en; and he was shrewd enough to observe she did not
sing and whistle as she used to do. The dog chuckled at that. His
bank-notes worried him night and day. He was afraid to put them in a
bank; afraid to take them about with him into his haunts; afraid to leave
them at home; and out of this his perplexity arose some incidents worth
relating in their proper order.

Arthur Wardlaw returned to business; but he was a changed man. All zest
in the thing was gone. His fraud set him above the world; and that was
now enough for him, in whom ambition was dead, and, indeed, nothing left
alive in him but deep regrets.

He drew in the horns of speculation, and went on in the old safe routine;
and to the restless activity that had jeopardized the firm succeeded a
strange torpidity. He wore black for Helen, and sorrowed without hope. He
felt he had offended Heaven, and had met his punishment in Helen's death.
Wardlaw senior retired to Elmtrees, and seldom saw his son. When they did
meet, the old man sometimes whispered hope, but the whisper was faint and
unheeded.

One day Wardlaw senior came up express, to communicate to Arthur a letter
from General Rolleston, written at Valparaiso. In this letter, General
Rolleston deplored his unsuccessful search; but said he was going
westward, upon the report of a Dutch whaler, who had seen an island
reflected in the sky, while sailing between Juan Fernandez and Norfolk
Isle.

Arthur only shook his head with a ghastly smile. "She is in heaven," said
he, "and I shall never see her again, not here or hereafter."

Wardlaw senior was shocked at this speech; but he made no reply. He
pitied his son too much to criticise the expressions into which his
bitter grief betrayed him. He was old, and had seen the triumphs of time
over all things human, sorrow included. These, however, as yet, had done
nothing for Arthur Wardlaw. At the end of six months, his grief was as
somber and as deadly as the first week.

But one day, as this pale figure in deep mourning sat at his table, going
listlessly and mechanically through the business of scraping money
together for others to enjoy, whose hearts, unlike his, might not be in
the grave, his father burst in upon him, with a telegram in his hand, and
waved it over his head in triumph.

"She is found! she is found!" he roared. "Read that!" and thrust the
telegram into his hands.

Those hands trembled, and the languid voice rose into shrieks of
astonishment a