ool, charming the canary birds with serenades.
Once or twice she caught me with my guitar playing the fool under her
own window. Of course she was not certain whether the homage was
intended for her or Elsie, but I think took it to herself and was
indignant, giving me in exchange for my music, such looks as a queen
might bestow on her slave. I rather liked her for it; that kind of
homage was not suited to her. The heap of thistle down yonder liked it.
She knew what it meant. The only deep thing about such creatures is
their craft. That girl is cunning as a fox. The pure, innocent thing,
for whom that splendid creature was sacrificed; if I were not dying, the
idea would make me laugh.

"There, now are we even? You deprived me of a fortune I was brought up
to expect; I have managed to get some of it back. You loved a woman, and
I married her. You married another woman, the most glorious creature I
ever saw, and in a fit of jealous rage with me, turned her out upon the
world to die.

"Tell me now, if my revenge has been complete?"

Mellen ran to the door and opened it.

"Come in," he cried to the officers. "Carry that man away! Take him to
the lodge; he shall not even die here."

"As you will," cried Ford. "I will hold my tongue for that poor woman's
sake."

He could not walk, so they carried him down to the lodge, and there,
while waiting for a doctor to come, he sat looking death in the face,
with the same desperate bravado that had marked his conduct all the
night.

CHAPTER LXXVII.

SEARCHING.

Shriek after shriek from Elsie roused Mellen. She was raving in horrible
delirium, and when assistance arrived it proved that she had been seized
with brain fever, and there was scarcely a hope of her recovery.

Standing there by her bed, this thought must have been a relief to
Mellen; but he did not forsake her, his pride was utterly crushed. He
longed to cast himself down by her side and die there.

The next morning, when nurses and physicians arrived, Mellen left the
house. He was going out on an aimless search for his lost wife--the
woman who had given up her last hope for him and his.

He learned at the lodge that the wounded prisoner had been carried to
the village by his own command; that he was alive still, but could not
last more than another day; that his name was North, and he was
well-known among the sporting gentry who came to the shore tavern. All
this was told him as news.

Mellen hurried