ted. It missed its grasp, and she never
got near enough again. But for half a minute I looked into that horrible
face following us and working with silent rage; and for half a mile at
least I heard the patter of her feet in the darkness behind. Indeed, I
can hear it now.

THE MYSTIC KREWE.

BY MAURICE THOMPSON.

CHAPTER I.

About seventy years ago a young man of strong physique and prepossessing
appearance arrived at New Orleans. He had come from New York, of which
city he was a native, and had brought with him a considerable sum of
money, supplemented by a letter of introduction to Judge Favart de
Caumartin, who was then at the flood tide of his fame.

It would not be fair to call our young man ("our hero" would be the good
old phrase) an adventurer, without taking pains to qualify the
impression that might be produced. Hepworth Coleman had his own way of
looking at life. Fifty years later he would have been a
tragedian--probably a famous one, but the conditions were not favorable
to awakening histrionic ambition at the time when his character, his
tastes, his ambition should have been forming. What he saw that was most
fascinating to him had no distinct form; it lay along the south-western
horizon, a dreamy, mist-covered something not unlike the confines of
romance.

Hepworth Coleman was rich, and what was, perhaps, a greater misfortune,
he had no living kinsfolk for whom he cared or who cared for him.
Practically speaking, he was alone in the world: moreover, he had an
imagination. Scott's novels, Byron's poetry, the French romances, and I
know not what else of the sort, had been his chief reading. For physical
recreation he had turned to fencing and pistol practice. When I add that
he was but twenty-two and unmarried, the rest might be guessed, but
Coleman was not a young man of the world in the worst sense--he had not
turned to evil sources of dissipation. Healthy, vigorous, full of
spirit, he nevertheless had sentimental longings as indefinite as they
were persistent.

Youth is the spring time when "Longen folk to gon on pilgrimages," as
old Chaucer words it, and it would be hard to find the young man who has
not felt the vaguely outlined yet irresistible desire to wander, to go
over the horizon into a strange, new world. Hepworth Coleman, when he
was taken with this longing, felt no restraint cast around him. He was
absolutely free, had all the means necessary--why should he not go where
h