Checkmate

. The stars shine down over the foliage of huge old trees. Dim as shadows stand the horse and tax-cart that await Mr. Longcluse

t like, to call my thoughts out a-seeking up and down, and to and fro; and 'twill not let me rest until I come to find the truth. Mace? No, no. Langly? Not he

nelled walls of the housekeeper's room. The light danced wildly from corner to corner of the wainscot, accompanied by the shadows of two geraniums in bow-pots

arrow road, and by the faded old inn, once famous in those regions as the "Guy of Warwick," representing still on its board, in tarnished gold and c

ngcluse spoke. Aperit pr?cordia vinum. In his brandy and water

d, what is harder to bestow on others, my time and labour. But who to look at me would believe it? I'm not a worse fellow than Penruddock. I can cry for pity and do a kind act like him; but I look in my glass, and I also feel like him, 'the mark of Cain' is on me-cruelty in my face. Why should Nature write on some men's faces such libels on their characters? Then here's another thing to make you laugh-you, a handsome fellow, to w

y thinks your face, she says, very i

ed Mr. Longcluse, wit

on't mind?), some young lady friends of hers who were by said, I assure you, t

re too good-natured," said

an be gifted with vulgar beauty-plump, pink and whi

is that which, perhaps, you do n

hought up to then that Mr. Longcluse's history was

e in a moment from a beast into a prince; but I am something better than I seem. In a

three minutes, and then, on a sudden,

which I came too late ever to understand it thoroughly-I know something of a greater world, and human nature is the same everywhere. You talk of a girl's pride inducing her to marry a man

s is what women worship, and if, in addition to that, you possess wealth-not, as I said, that they are sordid, but only v

Longcluse, and relapsed int

brilliantly lighted, as such places are, and already crowded with all kinds of people. There is going to be a great match of a "thousand up" played between Bill Hood and Bob Markham. The betting has been unusually high; it is still going on. The play won't begin for nearly half an hour. The "admirers of the game" have mustered

e, the scenes of many a year ago. Looking down, there creeps over him an old horror, a supernatural disgust, and he sees in the dark a pair of wide, white eyes, staring up at him in an agony of terror, and a shrill yell, piercing a distance of many years, makes him shake his ears with a sudden chill. Is this the witches' Sabbath of our pale Mephistopheles-his night of goblins? He raised his e