the threshold with a quick return of his old habits
of caution. The door was slightly open; apparently his angry outbreak of
an hour ago had not affected the spirits of his daughters, for he could
hear their hilarious voices mingling with those of the strangers. They
were evidently still fortune-telling, but this time it was the prophetic
and divining accents of Mr. Rice addressed to Clementina which were now
plainly audible.

"I see heaps of money and a great many friends in the change that is
coming to you. Dear me! how many suitors! But I cannot promise you any
marriage as brilliant as my friend has just offered your sister. You may
be certain, however, that you'll have your own choice in this, as you
have in all things."

"Thank you for nothing," said Clementina's voice. "But what are those
horrid black cards beside them?--that's trouble, I'm sure."

"Not for you, though near you. Perhaps some one you don't care much for
and don't understand will have a heap of trouble on your account,--yes,
on account of these very riches; see, he follows the ten of diamonds. It
may be a suitor; it may be some one now in the house, perhaps."

"He means himself, Miss Clementina," struck in Grant's voice laughingly.

"You're not listening, Miss Harkutt," said Rice with half-serious
reproach. "Perhaps you know who it is?"

But Miss Clementina's reply was simply a hurried recognition of her
father's pale face that here suddenly confronted her with the opening
door.

"Why, it's father!"

CHAPER III.

In his strange mental condition even the change from Harkutt's feeble
candle to the outer darkness for a moment blinded Elijah Curtis, yet it
was part of that mental condition that he kept moving steadily forward
as in a trance or dream, though at first purposelessly. Then it occurred
to him that he was really looking for his horse, and that the animal was
not there. This for a moment confused and frightened him, first with the
supposition that he had not brought him at all, but that it was part of
his delusion; secondly, with the conviction that without his horse
he could neither proceed on the course suggested by Harkutt, nor take
another more vague one that was dimly in his mind. Yet in his hopeless
vacillation it seemed a relief that now neither was practicable, and
that he need do nothing. Perhaps it was a mysterious providence!

The explanation, however, was much simpler. The horse had been taken by
the luxurious a