she whispered, and started at the strangeness of her voice.
She opened the window softly and looked out. The night was cold and, calm
again, and the keen stars twinkled. She saw nothing--she heard no sound.

She closed it again, and paced the room. There were no tears in her eyes;
but they were wide open, startled, despairing. For the first time in her
terrible life she had loved.

"But he kissed me before he went," she said, pleadingly, to herself; "he
kissed me--he kissed me!"

She said it when the solemn city bells struck three. She said it when the
first dim light of dawn stole into the chamber. And when the full day
broke, and she heard the earliest footfalls in the street, her heart
clung to it as the only memory left to her of all her life:

"He kissed me! he kissed me!"

CHAPTER LXXXIX.

DUST TO DUST.

Scarcely had Abel left the bank, after obtaining the money, than Gabriel
came in, and, upon seeing the notes which Mr. Van Boozenberg had shown
him, in order to make every thing sure in so large a transaction,
announced that they were forged. The President was quite beside himself,
and sat down in his room, wringing his hands and crying; while the
messenger ran for a carriage, into which Gabriel stepped with Mr.
Van Boozenberg, and drove as rapidly as possible to the office of the
Chief of Police, who promised to set his men to work at once; but the
search was suddenly terminated by the bills found upon the body of Abel
Newt.

The papers were full of the dreadful news. They said they were deeply
shocked to announce that a disgrace had befallen the whole city in the
crime which had mysteriously deprived his constituency and his country of
the services of the young, talented, promising representative, whose
opening career had seemed to be in every way so auspicious. By what foul
play he had been made way with was a matter for the strictest legal
investigation, and the honor of the country demanded that the
perpetrators of such an atrocious tragedy should be brought to
condign punishment.

The morning papers followed next day with fuller details of the awful
event. Some of the more enterprising had diagrams of the shop, the blind,
the large yellow barrels that held the liquor pure as imported, the
bench, the counter, and the spot (marked O) where the officer had found
the body. In parlors, in banks, in groceries and liquor-shops, in
lawyers' rooms and insurance offices, the murder was the chief to