adventure. Among
other incidents of very poor fun, the two were notable in hectoring and
guying the old Polish trader, who, when drunk on mean whisky as he often
was, grew violent and antagonistic. He went very far in his
denunciations one fatal night, and by way of playing him a trick in
return, they set his boat adrift by cutting the rope that tied the craft
to a tree on the bank. The confession states that they supposed the
owner was then aboard and would suffer no greater hardship than having
to use the sweeps with considerable energy to row her in to a landing
again. They were genuinely horrified when he came running down the bank,
both arms out-stretched, crying out that his all, _his all_ was floating
away on that tumultuous, merciless tide. Before any skiff could be
launched, before any effort could be made to reach the trading-boat, she
suddenly disappeared. The Mississippi was at flood height, and it was
thought that the boat struck some drifting obstruction, swamped, and
went down in deep water. The agents in this disaster were never
suspected, but as soon as Jasper Keene had come of age, and had command
of any means of his own, his first act was to have an exhaustive search
made for the old fellow, with a view of financial restitution. But the
owner of the trading-boat had died, spending his last years in the
futile effort to obtain the insurance money. As the little he had left
was never claimed, no representative could profit by the restitution
that Jasper Keene had planned, and he found what satisfaction he could
in giving it secretly to an old man's charity. Then the phantom began to
take his revenge. He appeared on the banks of Bogue Holauba, and
straightway the only child of the mansion sickened and died. Mr. Keene's
first wife died after the second apparition. Either it was the fancy of
an ailing man, or perhaps the general report, but he notes that the
spectre was bewailing its woes along the banks of Bogue Holauba when
Jasper Keene himself was stricken by an illness which from the first he
felt was fatal."

"I remember--I remember it was said at the time," Geraldine barely
whispered.

"And now to the question: he leaves it to Mr. Gordon as his kinsman,
solicitous of the family repute, to judge whether this confession should
be made public or destroyed."

"Does he state any reasons for making it public?" demanded Geraldine,
taking the document and glancing through its pages.

"Yes; as an expiat