plendor, of enjoyment; and I, who won it for you, would have taught you
how to make life yield every bliss it had in store to your wishes. You
reject my offer unconditionally?"

Myrtle expressed her negative only by a slight contemptuous movement.

Murray Bradshaw walked deliberately to the fireplace, and laid the
spotted paper upon the burning coals. It writhed and curled, blackened,
flamed, and in a moment was a cinder dropping into ashes. He folded his
arms, and stood looking at the wreck of Myrtle's future, the work of his
cruel hand. Strangely enough, Myrtle herself was fascinated, as it were,
by the apparent solemnity of this mysterious sacrifice. She had kept her
eyes steadily on him all the time, and was still gazing at the altar on
which her happiness had been in some way offered up, when the door was
opened by Kitty Fagan, and Master Byles Gridley was ushered into the
parlor.

"Too late, old man! "Murray Bradshaw exclaimed, in a hoarse and savage
voice, as he passed out of the room, and strode through the entry and
down the avenue. It was the last time the old gate of The Poplars was to
open or close for him. The same day he left the village; and the next
time his name was mentioned it was as an officer in one of the regiments
just raised and about marching to the seat of war.

CHAPTER XXXV.

THE SPOTTED PAPER.

What Master Gridley may have said to Myrtle Hazard that served to calm
her after this exciting scene cannot now be recalled. That Murray
Bradshaw thought he was inflicting a deadly injury on her was plain
enough. That Master Gridley did succeed in convincing her that no great
harm had probably been done her is equally certain.

Like all bachelors who have lived a lonely life, Master Byles Gridley had
his habits, which nothing short of some terrestrial convulsion--or
perhaps, in his case, some instinct that drove him forth to help somebody
in trouble--could possibly derange. After his breakfast, he always sat
and read awhile,--the paper, if a new one came to hand, or some pleasant
old author,--if a little neglected by the world of readers, he felt more
at ease with him, and loved him all the better.

But on the morning after his interview with Myrtle Hazard, he had
received a letter which made him forget newspapers, old authors, almost
everything, for the moment. It was from the publisher with whom he had
had a conversation, it may be remembered, when he visited the city, and
w