The Argosy, January 1906 — page 126: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

508 ket—and next at the powder-stains on my white dress. Then he sat down weakly and laughed until he almost had convulsions. The next day he came home to dinner early. “edward Ridgely went out West to- day,” he said and looked at me suspi- THE ARGOSY. ciously. “ He and his brother. He made up his mind to go—rather suddenly.” “T hope that he will succeed out there,” I said, smiling vaguely, and then helped myself to more chicken. A birthday serenade in spite of the weather! But I was never in all my life sentimental. THE OUTCAST. BY W. BERT FOSTER. The lure of false hopes that paved the way to tragedy, hedged with doubt, and girdled by remorse. SYNOPSIS OF CHAPTERS PREVIOUSLY PUBLISHED. RAMON BurREsS returns to his native village possessed of nothing save his medical degree and some debts, which his uncle has given him to understand he will settle. He finds Leslie Searles, his boyhood sweetheart, betrothed to his chum, Seymour Lloyd, and his uncle refuses to settle his bills save by a legacy. His uncle’s taunts, his disappointment and the demands of his creditors half madden Burress, and when, while out hunting, he comes upon his uncle in the woods, he impulsively shoots in his direction. As his uncle falls dead, Lloyd rushes from the underbrush, crying out that Ramon is a murderer. In his haste he falls and stuns himself. in, discovered by Orrin Paddock, the old herb man. Burress returns to his own home, and later on Lloyd is brought The young doctor does his best to revive him, know- ing the while that with his friend’s returning consciousness his own doom will fall, but when Lloyd awakens, it is with a mind as blank as a new-born child’s. To Burress, sure that retribution will overtake him eventually, this is added torture rather than a relief. Meantime Orrin Paddock has found Lloyd’s gun, and Burress has now to bear his insinuations that Lloyd shot the old man. CHAPTER XI. THE AWAKENING OF A SOUL. B URRESS did not return directly to the office. There were several minor eases which the old doctor had left to his attention and refused to consider again now that he had returned. The young physician shook off the herbalist at he door of the first of these patients, and when he had completed this brief round of calls, struck out alene from the village, desirous only of being freed of all human companion- ship. The excitement through which he had so recently passed had sapped both his self-possession and his. mental vitality. Before returning to take up the duties awaiting him, he felt that he must quell those chaotic thoughts — now mastering his mind. * This story began in b the November issue of THe ARGosy. He feels that another crime burdens his conscience. First and most troublesome of all were the reflections anent the charac- ter of the wound in the dead man’s skull. And that it was peculiar there could be no question. A ball as large as that thrown by his rifle—the weapon he had buried in the mire—might make a wound no larger than a pea in the fleshy part of the body, but in this case it had drilled its path through the thin tissue of the scalp and the bone directly beneath it. There are exceptions to every rule, and a pellet of lead driven by the force of fulminating powder is a most uncer- tain thing. Nevertheless, his experience and observation pointed to the fact that his rifle ball should have made a larger and much more ragged wound. If the rifle found by the old herbalist was produced, his townspeople, knowing that the gun belonged to the injured The two back numbers will be mailed to any address on recent of 20 cents. com chook