beside a
bank of reeds at last, the figure rose stoopingly, and drew a gun from
between its feet and the bottom of the boat. As the light fell upon
its face, it could be seen that it was James Culpepper! James
Culpepper! hardly recognizable in the swollen features, bloodshot eyes,
and tremulous hands of that ruined figure! James Culpepper, only
retaining a single trace of his former self in his look of set and
passionate purpose! And that purpose was to kill himself--to be found
dead, as his father had been before him--in an open boat, adrift upon
the Marsh!

It was not the outcome of a sudden fancy. The idea had first come to
him in a taunting allusion from the drunken lips of one of his ruder
companions, for which he had stricken the offender to the earth. It
had since haunted his waking hours of remorse and hopeless fatuity; it
had seemed to be the one relief and atonement he could make his devoted
sister; and, more fatuous than all, it seemed to the miserable boy the
one revenge he would take upon the faithless coquette, who for a year
had played with his simplicity, and had helped to drive him to the
distraction of cards and drink. Only that morning Colonel Preston had
forbidden him the house; and now it seemed to him the end had come. He
raised his distorted face above the reedy bank for a last tremulous and
half-frightened glance at the landscape he was leaving forever. A
glint in the western sky lit up the front of his deserted dwelling in
the distance, abreast of which the windings of the inlet had
unwittingly led him. As he looked he started, and involuntarily
dropped into a crouching attitude. For, to his superstitious terror,
the sealed windows of his old home were open, the bright panes were
glittering with the fading light, and on the outer gallery the familiar
figure of his sister stood, as of old, awaiting his return! Was he
really going mad, or had this last vision of his former youth been
purposely vouchsafed him?

But, even as he gazed, the appearance of another figure in the
landscape beyond the house proved the reality of his vision, and as
suddenly distracted him from all else. For it was the apparition of a
man on horseback approaching the house from the upland; and even at
that distance he recognized its well-known outlines. It was Calvert!
Calvert the traitor! Calvert, the man whom he had long suspected as
being the secret lover and destined husband of Cicely Preston!
Calvert,