Page:The Father Confessor, Stories of Danger and Death.djvu/289

Rh of art among these, but he did not seem to be looking at these; he stopped at last before one small canvas inscribed—"the portrait of a coloured lady." He gazed for a long time at the smiling dark face, then slowly drew a penknife from his pocket and opened it.

"To rise again in the fourth generation. Curse you! curse you! curse you!" he cried, and drew the blade across the laughing eyes and mouth till the canvas fell apart in rags.

The Allisons' family packed up and disappeared. No one knew where they had gone, few knew why—only George, who died a soldier's death soon afterwards, and Miss Anderson, who would never tell. Even Mrs. Donald, who hired all the Allisons' servants, could never find out more than that the black negro gentleman had been thrown out one day for stealing; that Lucy Allison had run away one night with her lover, George, who she heard was leaving for America and the war; that he was killed soon after, poor gentleman! that it was a mercy she saw him first; that the master was upset at hearing of the trouble his daughter was in, in being left a