing.'

'A private fortune possibly?' inquired the other.

'Well, no,' replied Desborough, rather sulkily. 'The fact is
that I am waiting for something to turn up.'

'All in the same boat!' cried Somerset. 'And have you, too,
one hundred pounds?'

'Worse luck,' said Mr. Desborough.

'This is a very pathetic sight, Mr. Godall,' said Somerset:
'Three futiles.'

'A character of this crowded age,' returned the salesman.

'Sir,' said Somerset, 'I deny that the age is crowded; I will
admit one fact, and one fact only: that I am futile, that he
is futile, and that we are all three as futile as the devil.
What am I? I have smattered law, smattered letters,
smattered geography, smattered mathematics; I have even a
working knowledge of judicial astrology; and here I stand,
all London roaring by at the street's end, as impotent as any
baby. I have a prodigious contempt for my maternal uncle;
but without him, it is idle to deny it, I should simply
resolve into my elements like an unstable mixture. I begin
to perceive that it is necessary to know some one thing to
the bottom - were it only literature. And yet, sir, the man
of the world is a great feature of this age; he is possessed
of an extraordinary mass and variety of knowledge; he is
everywhere at home; he has seen life in all its phases; and
it is impossible but that this great habit of existence
should bear fruit. I count myself a man of the world,
accomplished, CAP-A-PIE. So do you, Challoner. And you, Mr.
Desborough?'

'Oh yes,' returned the young man.

'Well then, Mr. Godall, here we stand, three men of the
world, without a trade to cover us, but planted at the
strategic centre of the universe (for so you will allow me to
call Rupert Street), in the midst of the chief mass of
people, and within ear-shot of the most continuous chink of
money on the surface of the globe. Sir, as civilised men,
what do we do? I will show you. You take in a paper?'

'I take,' said Mr. Godall solemnly, 'the best paper in the
world, the STANDARD.'

'Good,' resumed Somerset. 'I now hold it in my hand, the
voice of the world, a telephone repeating all men's wants. I
open it, and where my eye first falls - well, no, not
Morrison's Pills - but here, sure enough, and but a little
above, I find the joint that I was seeking; here is the weak
spot in the armour of society. Here is a want, a plaint, an
offer of substantial gratitude: "TWO HUNDRED POUNDS REWARD.
- The above reward will be paid to any person giving
information as to the identity and whereabouts of a man
observed yesterday in the neighbourhood of the Green Park.
He was over six feet in height, with shoulders
disproportionately broad, close shaved, with black
moustaches, and wearing a sealskin great-coat."  There,
gentlemen, our fortune, if not made, is founded.'

'Do you then propose, dear boy, that we should turn
detectives?' inquired Challoner.

'Do I propose it? No, sir,' cried Somerset. 'It is reason,
destiny, the plain face of the world, that commands and
imposes it. Here all our merits tell; our manners, habit of
the world, powers of conversation, vast stores of unconnected
knowledge, all that we are and have builds up the character
of the complete detective. It is, in short, the only
profession for a gentleman.'

'The proposition is perhaps excessive,' replied Challoner;
'for hitherto I own I have regarded it as of all dirty,
sneaking, and ungentlemanly trades, the least and lowest.'

'To defend society?' asked Somerset; 'to stake one's life for
others? to deracinate occult and powerful evil? I appeal to
Mr. Godall. He, at least, as a philosophic looker-on at
life, will spit upon such philistine opinions. He knows that
the policeman, as he is called upon continually to face
greater odds, and that both worse equipped and for a better
cause, is in form and essence a more noble hero than the
soldier. Do you, by any chance, deceive yourself into
supposing that a general would either ask or expect, from the
best army ever marshalled, and on the most momentous battle-
field, the conduct of a common constable at Peckham Rye?'

'I did not understand we were to join the force,' said
Challoner.

'Nor shall we. These are the hands; but here - here, sir, is
the head,' cried Somerset. 'Enough; it is decreed. We shall
hunt down this miscreant in the sealskin coat.'

'Suppose that we agreed,' retorted Challoner, 'you have no
plan, no knowledge; you know not where to seek for a
beginning.'

'Challoner!' cried Somerset, 'is it possible that you hold
the doctrine of Free Will? And are you devoid of any
tincture of philosophy, that you should harp on such exploded
fallacies? Chance, the blind Madonna of the Pagan, rules
this terrestrial bustle; and in Chance I place my sole
reliance. Chance has brought us three together; when we next
separate and go forth our several ways, Chance will
continually drag before our careless eyes a thousand eloquent
clues, not to this mystery only, but to the countless
mysteries by which we live surrounded. Then comes the part
of the man of the world, of the detective born and bred.
This clue, which the whole town beholds without
comprehension, swift as a cat, he leaps upon it, makes it
his, follows it with craft and passion, and from one trifling
circumstance divines a world.'

'Just so,' said Challoner; 'and I am delighted that you
should recognise these virtues in yourself. But in the
meanwhile, dear boy, I own myself incapable of joining. I
was neither born nor bred as a detective, but as a placable
and very thirsty gentleman; and, for my part, I begin to
weary for a drink. As for clues and adventures, the only
adventure that is ever likely to occur to me will be an
adventure with a bailiff.'

'Now there is the fallacy,' cried Somerset. 'There I catch
the secret of your futility in life. The world teems and
bubbles with adventure; it besieges you along the street:
hands waving out of windows, swindlers coming up and swearing
they knew you when you were abroad, affable and doubtful
people of all sorts and conditions begging and truckling for
your notice. But not you: you turn away, you walk your
seedy mill round, you must go the dullest way. Now here, I
beg of you, the next adventure that offers itself, embrace it
in with both your arms; whatever it looks, grimy or romantic,
grasp it. I will do the like; the devil is in it, but at
least we shall have fun; and each in turn we shall narrate
the story of our fortunes to my philosophic friend of the
divan, the great Godall, now hearing me with inward joy.
Come, is it a bargain? Will you, indeed, both promise to
welcome every chance that offers, to plunge boldly into every
opening, and, keeping the eye wary and the head composed, to
study and piece together all that happens? Come, promise:
let me open to you the doors of the great profession of
intrigue.'

'It is not much in my way,' said Challoner, 'but, since you
make a point of it, amen.'

'I don't mind promising,' said Desborough, 'but nothing will
happen to me.'

'O faithless ones!' cried Somerset. 'But at least I have
your promises; and Godall, I perceive, is transported with
delight.'

'I promise myself at least much pleasure from your various
narratives,' said the salesman, with the customary calm
polish of his manner.

'And now, gentlemen,' concluded Somerset, 'let us separate.
I hasten to put myself in fortune's way. Hark how, in this
quiet corner, London roars like the noise of battle; four
million destinies are here concentred; and in the strong
panoply of one hundred pounds, payable to the bearer, I am
about to plunge into that web.'

CHALLONER'S ADVENTURE: THE SQUIRE OF DAMES

MR. EDWARD CHALLONER had set up lodgings in the suburb of
Putney, where he enjoyed a parlour and bedroom and the
sincere esteem of the people of the house. To this remote
home he found himself, at a very early hour in the morning of
the next day, condemned to set forth on foot. He was a young
man of a portly habit; no lover of the exercises of the body;
bland, sedentary, patient of delay, a prop of omnibuses. In
happier days he would have chartered a cab; but these
luxuries were now denied him; and with what courage he could
muster he addressed himself to walk.

It was then the height of the season and the summer; the
weather was serene and cloudless; and as he paced under the
blinded houses and along the vacant streets, the chill of the
dawn had fled, and some of the warmth and all the brightness
of the July day already shone upon the city. He walked at
first in a profound abstraction, bitterly reviewing and
repenting his performances at whist; but as he advanced into
the labyrinth of the south-west, his ear was gradually
mastered by the silence. Street after street looked down
upon his solitary figure, house after house echoed upon his
passage with a ghostly jar, shop after shop displayed its
shuttered front and its commercial legend; and meanwhile he
steered his course, under day's effulgent dome and through
this encampment of diurnal sleepers, lonely as a ship.

'Here,' he reflected, 'if I were like my scatter-brained
companion, here were indeed the scene where I might look for
an adventure. Here, in broad day, the streets are secret as
in the blackest night of January, and in the midst of some
four million sleepers, solitary as the woods of Yucatan. If
I but raise my voice I could summon up the number of an army,
and yet the grave is not more silent than this city of
sleep.'

He was still following these quaint and serious musings when
he came into a street of more mingled ingredients than was
common in the quarter. Here, on the one hand, framed in
walls and the green tops of trees, were several of those
discreet, BIJOU residences on which propriety is apt to look
askance. Here, too, were many of the brick-fronted barracks
of the poor; a plaster cow, perhaps, serving as ensign to a
dairy, or a ticket announcing the business of the mangler.
Before one such house, that stood a little separate among
walled gardens, a cat was playing with a straw, and Challoner
paused a moment, looking on this sleek and solitary creature,
who seemed an emblem of the neighbouring peace. With the
cessation of the sound of his own steps the silence fell
dead; the house stood smokeless: the blinds down, the whole
machinery of life arrested; and it seemed to Challoner that
he should hear the breathing of the sleepers.

As he so stood, he was startled by a dull and jarring
detonation from within. This was followed by a monstrous
hissing and simmering as from a kettle of the bigness of St.
Paul's; and at the same time from every chink of door and
window spirted an ill-smelling vapour. The cat disappeared
with a cry. Within the lodging-house feet pounded on the
stairs; the door flew back, emitting clouds of smoke; and two
men and an elegantly dressed young lady tumbled forth into
the street and fled without a word. The hissing had already
ceased, the smoke was melting in the air, the whole event had
come and gone as in a dream, and still Challoner was rooted
to the spot. At last his reason and his fear awoke together,
and with the most unwonted energy he fell to running.

Little by little this first dash relaxed, and presently he
had resumed his sober gait and begun to piece together, out
of the confused report of his senses, some theory of the
occurrence. But the occasion of the sounds and stench that
had so suddenly assailed him, and the strange conjunction of
fugitives whom he had seen to issue from the house, were
mysteries beyond his plummet. With an obscure awe he
considered them in his mind, continuing, meanwhile, to thread
the web of streets, and once more alone in morning sunshine.

In his first retreat he had entirely wandered; and now,
steering vaguely west, it was his luck to light upon an
unpretending street, which presently widened so as to admit a
strip of gardens in the midst. Here was quite a stir of
birds; even at that hour, the shadow of the leaves was
grateful; instead of the burnt atmosphere of cities, there
was something brisk and rural in the air; and Challoner paced
forward, his eyes upon the pavement and his mind running upon
distant scenes, till he was recalled, upon a sudden, by a
wall that blocked his further progress. This street, whose
name I have forgotten, is no thoroughfare.

He was not the first who had wandered there that morning; for
as he raised his eyes with an agreeable deliberation, they
alighted on the figure of a girl, in whom he was struck to
recognise the third of the incongruous fugitives. She had
run there, seemingly, blindfold; the wall had checked her
career: and being entirely wearied, she had sunk upon the
ground beside the garden railings, soiling her dress among
the summer dust. Each saw the other in the same instant of
time; and she, with one wild look, sprang to her feet and
began to hurry from the scene.

Challoner was doubly startled to meet once more the heroine
of his adventure, and to observe the fear with which she
shunned him. Pity and alarm, in nearly equal forces,
contested the possession of his mind; and yet, in spite of
both, he saw himself condemned to follow in the lady's wake.
He did so gingerly, as fearing to increase her terrors; but,
tread as lightly as he might, his footfalls eloquently echoed
in the empty street. Their sound appeared to strike in her
some strong emotion; for scarce had he begun to follow ere
she paused. A second time she addressed herself to flight;
and a second time she paused. Then she turned about, and
with doubtful steps and the most attractive appearance of
timidity, drew near to the young man. He on his side
continued to advance with similar signals of distress and
bashfulness. At length, when they were but some steps apart,
he saw her eyes brim over, and she reached out both her hands
in eloquent appeal.

'Are you an English gentleman?' she cried.

The unhappy Challoner regarded her with consternation. He
was the spirit of fine courtesy, and would have blushed to
fail in his devoirs to any lady; but, in the other scale, he
was a man averse from amorous adventures. He looked east and
west; but the houses that looked down upon this interview
remained inexorably shut; and he saw himself, though in the
full glare of the day's eye, cut off from any human
intervention. His looks returned at last upon the suppliant.
He remarked with irritation that she was charming both in
face and figure, elegantly dressed and gloved; a lady
undeniable; the picture of distress and innocence; weeping
and lost in the city of diurnal sleep.

'Madam,' he said, 'I protest you have no cause to fear
intrusion; and if I have appeared to follow you, the fault is
in this street, which has deceived us both.'  An unmistakable
relief appeared upon the lady's face. 'I might have guessed
it!' she exclaimed. 'Thank you a thousand times! But at
this hour, in this appalling silence, and among all these
staring windows, I am lost in terrors - oh, lost in them!'
she cried, her face blanching at the words. 'I beg you to
lend me your arm,' she added with the loveliest, suppliant
inflection. 'I dare not go alone; my nerve is gone - I had a
shock, oh, what a shock! I beg of you to be my escort.'

'My dear madam,' responded Challoner heavily, 'my arm is at
your service.'

'She took it and clung to it for a moment, struggling with
her sobs; and the next, with feverish hurry, began to lead
him in the direction of the city. One thing was plain, among
so much that was obscure: it was plain her fears were
genuine. Still, as she went, she spied around as if for
dangers; and now she would shiver like a person in a chill,
and now clutch his arm in hers. To Challoner her terror was
at once repugnant and infectious; it gained and mastered,
while it still offended him; and he wailed in spirit and
longed for release.

'Madam,' he said at last, 'I am, of course, charmed to be of
use to any lady; but I confess I was bound in a direction
opposite to that you follow, and a word of explanation - '

'Hush!' she sobbed, 'not here - not here!'

The blood of Challoner ran cold. He might have thought the
lady mad; but his memory was charged with more perilous
stuff; and in view of the detonation, the smoke and the
flight of the ill-assorted trio, his mind was lost among
mysteries. So they continued to thread the maze of streets
in silence, with the speed of a guilty flight, and both
thrilling with incommunicable terrors. In time, however, and
above all by their quick pace of walking, the pair began to
rise to firmer spirits; the lady ceased to peer about the
corners; and Challoner, emboldened by the resonant tread and
distant figure of a constable, returned to the charge with
more of spirit and directness.

'I thought,' said he, in the tone of conversation, 'that I
had indistinctly perceived you leaving a villa in the company
of two gentlemen.'

'Oh!' she said, 'you need not fear to wound me by the truth.
You saw me flee from a common lodging-house, and my
companions were not gentlemen. In such a case, the best of
compliments is to be frank.'

'I thought,' resumed Challoner, encouraged as much as he was
surprised by the spirit of her reply, 'to have perceived,
besides, a certain odour. A noise, too - I do not know to
what I should compare it - '

'Silence!' she cried. 'You do not know the danger you
invoke. Wait, only wait; and as soon as we have left those
streets, and got beyond the reach of listeners, all shall be
explained. Meanwhile, avoid the topic. What a sight is this
sleeping city!' she exclaimed; and then, with a most
thrilling voice, '"Dear God," she quoted, "the very houses
seem asleep, and all that mighty heart is lying still."'

'I perceive, madam,' said he, 'you are a reader.'

'I am more than that,' she answered, with a sigh. 'I am a
girl condemned to thoughts beyond her age; and so untoward is
my fate, that this walk upon the arm of a stranger is like an
interlude of peace.'

They had come by this time to the neighbourhood of the
Victoria Station and here, at a street corner, the young lady
paused, withdrew her arm from Challoner's, and looked up and
down as though in pain or indecision. Then, with a lovely
change of countenance, and laying her gloved hand upon his
arm -

'What you already think of me,' she said, 'I tremble to
conceive; yet I must here condemn myself still further. Here
I must leave you, and here I beseech you to wait for my
return. Do not attempt to follow me or spy upon my actions.
Suspend yet awhile your judgment of a girl as innocent as
your own sister; and do not, above all, desert me. Stranger
as you are, I have none else to look to. You see me in
sorrow and great fear; you are a gentleman, courteous and
kind: and when I beg for a few minutes' patience, I make
sure beforehand you will not deny me.'

Challoner grudgingly promised; and the young lady, with a
grateful eye-shot, vanished round the corner. But the force
of her appeal had been a little blunted; for the young man
was not only destitute of sisters, but of any female relative
nearer than a great-aunt in Wales. Now he was alone,
besides, the spell that he had hitherto obeyed began to
weaken; he considered his behaviour with a sneer; and
plucking up the spirit of revolt, he started in pursuit. The
reader, if he has ever plied the fascinating trade of the
noctambulist, will not be unaware that, in the neighbourhood
of the great railway centres, certain early taverns
inaugurate the business of the day. It was into one of these
that Challoner, coming round the corner of the block, beheld
his charming companion disappear. To say he was surprised
were inexact, for he had long since left that sentiment
behind him. Acute disgust and disappointment seized upon his
soul; and with silent oaths, he damned this commonplace
enchantress. She had scarce been gone a second, ere the
swing-doors reopened, and she appeared again in company with
a young man of mean and slouching attire. For some five or
six exchanges they conversed together with an animated air;
then the fellow shouldered again into the tap; and the young
lady, with something swifter than a walk, retraced her steps
towards Challoner. He saw her coming, a miracle of grace;
her ankle, as she hurried, flashing from her dress; her
movements eloquent of speed and youth; and though he still
entertained some thoughts of flight, they grew miserably
fainter as the distance lessened. Against mere beauty he was
proof: it was her unmistakable gentility that now robbed him
of the courage of his cowardice. With a proved adventuress
he had acted strictly on his right; with one who, in spite of
all, he could not quite deny to be a lady, he found himself
disarmed. At the very corner from whence he had spied upon
her interview, she came upon him, still transfixed, and -
'Ah!' she cried, with a bright flush of colour. 'Ah!
Ungenerous!'

The sharpness of the attack somewhat restored the Squire of
Dames to the possession of himself.

'Madam,' he returned, with a fair show of stoutness, 'I do
not think that hitherto you can complain of any lack of
generosity; I have suffered myself to be led over a
considerable portion of the metropolis; and if I now request
you to discharge me of my office of protector, you have
friends at hand who will be glad of the succession.'

She stood a moment dumb.

'It is well,' she said. 'Go! go, and may God help me! You
have seen me - me, an innocent girl! fleeing from a dire
catastrophe and haunted by sinister men; and neither pity,
curiosity, nor honour move you to await my explanation or to
help in my distress. Go!' she repeated. 'I am lost indeed.'  
And with a passionate gesture she turned and fled along the
street.

Challoner observed her retreat and disappear, an almost
intolerable sense of guilt contending with the profound sense
that he was being gulled. She was no sooner gone than the
first of these feelings took the upper hand; he felt, if he
had done her less than justice, that his conduct was a
perfect model of the ungracious; the cultured tone of her
voice, her choice of language, and the elegant decorum of her
movements, cried out aloud against a harsh construction; and
between penitence and curiosity he began slowly to follow in
her wake. At the corner he had her once more full in view.
Her speed was failing like a stricken bird's. Even as he
looked, she threw her arm out gropingly, and fell and leaned
against the wall. At the spectacle, Challoner's fortitude
gave way. In a few strides he overtook her and, for the
first time removing his hat, assured her in the most moving
terms of his entire respect and firm desire to help her. He
spoke at first unheeded; but gradually it appeared that she
began to comprehend his words; she moved a little, and drew
herself upright; and finally, as with a sudden movement of
forgiveness, turned on the young man a countenance in which
reproach and gratitude were mingled. 'Ah, madam,' he cried,
'use me as you will!'  And once more, but now with a great
air of deference, he offered her the conduct of his arm. She
took it with a sigh that struck him to the heart; and they
began once more to trace the deserted streets. But now her
steps, as though exhausted by emotion, began to linger on the
way; she leaned the more heavily upon his arm; and he, like
the parent bird, stooped fondly above his drooping convoy.
Her physical distress was not accompanied by any failing of
her spirits; and hearing her strike so soon into a playful
and charming vein of talk, Challoner could not sufficiently
admire the elasticity of his companion's nature. 'Let me
forget,' she had said, 'for one half hour, let me forget;'
and sure enough, with the very word, her sorrows appeared to
be forgotten. Before every house she paused, invented a name
for the proprietor, and sketched his character: here lived
the old general whom she was to marry on the fifth of the
next month, there was the mansion of the rich widow who had
set her heart on Challoner; and though she still hung wearily
on the young man's arm, her laughter sounded low and pleasant
in his ears. 'Ah,' she sighed, by way of commentary, 'in
such a life as mine I must seize tight hold of any happiness
that I can find.'

When they arrived, in this leisurely manner, at the head of
Grosvenor Place, the gates of the park were opening and the
bedraggled company of night-walkers were being at last
admitted into that paradise of lawns. Challoner and his
companion followed the movement, and walked for awhile in
silence in that tatterdemalion crowd; but as one after
another, weary with the night's patrolling of the city
pavement, sank upon the benches or wandered into separate
paths, the vast extent of the park had soon utterly swallowed
up the last of these intruders; and the pair proceeded on
their way alone in the grateful quiet of the morning.

Presently they came in sight of a bench, standing very open
on a mound of turf. The young lady looked about her with
relief.

'Here,' she said, 'here at last we are secure from listeners.
Here, then, you shall learn and judge my history. I could
not bear that we should part, and that you should still
suppose your kindness squandered upon one who was unworthy.'

Thereupon she sat down upon the bench, and motioning
Challoner to take a place immediately beside her, began in
the following words, and with the greatest appearance of
enjoyment, to narrate the story of her life.

STORY OF THE DESTROYING ANGEL

MY father was a native of England, son of a cadet of a great,
ancient, but untitled family; and by some event, fault or
misfortune, he was driven to flee from the land of his birth
and to lay aside the name of his ancestors. He sought the
States; and instead of lingering in effeminate cities, pushed
at once into the far West with an exploring party of
frontiersmen. He was no ordinary traveller; for he was not
only brave and impetuous by character, but learned in many
sciences, and above all in botany, which he particularly
loved. Thus it fell that, before many months, Fremont
himself, the nominal leader of the troop, courted and bowed
to his opinion.

They had pushed, as I have said, into the still unknown
regions of the West. For some time they followed the track
of Mormon caravans, guiding themselves in that vast and
melancholy desert by the skeletons of men and animals. Then
they inclined their route a little to the north, and, losing
even these dire memorials, came into a country of forbidding
stillness.

I have often heard my father dwell upon the features of that
ride: rock, cliff, and barren moor alternated; the streams
were very far between; and neither beast nor bird disturbed
the solitude. On the fortieth day they had already run so
short of food that it was judged advisable to call a halt and
scatter upon all sides to hunt. A great fire was built, that
its smoke might serve to rally them; and each man of the
party mounted and struck off at a venture into the
surrounding desert.

My father rode for many hours with a steep range of cliffs
upon the one hand, very black and horrible; and upon the
other an unwatered vale dotted with boulders like the site of
some subverted city. At length he found the slot of a great
animal, and from the claw-marks and the hair among the brush,
judged that he was on the track of a cinnamon bear of most
unusual size. He quickened the pace of his steed, and still
following the quarry, came at last to the division of two
watersheds. On the far side the country was exceeding
intricate and difficult, heaped with boulders, and dotted
here and there with a few pines, which seemed to indicate the
neighbourhood of water. Here, then, he picketed his horse,
and relying on his trusty rifle, advanced alone into that
wilderness.

Presently, in the great silence that reigned, he was aware of
the sound of running water to his right; and leaning in that
direction, was rewarded by a scene of natural wonder and
human pathos strangely intermixed. The stream ran at the
bottom of a narrow and winding passage, whose wall-like sides
of rock were sometimes for miles together unscalable by man.
The water, when the stream was swelled with rains, must have
filled it from side to side; the sun's rays only plumbed it
in the hour of noon; the wind, in that narrow and damp
funnel, blew tempestuously. And yet, in the bottom of this
den, immediately below my father's eyes as he leaned over the
margin of the cliff, a party of some half a hundred men,
women, and children lay scattered uneasily among the rocks.
They lay some upon their backs, some prone, and not one
stirring; their upturned faces seemed all of an extraordinary
paleness and emaciation; and from time to time, above the
washing of the stream, a faint sound of moaning mounted to my
father's ears.

While he thus looked, an old man got staggering to his feet,
unwound his blanket, and laid it, with great gentleness, on a
young girl who sat hard by propped against a rock. The girl
did not seem to be conscious of the act; and the old man,
after having looked upon her with the most engaging pity,
returned to his former bed and lay down again uncovered on
the turf. But the scene had not passed without observation
even in that starving camp. From the very outskirts of the
party, a man with a white beard and seemingly of venerable
years, rose upon his knees, and came crawling stealthily
among the sleepers towards the girl; and judge of my father's
indignation, when he beheld this cowardly miscreant strip
from her both the coverings and return with them to his
original position. Here he lay down for a while below his
spoils, and, as my father imagined, feigned to be asleep; but
presently he had raised himself again upon one elbow, looked
with sharp scrutiny at his companions, and then swiftly
carried his hand into his bosom and thence to his mouth. By
the movement of his jaws he must be eating; in that camp of
famine he had reserved a store of nourishment; and while his
companions lay in the stupor of approaching death, secretly
restored his powers.

My father was so incensed at what he saw that he raised his
rifle; and but for an accident, he has often declared, he
would have shot the fellow dead upon the spot. How different
would then have been my history! But it was not to be: even
as he raised the barrel, his eye lighted on the bear, as it
crawled along a ledge some way below him; and ceding to the
hunters instinct, it was at the brute, not at the man, that
he discharged his piece. The bear leaped and fell into a
pool of the river; the canyon re-echoed the report; and in a
moment the camp was afoot. With cries that were scarce
human, stumbling, falling and throwing each other down, these
starving people rushed upon the quarry; and before my father,
climbing down by the ledge, had time to reach the level of
the stream, many were already satisfying their hunger on the
raw flesh, and a fire was being built by the more dainty.

His arrival was for some time unremarked. He stood in the
midst of these tottering and clay-faced marionettes; he was
surrounded by their cries; but their whole soul was fixed on
the dead carcass; even those who were too weak to move, lay,
half-turned over, with their eyes riveted upon the bear; and
my father, seeing himself stand as though invisible in the
thick of this dreary hubbub, was seized with a desire to
weep. A touch upon the arm restrained him. Turning about,
he found himself face to face with the old man he had so
nearly killed; and yet, at the second glance, recognised him
for no old man at all, but one in the full strength of his
years, and of a strong, speaking, and intellectual
countenance stigmatised by weariness and famine. He beckoned
my father near the cliff, and there, in the most private
whisper, begged for brandy. My father looked at him with
scorn: 'You remind me,' he said, 'of a neglected duty. Here
is my flask; it contains enough, I trust, to revive the women
of your party; and I will begin with her whom I saw you
robbing of her blankets.'  And with that, not heeding his
appeals, my father turned his back upon the egoist.

The girl still lay reclined against the rock; she lay too far
sunk in the first stage of death to have observed the bustle
round her couch; but when my father had raised her head, put
the flask to her lips, and forced or aided her to swallow
some drops of the restorative, she opened her languid eyes
and smiled upon him faintly. Never was there a smile of a
more touching sweetness; never were eyes more deeply violet,
more honestly eloquent of the soul! I speak with knowledge,
for these were the same eyes that smiled upon me in the
cradle. From her who was to be his wife, my father, still
jealously watched and followed by the man with the grey
beard, carried his attentions to all the women of the party,
and gave the last drainings of his flask to those among the
men who seemed in the most need.

'Is there none left? not a drop for me?' said the man with
the beard.

'Not one drop,' replied my father; 'and if you find yourself
in want, let me counsel you to put your hand into the pocket
of your coat.'

'Ah!' cried the other, 'you misjudge me. You think me one
who clings to life for selfish and commonplace
considerations. But let me tell you, that were all this
caravan to perish, the world would but be lightened of a
weight. These are but human insects, pullulating, thick as
May-flies, in the slums of European cities, whom I myself
have plucked from degradation and misery, from the dung-heap
and gin-palace door. And you compare their lives with mine!'

'You are then a Mormon missionary?' asked my father.

'Oh!' cried the man, with a strange smile, 'a Mormon
missionary if you will! I value not the title. Were I no
more than that, I could have died without a murmur. But with
my life as a physician is bound up the knowledge of great
secrets and the future of man. This it was, when we missed
the caravan, tried for a short cut and wandered to this
desolate ravine, that ate into my soul, and, in five days,
has changed my beard from ebony to silver.'

'And you are a physician,' mused my father, looking on his
face, 'bound by oath to succour man in his distresses.'

'Sir,' returned the Mormon, 'my name is Grierson: you will
hear that name again; and you will then understand that my
duty was not to this caravan of paupers, but to mankind at
large.'

My father turned to the remainder of the party, who were now
sufficiently revived to hear; told them that he would set off
at once to bring help from his own party; 'and,' he added,
'if you be again reduced to such extremities, look round you,
and you will see the earth strewn with assistance. Here, for
instance, growing on the under side of fissures in this
cliff, you will perceive a yellow moss. Trust me, it is both
edible and excellent.'

'Ha!' said Doctor Grierson, 'you know botany!'

'Not I alone,' returned my father, lowering his voice; 'for
see where these have been scraped away. Am I right? Was
that your secret store?'

My father's comrades, he found, when he returned to the
signal-fire, had made a good day's hunting. They were thus
the more easily persuaded to extend assistance to the Mormon
caravan; and the next day beheld both parties on the march
for the frontiers of Utah. The distance to be traversed was
not great; but the nature of the country, and the difficulty
of procuring food, extended the time to nearly three weeks;
and my father had thus ample leisure to know and appreciate
the girl whom he had succoured. I will call my mother Lucy.
Her family name I am not at liberty to mention; it is one you
would know well. By what series of undeserved calamities
this innocent flower of maidenhood, lovely, refined by
education, ennobled by the finest taste, was thus cast among
the horrors of a Mormon caravan, I must not stay to tell you.
Let it suffice, that even in these untoward circumstances,
she found a heart worthy of her own. The ardour of
attachment which united my father and mother was perhaps
partly due to the strange manner of their meeting; it knew,
at least, no bounds either divine or human; my father, for
her sake, determined to renounce his ambitions and abjure his
faith; and a week had not yet passed upon the march before he
had resigned from his party, accepted the Mormon doctrine,
and received the promise of my mother's hand on the arrival
of the party at Salt Lake.

The marriage took place, and I was its only offspring. My
father prospered exceedingly in his affairs, remained
faithful to my mother; and though you may wonder to hear it,
I believe there were few happier homes in any country than
that in which I saw the light and grew to girlhood. We were,
indeed, and in spite of all our wealth, avoided as heretics
and half-believers by the more precise and pious of the
faithful: Young himself, that formidable tyrant, was known
to look askance upon my father's riches; but of this I had no
guess. I dwelt, indeed, under the Mormon system, with
perfect innocence and faith. Some of our friends had many
wives; but such was the custom; and why should it surprise me
more than marriage itself? From time to time one of our rich
acquaintances would disappear, his family be broken up, his
wives and houses shared among the elders of the Church, and
his memory only recalled with bated breath and dreadful
headshakings. When I had been very still, and my presence
perhaps was forgotten, some such topic would arise among my
elders by the evening fire; I would see them draw the closer
together and look behind them with scared eyes; and I might
gather from their whisperings how some one, rich, honoured,
healthy, and in the prime of his days, some one, perhaps, who
had taken me on his knees a week before, had in one hour been
spirited from home and family, and vanished like an image
from a mirror, leaving not a print behind. It was terrible,
indeed; but so was death, the universal law. And even if the
talk should wax still bolder, full of ominous silences and
nods, and I should hear named in a whisper the Destroying
Angels, how was a child to understand these mysteries? I
heard of a Destroying Angel as some more happy child might
hear in England of a bishop or a rural dean, with vague
respect and without the wish for further information. Life
anywhere, in society as in nature, rests upon dread
foundations; I beheld safe roads, a garden blooming in the
desert, pious people crowding to worship; I was aware of my
parents' tenderness and all the harmless luxuries of my
existence; and why should I pry beneath this honest seeming
surface for the mysteries on which it stood?

We dwelt originally in the city; but at an early date we
moved to a beautiful house in a green dingle, musical with
splashing water, and surrounded on almost every side by
twenty miles of poisonous and rocky desert. The city was
thirty miles away; there was but one road, which went no
further than my father's door; the rest were bridle-tracks
impassable in winter; and we thus dwelt in a solitude
inconceivable to the European. Our only neighbour was Dr.
Grierson. To my young eyes, after the hair-oiled, chin-
bearded elders of the city, and the ill-favoured and mentally
stunted women of their harems, there was something agreeable
in the correct manner, the fine bearing, the thin white hair
and beard, and the piercing looks of the old doctor. Yet,
though he was almost our only visitor, I never wholly
overcame a sense of fear in his presence; and this
disquietude was rather fed by the awful solitude in which he
lived and the obscurity that hung about his occupations. His
house was but a mile or two from ours, but very differently
placed. It stood overlooking the road on the summit of a
steep slope, and planted close against a range of overhanging
bluffs. Nature, you would say, had here desired to imitate
the works of man; for the slope was even, like the glacis of
a fort, and the cliffs of a constant height, like the
ramparts of a city. Not even spring could change one feature
of that desolate scene; and the windows looked down across a
plain, snowy with alkali, to ranges of cold stone sierras on
the north. Twice or thrice I remember passing within view of
this forbidding residence; and seeing it always shuttered,
smokeless, and deserted, I remarked to my parents that some
day it would certainly be robbed.

'Ah, no,' said my father, 'never robbed;' and I observed a
strange conviction in his tone.

At last, and not long before the blow fell on my unhappy
family, I chanced to see the doctor's house in a new light.
My father was ill; my mother confined to his bedside; and I
was suffered to go, under the charge of our driver, to the
lonely house some twenty miles away, where our packages were
left for us. The horse cast a shoe; night overtook us
halfway home; and it was well on for three in the morning
when the driver and I, alone in a light waggon, came to that
part of the road which ran below the doctor's house. The
moon swam clear; the cliffs and mountains in this strong
light lay utterly deserted; but the house, from its station
on the top of the long slope and close under the bluff, not
only shone abroad from every window like a place of festival,
but from the great chimney at the west end poured forth a
coil of smoke so thick and so voluminous, that it hung for
miles along the windless night air, and its shadow lay far
abroad in the moonlight upon the glittering alkali. As we
continued to draw near, besides, a regular and panting throb
began to divide the silence. First it seemed to me like the
beating of a heart; and next it put into my mind the thought
of some giant, smothered under mountains and still, with
incalculable effort, fetching breath. I had heard of the
railway, though I had not seen it, and I turned to ask the
driver if this resembled it. But some look in his eye, some
pallor, whether of fear or moonlight on his face, caused the
words to die upon my lips. We continued, therefore, to
advance in silence, till we were close below the lighted
house; when suddenly, without one premonitory rustle, there
burst forth a report of such a bigness that it shook the
earth and set the echoes of the mountains thundering from
cliff to cliff. A pillar of amber flame leaped from the
chimney-top and fell in multitudes of sparks; and at the same
time the lights in the windows turned for one instant ruby
red and then expired. The driver had checked his horse
instinctively, and the echoes were still rumbling farther off
among the mountains, when there broke from the now darkened
interior a series of yells - whether of man or woman it was
impossible to guess - the door flew open, and there ran forth
into the moonlight, at the top of the long slope, a figure
clad in white, which began to dance and leap and throw itself
down, and roll as if in agony, before the house. I could no
more restrain my cries; the driver laid his lash about the
horse's flank, and we fled up the rough track at the peril of
our lives; and did not draw rein till, turning the corner of
the mountain, we beheld my father's ranch and deep, green
groves and gardens, sleeping in the tranquil light.

This was the one adventure of my life, until my father had
climbed to the very topmost point of material prosperity, and
I myself had reached the age of seventeen. I was still
innocent and merry like a child; tended my garden or ran upon
the hills in glad simplicity; gave not a thought to coquetry
or to material cares; and if my eye rested on my own image in
a mirror or some sylvan spring, it was to seek and recognise
the features of my parents. But the fears which had long
pressed on others were now to be laid on my youth. I had
thrown myself, one sultry, cloudy afternoon, on a divan; the
windows stood open on the verandah, where my mother sat with
her embroidery; and when my father joined her from the
garden, their conversation, clearly audible to me, was of so
startling a nature that it held me enthralled where I lay.

'The blow has come,' my father said, after a long pause.

I could hear my mother start and turn, but in words she made
no reply.

'Yes,' continued my father, 'I have received to-day a list of
all that I possess; of all, I say; of what I have lent
privately to men whose lips are sealed with terror; of what I
have buried with my own hand on the bare mountain, when there
was not a bird in heaven. Does the air, then, carry secrets?
Are the hills of glass? Do the stones we tread upon preserve
the footprint to betray us? Oh, Lucy, Lucy, that we should
have come to such a country!'

'But this,' returned my mother, 'is no very new or very
threatening event. You are accused of some concealment. You
will pay more taxes in the future, and be mulcted in a fine.
It is disquieting, indeed, to find our acts so spied upon,
and the most private known. But is this new? Have we not
long feared and suspected every blade of grass?'

'Ay, and our shadows!' cried my father. 'But all this is
nothing. Here is the letter that accompanied the list.'

I heard my mother turn the pages, and she was some time
silent.

'I see,' she said at last; and then, with the tone of one
reading: '"From a believer so largely blessed by Providence
with this world's goods,"' she continued, '"the Church awaits
in confidence some signal mark of piety."  There lies the
sting. Am I not right? These are the words you fear?'

'These are the words,' replied my father. 'Lucy, you
remember Priestley? Two days before he disappeared, he
carried me to the summit of an isolated butte; we could see
around us for ten miles; sure, if in any quarter of this land
a man were safe from spies, it were in such a station; but it
was in the very ague-fit of terror that he told me, and that
I heard, his story. He had received a letter such as this;
and he submitted to my approval an answer, in which he
offered to resign a third of his possessions. I conjured
him, as he valued life, to raise his offering; and, before we
parted, he had doubled the amount. Well, two days later he
was gone - gone from the chief street of the city in the hour
of noon - and gone for ever. O God!' cried my father, 'by
what art do they thus spirit out of life the solid body?
What death do they command that leaves no traces? that this
material structure, these strong arms, this skeleton that can
resist the grave for centuries, should be thus reft in a
moment from the world of sense? A horror dwells in that
thought more awful than mere death.'

'Is there no hope in Grierson?' asked my mother.

'Dismiss the thought,' replied my father. 'He now knows all
that I can teach, and will do naught to save me. His power,
besides, is small, his own danger not improbably more
imminent than mine; for he, too, lives apart; he leaves his
wives neglected and unwatched; he is openly cited for an
unbeliever; and unless he buys security at a more awful price
- but no; I will not believe it: I have no love for him, but
I will not believe it.'

'Believe what?' asked my mother; and then, with a change of
note, 'But oh, what matters it?' she cried. 'Abimelech,
there is but one way open: we must fly!'

'It is in vain,' returned my father. 'I should but involve
you in my fate. To leave this land is hopeless: we are
closed in it as men are closed in life; and there is no issue
but the grave.'

'We can but die then,' replied my mother. 'Let us at least
die together. Let not Asenath and myself survive you. Think
to what a fate we should be doomed!'

My father was unable to resist her tender violence; and
though I could see he nourished not one spark of hope, he
consented to desert his whole estate, beyond some hundreds of
dollars that he had by him at the moment, and to flee that
night, which promised to be dark and cloudy. As soon as the
servants were asleep, he was to load two mules with
provisions; two others were to carry my mother and myself;
and, striking through the mountains by an unfrequented trail,
we were to make a fair stroke for liberty and life. As soon
as they had thus decided, I showed myself at the window, and,
owning that I had heard all, assured them that they could
rely on my prudence and devotion. I had no fear, indeed, but
to show myself unworthy of my birth; I held my life in my
hand without alarm; and when my father, weeping upon my neck,
had blessed Heaven for the courage of his child, it was with
a sentiment of pride and some of the joy that warriors take
in war, that I began to look forward to the perils of our
flight.

Before midnight, under an obscure and starless heaven, we had
left far behind us the plantations of the valley, and were
mounting a certain canyon in the hills, narrow, encumbered
with great rocks, and echoing with the roar of a tumultuous
torrent. Cascade after cascade thundered and hung up its
flag of whiteness in the night, or fanned our faces with the
wet wind of its descent. The trail was breakneck, and led to
famine-guarded deserts; it had been long since deserted for
more practicable routes; and it was now a part of the world
untrod from year to year by human footing. Judge of our
dismay, when turning suddenly an angle of the cliffs, we
found a bright bonfire blazing by itself under an impending
rock; and on the face of the rock, drawn very rudely with
charred wood, the great Open Eye which is the emblem of the
Mormon faith. We looked upon each other in the firelight; my
mother broke into a passion of tears; but not a word was
said. The mules were turned about; and leaving that great
eye to guard the lonely canyon, we retraced our steps in
silence. Day had not yet broken ere we were once more at
home, condemned beyond reprieve.

What answer my father sent I was not told; but two days
later, a little before sundown, I saw a plain, honest-looking
man ride slowly up the road in a great pother of dust. He
was clad in homespun, with a broad straw hat; wore a
patriarchal beard; and had an air of a simple rustic farmer,
that was, in my eyes, very reassuring. He was, indeed, a
very honest man and pious Mormon; with no liking for his
errand, though neither he nor any one in Utah dared to
disobey; and it was with every mark of diffidence that he had
had himself announced as Mr. Aspinwall, and entered the room
where our unhappy family was gathered. My mother and me, he
awkwardly enough dismissed; and as soon as he was alone with
my father laid before him a blank signature of President
Young's, and offered him a choice of services: either to set
out as a missionary to the tribes about the White Sea, or to
join the next day, with a party of Destroying Angels, in the
massacre of sixty German immigrants. The last, of course, my
father could not entertain, and the first he regarded as a
pretext: even if he could consent to leave his wife
defenceless, and to collect fresh victims for the tyranny
under which he was himself oppressed, he felt sure he would
never be suffered to return. He refused both; and Aspinwall,
he said, betrayed sincere emotion, part religious, at the
spectacle of such disobedience, but part human, in pity for
my father and his family. He besought him to reconsider his
decision; and at length, finding he could not prevail, gave
him till the moon rose to settle his affairs, and say
farewell to wife and daughter. 'For,' said he, 'then, at the
latest, you must ride with me.'

I dare not dwell upon the hours that followed: they fled all
too fast; and presently the moon out-topped the eastern
range, and my father and Mr. Aspinwall set forth, side by
side, on their nocturnal journey. My mother, though still
bearing an heroic countenance, had hastened to shut herself
in her apartment, thenceforward solitary; and I, alone in the
dark house, and consumed by grief and apprehension, made
haste to saddle my Indian pony, to ride up to the corner of
the mountain, and to enjoy one farewell sight of my departing
father. The two men had set forth at a deliberate pace; nor
was I long behind them, when I reached the point of view. I
was the more amazed to see no moving creature in the
landscape. The moon, as the saying is, shone bright as day;
and nowhere, under the whole arch of night, was there a
growing tree, a bush, a farm, a patch of tillage, or any
evidence of man, but one. From the corner where I stood, a
rugged bastion of the line of bluffs concealed the doctor's
house; and across the top of that projection the soft night
wind carried and unwound about the hills a coil of sable
smoke. What fuel could produce a vapour so sluggish to
dissipate in that dry air, or what furnace pour it forth so
copiously, I was unable to conceive; but I knew well enough
that it came from the doctor's chimney; I saw well enough
that my father had already disappeared; and in despite of
reason, I connected in my mind the loss of that dear
protector with the ribbon of foul smoke that trailed along
the mountains.

Days passed, and still my mother and I waited in vain for
news; a week went by, a second followed, but we heard no word
of the father and husband. As smoke dissipates, as the image
glides from the mirror, so in the ten or twenty minutes that
I had spent in getting my horse and following upon his trail,
had that strong and brave man vanished out of life. Hope, if
any hope we had, fled with every hour; the worst was now
certain for my father, the worst was to be dreaded for his
defenceless family. Without weakness, with a desperate calm
at which I marvel when I look back upon it, the widow and the
orphan awaited the event. On the last day of the third week
we rose in the morning to find ourselves alone in the house,
alone, so far as we searched, on the estate; all our
attendants, with one accord, had fled: and as we knew them
to be gratefully devoted, we drew the darkest intimations
from their flight. The day passed, indeed, without event;
but in the fall of the evening we were called at last into
the verandah by the approaching clink of horse's hoofs.

The doctor, mounted on an Indian pony, rode into the garden,
dismounted, and saluted us. He seemed much more bent, and
his hair more silvery than ever; but his demeanour was
composed, serious, and not unkind.

'Madam,' said he, 'I am come upon a weighty errand; and I
would have you recognise it as an effect of kindness in the
President, that he should send as his ambassador your only
neighbour and your husband's oldest friend in Utah.'

'Sir,' said my mother, 'I have but one concern, one thought.
You know well what it is. Speak: my husband?'

'Madam,' returned the doctor, taking a chair on the verandah,
'if you were a silly child, my position would now be
painfully embarrassing. You are, on the other hand, a woman
of great intelligence and fortitude: you have, by my
forethought, been allowed three weeks to draw your own
conclusions and to accept the inevitable. Farther words from
me are, I conceive, superfluous.'

My mother was as pale as death, and trembled like a reed; I
gave her my hand, and she kept it in the folds of her dress
and wrung it till I could have cried aloud. 'Then, sir,'
said she at last, 'you speak to deaf ears. If this be indeed
so, what have I to do with errands? What do I ask of Heaven
but to die?'

'Come,' said the doctor, 'command yourself. I bid you
dismiss all thoughts of your late husband, and bring a clear
mind to bear upon your own future and the fate of that young
girl.'

'You bid me dismiss - ' began my mother. 'Then you know!'
she cried.

'I know,' replied the doctor.

'You know?' broke out the poor woman. 'Then it was you who
did the deed! I tear off the mask, and with dread and
loathing see you as you are - you, whom the poor fugitive
beholds in nightmares, and awakes raving - you, the
Destroying Angel!'

'Well, madam, and what then?' returned the doctor. 'Have not
my fate and yours been similar? Are we not both immured in
this strong prison of Utah? Have you not tried to flee, and
did not the Open Eye confront you in the canyon? Who can
escape the watch of that unsleeping eye of Utah? Not I, at
least. Horrible tasks have, indeed, been laid upon me; and
the most ungrateful was the last; but had I refused my
offices, would that have spared your husband? You know well
it would not. I, too, had perished along with him; nor would
I have been able to alleviate his last moments, nor could I
to-day have stood between his family and the hand of Brigham
Young.'

'Ah!' cried I, 'and could you purchase life by such
concessions?'

'Young lady,' answered the doctor, 'I both could and did; and
you will live to thank me for that baseness. You have a
spirit, Asenath, that it pleases me to recognise. But we
waste time. Mr. Fonblanque's estate reverts, as you
doubtless imagine, to the Church; but some part of it has
been reserved for him who is to marry the family; and that
person, I should perhaps tell you without more delay, is no
other than myself.'

At this odious proposal my mother and I cried out aloud, and
clung together like lost souls.

'It is as I supposed,' resumed the doctor, with the same
measured utterance. 'You recoil from this arrangement. Do
you expect me to convince you? You know very well that I
have never held the Mormon view of women. Absorbed in the
most arduous studies, I have left the slatterns whom they
call my wives to scratch and quarrel among themselves; of me,
they have had nothing but my purse; such was not the union I
desired, even if I had the leisure to pursue it. No: you
need not, madam, and my old friend' - and here the doctor
rose and bowed with something of gallantry - 'you need not
apprehend my importunities. On the contrary, I am rejoiced
to read in you a Roman spirit; and if I am obliged to bid you
follow me at once, and that in the name, not of my wish, but
of my orders, I hope it will be found that we are of a common
mind.'

So, bidding us dress for the road, he took a lamp (for the
night had now fallen) and set off to the stable to prepare
our horses.

'What does it mean? - what will become of us?' I cried.

'Not that, at least,' replied my mother, shuddering. 'So far
we can trust him. I seem to read among his words a certain
tragic promise. Asenath, if I leave you, if I die, you will
not forget your miserable parents?'

Thereupon we fell to cross-purposes: I beseeching her to
explain her words; she putting me by, and continuing to
recommend the doctor for a friend. 'The doctor!' I cried at
last; 'the man who killed my father?'

'Nay,' said she, 'let us be just. I do believe before,
Heaven, he played the friendliest part. And he alone,
Asenath, can protect you in this land of death.'

At this the doctor returned, leading our two horses; and when
we were all in the saddle, he bade me ride on before, as he
had matter to discuss with Mrs. Fonblanque. They came at a
foot's pace, eagerly conversing in a whisper; and presently
after the moon rose and showed them looking eagerly in each
other's faces as they went, my mother laying her hand upon
the doctor's arm, and the doctor himself, against his usual
custom, making vigorous gestures of protest or asseveration.

At the foot of the track which ascended the talus of the
mountain to his door, the doctor overtook me at a trot.

'Here,' he said, 'we shall dismount; and as your mother
prefers to be alone, you and I shall walk together to my
house.'

'Shall I see her again?' I asked.

'I give you my word,' he said, and helped me to alight. 'We
leave the horses here,' he added. 'There are no thieves in
this stone wilderness.'

The track mounted gradually, keeping the house in view. The
windows were once more bright; the chimney once more vomited
smoke; but the most absolute silence reigned, and, but for
the figure of my mother very slowly following in our wake, I
felt convinced there was no human soul within a range of
miles. At the thought, I looked upon the doctor, gravely
walking by my side, with his bowed shoulders and white hair,
and then once more at his house, lit up and pouring smoke
like some industrious factory. And then my curiosity broke
forth. 'In Heaven's name,' I cried, 'what do you make in
this inhuman desert?'

He looked at me with a peculiar smile, and answered with an
evasion -

'This is not the first time,' said he, 'that you have seen my
furnaces alight. One morning, in the small hours, I saw you
driving past; a delicate experiment miscarried; and I cannot
acquit myself of having startled either your driver or the
horse that drew you.'

'What!' cried I, beholding again in fancy the antics of the
figure, 'could that be you?'

'It was I,' he replied; 'but do not fancy that I was mad. I
was in agony. I had been scalded cruelly.'

We were now near the house, which, unlike the ordinary houses
of the country, was built of hewn stone and very solid.
Stone, too, was its foundation, stone its background. Not a
blade of grass sprouted among the broken mineral about the
walls, not a flower adorned the windows. Over the door, by
way of sole adornment, the Mormon Eye was rudely sculptured;
I had been brought up to view that emblem from my childhood;
but since the night of our escape, it had acquired a new
significance, and set me shrinking. The smoke rolled
voluminously from the chimney top, its edges ruddy with the
fire; and from the far corner of the building, near the
ground, angry puffs of steam shone snow-white in the moon and
vanished.

The doctor opened the door and paused upon the threshold.
'You ask me what I make here,' he observed. 'Two things:
Life and Death.'  And he motioned me to enter.

'I shall await my mother,' said I.

'Child,' he replied, 'look at me: am I not old and broken?
Of us two, which is the stronger, the young maiden or the
withered man?'

I bowed, and passing by him, entered a vestibule or kitchen,
lit by a good fire and a shaded reading-lamp. It was
furnished only with a dresser, a rude table, and some wooden
benches; and on one of these the doctor motioned me to take a
seat; and passing by another door into the interior of the
house, he left me to myself. Presently I heard the jar of
iron from the far end of the building; and this was followed
by the same throbbing noise that had startled me in the
valley, but now so near at hand as to be menacing by
loudness, and even to shake the house with every recurrence
of the stroke. I had scarce time to master my alarm when the
doctor returned, and almost in the same moment my mother
appeared upon the threshold. But how am I to describe to you
the peace and ravishment of that face? Years seemed to have
passed over her head during that brief ride, and left her
younger and fairer; her eyes shone, her smile went to my
heart; she seemed no more a woman but the angel of ecstatic
tenderness. I ran to her in a kind of terror; but she shrank
a little back and laid her finger on her lips, with something
arch and yet unearthly. To the doctor, on the contrary, she
reached out her hand as to a friend and helper; and so
strange was the scene that I forgot to be offended.

'Lucy,' said the doctor, 'all is prepared. Will you go
alone, or shall your daughter follow us?'

'Let Asenath come,' she answered, 'dear Asenath! At this
hour, when I am purified of fear and sorrow, and already
survive myself and my affections, it is for your sake, and
not for mine, that I desire her presence. Were she shut out,
dear friend, it is to be feared she might misjudge your
kindness.'

'Mother,' I cried wildly, 'mother, what is this?'

But my mother, with her radiant smile, said only 'Hush!' as
though I were a child again, and tossing in some fever-fit;
and the doctor bade me be silent and trouble her no more.
'You have made a choice,' he continued, addressing my mother,
'that has often strangely tempted me. The two extremes:
all, or else nothing; never, or this very hour upon the clock
- these have been my incongruous desires. But to accept the
middle term, to be content with a half-gift, to flicker
awhile and to burn out - never for an hour, never since I was
born, has satisfied the appetite of my ambition.'  He looked
upon my mother fixedly, much of admiration and some touch of
envy in his eyes; then, with a profound sigh, he led the way
into the inner room.

It was very long. From end to end it was lit up by many
lamps, which by the changeful colour of their light, and by
the incessant snapping sounds with which they burned, I have
since divined to be electric. At the extreme end an open
door gave us a glimpse into what must have been a lean-to
shed beside the chimney; and this, in strong contrast to the
room, was painted with a red reverberation as from furnace-
doors. The walls were lined with books and glazed cases, the
tables crowded with the implements of chemical research;
great glass accumulators glittered in the light; and through
a hole in the gable near the shed door, a heavy driving-belt
entered the apartment and ran overhead upon steel pulleys,
with clumsy activity and many ghostly and fluttering sounds.
In one corner I perceived a chair resting upon crystal feet,
and curiously wreathed with wire. To this my mother advanced
with a decisive swiftness.

'Is this it?' she asked.

The doctor bowed in silence.

'Asenath,' said my mother, 'in this sad end of my life I have
found one helper. Look upon him: it is Doctor Grierson. Be
not, oh my daughter, be not ungrateful to that friend!'

She sate upon the chair, and took in her hands the globes
that terminated the arms.

'Am I right?' she asked, and looked upon the doctor with such
a radiancy of face that I trembled for her reason. Once more
the doctor bowed, but this time leaning hard against the
wall. He must have touched a spring. The least shock
agitated my mother where she sat; the least passing jar
appeared to cross her features; and she sank back in the
chair like one resigned to weariness. I was at her knees
that moment; but her hands fell loosely in my grasp; her
face, still beatified with the same touching smile, sank
forward on her bosom: her spirit had for ever fled.

I do not know how long may have elapsed before, raising for a
moment my tearful face, I met the doctor's eyes. They rested
upon mine with such a depth of scrutiny, pity, and interest,
that even from the freshness of my sorrow, I was startled
into attention.

'Enough,' he said, 'to lamentation. Your mother went to
death as to a bridal, dying where her husband died. It is
time, Asenath, to think of the survivors. Follow me to the
next room.'

I followed him, like a person in a dream; he made me sit by
the fire, he gave me wine to drink; and then, pacing the
stone floor, he thus began to address me -

'You are now, my child, alone in the world, and under the
immediate watch of Brigham Young. It would be your lot, in
ordinary circumstances, to become the fiftieth bride of some
ignoble elder, or by particular fortune, as fortune is
counted in this land, to find favour in the eyes of the
President himself. Such a fate for a girl like you were
worse than death; better to die as your mother died than to
sink daily deeper in the mire of this pit of woman's
degradation. But is escape conceivable? Your father tried;
and you beheld yourself with what security his jailers acted,
and how a dumb drawing on a rock was counted a sufficient
sentry over the avenues of freedom. Where your father
failed, will you be wiser or more fortunate? or are you, too,
helpless in the toils?'

I had followed his words with changing emotion, but now I
believed I understood.

'I see,' I cried; 'you judge me rightly. I must follow where
my parents led; and oh! I am not only willing, I am eager!'

'No,' replied the doctor, 'not death for you. The flawed
vessel we may break, but not the perfect. No, your mother
cherished a different hope, and so do I. I see,' he cried,
'the girl develop to the completed woman, the plan reach
fulfilment, the promise - ay, outdone! I could not bear to
arrest so lively, so comely a process. It was your mother's
thought,' he added, with a change of tone, 'that I should
marry you myself.'  I fear I must have shown a perfect horror
of aversion from this fate, for he made haste to quiet me.
'Reassure yourself, Asenath,' he resumed. 'Old as I am, I
have not forgotten the tumultuous fancies of youth. I have
passed my days, indeed, in laboratories; but in all my vigils
I have not forgotten the tune of a young pulse. Age asks
with timidity to be spared intolerable pain; youth, taking
fortune by the beard, demands joy like a right. These things
I have not forgotten; none, rather, has more keenly felt,
none more jealously considered them; I have but postponed
them to their day. See, then: you stand without support;
the only friend left to you, this old investigator, old in
cunning, young in sympathy. Answer me but one question: Are
you free from the entanglement of what the world calls love?
Do you still command your heart and purposes? or are you
fallen in some bond-slavery of the eye and ear?'

I answered him in broken words; my heart, I think I must have
told him, lay with my dead parents.

'It is enough,' he said. 'It has been my fate to be called
on often, too often, for those services of which we spoke to-
night; none in Utah could carry them so well to a conclusion;
hence there has fallen into my hands a certain share of
influence which I now lay at your service, partly for the
sake of my dead friends, your parents; partly for the
interest I bear you in your own right. I shall send you to
England, to the great city of London, there to await the
bridegroom I have selected. He shall be a son of mine, a
young man suitable in age and not grossly deficient in that
quality of beauty that your years demand. Since your heart
is free, you may well pledge me the sole promise that I ask
in return for much expense and still more danger: to await
the arrival of that bridegroom with the delicacy of a wife.'

I sat awhile stunned. The doctor's marriages, I remembered
to have heard, had been unfruitful; and this added perplexity
to my distress. But I was alone, as he had said, alone in
that dark land; the thought of escape, of any equal marriage,
was already enough to revive in me some dawn of hope; and in
what words I know not, I accepted the proposal.

He seemed more moved by my consent than I could reasonably
have looked for. 'You shall see,' he cried; 'you shall judge
for yourself.'  And hurrying to the next room he returned
with a small portrait somewhat coarsely done in oils. It
showed a man in the dress of nearly forty years before, young
indeed, but still recognisable to be the doctor. 'Do you
like it?' he asked. 'That is myself when I was young. My -
my boy will be like that, like but nobler; with such health
as angels might condescend to envy; and a man of mind,
Asenath, of commanding mind. That should be a man, I think;
that should be one among ten thousand. A man like that - one
to combine the passions of youth with the restraint, the
force, the dignity of age - one to fill all the parts and
faculties, one to be man's epitome - say, will that not
satisfy the needs of an ambitious girl? Say, is not that
enough?'  And as he held the picture close before my eyes,
his hands shook.

I told him briefly I would ask no better, for I was
transpierced with this display of fatherly emotion; but even
as I said the words, the most insolent revolt surged through
my arteries. I held him in horror, him, his portrait, and
his son; and had there been any choice but death or a Mormon
marriage, I declare before Heaven I had embraced it.

'It is well,' he replied, 'and I had rightly counted on your
spirit. Eat, then, for you have far to go.'  So saying, he
set meat before me; and while I was endeavouring to obey, he
left the room and returned with an armful of coarse raiment.
'There,' said he, 'is your disguise. I leave you to your
toilet.'

The clothes had probably belonged to a somewhat lubberly boy
of fifteen; and they hung about me like a sack, and cruelly
hampered my movements. But what filled me with
uncontrollable shudderings, was the problem of their origin
and the fate of the lad to whom they had belonged. I had
scarcely effected the exchange when the doctor returned,
opened a back window, helped me out into the narrow space
between the house and the overhanging bluffs, and showed me a
ladder of iron footholds mortised in the rock. 'Mount,' he
said, 'swiftly. When you are at the summit, walk, so far as
you are able, in the shadow of the smoke. The smoke will
bring you, sooner or later, to a canyon; follow that down,
and you will find a man with two horses. Him you will
implicitly obey. And remember, silence! That machinery,
which I now put in motion for your service, may by one word
be turned against you. Go; Heaven prosper you!'

The ascent was easy. Arrived at the top of the cliff, I saw
before me on the other side a vast and gradual declivity of
stone, lying bare to the moon and the surrounding mountains.
Nowhere was any vantage or concealment; and knowing how these
deserts were beset with spies, I made haste to veil my
movements under the blowing trail of smoke. Sometimes it
swam high, rising on the night wind, and I had no more
substantial curtain than its moon-thrown shadow; sometimes
again it crawled upon the earth, and I would walk in it, no
higher than to my shoulders, like some mountain fog. But,
one way or another, the smoke of that ill-omened furnace
protected the first steps of my escape, and led me unobserved
to the canyon.

There, sure enough, I found a taciturn and sombre man beside
a pair of saddle-horses; and thenceforward, all night long,
we wandered in silence by the most occult and dangerous paths
among the mountains. A little before the dayspring we took
refuge in a wet and gusty cavern at the bottom of a gorge;
lay there all day concealed; and the next night, before the
glow had faded out of the west, resumed our wanderings.
About noon we stopped again, in a lawn upon a little river,
where was a screen of bushes; and here my guide, handing me a
bundle from his pack, bade me change my dress once more. The
bundle contained clothing of my own, taken from our house,
with such necessaries as a comb and soap. I made my toilet
by the mirror of a quiet pool; and as I was so doing, and
smiling with some complacency to see myself restored to my
own image, the mountains rang with a scream of far more than
human piercingness; and while I still stood astonished, there
sprang up and swiftly increased a storm of the most awful and
earth-rending sounds. Shall I own to you, that I fell upon
my face and shrieked? And yet this was but the overland
train winding among the near mountains: the very means of my
salvation: the strong wings that were to carry me from Utah!

When I was dressed, the guide gave me a bag, which contained,
he said, both money and papers; and telling me that I was
already over the borders in the territory of Wyoming, bade me
follow the stream until I reached the railway station, half a
mile below. 'Here,' he added, 'is your ticket as far as
Council Bluffs. The East express will pass in a few hours.'  
With that, he took both horses, and, without further words or
any salutation, rode off by the way that we had come.

Three hours afterwards, I was seated on the end platform of
the train as it swept eastward through the gorges and
thundered in tunnels of the mountain. The change of scene,
the sense of escape, the still throbbing terror of pursuit -
above all, the astounding magic of my new conveyance, kept me
from any logical or melancholy thought. I had gone to the
doctor's house two nights before prepared to die, prepared
for worse than death; what had passed, terrible although it
was, looked almost bright compared to my anticipations; and
it was not till I had slept a full night in the flying palace
car, that I awoke to the sense of my irreparable loss and to
some reasonable alarm about the future. In this mood, I
examined the contents of the bag. It was well supplied with
gold; it contained tickets and complete directions for my
journey as far as Liverpool, and a long letter from the
doctor, supplying me with a fictitious name and story,
recommending the most guarded silence, and bidding me to
await faithfully the coming of his son. All then had been
arranged beforehand: he had counted upon my consent, and
what was tenfold worse, upon my mother's voluntary death. My
horror of my only friend, my aversion for this son who was to
marry me, my revolt against the whole current and conditions
of my life, were now complete. I was sitting stupefied by my
distress and helplessness, when, to my joy, a very pleasant
lady offered me her conversation. I clutched at the relief;
and I was soon glibly telling her the story in the doctor's
letter: how I was a Miss Gould, of Nevada City, going to
England to an uncle, what money I had, what family, my age,
and so forth, until I had exhausted my instructions, and, as
the lady still continued to ply me with questions, began to
embroider on my own account. This soon carried one of my
inexperience beyond her depth; and I had already remarked a
shadow on the lady's face, when a gentleman drew near and
very civilly addressed me.

'Miss Gould, I believe?' said he; and then, excusing himself
to the lady by the authority of my guardian, drew me to the
fore platform of the Pullman car. 'Miss Gould,' he said in
my ear, 'is it possible that you suppose yourself in safety?
Let me completely undeceive you. One more such indiscretion
and you return to Utah. And, in the meanwhile, if this woman
should again address you, you are to reply with these words:
"Madam, I do not like you, and I will be obliged if you will
suffer me to choose my own associates."'

Alas, I had to do as I was bid; this lady, to whom I already
felt myself drawn with the strongest cords of sympathy, I
dismissed with insult; and thenceforward, through all that
day, I sat in silence, gazing on the bare plains and
swallowing my tears. Let that suffice: it was the pattern
of my journey. Whether on the train, at the hotels, or on
board the ocean steamer, I never exchanged a friendly word
with any fellow-traveller but I was certain to be
interrupted. In every place, on every side, the most
unlikely persons, man or woman, rich or poor, became
protectors to forward me upon my journey, or spies to observe
and regulate my conduct. Thus I crossed the States, thus
passed the ocean, the Mormon Eye still following my
movements; and when at length a cab had set me down before
that London lodging-house from which you