followed,
with the flaky white tea-biscuit made by Aunt Betsey's own hands, with
the fresh cream equally divided between the cherries and the
strawberries, and the scent of the roses stolen by the slight evening
breeze and thrown in at the windows. Then an hour of moonlight, but only
an hour, for the young girl was wearied out by the changes of scene that
had kept her excited during the day, and the broken rest of the night
before. Long hours earlier than Tom Leslie heard the whistle of his
train, braking-up at Suspension Bridge, Josephine was nestling among the
white sheets and cool pillows of her pleasant chamber, nodded at by the
vines at the window and just lovingly kissed by one glint of the moon
that stole in upon her privacy--sleeping such a sleep as wealth and
power turn wearily upon their pillows and pray for without hope.

CHAPTER XXIII.

JOSEPHINE HARRIS IN SEARCH OF INFORMATION--A BIG FIB FOR A GOOD
END--MARY CRAWFORD WITH HER EYES SHUT, AND WITH THE SAME EYES OPENED--A
BOMB-SHELL FOR COLONEL EGBERT CRAWFORD.

Pleasant though those hours in the little homestead at West Falls may
have been, they must be passed rapidly over, except as each bore some
event connected with the progress of this story.

When Josephine Harris woke next morning with the birds singing Sunday
matins under her window, all the fogs and mists of merriment and country
enjoyment seemed for the time to have rolled away from her brain, and
the prime object of her visit to West Falls came prominently into her
mind. In order to effect it, it was necessary that her aunt and cousin
should both be taken somewhat into her confidence; and she had no fear
of any evil result from this, as their location at a distance from the
city would prevent any ill effects even from an unguarded word. Whatever
these confidences were to be, however, there was no occasion to make
them with any great suddenness; and in her character of an "amateur
detective" she naturally preferred to make what discoveries might be
possible, before explaining her motives for making the inquiries.

Accordingly, when breakfast and the Sunday "morning work" had been
dispatched, she pulled little Susy away from the house, under the
pretence of taking a "swing" in the popular abomination of that name,
suspended between two of the trees in the back-yard. Seated side by side
on the board seat between the ropes, and with their arms clasping each
other's waists, the two girls fe