ravenous look; the fawning, obsequious tone to one of command.

'You shall not take away the jewel. I am your partner, and—I will have mine share!

'Your share! your share! Ha, ha, ha! You will have it? Let me see you take it then?'

The two stood glaring at each other for an instant, the last speaker braced in a posture of defence against a brick wall, the other only a few feet distant. There was a hush, then a spring, a struggle; first a suppressed shriek, again louder, and the scream of 'murder!' rang through the dark street. There was an instant pattering of feet all bearing towards the spot of the cry; there was a distant ringing of clubs on the pavement, and before the two could disentangle themselves from the deadly embrace, they were safe in the hands of a dozen policemen.

'The man's cut!' said one of these, catching the staggering body of one of the prisoners in his arms. Bring them to the light.'

They were brought under the flickering light of the gas-the stabber and the stabbed; the first still grasping the knife, covered with the warm blood. This was Kreiling, the same fierce, eager look upon his face.

'Das man has robbed me! He has taken away my gold, my diamonds! I did kill him to save my life!' And then the wretch clutched the knife more tightly and gasped for breath.

'The man's dead, Simmons. Bring him along,' said one of the policemen, rising from a close gaze into the face of the prostrate man and addressing him who had Kreiling in charge.

'Move quick!' was the command of the sergeant, and the group passed out from the dark spot, tracking blood in their steps towards the station.

in bursts to the street. It is a gay ball in honor of the bride that is to be, but the wedding that is to come off is a profound secret. Within the hearts of those four most nearly interested it is kept in glad imprisonment, that the world may have no chance for comment until comment shall be useless. Through the great rooms and out in quiet corners walked the host and Mr. Allen Conroy. Something there was of conversation that had arisen between them that planted graveness upon their faces and an undertone in their talk.

'It is a strange and unsuitable place, Robert, to bring up such a subject,' were the first words spoken by Mr. Allen; "but I cannot allow myself to retain a secret that should have been told long since, and which may possibly influence you to recall the intention you now have towards Ellinor. I shall make no farther apology for telling it to-night than from a fear that your anticipated happiness may be by you, in some word or act, revealed, and that a later confession may cause it to turn to ashes on your lips.'

'In the name of heaven, Conroy, what do you mean? Speak quick, and do not keep me in agony !'

come away

'Robert, Ellinor is not farther-Ellinor is not my daughter!' Cloyden stopped in his walk suddenly, and looked sternly at Mr. Allen.

'What is the meaning of this?'. 'I am ignorant of her birth and parentage. She is an adopted child. I took her from a dead, nameless mother, when she was two years old, and Marion and I have cherished her as our own; locking the secret in our own hearts, keeping it even from Ellinor.'

There was a silence of a minute, when Cloyden, stretching forth his hand, with a smile, said:

The dancers dancing in time,' and the wild notes of the harps and violins fill all the room, and escape away

was all your own; but your revelation cannot abate even a small portion of the love I bear you all. As the child of your love, she will be as dear to me as though

of your blood; but, from this moment, the secret must be buried between us, and Ellinor still remain as your own by birth.'

A quick pressure of the grasped hands spoke all that could have been said in many words.

'And now,' continued Cloyden, 'as you have chosen this time for a confession, let me do the same. To Ellinor I have already done so, and to you I have only awaited an opportunity to make it. Let me seize this as one, however unsuitable.'

Again there was a pause for a moment, as though the one dreaded to speak, the other to hear. At last Cloyden, in low and hesitating words, spoke.

'Allen, do you remember when we parted after my graduation, over twenty years since?'

'As well as yesterday.'

'You have sometimes wondered of late why, since my return to this land, I do not go again to my native town, and among my relatives. Let me give you the cause. It was there I commenced my practice and there I married.'

'Married!'

'Yes, married one to whom I had been attached from a child. I thought her pure in act and heart, and I trusted her as a woman when she was but a child. I loved her, how much it will be useless for me to say. I only awakened one day from my trust to find that I had, by my blindness, laid her subject to the designs of a villain. She fled, carrying with her my child. I never heard of them afterwards but once, and could never trace them, notwithstanding years of search. This it was that drove me, after obtaining legal release, for twenty years away from my home, and still makes me averse to return to the spot of my first life.'

'My dear Cloyden!' said Mr. Allen, 'I can well understand how little you wanted to speak upon this subject, and how its memory must have cast a shadow over your life. Though its confession ould not in the slightest degree affect

our relation, I am still glad that I know it, and more so that it is known to Ellinor.'

For many years the dark shade of that lost woman crossed me at every path; but time, the great solacer, has softened it, and now I can think of her only as one whom I have known in some dream of the past. I have only—' A servant at this instant announced, in a low tone, a message.

'Did he say to-night?' was Mr. Cloyden's question.

'He said it was urgent, Sir; that the man was dying.'

'I will go with you,' said Mr. Allen; 'there is most likely some mistake; or possibly it may be in reference to the miniature that Ellinor lost this evening.'

There is life in him yet, sergeant; but I don't think you'll have the pleasure of sending him up for ten years, as you calculated on. He'll hardly last through the night. It's an ugly cut.' 'Who's that you've got there, doc

tor?'

'The Padder,' answered the doctor, nodding to the new-comer, and turning again to the man who lay stretched upon a cot in the station-house, surrounded by a group of policemen. A long groan came from the prostrate figure.

'He's coming round, boys! What have you done with Dutch Charley?'. 'Taken him down,' answered one of the men.

There was a long silence, and presently another groan, and the man opened his eyes and looked vacantly around upon those who stood about him.

Has she come?' he asked faintly. 'She, who is she?' was the response of the doctor.

He gave no answer, but thrust his hand, with great effort, into his breast and seemed eagerly seeking something.

'He's looking for the miniature,' said the doctor.

'Yes, yes, the miniature,' he said, making a faint struggle to rise.

'Lie still!' said the_doctor, putting

his hand against the man's breast and pushing him down again. 'That's safe enough.'

'Give it back to her.'

Colonel, or some of his friends, from the circumstance of its being that gentleman's portrait.

'A fellow here, who has been badly

'Cloyden!' answered the man, in a hoarse whisper, without waiting for the question of the doctor.

'Cloyden! Cloyden!' said the sergeant musingly. 'Is n't that the name of that rich South-American who has just built on Simmons's beat. Here, Simmons, look at this miniature, and tell us whether you know who it is.'

The one addressed looked at it for a moment.

'Know who it is! Well, I should think I did! That's Colonel Cloyden.'

The eyes and ears of the man upon the cot drank in every word. When they ended, he turned to the doctor.

'Doctor, am I dying?'

'Yes!' was the doctor's response. He was a police-surgeon and could not afford to waste words on a criminal, even though a dying man.

'How long do you think I will live?' 'Perhaps until morning, if you lie still; but not five minutes if the bleeding comes on again.'

'Send for him.'

'Send for whom?'

‘The — the — Cloyden.'

'Hallo! sergeant. He wants to see Colonel Cloyden. Is n't there somebody here that can go for him? Perhaps he has something to confess.'

The eager eyes of the man followed and watched the figures moving about the room, and listened intently to every word.

In less than an hour, Cloyden entered the room, accompanied by Mr. Allen Conroy. The officer who had gone for him could tell nothing more than that a well-known thief, whose original cognomen was lost in that of 'The Padder,' had been stabbed by another of the same stripe as himself, in a quarrel over a miniature set with diamonds, which had to all appearance been stolen from the

Cloyden came to the side of the cot and gazed at the dying man, who returned the look with a wild, wandering stare. In a few moments he asked in a hissing tone between his teeth:

'Do you know me?'

Cloyden looked again earnestly at the figure stretched before him, and answered in the negative.

'No! have twenty years so changed me that not even my worst enemy knows me? Not even he who sought me for years to slay me!'

Once more Cloyden looked in the face of the speaker. A cold, pallid hue came over bis features, and his lips compressed as he recognized the man before him, and moved back as if from some loathsome thing.

Conroy made one instinctive, quick step to the side of his friend, who caught his arm convulsively and said, as though speaking to himself:

'This is he!'

'Yes!' said the man, 'it is he― he who, for a base passion, consigned the woman you loved to shame and death! Death! Was it death?'

As he said this he made a fierce effort to rise into a sitting position, but failed.

'I ask you was it death?' he continued, or is my brain gone. I saw her dead once, if ever there was death; and this night I saw her living.'

There was a pause of a few moments, as Cloyden stood looking at the man, during which no word was spoken. It was broken by his taking Mr. Allen by the arm and walking to another part of the room.

the darkness of the night. He drew his arm gently through that of his friend and led him away towards the door. The

'And there he has seen a most remarkable resemblance to the woman he had ruined and consigned to death. It was this wonderful likeness that first attracted me to Ellinor, strangely enough, since all lingering affection I may have had for the original has long ago faded away.'

Mr. Allen stood pondering and silent. Something there was flashing through his brain that sent the blood away from his lips and cheeks, and made the hand to tremble that he had laid upon the arm of his friend.

'Remain here,' he said in a choking voice, and let me question this man.'

The men stood back from the cot, at the request of Mr. Allen, and left him alone with the dying man. The conversation was carried on in a low voice, the questioner resting his head upon his hand and seated beside the cot. A quarter of an hour passed away, and Mr. Allen rose slowly from his seat and crossed the large room to where Cloyden stood looking out through a window into

them, with the announcement:

'Gentlemen, if you have any thing further to say to this man, you had better say it now. He will be dead in an hour. No power on earth can save him.'

They bowed without speaking, and passed out into the street.

It was Mr. Allen that spoke first. 'Cloyden, you must prepare for a most startling, perhaps a most joyful announcement.'

Cloyden walked on hurriedly, without speaking.

'Robert, you have lost a wife and gained a daughter.'

Still more hurriedly he walked. 'Another time I will relate to you that portion of the past in which I was an instrument of GoD to preserve your child.'

'Blessed be His name! It was indeed a child-love, not one of passion, that attracted me to Ellinor, once my own Lurline. Let us hurry on that I may clasp her in my arms, and call her really my own.'