ions I would give him a home until I
could arrange for a permanent refuge for him in my brother's house, a
good distance from these parts.

The day following was a Sunday. When I returned from evening service
at my branch parish, the beggar had disappeared. But by the evening of
the next day the story was known throughout the neighborhood.

Goaded by the pangs of conscience, Niels had gone to Rosmer and made
himself known to the judge as the true Niels Bruus. Upon the hearing
of the terrible truth, the judge was taken with a stroke and died
before the week was out. But on Tuesday morning they found Niels Bruus
dead on the grave of the late rector Soeren Quist of Veilbye, by the
door of Aalsoe church.

_HUNGARIAN MYSTERY STORIES_

FERENCZ MOLNAR

_THE LIVING DEATH_

There is a very serious reason, my dear sisters, why at last, after an
absence of twenty years in America, I am confiding to you this strange
secret in the life of our beloved and lamented father, and of the old
house where we were children together. The truth is, if I read rightly
the countenances of my physicians as they whisper to each other by the
window of the chamber in which I am lying, that only a few days of
this life remain to me.

It is not right that this secret should die with me, my dear sisters.
Though it will seem terrible to you, as it has to me, it will enable
you to better understand our blessed father, help you to account for
what must have seemed to you to be strange inconsistencies in his
character. That this secret was revealed to me was due to my indolence
and childish curiosity.

For the first, and the last, time in my life I listened at a keyhole.
With shame and a hotly chiding conscience I yielded to that insatiable
curiosity--and when you have read these lines you will understand why
I do not regret that inexcusable, furtive act.

I was only a lad when we went to live in that odd little house. You
remember it stood in the outskirts of Rakos, near the new cemetery. It
stood on a deep lot, and was roughly boarded on the side which looked
on the highway. You remember that on the first floor, next the street,
were the room of our father, the dining room, and the children's room.
In the rear of the house was the sculpture studio. There we had the
large white hall with big windows, where white-clothed laborers
worked. They mixed the plaster, made forms, chiseled, scratched, and
sawed. Here in this large hall had o