“Dr. Izard has confessed his sins, and now let the impostor confess his. Who are you, man, and how happens it that you know all our ways and the whole history of this town?” And Lawyer Crouse shook the would-be Earle by the arm and would not let him go till he answered. “I am—” the old bravado came back, and the fellow for a moment looked quite reckless and handsome. “Ask Tilly Unwin who I am,” he suddenly shouted, breaking into a great laugh. “Don’t you remember Bill Prescott, all you graybeards? You used to hustle with me once for a chance at her side at singing school and dance; but you won’t hustle any longer, I am ready to swear; the lady’s beauty is not what it was.” And with this unseemly jest he whirled about on one heel and gave his arm to a slim, light-complexion young man whom few had noticed, but who at no time had stepped far away from his side. The cry of “Phil! It is Phil, the scape-grace who was said to be dead a dozen years ago,” followed him out of the yard; but he heeded nobody, his game was over, and his last card, a black one, had been played. And Dr. Izard? When they thought of him again, he was gone; whither, no one knew, nor did it enter into the heart of any one there to follow him. One person, a heavily draped woman, who had not entered the graveyard, but who had stood far down the street during all that dreadful hour, thought she saw his slight form pass between her and the dismal banks of the river; but she never rightly knew, for in her mind’s eye he was always before her, and this vision of his bowed head and shrunken form may have been, like the rest, a phantom of her own creation. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ ● Transcriber’s note: ○ Typographical errors were silently corrected. ○ Inconsistent spelling and hyphenation were made consistent only when a predominant form was found in this book.