th it, and all
his dangers would be multiplied. It was a fearful point he had, reached.
He was tempted at one moment to give up all his plans and to disappear
suddenly from the place, leaving with the schoolmaster, who had come
between him and his object, an anonymous token of his personal sentiments
which would be remembered a good while in the history of the town of
Rockland. This was but a momentary thought; the great Dudley property
could not be given up in that way.

Something must happen at once to break up all this order of things. He
could think of but one Providential event adequate to the emergency,--an
event foreshadowed by various recent circumstances, but hitherto floating
in his mind only as a possibility. Its occurrence would at once change
the course of Elsie's feelings, providing her with something to think of
besides mischief, and remove the accursed obstacle which was thwarting
all his own projects. Every possible motive, then,--his interest, his
jealousy, his longing for revenge, and now his fears for his own
safety,--urged him to regard the happening of a certain casualty as a
matter of simple necessity. This was the self-destruction of Mr. Bernard
Langdon.

Such an event, though it might be surprising to many people, would not be
incredible, nor without many parallel cases. He was poor, a miserable
fag, under the control of that mean wretch up there at the school, who
looked as if he had sour buttermilk in his veins instead of blood. He
was in love with a girl above his station, rich, and of old family, but
strange in all her ways, and it was conceivable that he should become
suddenly jealous of her. Or she might have frightened him with some
display of her peculiarities which had filled him with a sudden
repugnance in the place of love. Any of these things were credible, and
would make a probable story enough,--so thought Dick over to himself
with the New-England half of his mind.

Unfortunately, men will not always take themselves out of the way when,
so far as their neighbors are concerned, it would be altogether the most
appropriate and graceful and acceptable service they could render. There
was at this particular moment no special reason for believing that the
schoolmaster meditated any violence to his own person. On the contrary,
there was good evidence that he was taking some care of himself. He was
looking well and in good spirits, and in the habit of amusing himself and
exerc