of two dim, reproachful
shades who watch while an agonized ghost prowls eternally about the
dilapidated houses at the beach's edge, close by the black, whispering
water, seeking for the woman who has escaped him--escaped to bring
upon him the death he deserves, whom he never, never, never can find,
though his distracted spirit may search till man shall vanish from off
the face of the earth, and time shall be no more.

VENETIAN GLASS.

BY BRANDER MATTHEWS.

_Hitherto unpublished._

I.

IN THE OLD WORLD.

They had been to the Lido for a short swim in the slight but bracing
surf of the Adriatic. They had had a midday breakfast in a queer
little restaurant, known only to the initiated and therefore early
discovered by Larry, who had a keen scent for a cook learned in the
law. They had loitered along the Riva degli Schiavoni, looking at a
perambulatory puppet-show, before which a delighted audience sturdily
disregarded the sharp wind which bravely fluttered the picturesque
tatters of the spectators; and they were moved to congratulate the
Venetians on their freedom from the monotonous repertory of the
Anglo-American Punch-and-Judy, which consists solely of a play really
unique in the exact sense of that much-abused word. They were getting
their fill of the delicious Italian art which is best described by an
American verb--to loaf. And yet they were not wont to be idle, and
they had both the sharp, quick American manner, on which laziness sits
uneasily and infrequently.

John Manning and Laurence Laughton were both young New Yorkers.
Larry--for so in youth was he called by everybody pending the arrival
of years which should make him a universal uncle, to be known of all
men as "Uncle Larry"--was as pleasant a travelling companion as one
could wish. He was the only son and heir of a father, now no more, but
vaguely understood when alive and in the flesh to have been "in the
China trade"--although whether this meant crockery or Cathay no one
was able with precision to declare. Larry Laughton had been graduated
from Columbia College with the class of 1860, and the following spring
found him here in Venice after a six months' ramble through Europe
with his old friend, John Manning, partly on foot and partly in an old
carriage of their own, in which they enjoyed the fast-vanishing
pleasures of posting.

John Manning was a little older than Larry; he had left West Point