nt to which would be sufficient to insure the
fitting and natural course of descent to the great Dudley property. If
it had been a simple question of helping forward a casualty to any one
person, there was nothing in Dick's habits of thought and living to make
that a serious difficulty. He had been so much with lawless people, that
a life between his wish and his object seemed only as an obstacle to be
removed, provided the object were worth the risk and trouble. But if
there were two or three lives in the way, manifestly that altered the
case.

His Southern blood was getting impatient. There was enough of the
New-Englander about him to make him calculate his chances before he
struck; but his plans were liable to be defeated at any moment by a
passionate impulse such as the dark-hued races of Southern Europe and
their descendants are liable to. He lay in his bed, sometimes arranging
plans to meet the various difficulties already mentioned, sometimes
getting into a paroxysm of blind rage in the perplexity of considering
what object he should select as the one most clearly in his way. On the
whole, there could be no doubt where the most threatening of all his
embarrassments lay. It was in the probable growing relation between
Elsie and the schoolmaster. If it should prove, as it seemed likely,
that there was springing up a serious attachment tending to a union
between them, he knew what he should do, if he was not quite so sure how
he should do it.

There was one thing at least which might favor his projects, and which,
at any rate, would serve to amuse him. He could, by a little quiet
observation, find out what were the schoolmaster's habits of life:
whether he had any routine which could be calculated upon; and under what
circumstances a strictly private interview of a few minutes with him
might be reckoned on, in case it should be desirable. He could also very
probably learn some facts about Elsie. whether the young man was in the
habit of attending her on her way home from school; whether she stayed
about the schoolroom after the other girls had gone; and any incidental
matters of interest which might present themselves.

He was getting more and more restless for want of some excitement. A mad
gallop, a visit to Mrs. Blanche Creamer, who had taken such a fancy to
him, or a chat with the Widow Rowens, who was very lively in her talk,
for all her sombre colors, and reminded him a good deal of same of his
e