worthy people, who unfortunately had got into his confidence and purse; when, if so, adieu to all hope of reclamation of Britannic gold! That letter was the Hopgoods' writ of exculpation. By it they obtained public forgiveness for their tremendous mistake in having stood sponsors for an impostor to the choice society of Stoneleigh, and public sympathy for their supposed victimization completed their whitewashing. "Then she did cheat at cards, after all!" cried Mr. Jones. "I had my suspicions all along; but who would have listened to them? Indeed, how could I have tested them? She was deep and beautiful enough to have cheated the ahem! She was, though, the little baggage!" with indignant reminiscences of the blue-andsilver boudoir, and of the heaps of lies piled up on his innocent wife's brain. "And that's why she always fought so shy of me," laughed Captain MacArthur. "I saw her once or twice, under the title of Madame la Baronne, at Baden. She was just beginning her career when I was leaving. Lord, lord, what fools we have all been!" That evening a more painful rumor ran through Stoneleigh. It was said that young Anthony Carthew had destroyed himself: some said poisoned, others that he had hung himself, and others detailed a circumstantial account of how he had blown out his brains. But all agreed that he was lying dead in the boudoir at Oakfell Hall. And, too surely, there he lay, pale, beautiful, and lifeless, on the very spot where only yesterday he had passed through the courts of paradise. A letter in Italian, praying for forgiveness and ending with "Io t' amo," a lock of shining chestnut hair, and a faded bouquet, were in his hand; and on the sofa, beside the torn envelope of a packet, lay a valuable diamond ring. The Countess, before they left the house, found means to make up this packet, which she threw, unobserved, into the little garden before Anthony's house as they passed it in the gray dawning. The ring was the most valuable piece of property she had, and its loss entailed on her both insult and ill-treatment. An inquest was held, but neither poison nor mark of violence was discovered; a ruptured vessel in the heart sufficiently accounted for the death. Perhaps it was as well. The sun had set for the poor boy forever: what joy would he have had through a long unending night? As the funeral passed the house of Lawyer Blair, Nelly, in her new mourning, looking up from making apple-jelly, wiped her eyes and said, sobbing, "Poor Anthony! poor fellow! he was very handsome and clever, and all that; but see how foolish! Poor Anthony! I am sure I loved him as much as I could; he need not have gone after a foreign swindler like that! Oh, Sarah, Sarah!" in a tone of anguish, "what are you doing? Don't you know apple-jelly burns if you don't keep on stirring it, and you with the spoon out, gaping like that! Come, give it to me, do, and go and set the tea!" 46 recognized a neighbor from the town next her own, I am beat now! When did you leave home, Miss Packard ?" LOST ON A RAILWAY. 3 OOSOP STATION!" roared the conductor on the H. P. & F. R. R., as ad- "Why, I come away this morning. But set vertisements economically style that line of road down, set down. I'm real glad it's you; I never that cuts Connecticut in two-as far as it goes-do fellowship strange folks settin' in the same probably on the principle that it might go farther and fare worse, or rather get no fares. seat with me on the railroad; seems so intimate like, and they 'most always crowd." "I'm goin' to hang my basket up before I set down," remarked Mrs. Dodd. "John he put a string on't so as to be handy." She stretched up her arm across Mrs. Packard's head to hang up her apples, but at that unlucky moment a sharp jar shook the car, and the apples rolling out of the basket fell on the head below, and Mrs. Packard sprung up in a fury, her straw bonnet, liberally adorned with red flowers, thoroughly smashed, and her head well bruised. The train stopped, the axles screeched, the whistle shrieked, and the engine sent out sidepuffs of spiteful steam, and on the platform stood a little old lady with a big new bandbox, in that state of mingled confusion and excitement common to old ladies from the country in prospect of a journey, particularly a journey after that incarnation of Young America-a locomotive. "Good-by, mother!" said a mild-looking, dark-eyed woman, giving the old lady a kiss. "Good-by, gram'ma," shouted a thick-set boy from his station beside the engine, which he "Good gracious!" said she, darting a sharp was surveying, much as if he had taken an order look at Mrs. Dodd, who was holding on to the to build one, and meant to improve on this pat-seat, pretty well frightened. "Good gracious! tern. them apples have a'most broke my skull! and they've smashed my bunnet all up! I don't see what folks do want to carry sech things for!" "Oh dear me! where's my bundle?-no, my bandbox! I declare if I hain't got it in my hand after all!-Good-by, Sary! Good-by, Sammy! Where's John? Oh, here he is.—I John, where's my umberell?" "Here it is, mother; now get in," answered an elderly man who stood at her elbow. "But where's my piece of string?-and the apples?-and you hain't lost that fennel, have ye, Sary ?" "All aboard!" again roared the conductor; and the old lady made for the car with John after her, holding in his hand the basket of apples, with a piece of string knotted to the handle, a bunch of dry fennel, and a blue cotton umbrella. John could get no farther than the door, for the cars began to move. He piled the things upon the old lady's bandbox, and swung himself off, just in time to get upon the end of the platform, leaving his mother-in-law a picture of confusion. However, the old lady righted herself pretty quickly; she tied her fennel to one end of the string, took the umbrella in one hand and the bandbox in the other, hung the basket on the umbrella handle, which she held horizontally, and proceeded to find a seat. There were none empty, but several occupied by only one woman; and guided by the instinct of dress that almost all women possess, she stopped beside one of these whose occupant's peculiar array stamped her as a country woman, and gave her a familiar aspect to our heroine. "Can I set here?" said the old lady, giving a little poke to the woman's elbow, who looked round with the forbidding expression common to single or solitary females when assaulted by that question in the cars. But as soon as she caught sight of her questioner's face within the frill of her black bonnet she smiled a benignant smile of welcome, and said, in a loud, cheerful voice, "Why, 'tain't you, Miss Dodd, is it?" "Dear me!" said the old lady, "it is too bad, do say! But what on airth jounced all these cars so? I do believe we've run away!" "Well," was Mrs. Packard's indignant reply, "I guess if we had, you wouldn't be a talkin' about it!" "Don't you want some rum onto your head?" said Mrs. Dodd, anxious to repair the injuries her apples had committed. "I guess I had better have some,' was the mollified reply, evidently expecting the old lady to hand over the lotion from her bandbox or her pocket. But she innocently answered, "I wonder if the conductor hain't got any. I should think he'd keep some in case of bruises and cuts." An indignant sniff was the sole remark Mrs. Packard hazarded; and the old lady, after picking up her apples, which had rolled hither and yon through the car, quietly established herself in the seat beside her friend, who was occupied in pinching up and pulling out the crushed bonnet and its decorations. Just as bandbox, umbrella, apples, and fennel were all finally arranged, the conductor came by. "Ticket, Ma'am!" Mrs. Dodd was a long time getting it. Out of her deep pocket came all its contents before the missing card was found; three keys on a blue string, one red silk handkerchief and one white cambric one, two pieces of flag-root, an old silk purse with change in it, half a nutmeg, a silver thimble, a tape-needle, a little almanac, a box of Dally's Pain Extractor, and one of corn-salve, a pin-ball, and a pair of scissors, a lemon, and two peppermints, a small ball of blue yarn, a bit of Turkey rhubarb, three pea-nuts, and a pair of black silk gloves, in whose folds was the ticket. But while this investigation was going on Mrs. Dodd improved her time in questioning the conductor. “What did make these cars jump so a little | got a nephew 't keeps a bakery to Saratogue, so while back, Sir?" it didn't cost no great), he slep to Albany, to "Cow on the track," laconically growled the Joe Weed's house, and he said 'twas queer why they had it for the capital to York State, when "Dew tell!" said the old lady, in an accent York City was so much the biggest. I know 't of horror, "was 't a red caow ?" ain't in Indianny!" man. "Pretty red when I see her," grimly remarked he. "I shouldn't wonder now if 'twas Miss Jacob Smith's old Red," went on she; "I heerd her tell how her caow would run acrost the track comin' home from pastur. Why, here's my yarn, and Sammy's pea-nuts 't I took away from him last night when he was goin' to eat 'em in bed; poor little fellow, he'll think grandma is dreadful! I declare I did mean 't he should have 'em again. You didn't hear whose caow did you, Sir?" it was, (Dear reader, let me tell you, par parenthèse, that "he," to a Connecticut woman, always means "my husband." Grammar fails before conjugal devotion; there is but one man to our Mrs. Packards, and the personal pronoun is sacred to that one.) "Well," rather irresolutely replied Mrs. Dodd, "I know Jehiel said 'twas Indianny, and so did John; and come to think on't, Jehiel's letters always have New Albany on 'em, but I never heerd John call it New." "I don't say but what there may be an Albany "No!" emphasized the conductor, who want- or even a New Albany out to Indianny," reed the ticket-and at last got it! torted Mrs. Packard with dignity; "but I do say By this time Mrs. Packard's bonnet was bent I hain't never heerd of no Albany except the out to its pristine shape and splendor, and Mrs. one in York State; and if there was one out in Dodd, recalled from her ticket hunt, remember-Indianny, I don't see why John should send you ed the bruises and called the conductor back in to York to go there; it appears more likely so loud and earnest a voice that he could not af-you should go to the York State Albany from fect not to hear her, and unwillingly turned. 66 there." "Well, I don't know," feebly answered the old lady; "I expect John's brother 'll know. I feel rather uncertain about changin' cars to Say, Mr. Conductor, you haven't got any old rum, have you? I want to wet her head with 't." The conductor, I regret to say, became pro- Hartford. After that, I expect I'll go straight." fane. "There ain't no difficulty to Hartford,” con "Why, he swears!" ejaculated the old lady descended Mrs. Packard. "You've jest got to with an accent of horror and surprise. step acrost the depott, and there'll come along Mrs. Packard laughed; a touch of superiority | a train by-'n-by, and you jest ask ef that's the restored her temper: she could afford to be amiable to a woman who knew so little of the ways of the world as Mrs. Dodd. So she resumed the conversation. "You haven't told me yet where you're goin', Lucy-Ann; she's got a bad complaint of her viMiss Dodd." Albany train-I would say the York train-and they'll tell you, somebody will. I wish 't I was agoing as fur as that myself, but I ain't. I'm going to stop to Manchester to see my sister tals, and I ruther expect she won't survive. Any way, I'm goin' to nuss her for a spell." "I declare I do wish you was goin' along," said the old lady in a wistful voice. "I'm kind o' hampered with these bundles and things. But my trunk was packed, and I thought maybe I'd have to stop quite a while in York, and this pongee I'm ridin' in isn't very much to look at, so I put up my best black silk gown, and two frilled caps, and some handkerchers, so 't I needn't appear otherwise than conformable to city folks's ways, and then I knew James Greene (that's John's brother, leastways his step-brother) was extreme fond of Roxbury russets, so I concluded to take along a few; they have kept over so well "Me? Why I'm goin' to Albany to see my son Jehiel, he that studied for the ministry, and was settled a spell in Westbury, and then down to Fall River, and now he's ben in Albany quite a spell, five years I guess, and I haven't ben to see him never. You see Sary she's hed young childern, and I hevn't felt as though I could leave her to worry it through alone. But now they're pretty well grown; Sammy he's the smallest, and Jehiel wouldn't hear to my stayin' away no longer; I was bound to go and stay there a year. So John he sent my trunk somehow, by Express I expect, so 't I shouldn't hev no trouble, and I'm a goin' in to Hartford and down to York, and John's brother-why, it's June the tenth to-day-and I couldn't he's goin' to meet me there, and find somebody that's goin' that way, who'll take me along. It's quite a voyage out to Indianny, and I don't hanker much to go." "Out to Indianny!" exclaimed Mrs. Packard. Why, Albany's in York State, 'tain't out there." "Why, yes it is," stoutly answered Mrs. Dodd. "Why, Miss Dodd, it ain't! I guess I know where Albany is; his sister's son, Joe Weed, lives to Albany; and when he had a liver complaint, and had to go to Saratogue a spell (he's go without my umberell no way, if it should come on to rain; and then I had the fennel so 'st if I should be sick to my stomach a riding in the cars, it's very warming-" "Manchester!" interposed the conductor, and Mrs. Packard bundled out of the cars with a rapid farewell to her traveling companion, and left the old lady alone. Before long the train rolled into the Hartford station, and Mrs. Dodd, somewhat confused by the rush of people out of the cars, and the vociferations of the hackmen, gathered up her "things" and stepped off the train, coming down the long step quit unawares, with a bounce that made her drop her bandbox and exclaim, moved off. Poor Mrs. Dodd, tired with the worry and bustle of the morning, fell asleep, and the conductor, having an old mother himself, compassionately forbore to wake her on his "Oh goodness! I believe I have bumped my first round. But next time he tried to rouse bunnet off!" But the approach of a predatory hackman made her grasp the precious box again, and let go of the bonnet. "Allyn House, Ma'am ?" 66 Hay?" replied the bewildered old lady, as another man behind her screamed, "United States Hotel!-where's yer checks ?" her, as they neared a station, and possibly she might wish to get off; the old lady slept however so soundly that shakings and callings seemed all in vain, much to the amusement of the two women before her. But one behind, more considerate, offered her bottle of salts to the conductor, who applied it with such effect that Mrs. Dodd jumped up, spilled her basket of "Why, I left 'em to home," was the naïve re-apples out of her lap, and looked about her with ply, "a hangin' behind the milk-room door." 66 City Hotel! give me your box, Ma'am. Any more baggage?" a dismayed and alarmed expression, irresistible to behold. Even the conductor laughed. "Why, what do you want of my box? I he. hain't got no trunk, it's gone to Albany." 66 Just then a train screeched into the station and completed Mrs. Dodd's confusion, while it drowned the drivers' voices; and seeing there was nothing to be done with the old lady, they left her staring at the locomotive, as thoroughly confused as ever any old lady was. "Dear me!" soliloquized she; seems as though my head would bust." Just then her eye caught a placard, "Beware of Pickpockets!" A look of alarm and horror crossed her face; she shifted the apples and the "umberell" all to one hand, and grasped her pocket firmly with the other thereby drawing up her gray pongee dress, and displaying to all beholders a pair of thick-set ankles cased in blue cotton stockings, and the goodly feet to which they belonged clothed with prunella shoes, whose shape betrayed the swollen joints and crooked shapes that were the reward of hard work and cheap shoe-leather. Certainly Mrs. Dodd did not look one whit less funny to the loungers and employés in that station-house because she was one of the kindest and best old ladies in the world! If love and truth and unselfishness want to be appreciated, they must wear hoops, and cosaques, and coats with big sleeves; not pongee-skirts and black bombazine bonnets, or even blue yarn stockings! As she stood there glaring through her silver-rimmed spectacles, and trying to recall Mrs. Packard's advice, the station-master came by, and she appealed to him, for she despaired of finding out for herself: "Sir," said she, tremulously, quite forgetting in her confusion where she was going, "are them the Albany cars ?" "Do you want to get off here, Ma'am ?" said "Where is't? where is't? We haven't got to York, have we? Oh, my apples! I declare for 't, they're all rolled away!” Thompsonville!" shouted the breakman, as the conductor did not fulfill that particular part of his duty, being occupied with Mrs. Dodd. "Are you going off here, Ma'am?" repeated this latter functionary. "No, I'm going further. I'm goin' to York." The conductor did not wait to hear the latter part of her answer, he was obliged to see to other affairs. So long as the old lady didn't mean to get off, he could wait for her ticket till their brief stop at the station was over. And she, by this time wide awake, began to collect her scattered apples--a task of no small difficulty, between the mischievousness of two school-boys who had already possessed themselves of three or four, and the spread of sundry hoops that concealed others. At length she had gathered the better part of her fruit, feeling rather puzzled by the earnest declaration of the boys that they hadn't seen such a thing, when she had found three rolled beyond them; and just as she stooped to pick up one more the train started and pitched her forward. Luckily the bom bazine bonnet took the brunt of her fall, the front crushed in and saved her face, but the bonnet was deplorable; and the poor old lady's discomfiture was completed by the malicious tittering of the "ladies" before her. As soon as she was seated the conductor came back, his face twitched a little at Mrs. Dodd's aspect, the pongee was streaked with dust from the car floor, the bonnet bent in an"That's the New Haven, Hartford, and Spring-gles that were none of them right angles, and field train, Ma'am; you can go to Albany by it, her attempts at straightening it had only multior you can go to New York or to Boston." "Oh, well! it's York I'm going to, thankee, Sir." Somebody called the station-master and he walked rapidly away, while the old lady picked her way across the tracks, and with some difficulty clambered into the cars on the wrong side, nothing doubting but that she was all right, when in fact she had taken the up train. She sat down behind two ladies, young and fashionably dressed, and presently the train plied them, her face was flushed with heat and mortification, and she had put down her basket of apples on the floor between her two feet, which steadied it as resolutely as if they were glued to either side. "Where's your ticket, Ma'am?" said he. "Why, I hain't got none," she answered, meekly. "I thought you kep' 'em." "Didn't you get one at the office?" "Well, I declare, I forgot John told me to, I was in sech a hurry. You see I come in on "Oh dear!" exclaimed she, in a tone of heart-felt confusion and distress. "What be I goin' to do?" "Why, we stop at Springfield in a few minutes, and you can get on the down train there, and go right on to New York." "Well, can you give me a ticket, Sir? I've got the money all right. I held on to 't down to Hartford deepott so's there shouldn't no pickpockets git it." "I guess I sha'n't ask you to pay for this ride," said he, smiling. "You can get a ticket for New York at the Springfield office, and the down train starts in five minutes, right alongside t'other side of the waiting-room; you won't have any stop to make there. Is this all your baggage?" "I expect it is, Sir. John, he sent my trunk by ex-press, and these is all besides, if I don't tip over them apples agin." Pretty soon the train did stop, and the old lady bundled out, and after much questioning and explanation discovered a ticket-office, and in her fresh confusion asked for and bought a ticket to Albany, and deposited herself in the train for Boston. It was some time before the cars began to move, and Mrs. Dodd thought her friendly conductor must have mistaken the time, so she left her box and walked forward to an elderly man who sat reading a paper just before her, and said, "I thought these here cars wan't goin' to wait very long. "Time changed," gruffly replied he. for the third time that day, went rolling along the floor. This last catastrophe was too much for poor Mrs. Dodd. She was tired, and puzzled, and hungry, withal; she had had no dinner, and had brought nothing to eat with her; and tears of fatigue as well as vexation dimmed her spectacles as she tried to inspect the wounded thumb. "I'll get your ticket when I come back," said the conductor, tired of waiting. But the old lady scarcely heard him-she could not see the place that was hurt on her thumb, which she was most anxious to do-and in her simplicity she quite forgot that the ladies in front of her had been rude in the morning; so, quite regardless of her apples, she lifted herself half-way off the seat, and leaning forward, thrust her hand between the two ladies, and asked, in perfect good faith, 66 Mrs. Dodd never winced, she was so absorbed in her hurt. 'Why, you see I sticked a pin into my thumb, and pins are p'isonous, they say. Hester Smith's daughter, she 't worked to a pinfactory, she got pricked and didn't take no pains to heal up the wownd, and she swelled up awfully, got mortified and re'lly died; so I always carry Dally in my pocket to put on first jump; but I can't see real well in the cars so as to apply it right. Do you see the hole?" The green eyes and amber hair confronted her again, and the same discriminating voice remarked, "I see a very dirty thumb." Now Mrs. Dodd's thumb did not look clean; she had taken off her clinging silk gloves to straighten out her bonnet and pick up her apples, and the dust had left unmistakable traces So Mrs. Dodd sat down again, and in a few minutes the same two women who had been be-on that puckered and pierced member. But Mrs. fore her on the Springfield train came in, and took the same seat. Mrs. Dodd was hardly pleased by this encounter, and it puzzled her somewhat that these two ladies who had just come up should be going down again; but she said nothing, and in ten minutes the train was off. It was an express train, and stopped at but few places, so that she was well on her journey before the conductor claimed her ticket, which was safe at the bottom of her pocket. Dodd's hobby was cleanliness; she was scrupulously, religiously neat: however old, and faded, and stained her dress might be, it was always faultlessly clean as soap and water could make it; and to have a strange woman in a public conveyance tell her that her thumb was "dirty" was not to be endured. She bent her head slightly to facilitate the manœuvre, and directed a look over her spectacles at the offender, a look of that transfixing kind peculiar to indignant old ladies, in which they assume something of the severely virtuous aspect common to those dragon-flies that have four eyes, though they do not wear spectacles. But the green eyes and cross-amber hair were turned away, and poor Mrs. Dodd's Medusean artillery was wasted. She gave no further license to her tongue than to remark quite audibly, "I'll get it in a minute," said she, deprecatingly, as the conductor began to look impatiently at the heterogeneous articles that one by one were being fished up out of her pocket. "Hurry up, Ma'am!" said he, at length, ly. "I can't wait all day!" So urged, the poor old lady thrust her hand energetically down, deeper yet, and ran a sharp pin from the pin-ball into her thumb: her hand was withdrawn with as much force as it went in, and her elbow hit the basket of apples, which, "I wish you better manners!" No notice was taken of this little remark by the green eyes. An icicle could not have been |