ude
ladder, climbing this, we emerged through a well concealed trap door
into the very room where Abner Haffner had laid at the point of death
two months before."

"Is that all?" I asked, as the major paused and lighted a fresh cigar.

"Yes, it's all of that story. I could not cause the arrest of the gang,
even had I known who composed it, without causing that of their leader,
and from the moment that blessed light illumined the black waters of
that underground river I would not have harmed Case Haffner for anything
the world holds best worth having. No; by daylight I was well out of
that section of country, nor have I ever since set foot in it."

"Have you ever heard again from that boy?"

"Who, Abner? Well, I should say I had. I put him through college, and he
is in Congress to-day. If I should tell you his real name you would
instantly recognize it as that of one of the smartest men ever sent to
Washington from the far South."

THE END OF ALL.

BY NYM CRINKLE.

The difficulty that I experience in complying with your request, dear
spirit, springs from the terrestrial limitations of thought and
expression, from which, as you may well know, I have not been long
enough with you to free myself.

I shall, however, give you a plain narrative of the events attending the
extinction of life on our planet, asking you only to remember that I am
doing it just as I would have done it, were it possible, for a fellow
human being while on earth, using the phraseology and the terrestrial
time divisions with which I am most familiar.

The circumstance which at our last intercourse I was trying to explain
to you was simply this: In the early summer of the year 1892 a sudden
interruption of navigation occurred on the Pacific coast, which,
curiously enough, attracted very little attention outside of scientific
circles. I was living at the house of my wealthy friend, Judge Brisbane,
in Gramercy Park. To tell you the truth, I was in love with his
beautiful daughter, of whom I shall have to speak more fully to you, for
she was intimately associated with me in the appalling scenes which you
desire me to describe.

I was sitting in the Judge's library on the night of June 25. His
daughter was present, and I had been conversing with her in an undertone
while the Judge read the evening papers. He suddenly laid down the
paper, took off his spectacles, and, turning round in his chair, said to
me: "Did you see the brief dispatc