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♦»4-»4W"»f«hfW>«4«>ieH-CH-»4»<^XH-){H-»f«'fOH^^ tt-ftt+a-ftt^aH^+a-fQ^o-Ha-w.-f-^-cH-sH^-fQ-f^fo-ftt-fttftt-fW^-i CHAPTER XXIV. A man-servant answered my sum- mons. "Mrs. Anson?" I inquired. "Mrs. Anson •« out of town, sir," answered the man. "The bouse is let." "Furnished J" "Yes, sir." "Is your mistress at home?" I in- quired. "I don't know sir," answered the man, 'iploraat'cally. 'Oh, of course!" I exclaimed, taking out a card. It was the first I found within my cigarette-case, and was intentionally not my own. "Will you take this to your mis- tress, and ask her if she will kind- ly spare mo a few moments. I am a friend of Mrs. Anson's." "I'll see if she's at home, sir," said the man, dubiously ; and then, asking me into the entrance-hall, he left me standing while he went in search of his mistress. That hall was the same down which I had groped my way when blind. I saw the closed door of the drawing-room, and knew that with- in that room the yo\ing man whose name I knew not ha.1 been foully done to death. There was the very umbrella-stand from which I had taken the walking-stick, and the door of the little-used library, which I had examined on that n'ght when I had dined there at Mrs. An- son's invitationâ€" the last night of my existence as my real self. The man returned in a few mo- ments and invited me into a room on the left â€" the morning-room I supposed it to be saying : "My mistress is at home, sir, and will see you." I had not remained there more than a couple of minutes before a youngish woman of perhaps thirty or so entered, with a rather dis- tant bow. She was severely dress- ed in black ; dark-haired, and not very prepossessing. Her lips were too thick to be beautiful, and her top row of teeth geemed too much in evidence. Her face was not exact- ly ugly, but she was by no means good-looking. "T have to apologize," I said, rising and )>owing. "I understand that Mrs. Anson nas left her house, and I thought you would kindly give me her address. I wish to see her on a most pressing personal matter." She regarded me with some su- spicion, I thought. "If you are a friend of Mrs. An- son's, would it not be better if you wrote to her and addressed the let- ter here? Her letters are always forwarded," she answered. She was evidently a rather shrewd and superior person. "Well, to tell the truth," I.Hiid, "I have reasons for not writing." "Then I much regret, sir, that I nni unable to furnish you with her address," she responded, somewhat stiffly. "I hove been absent from London for six years." I exclaimed. "It is because of that long absence that I prefer not to write." "I fear that I cannot assist you," she replied briefly. There was a strange, determined look in her dark-grey eyes. She did not seem a person omenablc to argument. 'But it ifrregarding an urgent and purely private affair that I wish to see Mrs. Anson," I said. "I have nothing whatever to do with the private affairs of Mrs. An- son," she replied. "I merely rent this house from her, and, i.i justice to hor, it is rtot likely that I give the address to every chance caller." "I am no chance caller," I re- sponded. "During her residence hore six years ago I was a welcome iru»st at her table." "Six years ago is a long time, "i on may, for aiight I know, not be sii welcome now." Did she, I wondered, speak the truth? , . "You certainly speak very plain- ly, madam," I answered, rising Btlflly. "If I have put you to any li>convcnienre I regret it. I can, ro doubt, olitain from some other person the information I require." "Must probably you ran, sir," she answered, in a manner quite unruffled "1 tell you that if you write I shall at once forward your letter to hor. More than that I cannot do." A- "I presume you are acquainted Mabel Anson?" I in- with Miss quired. She smiled with some sarcasm. "The Anson family do not con- corn me in the least, sir," she re- plied, also rising as sign that my unfruitful interview was at an end. Ment'on of Mabel seemed to have irritated her, and although I plied her with further questions, she would tell mo absolutely nothing. When I bowed and took my leave I fear that I did not show her very much politeness. In my eagerness for information her hesitation to give me Mrs. An- son's address never struck me as perfectly natural. She, of course, did not know me, and her offer to forward a letter was all that she cruld do in such circumstances. Yet at the time I did not view it in that light, but regarded the ten- ant of that house of mystery as an ill-mannered and extremely dis- agreeable person. In despair I returned to St. James's Street and entered my club, the Devonshire. Several men whom I did not know greeted me warmly in the smoking-room, and, from their manner, I saw that in my lost years I had evidently not obandoned that institution. They chatted to me about politics and Flocks, two subjects upon which 1 '»a» perfectly ignorant, and I was compelled to exercise considerable 'act and ingenuity in order to avoid betraying the astounding blank in my mincT After a restless hour I drove back westward and called at old Chan- ning's in Cornwall Gardens in an endeavor to learn Mabel's address. Tlie colonel was out, but I saw Mrs. (banning, and she could, alas! tell mt nothing beyond the fact that Mrs. Anson and her daughter had been abroad for three years past- whore, she knew not. They had drifted apart, she said, and never now exchanged letters. "Is Mabel married?" I inquired as carelessly as I could, although in breathless eagerness. "I roally don't know," she re- sponded. "I have heard some talk of the likelihood of her marrying, but whether she has done so I om unaware." "And th«< man whom rumor de- signated as her husband ? Who was he?" I inquired quickly. "A young noblnman, I believe." "You don't know his name?" "No. It was mentioned "' the time, but it has slipped my memory C)ne takes no particular notice of tea-cup gossip." "Well, Mrs. ('banning," I said, confidently, "I am extremely d'.sir- ous of discovering the whereabouts 01 Mabel Anson. I want to see her upon a rather curious matter ^-hich closely concerns herself, '..'an you tell me of any one who is intimate with them?" "Unfortunately, I know of no one," she answered. "The truth ih, that they left London quite sud- denly ; and, indeed, it was a mat- ter for surprise that they neither paid farewell visits nor told any of their friends where they were go- ing." "Curious," I remarkedâ€" "very curious !" Then there was, I reflected, ap- parently some reason for the pre- sent tenant at The Boltons refusing the addroas. "Yes," Mrs. Channing went on, "it was all very mysterious. No- body knows the real truth why they \vent abroad so suddenly and sec- retly. It was between three ond ft.ur years ago now, and nothing, t(> my knowledge, has since been heard of them." "Very mysterious," I responded. "It would seem almost as though they had some reason for conceal- ing their whereabouts." "That's just what lots of people have said. You may depend upon it that there is something very mysterious in it all. We wero such VI ry close friends for years, and it if. certainly strange that Mrs. An- son has never confided in me the secret of lier wliereabouts." "I romcinhered the old Colonel's strango warning on that evening 1( ng ago, when I had first met Mabel nt his tahle. What, I won- dered, could he know of them to their detriment? I remained for a quarter of an hour longer. The colonel's wife was full of the latest tittle-tattle, ns the wife of an ex-attache always is. It is part of the dijplomatic training to be always well-inform- ed of the sayings and doings of our neighbors ; and as I allowed her to gossip on she revealed to me many things of which I was in ignorance. Nellie, her daughter, had, it ap- peared, married the son of a New- castle shipowner a couple of years before, and ' now lived near Bci- wick-on-Twoed. Suddenly a thought occrrred to me, and I asked whether she knew Miss Wells or the man Hickman, who had been my fellow-guests on that night when I had dined at The Boltons. "I knew a Miss Wells â€" a very pronounced old maid, who was a friend of hers," answered Mrs. Channing. "But she caught influ- enza about a year ago, and died of it. She lived in Edith Villab, Keu- sington." "And Hickman, a fair man, of middle age, with a very ugly face?" She reflected. "I have no recollection of ever having met him, or of hearing of him," she answered. "Was he an intimate friend ?" "I believe so," I said. Then, finding that she could explain no- thing more, I took my leave. Next day and the next I wander- ed about London aimlessly and without hope. Mabel and her mo- tner had, for some unaccountable reason, gone abroad and carefully concealed their whereabouts. Hod this fact any connection with the mysterious tragedy that had been enacted at The Boltons? That one thought was ever uppermost in my mind. A week passed, and I still remain- eo at the Grand, going forth each day, wandering hither and thither, but never entering the Club or go- ing to places where I thought it likely that I might be recognized. I could not return to the life at Denbury with that angular woman at the heod of my table â€" the woman who called herself my wife. If I returned I felt that the mystery of it all must drive me to despair, arid I should, in a fit of desperation, commit suicide. I ask any of those who read this strange history of my life, whether they consider themselves capable of remaining calm and tranquil in such circumstances, or of carefully going over all the events in their sequence and considering them with logical reasoning. I tried to do so, iiut in vain. For hours I sat with- in the hotel smoking and thinking. I was living an entirely false life, existing in the fear of recognition by unknown friends, and the con- stant dread that sooner or later I must return to that hated life in Itevonshire. That a hue-and-cry had been raised regur Jing my disappearance was plain from a paragraph which I read in one of the morning papers tired Londoners were taking their ease upon the seats provided by that most paternal of all metropo- litan institutions, the London County Council ; children were shouting as they played at ball and hop-scotch, that narrow strip of green being, alas! all they knew of Nature's beauty outside their world cf bricks and mortar. The slight wind stirred the dusty foliage of the trees beneath which I walked, while to the left river-steamers belched forth volumes of black smoke, and barges slowly floated down with the tide. On either side were great buildings, and straight before the dome of St. Paul's. Over all was that golden, uncertain haze which in central London is called sunset, the light which so quickly turns to cold, grey, without any of those glories of crimson and gold which those in the country associ- ate with the summer sun's decline. That walk induced within me melancholy thoughts of a wasted life. I loved Mabel Ansonâ€" I loved her with all my soul. Now that marriage with her was no longer within the range of possibility I was inert and despairing, utterly heed- less of everything. I had, if -truth be told, no further desire for life. All joy within me was now blotted out. (To be Continued.) Oil i[ rm FATTENING FOWLS. In Sussex, the staple fattening food is oats, ground very fine by a special process, mixed with skim milk. But there are other less costly mixtures which have given excellent results, and there is no reason why the fowl-fattener should depend solely on one kind of food. Success depends largely upon the proportions in which the various fteding stuffs are mixed. A mi.xture of ground oats, two parts, maize meal, one part; middlings, one part, makes an excellent fattening ration. The principal moistening agent in all mixtures must be skim milk, since nothing else that may he used for thi.s purpose is quite as good. Some fatteners, however, feed a good deal of broth, which is made by boiling down all kinds of rough fat, tallow, bones, pieces of meat, livers, etc., which can be picked up at small cost. The method is to boil those vorious kinds of of- fal in a large vat for several hours, and according os the broth or soup is required it is drawn of! and mixed with meal. Fowls in coops may be ted either about ten days after my departure | twice or thrice a day ; but we prc- from Denbury. In the paragraph | fe« to feed them only twice, as we I was designated as "a financier have found that tliey keep healthier well-known in the City," and it [ and maintain a hearty appetite for was there stated that I had left my a longer time upon two meals a day home suddenly "after betraying | than on three, while there is no ap- signs of insanity." ond had not parent difference m gains of weighty since been heard of. Insanity ! I laughed bitterly as I read those lines supplied by the F.xoter correspondent of the Cen- tral News. The police had, no doubt, received my description, and were actively on the watch to trace me and restore nie to my "friends." For nearly a fortnight I had been in hiding, and was now on the verge of desperation. By means of one of the cheques I had taken from Denbury I succeeded in drawing a good round sum without my bank- trs being aware of my address, and was contemplating going abroad in order to avoid the possibility of be- ing put under restraint as a luna- tic, when one evening, in the dusky sunset, I went forth and wandered down Northumberland Avenue to the Victoria Embankment. In com- parison with the life and bustle of tlte Strand and Trafalgar Square, the wide roadway beside the Tliames is always quiet and repose- ful. Upon that some pavement over which I now strolled in the di- rection of the Tomplo I had, in the days of my blindness, taken my les- sons in walking alone That pave- ment had been my practice-ground f)n summer evenings under the ten- der guiduneo of poor old Parker, the faithful servant now lost to me. My eycHight had now grown as strong OS that of other men. The great blank in my mind was all that distinguished me from my fel- lows. During those past fourteen days I had been probing a period wliich I had not lived, and osoer- titining by slow degrees the events o|^my unknown past. And ns t strolled along beneath the plane trees over that bro.ad pavement I recollected that the la.it orcasion I bnd been there was on tlint inenioralile evening when I had lost mvself, and was subsoqv.ontly present at the midnight tragedy ii thot house of mystery. I gjvzed around. In the ornompntal giir- dens, bright with geraniums, some Much labor is also saved by feeding only twice a day, and this is an im- portant consideration in establish- ments where some hundreds of frwls are being fattened at once. The hours of feeding should be re- gular and evenly dividedâ€" that is to say, there should not be too long a period between any two meals, for fowls in close confinement, with no opportunity of foraging for a single morsel of food, suffer in 1 ealth and decrease in weight, when kept fasting t >o long. The attendant should be early astir, so as to give the ' -..i their morning meal between 6 and 6 o'clock in summer time, and os early as there i^ daylinght in winter, and the ev- ening meal is also to he regulated by the length of the day. In winter it must be fed between 3 and 4 iv'clock, but in the time of longer daylinght the usual mealtime is about 5 p.m. ' At feeding times the attendant should be particularly observant, for there is no other time at which the health of the birds can be so accurately gauged. It will be ob- served that certain fowls will eat ruvenously from the start, and will improve in condition daily, whilst others seem to lose their relish for food within a tew days after hav- ing been placed in the coops. The latter birds are usually unsuitable subjects for fattening being anae- mic and thriftleas. and the only ccurse that can be token with them is to lot them loose, and if they can be got into good health and fair condition in the fields, to sell them i.jl without fattening, for anything they will fetch. Wo may mention that tlte fowls which have neces- sarily to be handled in this way are pxceptiona), Riul that the majority of healthy fowls respond readily to the effoits uf the t.itlener. It is unnecossory and indeed impoK.^ihk-. io lay dt)wn and keep rules as to tho quantity of food to be fed, and in this tho attendant must bo guid • tj entirely by obeervaticn. The practice is to place as much food in the troughs as it is supposed the fowls will eat up greedily, aijd then- lo observe them in order to ascer- tain tf all are feeding well. If tha attendant sees that more food is required, he gives it ; but, if, on the other hand, there is food left over, the troughs are scraped into th« feeding pail, and as the food can- not possibly get soiled in the tioughs, it may be fed again at the next meal. The attendant should, however, aim at mixing only as much food at a time as will be con- sumed at a single meal. â€" Home- stead Poultry Expert. FENCE-POST PRESERVATIVE. Experiments have for some years been conducted at United States stations to determine the best me- thod of wood preservation. The glowing scarcity of timber gives this question an interest for all o£ us. If the life of a fence post could be doubled, what a saving would be effected ? Many substances have been tried, but the preservative now recommended is creosote. This is a by-product of coal tar, which is produced at most plants for the manufacture of illuminating gas. This tar is distilled, and during the piocess the condensed vapors are run into three separate vessels and thus separated into the light oil of tar or napthas, the dead oil of coal tar or creosote, and pitch. Wood tar, when distilled in a similar man- ner, gives "wood creosote." which also possesses strong antiseptic properties. The treatment recom- mended for fence posts is to have an iron tank capable of holding fifty posts, filled, when the posts are in, to a depth of three and a half feet with creosote and kept hot. Tha posts are kept in this bath for from one to five hours, depending on the character of the wood, and are then transferred to a cold bath of the same material for ao hour. It is claimed thot by this process low-grade woods, such as willow, Cottonwood and elm. can be made as lasting as cedar or oak untreat- ed. •* JEWISH FAMILY WIPED OUT. Itus.sian Rcvolnlionists Took Te?- ^^^ rlble Ven-teant'c. News hos reached St. Petersburg C't a terrible vengeance taken by the Revolutionists of Y^urivka, ^n Yekaterinoslav Province, upon a Jewish family named Edelstein, who were accused of giving infor- mation to the authorities regard- ing tho activities of the agitators. They visited the Edelstein house at n:ght and throw bombs through tho windows. They then opened on the members of the family with revol- vers and shot to death the father, a daughter, a woman guest and her child. 'The mother, a son, son-in- law and two grandsons were severe- ly wounded. After this murderous onslaught the Revolutionists temporarily r«» tired, and help for the wounded was summoned. In the course of a couple of hours the victims who were still alive had been conveyed to a hospital. Not satisfied with their vengeance, the Revolution- if-ts. now a well-armed band of about forty or sixty men, descend- ed upon the hospital, overpowered the nurses and guards and shot the mother and son to death, after which they made their escape. Another despatch from the pro- vinces received here says. that the prisoners in the jail at Saratov, upon discovering that two of their comrades wore traitors, fell upor them and beat them to death. FINDING A HORSESHOE. There is a man who has a very poor idea of the horseshoe as a L ringer of good luck. "I found one in the road some time ago," he remarked. "As a matter of fact, another old gentle- man found it also about the same time. We both wanted it, and there was a tussle for it. "I got the shoe, a black eye, a torn finger from a rusty nail in the shoo, and a summons for assault and battery. "It wasn't tt very good start, but I thought I'd give it a fair trial. Of course, in nai'B;;g the shoe up above the front dour I managed to smash my thumb and fall from the step- ladder. "Then I sat down and waited for the luck to begin. Thot shoe seem- ed to be endowed with the power to attract trouble in every form. "Duns, bailiffs, the landlord, nieajlcH, and poverty wero rarel,v ( ut of the house, and my faith was shaken. "Then one dav, when the tax-col- lector was standing on the top stop, . that shoe came down with a crash " "Ahl" intorrupt.'d a sympathiz- er "Luck at last:'' "Not is bit of it," !i!?hod tho un- lueVy .mo. "It missed him by a to. „"