take something to eat and drink? Do now!"

The Major shook his head:

"I want nought, Zeb, save to be--alone."

Sergeant Zebedee sighed heavily, shook doleful head and going out, shut
the door softly behind him.

"That it should be Effingham of all men, or one so hatefully like!"

The Major clenched his hands and began to pace restlessly back and
forth. And now came Memory to haunt him--her sweet, soft voice, the
droop of her black lashes, the way she had of pouting red lips
sometimes when thoughtful, her eyes, her hands, her quick, light feet,
and all the infinite allurement of her. And now----!

"That it should be--Effingham!"

Here again he was seized of faintness and nausea, fierce tremors shook
him and sinking into his elbow-chair he sat crouched above the desk,
his face bowed between clutching hands. Sitting thus, the great house
so still and silent all about him, he must needs remember how she had
called it a "desolate" house. And, in truth, so it was and must be for
him now until the end. The end?

Once more he rose and took to his restless pacing. What end was there
for him now but a succession of dreary days, while old age crept upon
him bringing with it loneliness and solitude--a great, empty house and
himself a solitary, loveless old man. And he had dreamed of others
perchance to bear his name! God, what a life it might have been! And
now, this was the end; he had walked in a "fool's paradise" indeed.

Pausing in his tramping he lifted haggard eyes to the pistols on the
wall; with fumbling hands he opened a certain drawer in his desk, and,
taking thence a brown wisp that once had been a fragrant rose, looked
down at it awhile with eyes very tender, then let it fall and set his
foot upon it, and leaning back in his chair stared down at all that
remained. Long he sat thus, chin on breast, his drawn face half buried
in the gay curls of his glossy peruke, but now his gaze had wandered
back to the pistols on the wall. The candles, guttering in their
sockets, burned low and lower, flickered and went out, but he sat on,
motionless and very still; at last he sighed, stirred, rose from his
chair, reached groping hand up to the wall and stood suddenly rigid.

"Major John, dear, some of your tenants are miserably poor, Major John!"

It was as if she had uttered these words again, the small room seemed
to echo her soft voice, the darkness seemed full of her fragrant
presence. The Major sank bac