s contents, he turned
it over, and, to his great delight, perceived the slat as described in
the letter. Removing the screws, he soon had the satisfaction of holding
in his hand the packet which, he doubted not, would restore the heiress
of Bellevue to her home and her estates, if she were still alive; or
which would give him a hold upon Jaspar, by means of which he could make
his fortune.

Dalhousie was not a natural-born villain. It was the pressure of
necessity, the almost unconscious yielding of a weak resolution, which
had led him thus far in his present illegal and dishonorable course. Of
the heiress he knew nothing; and the thought of restoring her had never
entered his head, much more his heart. The great purpose of his life
was to make his fortune, and it was this idea alone which influenced him
in the present instance. He had entered upon his duties at Bellevue only
the day before; but so impatient was he to realize the hope which had
brought him there, that every hour seemed burdened with the weight of
weeks.

Carefully depositing its contents as he had found them, he locked the
drawer, and put the key upon the floor.

CHAPTER XIX.

"The accursed plot he overheard,
Its every point portrayed;
Yet ere the villain's words were cold.
The counter-plot was made."

Hatchie was chagrined at the loss of his prisoner. His diligent search
was of no avail. The Chalmetta's boat, which lay at the wood-yard in the
morning, was gone; so he had no doubt Maxwell had made his escape in it.
Having no further motive in remaining at the wood-yard, he procured a
small canoe, with the intention of joining his mistress at Cottage
Island.

Seated in the stern of the canoe, Hatchie propelled it with only
sufficient force to avoid the eddies which would have whirled his frail
bark in every direction. His thoughts wandered over the events of the
past few days. He moralized upon the conduct of the attorney and the
uncle, and nursed his indignation over them. Hatchie was a moralist in
his own way, but not a moralist only. The great virtue of his
philosophy, unlike much of a more scholastic origin, was its practical
utility. From the past, with its conquered trials, he turned to the
future, to inquire for its dangers, to ask what snares it had spread to
entangle the fair being whom he worshipped with all a lover's fondness,
without the lover's sentiment.

We will not follow him in his peregrina