cely. "What
right have you to die while others--double-dyed and blood-stained, are
condemned to live, 'testify,' and suffer?"

The dying man feebly waved a deprecation with his maimed hand, and even
smiled faintly. "I knew you'd say that. I knew what you'd think about
it, but it's all the same now. I did it for you and Safie! I knew I was
in the way; I knew you was the man she orter had; I knew you was the man
who had dragged her outer the mire and clay where I was leavin' her, as
you did when she fell in the water. I knew that every day I lived I was
makin' YOU suffer and breakin' HER heart--for all she tried to be gentle
and gay."

"Great God in heaven! Will you stop!" said Wayne, springing to his feet
in agony. A frightened look--the first that any one had ever seen in
the clear eyes of the Bell-ringer of Angel's--passed over them, and he
murmured tremulously: "All right--I'm stoppin'!"

So, too, was his heart, for the wonderful eyes were now slowly glazing.
Yet he rallied once more--coming up again the third time as it seemed
to Wayne--and his lips moved slowly. The preacher threw himself
despairingly on the ground beside him.

"Speak, brother! For God's sake, speak!"

It was his last whisper--so faint it might have been the first of his
freed soul. But he only said:--

"You're--followin'--me? You--understand--what--I--mean?"

JOHNNYBOY.

The vast dining-room of the Crustacean Hotel at Greyport, U. S., was
empty and desolate. It was so early in the morning that there was a
bedroom deshabille in the tucked-up skirts and bare legs of the
little oval breakfast-tables as they had just been left by the dusting
servants. The most stirring of travelers was yet abed, the most
enterprising of first-train catchers had not yet come down; there was
a breath of midsummer sleep still in the air; through the half-opened
windows that seemed to be yawning, the pinkish blue Atlantic beyond
heaved gently and slumberously, and drowsy early bathers crept into it
as to bed. Yet as I entered the room I saw that one of the little
tables in the corner was in reality occupied by a very small and very
extraordinary child. Seated in a high chair, attended by a dreamily
abstracted nurse on one side, an utterly perfunctory negro waiter on the
other, and an incongruous assortment of disregarded viands before
him, he was taking--or, rather, declining--his solitary breakfast. He
appeared to be a pale, frail, but rather pretty boy,