blenchingly in the face, and gasped forth, with a husky, halfchoked utterance, "Beware!

"Truly, madam," said the astonished husband, "this is a new character for you to appear in, and one for which I am not prepared."

"It is for that reason I say, Beware! Beware when the tame, the submissive, the uncomplaining woman is roused at last. Will you give me that letter?"

"Go to the Devil!"

Mrs. Charlton threw out her hand and clutched at the manuscript, but her husband had anticipated the attempt. As she closed with him in the effort to recover the paper, he threw her off so forcibly that she fell and struck her head against one of the protuberant claws of the legs of her writingtable.

Whatever were the effects of the blow, it did not prevent the lady from rising immediately, and composing her exuberant hair with a gesture of puzzled distress that would have excited pity in the heart of a Thug. But Charlton did not even inquire if she were hurt. After a pause she seemed to recover her recollection, and then threw up her head with a lofty gesture of resolve, and quitted the room.

Her husband sat down and read the letter. His equanimity was unruffled till he came to the passage where the writer alludes to the gold casket she had put aside for little Clara. At that disclosure he started to his feet, and gave utterance to a hearty execration upon the woman who had presumed to circumvent him by withholding any portion of her effects. He opened the door and called, "Wife!" No voice replied to his summons. He sought her in her chamber. She was not there. She had left the house. So Dorcas, the one overworked domestic of the establishment, assured him.

Charlton saw there was no use in scolding. So he put on his hat and walked down Broadway to his office. Here he wrote a letter which he wished to mail before one o'clock. It was directed to Colonel Delancy Hyde, Philadelphia. Having finished it and put it in the mail-box, Charlton took his way at a brisk pace to the house of old Toussaint.

That veteran himself opened the door. A venerable black

man, reminding one of Ben Franklin in ebony. His wool was gray, his complexion of the blackest, showing an unmixed African descent. He was of middling height, and stooped slightly; was attired in the best black broadcloth, with a white vest and neckcloth, and had the manners of a French marquis of the old school.

"Is my wife here?" asked Charlton.

"Madame is here," replied the old man; "but she suffers, prays to be not disturbed."

and

"Pardonnez. Monsieur will comprehend as I say the com

mands of Madame in this house are sacred."

"You insolent old nigger! do you mean to tell me I am not to see my own wife?"

"Precisement. Monsieur cannot see Madame Charlton." "I'll search the house for her, at any rate. Out of the way, you blasted old ape!"

Here a policeman, provided for the occasion by Toussaint, and who had been smoking in the front room opening on the hall, made his appearance.

"You can't enter this house," said Blake, carelessly knocking the ashes from his cigar. Charlton had a wholesome respect for authority. He drew back on seeing the imperturbable Blake, with the official star on his breast, and said, "I came here, Mr. Blake, to recover a little gold box that I have reason to believe my wife has left with this old nigger."

"Well, she might have left it in worse hands, - eh, Toussaint?" said Blake, resuming his cigar; and then, removing it, he added, "If you call this old man a nigger again, I'll make a nigger of you with my fist."

Toussaint might have taken for his motto that of the old eating-house near the Park,-"Semper paratus." The gold box having been committed to him to deposit in a place of safety, he had meditated long as to the best disposition he could make of it. As he stood at the window of his house, looking thoughtfully out, he saw coming up the street a gay old man, swinging a cane, humming an opera tune, and followed by a little dog. As the dashing youth drew nearer, Toussaint recognized in him an old acquaintance, and a man not many years his junior, Mr. Albert Pompilard, stock-broker, Wall Street.

No two men could be more unlike than Toussaint and Pompilard; and yet they were always drawn to each other by some subtle points of attraction. Pompilard was a reckless speculator and spendthrift; Toussaint, a frugal and cautious economist; but he had been indebted for all his best investments to Pompilard. Bold and often audacious in his own operations, Pompilard never would allow Toussaint to stray out of the path of prudence. Not unfrequently Pompilard would founder in his operations on the stock exchange. He would fall, perhaps, to a depth where a few hundred dollars would have been hailed as a rope flung to a drowning man. Toussaint would often come to him at these times and offer a thousand dollars or so as a loan. Pompilard, in order not to hurt the negro's feelings, would take it and pretend to use it; but it would be always put securely aside, out of his reach, or deposited in some bank to Toussaint's credit.

Toussaint stood at his door as Pompilard drew nigh.

"Ha! good morning, my guide, philosopher, and friend!" exclaimed the stock-broker. "What's in the wind now, Toussaint? Any money to invest?"

"No, Mr. Pompilard; but here's a box that troubles me." "A box! Not a pill-box, I hope? Let me look at it. Beautiful! beautiful, exceedingly! It could not be duplicated for twelve hundred dollars. Whose is it? Ah! here's Henry Berwick to Emily. Henry Berwick to Emily.

an inscription,

Berwick? It

was a Henry Berwick who married my wife's niece, Miss Aylesford."

"This box," interposed Toussaint, "was the gift of his late father to his second wife, the present Mrs. Charlton."

"Ah! yes, I remember the connection now."

"Mrs. Charlton wishes me to deposit the box where, in the event of her death, it will reach the daughter of the present Mrs. Berwick. Here is the direction on the envelope."

Pompilard read the words: "For Clara Aylesford Berwick, daughter of Henry Berwick, Esq., to be delivered to her in the event of the death of the undersigned, Emily Charlton."

"I will tell you what to do," said Pompilard. "Here come Isaac Jones of the Chemical and Arthur Schermerhorn. Isaac shall give a receipt for the box and deposit it in the safe of the

B

bank, there to be kept till called for by Miss Clara Berwick or her representative."

"That will do," said Toussaint.

The two gentlemen were called in, and in five minutes the proper paper was drawn up, witnessed, and signed, and Mr. Jones gave a receipt for the box.

Briefly Toussaint now explained to Charlton the manner in which the box had been disposed of. Charlton was nonplussed. It would not do to disgust the officials at the Chemical. · It might hurt his credit. A consolatory reflection struck him. "Do you say my wife is suffering?" he asked.

"Madame will need a physician," replied the negro. "I have sent for Dr. Hull."

"Well, look here, old gentleman, I'm responsible for no debts of your contracting on her account. I call Mr. Blake to witness. If you keep her here, it must be at your own expense. Not a cent shall you ever have from me."

"That will not import," replied Toussaint, with the hauteur of a prince of the blood.

Felicitating himself on having got rid of a doctor's bill, Charlton took his departure.

"The exceedingly poor cuss!" muttered Blake, tossing after him the stump of a cigar.

"Let me pay you for your trouble, Mr. Blake," said Toussaint.

"Not a copper, Marquis! I have been here only half an hour, and in that time have read the newspaper, smoked one regalia, quality prime, and pocketed another. If that is not pay enough, you. shall make it up by curling my hair the next time I go to a ball."

"But take the rest of the cigars."

"There, Marquis, you touch me on my weak point. Thank you. Good by, Toussaint!"

Toussaint closed the door, and called to his wife in a whisper, speaking in French, "How goes it, Juliette?"

"Hist! She sleeps. She wishes you to put this letter in the post-office as soon as possible. If you can get the canarybird, do it. I hope the doctor will be here soon."

Toussaint left at once to mail the invalid's letter and get possession of her bird.

CHAPTER IV.

A FUGITIVE CHATTEL.

"The providential trust of the South is to perpetuate the institution of domestic slavery as now existing, with freest scope for its natural development. We should at once lift ourselves intelligently to the highest moral ground, and proclaim to all the world that we hold this trust from God, and in its occupancy are prepared to stand or fall."— Rev. Dr. Palmer of New Orleans, 1861.

THE

HE next morning Charlton sat in his office, calculating his percentage on a transaction in which he had just acted as mediator between borrower and lender. The aspect of the figures, judging from his own, was cheerful.

A

The office was a gloomy little den up three flights of stairs. All the furniture was second hand, and the carpet was ragged and dirty. No broom or dusting-cloth had for months molested the ancient, solitary reign of the spiders on the ceiling. pile of cheap slate-colored boxes with labels stood against the wall opposite the stove. An iron safe served also as a dressingtable between the windows that looked out on the street; and over it hung a small rusty mirror in a mahogany frame with a dirty hair-brush attached. The library of the little room was confined to a few common books useful for immediate reference; a City Directory, a copy of the Revised Statutes, the Clerk's Assistant, and a dozen other volumes, equally recondite. There was a knock at the door, and Charlton cried out, "Come in!"

The visitor was a negro whose face was of that fuliginous hue that bespeaks an unmixed African descent. He was of medium height, square built, with the shoulders and carriage of an athlete. He seemed to be about thirty years of age. His features, though of the genuine Ethiopian type, were a refinement upon it rather than an exaggeration. The expression was bright, hilarious, intelligent; frank and open, you would add, unless you chanced to detect a certain quick oblique glance which would flash upon you now and then, and vanish before you could well realize what it meant. Across his left