t so as to shield myself. Yes, I must
shield myself!" And she puts into the woman's hand several pieces of
gold, saying: "take this!--to-morrow you will be better provided for. Be
silent. Speak to no one of what has passed between us, nor make the
acquaintance of any one outside the home I shall provide for you." Thus
saying, she recalls Mr. Detective Fitzgerald, rewards him with a nostrum
from her purse, and charges him to make the woman comfortable at her
expense.

"Her mind, now I do believe," says the detective, with an approving
toss of the head, "her faculties'll come right again,--they only wants a
little care and kindness, mum." The detective thanks her again and
again, then puts the money methodically into his pocket.

The carriage having returned, Madame Montford vaults into it as quickly
as she alighted, and is rolled away to her mansion.

CHAPTER XLIV.

IN WHICH IS RECORDED EVENTS THE READER MAY NOT HAVE EXPECTED.

While the events we have recorded in the foregoing chapter, confused,
hurried, and curious, are being enacted in New York, let us once more
turn to Charleston.

You must know that, notwithstanding our high state of civilization, we
yet maintain in practice two of the most loathsome relics of
barbarism--we lash helpless women, and we scourge, at the public
whipping-post, the bare backs of men.

George Mullholland has twice been dragged to the whipping-post, twice
stripped before a crowd in the market-place, twice lashed, maddened to
desperation, and twice degraded in the eyes of the very negroes we teach
to yield entire submission to the white man, however humble his grade.
Hate, scorn, remorse--every dark passion his nature can summon--rises up
in one torturing tempest, and fills his bosom with a mad longing for
revenge. "Death!" he says, while looking out from his cell upon the
bright landscape without, "what is death to me? The burnings of an
outraged soul subdue the thought of death."

The woman through whom this dread finale was brought upon him, and who
now repines, unable to shake off the smarts old associations crowd upon
her heart, has a second and third time crept noiselessly to his cell,
and sought in vain his forgiveness. Yea, she has opened the door gently,
but drew back in terror before his dark frown, his sardonic scorn, his
frenzied rush at her. Had he not loved her fondly, his hate had not
taken such deep root in his bosom.

Two or three days pass, he has armed h