I don't know if you ever heard Madeleine's history. It is a singular one, like my own. Her father and my father were partners in business. A fire ruined them both; and, as you know, an accident on the railway occurred which proved fatal to both. My poor mother I never knew, and she knew nothing of these troubles; but Madeleine's mother had to bear them all, and the weight was too heavy; she died broken-hearted, the life crushed out of her by misfortune upon misfortune. So, up to the present time, Madeleine and I have been, to a very great extent, dependent upon others; and as our circumstances in life have been so strangely similar, we are more like brother and sister than cousins. I shall be very glad, for her sake, if she finds in the Mortons more than is ordinarily found in chance friends. And I shall be glad, for my own sake, when I can release the dear old Doctor from the burden with which he willingly shackled himself when he took me under his care. I wish I could have a good long talk with you, my dear old boy, on this and a hundred other subjects; but I can't. And now I must knock off for to-night, as the Doctor has just sent for me. MARTIN VENABLES. P. S.--I write in a violent hurry. The Doctor has read some extraordinary news in the paper just in from London. It is about the missing miniature, found on a prisoner. He will leave here for London by the 7.45 train in the morning. I want this to catch the post, so cannot write more, except that the Doctor wishes me to say he will be sure to see you before he has been long in London. M. V. This postscript threw the little household at Rose Cottage into a great flutter at the breakfast table the next morning. "What can it mean?" asked Howard. "Have you seen anything in the paper, uncle, to which it refers? I have not seen the paper for a week." "'Pon my word, I don't know," said Captain Arkwright. "It can't be--yes, it may, though. Just wait a minute." The Captain jumped up, snatched the paper of the day before from a side-table, and began to search for a particular heading, which, of course, was not on the pages he had first opened. "Here it is!" he cried at length. "It is headed, 'A Fatal Chase.'" "Let me see it," said Howard, almost trembling with anxiety, as he ran his eye hastily over the report. It ran on this wise: