The Argosy — page 371: what you’re looking at

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

252 Verena Fontaine's Rebellion. “ Hush, Alice! It is impossible. This is Sir Dace Fontaine.” ‘“T do not care who he is,” was her impulsive retort. ‘‘ As surely as that Heaven is above us, Edward Pym got his death at the hand of thisman. My dream revealed it to me.” I might as well have tried to stem a torrent as to argue with her; so I drove on and held my tongue. Arrived at the office of Paul and Chandler, I following her in, leaving a boy with the pony outside. Alice pounced upon old Paul with the assertion: Sir Dace Fontaine was the evil and guilty man she had seen in her dream. Consider- ing that Paul was a sort of cousin to Sir Dace’s late wife, this was pretty well. Old Paul stared at her as I had done. MHer cheeks were hectic, her eyes wildly earnest. She recalled to the lawyer’s memory the dream she had related to him; she asserted in the most unqualified manner that Dace Fontaine was guilty. Tom Chandler, who was old Paul’s partner and had married his daughter Emma, came into the room in the middle of it, and took his share of staring. ‘Tt must be investigated,” said Alice to them. ‘* Will you under- takeat?? “My dear young lady, one cannot act upon a fancy—a dream,” cried old Paul: and there was a curious sound of compassionate pity in his voice, which betrayed to Alice the gratifying fact that he was regarding her as a monomaniac. ‘Tf you will not act, others will,” she concluded at last, after ex- hausting her arguments in vain. And she came away with me in resentment, having totally forgotten all about her mother’s business. To Crabb Cot then—she would go—to take counsel with the Squire. He told her to her face she was worse than a lunatic to suspect Sir Dace; and he would hardly get out the sealed packet at all. It was opened at last, and the dream, as written down in it by herself at the time, read. ‘‘ John Tanerton, my husband, was going to sea in command,” it began. ‘‘ He came to me the morning of the day they were to sail, looking very patient, pale and sorrowful: more so than anyone, I think, could look in life. He and I seemed to have had some estrangement the previous night that was not remembered by either of us now, and I, for one, repented of 1t. Somebody was murdered (though I could not tell how this had been revealed to me), some man; Jack was suspected by all people, but they could not bring it home to him. We were in some strange town; strangers in it; though J, as it seemed to me, had been in it once, many years before. All this while, Jack was standing before me in his sadness and sorrow, mutely appealing to me, as it seemed, to clear him. Everybody was talking of it and glancing at us askance, everybody shunned us, and we were in cruel distress. Suddenly I remembered that when I was in the town before, the man now murdered had had a bitter quarrel with another man, a gentleman of note in the town ; and a conviction came over me, powerful as a revelation, that it was Gomichbooks:. co m