ntly and both grew pale; but she, quicker witted, recovered
her composure at once and advanced towards him with a smile and an
extended hand. He stepped back, his face ghastly with fear.

"Oh!" he gasped, "the excitement, the shock,--it has made the blade
slip out! The blood is pouring from the opening,--it burns,--I am
dying!" and he fell into my arms and instantly expired.

The autopsy revealed the surprising fact that there was no blade in his
thorax at all; it had been gradually consumed by the muriatic acid
which Entrefort had prescribed for that very purpose, and the
perforations in the aorta had closed up gradually with the wasting of
the blade and had been perfectly healed for a long time. All his vital
organs were sound. My poor friend, once so reckless and brave, had died
simply of a childish and groundless fear, and the woman unwittingly had
accomplished her revenge.

Over an Absinthe Bottle

Arthur Kimberlin, a young man of very high spirit, found himself a
total stranger in San Francisco one rainy evening, at a time when his
heart was breaking; for his hunger was of that most poignant kind in
which physical suffering is forced to the highest point without
impairment of the mental functions. There remained in his possession
not a thing that he might have pawned for a morsel to eat; and even as
it was, he had stripped his body of all articles of clothing except
those which a remaining sense of decency compelled him to retain. Hence
it was that cold assailed him and conspired with hunger to complete his
misery. Having been brought into the world and reared a gentleman, he
lacked the courage to beg and the skill to steal. Had not an
extraordinary thing occurred to him, he either would have drowned
himself in the bay within twenty-four hours or died of pneumonia in the
street. He had been seventy hours without food, and his mental
desperation had driven him far in its race with his physical needs to
consume the strength within him; so that now, pale, weak, and
tottering, he took what comfort he could find in the savory odors which
came steaming up from the basement kitchens of the restaurants in
Market Street, caring more to gain them than to avoid the rain. His
teeth chattered; he shambled, stooped, and gasped. He was too desperate
to curse his fate--he could only long for food. He could not reason; he
could not understand that ten thousand hands might gladly have fed him;
he could think only of the