Page:McClure's Magazine volume 10 October-April.djvu/20

44 rascal home, sir? Allow me to offer you my card. I am staying at Walker and Poole's Hotel, sir, where I should be pleased to see you."

"The pleasure would be mutual, sir," said I; but I must say my heart was not in my words, and as I watched Mr. Byfield departing, I desired nothing less than to pursue the acquaintance.

One more ordeal remained for me to pass. I carried my senseless load upstairs to our lodging, and was admitted by the landlady in a tall white night-cap and with an expression singularly grim. She lighted us into the sitting-room; where, when I had seated Rowley in a chair, she dropped me a cast-iron courtesy. I smelt gunpowder on the woman. Her voice tottered with emotion.

"I give ye nottice, Mr. Ducie," said she. "Dacent folks' houses "

And at that, apparently, temper cut off her utterance, and she took herself off without more words.

I looked about me at the room, the goggling Rowley, the extinguished fire; my mind reviewed the laughable incidents of the day and night; and I laughed out loud to myself—lonely and cheerless laughter!

At this point the story breaks off, having been laid aside by the author some weeks before his death. The argument of the few chapters remaining to be written was known to his stepdaughter and amanuensis, Mrs. Strong, who has been good enough to supply materials for the following summary:

Anne goes to the Assembly Ball, and there meets Chevenix, Ronald, Flora, and Flora's aunt. Anne is very daring and impudent, Flora very anxious and agitated. The Bow Street runner is on the stairs, and presently the Vicomte de St. Yves is announced. Anne contrives to elude them and to make an appointment with Flora that she should meet him with his money the next day at a solitary place near Swanston. They keep the appointment, and have a long interview, Flora giving him his money packet. They are disturbed by a gathering crowd in the neighborhood, and learn accidentally that a balloon ascent is about to take place close at hand. Perceiving Ronald and Chevenix, Anne leaves Flora and forces his way into the thickest of the crowd, hoping thus to evade pursuit. But the Bow Street runner and the rest of his pursuers follow him up to the balloon itself. The ropes are about to be cut when Anne, after a moment's whispered conversation with the aëronaut, leaps into the car as the balloon rises. The course of the balloon takes it over the British channel, where it descends, and the voyagers are picked up by an American privateer and carried to the United States. Thence St. Ives makes his way to France.

Meanwhile Rowley, with the help of Mr. Robbie, busies himself successfully at Edinburgh to bring about an investigation into the circumstances attending Goguelat's death. Chevenix, conceiving that Anne would never return, and wishing to appear in a magnanimous light before Flora, comes forward as the principal witness, and, by telling what he knows of the duel, clears his rival of the criminal charge hanging over him.

Upon the restoration of the monarchy, the Vicomte de St. Yves being discredited and ruined, Anne comes into possession of his ancestral domains, and returns to Edinburgh in due form and state to claim and win Flora as his bride. S. C.