"I had proceeded thus far when the terror of our position became luminous like the coming fire on a prairie, which shows everything but a way of escape. 'Where is your father?' they would ask of me in Kensington. 'He is drowned.' 'How drowned?' 'He shot himself.' 'Why did he shoot himself?' 'Because I had married his ward.' 'But his partner is gone too.' 'He is murdered.' 'Why murdered?' 'Because he interceded for me.' 'Where is your witness?' 'He has disappeared.' I saw the wild improbability of this tale, and thought of past notorious quarrels with my father ended by my voluntary absence. There were but two points that seemed to stick in my nervous mind: 'It never would do to tell our marriage at that moment, and I must find that sailor, who might still be living.'" "He found me, sure enough, begorra!" exclaimed Mike Donovan, giving the relief of laughter to that intense narrative. "Cowardly as you may call my resolution, gentlemen, it was all the resolution I had left. To partake of the inheritance left me by both partners in our house I feared to do. 'Let us do the penance of suspicious separation,' I said to Agnes; 'as your husband I command you to let me go!' She yielded like a wife, and stood my hostage in Kensington for all those melancholy months. I had just learned the place for which the bark which passed us on that eventful night had cleared, when the two bullet-pierced bodies were discovered in the ice. That night I sailed for Wilmington, North Carolina. When I arrived there the bark was gone for the Mediterranean, but I heard of my sailor, wounded, in her hospital. I sailed from Charleston for Cuba, and from Cuba to Cadiz, and thence I embarked for Trieste. At Trieste I found the ship, but Donovan had sailed for Liverpool. From Liverpool I tracked him to the River Plate, and thence to Panama. You will ask how I lived all those months? Ask him." He turned to Duff Salter. "Mr. Magistrate," spoke Duff Salter, a little confused. "I sent him drafts at his request. He knew me to be the resident executor, and wrote to me. I did it because of the pity I had for Agnes, and my faith in her assurance that he was innocent." "Good! Yes!" exclaimed the magistrate. "I would have done the same myself." "I returned with my man," concluded Andrew Zane. "I was now so confident that I did not fear; but a hard obstinacy, coming on me at times, I know not how, impelled me to postpone my vindication and make a test of everybody. I was full of suspicion and bitterness--the reaction from so much undeserved anxiety. I was the ghost of Kensington, and the spy upon my guardian, but the unknown sentry upon my wife's honor all the while. "Magistrate!"--the young man turned to the alderman, and his face flushed--"is there no punishment at law for men, and women too, who have cruelly persecuted my wife with anonymous letters, intended to wound her brave spirit to the quick?" "Plenty of it," said the magistrate. "Yes, I will. I will warrant them all."