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HE night was passed in sleepless anxiety
by Sylvia’s friends. As soon as she could
leave her father the following morning,
Faith went to the Lodge. King was on
the veranda; he had brought Charley a
letter which had come to him in the
morning mail. Charley had read the let
ter and handed it to King, saying only:
“It is very strange, I can hardly believe
T
it, yet I feel relieved in a measure.”
King gave the letter to Faith. It was addressed
to Charley and it had no signature. It said: “Sylvia
Thorne is safe and well. She has gone away be
cause she was not happy in your home and because
she had promised to marry a man she did not love.
She is with friends, who will take every care of
her.”
Faith read the lines once and again. Then she
looked up into the haggard face of Stanley King.
“Well?” he questioned.
“It is unaccountable; it is wholly unlike Sylvia;
it does not lessen my anxiety about her or satisfy
me as to her disappearance.”
“I believe it was written as a blind,” said King.
“It increases my fear about her. There has been
foul play; I feel it and I will move heaven and earth
to trace it; I will find Sylvia Thorne or her dead
body, if she is anywhere on this earth.”
He kept his word. He left no means untried to
find a clue to the disappearance of the woman who
was to have been his wife.
The Twin Lakes were dragged from end to end.
They gave up one secret which they had held for two
years. The drag hooks brought up the remains of a
negro boy who was supposed to have run away. The
bones were found weighted by a chain and a plow
share, and it was believed the boy had been killed by
his stepfather and the body concealed in the lake.
But no trace of the missing girl was discovered.
Every foot of the grounds around the lake was gone
over; the island, the hermit’s cabin, the houses in
the neighborhood of the lakes, and of Glenn Lodge
were searched without any clue being found. Dr.
Yent, and occasionally Nemo and others joined in
the search which was untiringly prosecuted by King
and Charley Glenn. Charley, however, was inclined
to believe that the letter he had received disclosed
the truth as to Sylvia’s disappearance. She had gone
away from home because she was unhappy there
and to escape carrying out a rash promise of mar
riage. She had gone with friends, perhaps relatives
of her father, with whom she had secretly communi
cated. To Faith this solution of the mystery seemed
highly improbable, knowing as she did Sylvia’s
straightforward, honorable nature and believing that
she was sincerely attached to the man she had prom
ised to marry.
Anabel made light of the theory that Sylvia’s dis
appearance was due to foul play. She declared:
“Sylvia has gone away of her own accord because
she wanted to see the world and did not wish to bind
herself down by marrying. She went with some of
her father’s kin. Running away is in the family.
She will, no doubt, go on the stage, as her mother
went before her.” As she said this, she caught
King’s eye and turned pale under its look of burning
scorn. She made no more such remarks, where he
could hear them, but she told everywhere that King
was crazed because Sylvia had left him.
There were others beside King who believed the
anonymous letter was a blind and that some terrible
wrong had been done to the girl who was loved and
honored by the community. She had been murdered,
or she had been spirited away in some underhanded
manner. Was there a motive for this? Yes, there
was a motive, a strong motive. It was spoken of in
confidential whispers, by those who recalled that Syl
via was an heiress to money and estates that seemed
a great fortune to these plain people. If she was not
on hand when her twenty-first birthday arrived, this
fortune would go —where? Why, to her step-brother
and guardian, Charles Glenn.
But was it possible? Could it be conceived that
Charley Glenn could commit a wrong, a crime against
WAL AND miUNPH
A Story of the Conflict of Good and Ebil —By Mary E. Bryan.
CHAPTER XXV.
The Golden Age for December 8, I§lo.
the girl who had been to him as a sister? Charley
Glenn, the honorable and honored, the stainless son
of the beloved old minister? None dared as yet to
voice the suspicion plainly, but it was brooding
in more than one mind.
“Charley Glenn has bit off more than he can chew,”
said one man. “What with an extravagant wife, and
all that building and grading and park-making he’s
doing to make the Twin Lakes a swell resort, he’s
finding himself pushed for money—hard pushed, too,
I reckon.”
By far the larger number of those who did not be
lieve that Sylvia went away of her own accord
ascribed her disappearance as due in some way to
Charley’s wife —that bold, haughty woman, who was
eager for money who had no religious principles and
who, it was suspected, hated Sylvia and was envious
of her. Truly these were grounds for suspecting
her of wrong toward the missing girl.
So it was that a number of the people of Glenn
wood sympathized with King and aided him in his
search.
But at last, the search was given up as hopeless.
Even King ceased to haunt the woods about Mystic
Lake, though Faith knew that the best detectives had
been employed to investigate the case. The large
reward he had offered for any information bearing on
Sylvia’s disappearance was also doubled. But with
out result.
One day Faith set out to see Nemo in the faint hope
that his occult gift might have given him some knowl
edge as to the whereabouts of the girl to whom he
had been so faithfully attached. She paid two visits
to his island cabin before she could find him there;
then she came upon him as he sat against a tree in
his yard, his head bent on his hands. He raised his
head when she spoke and she saw that his face
looked haggard and anxious. When she told him
why she had come, he shook his head. “It is all
dark,” he said; “I can tell you nothing.”
She went sadly away.
Mixed with her mourning for Sylvia there was in
tense distress on her brother’s account. There had
been a fearful change in him dating from the night
he had come home in the storm. He had become a
melancholic. He passed half his time in his room;
a light burned there all night; he seldom spoke save
in monosyllables. His eyes—those beautiful eyes,
whose changing expression his sister had loved to
watch, had now a hunted look. Anabel’s name never
passed his lips.
“They must have quarreled bitterly,” Faith thought.
One night, a strange thing happened. Faith was
asleep in her room in the back part of the house.
The night was warm and the long window which
opened on the floor of a back porch had been left
open, the blinds being closed but not fastened. It
was about ten o’clock when Faith suddenly awoke
from a realistic dream that Sylvia was standing be
side her bed and that she bent down and kissed
her. It seemed to her that it was the kiss that had
waked her. She started up in bed. A stream of
pale moonlight came through the window and she
saw that the blinds were open. She sprang out of
her bed and ran to the window. She saw or fancied
she saw, a dark robed figure, a woman s figure, glide
quickly into the shadowy mazes of the shrubbery and
disappear. She stepped out on the porch and called,
“Who is that?”
There was no sound in response and Faith asked
herself, “Was it an illusion? Could I have been only
half awake? But there was the open blinds. Well,
the wind might have blown them apart.
She went back to her room and lighting a lamp,
looked all around the apartment. She approached
her bed, and a startled cry broke from her as she
saw lying on her pillow a lock of hair. She put out
her hand and touched it with trembling fingers.
Gathering courage she took it up and held it out.
The light gleamed in the golden tint —its delicate
curling fineness.
“It is Sylvia’s hair,” she said in an awed whisper.
“Sylvia was here in this room. It was her I saw dis
appear in the shrubbery.”
In her excitement, she ran to her brother’s room.
He was lying in bed awake. The light burning on
the table showed his white face and his bright, un
sleeping eyes.
“Claude,” she cried, “I have seen Sylvia! she was
in this house.”
He bounded out of bed, his eyes starting from their
sockets.
“My God! my God!” he uttered between his chat
tering teeth.
She was terrified at the effect of her words. She
began at once to soothe him. He got back into bed,
still trembling.
“It was a dream; a dream,” he muttered.” “Yes;
it may have been just a dream, but it frightened me,
and I came and scared you. Forgive me, dear, and
be calm,” she pleaded.
It was many minutes before he ceased to tremble
and asked to be left alone. She had not shown him
the curl, nor told him about it. She could not do this
after seeing his agitation. But she wrote to King,
telling him of the strange incident. He came to see
her at once. He took from inside his watch a tiny
curl Sylvia had given him and laid it beside the
lock Faith had found on her pillow. The two locks
were identical in color and quality.
King found the occurrence wholly unaccountable.
After puzzling over it for some time, he finally said:
“It must have been a trick of that woman, Anabel
Glenn, to make you believe that Sylvia was alive.
I believe she is dead and that her death lies at the
door of Anabel. If I could believe she is alive, I
would rejoice even though she had turned against
me.”
(To Be Continued.)
I? *
AN UNWELCOME MISSIONARY.
Ready wit, and the gift of repartee are among the
most interesting and attractive of human gifts.
The following unpublished story of a Civil War
incident illustrates at once the odd and interesting
situations which were sometimes brought about dur
ing that unfortunate struggle, and also the ready wit
of one of the Union generals:
During the raid in which General Kilpatrick led
a fine body of his five thousand horsemen, sweeping
around Lee’s army, for the purpose of relieving the
Union troopers then confined in Libby Prison, the
general, with some of his staff, came at nightfall to
the door of a Virginian gentleman, Mr. John Gresh
am (a cousin of the Hon. Walter Q. Gresham, Secre
tary of State in Mr. Cleveland’s cabinet), and asked
for supper for himself and his officers. Mrs. Gresh
am, who met them at the door, was a generous
hearted, pious woman, but very ardent in her South
ern sympathies, and in her cordial dislike for the
“Yankees.” She went briskly to work, however,
and prepared the supper. As she brought in the hot,
smoking “corn batter-cakes” and placed them be
fore the officers gathered about the table, she re
marked with a sigh:
“Well, did I ever think it would come to this?
Feeding my enemies! But” she remarked, “the good
Book says, “If thine enemy hunger, feed him; if he
thirst, give him drink.”
At once, General Kilpatrick, recalling that the
South was in danger of being lost to the Union, re
plied: “Madam, we are not your enemies; we Lave
only ‘come to seek and to save that which was lost.’ ”
AN OPPORTUNITY
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