Beadle's New York Dime Library No. 114 — page 25: what you’re looking at

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

-_ghe had fleshed emma bene hesitation, the woman dressed herself in black, so as to be inconspicuous in the darkness, crept unobserved from the hotel, and hastened in the direction taken by her mysterious summoner. ‘He is going to take me to her,” she reflected, with a fierce chuckle of unrelenting malignity. ‘‘ Ah! it will be worth all it has cost me to see her writhe! And perhaps it will be as well for me to keep out of his way until the edge of his fury is turned. How he looked at me! For her sake he might go to any length, notwithstand- ing my womanhood. a! ha! when he comes to wring from me the secret of her whereabouts, L’ll tell him fast enough. Much Paprnces will the recovery of her bring him! Then he will rid me of my cat’s-paw. The fool!—does he think to buy a woman’s love by gratifying her hate? And, having betrayed a man a hundred fold his superior, does he think that I will keep faith with bim?”’ With these reflections coursing through her brain, she hastened after the Frisco Sharp, who kept ahead of her until they had left the mining camp out of sight. ‘* Well?” she queried, upon overtaking him. **T have come to take you to her,” he replied. *“You have divined my wish. This will be the sweetest part of my revenge! How does she bear herself? Is she crushed to the earth? But why did you carry her off? She must be restored to her lover! The blow is but half struck while she suffers alone.” The Frisco Sharp shuddered at the ghoul-like eagerness of the woman. But before he could reply, they had to leave the road, to avoid the party ed in their attempt to follow his trail, The sun was above the mountain peaks when they entered the canyon leading to the cave where Lilian was imprisoned. Before the mouth of the cave the Frisco Sharp stopped. Until now he had delayed telling Mrs. Seaford his failure to carry out her plot, and the substi- tute he had to propose. er exultation had been so utterly without remorse that he knew that she would exact the utmost of him. Now with a chill of dread upon him, he said: “Stop a moment. have something to tell you before you enter.” ‘*I have no bime to listen now!” cried the wo- man. ‘Let me see her at once! When my ha- tred has been cooled a little, then I will hear all you have to say, Now I want to see her!—I want to laugh in her face!—I want to make her waleome to such love as she can win from him now And in her eagerness she would have preceded her guide into the black mouth of the cavern. But the Frisco ore detained her resolutely. “Wait!” he faltered, ‘‘She is not as you ex- pect to find her.” She turned upon bim with wondering inquiry erugpling with her impatience, “s oy, pot as I expect to find her? What has en, eagerly: “Is she dead? Has she killed herself ?” Her tigerish clutch, the savage glance of her eyes, thrilled the Frisco Sharp with a shudder, and caused his heart to sink with hopelessness. “No,” he replied, ‘she is not dead—” ‘What then? A esart speak!” ** Aside from abduction, she has suffered no from me—” “Wat?” The woman fairly shrieked the word. “1 could not do it,” he went on, hastily averting his eyes from her white face.’ “ But I have another plan, which will answer every of your revenge. She will swear to hind , and never let any one know what has Reus of her. They will be separated; his will be as great; and she will suffer scarce- lees. Your revenge will be complete; and I 8 be spared—” | “ Foo. |” While listening to his words, the forces of her had been gathering themselves. Had he looked at her, he would have been warned by the intensified glitter of her eyes, the gray- ish whiteness of her face, the gathering tog+ ther of her frame. But, with his eyes on the ground, he knew nothing of her murderous purpose un- til her d struck his breast violently and a deadly faintness came. Then he realized that a stiletto to the hilt in his body! One look of Seong reproach, and he sunk to the ground, without a word! Like an insane creature the woman rushed in- tothe yawning mouth of the cavern, carrying the ng knife in her hand. ‘* At least, Ican kill her!—I can kill her!—I ean kill her!” was the one thought that kept surging through her br h the interstices in the rocky barricade she could see the gleam of the torchlight within. Then, with her frail hands infused with the stre of a maniac, she began to tear away the rocks, until she had effected an entrance, Lilian Amberleigh stood with distended eyes and hands c over her panting bosom. She was struck speechless with fear, at the nt of that bloody dagger. the lurid torchlight, Mrs, Seaford stopped within a few feet of her victim, and stood re- her with a hatred which Bie tin an. & —— as —— _ *. = as ee The Gentleman from Pike. ** So!” she hissed, at last, ‘you bewitch every one who is sent against you? Well, try your powers on me!” The spell was broken. It was only woman against woman, after all. Lillie was quite as large, and perhaps stronger than her antago- nist. Her active life had made her self-reliant, in spite of her penance of disposition, Only the thought of that bloody knife cleaving its way through her flesh paralyzed her with an icy dread. *“What do you mean?” she cried, casting about for some means of escape or resistance. ‘* ‘Why do you persecute me so relentlessly ?” *“‘T mean to reunite you with your two lovers!” sneered Mrs, aford, venomously. *One I b porege the death of last night. He lies mangled out of all recugnition in the canyon bottom. The other agreed to leave you a life to rid yourself of which you would willingly pass through a hundred deaths! His heart failed him, as you know. I drew off with this dagger the water that took the place of blood in his veins. He lies now just at the mouth of this cave. Ha!” For Lillie had suddenly sprung to grasp one of the unburnt torches that lay on the floor. But Mrs. Seaford, quite as active, leaped for- ward, kicked the torch beyond her reach, and menaced her with the dagger, crying:— “Beware! Do not precipitate your own death!” From that reeking weapon the girl shrunk away, shuddering. But now anew thought came to Mrs. Sea- ford. ‘*Stop!” she cried, ‘‘why should I dispatch ou at once? No! I havea better plan! I will eave you here to die of starvation and thirst, while you reflect on the death of the man doom- ed by your infamous love! here in darkness, and drag the dead body of your last conquest into the passage, to keep you company! Ha! ha! A rare courtship you will have with that bloody corpse! ‘You here, alone, in utter darkness; and just on the other side of your prison door the body of a murdered man! a!lha!Ienvy you your thoughts during the next few days, before death or insanity re- leases you from the horrors of your living tomb!” In pursuance of her new scheme of cruelty, she began to edge her way tothe torch which had ina measure dissipated the terrors of Lili- an’s imprisonment. But left in utter, rayless darkness, and with that hideous corpse lying between her and the daylight! Lillie was frozen with horror! ¢ She would not submit to this without a strug- gle. She was growing desperate. She began to creep after her would-be murderess wateting for a chance to spring upon her and disarm her of that bloody weapon. But Mrs, Seaford was just as vigilant. She possessed herself of the torch, and began to walk backward toward the exit of the cave, So, each with her eyes fastened upon the other’s they crossed the chamber, keeping pace, step by step, one with a laugh of malicious triumph, the other growing paler and paler, and wilder and wilder, with a desperation that increased in recklessness with every step nearer that horrible emtombment with the terrors of solitude and darkness and the ghastly dead! There was something thrilling in the specta- cle of these two delicate women so entirely un- der the dominion of fierce animal instincts, equal in intensity though different in charac- ter. So they had reached the mouth of the passage, when Lilian Amberleigh’s eyes suddenly left those of her enemy, and passed on beyond fixing upon some object bebind Mrs. Seafo with a look of horror which surpassed even that which had preceded it, when she stood face to face with the prospect cf being en- tombed alive. Then the great heart of the woman manifes- ten itself in an involuntary act—an act sublime in its generosity She extended her hand with acry of warning to the woman who was even el ej ar her with a fate worse than ea Before Mrs. Seaford had time for thought, she felt on her cheek the contect of something cold and clammy, which thrilled her to the soul with a sickening loathing. | Instantly after that warning cry, Lillie turn- ed and in her blind flight, ran headlong against the canyon wall, to sink tothe ground bleeding and senseless. Meanwhile, Mrs, Seaford had turned to face the appalling danger before which the terrified girl had forgotten all else. As she turned, she felt the coil of a serpent about ber neck! Her ears were pierced with a blood-curdling hissing: her eyes were blasted with a vision that struck horror ble to her soul! With a shriek of agonized fear and repulsion, the desperate woman dashed the blazing torch full into the face of the monster, and struck wildly—again, and again, and again!—with her dagger, until it seemed as if a legion of loath- fede! reptiles encompassed ber in sinuous I will leave you. Then the torch, falling to the ground, was ex- tinguished, and the darkened cavern resounded with the terrible cries of the Ghost of the Canyon! CHAPTER XXXVI. THE UNKNOWN PERIL, ‘‘LeT me begin,” said Captain Gunnison, “ by telling you briefly the sad story of Mrs. Amber- leigh’s life. ** She is of an excellent New England family; and up to the age of seventeen was reared luxury. Atthat age the bankrupicy and re- sultant death of her father threw her on her own resources; and she sought to support herself as a governess, ‘* Imagine the life of a sensitive girl, entering in a subordinate position where the had once ruled! She was subjected to insult by her one- time rivals, until her position seemed no longer endurable. ‘“Then she consented to a secret marriage with a man to whom she had been betrothed during her prosperity, whose father, when ad- versity fell upon her, commanded his son te break the engagement on pain of disinheritance. ‘* For six years this boy and girl marria for the husband was but nineteen—had but one cloud—its secrecy and the unavoidable absence of the husband who lived this double life, “Then, by some means, his secret was dis- Cores and the father cast his son off without a cent, ‘* Without resources, and never having earned a dollar in his life, the young husband found himself in hopeless poverty, and sunk inte brooding melancholy, until his wife feared for his reason. One day he disappeared, and them her cup of wretchedness was full to overflowing. **She appealed to his father for ce look for her husband, The hard-hearted parent ejected her from his door as an abandoned woman, denying that she bad any legal claim on his son, and showing her a letter, in which the writer stated that be had deceived the woman, who supposed herself his wife, by a sham marriage. ‘‘On her return home, she found another letter awaiting her, full of wild upbraiding, charging her with betraying the secret of th union and causing the writer’s ruin. This letter also declared the marriage a fraud, the writer explaining that he had resorted to this means of saving his inberitance in case of detection, but always intended to marry his wife legally, as soon as he was master of his fortune. ‘‘Can you imagine a more crushing blow}? The wife did not put the world’s false estimate on the situation, and feel that her own woman- hood had been impaired in any degree, No stigma could attach to her, in her own esteem, by reason of another’s sin. But her idol was shattered—the man sLe had placed on so high a pedestal had fallen below the basest. ‘*For weeks she lay at the point of death. Then her child called ber, and she rallied. She had but one thought—to find the father of her child, and demand justice for it. Alas! in her innocence and inexperience, she bad no proof of its legitimacy. She did not know the minister who had performed the ceremony, nor either of the witnesses. ‘‘That is her story up to the time when she foun my ill-starred wagon-train, Now for our ife subsequent to the catastrophe, the Ghost of the Canyon, and discoveries I have made during our long imprisonment.” It must have been a strange revelation that Capt. Gunnison had to make to the Gentleman from Pike, judging from the sad solemnity of the speaker, and the wonder and deep interes: on the face of the listener. At last the former continued—- 25 ‘'T have the marriage certificate and thecon | fession now in my possession. But how can I tell her the terrible truth? The shock would ay her whole after life with horror. I have though that it would be better to let the papers be pro duced after our escape by some one else, whe would claim to have received them from a asd man. in this way all tbat is desirable will be secured, and she will be happier by reason of her ignorance. What do you think!” The Gentleman from Pike grasped the other’s hand, and replied:— ‘“*T cannot express the depth of my sympathy for you—and for her. The situation is as sad as it is strange. I am ata loss how to advise you, But I agree with you in this—that the terrible truth must be kept from her at all hazards. The kindness of the SUPP rSenIGH, and the useless- ness of disclosure, will be ample justification. For the rest, we must be guided by circum- stances. But if the secret become public, it must almost inevitably reach her ears at some time, through gossip, or even a chance paragraph in the papers. That will be a constant menace. How can we guard against it?” “The world must never know,” said Capt. Gunnison. ‘You and I must make away with the mystery. In ashort time its very existence will become mythical. The world will class it with the other superstitions paisa fe orance,” ‘* Make away with it?” repeated the Gentleman ke, : trop Fie ah ade of area MIEVOOKS (E(0) (E (C (0)