The Argosy — page 182: what you’re looking at

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

Spey bp qo pent Gr OS » ¥, MARCH, 1886. pot DD YicoV; ALA Rabe a CHAPTER” EX: UNDER THE STARS. HE Seven of Spades. Eustace picked up the card from the vestry floor. An un- accountable thrill of uneasy alarm passed through him as he touched the harmless bit of pasteboard. ‘*‘ Dropped by one of the choir, I sup- pose,” he said, to reassure himself. Yet in his mind there lingered the conviction that it had wzof been there when he and Lady Valeria left the place. He carried it with him out into the church- yard, and, bidding the old verger good-night, set himself to think out the strange story that had been confided to him. He wished he could disbelieve it from beginning to end. Why should it not be the fiction of a distempered brain prompted by some secret ill-will of Lady Valeria towards her son Oliver? Her manner had been confused when he pressed for details. She had withheld évery important point of the story, every fact that might aid his search : her son’s real name, age, description. Yet she spoke the truth. He felt it. Her fierce, passionate yearning for her boy was genuine— past all feigning. And he must help her. To and fro he paced under the churchyard poplars, revolving and rejecting scheme after scheme. Could de Cressy help him? The duel must have been a notorious fact in its day. An English officer, the heir to a baronetcy, could not have been done to death in the Phcenix without open scandal. And yet—if “Jack” had not been killed? No! Eustace shrank from contemplating that grievous possibility. Jack must have been shot by Lord Kilmoyne; and with him and the Magraths must have disap- peared the only proofs of the marriage. Let but Jack be dead and the Vicar felt equal to disposing of the claims of his son. | Fhe Magraths. Would further search after them be of use? Lady Valeria by her own showing had utterly failed to trace them. Given two West of Ireland emigrants undescribed, to find their address thirty VOL. XLI. M COMmicaooks (CO) im