Title: The Last Call (Vol. 2 of 3) - A Romance
Author: Dowling, Richard
Language: English
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     2. The diphthong oe is represented by [oe].



                            THE LAST CALL.



                            THE LAST CALL.


                              A Romance.



                                  BY

                           RICHARD DOWLING,

       AUTHOR OF "THE MYSTERY OF KILLARD," "THE WEIRD SISTERS,"
                         "SWEET INISFAIL," ETC.



                         _IN THREE VOLUMES_.

                               VOL. II.



                               LONDON:
             TINSLEY BROTHERS, 8, CATHERINE ST., STRAND.
                                1884.
                       [_All rights reserved_.]



                      CHARLES DICKENS AND EVANS
                        CRYSTAL PALACE PRESS.



                            THE LAST CALL.


                              * * * * *


                        Part I.--_Continued_.



                            THE LAST CALL.



                             CHAPTER XX.


When Dora Harrington released herself from old Crawford's arms, he led
her to a chair, and said: "I have no longer the shadow of a doubt that
you are the daughter of my Dora. It was, indeed, a lucky chance which
made me in my despair last night turn my steps towards the river. And
now," he added, "the next thing is to get some nice comfortable place
for you. This old rookery would never suit. Let us go and try if we
cannot find a suitable, homely place, somewhere outside the City."

"I told you, sir," said the girl timidly, "that when yesterday I found
out all my money was lost in the bank, I had not a shilling to send a
message to him."

"To Lavirotte?"

"Yes, sir."

The old man took out a leather bag and handed it to her, saying: "This
will be enough for the present. When it is all gone let me know."

"But, sir," said the girl, holding the bag in her hand without opening
it, "I do not want all this. A shilling will be sufficient for the
present, if you will only let me go to the nearest telegraph office."

"Nonsense, child," he said. "You cannot be without money in London.
There is more where that came from. If you wish to go immediately to
the telegraph office, you may as well start now. I will meet you in an
hour at Ludgate Circus."

The young girl descended the ladders through the gloom of the tower,
and opening the deep sunken door, emerged into the broad morning
sunlight. She went to the telegraph office and wrote out the following
message:


"Cannot say how sorry you are not well. Could not telegraph yesterday.
Would go over, but have no money."


When she had written out this message, she untied the string of the
bag and poured the contents into her hand. She had expected to find a
few shillings. She started with surprise.

"Gold! All gold!" She counted. "Twelve pounds!" Then for a moment she
stood in thought, tore up the telegram she had written, and walked
quickly back to the tower.

Here a difficulty presented itself. How was she to summon the old man
from the top or from the pit? If he was above, the feeble sound of her
hand beating against that door would never be heard, even at night.
But now in the day, owing to the roar of traffic around, she could not
make herself heard if he was in the pit beneath.

What was she to do? This was the only door. Under the circumstances
she did not care to ask the aid of any passer-by, lest it might anger
the old man. Notwithstanding her conviction that the effort would be
fruitless, she did knock at the massive door with her hand.

There came no response. For a quarter of an hour she stood and knocked
unavailingly. Then she turned to go, and hastened to Ludgate Circus.
She had taken no heed of time, and when she got to the Circus she was
horrified to find herself twenty minutes behind the time appointed.

She glanced hastily round, but could not see the old man. Then she
carefully examined with her eye each of the four sections that make up
the Circus. She found no one she knew. The hurrying crowd and throng
of vehicles 'confused her senses and her mind. The old man had not
indicated to her the section in which he would meet her, and to her
eyes, unaccustomed as they were to the ceaseless turmoil of traffic in
the City, it seemed almost impossible to find anyone in that place.

She waited half-an-hour vainly. Then she began to despair. Whither
should she turn? That tower in Porter Street now seemed as
inaccessible to her as the centre of the Great Pyramid. This
dereliction of to-day was harder to bear than that of yesterday;
for since her desperate resolve the previous night she had found a
friend--nay, more, a close relative--who was also the friend of the
man she loved, and who was willing and able to help her. Had she not
with her the proof of this willingness and this ability?

Then, as she betook herself once more in the direction of St. Prisca's
Tower, she remembered he had said the money he gave her that morning
would do for the present. She was therefore, of course, at liberty to
employ the money as she chose. It was hers to use, for a grandfather
had of course a perfect right to give his grand-daughter money, and
the granddaughter had a perfect right to accept it.

Once more she found herself in the doorway of the tower. She stood a
while looking up and down the busy way, when all at once, to her great
joy, she saw the old man approaching.

"My dear child, where have you been? I have been greatly frightened
about you."

She then explained to him what had occurred--how she had not noticed
the time slipping by, and how, when she found herself in Ludgate
Circus, she was twenty minutes too late.

"Well, there's no harm done so far," said Crawford. "You sent your
telegram, and now we shall go and look for a lodging."

"No," she said, "I did not send it. I wrote it out and then tore it
up. Did you know, sir, that all the money in this bag is gold?"

"Yes," he said, "I keep my change loose always. Did you expect to find
notes?"

"Oh no, sir; but I thought as you were good enough to give this money
you might perhaps allow me to do with it what I would most like. That
is the reason I tore up my telegram."

"Certainly," he said. "You may do with it exactly what you please."

"Well then," said the girl, "will you consent to my going to Ireland
this evening?"

The old man started for a moment. "I suppose you mean," he said, "to
Glengowra, to see Lavirotte."

She coloured, and said: "Yes. If you do not object. He is ill, you
know."

"It is a long way for a young girl to go alone; too long I fear."

"I am used to travelling," pleaded the girl, "I do not mind travelling
in the least. I have travelled a great deal alone."

"Give me a little time to think," said the old man. "I cannot decide
at the moment. This is no place to stand any longer. Let us sit down
somewhere. Come with me."

Crawford led the way to a quiet room, where he ordered some light
refreshment, and where they could speak without effort or restraint.

They talked the matter over a little. At last he made up his mind. "I
have resolved," he said, "that you should not go alone so long a
journey."

The girl looked disappointed; her eyes filled with tears. "Oh!" she
cried, "I wish you would give me leave."

"Nevertheless," said the old man, not heeding the interruption, "you
shall go to Ireland this evening. I will go with you."

They were alone. She took his dark, wrinkled hand in hers and kissed
it, and cried, "Thank you, grandfather," and burst into tears.

It was the first time the old man had been called grandfather, and the
name seemed to re-awaken in his breast echoes of his old tenderness.
He placed his other hand on her head, and drew her head down on his
shoulder, saying softly: "Weep, if it is good for your heart, my
child. These are healing tears. You are, as far as I know, the one
human being saved to me out of the shipwreck of my life. I will go
with you to-night. He will recover speedily, you may be sure, and I
will afterwards do all I can for you and him."

Then the detail of their journey was arranged. She was to get what
things she required in lieu of those left with her landlady. He had
some preparations to make too. That evening they both set out for
Dublin on their way to Glengowra.



                             CHAPTER XXI.


The gold and silver plate and the jewels of the great Lord Tuscar were
the wonder and admiration of Europe. Sovereigns envied him for their
possession. They had not been the result of one generation. The
Tuscars had for a couple of centuries been generals, admirals,
statesmen, lawyers. They had, in fact, occupied every favourable
position for earning high rewards and for wholesale plundering.

They had plundered with a will. And now, in addition to fine estates
in three English counties and a large slice out of "settled" Ulster,
and one of the finest houses in London, Lord Tuscar had the largest
collection of plate and jewels owned by any nobleman in the three
kingdoms. No one had ever attempted even to estimate the value of his
treasures.

His house was situated close to the river, at no great distance from
St. Prisca's Church. Those were times of troubles and dangers. Great
houses had been ruined and great houses made in an incredibly short
space of time. Men who had been at the zenith of power and riches
yesterday were penniless exiles to-day, and the men who had subsisted
upon the charity of foreign courts and foreign nobles a week ago, were
now environed with all the circumstance and pomp of power and all the
splendour of wealth.

Now, one of the most remarkable things in connection with the great
Tuscar treasure was, that for some years no one had seen more of it
than the meaner exigencies of a great house required. Some said the
great lord had pawned it. At this most people laughed; for was it not
known that, gorgeous as was the state and luxury with which he
surrounded himself, his income exceeded his expenses? Others said that
although the time was over when monarchs playfully adopted the
treasures of their nobles, the great earl had misgivings, and although
one of the most favoured courtiers of the Merry Monarch, he had a
morbid dread that his Majesty might unjustly covet those precious
stores. Then there was an idea that as the Tuscars had been
enthusiastic Royalists, and as the present earl was notoriously timid,
he had, in dread of a second Commonwealth, sent his plate and gems
over seas.

However the matter stood, there could be no doubt that the treasure
was not now at Tuscar House; and, moreover, it was alleged that only
his lordship and one confidential person could tell the whereabouts of
the hoard.

It was towards the end of summer, and night. Most of London had
retired to rest. A strong wind was blowing from the east. The city was
ill-lighted where it was lighted at all, and the streets dangerous
after dark; so that most people who were honest and had anything to
lose kept indoors.

It was not a fashionable part of the city, but it was not
unprosperous. As the night went on the wind increased, until about ten
o'clock. Then it blew fiercely.

All at once in front of the shop of one, Farryner, baker to the King,
was raised a cry:

"Fire!"

That was the beginning of it. In an incredibly short time, aided by
the wind, Farryner's house was burned out; but, before it was finally
reduced to ashes, most of Pudding Lane was in flames. Many of the
houses were of wood, and offered no protest whatever against the
development of the conflagration.

An hour from the outbreak of the flames it was known Farryner was
burned out. Two hours later it was known that London was in flames.

Now it could be seen that this was no incidental fire, to be dismissed
finally at the end of the nine-days' wonder. This was a fire that
would be remembered for years.

Three hours after midnight it was obvious that, if the wind continued
in its present quarter for any great length of time, the fire would
become a matter which history could never ignore.

By this time a large portion of the population in the neighbourhood
afflicted were afoot. Now the fire leaped from street to street, as
though with the agility of trained experience. Now, when new material
came in its way, it shot upward in spires of flame. Later, these
spires, bending under the pressure of the wind, made radiant viaducts
for the fire across the darkened streets. And when they had done their
deadly work, and the buildings opposite crackled and glowed, these
huge beams of molten gold contracted as the source upon which they
had fed failed them, and finally they made one wild, aspiring rush
upwards when the roof fell, and the four walls of each house formed
the crater of an iridescent volcano, which belched forth one huge mass
of co-mingled smoke, and flame, and sparks, and flakes, and wands of
fire.

About this time the vast house owned by the great Lord Tuscar was
threatened, touched, and fired. He, his suite and retinue, escaped by
the river; and in a brief time, before the daylight yet broadened in
the east, already red with the flames, Tuscar House was beyond hope.

Now terror had fully seized the people. No efforts were made to save
the buildings. Those who could escape with their lives, and a few of
the most portable of their worldly goods, were considered lucky. Men
and women might be seen hurrying through the streets frantically,
moving west, carrying such of their possessions as could be borne a
great distance. For now they had come to the conclusion that it was
impossible to set a limit to the flames, and that the whole of London
in a westerly direction might succumb.

There had been a long, hot, dry season, and the houses burned bravely.
They seemed but to need a touch from the fiery wind flying by to
kindle them. Despair reigned supreme. Men and women went shrieking
through the streets. The roar of the conflagration shook the air. The
crash of falling houses made the solid ground tremble. People would
not leave their homes until the flames had touched the walls, until
the last ray of hope was obscured. Then such as were not encumbered
with children or goods flew through the streets, shrieking like
demented beings.

One of those most alarmed by the magnitude of the calamity and the
terrors of that night was the great Earl of Tuscar. When he entered
his barge to row up the river his feet trembled, and he could scarcely
keep himself upright.

He was elderly, and had been in failing health for some time. Before
they arrived at the stairs at Westminster he complained of feeling
faint; and when at last the barge ran alongside, they had to carry the
great Earl out, for he was dead.

As the attendants were bearing the body of the great Earl from his
barge, a solitary man stood on the leads of the tower belonging to St.
Prisca's Church, watching the progress of the flames.

Evidently he was very anxious, for his head and eyes moved continually
from right to left. As each spot, which, a moment before had been
black, sprang into flame, he shifted his feet restlessly like one
feeling he ought to be gone, and yet daring to hope there was no need
for flight.

"If anything is to be saved," he said, "there is no time to lose."

Again he ran his eye over the increasing area of the fire.

"The walls of the tower may stand," he thought. "They are much thicker
than is common. But the church itself must go if the wind does not
abate. The Earl has already left, of course. The fire did not spare
his stout walls, nor respect his greatness. He and I alone know where
his treasure is hid. He will, of course, take measures to secure it
after the fire. It could be nowhere safer than it is at present. No
one suspects it is in the vault. People who saw the chests come
believed they contained only the rescued archives of an abbey
destroyed by Cromwell. But let me see. Supposing anything should have
happened to him; supposing he was overtaken by the flames; suppose,
from some cause or other, he should not be able to communicate the
secret to anyone, how then could this treasure be discovered? How
could it be so arranged that the secret might fall into no other hands
than those entitled to know it, for may not I too perish in this
terrible disaster?"

He turned around, and leaving the embrasure in which he had stood,
descended quickly to the room below.

Here a light was burning, and it could be seen that he who had watched
the fire from the roof was a clergyman.

"How is it to be done?" he thought, and pondered some seconds. At last
he lifted a small box, and, going to some bookshelves, took out a few
volumes. In two of these volumes he wrote something.

"It will not do," he thought, "to make this matter so plain that
anyone may understand it. If the Earl is alive, by noon he will surely
take some steps with regard to his treasure. If he is not alive, and I
too have perished, it will be necessary some record should be left
behind."

He placed a copy of Chaucer, in which he had written something, in the
bottom of the box, then a few indifferent books, and then "Mentor on
Hawking," in which he had written something also; then a few more
indifferent books, and finally a piece of paper bearing these words:


"Search diligently if you would know what John Henry Plantagenet
James, eighth earl, knew, if he be dead."

On the outside of the box he fastened a piece of parchment on which he
wrote: "A box of books. Take this at once to the Earl of Tuscar, who
will reward the bearer."

Then he locked the box, and, putting it on his shoulder, descended the
ladders of St. Prisca's Tower. As he did so he said to himself: "I
have not been too soon. The air here is already hot. I can smell the
fire close by."

As he was about half-way down, a sudden light in one of the openings
attracted his attention. He started, and cried: "The flames have
already struck the church."

Ere he reached the next loft it was but too plain the tower was
already in flames.

"My retreat cut off!" he exclaimed in despair. He looked down into the
next loft. The floor and the foot of the ladder were alight, and exit
was impossible. If there was any hope for him it must be upon the
roof. He hastened thither.

During the time he had been occupied with the books and writing, and
in descending and ascending, the fire had made rapid, terrible
progress. It had touched the Church of St. Prisca, and the smoke was
already coming up the opening in the roof.

It was quite plain now to the man on the leads that he was doomed.
There were people in the streets below, but they were as helpless as
he.

"I must die," he said. "Nothing can save me. There is but one chance
for my preserving the secret."

He approached an embrasure on the western side, and dropped the box
into the street below.

The box shot downward and was shattered into atoms. Some paltry
pilferer, a few minutes later, snatched up the books and put them into
his bag. The label on the box and the manuscript-slip inside were
never seen afterwards. The books were carried to Kensington, whither a
good deal of the salvage of the fire was brought; and the clergyman,
who had tried to save the Earl's secret, fell a victim to the Great
Fire of London on the 3rd of September, 1666.



                            CHAPTER XXII.


It was evening when Lionel Crawford and his grand-daughter arrived at
Glengowra. Much of the excitement had by this time disappeared, and a
tone of gentle disgust was to be observed among the inhabitants of
that little town.

Was it not provoking, townfolk thought, that such a splendid
opportunity for invective and commiseration should be wholly wasted?
Who could throw stones at Lavirotte if young O'Donnell did not? Who
could pity young O'Donnell if he consented to receive the friendly
overtures of Lavirotte. The whole thing was an abominable conspiracy
against comfortable living in Glengowra. There was something to be
grateful for, no doubt, in the first blush of that event at the cove,
but it had led to nothing worthy of its parts; and a circumstance
which had gone up the very largest of rockets, seemed destined to come
down the most insignificant of sticks.

When Lionel Crawford and Dora Harrington arrived in Glengowra and went
to Maher's hotel, a new fillip was given to public curiosity. It was
known by the speech of the grandfather and his grand-daughter that
they were not of Irish bringing up. There was, of course, no reason
why they should be in any way connected with the great event of that
week. Yet, still it had been noised abroad that Lavirotte had
telegraphed to a Miss Harrington in London, and here now had arrived
an old man and a young girl with unfamiliar accents. The shrewd people
of Glengowra made a connection between these facts, and came, in about
ten minutes, to the conclusion that the young girl was Miss
Harrington.

In the back room of the Confectionery Hall, a man who had come out by
the same train with the newly-arrived pair brought all news and
surmises concerning them; and here, out of gratitude for small
mercies, the company were for a time solaced by the fact that no one
could offer a rational explanation of who the old man was.

When Crawford and Dora were safely inside Maher's hotel, the old man
asked to be shown to a private sitting-room.

"For," said he to Dora, "I have been so long accustomed to the
solitude of St. Prisca's Tower, that I cannot endure the company or
curious gaze of strangers."

He had no means of knowing up to this that Lavirotte's illness was not
a natural one, or that he and his grand-daughter were the subjects of
peculiar interest to the good folk of Glengowra.

He rang the bell, and when the waiter came, said:

"I should very much like to see the landlord, if you think he would
oblige me by coming here."

In a few minutes the proprietor entered the room.

The old man lost no time in stating his case. He said:

"We have come a long journey, and are tired. We are both deeply
interested in a gentleman who is now lying ill here, Mr. Lavirotte,
and are most anxious to know his present condition."

The landlord looked from one to the other in some perplexity.

"May I ask," said he, "the nature of the interest you take in Mr.
Lavirotte?"

The old man smiled, and said: "An Irishman's answer."

"An Irishman's answer," said Maher, "is often kindly meant."

He glanced significantly, first at the old man, and then at the young
girl.

"Perhaps you know," said Crawford, "that Mr. Lavirotte telegraphed to
a lady in London, in whose affairs he is interested?"

"I wrote out the message myself." He paused a moment. "Have I the
honour of seeing Miss Harrington?"

"This is Miss Harrington."

"And you are, sir----?" He paused here.

"Her grandfather."

"May I ask you, sir," said Maher, "to step out with me for a moment?"

"Oh, sir, he is worse," cried the girl, looking appealingly at the old
man.

Maher turned quickly upon her, saying: "I pledge you my word of
honour, Miss Harrington, that, on the contrary, Mr. Lavirotte is much
better; and that he has continued to improve ever since I telegraphed
to you."

"Then," said the girl, "his illness must have been sudden."

"Rather sudden. If you, sir," he continued, turning to the
grandfather, "will accompany me just down to the strand, I should feel
greatly obliged. Miss Harrington will, if you approve of it, remain in
this room until we come back, with my most emphatic assurance that Mr.
Lavirotte is out of danger and getting on very well."

Maher did not wish the girl to meet even a chambermaid, lest the whole
of the story might reach her at the one time, and give her a most
painful and unnecessary shock. The substance of the conversation
between the two clerks at the back of the Confectionery Hall had by
this time become public property; and, of course, the hotel proprietor
was one of the first men to hear all news.

Jaded as the old man was, he rose with alacrity, and accompanied
Maher. As soon as they were in the open air Crawford turned on his
companion, and said: "I am sure, sir, your intention is kindly. There
is kindliness in your manner and face; but I hope you are not, through
some benevolent motive, deceiving that child we have left behind."

"I--deceiving her!" cried the landlord. "_I_ am not deceiving her."

"I do not understand," said the old man, "what you mean by laying such
emphasis on the word _I_."

"I mean, sir, that although I am not deceiving her now (Lavirotte is
really getting better), someone else may be deceiving her."

"You perplex and disturb me," said the old man. "I have no clue
whatever to your meaning. Pray, if you would be kind, be plain."

"I take it for granted, sir, that you know Mr. Lavirotte."

"I know Mr. Lavirotte, but not very well."

For a moment or two the landlord was silent. His position was one of
great delicacy and difficulty. He now held a profound hatred for
Lavirotte, and the look of that gentle, confiding young girl had
touched him keenly. He pitied her.

"I hope, sir," he said, "if I am bold enough to ask you a few
questions, you will be so kind as not to fancy it is through
curiosity."

"I will do anything," said the old man, "if you will only go on."

"There is a rumour here, which may be true or false, that Mr.
Lavirotte met Miss Harrington in London, and that they were good
friends there."

"I see what you are driving at. They are engaged to be married."

"Precisely. You have not for some months past heard much of Mr.
Lavirotte, have you?"

"Absolutely nothing, except your telegram. Has he been ill all that
time?"

"No. He was not taken ill until a few hours before I sent that message
to London."

"What is the nature of his illness?"

"He received an injury in a mysterious way, in a quarrel with another
man, and neither he nor the other man will say anything about the
quarrel, or the cause of it. But, of course, as in all cases of this
kind, there is a general notion of what it was about. People say that
jealousy led to it."

"Jealousy of Miss Harrington? I did not understand there was any
likelihood of his being jealous of her."

"Nor is he, as far as rumour goes. The facts are that he attacked a
young man in this place, and, after stabbing the young man, was
rendered insensible himself, no one knows how."

"Stabbing!" exclaimed the old man with horror. "Are you sure of that!"

"There is no evidence he did. There is no doubt he did."

"I am old," said Mr. Crawford, "and have lived a long time out of the
ways of the world. I am slow, and do not understand. Out of pity to my
infirmities, be simple with me. I know something very unpleasant is
coming. Let me hear it at once."

The two men had now reached the roadway that ran inside the storm
wall.

"It will rest you, sir, if we stand here and lean upon the wall. I
will tell you everything I know in a few words.

"The prettiest girl in this neighbourhood is a Miss Creagh. She is now
in my house. One of the finest young fellows within twenty miles is
Mr. Eugene O'Donnell. He is now lying in my house. He is the man
Lavirotte stabbed. They were bosom friends. The story goes that about
two months ago Lavirotte made love to Miss Creagh and was rejected. A
little later O'Donnell made love, and was accepted. The wedding was to
be in about a month, and to prevent it Lavirotte tried to murder young
O'Donnell."

"Good God!" said the old man, "what a dreadful story, and what a
scoundrel he must be! It is the most horrible thing that ever came
near me in all my life."

"It is very bad, sir, indeed. You will now, sir, understand why I
wished to speak to you alone. Shall we go back? I left orders that no
one was to enter the private room, so that you can act now as you
think best, and be quite certain that the young lady knows nothing of
this most miserable affair. It is only right you should know that
young O'Donnell is also doing very well, and no fears are felt about
his recovery."

In perfect silence the two men walked back to the hotel.



                            CHAPTER XXIII.


Lionel Crawford did not go straight to the room where Dora was. He
turned into the coffee-room, and there stood a while pondering. Though
he was a visionary, a dreamer, a philosopher, he had, before he became
immersed in his present studies and pursuits, been, comparatively
speaking, a man of the world. For although he had never mingled much
in society, he had a tolerable knowledge of what people said and did.

What would people say of such conduct as Lavirotte's? They would call
it abominable. What would people say of Lavirotte? They would call him
a scoundrel. Here was a dilemma. If this strange, this unknown girl,
were not to marry Lavirotte but the other man, there seemed on the
face of it to be no reason why he might not still marry Dora. It was
quite certain his grand-daughter had no hint that Lavirotte's
affections had strayed from her. This liking for Miss Creagh might
have been only the errant fancy of an hour--of a day--of a week. It
might turn out that the landlord had exaggerated the position of Miss
Creagh in the matter, and that the encounter had been the result of
heated blood, arising from some other cause.

If things had only run on smoothly, without this wretched interruption
of the fight, how satisfactory all would be.

Here was Lavirotte, the owner of the tower, and he, the seeker for the
treasure, already bound together in a kind of business contract. And
here, then, as a second bond of union between the two, had come Dora.
His grand-daughter was to be the other's wife if things had not been
disturbed. If Lavirotte and he had shared the treasure equally between
them, and then these two young people were married, the whole of the
enormous fortune hidden under St. Prisca's Tower would, when he died,
be theirs.

It would be a thousand pities that such a match should be broken off.
The most ordinary prudence pointed at the absurdity of such a step. It
would be his duty to his grand-daughter, Lavirotte, and himself, to
take care that no such misfortune might befall.

The agreement which existed between him and Lavirotte had never been
reduced to writing. Neither of them had desired that it should. He
knew that such an agreement would not be binding in law. If the
finding and retaining of all the treasure was contrary to the law, no
instrument embodying the disposal of all the property between him and
Lavirotte would hold for one moment. It would be a cruel shame if,
after all his years of inquiry and anxiety, when he was working on the
mere traditional rumour that a great hoard was concealed somewhere in
the city, the labour of that time and the labour of his later years in
the tower should all go for nothing, or next to nothing.

Lavirotte had been sceptical as to the existence of the treasure; had
given him to understand he would not sink a penny in the speculation.
If any difficulty arose between him and the owner of the tower now,
that door might remain shut for a hundred years, until they were all
dead, until the clue to the secret had been destroyed for ever.

By some means or other this catastrophe must be avoided. It was too
hideous even to think of. He must prevent it at any cost. How was he
to prevent it?

It was plainly his first business to see Lavirotte and ascertain all
he could from him. No doubt the Frenchman would be more communicative
to him than to others in whom he had no interest whatever. Of course
Lavirotte would not recognise in him the grandfather of Dora, but they
had been acquainted some time and were partners in his secret, in his
great undertaking. No doubt by this time the girl was becoming
impatient for news of some kind. He would go to her first and reassure
her, and then seek an interview with Lavirotte.

When he entered the room where Dora was, she came to him eagerly and
caught his hand and said: "Have you seen him--is he better? What did
he say?"

"I have not seen Dominique yet," said the old man, using the other's
Christian name for the first time.

"Oh, you are good to call him Dominique. You have something to tell
me."

"I have nothing very new to tell you. It is quite true he is
progressing most favourably, and there is no cause for alarm. This
place is full of strangers, and the landlord thinks you will be most
comfortable if you remain in this room a little longer until I see
Dominique."

"You will not be long. I am so impatient to know all--to see him if I
may."

"I will make all the haste I can," and with these words the old man
left the room.

When Lionel Crawford entered the injured man's room the latter was
prepared to see him, as word had been sent up before that Crawford was
coming.

"It was exceedingly kind of you to come, Mr. Crawford," said the
wounded man; "but, in the name of all that is mysterious, how did you
find out I was hurt, or are you here merely by some extraordinary
coincidence?"

"Let us not waste time now," said the old man, "with idle matters. I
am in a hurry. By a mere accident, which I will explain to you later,
I found out you were ill. I lost no time in coming, as, for several
reasons, I was anxious to see you."

"I suppose," said Lavirotte, "you heard something of what has occurred
since you came to this place?"

"I will be candid with you," said Crawford, "and tell you all I
heard."

When he had finished, he said: "Is it true in substance?"

The prostrate man admitted it was true in substance, and went on to
explain:

"I will tell you a little more about it than you seem to have heard,
and what I am going to tell you will lessen me a good deal in your
regard, for it will show you that the wind is constant compared to me.
It is true I was engaged to someone in London. It is true that while I
was engaged I fell in love with Miss Creagh. She would not have me.
She accepted my dearest friend, Eugene O'Donnell, and in a moment of
absolute madness I tried to take his life. He has forgiven me. We are
friends again, and now I have only one great fear. It is that what has
occurred may come to the ears of the girl I am engaged to in London,
and so prejudice me in her opinion. For, you see, when I proposed to
her she had a fortune of five thousand pounds, and now she has lost
all that fortune in the terrible crash of Vernon and Son. If she heard
of all this, it might make her think--in fact, it would look like
it--that I made love to her when she had a fortune, and gave her up as
soon as I found it swept away."

"So that," said the other anxiously, "if you were up and about once
more, and were free to travel, you would go to London, and, if you
were in a position to do so, marry Miss Harrington."

"That," said Lavirotte eagerly, "is the only thing I could do which
would atone to her in any way for my vile fickleness. It would, at the
same time, prove to my dear friend, O'Donnell, that I had not only
abandoned all my pretensions to Miss Creagh, but that by marrying and
going to London I had put a final barrier between myself and her, and
gone into voluntary exile as a punishment for my crime. But, you see,
as to marrying at present, that is completely out of the question. I
was too poor before this affair, and now the whole town will turn
against me, and I shall be obliged to leave the place. There will be
no getting a crust for me here now."

"But," said the old man, enthusiastically, "we must be very near our
great fortune now. I work day and night, night and day. By day in the
pit, by night on the top of the tower. I cannot be far off now.
Another six months and I surely must reach the chests in which the
great treasure is hidden." His voice had fallen to a whisper, and the
intense excitement with which he contemplated his final triumph had
caused the sweat to break out upon his forehead. He grasped the
counterpane convulsively. He could scarcely breathe. This was the
first time for years he had spoken of the matter. It was the second
time in all his life. "You shall be rich," he said. "And I shall be
rich. I have tried over and over again to estimate what may be the
value of that hoard, and the more I think of it the greater, I am
persuaded, it must be. At first I thought two hundred thousand pounds
might be the outside limit. But the more I read the more it grew,
until at last I have come to the conclusion that it must be somewhere
between a million and a million and a half."

The excitement of the old man was intense. His eyes were fixed, his
attitude and manner that of one fascinated by some glorious vision.
The splendour of the image he had conjured up drew him wholly away
from the present time and his surroundings. He had forgotten
Lavirotte, his own long journey, Dora, everything but the one colossal
figure of wealth triumphant gleaming before his mental vision.

The wounded man shook his head sadly and slowly on his pillow.

"If I am to wait, Mr. Crawford," said he, dreamily, "until we reach
the goal at which you aim, I greatly fear I must starve. This illness
will exhaust all the money I have. Popular opinion will drive me from
this town. I see nothing before me but ruin."

The words seemed to recall the old man to the immediate circumstances
of his position, but he did not clearly recover all he had said to
Lavirotte before. "All my money is not yet gone. Does no means suggest
itself to you of putting a little capital to some advantage? I don't
think you can hope for much from your present occupation. Without any
danger to our great project I could, I think, find a few hundred
pounds if they would be of any permanent use to you."

"A little while ago," said Lavirotte, in a melancholy tone, "I thought
if I could get a few hundred pounds I should be able to put it to very
profitable use. I have a voice, if this accident has not taken it
away, and all my friends said that if I could devote a couple of years
exclusively to its cultivation, I might succeed as a singer."

"You are not yet too old," said the other, with interest. "Take the
money and try the experiment."

"But I can have no excuse for taking from you money which I may never
be able to repay."

"You want no excuse," said Lionel Crawford, catching the injured man's
hand. "Why should I not help the future husband of my grandchild?"

"Your grandchild!" cried Lavirotte, in astonishment. "Who is she?"

"Dora Harrington."



                            CHAPTER XXIV.


This announcement of Lionel Crawford head an electrical effect upon
Dominique Lavirotte. Notwithstanding Dr. O'Malley's strict orders to
the contrary, the Frenchman sat bolt upright in the bed, looking
ghastly in his bandages, and stared at the old man.

"_You_, Dora's grandfather!" he cried. His eyes starting in their
sockets, and bloodless lips remaining open when he had spoken. "_You_,
Dora's grandfather! You are telling me a hideous lie. For what purpose
are you telling me this hideous lie?"

"Hush!" cried the old man, alarmed lest Lavirotte in his excitement
should make allusion in similarly loud tones to his great secret. "You
must not excite yourself. Someone may hear you, and then how should we
be?"

Lavirotte stared still, but uttered no word. The power of speech was
taken from him by the nature of the statement made by the other man.
Had this dark-visaged ogre come here to worm the history of his
perfidy to Dora from him, in order to be avenged on him out of a
confession from his own mouth? Was this man about to add to his mental
tortures a storm of intolerable abuse, or, taking advantage of his
helpless state, finish the work which the night of that encounter had
left undone?

"You seem to misunderstand my intention altogether. I assure you all I
have said and have to say is for your good, for our good, for the good
of our great object." Like all other men who have ever been possessed
by the idea of discovering hidden treasure, all pursuits and
considerations seemed of comparatively little moment compared with the
thought which possessed him. Like all other such men, he dreaded more
than anything else the chance that his secret might become known to
anyone not absolutely essential to success.

Lavirotte fell back, relieved and exhausted. There was no mistaking
the wild earnestness of this strange-eyed enthusiast. "Go on," he said
faintly.

"There can be nothing simpler or, I think, better, than I suggest,"
continued Lionel Crawford. "I cannot say, I do not know, how long yet
it may take me to get down to where the plate and jewels lie buried.
It may be a year, it may be more or less, six months at least, and not
farther off than a year-and-a-half. You are, unfortunately, sceptical
of the existence of any such treasure. I am as sure it is there as
though I myself had buried it."

"Why not then use the money you speak of in employing men to dig for
it under your superintendence?" asked Lavirotte, peevishly.

"Do not talk so loud." Lavirotte had, because of his weakness, spoken
almost in a whisper. "Do not talk such nonsense. Employ men to dig,
and have the whole thing town-talk in twenty-four hours! Let a lot of
mere day labourers within the magic spell, within touch of the thing I
have brooded over and kept secretly apart from all the rest of the
world for years and years! What profanation! I would rather forego all
hope of ever enjoying final triumph than let the shrine of my dreams
be defiled by unsympathetic hands!"

The old man was once again back in dreamland, and unconscious that the
present had any real existence, save that it was the roadway to the
future.

"But if there is any likelihood of long delay in--in finding this
treasure" (Lavirotte believed his visitor would come on the chests of
precious articles belonging to the great Lord Tuscar on the same day
that someone else found the philosopher's stone), "you will want all
the money you have, and cannot afford to give it to me for the purpose
of spending it on a speculation which may be as likely to succeed
as----," he was about to say "your own," but substituted, "the search
for the North Pole. It seems to me that there is no earthly use in my
even thinking of such a thing. I am beaten by fate, and the best thing
I can do is to give in."

This speech instantly recalled the old man to the subject in hand
and the immediate surroundings of the case. Apart from his ruling
passion--the hidden gold and stones--he was simple, almost childlike.
But anything which touched his darling project roused up in him a
fiery spirit of intelligence no one under ordinary circumstances could
anticipate.

"No, no!" cried he. "You must not even think of giving in. You must
make up your mind to succeed. You must succeed, not only for your own
sake, but for the sake of Dora as well."

A faint smile came over Lavirotte's face. "Tell me more. Tell me more.
You give me hope. You make me aspire." The peevishness was fading out
of Lavirotte's manner and face. "It may be possible for me to redeem
my character and my credit yet."

"Of course it is quite possible, quite easy for you to do so. There is
not the least difficulty about the matter. Is it a bargain?"

After a little more talk it was arranged that Lavirotte should take
the money as an advance on his share of the great Tuscar hoard.

"And now," said Lavirotte, "dear Mr. Crawford, don't you think that in
this matter of making love to one girl while I was engaged to another,
I deserved the very severest instead of the most merciful treatment at
your hands?"

"Well," said the old man, "that's all past and gone now, and we all
grow wiser as we grow older. It will, I suppose, be some days before
you are up and about again. The landlord of this place has been very
wise, and by his aid I have been able to keep all knowledge of the
circumstances of your case from Dora. There is no need why she should
hear anything about it now, and as you are on the way to recovery, and
we need not be anxious about your health, I fancy the best thing we
can do is to get her away as quickly as possible from this. What do
you think?"

"I don't know," said Lavirotte, gloomily. "You see, if she does not
hear the truth now it will be like practising another deceit upon her.
I shall have to act a part, and not a very creditable one."

Crawford became uneasy. He knew too little of Dora to be able to judge
how she would receive the whole story, and it seemed now to him a
matter of the first importance that he should lose no possible hold of
Lavirotte. "You see," said he, "she will be shocked to learn that you
have been hurt in an encounter, and are not ill in a natural way as
she supposes. Then you will have to explain almost everything, and it
might be better that portion of the explanation should be postponed."

Lavirotte moved restlessly. "It is very difficult," he said. "I own it
is very difficult. One hardly can know what to do. I want to spare
her, of course, if I can; and I want to put myself right with her if I
can."

"Then," said the old man, with a sudden gleam of intelligence in his
eyes, "let mercy for her prevail. You see you have been in fault.
Suffer your own explanation to lie over for the present in order to
spare her feelings. Later on you can put yourself right with her."

Lavirotte sighed, and then asked, languidly:

"What do you propose?"

"That I should take her back with me to London at once, telling her
that you are not allowed to see her in your present state of health;
but that immediately on your recovery you will follow us to London,
and that, in the meantime, I will take care of her."

"Perhaps, after all," said the injured man, "that is the best plan."
Now that the prospect of an immediate meeting between him and Dora
grew dim, he lost interest in the conversation, and the excitement of
anticipation being withdrawn, the weakness of his condition asserted
itself.

After some more talk, it was finally agreed between the two men that
Lionel Crawford's suggestion should be carried out. Then it became the
duty of the latter to inform Dora of this decision.

He found the girl in a state of the greatest excitement and anxiety.
"Oh!" she cried, "I thought you would never come. May I not see him
now?"

The old man took her by the hands and led her back to the seat she had
risen from on his entrance. "My dear child," he said, "there is not
the least cause for your anxiety about Dominique's health. He is
progressing most favourably. But it would be exceedingly unwise that
he should see you now."

"But you said I might see him. You promised I might see him!"

"Since I told you so I have been with him and learned more of his
case. Although he is most anxious to see you, he is persuaded that
doing so would be injurious now. He will be all right in a few days.
We have talked the whole matter over. I intend assisting him to a much
better position than he now holds. I am authorised by him to make all
preparations for your marriage."

The young girl coloured, partly by surprise and partly by bashfulness.

Lionel Crawford saw that these words had made an impression favourable
to his views. "If we want to get him well and make him happy soon," he
continued, "he and I agree that the best thing to be done is that you
and I should instantly set out for London."

"But it is very hard to have to go without seeing him," said the girl,
confused by the new and unexpected turn affairs had taken, and elated
by the assurance that the difficulties of her lover's worldly position
were at an end, and that when next they met it would be to part no
more.

The old man saw that he had carried his point. He rose briskly, and
said: "The sooner we are off the better. There is no use in our
staying here an hour. Being so near him when you may not see him would
only add to your uncomfortableness. I will go and see at once how and
when we are to get back. Wait for me here."

As he reached the bar, he found two young men there. One was in the
employment of the railway at Rathclare, the other in the post-office
of that town. Their backs were towards him, and they did not hear him
entering the room.

"Maher told me," said the Railway, "that an old man and a young girl
have come to see Lavirotte. That's the girl, no doubt, he made love to
in London. Maher wouldn't tell me their names; but I'll find out all
about them when I get to London."

"You may not find it so easy, my young man," thought Lionel Crawford.
"I have kept a secret for years."



                             CHAPTER XXV.


It was a sore disappointment to the town of Glengowra when it found
that its two interesting visitors had left, and left suddenly; having
had, as far as current accounts went, no communication whatever with
anyone in the place but the landlord of the hotel and Lavirotte,
neither of whom would give any information as to the strangers or
their business.

It was not, of course, until the next day that it became generally
known two strangers had arrived and gone away. Kempston, the fussy
little magistrate, said it was a shame, a part of a scandalous plot to
defeat justice, and that someone or other ought to be punished all the
more severely on this account.

The police became more gloomy and suspicious, and silent, and the
general townsfolk, visitors included, felt that they had been robbed
of an exciting item in the programme of crime.

Dr. O'Malley was no exception to the general protest, but he took a
rather different view of it. "I am told," he said to Lavirotte, "that
two highly mysterious and attractive strangers arrived last night. An
old man, attractive, because venerable, and all that. A young girl, a
seraph, a sylph, a miracle of beauty, attractive because of her
loveliness. The old man has an interview with Maher. The old man has
an interview with you. The two slope. Let us say, for argument sake,
'Confound the old man, but what about the nightingale, the bride of
Abydos, the seraph?' Here am I, Dr. Thomas O'Malley, one of the lights
of my profession, and a man who may at any time be called into
consultation at the bedside of Royalty, and yet I am not permitted to
be fascinated. You know, Lavirotte, I am not in the least curious, but
who was this goddess, and why was I not permitted to see her?"

Lavirotte raised his hand and let it fall on the counterpane with a
gesture of deprecation. "Even I was not permitted to see her,
O'Malley."

"But all those who did see her say she was adorable, divine. You arch
hypocrite, you know all about her, and will not speak. At this moment
there may be a telegram awaiting me at home, announcing that I have
been created a baronet. How, in heaven's name, am I to get on without
a Lady O'Malley? And once I am a baronet, a man of my appearance,
parts, and position would be so assailed by ambitious and designing
spinsters, that I should be compelled, in sheer self-defence, and in
order to prevent myself committing bigamy, to turn my back upon the
whole brood. What spite have you, Lavirotte, against this dark-eyed
wonder, that you would not give her a chance of becoming Lady
O'Malley?"

Lavirotte affected to be languid, and said: "I really cannot give you
any information, and you said I was not to talk much."

"I'll take very good care you do not talk much while _I_ am present.
_I_ never let anyone talk too much in my presence."

"Look here, O'Malley," said the invalid, "I really must ask you to let
me alone on this subject. I'm not equal to it just at present."

"I know, my dear fellow. I won't worry you. I'm the least curious man
in the world. As your medical adviser, I would recommend you, with a
view to relieving your mind, to tell me all about this matter. But, as
your friend, I would advise you to tell me nothing at all of it,
unless you wish it all over the town in an hour."

The busy little doctor left and proceeded to the room of the other
patient. Here he found Mrs. Creagh with O'Donnell. She had insisted
upon dividing the work of nursing with her daughter, and made the girl
go home and lie down for some hours.

Under the circumstances of Mr. O'Donnell's business difficulties, his
wife did not dare to leave him. She had paid a flying visit the
morning after the encounter, and gone back to Rathclare the following
day. After the position in which her husband had been found that
night, she did not dare to leave him for an hour. Like a brave woman
she faced all the world for his sake, and although no one blamed him
for the ruin which had overtaken him, the pair were pitied
universally, and pity is harder to bear than blame.

The doctor found his second patient doing remarkably well; in fact,
much better than could be expected. Of course, Mrs. and Miss Creagh
had been cautioned, with all the others who might visit the sick room,
to say nothing of the Vernon disaster.

"Let me see," said the cheery little man; "let me see. I think you
said your wedding was fixed for a month after the accident. Well, if
you don't want to be all right until a month, I'll have to give you
some powerful medicine to keep you back. It's amazing, ma'am," he
said, turning to Mrs. Creagh, who sat smiling pleasantly at the
bedside. She was a plump, fair, good-looking woman, between fifty and
sixty, with a genial, round face, and a gracious, cordial manner,
which are better in a sick room than all the medicines in the
Pharmacop[oe]ia. "It is amazing, ma'am, how these young men will get
well in spite of us doctors. We can generally manage to polish off the
old people in a handsome, becoming, and professional way; but these
young people are dead against us--or alive against us, what's worse.
Whenever, Mrs. Creagh, you hear of a doctor dying of a broken heart,
it is _always_--mind, I say _always_--because of the stubbornness of
the young people. Ordinary men die of broken hearts because of love,
or business, or something of that kind; but when a patient defies
prussic acid, nux vomica, or aqua pura, it is all up with one of our
profession."

"By-the-way, O'Malley," said O'Donnell, "have you got a couple of
hours to spare to-day?"

"My dear fellow, pending the arrival of the official documents
appointing me Surgeon-in-ordinary to the Queen, I can spare you a
couple of hours."

"Then I'd be very much obliged to you," said O'Donnell, "if you'd run
into Rathclare and see the old people. I am very anxious about them.
I know the governor always has his hands full of business, and that
my mother does not wish to be away from him, but I cannot help
wondering why neither of them has come out. I am greatly afraid there
must be something the matter with the governor. Of course Mrs. Creagh
or Nellie writes twice a day, and we hear once a day; but I can't make
out how neither of them has come here."

"I'm sure your father is in excellent health," said O'Malley; "but if
it will relieve your mind in the slightest degree, I shall go in by
the next train and come out with news."

O'Malley went straight to the railway station and took the first train
leaving Glengowra for Rathclare. He of course knew, or guessed, why it
was neither father nor mother came to visit the son; but under the
circumstances it was best to humour Eugene and see Mr. and Mrs.
O'Donnell.

He found the old couple in the small library behind the dining-room.
The window of this looked into the garden in the rear, and so was
shielded from prying eyes.

"Dr. O'Malley," cried the woman, rising to her feet, "have they been
writing me lies? Is he worse?"

The old man was sitting at the table, on which lay a few open ledgers.
In his hand he held a quill pen, with which he was making,
tremorously, figures on a large sheet of ruled paper. At his wife's
words he dropped the pen on the paper and looked up. Then, hearing the
noise of the pen fall, he looked down again, and cried: "Confound it,
I have blotted the sheet." At that moment the traditions of a lifetime
of business were all upon him. He stood in the centre of the ruins of
his beloved city, laid low by earthquake; the fiery heat of all his
years of commercial toil were focussed on him then.

He was making out _his bankrupt sheet_.

The doctor replied instantly, taking no notice of what the old man had
said:

"On the contrary, Mrs. O'Donnell, I am come to tell you, thinking you
would be glad to hear it by word of mouth from me, that your son is
getting on infinitely better than I had ever dared to hope. You may
make your mind quite easy that he will be up and about sooner than we
thought at the best."

The woman threw herself into a chair and burst into tears.

"Mary," said the husband, looking at her in perplexity as he sopped up
the ink with a piece of blotting-paper, "I was so busy I did not hear.
What did he say?"

"He said that all is well at Glengowra," said the woman, through her
sobs.

"He means, Mary," said the old man, "that Eugene is dead."

She dried her eyes, ceased her sobs, and looked up.

"No, James, no. He said Eugene is better--getting on as well as can be
expected, and that he will soon be up and about once more."

The father put down his pen, leaned back in his chair, covered his
face with his hands, and said in a feeble, tremulous voice: "It would
be better if my boy was dead."

Mrs. O'Donnell made a gesture of silence and caution to the doctor.
Then she rose and beckoned the latter to follow her out of the room.
When they were in the hall she said: "The shock, the business shock,
has been too much for his brain, I fear. Ever since that awful night
they found him in the strong-room with the revolver I am in dread if I
leave him for even a minute. I must go now. God bless you for coming.
Good-bye. Be good to my boy."

That evening, when O'Malley called to see Lavirotte, he told him the
scene he had witnessed that day in the library at O'Donnell's.

All at once the Frenchman became strangely excited. He sat up in the
bed, and cried out: "I have it, O'Malley; I have it. I have done a
great wrong to those people, but I think I see my way to setting it
right again."

"Lie down, you maniac," said the doctor, pushing him softly back. "Do
you want to burst your bandages, or bring on fever? What do you mean?"

"Mean!" cried the other. "I mean to sell my last shirt rather than
that Eugene's father should come to ruin."

"Keep quiet," said the doctor. "Keep quiet, or you will surely bring
on delirium."

"I have the means of doing it," cried Lavirotte, fiercely, "and I will
do it."

By this time O'Malley was bathing the injured man's head copiously.
"If he gets delirium," thought the doctor, "it's all up with him."

"I see the money," cried Lavirotte, excitedly shaking his arms in the
air. "Half a million if it's a penny! That will clear James O'Donnell,
the noble, honourable James O'Donnell, the father of my best, my
dearest friend Eugene. Come here, Eugene, and take it, every
sovereign, every sou. It is all yours. Take it, my boy; clear the old
man, marry Nellie, and God bless you and her, and then the devil may
have me if he will only have the goodness to wait so long."

"Delirium," said the doctor, "has set in, and he will die."



                            CHAPTER XXVI.


It was late that evening when O'Malley left Lavirotte. The doctor gave
instructions that if the delirium increased he was to be called. In
the case of the Frenchman, two things puzzled the energetic little
doctor. Although unquestionably the patient was raving mad, his pulse
was normal, and his skin moist.

When the nurse came up to the sick room, she could find no sign
whatever of delirium. Lavirotte seemed as calm and collected as any
judge on the bench. He asked was the doctor gone, and receiving an
answer in the affirmative, said to the nurse: "Bring me a pencil and
some paper. I want to write a couple of short notes."

"Are you not afraid it would be too much for you, sir?" remonstrated
the nurse.

"No, no," said the other, decisively. "There is something on my mind,
and I cannot sleep unless I get rid of it, so the sooner you get me
what I want the better."

The woman left the room, and in a few moments returned with what he
required. Then, on the back of a book, he wrote the two following
notes:


"My Dear Mr. Crawford,

"Since I saw you last I have thought of a matter which makes it of
vital consequence we should not lose an hour in realising your great
hope. I therefore beg of you to do all you can in furtherance of the
scheme. Let me hear from you by return of post. The moment I am able
to move I shall follow you to London.

"Give my dearest love to Dora; say I am very sorry they would not let
me see her when she was so near to me, and that to-morrow I will write
her as long a letter as my strength will allow.

              "Yours, most devotedly,

                   "Dominique Lavirotte."


The second was to this effect:


"Dear Mr. O'Donnell,

"I am too weak to write you a long letter. I hope you will take the
will for the deed. I cannot tell you how sorry I am for all that has
lately occurred, and how deeply I sympathise with you in the business
troubles which, because of no fault of your own, have come upon you.

"You know, of course, that Eugene and I are the greatest friends on
earth. From news which I received to-day, and which I had little
expectation of ever hearing, I have reason, good reason, to hope that
within a very short time I am likely to come into possession of an
enormous fortune--a fortune so large that it will make me one of the
richest men in the kingdom. You are a man of business. To be precise,
I expect about half a million. Need I tell you what my first, my
greatest pleasure, will be in this? It will be to place the whole of
it absolutely at the disposal of my best friend's father, so that he
may be led carefully out of the present storm into the calm waters of
prosperous trade, in which his honour and his industry have already
made his name a household word in Ireland.

"This note has run out much longer than I expected. Good-night, my
dear Mr. O'Donnell. God bless you.

              "Dominique Lavirotte."


When he had finished his two letters he enclosed them in envelopes,
directing the latter first.

Then suddenly he thought of what at first sight seemed an insuperable
difficulty.

How was he to address Crawford's letter? If he wrote on the envelope,
"St. Prisca's Tower, Porter Street," there was little doubt that in
due time the letter would be returned to him through the dead-letter
office.

Yet St. Prisca's Tower was the only address he knew for Crawford in
London. How stupid it was of him not to have asked for an address. At
the time, he had thought Dora or the old man should write to him
first. Since they had left, this idea had occurred to him, and now he
felt himself hopeless of communicating it to Crawford for the present.

No postman would in his senses think of knocking at the massive door
of that solitary tower, and if a postman, touched with lunacy, did
knock with his knuckles, he would never receive a reply.

He was fairly beaten. In this matter every hour was of value, of the
highest value; and here he was paralysed by an unpardonable stupidity
of his own.

"Will you ask Mr. Maher," he said to the nurse, "if he would be good
enough to step this way? I want a word with him."

When the landlord entered, Lavirotte said:

"Mr. Crawford, who was here last night, left for London without giving
me his address. Can you think of any means by which I might be able to
find it out at once? The matter is of very great importance."

The landlord looked with a keen glance at the sallow face and bandaged
head of the prone foreigner. Before Crawford left, he had made a
confidant of Maher to the extent that all would yet be well between
Lavirotte and his grand-daughter, and he had bound Maher, as an
honourable man, to silence. He had, moreover, tried to persuade Maher
that Lavirotte might not be quite so black as circumstances
represented him. Still the other could not help regarding Lavirotte
with a feeling the reverse of cordial. There could, however, be no
harm, he thought, in helping Lavirotte in this matter. He said: "Mr.
Crawford came first-class."

"Yes."

"From Euston?"

"From Euston."

"Then telegraph to Euston, address Mr. Crawford, first-class passenger
Irish mail, Euston."

The difficulty was solved, and in a few minutes Lavirotte had
forwarded the telegram, asking to what address he should send a letter
to him in London. At the same time he posted his letter to Mr.
O'Donnell.

There was little or no chance of his receiving a reply that night, as
the Glengowra office would, in all likelihood, be shut before it could
be forwarded there.

Next morning the answer came:


"Address letter to the Cygnet Hotel, Porter Street, E.C."


Lavirotte's letter to Mr. O'Donnell was delivered the morning after it
was written. He put it aside as the work of a man not responsible for
his actions; and yet, since it contained the first suggestion that it
was possible his business might be saved, he felt a slight tenderness
towards it, as a man, whose powers are altogether small, out of
proportion to his ambition, feels a tenderness towards the one person
who believes in his strength.

Immediately after it became generally known that Vernon and Son had
stopped payment, Mr. O'Donnell had asked a few of his best friends to
come and advise him as to his position. He explained to them that as
far as the business in Rathclare was concerned, he was perfectly
solvent and capable of carrying it on, but that, as he understood the
affairs of Vernon and Son were in a desperate and disgraceful way, and
as the company was unlimited, he should be certainly ruined by the
"calls."

He would, he told them, be quite content to lose all the money he had
invested in Vernon and Son, if he might only keep on the Rathclare
business as it was going; but that, of course, he was liable to the
creditors of the bank up to the very last penny he had, and the
chances were a thousand to one that, when Vernon and Son were
completely wound up, he would find himself as poor as the poorest man
in the parish.

Then he asked what they would recommend him to do with respect to the
business.

They tried to persuade him that things were sure to turn out much
better than he anticipated, and they advised him to keep the business
running exactly as it now was.

He had adopted their advice, but his heart was no longer in his work,
and he wandered about the place which he had reared from the
foundation to the roof, and he looked at the trade which he had
created, with a faltering step and a lack-lustre eye.

The evening of the day he got Lavirotte's letter was that following
Dr. O'Malley's call. Mrs. O'Donnell had, in the few days between
Eugene's hurt and this, tried to induce the father to go out to
Glengowra and see their son. But he had declined, saying: "It would do
neither him nor me any good. I can be of no use whatever to him now,
after all my big promises to him. The boy's prospects are ruined, and,
of course, for the girl's sake, that marriage must be broken off."

This evening the mother felt more than ever anxious to see her son,
and she made a strong appeal to the old man to take the train and run
down to Glengowra for an hour.

"No," he said, wearily. "Let me be, let me be. The very sight of the
boy would be a reproach to me. He must see I was a fool to venture all
my money, all my credit, with Vernon and Son."

"Don't say that, James. You know he is the best and kindest son that
ever lived. Besides, don't you see, as I told you before, it has all
been kept from him?"

"Then it will be all the worse to hear him talk about his marriage and
his prospects. I could not stand it, Mary. I should go mad. I should
let it all out to him, and kill him. My poor boy!"

"Well," said the mother, "come down to Glengowra, and don't see him at
all. He need not know you are there. Come with me--just for company."
The poor woman was torn between devotion to her husband and affection
for her son. She durst not leave the old man alone at home, and her
heart was breaking to see her only son, her only child, the infinity
of her maternity.

At this suggestion of his wife's, that he might go to Glengowra
without seeing his son, the old man looked up.

"Wait a moment," he said, and lifted a paper-weight off some letters
of the morning. He took up Lavirotte's and read it over carefully once
more, then thrust it into his pocket, and said: "Very well, Mary. Come
along." He uttered these words more brightly and briskly than any he
had spoken since the great crash had come upon him.

When the old couple arrived at Glengowra, they went straight to the
hotel. The mother ascended to her son's room. The father sent his card
up to Lavirotte.

He was requested to walk upstairs.

When he entered the room Lavirotte asked the woman to retire.

"Mr. Lavirotte, I got your letter this morning, and I am extremely
obliged to you for your kind words and for your offer of such enormous
help. I most sincerely hope you may get your fortune; for, from all I
have heard from Eugene, no one in the world could deserve better. I
have come especially to thank you for your kind offer; but, of course,
Mr. Lavirotte, you know I could never accept it. I am a doomed man."

"You shall, you must accept it," cried the prostrate man,
energetically. "I should care no more for all the money in the world
than for a handful of pebbles on the beach below. With the money in my
possession, should I see my friends wanting it? Besides, the sum I am
to come into will be so great that even largely as you have suffered
through that bank, I shall be able to spare you what you want to make
good the breach, and still leave myself in absolute affluence."

The manner of the Frenchman was one of utter self-possession, and it
confounded Mr. O'Donnell to find one so apparently sane talking such
trash. "May I ask you," said the old man, "if it is a fair question,
from what source you expect to acquire this fortune?"

"I am under an oath of secrecy in the matter, and cannot tell you. But
since I have been hurt, the person who is working the affair for me,
or rather on our joint behalf, has paid me a visit, and assured me
there is not the least prospect of failure or miscarriage, and that at
the end of six, and certainly in less than eighteen months from this,
I should be in possession of my share, not less than half a million
sterling."

The figures six and eighteen months appealed to certain possible
exigencies in the mind of Mr. O'Donnell, and carried his mind away
from the main prospect of the consideration to the details.

"I suppose," he thought, "they will make the first 'calls' light, so
as to get all they can out of the poorer shareholders. Then they will
go on increasing the sums of the 'calls' as the poorer ones drop off,
and this they cannot do under a certain time. Of course, I can pay the
'calls' up to a certain point, but when they reach the end of the
poorer shareholders, and have to fall back on the five or six men of
large means, I shall certainly be ruined. But I do not think they can
reach the point at which I should be left absolutely penniless before
eighteen months."

Lavirotte and Mr. O'Donnell talked on for half-an-hour in the same
strain. The Frenchman was careful to adhere strictly to his vow to
Crawford, and yet to say such things to the merchant as in the end
convinced him there was at least something in the statements made by
his son's friend.

At last he looked at his watch, and saw there was no time to lose if
they would catch the last train to Rathclare.

After a cordial parting with the Frenchman he went down, and found his
wife waiting for him.

By this time both were radiant. One had firm faith in the recovery of
her son, the other full assurance of the salvation of his position.



                            CHAPTER XXVII.


Mr. O'Donnell got home that evening in remarkably good-humour.
Lavirotte had explained to him that his own hope of coming into this
money had been absolutely nothing until the visit from the man who was
working with him. So that here were two men who knew all about a
certain chance, believing thoroughly in it. Why should not he, a
third, who knew absolutely nothing about the matter, accept their
judgment?

What a splendid thing it would be if, after all, the firm which he had
created did succeed in weathering the storm!

He had said nothing to his wife about the matter on his way to the
station, in the train to Glengowra, or from the Glengowra station to
his own home. He thought he would preserve the good news--by this time
it had taken the substantial form of news in his mind--until they were
quietly seated in his little library, where many of the projects
leading to his fortune had been devised.

When at last he reached that haven, he found the writing-table
littered with the ledgers he had left upon it, and between the leaves
of one of these ledgers was the completed rough balance-sheet he had
made out.

Mrs. O'Donnell was astonished to find her husband in such good-humour.
She could in no way understand it, for he had not even seen their boy
or noticed the progress towards recovery he was making.

"The run has done you good, James," she said. "I told you it would.
Why, it has been as much to you as good news."

"I should think it has," he said; "in fact, Mary, I have heard the
very best news while I was in Glengowra. I have every reason to hope
we may be able to save the business, anyway."

"Thank God!" cried the woman devoutly. There was a tone of incredulity
in her voice. It was not easy to imagine that, after all the hideous
certainties of ruin they had been facing for days, there was any
prospect these certainties would melt away before doubts that might be
shaped into hopes.

They were now both seated in their accustomed easy-chairs. The old man
caught the arms of his firmly, as though he now saw no reason why it
should come under the hammer and pass away for ever from him.

"Yes," he said; and then he told her all that had passed between him
and Lavirotte, enjoining her to strict secrecy.

Then the wife lifted up her voice in praise of Lavirotte, and
thanksgiving for their great deliverance, and bargained with her
husband for one thing--namely, that she should be allowed to tell the
good news to Nellie. "For," said the mother, "she heard the bad news,
and bore it like a true-hearted woman! Of course if she was only to
think of him, she must have been very sorry to hear it, but when we
remember it affected herself too, it must have been harder still to
bear. Eugene never heard the bad news. It is only now fair she should
hear what Lavirotte promises."

It was there and then settled that the hopes aroused that evening
should be made known to Ellen Creagh.

Next day Mrs. O'Donnell found herself under no necessity of keeping
close to her husband, for he was not only not depressed and hopeless,
but active, cheerful, and full of projects for the future. So she went
early to Glengowra, and, having taken the girl aside, told her all.

Nellie clasped her hands in mute stupefaction, and when she did speak
at last, could say only: "Mr. Lavirotte! Mr. Lavirotte! Has he really
promised to do this, and do you think the thing is in his power? I
never felt more bewildered in all my life."

Yes, it was enough to make one think one was dreaming. This Lavirotte
had asked her to marry him. He had said her refusal would ruin him.
O'Donnell had asked her to marry him, and she had consented. Then this
Lavirotte had sought O'Donnell's life. In the struggle both had been
badly hurt. O'Donnell had forgiven Lavirotte. Upon this came the
absolute ruin of O'Donnell's father, and the consequent ruin of his
son also. By this commercial catastrophe the possibility of his
marrying her was indefinitely postponed, and at the very moment when
it might be supposed a man in Lavirotte's position, and of his
excitable temperament, would nourish hope anew of succeeding where he
had failed before with her, he offered to rescue the father from ruin,
and reinstate the whole family in affluence!

"It is incredible," she said, after a long pause. "I cannot believe it
possible."

"But it is true," said Eugene's mother. "Believe me, my dear, it is
true. My husband, after all his years and years in business, is not
likely to make a mistake or be misled in such matters."

"It may be true," said the girl, "but I cannot believe it."

All things were now going on well with everybody. The old merchant was
no longer in dread of bankruptcy. Lionel Crawford had got an
additional hold on Lavirotte. The two wounded men were progressing
rapidly towards perfect health. Lavirotte had forsworn his fickleness,
and declared himself devoted to Dora. The two men who had met in a
struggle for life had shaken hands by proxy, and sworn friendship
anew; and Nellie and Dora passed the happy days in the full assurance
of the devotion of their lovers, and the speedy approach of their
marriages.

The time went quickly by. Dr. O'Malley called regularly at the hotel,
and regularly reported favourably of the patients. Now Lavirotte wrote
a few lines every day to Dora, and she every day a long letter to him.
And every day came Nellie to sit a while with Eugene, and hear his
voice, and go away with strengthening consciousness that daily he grew
more like his own self. Once more Lionel Crawford was happy at his old
work, excavating at the base of the old tower with increased vigour,
and getting rid of the fruits of his toil with greater despatch.

Nothing, indeed, but good seemed to have come of that dark night's
work. It is true that the police were still a little bitter over their
disappointment, and that the townsfolk observed a more reserved
attitude towards those connected with that affair. But if those
chiefly concerned in the matter were content, the police and the
people might be dismal and disagreeable if they pleased.

In the town of Rathclare, besides Mr. and Mrs. O'Donnell, there was
another person greatly pleased with the turn things had taken. This
was Mr. John Cassidy, a gentleman of slight build, pale, small,
impertinent, pretty face, the nose of which turned up slightly. He had
an exquisitely fair moustache, an exquisitely fair imperial, and the
most exquisitely made clothes a man on a hundred pounds a year could
afford to wear in a provincial town in Ireland.

He had what he believed to be a very pretty English accent, although
he never had been out of Ireland. He wore a delicate yellow
watch-chain purely as an ornament, for its use had no existence. He
wore an eye-glass for ornament also. He had never been seen to smoke a
pipe, and never much more than the tenth part of a cigar at a time. He
was always scrupulously neat and consciously pretty, and spoke of the
whole female sex as "poor things," as though it grieved him to the
soul he could not make every woman alive absolutely happy by marrying
her. He really wasn't a scamp, and had no offensive accomplishments or
acquirements.

He had a ravenous curiosity, particularly in love affairs. How it came
to be that a man who devoted so much of his time to the courtship of
others, should have himself the time to break and cast away all female
hearts he encountered, no one could tell. It was the great prerogative
of his genius to be able to do so.

The chief source of his present amiable condition of mind was that he
found himself about to start in a few days for London, and that, by
way of an introduction to that vast place, he carried with him the
clue to a mysterious love affair in which he was not a principal, and
which he had sworn to follow up.

He had sworn to his friend of the Post Office that he would discover
what girl Lavirotte was sweet on in London before he had made love to
Nellie Creagh, and his efforts in such a case hitherto had seldom
failed. He had no heart and no tact, but instead of these a wonderful
power of going straight at the mark, and in a case of this kind
demanding of a woman point-blank: "Is it a fact that Mr. Lavirotte,
while engaged to you, asked Miss Creagh to marry him? I'm interested
in all subjects of this kind."

Mr. John Cassidy had up to this been employed in the head office of
the railway at Rathclare, and was now about to separate himself from
his dear friend, a clerk in the Post Office, and go to London, where
something better had offered, and where he should have, he hoped, for
the sake of womankind, a larger female audience to hearken to his
attractions, and where, moreover, he should have a very handsome
mystery of his own particular pattern to solve.



                           CHAPTER XXVIII.


The gloom of irreparable ruin had fallen on the house of Vernon. The
deeper its business affairs became investigated the more ghastly
appeared the inevitable finish.

At first people were doubtful as to whether the result of the failure
would be this or that or the other, in connection with Mr. Vernon's
social position. Now it seemed there was no longer any room for
speculation. Bankruptcy of the worst kind would be the end.

All at once a still more startling rumour got abroad. At first people
whispered it only in quiet places, and only to confidential friends.
Then gradually a murmur arose. Finally, within a month of the failure
of the bank, and before yet the accounts had been fully investigated,
people had been heard to say openly that William Vernon ought to be
made the object of a criminal prosecution and put in the dock.

The panic of fear which had kept people's mouths shut, upon this
suggestion, disappeared at once; and where there had been, a few hours
before, but hints and faint whispers, and timid words of acquiescence,
there was now a loud, clear, articulate demand for the impeachment of
William Vernon.

There was, on the day of the bank's failure, scarcely less talk of
that disaster than there was now of the passionate desire that this
fraudulent speculator should suffer at the hands of the law.

An evening paper hinted that steps of the kind ought to be taken at
once.

Next morning, Mr. William Vernon was not to be found. He had left
Dublin--Ireland--for some place unknown abroad--Mexico it was
supposed.

A few days after the flight of Vernon, the accountants, in whose hands
the bank affairs had been placed, made a report, and upon this report
was based the first call. It was not a heavy one. It ruined only a few
people, and drove only one man mad.

James O'Donnell met this call promptly and cheerfully. It did not
strain him in the least. He had put most of his savings into Vernon's
bank, but then he was a man of large prudence, and held a considerable
reserve of ready money. Indeed, after he had paid the first call he
had still at command what people in moderate circumstances would
consider a very large sum. When he got the acknowledgment from Dublin,
he showed it to his wife with a buoyant laugh, and said: "You see,
Mary, I am not yet quite a bankrupt. Up to this I have met every
engagement, this included, and, please God, I shall be able to meet
all."

Although it had been hoped that there would have been no delay to the
marriage of Eugene and Nellie, a variety of circumstances made it
desirable that a postponement of about a month should take place. In
the present posture of affairs it would have been impossible for Mr.
O'Donnell to settle money on his son; or, indeed, to give him anything
worth speaking of, beyond the salary he drew in connection with the
firm.

When Eugene had recovered sufficient strength to bear the shock, he
had been told of the misfortune which had overtaken his father in
business.

When he heard it he made little of it. He thought little of everything
except his approaching marriage. It was Nellie who broke the news to
him. She had been timid, fearful, as she approached the subject. She
had prepared the way by saying that all those people who were dear to
him were in good health and spirits, but that a certain unpleasant
thing had occurred--a very unpleasant thing--a terribly unpleasant
thing of a purely business nature; in fact, his father had lost a vast
sum of money--all his savings.

The young man looked grave, and said he was very sorry for the poor
old man; but that--as long as the business held they should be more
than comfortable, and that he was sure Nellie did not want riches such
as would be his if this misfortune had not arisen. What exactly had
happened?

She told him all.

He was serious, and said it was too bad--too hard on the governor, who
was the best of men.

In an interview later with his father, the latter told him that for
the present he was not in a position to make any settlement whatever,
but that if his son was contented to marry on his present salary,
there would be no opposition.

The son said he would be more than contented; that he had no
extravagant habits or expensive tastes, and that he and Nellie could
manage very well on the five hundred pounds a year his father allowed
him.

The old man said he had felt quite sure his son would be satisfied;
but what would Nellie say, in the face of former promises he, the
father, had made?

The young man laughed a strong, joyous, wholesome laugh, and told his
father that Nellie would marry him on a pound a week. "For you know,
sir," he said, "she is not used to luxuries. She does not want them,
and she is the most sensible, as she is the best, girl in the world."

Then Eugene's father told his son of what Lavirotte had promised.

"I am not surprised, father, to hear he has offered to help us. I
always told you he was true as steel." At the word steel he winced,
but recovered himself instantly. "People here don't like him, because
they can't understand his quick southern ways. But the longer you know
him the better you like him, and the more you'll trust him."

When Eugene spoke to Nellie on the subject of his father's
conversation with him, she confirmed his anticipations, and said: "You
know, Eugene, that five hundred pounds a year is a great deal more
than a girl like me could ever reasonably have hoped for. Why, it's a
small fortune to one who has been a poor governess, and who never knew
what it was to have even one hundred pounds a year."

He took her in his arms and kissed her, and called her his own true,
loyal darling, his best of girls, his wisest sweetheart, his only
sweetheart. "And if the worst comes to the worst, Nellie, even
supposing that the Lavirotte affair never turns up, you know I am
young and once more strong, and if we had to go to America, love, I
could hoe a field, or split rails, or conduct a car, or heave on a
winch, or get a crust for the two of us somehow; and if the two of us
mean, above all things, to be together, what are all other things to
us compared to our being together?"

She was of the same opinion, and so it was settled that at the end of
the month to which the marriage had been postponed, it should take
place as quietly as possible, but otherwise as though no trouble had
overtaken the house of O'Donnell.

By this time Lavirotte was established in London. Lionel Crawford had
taken lodgings for Dora in Charterhouse Square, and Lavirotte lived in
one of the streets leading from the Strand towards the river.

John Cassidy was now regularly installed in his London situation, and
had taken a genteel lodging in Bloomsbury. His fellow clerks did not,
as a rule, live so near the great centre of London. They had rooms in
Peckham, Islington, Kennington, and such ungenteel neighbourhoods.
But no man with any pretensions to be handsome, a gentleman, and a
lady-killer, could condescend to associate his name with such haunts
of rabble London as Peckham, Islington, and Kennington.

Up to this he had not been able to devote much time to what he was
pleased to call "the Lavirotte mystery." A variety of other matters
claimed his most careful attention.

On his arrival in London, he found that his coats, and collars, and
ties, and socks, although the very best that his money would allow him
to get in Rathclare, were not at all the right things for a man of his
antecedents in the matter of the fair sex. His clothes were, it is
true, equal if not superior to those worn by the mere common, ordinary
clerks with whom he was bound to associate, and whose coarse and
ungenteel ways he was for a portion of the day obliged to endure. But
then the clothes, which in Rathclare had been those of a man of
distinguished fashion, were, to his chagrin, in London no more than
those proper to a mere common clerk. This was a terrible revelation to
a sensitive soul.

Of course it could be remedied in the future; but how terribly the
fact reflected upon the past, and fancy the figure he should have made
in Rathclare if he, when there, had only known as much as he did now.
Imagine how ladies would have stared and admired if he had but
appeared in a costume such as he was now hastening to assume. Dainty
shoes, clocked socks, trousers that fitted the limb as the daintiest
of gloves fit the hands of the daintiest of duchesses, coat and
waistcoat which could only be put on before meals and when the lungs
were empty, collars and scarfs designed by Royal Academicians and
tenderly executed by tradespeople who might, if they would, have
written sartorial epics; such were the splendours now preparing for
his exquisite person.

Apart from the cares born of his tailor and outfitter, certain
other little matters had to be arranged about his room. A Japanese
letter-rack had to be purchased and hung up for the reception of his
prospective love-letters. Open work, china dishes of elegant hues,
although of cheap manufacture, had to be obtained and set forth for
the reception of rose-leaves, photographs, and cards. The portraits of
celebrated beauties had to be hung up, so that, should an acquaintance
drop into his room, he might have an opportunity of showing his
visitor the counterpart of his dearest friends.

His fellow-clerks were coarse enough to consider him a humbug. His
superiors at the office did not know whether he was an ass or not;
but the clerks and the superiors agreed that he had two priceless
virtues--he could tot all day long without making an error, and there
was not a spot of extraneous ink on any folio of his books.

By this time Lavirotte was thoroughly restored to health. Daily he
paid a visit to Dora. The course of their true love was running with
idyllic smoothness. No suitor could be more tender, enthusiastic,
constant-minded than he. Dora's life was one long daydream. Her former
solitary life in London now seemed to her like a dreary unreality,
forced upon her imagination merely that her present life might stand
out in glory against so gray and sad a background. Since Lavirotte
left London of old, the place had grown dull and dismal around her.
Now the whole city was bright and joyous once again. Instead of being
a vast chasm filled with unfamiliar things and unfriendly forms, and
dark with her inner solitude, the buildings now were full of vital
beauty, and the people of courteous friendliness. Although she looked
forward with pleasant anticipations to the time when she would not be
even temporarily separated from Dominique, she could not persuade
herself that the future would be more happy than the present. She
seemed to want nothing now beyond just a little more of his society.

Meanwhile Lavirotte had availed himself of Lionel Crawford's offer and
taken the money, and was getting lessons. But, in addition to these,
he was now busy in another way. The idea of the treasure mastered
him as completely as it had the old man. He seemed to take but a
second-rate interest in his own affairs, and every hour he could spare
from the lessons and Dora was devoted to helping Crawford in his work
at St. Prisca's Tower.

He had said to Crawford: "There is no knowing when these poor
O'Donnells will want the money. You said we should have it in six to
eighteen months. We must have it sooner, much sooner, as soon as ever
we possibly can."

And so he bent himself to the work as he did to any other work he took
in hand--wholly, passionately, fiercely. The old man said he would
kill himself. He swore he did not care so long as he might succeed.

Now that he had entered fully into the scheme of Crawford, and was
actively helping him, he, too, felt the wild pleasure of the search;
the inexorable determination of not sharing the secret with anyone.
No; it was their secret, and they two, unassisted by anyone who might
betray them, should alone reach the golden goal.

So absorbed was he in the work at the tower that he could think of
little else, and felt rather put out when one morning he received a
letter from Eugene O'Donnell, saying that he and Nellie were to be
married on Wednesday next week, and asking him to come over a day or
two beforehand, as became a best man.

About this time Mr. John Cassidy found himself arrayed according to
his taste, with his room in order for the reception of anyone he might
care to ask in, and with his hands free to follow up the Lavirotte
mystery.



                            CHAPTER XXIX.


Nothing could have been quieter than the marriage at Rathclare. There
was no display of any kind, no wedding-breakfast, no rejoicings. The
men employed by Mr. O'Donnell had proposed subscribing and giving the
bride a present, until they were told that anything of the kind would
be inopportune. The presents which private friends sent were, out of
respect to the few people who called, set forth in the dining-room.
But, upon the whole, neither before nor after the marriage, was there
anything connected with it which could give the people of Rathclare
the least pretence for uncharitableness.

The bride and bridegroom drove away from the house early in the
afternoon, with the intention of spending a short time on the
Continent, and then returning to Rathclare.

When they had gone, not more than half-a-dozen guests remained at
O'Donnell's. Among these was Lavirotte, who had promised to stay with
the old folk that night. There was a very quiet dinner, and before one
o'clock the old man and Lavirotte found themselves alone in the
dining-room.

"I have been waiting for this opportunity, sir," said the Frenchman,
"when we should be quiet and alone, with no chance of interruption, in
order that I might speak to you about the matter which is nearest my
heart."

The old man looked at Lavirotte gratefully, and said: "You are
alluding to the property you spoke to me of?"

"Yes," said Lavirotte. "I am still in no position to talk freely of
the matter; but this much I can tell you, that since I saw you last I
have made it my business to ascertain as closely as possible our
chances of success."

"And they are?" said O'Donnell, leaning forward and looking at his
guest eagerly.

"Excellent, most excellent. Nothing could be better. Ever since I left
Glengowra I have devoted all my time to their furtherance, and I have
come to the conclusion that, although I cannot now say with certainty
the exact amount, no more than a few months need pass before you shall
be in command of any sum of money you may require."

"Thank God!" cried the old man, throwing himself back in his chair,
clasping his hands, and looking upwards. "You do not know what a
blessed relief your words are to me; for no longer ago than this
morning I had news from Dublin to the effect that there is to be
another and an immediate call, and that this will be at least double
the former one."

"How soon is this likely to come upon you? How soon shall you want the
money for this call?"

"Within a few weeks. What distresses me most of all is other news
which accompanies what I have already told you, to the effect that
although the first demand had been very freely met, the general
impression, the conviction, was that the second demand would be met by
very few indeed in full, and that all of those who met it in part, and
many of those who met it in full, would be absolutely ruined."

"I do not exactly know the full meaning of what you tell me," said
Lavirotte. "Will you explain?"

"Nothing is simpler. Let us say a man held one one-hundred pound
share. When the bank stopped, having lost all its capital and a vast
quantity of the money lent to it and deposited in it, this man's
hundred pounds was then not only gone, but the rest of his fortune
also (the bank being unlimited) if the whole of his fortune was
necessary to pay the last penny to the lenders and depositors."

"That's very hard," said Lavirotte.

"Very hard--cruel. Now, the first call, let us say of fifty pounds,
means that the man who held the one-hundred pound share is called upon
to pay fifty pounds towards indemnifying the depositors and lenders."

"So that if the man pays the fifty he loses a hundred and fifty?"

"Exactly. Now, if the second call is double the first, he will, when
he has paid that----"

"He will have lost two hundred and fifty pounds on his original
hundred pound speculation."

"Quite so. You see that. Let us say nine out of ten can pay the fifty
pounds, but not more than six out of ten can pay the hundred. Now, my
correspondent in Dublin gives me to understand that nothing like six
out of ten will be able to meet the second call, and that, in fact,
the solvent shareholders after the second call will be only rich men;
so that there will be no need for proceeding further gradually, and,
in all likelihood, the third call will be for a very large sum indeed
per share, two hundred and fifty, five hundred, or a thousand pounds
perhaps."

"Mr. O'Donnell, you will not consider me impertinent if I ask you, in
strict confidence, whether you think you will be able to pay this
second call?"

"Yes, I think I shall be able to pay the second call, but as far as I
can see it will drain me to the utmost. My credit is now, of course,
gone, and I am obliged to pay cash, so that after paying the hundred
pound call I shall have barely sufficient capital to keep the business
going. The business consists, of course, of the good-will, the plant,
the stock, and the debts. All this put together would not go nearly
meeting a third call of any such magnitude as I have spoken of."

"And the result of that would be to you?"

"That I should be a bankrupt and a pauper."

"Well," said Lavirotte, going over and taking the old man by the hand,
"meet the second at all hazards." He drew himself up then to his full
height, raised his right hand to heaven, saying: "And I swear to you,
Mr. O'Donnell, that I will answer for the third."

The merchant rose from his chair and took his hand. "There is no use
in attempting to thank a man for a service such as you promise. I will
not try to say anything; I could not if I would."

"Be seated, sir, I beg you, be seated. Think no more of the matter.
Rely on me. Leave the rest to me. And now that we have settled the
matter" (both men had sat down) "I wish you to answer me a question
which affects a friend of mine, and is connected with Vernon's bank.
My friend is a minor. Her affairs were in the hands of trustees. Her
trustees--or, I believe, trustee, more accurately--invested the money
in Vernon's bank, shares I presume. Now, my friend has heard nothing
from the bank about these calls. How is that?"

"She has nothing to do with the matter. She has lost all her money."

"Yes; but what about the calls?"

"The trustee has to pay those."

"Out of his own pocket?"

"Yes, out of his own pocket."

"Supposing him to be an honest man, and that he did everything for the
best?"

"Supposing him to be an honest man, and that he did everything for the
best."

"What an infamous injustice! What an infamous injustice to a
well-meaning, honest man!"

"An infamous injustice you may say, supposing the man to be honest. He
gets your friend's money on trust to invest. Here is a highly
respectable banking firm which will pay him, according to the market
value of its shares, six or seven per cent. He is anxious his ward
should have the most interest he can safely get for her money. He
invests, and is ruined."

Lavirotte started to his feet, threw his arms above his head wildly,
and, walking up and down the room, excitedly cried: "By heavens, Mr.
O'Donnell, he shall not be ruined, I will see that he shall not be
ruined. He did me a bad turn once, or rather he refused to do me a
good one when he could; but I shall protect him against this execrable
injustice, this infamous law."

Mr. O'Donnell did not feel himself justified in asking any questions,
and there was no further conversation of any interest that night.

Next morning Lavirotte set off for London, arrived in due time, called
upon Dora first, and related to her all the interesting particulars of
the marriage.

She had but a reflected interest in the bride and bridegroom, and,
therefore, the subject was soon exhausted.

Before this he had, of course, told her of the large fortune into
which he hoped to come soon. They had, upon one or two occasions,
talked over the loss of her money; but he had always tossed the matter
to the winds as of no consequence when confronted with the mighty
results he was expecting. Now he had a matter of another kind to speak
about.

He asked her pointedly, elaborately, how upon the whole Kempston had
behaved towards her.

She said that no one could have been more kind and considerate, and
that the only occasion upon which she had any reason to complain of
him, was when he refused to let Lavirotte have the money or her to
marry him.

Then Lavirotte informed her that not only was her money swallowed up
in the Vernon whirlpool, but that Kempston, her trustee, would
inevitably be ruined owing to his connection with her and it.

The girl was horrified.

Then Lavirotte told her that he had sworn this man should not be
ruined, and that he meant to keep his oath.

She clung to him and kissed him, and praised him with all the dearest
words of her heart, for his noble, his sublime generosity, and after
some time he left her to see Crawford.

He found the old man more busy, more energetic, more enthusiastic,
more hopeful than ever.

Lavirotte told him that since he had seen him last additional reason
had arisen for haste. He did not go into detail. He merely said that
business called him hence for a few hours; but that on his return he
would throw into the work twice the energy he had previously
displayed.

"Then," said the old man, "you are digging at once to find a treasure
and a grave."

"But in what a glorious cause!" cried Lavirotte, in an excited voice.
"The cause of honour, of justice, of reparation. When I have secured
my dear friends from the disaster which now threatens them, and when I
have paid back the prudent parsimony of this attorney a thousandfold,
why should I not die! I shall never do a better thing in all my life,
and when a man has done his best he ought to go, lest, peradventure,
he live to do his worst, and die in doing it."

"And Dora?"

The look of exaltation faded from the face of Lavirotte. "And Dora, my
darling Dora! My own sweet, trusting girl!" he cried, tenderly. "I do
not understand myself; I am two beings; I have two natures. To myself
I would be merciless to gain this final glory of assuaging the wrong I
have done my friends, and in act forgiving the injury this man
Kempston has done to me. But Dora! Dora! Then something else comes in,
my other self, my weaker self, my better self, perhaps. Any weakness
is better than the tyranny of glory, than the lust of applause."

He was silent for a while. The old man had listened to him without a
word.

"Now, I must go and see that attorney, and show him that I am not the
interested adventurer he took me for, and that if a little time ago I
was willing to borrow a few paltry pounds, which in a year or two
should in any case be my own, I am now willing to throw down thousands
for him who never did me personally a service, simply because he was
kind and good to the woman whom I love."

Lavirotte left the tower.



                             CHAPTER XXX.


After the marriage and the going back of Lavirotte to London, all
things went on regularly in their old course. Before the return of the
bride and bridegroom from their Continental tour, Mr. O'Donnell paid
the second call. He had done so with extreme difficulty. It had taken
every penny he could lay his hand upon; and, indeed, the way in which
he was obliged to draw in money from those who owed it to him
threatened to be of serious injury to his business.

Still he fought on bravely. The heart of the old man was stirred
within him. His dogged nature was aroused to activity such as it had
never known, even in his younger days. James O'Donnell was at bay, and
he would show the world what James O'Donnell could do when his case
seemed desperate.

Day and night he worked. His energy appeared inextinguishable. His
resources seemed to increase with the demands upon them. His vision
was clear, his judgment infallible, his instincts true, his
premonitions verified. Rathclare stood still and watched this miracle
of new-born strength in the old man. People knew well enough that he
had called in his last farthing, and that now, outside the four walls
of his business place, he had not a hundred pounds in the world,
beyond the book debts, which to claim hastily would be finally to
destroy the business.

When his son came back from abroad, he was more amazed than anyone
else. The slow, plodding manner of late years had completely
disappeared from his father, and instead he encountered the
indomitable energy, the insatiable thirst for activity, and a judgment
clearer and sounder than he had ever found in any other man.

The newly-married couple took a small house in Glengowra. Every day
Eugene went in to business, and every day returned to Glengowra in
time for dinner.

While Eugene was away his father had written to him, saying he had
paid the second call, and that, with the help of Lavirotte, he would
be able to pay the third, which would, he assumed, be the last.

In Dublin the opinion was that the third call would certainly be the
last. The determination was to wind the whole thing up with the
greatest possible despatch, and hide its infamy away for ever. It was
possible for accountants, who had charge of the affair, to go over the
share book, and place opposite every name, which had hitherto proved
solvent, a very close approximation of the resources at the disposal
of each; and it gradually oozed out that there would be no use in
having a call of anything less than five hundred pounds, for if they
had two hundred and fifty now, and another two hundred and fifty later
on, they would simply have the same names recurring, since the men who
could meet the two hundred and fifty could meet the five. In
Rathclare, at last, people began to believe that someone must have
promised to sustain O'Donnell at the final moment, for all agreed that
unless the old man had lost his reason, there could be now no doubt he
was certain to tide over the affair. He had made arrangements one,
two, three years in advance. He was in treaty for purchasing adjoining
buildings with a view to incorporating them in his vast store. He had
ordered new lighters to be laid down for him in the dockyard. Up to
this he had always refused the mayoralty of the town, although he had
for many years been a member of the corporation. Now he allowed
himself to be put forward as a candidate for next year. No bankrupt
could be mayor.

From first to last he had never once sought any communication with the
Vernons. Now he seemed to think his old friend not so great a criminal
as at one time he appeared. Although he could not entirely forgive
him, he spoke less harshly of him than of old, and was heard even to
say once: "Poor devil, how do we know how he was dragged into it?"

Meanwhile, Lionel Crawford and Dominique Lavirotte wrought with the
energy of desperate men in the basement of St. Prisca's Tower. By day
they dug and delved, Lavirotte, being younger, carrying the fruit of
their labour to the top of the tower. The slow and cautious mode of
procedure adopted by the old man was too tedious for the fiery-hearted
Frenchman.

"I'll risk the lofts," cried Lavirotte, "if I were to perish beneath
them. You may stick to your old plan if you like, but it is too slow
for me. It would kill me. It would drive me mad, when I think of my
friends over there, when I think of the approaching ruin which we may
avert."

Mr. Kempston was a bachelor, easy-going and somewhat indolent, when
the first news reached him that Vernon and Son had closed their doors.
Hour after hour, and day after day, brought him nothing but a tedious
aggravation of the worst reports, and gradually it dawned upon him
that now, when he was no longer young, he was a ruined man.

Harrington, the father of Dora, and he had been friends in youth.
Hence his trusteeship to the will. Hence his guardianship of Dora. He
had always been a man of excellent business capacity; but outside his
business he was inclined to be lazy, self-indulgent, extravagant. When
younger, he was greatly devoted to what is called fun. Now he liked
rich living, good company, good clubs, and, if the truth might be
told, a great deal more rather high whist than was good for his
pocket.

He paid the first "call" of the Vernon bank with a groan. "When I have
paid the second," he said, "I shall still have my profession--that
is," he said bitterly, "if they don't make a bankrupt of me."

Then Lavirotte came with his amazing promise of indemnity, and his
still more amazing forgiveness. The elderly attorney groaned, smiled,
shook his head, swore, thanked Lavirotte profusely, said he'd take the
help if it came, grasped Lavirotte by the hand, swore again, gave
Lavirotte an excellent luncheon at his club, shook hands and said
good-bye to Lavirotte, and then swore mutely the whole way from his
club back to his office.

When the time for paying the second instalment arrived, he paid it
without a murmur, and then swore no more. He had nothing to swear by.

Day by day Lionel Crawford and Dominique Lavirotte tore at the earth
and clay and stones at the base of St. Prisca's Tower. Day by day they
grew nearer and nearer to the goal.

Crawford had told Lavirotte what that goal would be like. He knew
every stone of that tower from his old readings.

They were to keep now to the centre, as near as possible, driving the
pick down as far as ever they could.

"If it meets anything hard," said the old man, "strike again with the
pick a few inches all round, and if it meets anything hard all round,
that's it--that's the conical roof of the vault. In that vault the
chests have now lain buried more than two hundred years."

At last, the accountants who had charge of the affairs of Vernon and
Son issued the last call.

It was for five hundred pounds per share.

Eugene wrote to Lavirotte, and asked him, for God's sake, to be quick.

Lavirotte scarcely ate or slept. For days now he did not go near Dora,
even. He was wasted, haggard, thin. He had long ago given up living at
his rooms off the Strand. He and Lionel Crawford spent all their time
now in the tower. Once in two or three days he went to his lodgings to
see if there were letters. The morning he went and found Eugene's
there he felt faint, and he had no sooner sat down in a chair than the
fact that he had at last worn out all his energies came upon him. If
death threatened him there he could not have arisen. For two nights he
had not slept, and he had eaten little for the two days. The lofts had
already shown unmistakable signs of impatience at the weight they
bore. Any moment they might come crushing down upon the two workers,
burying Crawford and himself and the stupendous treasure for ever,
since outside that tower no living being knew what they sought.

The sight of Eugene's letter, and the sense that not only were his
labours not completed, but that they must be redoubled, overcame him.

He called for wine.

They brought him some. He drank a little, and felt stronger. He
thought if he drank a little more he might be able to get back to the
tower before his drowsiness overcame him.

He drank a little more wine, and, before he found himself sufficiently
invigorated to move, he fell asleep in the chair.

He did not awake for some hours. Then he felt refreshed and stronger.
"It was a shame for me," he said, "to fall asleep, but the sleep has
done me good. Now to work once more."

He drove to within a hundred yards of St. Prisca's Tower, and there
alighted. He walked up to the massive oak door, opened it with his
key, and entered the tower.

The darkness was Cimmerian. He could see absolutely nothing.

"Crawford must be aloft." He looked down.

His eye detected something unusual below.

In the middle of the impenetrable gloom there was what seemed to him a
phosphorescent glow, covering about two square feet of the bottom of
the pit. The lantern by which they worked was not to be seen. What
could this glow of light be? The lantern, when below, looked like a
distinct yellow patch surrounded by circles of light, decreasing in
brightness as they receded from the lantern. But the light below was
perfectly equal. It was not more intense at the centre than at the
edges, and, contrary to the case of the lantern, there was no dark
patch in the centre.

Lavirotte descended the ladder in uneasy amazement, and approached the
glowing space.

It was not until within a few feet of it he discovered what it was.

A hole!

At the bottom, twelve feet below, an uneven floor.

Through the hole dangled a rope.

On the floor below, the lantern by which Crawford and he worked.

Close to the lamp, the prostrate form of a man.

Lavirotte seized the rope and descended.

This was the vault in which they had hidden the treasure,
unmistakably.

He stooped and raised the lantern, casting the light slowly all round
him, so that when he had finished his inspection nothing that was in
that vault could be unknown to him.

Then he knelt down beside the prostrate form of the man, and turned
the face upward.

Lionel Crawford!

There was no other way of getting out of that vault but by climbing up
that rope.

He tried to climb that rope and failed. His strength was gone.

He sat down on the floor of the vault, and covered his face with his
hands. With the exception of himself, the lantern, and the corpse of
Lionel Crawford, the vault was empty!



                               Part II.



                              CHAPTER I.


For a while Lavirotte sat on the floor of that vault, immovable. He
was confounded, stunned.

He found himself confronted by three terrible facts.

There was no treasure here. Here was the dead body of Lionel Crawford.
Here was he himself entombed.

When he closed the door of the tower, he locked it on the inside, and
put the key in his pocket. How was anyone to find out he was here?
Lionel Crawford had told him that during all the months and months he
had lived in that place no one, to his knowledge, had ever rapped at
the door. Was it likely anyone would rap now? And, if anyone did, what
use would the rapping be?

From the top of the vault to the threshold of the door was at least
twenty feet; and he was twelve feet below the top of the vault. And
all day long, around and about the base of St. Prisca's Tower the
heavy traffic of one of the great waterside streets groaned and
screeched and murmured, continually pierced by the shouts and oaths of
men, until such a dull, dead, loud tumult reared itself against the
walls of the tower that no single human voice could by any possibility
be, in the daytime, heard without from where he now sat.

By night things would not improve. If he happened to be on a level
with the door leading from the tower into the lane, he could, no
doubt, hear the footfall of the infrequent policeman. But here, thirty
feet down, and with the concave shield of the vault between him and
the doorway, and the massive door between him and the lane, it would
be insanity to expect he could hear so slight a sound.

There, it is true, dangled the rope through the hole. He could read
the last chapter in the life of Lionel Crawford by the aid of that
rope. Would someone else, years, ay perhaps a century hence, be able
to read the last chapter of his life by the aid of what would then
remain of that rope?

He saw how it had been with the dead old man. During his (Lavirotte's)
absence, Crawford's pickaxe had struck upon the roof of the vault.
Crawford then felt that the labours of his life were at an end. While
he (Lavirotte) was sleeping, the old man must have worked like a
giant. They had found the floor above the vault a few days ago. Now,
here was hard against the steel pick the very stone that kept the
treasure from the old man's eyes.

He could see Crawford stoop in the dim light of the lantern, lean over
his pick, grovel under his shovel, panting, praying, sweating, until a
large space of the stonework of the roof had been cleared.

Then he could see the ardent, eager, tremulous haste of the old man
as, bit by bit, he picked out the mortar from between the stones,
until at last he had freed one stone, and succeeded in getting it out
of the bed in which it had lain for centuries.

To enlarge the orifice was a matter of no great labour or time. He
simply put his arm through the hole, and swung a sledgehammer against
the roof-stones until he had loosed them. Then he removed them one by
one, making the opening big enough to allow him to descend.

When all was ready for going down he went up to one of the lofts and
fetched a rope, tied one end of this rope to the foot of the ladder
that dipped into the pit, or to several of the larger stones, or to
the handles of one of the baskets filled with earth--to something
which would more than counterpoise his weight. Then, taking the
lantern with him, and the hopes of years and the certainty of success,
he had lowered himself into that blind void, in the full belief that
within a minute from the time he began the descent he would be in
possession of one of the largest treasures ever discovered by man on
earth.

He had slid down that rope. He had in all likelihood done as he
(Lavirotte) had done--swung the lantern hither and thither, round and
round, until he had found out that the vault was empty, the treasure
had been carried away, or had never been deposited there at all.

Then the shock had, no doubt, been too much for the overwrought
nature, and the broken spirit of Lionel Crawford had fled.

There was no reason to suppose that any vapours of the place had
killed him, for while he died the light in the lantern lived. Man has
taken the wolf and made a servant of him. Man has taken the fox and
made a servant of him. He has called the two when fused, the dog. Man
has taken the heat of the sun and the blaze of the volcano, and has
called the two when fused, fire. They are both his especial slaves.
They are both his especial prerogatives. The dog is his creature. Fire
is his creature. Neither exists without him. Either will die where he
cannot live. The light of the lantern had outlived Crawford, which
showed that he had not died of any exhaled or infiltrated poisonous
gas.

Shock or exhaustion had killed the old man. What was to kill him,
Lavirotte?

Hunger?

He shuddered and looked around. How horrible the thought of dying of
hunger; there, within thirty feet of one of the great ways that, from
early to late, was crammed and choked with all kinds of simple or rich
or rare or exquisite food, endlessly moving westward for the
sustentation of the great city. To die of hunger there, when the
freight of one huge van now lumbering by would preserve a whole
regiment from starving for a week, would give him enough food for
years.

To die of hunger there within five hundred yards of five thousand
people, not the humblest of whom would refuse to share with him his
crust, if that humblest of the upper earth but knew how dire his
extremity.

To die of hunger there, with money in his pocket, when, within a
stone's throw of the door of that tower, there were ten places whose
only business was to supply food, not to those who were absolutely
hungry in the sense of their approaching death through hunger, but to
those who were hungry in the ordinary trivial routine of the day.

It seemed horrible. He took down his hands from before his eyes, and
looked with horror around him. To be alone without any chance of
delivery and in danger of death is bad, seemingly almost the worst
condition in which a man could find himself; but to be alone, beyond
succour, threatened by death, and in the presence of the already dead,
is ten thousand times more appalling.

In the former case we know to a certainty, we are assured beyond doubt
that we shall die, but the realisation of death is unfixed and'
shadowy. We have, ever since we can remember, known we should die. We
have seen death, touched death, kissed the dear dead, seen the dead
put finally away in the cold envicinage of earth. But few have sat
looking at the dead, waiting for death.

Here to Lavirotte death was approaching. There to Lavirotte was an
exemplar of the dead. As that was, he should be. The whole blue vault
of heaven should vanish. The whole sweet plains and dales and hills of
earth should be to him no more. No more to him than to _that_ lying
there now before him. Hope and love and joy and friendship, and the
sweet commune with the great body of sympathetic man, where experience
had first developed, expectancy had first arisen, and vague and
splendid imaginings had had their hint and form, should all, all
evanesce.

Here, upon what was to have been the completion of their joint great
work, was to be no reward, but their joint death. Of old he had smiled
at Crawford's enthusiastic belief in this buried treasure. Then he had
come to share Crawford's beliefs and hopes. Now he had come to share
Crawford's despair and grave.

Out of that vault there was no chance he should ever go alive. The
friends whom he had striven to serve would believe him to have been a
foolish braggart or a vicious liar. The girl whom he was to wed would
know no more of his fate than though a whirlwind had plucked him up
and cast him, unseen by man, into the middle of the sea.

There would be no record of him when all was over, until, perhaps, a
century hence reference would be made somewhere to his bones.

It was hotter here than above-ground, much hotter.

To die of hunger was, he had always heard, one of the most painful of
deaths. Yet here was he caged in by all adversity, destined to end his
life for want of such things as no man above-ground need die for lack
of, since, when all man's individual enterprise was marred or put
away, the State stepped forth and said he shall not die for need of
mere bread.

It was much hotter here than in the cool broad streets, fenced with
places where one could get wholesome food, and get that wholesome
food--cheap. The sky was above those streets. He had seen the sky as
he drove along the Strand and Fleet Street to-day. The sky was blue,
and to wave one's arms upwards towards it was to feel refreshed and
cool.

Cool--cool--cool.

It was getting hotter.

As he had come along the Strand that evening he had thought he would
stop the cab at one of those many, many shops that hedged the way, and
get a drink of something deliciously cool and bitter to take away the
thirst which that wine had put upon him. But then he was so eager to
reach the tower, he had forborne.

Now he was sorry. He had had only two glasses of that wine, and two
such small glasses were very little good to quench thirst when one was
thirsty. How much better it would have been for him to have taken a
whole pint of milk, or cold, clear, sparkling water. If he had had
either of these----

The place was getting hotter and hotter. He looked at the candle in
the lantern. It was burning low. In an hour he should be in the dark.

What a pity he had not bought a lemon for a penny. How strange seemed
the difference between a penny here and a penny in the Strand or Fleet
Street a little while ago. He had gold and silver in his pocket, and
although he thought to himself as he drove along, "Why should I give a
penny for a lemon, when I know as soon as I get to the tower I shall
be able to have as much water as I desire for nothing?" now he was in
the tower, and he knew that on one of the lofts above was water more
than any man could drink in many days, and yet he would have given all
the silver he had in his pocket for one pint.

The heat seemed to increase.

He stood up. His limbs were scarcely strong enough to support him. His
strength had left him wholly. He looked up at the opening over his
head. He clutched the rope. He pushed his arms up as far as they would
reach, then raised his feet from the ground. The hands would not
support the body. The rope slipped through them. He fell awkwardly
upon the hard floor of the vault.

A subtle dust rose from the floor. It filled his eyes, his nose, his
mouth. He rose into a kneeling posture. He pressed his eyelids down
with his fingers. He blew the dust from his nose. He thrust out his
dry parched tongue, and sought to clear it of the dust with the back
of his hand. But his hand, too, was dusty, dry.

Oh, if he might have but one wineglassful of the water in the loft
above! Just one wineglassful to clear his mouth of the hideous
dryness, and the still more hideous dust of two hundred years. Just so
much water as would suffice to lave the parched portions of his mouth,
and carry away the foul savour.

He had heard that to die of hunger was painful.

He had heard that to die of thirst was madness.

Was he to die of thirst?



                             CHAPTER II.


Thirst! It was an awful death, one of the worst that could befall man.
He had read of it, heard of it both aboard ship and on the solid land.
He had read how in China they kept malefactors seven or eight days
without food or drink, until at last, having become already mad, they
died. But in China or the broad plains of the Pacific, to die of
thirst was intelligible, tolerable. In China, a man must have done
something more or less criminal, according to the notions of the
people there; and at sea, one, when first launched without water,
might live for a while upon the hope of a sail.

But here was he now, absolutely innocent from a criminal point of
view, doomed, beyond the hope of any sail, to final extinction by one
of the cruellest of deaths.

The candle in the lantern would not burn much longer. It would hold
out for an hour or so, let him say. He had read that men can live
seven or eight days without sleep, seven or eight days without food,
seven or eight days without water. If in a warm climate a man had
water alone, he might live for thirty days without food. But,
supposing he had neither water nor food, there was little or no chance
of his surviving the ninth day.

What to him, in his present position, was the value of nine days, nine
weeks, nine months; nine years? It was more than probable that since
the Great Fire, more than two hundred years ago, no one had ever stood
in the vault where he sat now. What likelihood was there that for two
hundred years to come his peace would be disturbed by anybody, once
his death-struggle was over?

As he sat there he could see the clothes of the dead man tremble,
owing to the vibration of the air caused by the enormous traffic going
on overhead. But all the strong life above-ground was now as remote
from him, as little allied to help he might expect, as the faintest
cloud darkening in the east.

Yes, darkening in the east, for now he knew by the sounds around
him--the sounds whose volume thinned while its pitch increased--that
evening was coming on, and that soon upon the evening would come the
night.

When it was dead of night, and there was no longer any chance of
feeling the touch of man through the vibration of the din, what should
he do?

Nothing.

Whatever might come or go he could do nothing. He was powerless to
climb that rope. The excitement which had sustained him at fever pitch
for many days was now gone finally. He could no longer hope, not only
to save his friends from financial ruin and realise a handsome
fortune, but he could no longer hope to do more than drag on the most
miserable of existences hour by hour, under conditions the meanest
pauper would refuse to accept.

Here was he doomed to death, as surely as the condemned man in the
condemned cell is doomed to death. In a certain number of days, in a
certain number of hours, he must die, as inevitably as the sun must
rise and set upon the broad, fair world above him.

He had hoped greatly, and laboured greatly, and lost all--all--all.

He put his hand in his pocket and felt his knife.

Would it not be best to die while he had the companionship of the
light, the companionship of the spectacle of the dead? To all intents
and purposes he was as dead as though he had been blown from the
muzzle of a gun. Morally, there could be no harm in his anticipating
by a few hours, a few days of dreary pain, the fate which was
inevitably before him. Morally, he did not shrink from the knife. But
in him was strong the brute instinct, the love of life for life's
sake, for the infinite potentialities of hope that lie hidden in the
last ragged remnant of existence.

It would, perhaps, be better after all to wait until the lantern burnt
out, and he was alone with silence and the dead. Then he should
possibly go mad, and it was incredible that the insane could suffer so
acutely as he was suffering now. Supposing, then, some fine delirium
seized him, and he fancied himself to be Pluto, and that this realm of
darkness was his natural element, his habitual haunt; that hunger and
thirst were the inevitable accessories of his gloomy rule, and that
the dignity of his position was heightened by the fare which Charon
had just ferried across the Styx, and now lay there before him!

Here the lantern went out.

Fool! Fool! Madman! What had he been thinking about? Two things, only
two, had been left to him--life and light. Now the latter had been
taken away from him for ever.

For ever! What an awful phrase! Here was he, who had no more than
touched manhood, thrust downward by a malignant chance into a vile
dark dungeon to die.

Here was he, who ought to be in the full plenitude of his youthful
strength, unable to master the brief space hanging there in the
darkness above him, between the invisible floor and the imperceptible
roof.

If in the heat and hurry of that morning, he had been asked to clamber
up a rope three times the length of that now hanging above his head,
he could have done so with perfect ease. But since he had left the
tower that morning the shears of fate had been busy with his hair, and
it was now almost as difficult for him to stand unsupported as it
would then have been for him to put his back against the wall and
shake down the solid foundations of the tower.

And yet, what a paltry thing it was to die because he lacked the brute
force to urge, himself upwards twelve feet along that rope. It seemed
incredible that one so exquisitely formed, so superbly endowed with
intelligence and the mastery of all forces that exert themselves on
earth, should here lie prone, helpless, before a difficulty which half
the brute creation would have regarded as no difficulty at all.

It was all over with him. When it was all over with him how would it
be with others who had depended upon him?

He had promised Mr. O'Donnell a vast sum of money to meet the demands
of the bank. Now he could not even lay his body before that troubled
man in assurance that he had done his best.

He had promised to protect Kempston from ruin. Now he was powerless
even to go and explain to Kempston the reason of his failure.

To go! All the bitterness of his present situation was wrought up in
that one phrase--To go! He could now go nowhere until he went forth
for ever.

Then the thought of Dora came upon him. Dora, the sweetest, the
simplest, the truest, the most confiding sweetheart man ever had. He
did not pity her for losing him. He pitied her for losing the lover
rather than the man. He knew that all her soul was centred in him,
that she waited eagerly for his coming, and grieved when he left; that
she lived in one only hope--namely, that some day, and soon, she
should leave the solitude of her present ways and come and be with him
for ever, to soothe him with her gentle ministerings and cheer him
with her anxious hopes.

He thought of how she would leave her hand trustingly in his, lean her
head trustingly on his bosom, take all he said to her as revealed
truth, and, in token of gratitude for his love, hold up her sweet lips
for his kisses.

He thought of how he in the fickle wavering of his nature had been
carried away from her beauty, which was the beauty, the dark beauty of
his own folk purified and chastened by a less ardent sun, to the rich,
ripe, northern beauty of sunnier hue, although remoter from the sun.

He thought how for a while he had swerved from Dora to Nellie, and now
he could not understand it, for the glamour was withdrawn, and he saw
the unapparelled hearts of both. In Nellie, he saw nothing now but the
beauty, the unapproachable beauty which could never be more to him
than the irresponsive beauty of a marble statue. In Dora, he now saw
beauty that was thoroughly informed with love, and that radiated
towards him with all the responsive faculties of inexhaustive
sympathy. Her slightest word or gesture, was measured for his regard.
Her least syllable was designed to move his lightest mood to pleasant
consonance. Her smiles were those which came upon her face merely to
show him that all the smiles and joyousness of her nature came forth
but to greet and welcome him, and show him that all the smiles and
joyousness of her nature were his wholly.

What a contrast was here! The sunlight of success, the sunlight of
love, the sunlight of heaven, shut out by one foul, crass adventure!

The sunlight of life, of young life, of life before it had drunk under
the meridian sun, extinguished for ever!

"Dominique Lavirotte," he thought, "pray to the merciful God that you
may go mad--speedily."



                             CHAPTER III.


Of late Lavirotte's visits to Dora had been so infrequent and
irregular that she did not know when to expect him, or when to be
surprised that he did not come. Three or four days often passed now
without her seeing him. She knew he was busy, exceedingly busy, at St.
Prisca's Tower, but busy with what she could not tell.

For the past few weeks he had always seemed to her exhausted and
taciturn. There was no falling off in his tenderness towards her. He
seemed to love her more passionately than ever. But his visits were
short, and he said little.

It was three days before Lavirotte got O'Donnell's last letter that he
visited Dora. On going back from her to the tower he had thrown
himself more blindly, more enthusiastically into the work of
excavation than ever. In this final effort he had exhausted all his
physical resources, with the result that when O'Donnell's letter came
his strength was completely wasted, and he was as helpless as a little
child.

When he had seen Dora last he said he would come again soon--as soon
as the important business upon which he was engaged would allow him.
But he named no hour, no day.

Three days passed and she did not see him or hear from him. That was
not unusual. A fourth, a fifth, a sixth, a seventh day might go by
without arousing anything stronger than longing and disappointment in
her heart.

Since she had come back from Ireland she had never passed the
threshold of that solitary tower in Porter Street. He had never asked
her to come, nor had her grandfather.

Dominique had told her that matter of the first moment rested upon his
uninterrupted attendance at the tower. He had taken her no further
into his confidence. It would, he had said, be time enough to tell her
all when all was known, and the hopes which moved him had been
realised.

Beyond Dora there was nobody else in London who had any distinct
knowledge of where Lavirotte and the old man lived. It is true, of
course, that they had to get food, but this Crawford always procured
and brought into the tower, so that the likelihood was not a soul who
supplied them with the necessaries of life had any distinct memory as
to where they lived. And even if the people knew where they lived,
there was no reason in the world why they should be uneasy because a
certain old man who had for some time back bought milk, or bread, or
meat of them ceased to come any more. It might be he had left the
place. It might be he had taken his custom somewhere else. It might be
he was dead in the ordinary and familiar ways of death, which require
no extraordinary comment and exact no extraordinary cares.

Among the four millions of people who live within the mighty circle
called London, it was unlikely one would take the trouble to inquire
what had become of Crawford and Lavirotte. Dora naturally would; but
her grandfather had visited her in Charterhouse Square only two or
three times since they had come back from Ireland. She had no reason
to expect a visit from him for one week, two weeks, three weeks. Nor
had she any reason to feel uneasy if Dominique did not come to
Charterhouse Square for several days.

Meanwhile, what was to become of him, Lavirotte? While the candle yet
burned he had made out that there was only one door into this vault,
and that in the direction of what had formerly been the body of the
church. Crawford had told him that the ordinary entrance to that vault
had been from the crypt of the church, but that with the destruction
of the church the crypt had been destroyed, and now a solid bank of
masonry and earth, thirty or forty feet thick, forming the lane at the
back, lay between the vault and the cellars of the stores beyond.

So long as the candle had lasted he did not seem to have severed his
last connection with the earth above; but with the absolute darkness
following the failure of the light, all the realities of the tomb,
without the merciful absence of suffering, had come upon him.

He was buried, and yet free to move. He could walk about, and yet the
great tower standing over him was little better than a large headstone
on his grave.

He had committed no crime, and yet was condemned to die--to die the
slowest and most painful of all deaths--by want of water.

He had read about the Black Hole of Calcutta. This place was about the
size of that terrible dungeon. But how much better it would have been
to die there a hundred years ago, surrounded by fellow-men--to die
there quickly, in the distance of time between evening and day,
instead of dragging out here, hour by hour, minute by minute, the
terrible solitude of doom foreclosed.

It had been a very hot summer, and now the autumn was at hand. The
leaves had taken their earliest shade of yellow, and when the wind
blew strongly the sicklier leaves fell. For months in London a fierce
sun and a dry air had parched all they touched. Nails in woodwork
exposed to the sun had worked loose in their holds. It was the
beginning of September, and people, thinking of a calamity which
occurred more than two hundred years ago, said it was a mercy London
was no longer built of wood; since if it was, and the fire should then
break out with a strong wind behind it--as at the time of the Great
Fire--what was now called the Great Fire would cease to be so named,
and be referred to as the Little Fire compared with the gigantic
proportions which a burning wooden London of to-day would afford.

Crawford and Lavirotte had, owing to the dryness of the season, been
able to get rid of the excavated earth by exposing it to the heat on
the roof of the tower, and then casting it, handful by handful,
through the embrasures.

Although no food ever was sent by tradespeople in the vicinity to the
tower, it was generally known by the men who worked there that two men
visited the tower. But why they lived there, or what their occupation
was, no one knew. They had been seen to come in and go out. That was
all.

When Lavirotte made up his mind that their means of making away with
what they dug was out of proportion with his desire of getting
downward, he had resolved to trust the lofts to a greater weight than
had hitherto been put upon them; and finding loft number one but
slightly cumbered with the larger stones Crawford could not dispose
of, he had determined to make it the chief depository of the excavated
earth.

Over and over again Crawford had told him the lofts were old, the
beams rotten. He had ignored the warning, saying if they were to win
at all they must win quickly, and that he would risk everything but
delay.

As the weight of earth upon the first loft increased, it gradually
sank in the middle.

Lavirotte, cautioned by this, tried to find out the absolute condition
of the beams, and to his great joy discovered, after carefully probing
them, while slung under them in a loop of line, that they were
comparatively sound.

But the hotter the weather became, and the greater the burden upon the
floor above grew, the more the joists bent downward.

He did not care. He was certain the joists would not break. They
showed no sign of chipping or splitting, and, in perfect fearlessness,
he went on piling up the clay, taking, of course, the ordinary
precaution to keep the weight as close as possible to the wall.

Gradually, however, owing to the inclination towards the centre, the
clay slid slightly inward, and, as it dried in the hot air of August,
the inner surface of the clay fell inward.

Before leaving the tower, the morning he got O'Donnell's letter,
Lavirotte looked anxiously at the floor of the first loft. It was now
concave above, convex below. But although he looked long and
anxiously, he could see no sign of any of the joists giving way.

"They will bend like yew," he said. "They will never break."

He had omitted one calculation, that when they had bent to a certain
degree, they would be withdrawn to a certain extent from their
holdfasts in the wall, and when they were withdrawn from their
holdfasts beyond a certain extent, they would slip out.

On the morning of the day after Lavirotte was entombed in the vault
beneath St. Prisca's Tower, the joists of loft number one had been so
far withdrawn from their supports in the wall that the loft was in
equilibrio, and ten pounds more pressure on the floor would drag the
whole loft down with all its burden into the hole beneath.



                             CHAPTER IV.


There was no hope. What hope could there be for him, Lavirotte, buried
thirty feet below a roaring thoroughfare of London, with no possible
means of communication with the upper world, a feebleness so great
that it did not allow him to do more than stand, and twelve clear feet
in the perpendicular between him and deliverance?

Under such circumstances how could anyone hope? What could anyone do?
Nothing. Lie down and die.

There was space enough to die, and air enough to make dying tedious.
That was the worst of it.

It was bad enough to die at any time; but to die when young, of no
fault of one's own, and when dying happened to be tedious, was almost
beyond endurance.

And yet what could one do but endure? Nothing. No action was possible.
He could not without violence accelerate his death. By no power at his
disposal could he retard it.

It was dismal to die here, alone, unknown. It was chilling to think
that the whole great, bustling world abroad would go on while, from
mere hunger, or, still worse, thirst, he was panting out the last
faint breaths of life in this hideous darkness here. There was no help
for it. Second by second, man lives through his life, is conscious of
living; and when the proper time comes, hour by hour he is conscious
that, owing to some failure in his internal economy, he is dying.

But here was he, Lavirotte, in the full consciousness of the
possession of youth and of health, save in so far as health had been
exhausted by trying labours and wasting fasts, about to die because
there was no pitcher of water from which he might slake his thirst, no
crust which could allay the pangs of hunger.

Suppose he had been upon the upper, gracious earth, without any of the
money now in his pocket. Suppose he had nothing but his youth and
youthful elasticity of spirits, even feeble as he now was, he might
pick up a living somewhere. He had education and good manners. He
might not be able to earn two hundred pounds a year, but he could make
a shilling, eighteenpence a day somehow, and on eighteenpence a day a
man could live.

On eighteenpence a day no man could have splendours or luxuries, but
he might have water free from the fountain he had just passed in front
of that church in Fleet Street, and water was a great deal. Water was
half life, more than half life--water was all life when one was
thirsty, as he was now.

Then, for eighteenpence a day he might have food, not luxurious or
exquisite food; but in his wanderings through London he had seen
places where suppers were set forth at threepence--large bowls of
boiled eels swimming in appetising gravy, with, to each bowl, a huge
junk of milky white bread.

He had, when his pocket was comparatively full of money, often seen
the wearied artisan or factory "hand" eating with relish eel-soup and
bread. He had stood looking in at the windows, and, being full-fed
himself, congratulated himself upon the comfort, the luxury, these
poor people enjoyed in their savoury evening repast.

He had watched them go in tired and dreary, worn out with the mean
commonplaces of hard work and insufficient wages. He had watched them
sit down in a listless, careless way, as though they cared not whether
the next hour brought them death or not. Then, gradually, as the
savour of the place penetrated them, and as the eager but delayed
appetite became satisfied, he had seen a kind of attenuated
conviviality arise between these poor folk, until, at the end, when
they had finished their meal, they came forth congratulating
themselves upon the cheapness, wholesomeness, and satisfying power of
the food they had enjoyed.

Now, supposing in a shop he had a basin of this eel-soup, not merely
soup, but soup with luscious, succulent flesh of the rich fish
swimming about in that delicious liquor, and in his hand a piece of
bread larger than one fist, but not quite so large as two, what should
he do?

First of all he would take the spoon--nay, not the spoon, the bowl
itself, and quench his thirst and recruit his failing energies with a
long draught out of that humble, yellow bowl. He would drink nearly
all the liquid up, for he was parched and dry. Abroad would be the
sound of traffic and of human voices, stronger than the sound of
traffic now beating against his ears. Then, when he had slaked his
thirst he would eat some of the bread--no, the bread was too dry. It
would make him thirsty again. He would eat some of the fish, and sop
the soft white bread in what remained of the soothing liquor. And when
he had finished, he, too, would come forth with a contented mind, and
supposing any trace of thirst remained, and he had no money to spend
in fantastic ways of allaying thirst, he would go to some public
drinking-fountain where there was an unlimited supply of water, and
out of the clean white metal cups drink and drink and drink until this
horrible dryness of mouth and throat had been finally removed, and he
felt cheered and invigorated, and fit to face any difficulty or odds
that might be against him.

Threepence, and he might enjoy what then seemed to him an unparalleled
luxury!

But supposing he were free and penniless, there was nothing to prevent
him walking to the first drinking-fountain that offered and quenching
his thirst, drowning his thirst in its free waters.

He could have one, two, three, any number of cups of water, and, while
drinking, he could touch his fellow-man, see the blue sky above him,
and feel upon his cheek the wind made by passing men and vehicles.

Now was he here, young and full of notions of life, with no malady of
ordinary growth upon him, merely the victim of an extraordinary
accident, destined to die in darkness of thirst, of hunger, of
despair.

There was no hope for him. Dora knew he spent most of his day in that
tower. She did not know why. She would never think of seeking him
there. And if she did seek him, if she came and knocked, she would get
no reply. She would have no reason to assume more than that he did not
hear, being there, or was absent from the place.

If she called at his lodgings she would be told all they knew of him,
and all they knew of him would not help her forward towards his
present condition.

He had no means of measuring time. His watch had ceased to beat, he
could not tell how long ago. He held it up against his ear. It was
silent.

This silence seemed to him typical of the final silence which already
surrounded Lionel Crawford, and which was now gathering around
himself.

Through this silence now came a sound,

It was the sound of something falling. Something very small falling
sharply, as it were, against the dull murmur of the traffic around
him.

He paused and listened. Then he sprang to his feet, aroused by a
tremendous crash which deafened his ears, shook him as though a great
gale blew, and filled his eyes, his mouth, his nostrils with some
thick air or dust, he knew not which, that for a moment threatened to
suffocate him.

The loft above had fallen.



                              CHAPTER V.


Before this tremendous noise and confusion had arisen, Lavirotte had
no means of ascertaining how time went. He was conscious of certain
pauses and beats in the great noise of traffic above his head. The
pauses and beats, he assumed, of traffic in the artery of time. But he
knew nothing certain. He had kept no record whatever. He was conscious
that there had been periods of activity and quiescence, just as he was
conscious there had been periods of activity and quiescence in his
youth, when he was a child. But, as in the remote past, he had lost
all knowledge or record of the numbers of the period.

His reason told him he could not have been a fortnight entombed. His
memory told him nothing.

Abroad in the busy street and lanes close to St. Prisca's Tower, the
fall of the lowest loft made a prodigious commotion. First of all,
there was the roar of noise accompanying the fall of the floor, and of
the tons upon tons of stones and clay lying on the loft. Then out
through the narrow windows of the tower sprang shafts of dust, forced
furiously outward by the enormous pressure upon the air within.

For a moment the tumultuous traffic of Porter Street was stopped, and
men who would scarcely have minded the downfall of the warehouse out
of which they were loading their vans or carts, stood in silent
amazement at the inexplicable, tremendous subsidence which had
occurred in the tower.

Those men who were familiar with the place were all the more amazed,
because they believed there had been no possibility of the old tower
uttering such a terrible note as that which had proceeded from it.
They believed that the lofts of the tower were merely decayed wood. It
was well known that the bells had been long ago removed, and as there
had been in that tower, so far as the frequenters of Porter Street
knew, nothing which could with profit be stolen, the interest in that
tower to them had been less than in the Monument.

To people of this class the Monument was something like the rainbow or
the Milky Way. It had no effect on life, no influence upon wages, and,
consequently, was altogether unworthy of consideration. Rain and hail
and snow influenced wages in so far as they impeded work, but not the
Monument, not St. Prisca's Tower, not the rainbow, not the Milky Way,
controlled work, and therefore each, while it might be a matter for
dreamy speculation under the influence of tobacco, was absolutely
indifferent to the workmen frequenting Porter Street.

Few, except workmen, or those intimately connected with workmen,
frequented Porter Street. You might walk there a whole day long with
the assurance you would never meet a brougham or a hansom, a beau or a
lady. It was as much out of the line of the fashionable world as
Kamtchatka. In Nova Zembla, in Patagonia, in Japan, in Florida, you
may meet an English nobleman, an English lady, but in the history of
Porter Street it is not recorded that any member of the elegant world
wandered there for a hundred years.

The first effect of the tremendous crash, caused by the falling of the
loft, was to paralyse activity for a short time. The next thing was to
create discussion as to the possible source and cause of the crash.
The third was to induce speculation as to the fate of anyone who might
have been in the tower at the time of the catastrophe.

Then slowly, very slowly, those around the place began to realise the
fact that someone--a man--more than one man--two men it was thought,
of late--one man of old--two men of late--an old man some time ago--a
young man latterly, had taken up their residence in that tower. This
might account for something of the extraordinary in what had taken
place. It might have been that owing to something or other done by
these men, this enormous explosion--for so it seemed at first--had
occurred. They may have had some object in blowing down the tower, or
in some other violent onslaught against its integrity.

If this were so, in all likelihood they were both now far beyond the
range of any danger which could reach them from the tower.

After a while, when speculation had become somewhat methodical and
less vague, people began to remember that there was nothing
particularly dangerous-looking about either of the men who had taken
up their residence in the tower, and that in all probability neither
of them had been actuated by any criminal designs.

There for a while public opinion stood still, and men began to wonder
what was the fate of their fellow-men, whose lives had for some time
back been associated in their minds with the existence of the tower.

Slowly, gradually, the people who were familiar with Porter Street
came to think that possibly the two men, whose appearance had been
connected in their minds with that place for some time, had been
imperilled or destroyed in the fall of the lofts. For to the outside
public it had seemed that nothing less than the fall of the lofts
could have produced so great a noise as they had heard. They had not
taken into account that the beams of dust which shot across the street
and lanes had reached no higher than the first loft, and they had not
taken care to conclude that since no dust exuded through the higher
windows, the likelihood was that the higher lofts were untouched.

But after the first sense of arrest and confusion which came upon
those within the scope of the sound, there arose the humane idea of
rendering succour to the living, if the place contained anyone alive,
or tendering services to the dead, supposing both had perished.

Then it was anxiously asked, was anything known as to whether either
or both men were in the tower.

It was well known that the old man now seldom came forth, that the
young man brought in the provisions necessary for the two, and that
even he was seldom for any long time absent from St. Prisca's.

Moment by moment people began to recollect that the old man had not
been seen out of the tower for many days, and that the young man had
been seen to leave the tower and return.

In such a crowded thoroughfare it was almost impossible that the door
of the tower could be opened without exciting observation. It was also
nearly impossible that any close observation could have been made.

It is quite common for a busy man who lives close to a church clock
that strikes the hours and the quarters, to hear and yet not heed the
striking of the clock; so that you may ask him, after the striking,
what has occurred with regard to the hour, and he may have been
perfectly unconscious at the time the clock struck that he was
observing the sound, and yet when asked he may be able to tell
perfectly the time.

So it was with these busy folk in Porter Street. They had never
regarded those two men with any interest whatever beyond the interest
one feels for a friendly but unknown dog, or for a man who is not
likely ever in the course of life to have more than a passing interest
for the observer.

Nevertheless, these busy folk who worked hour by hour, day by day, and
the sum of whose life was made up in the sum of their work, and the
mere material comforts and pleasures which the result of their work
brought them, had insensibly drunk in the fact that two men had
entered that tower, that neither of these men had come forth, and that
now the likelihood was the lives of either or both of these men had
been swallowed up in the catastrophe which had occurred.

With men of the class who worked in Porter Street, thought is a very
rarely exercised faculty. They have to carry huge weights, heave
winches, stow goods, pack and manage vast bales, in the conduct of
which the eye for space and the muscle for motion is all that is
called into play. Everything else is designed by the foreman, and each
man has no more to do with every separate piece of goods than dispose
of it as his strength will allow in the position the foreman
indicates.

Hence men of this class are exceedingly slow to invent, and
exceedingly quick to act. When the loft fell, all the men within
hearing of the crash immediately ceased to work, and stood stupidly
looking on as though they expected some miraculous manifestation. They
did not remain inactive because of any disinclination to help, if help
were needed, but they had not realised the fact that it was possible
their great strength might be of avail to anyone suffering.

All at once a woman cried: "My God, the men are buried!" and before
the words were well out of her mouth, the crowd seemed to grasp the
central idea that underneath the encumbrance of these lofts had been
buried two men, who were formed in every way like themselves, and who,
although not of their class, were nevertheless entitled to all that
could be done for them.



                             CHAPTER VI.


How were the entombed men to be delivered? Various ways suggested
themselves in the heat of the moment. It was plain to all that the
first thing to be done was to force the door. This was no trivial
matter. How it was to be forced was the consideration. There were
those among the crowd who had seen the door open, and noticed the huge
bolt of the lock which shot into an iron holdfast let into the solid
stonework of the tower. They knew that the old man had never omitted
to lock the door on the inside when he came in, and that the young man
had been no less careful.

There was a general belief that something secret, and, upon the whole,
uncommendable, was going on in that tower, and the desire to rescue
the two imprisoned men was largely augmented by curiosity.

The laneway from which the door opened was seldom crowded. There was
usually a brisk traffic up and down it; but in that part of the City
the narrow laneways that feed the great thoroughfares are seldom
blocked, although the main thoroughfares themselves may be impassable.

A man in the crowd cried out:

"Someone get a pole or a beam, and we'll soon have them out."

Then several men rushed off in various directions.

By this time the traffic in the laneways and in Porter Street itself
was interrupted. The workmen ran out of the stores and wharfs, the
waggoners and carters deserted their horses, and even the bargemen
from the river had come up on hearing that some terrible accident had
befallen St. Prisca's Tower.

In a few minutes three men were seen advancing, carrying a heavy beam
of wood. Other men ran to help them. A dozen willing arms had now
seized the beam, and a hundred men were anxious to lend their aid if
opportunity offered.

A way was cleared for the men with the beam. The people separated on
both sides. The men turned out of Porter Street and ran up into the
lane. The men engaged in carrying the baulk were too intent upon
getting it to its destination as quick as possible to observe one
fatal defect. One onlooker shouted out: "Too long. Too long." Then the
men carrying it swept up, way was made for them, and they tried to
bring the beam into position for use as a battering-ram against the
door.

Then the onlooker's words were confirmed by experience, and it was
seen that it would be utterly impossible to use the baulk effectually
as a ram, for, owing to the narrowness of the lane, it was impossible
to get it at right angles to the door, and striking the door with it
at an acute angle would not be likely to produce the desired effect.

However, it was better to try this which was at hand, than to do
nothing at all. In the meantime some better means might be devised of
bursting open the door.

Once, twice, thrice, half-a-dozen times the men thrust the beam
obliquely against the massive woodwork. It merely glanced off the
thick stubborn oak, and more than two-thirds of its power was expended
upon the solid and immovable stonework of the doorway.

Other pieces of timber were brought, but all proved too long to be of
any effective use. The shortest, it is true, could be brought into a
horizontal position against the door, but it allowed of no play, and
therefore was incapable of receiving the necessary impetus.

Then the crowd began to clamour for sledges. A great, brown-bearded
man, tall, lank, and rounded in the shoulders, broke away from the
crowd crying: "I'll soon get it open; I'll soon break it in."

This man was celebrated in Porter Street for his enormous strength. No
sooner had he undertaken to burst in the door than all other efforts
were suspended, in the full faith that he would make good his words.

In a few moments he returned, bearing in each hand a square
half-hundredweight. He hastened up to the door and said: "Someone must
hold me."

But how are they to hold him? "I want," he said, "to put my back
against the door, lift these up this way" (he raised the half-hundreds
above his head as though they were no heavier than boxing-gloves),
"then I'll bring them down against the door; but if it bursts open I
don't want to fall in, for there's a pit inside."

The difficulty now was how to hold him, and at the same time give him
free play with the weights, and avoid any possibility of the weights
in the downward swoop touching anyone who might aid him.

Some time was lost in trying to arrange so that he might be held,
prevented from falling inward, and, at the same time, not impeded.

At last he cried:

"Let me alone; I can manage it myself. Stand back. Don't be afraid of
me."

Then they cleared a semicircle round him. He put his back to the door,
raised his arms aloft, directly over his head, bowed himself backward,
so that his head and heels alone touched the door, and his back was
bowed forward as a bent bow is against the string. Then, setting his
teeth and putting all the energy of his body into the muscles of his
arms and shoulders, he swung the two weights downward with prodigious
force, loosed them from his hold when they came level with his legs,
sprang forward, and turned swiftly round with a look of expectant
success.

The crowd cheered. The two half-hundredweights had crushed through the
lower portion of the door as though it were so much cardboard. The
lock remained unshaken. The blows had been delivered too low down,
and, while the wood had given way, the iron had remained firm.

Then, while the people were standing admiring the result of his great
strength, a man cried out: "Here's a crowbar, Bill. You can finish it
with that."

Bill caught the crowbar in his hand, whirled it over his head as
though it were but a walking-cane, leaped back from the door as far as
the narrowness of the lane would allow him; then, holding the crowbar
lightly in his hand, as a soldier holds his gun at the charge, he
dashed forward and flung the crowbar with its blunt edge against the
place where the lock held fast.

The lock had been loosened on the door by the previous assault, and
now, with a tearing screech, the bolts drew out of the tough wood, and
the door swung back on its hinges.

When Bill had succeeded, and seen that he had succeeded, he turned
round, surveyed the crowd steadily for a few moments, and then said:
"That's my share of it. You do the rest."

Then, as one who had no further concern with the matter, he strode
off, the people making way for him as he went.

Two or three men approached the door and looked in. Below was a wild
jumble of planks and beams and stones and earth, all mixed up,
higgledy-piggledy, in the wildest confusion. It was impossible to make
out anything clearly at first, owing to the dense dust that floated in
the air. The men who had thrust in their heads withdrew them after a
short time, partly suffocated and partly blinded by the fumes that
arose out of the pit beneath.

"Ask is there anyone there," suggested one of the crowd.

A head was thrust in through the open doorway, and a stentorian voice
cried out: "Anyone there!"

To this a feeble voice replied from what seemed to be the bowels of
the earth: "Yes. Help. Water, for God's sake."

"All right," shouted the man above. "We'll get you out safe enough.
Keep up your heart. Are the two of you below?"

"Yes," answered the feeble voice; "but he is dead. Quick, for God's
sake, or I shall die. This dust is killing me."

"Keep up," shouted the man, "and we'll do the best. We'll get you out
in a jiffy. There's a hundred of us here. How much of the place has
fallen?"

"I don't know," answered the voice below, growing fainter. "I think
only the first floor. I can talk no more. I am dying." And then came
some sounds, inarticulate and faint, the meaning of which the man
above could not gather.

A ladder was got and thrust down into the pit, and in a short time a
score of willing hands were at work.

The joists had drawn gradually out of the wall, and the eastern end
being first freed, that side fell downward, shooting most of the
stones and earth up into the pit at the eastern side. The floor
doubled up in two from the north and south, almost like the leaves of
a book, and in the fold of this a large quantity of clay and stones
had remained. This folded part fell almost directly on the hole made
by Lionel Crawford in the roof of the vault. The weight of the stones
and the impetus they had gained in their fall was sufficient to cause
them to smash through the doubled-up flooring, and some of them fell
through the hole, carrying with them a portion of the roof of the
vault. By this falling mass Lavirotte had been struck and hurt, and
under some of the flooring, earth, and stones he now lay partly
covered, prostrate upon the ground of the vault.

Owing to the fact that most of the heavy stones and the great bulk of
the earth had been shot to the eastern side of the tower,
comparatively little entered the vault, and so Lavirotte escaped
instant death.

The men working at his release found out after a short time, partly by
his moaning and partly by looking through the hole in the fallen
floor, that Lavirotte was in the vault, and not immediately under the
fallen floor.

In less than an hour he was rescued. He was all begrimed with dirt and
clay, insensible, battered, bleeding, almost pulseless. He was
immediately placed in a cab and taken to an hospital. On his way he
recovered consciousness and begged for water, which was given him.

Upon examination it was discovered that his injuries were not of much
moment, and that exhaustion had more to do with his prostrate
condition than the hurts he had received.

For a long time he lay quiet, expressing no wish. At length he asked
what had become of the body of his companion, and was told that it had
been removed from the tower. He was asked if he had any friends with
whom he desired to communicate, and he said no. Now that Lionel
Crawford was dead, there was no one in London whom he could call a
friend. He did not wish that Dora should hear anything of the result
of that awful day, when her grandfather lost his life, and he all hope
of the vast fortune upon which he had been building for some time.

They told him that he would be able to leave the hospital in a few
days. A few days would be quite time enough to tell her all the bad
news. Indeed, the longer she was kept in ignorance of it the better.
To the inquiries of those around him, he had refused to give any reply
beyond the facts that St. Prisca's Tower was his property; that he and
the dead man, Lionel Crawford, had for some time back lived in the
tower; and that, for reasons which he declined to state, they had both
been engaged in excavating.

John Cassidy usually left his office at about four o'clock in the
evening. As he was walking in the direction of his home on the
afternoon Lavirotte was rescued from the tower, his eye was arrested
by a line in the bills of _The Evening Record_--"Mysterious affair in
Porter Street."

As a rule, John Cassidy did not buy newspapers. They did not interest
him. His theory was that one could learn enough of public affairs from
the conversation of others. But a mysterious affair always did
interest him, and in this case he bought _The Evening Record_, and
read in it a brief paragraph of what occurred in the tower, giving the
names of the two men concerned.

Mystery on mystery! Here was this man Lavirotte mixed up in two
inexplicable affairs in a space of a few months.

On the previous occasion Lavirotte had been found insensible, near a
wounded man. Now he was found insensible, near a dead man. In the
paragraph there was no suggestion that any suspected foul play; and
yet to him, Cassidy, it seemed impossible that Lavirotte was not in
some way accountable for the death of the man found with him that day.

Cassidy was burning with anxiety to tell someone of Lavirotte's former
predicament. It would give him such an air of importance if he could
add material facts to those already known in connection with this
matter. There was no use in his going back to the office, for all his
fellow-clerks had left. It was impossible for him to go home to his
room burdened with this news. He therefore resolved to turn into the
Cleopatra Restaurant in the Strand, in the hope he might there find
someone to whom he might communicate the startling addition to the
news in the evening paper.

It so fell out that he succeeded beyond his wishes. He found a group
of men standing at the bar, and among these one named Grafton, an
artist whom he had known for some time, and through whom he hoped to
find himself on the track of the Lavirotte mystery, as he knew Grafton
was acquainted with Lavirotte.

"I say, Grafton," said he, "that's a deuce of a mysterious thing that
happened to-day in Porter Street. You know, of course, this is the
Lavirotte you told me you knew. He's back in London again, after being
mixed up in a most extraordinary affair in my part of the world."

Then he related, in a voice loud enough to be heard by the group of
men standing round, all he knew concerning the affair at Glengowra.

When he had finished, one of the bystanders, whom he did not know,
said: "You would have no objection to my making use of what you say?"

"In the press?" said Cassidy, colouring with delight and importance.

"Yes," said the other. "I am connected with _The Evening Record_, and
if you authorise me to do so, I should be greatly pleased to add just
a line to our account of the affair. All I would ask or say: 'We
understand that M. Lavirotte, who was found insensible, was some
little time ago mixed up with another mysterious affair in Glengowra,
in the south of Ireland.'"

Cassidy gave a willing consent, and the addition suggested appeared in
the special edition of _The Evening Record_.

It was in the special edition of _The Evening Record_ that Dora
Harrington saw her grandfather was dead, that Lavirotte was injured,
and that he had been mixed up in a mysterious affair in Glengowra.



                             CHAPTER VII.


The shock nearly overwhelmed Dora. The double blow was too much for
her, and when the landlady came into the room a short time afterwards
she found the girl insensible on the floor.

When she returned to consciousness she could not believe she had read
the paper aright. She took it up again and went carefully over the
passage with aching eyes. The solid ground seemed to be melting away
under her feet, and all the material things around her were visionary,
unreal, far away.

The landlady at length made her talk, and with talk came tears, and
with tears relief. She pointed out the paragraph to the woman, and
told her she must go at once to the hospital and see about the whole
affair. It was too horrible, she said, to think that her grandfather
should be killed and her lover nearly killed in this enterprise,
whatever it was, they were engaged upon.

The woman was of a kindly and compassionate nature, and offered to
accompany the girl. This offer Dora gladly accepted, and the two set
out. They ascertained at the hospital that Lavirotte was going on
favourably, but that they could not see him until next day. They went
and saw the body of the old man at the mortuary, and, finding out that
nothing could be done, returned to Charterhouse Square, greatly
depressed and saddened; for the kindly woman shared the girl's grief,
and felt for her desolate condition.

Next day, when Dora called at the hospital she was admitted.

She found Lavirotte haggard, and worn, and wild-looking, but far less
seriously injured than the newspaper report had led her to expect.

It was not a place for a demonstrative meeting, and she had been
cautioned not to excite the injured man.

After the first words of the meeting she asked him all the particulars
of what had occurred at the tower. He told her as briefly as he could.
Then for the first time she learned that her grandfather and her lover
had been seeking for a treasure in that lonely place in Porter Street.
He told her how the old man had been firmly persuaded a vast hoard had
been hidden beneath the tower before the Great Fire, and had remained
there ever since. While he, Lavirotte, was away at his lodgings,
looking for letters, the old man had found the top of the vault, had
pierced the vault, and descended into it. Then, no doubt, the shock of
finding the work of years useless had been too great for him, and he
had succumbed.

He related how he, being then in a very weak condition from wearing
anxiety and the want of food and rest, had returned to the tower,
descended into the vault, and found himself unable to reascend. Then
later on came the crash, his own insensibility, and finally the rescue
the afternoon before.

In grief and pity she listened to him, and when he had finished she
could think of nothing to say but that she hoped he would soon get
strong again, and that she would do anything she could for him, and
come to see him as often as they would let her.

Then he went on to explain how this terrible disappointment at not
finding the treasure would not only leave him almost penniless, but
would prevent him doing the service he had intended for O'Donnell and
Kempston.

He told her he had not replied to the letter he found from Eugene at
his lodgings, because he hoped that in a day or two he might be able
to communicate the glorious news that the period of their affluence
was at hand. Now all this was changed. The whole aspect of his career
was altered, and the first thing she would have to do for him was to
telegraph to Eugene, saying that all hope of succour was now at an
end. It would be a cruel, a terrible, perhaps literally a fatal blow
to the elder O'Donnell, but that could not now be helped.

He dictated to her the telegram, and she wrote it down. He also
dictated a note she was to write to Mr. Kempston. Then he said:

"They tell me I shall not be long here; but how it is to be with me
when I get about again I cannot say. Misfortune seems to have marked
me out as one upon whom she was to try all her arts."

She said tenderly, advancing her hand to his: "Don't say that,
Dominique."

"Forgive me, Dora, darling. I was not thinking of you. I was speaking
of only the business aspect of things. We shall be as poor as ever
now."

"But we were never rich, and yet we were--fond of each other, and very
happy."

"Ay, darling, very fond of each other, and very happy, and will be
always," he added, pressing the hand he had in his. "I was thinking
only of you in the matter. When I had this dream of wealth upon me, I
used to picture to myself what we should do when we became rich; how
you should have all that art and luxury could produce."

"I have never wished for wealth or luxury, Dominique," she whispered.
"I know I shall be as happy as I ever hoped to be, more happy than I
ever deserved, with you. Let us think no more of that treasure. It has
brought no good to us up to this. Why should we allow it to cause us
sorrow now?"

"Ay, ay," he said. "We must make the best of it now. Bad will be the
best of it, but it might have been worse. You know I have a little
money, and with it I shall be able to continue at the singing until I
am good enough for the boards. Then I shall be able to earn enough for
us both, Dora."

"Very little will be enough," she whispered, again pressing his hand.

He returned the pressure, and said: "Thank you, darling. They will not
let you stay much longer now. I am sorry I am not able to be up; but I
suppose they will do everything necessary about your grandfather. I
want you to go to my landlord. He has some money of mine. Tell him to
arrange all about the funeral. You tell me there is no man in the
house where you lodge, and the few men I know in London, I know
scarcely sufficiently well to ask a favour of them. Stop," he said;
"there is Grafton. I might ask him. He was very friendly to me when I
was in London before. I remember where he lived. Go to him and tell
him all, and give him the money. That will be better."

He gave her Grafton's address, and after a little while she took her
leave.

She sought the artist and found him at home. He had two rooms in
Charlotte Street--one a bedroom; the other served as studio and
sitting-room. When Dora called, he was not alone. Having renewed his
acquaintance with Cassidy, he had invited the dandy to his place.
Cassidy and he were now having coffee.

Grafton hurried Cassidy into the bedroom, which was separated from the
sitting-room by folding doors. Dora was shown up, and explained the
circumstances of the case.

Grafton said he would be delighted to do anything he could for
Lavirotte and Miss Harrington. Unfortunately there was a difficulty in
the way. It was utterly impossible for him to leave his studio that
afternoon or night, as he was at work on a block which would take him
till five o'clock in the morning to finish, and he had just that
moment received a telegram from the illustrated paper on which he
worked, ordering him north to the scene of a great colliery accident
the first thing in the morning. He was deeply grieved. He would try if
he could possibly do anything. Stop! A friend of his was in the house.
He would go and ask him if he could manage to do what was required.

He went out by the door leading to the landing, and from that landing
through another door into the bedroom where Cassidy was.

Cassidy flushed with surprise and pleasure when he saw a chance of his
getting mixed up with the Lavirotte affair. He told Grafton he would
ask them to give him a holiday to-morrow, and between this afternoon
and to-morrow there would be plenty of time to arrange everything
about Lionel Crawford, as, no doubt, the inquest was held that day.

Then Grafton brought Cassidy in and introduced him to Dora, and said
that he would act in every way as though he were Grafton himself.

Dora expressed her great gratitude.

"You know," Cassidy said, "I shall go and see Mr. Lavirotte as soon as
possible, and I have no doubt he will be glad to see me, for I come
from the neighbourhood in which he lived, and know Glengowra
thoroughly." Here the overwhelming desire to rise in importance in the
eyes of Dora, pleasantly or otherwise, mastered him, and he said:
"Perhaps you have seen the special edition of _The Evening Record?_"

She said yes; that she had there first seen an account of the terrible
affair.

"It was I," said he, bowing and smiling, "who gave the information
respecting the mysterious occurrence at Glengowra, of which you,
doubtless, know." By this time he was, of course, aware he was talking
to the girl to whom Lavirotte had made love when formerly in London.

"I do not know anything about it," she whispered faintly. "I am
exceedingly obliged to both of you." She said good-bye and went.

When she was gone, Cassidy said: "Strange she doesn't know anything
about the Glengowra affair. I don't think it right she should be kept
in ignorance of it. However, Grafton, you haven't a minute to lose
now. I'll be off down east and see what's to be done. I assure you
nothing could give me greater pleasure than to act for you in this
affair."



                            CHAPTER VIII.


When Eugene O'Donnell got the telegram he fell into despair. He durst
not go to his father or his mother. Up to this his father had been in
the very best spirits, fully anticipating deliverance at the hands of
Lavirotte. Now what was to become of them? Ruin of the most complete
kind stared them in the face. They would not have the least chance of
saving anything from the wreck of their fortune, for James O'Donnell
was a man of scrupulous honesty, and would not lend himself to the
least kind of fraud. When everything was sold up they would not be
able to pay more than a small portion of the last call, and Eugene
knew his father too well to think he would conceal a single penny, or
accept a favour at the hands of the bank.

Eugene did not know what to do. The telegram came to him when he was
alone. He read it three times, put it in his pocket, and went out to
try if a walk in the air would help him.

Insensibly his steps turned towards the station, where, a little later
on in the afternoon, he would, in the ordinary course, find himself on
the way to Glengowra. When he got to the railway station he looked at
his watch, and saw that there was just time for him to run out to
Glengowra and get back again before his ordinary time for leaving the
office. He determined to run out and tell it first of all to Nellie,
upon whom he had learned to depend.

She was greatly surprised to see him so early, ran to him with a
smile, and, throwing her arms round him, said: "I cannot tell you why,
but I was half expecting to see you earlier than usual. You have
brought good news, I dare say, from Lavirotte?"

He shook his head, and said: "No; poor Lavirotte has met with an
accident."

"Met with an accident!" cried Nellie, in surprise. "Is it serious, and
will he be able to do what he promised for your father?"

"Well, you see," said her husband, "this accident is likely to knock
him up for some time, I suppose, and every hour is precious to us."
The husband and wife were now in the little drawing-room overlooking
the sea. He had sat down on a chair, dispiritedly. She stood opposite
him, with eager, inquiring eyes.

"So that you are afraid," said she, "that, after all, his promise may
come to nothing."

"Yes," said Eugene, "I am afraid it may come to nothing."

She sank on a chair beside him, and cried: "Good heavens, Eugene, what
is to become of us all?"

"I don't know, Nellie," he said gloomily, "I have not dared to tell
the governor yet. I must tell him to-night, you know. He must at once
decide upon what we shall do."

"Do you believe Lavirotte met with an accident?"

"Certainly I believe. What object could he have in telling a lie?"

"To screen his failure, if not worse."

"What could be _worse_ at present than his failure?"

"Supposing he had deliberately deceived all through."

"What earthly object could Lavirotte have in deceiving us?"

"Well, he would tell neither you nor your father where he expected
this money from. I don't like Lavirotte. I don't trust him. I wish we
never had anything to do with him. I think it was an unfortunate day
you first met him."

"Look here, now, Nellie. I believe Lavirotte was perfectly sincere in
this matter, as I believe he was sincere in his love of you, or in his
desire to destroy me when under the influence of what must have been
insanity. Anyway, this is not the time to discuss his merits. We must
think of what we ourselves have to do in this matter. How am I to
break it to my father? After all he has gone through, I fear it will
kill him or drive him mad. He has the fullest faith in Lavirotte's
turning up with the money in time. As I told you before, he has made
arrangements for the future in the full faith that the help will be
forthcoming."

"I don't know how you are to do it, Eugene. As you say, there is very
little time, if he must know this evening. Would you like me to go in
and see your mother, or do you think I should only be in the way?"

"I don't know, I'm sure. But I think, after all, it will be best if I
open the subject to him."

So it was decided that Eugene should go back to Rathclare, and make
known to his father the bad news contained in the telegram.

His visit to Glengowra had no effect. It left a strong impression on
Nellie's mind, that in addition to Lavirotte being, under great
excitement, a dangerous lunatic, he was capable at ordinary times of
deliberately and cruelly lying, if the statements he made were not the
result of delusion.

When Eugene found his father, the latter was in the best of spirits.

"Well, my son," he cried cheerily, "any news from London? Has our
friend, our good friend, got the money? Time is running very short
now, and since we are going to pay the call, we may as well do the
thing decently and be up to time."

"Do you think, sir, there is no chance of getting a later date for
payment?"

The father shook his head. "No, there is no chance," he said. "Those
who can pay must pay up at once. I am not myself uneasy about
Lavirotte, but I wish we had some news. It will be comfortable to hear
the mill going when this awful banking affair is pleasantly settled;
but I own the sound of the mill does not seem good for my ears just
now. This, of course, will be all right in a few days. Why do you ask
if there is any chance of getting time, boy?"

"Because, sir, it has occurred to me that possibly we may want it."

"But Lavirotte knows the circumstances of the case; and with such vast
expectations as he has, there can be no difficulty whatever in getting
in the form of an advance any sum of money we may require."

"That depends on the security he has to offer. Do you know, sir, what
is the nature of the security he has to offer?"

"No, he would not tell me. He said he was under an obligation, and
could communicate the matter to no one."

"Well, sir, may it not be that the property which he expects to come
into will not realise quite as much as he anticipated? Suppose it fell
a little short of what you want, what should you do?"

"Borrow money on this place, of course," said the merchant, waving his
hand over his head.

"But in case, I mean, that what Lavirotte could give you and what you
could borrow on this place would not together make sufficient, what
would you do?"

"Upon my word, Eugene, you are in a very uncomfortable humour to-day.
What earthly use is there in calculating upon chances or solving
difficulties that will never arise? But I may answer you. I should of
course sell the place. I should sell every stick of the place, every
wheel, every ounce of stuff in it, my house, horses, plate, furniture,
in fact everything that I have."

By this time the face of the old man had lost its gay aspect. He had
turned pale. His eyes were no longer sprightly, but fixed with a
strange glitter, not turned directly towards his son--in fact,
avoiding his son's gaze. It was as though he suspected--he more than
suspected, he assumed--Eugene had some bad news to give him, and that
he would wait there patiently for the bad news to come without aiding
his son's story by the display of curiosity.

"But, sir, I have some reason to fear Lavirotte will not be able to do
all he said. I am disposed to think, on good grounds, that he will not
have all the money we want in time."

The son now avoided the father's face. They were sitting at opposite
sides of the large office table. The son's eyes were turned towards
the window looking into the quadrangle. The father's eyes were fixed
vacantly upon the door of the strong-room behind his son, and to his
right.

"In that case," said the elder man, "I should mortgage."

"I am very much disinclined to go on," said the young man, frowning
heavily, "but I have no alternative. Lavirotte will not be able to
give you all you want, and I do not think you will be able to pay
all."

"Then I shall sell. I shall sell every stick I have in the world." The
old man's eyes became more fixed than ever; they never wandered from
that door. His face became more pallid. With both hands he grasped the
elbows of his chair. He sat well in the chair, leaning slightly
forward, as though he expected someone who would try and pull him out
of it.

His son looked hastily at him for a moment, then turned his eyes away
as hastily, and said slowly: "You must know, sir--you must by this
time have guessed that I have had bad news from London, from
Lavirotte. You must try and bear up, sir, for all our sakes. It will
be a bitter blow after the hope we have lived in for months."

James O'Donnell seemed to abandon the position he had taken up with
regard to Eugene's news. It would be folly any longer to affect
ignorance that something terrible was coming, or to court delay.

"What is the news from Lavirotte?" he asked.

"Lavirotte is himself injured by some accident, and he has no longer
any hope of realising the money he expected."

"No longer any hope," repeated the old man.

"No longer any hope, sir. We are not to rely on him for the least aid.
What do you purpose doing, sir?"

"I must think over the matter for a while, Eugene." He looked calmly
at his watch. "You have only just time to catch the train, and I would
rather be alone at present."

"If you would let me stay, sir, I would much rather remain with you. I
can drive home later."

"No, Eugene; you may go now. I would rather be alone." The old man
seemed quite calm and collected; in fact, so calm and collected, that
Eugene resolved not to go to Glengowra by the train, but to run up to
his father's house and to tell his mother what had occurred.

When James O'Donnell found himself alone, he got up slowly out of his
chair, crossed the floor, opened the door of the strong-room,
whispering to himself:

"No longer any hope."

He went into the gloomy chamber, and going to the safe, opened it and
took something from it. When he returned to the office, he held the
revolver in his hand and whispered to himself:

"No longer any hope."

He looked at his watch. It was just closing time. Having placed the
revolver on the table, he sat down in his chair, whispering in the
same quiet voice, "I will wait till they are all gone," and repeated
for the third time: "No longer any hope."

At seven o'clock Eugene returned to the private office, for which he
had a key. To his astonishment he found his father's chair vacant and
the strong-room door open. He went into the strong-room and examined
it. The door of the safe was open. The drawer was pulled out.

Eugene turned sick. He leant against the wall and moaned out: "Oh!
what has the poor old man done!"

Then he pushed in the drawer, the door of the safe, the door of the
strong-room, and having locked the door of the private office,
hastened downstairs.

He could find no trace of his father. He set half-a-dozen men to
search the town quietly.

Up to next morning he failed to find any clue to James O'Donnell.



                           END OF VOL. II.



                         * * * * * * * * * *

           CHARLES DICKENS AND EVANS, CRYSTAL PALACE PRESS.





*** End of this LibraryBlog Digital Book "The Last Call (Vol. 2 of 3) - A Romance" ***

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