cards. I have lost more: the power to stop playing, as I can no longer stop drinking. You look at me with wonder and pity, but it is true. As sure as you sit there, Will, some angel, or devil, has put that word Lost before me as a warning or a foreshadowing. Ordinary men live long and happy lives; men like myself burn out at thirty. Woe unto them if they link their lives with others that are purer! Do you understand me? I have determined not to hold Miss Francis to her engagement. Now, do not reply to me. Let us go and join the party."

I did not reply. Overwhelmed with a sad foreboding I accompanied Marquis in silence. On the next day I set out for home. The foreboding had not ceased to overshadow me. I did not hear from the city of a year. I then received the intelligence that Marquis Cotesbury and Caroline Francis had become man and wife.

for nearly

IV. THE MURDER AND SUICIDE.

Ten years passed away. In my happy home, surrounded by my wife and children, I rarely gave a thought to the wild days of my youth, and was gradually settling down into a humdrum attorney at law. My profession enlisted all the intellectual energy which I possessed, and for

my heart ache-"I mean that, as far as I am concerned, the taste for drink and cards will probably ruin me. You start-but there is a terrific truth in my foreboding. Listen for an instant: I will tell you what a woeful nature and social position I was born with. My father was a man of distinction and wealth-people said of immense wealth. I was told of it: as soon as I could speak I was told more. These kind friends informed me that in ten thousand youths not one was endowed with such graces of mind and person as myself. I drank in the flattering assurances greedily, and looked upon myself as verily the chief among ten thousand. I went into society: I heard the girls whisper, and saw them point at me as I passed. I was wealthy, aristocratic, handsome, brilliant-the 'best catch' in the State. All this I had conveyed to me in a way perfectly easy to be understood. Well I went to college-I scattered my money-I associated with the 'bloods' of the day. Every where I was received with flattery, adulation, submission. Life was only a succession of triumphs. It was 'What a glorious fellow Marquis Cotesbury is!' 'How generous!' 'What a splendid buck!' I sailed upon a summer sea of caresses and victories. I was told that I was a genius, and need only to show my-recreation and happiness I did not desire to look self to triumph in love, or politics, or literature. And do you know, Will, that I have what you may consider the miserable bad taste to think that these assurances were not altogether false. At the risk of appearing silly, I will say that my Maker gave me at my birth an intellect which, rightly trained, would have been rendered capable of achieving no small benefit to my species. I had, especially in my early manhood, a mind which acquired ideas with the most astonishing ease. I lay open my bosom to you, and add, that I think my Creator gave me the dangerous and unspeakably-fearful gift of genius. Pardon me if I seem wretchedly egotistical and vain, but I am dissecting my career for you, for your benefit, since it involves and contains a warning. "Well," continued Marquis in the same tone, "I came from college with these plaudits sounding in my ears, with the highest diploma in my pocket, gained by shutting myself up for a fortnight before the final examination-a fortnight in which by toiling night and day I grounded convenient; he required my assistance in a matmyself thoroughly in the entire course. I re-ter of important business. turned hither, and just in time to hold my dy- Our Superior Court had just adjourned, and ing father in my arms. He died--the 'noblest Roman of them all!' And I? what did I do? I will tell you. I did what I did at college-I drank. This word contains my life. From my boyhood drink became my passion. You see, a 'great genius' like myself can't tread the humdrum path of ordinary mortals! I required stronger stimulants, because I was of higher nature!' I sneer at myself-it is a sad sneer; it is a woeful thing when one must thus jeer at himself. Well, to drown my grief-I drank. To heighten my joys-I drank. I always drank, drank, drank; and to this I added gambling. I have lost two hundred thousand dollars at

beyond the affectionate home circle which met me each day with loving smiles and caresses. If in the midst of my toils, or my evening joys, the figures of Marquis Cotesbury and his companions ever rose before me-if the beautiful face of Caroline Francis, my wife's former friend, smiled in my memory-if, in a word, that old life came back, in a dream as it were, I did not long continue to dwell upon it. As we pass on in life things change in value for us-old ties become looser-we have a lingering kindness for old times, and old faces; but the wife at our side, the children round our knees, soon rout all our dreams, and bring us back to the sweeter reality. To sum up every thing, Marquis Cotesbury and his companions had completely disappeared from my horizon, when one morning a letter was laid on my table which recalled old things.

It was a request from Marquis that I would come to at as early a moment as I found

the request, which at any other time I could not have responded to, was perfectly feasible. On the very next morning therefore I took the stage-coach, and set out for the city of In those days traveling was a very tedious affair; and as I should be at least two days upon the road, I determined to arrange my time economically-a portion for conversation, another portion for thought, another for observation of the country.

In the prosecution of this plan I met with but one obstacle. This was the presence of two men upon the outside of the vehicle who were intoxicated, and continued throughout the day

to utter the most disgusting oaths. When the coach stopped for the night these men had an altercation with the driver, who declined attempting a very dangerous piece of road in the pitch darkness. He remained stubborn and immovable, and the quarrelsome passengers finally staggered off to the bar-room of the tavern, where they called for whisky punches, and applied themselves assiduously to the task of "making a night of it."

As they passed me I thought there was something familiar in their faces, bloated and blotched by habits of confirmed intemperance, and the idea occurred to me that I had defended one at least of them in a criminal trial some years before. I could not be certain of this, however, and dismissed the subject from my mind, selecting another apartment for reading my newspaper, and glad to get away from their drunken revelry. At ten o'clock, as I passed the door of the bar-room, I saw the two men wrestling with each other, and uttering oaths mingled with drunken laughter; and then, not wishing to sadden myself further with the spectacle, I retired to sleep.

recoiling with wild horror at the deed, had drawn a pistol, and placing it to his forehead, put an end to his own life.

I shall not attempt to convey an impression of my feelings at this terrible tragedy. The murder and suicide of two men who had been my close friends communicated to my nature a shock which it did not recover from for years. I pray that never while I live a similar spectacle may be presented to my eyes. The dead bodies were solemnly removed, few words were spoken, and on the next day, when we continued our journey, little was said of the occurrence. It was something too awful even for conversation. I reached at four in the evening, and at five had made my toilet, and presented myself at the door of Marquis Cotesbury's splendid mansion, once so familiar.

V.-MARQUIS COTESBURY AT THIRTY-SIX.

I had not been in the well-remembered receiving-room five minutes when Marquis entered. His appearance shocked me profoundly. All his bloom and beauty of countenance had disappeared, his cheeks were sunken and flushed, his eyes bloodshot, and of a lack-lustre appearance, and as he came toward me I perceived that his gait was unsteady, and at one moment he was compelled to catch the corner of a marble table to keep himself from staggering.

I had slept two or three hours, I suppose, when a sudden outcry, followed by the explosion of a pistol, suddenly awakened me. I hastily drew on my clothes and descended to the lower floor, where a confused crowd of persons, and lights "Why, how are you, my dear Will?" he said, moving about, indicated some terrible source of shaking my hand warmly, and looking at me excitement. I shall never forget the horrible with his old kind glance. "It's good for sore spectacle which greeted my eyes as I entered eyes to see you, my boy, and you see my eyes the common room. At two paces from the door, are not far from that-rings round 'em, and one of the two men I had left drinking lay dead, sunken-drink, drink; I told you how it would with a terrible wound in his forehead, evident-be-ha! ha!-but you? You look as fresh as ly produced by the ball of a pistol; at the oth- a May morning, my youngster!" er end of the apartment, his companion was supported in the arms of the landlord—his breast covered with blood, his countenance as pale as ashes. He was evidently dying, and indeed expired in a few minutes after my entrance. But before his eyes became glazed we exchanged a glance which made me draw back, faint and shuddering. I had recognized in that changed look of the dying my friend of other days, Tom Francis. An examination of the other's face revealed also the fact that his companion was the kindest of good fellows-the sunbeam of our old revels-poor Charley Ashton.

For a time my horror and grief were too great for speech; but at last I inquired the particulars of the shocking event. The companions had continued to sit up and order fresh drink long after every one had retired, despite the remonstrances of the landlord; and with each additional potation they grew more wild and ungovernable. Commencing a playful altercation, they had grappled in a laughing wrestle, but the rough play irritated them both. The landlord said that he first comprehended this dangerous change of feeling from their voices, but, quickly as he hastened from his post behind the counter, he had been unable to part them. Drawing a knife from his bosom one of them had plunged it into the other's heart-and then,

And Marquis gazed at me again with his kind, good eyes, until tears nearly rushed from my own.

"Oh, my dear Marquis! my dear friend," I could not help saying, "it pains me to the heart to see you looking so ill. Ten years have worsted you painfully-very painfully."

Marquis steadied himself by a chair and sat down, with a laugh.

"That's true, Will, my boy. Ten years of drink are enough to hurt any constitution, and mine was of iron. I am really astonished, sometimes, to think of how strong I must have been originally. I think I'll last five or ten years longer-the rest won't."

I was too much pained to reply.

"There was that fellow Thornburg, who had the little affair with me, you remember, in the year ," continued Marquis, laughing, "drank himself within a foot of the grave, and then, as luck would have it, broke his neck by a fall from his horse, after dinner. He was a great rascal-he cheated me at cards, if I recall rightly-I remember something about it, but my memory grows sadly treacherous. Then there was Charley and Tom-poor Tom! They still keep it up. They are both long since ruined, and lead wandering lives. I've tried to reclaim Tom, and—this is a family secret-he

"The warning you read in Burton's 'Anato

gets piles of money from me; but the devil of
drink's got him. It's only a question of soon-my.'"
er or later-poor Tom!-and I cry sometimes
thinking of him, thinking to what he may
come, poor fellow! Tom's a good fellow!"

And for a moment Marquis looked profoundly sorrowful. I could not find it in my heart to tell him of the terrible tragedy I had witnessed, and turned the conversation. I found that I could easily lead Marquis to any subject, and as the effect of the wine he had taken wore off I thought it as favorable an opportunity as I might obtain to talk upon business.

Marquis declared that the topic should not be introduced until I had been with him for a month; but I vetoed this, and was soon put in possession of the points he desired my opinion upon. It is only necessary to say that these were questions of law, touching the doctrines of wills, and indeed it was to write his complicated will that Marquis sent for me. In spite of enormous losses at cards, his property was still immense, and every day increased in value; and after a general conversation on the subject, dinner was announced.

As I entered the well-remembered apartment, where the great dark mahogany table was set forth, with its splendid service of plate, I almost started at the sight of Jugurtha standing, waiter in hand, behind his master's chair. The sight of the servant's face brought a rush of memories, and when he bowed and respectfully smiled by way of greeting, it was the same bow and smile with which he had handed the pitcher of julep to us, before we had risen, ten long years before. Marquis apologized for "Mrs. Cotesbury's" non-appearance. She was a little unwell today, and begged to be excused. So we dined

"Why, certainly, I remember!" cried Marquis, shaking with laughter; "I think I came on the word-stop, what word was it?" and with contracted brows he seemed trying to remember. "The word was

"I will tell you," I said. 'Lost!"

"So it was; but what are we 'fashing our heads' with all this nonsense for? Let me give you a piece of this duck, and a glass of sherry. No? Well, my dear boy, you're a man of taste, I despise all these slops. Jugurtha," turning his head, "take away these glasses and bring me some whisky."

Jugurtha silently glided to the wine-closet and brought forth a common black bottle, which he presented to his master on a silver waiter.

"After all," said Marquis, pouring out half a tumblerful of the pale yellow liquid, which an attentive servant diluted with ice-water, "after all there's nothing like good old whisky. Your brandies nauseate me, and burn me up, but this is the pure aqua vita-water of life. When I drink it I am surrounded by all the heathen gods and goddesses-ha! ha!-especially the goddesses-for 'never alone come the immortals!'”

A harsh, cracked laugh accompanied the words, and Marquis drained his whisky at a single draught.

When the dessert was removed from the table Marquis had emptied the whisky bottle, and declared himself growing "companionable." I witnessed with astonishment the extraordinary amount he drank-for another capacious bottle of the heady liquor gradually disappeared be

in solitary state, surrounded by a dozen serv-fore his determined attacks. To have remonants, silent, and moving noiselessly.

strated with him for this enormous excess would have been purely gratuitous. It was plainly a fixed, daily habit, and I could only sit silent and gaze at my companion, who refused to rise "till he had finished his allowance."

The dinner was superb, and my host did full justice to it. His constitution was indeed an iron one; the immense assaults he had made upon it seemed not to have impaired its capacities of enjoyment, and Marquis ate with the I was compelled to yield; and on that afterair of a trained epicure. I found by my plate | noon listened to talk such as, for wild and brilla semicircle of glasses, variously shaped and of iant vigor, penetrating criticism, and dazzling different colors, for the numerous wines-Cham-subtlety, I had never heard from mortal in this pagne, Madeira, hock, sherry, Val de Peñas, world, nor shall hear. The liquids he had Bordeaux, etc.; but to all Marquis's invitations drunk seemed simply to warm his intellect to I turned a deaf ear. its normal state-to arouse the mental energy of "I have drank nothing for ten years," I said, this extraordinary man-and when some weird "and you must excuse me."

extravagance marred his vivid sentences, it was "Nothing for ten years!" cried Marquis, fill- not caused by what he had drunken now, but ing my glass and his own with Champagne from the warping of the brain, resulting from habita bottle which Jugurtha had just opened; "isual excess. I shall only add, in ending my such a thing possible in the nature of human sketch of a scene acutely painful to me, though things? The idea! Why what a dull life! | crammed with tragic interest, that I have never You've kept yourself from a thousand-yes, ten thousand glorious delights, Will!"

met with the human intellect which exhibited such splendid grace and strength; never heard the talker who poured out such grand ideas in such gorgeous and imperial profusion. I sometimes sit and wonder now if the Enemy of Souls was not personally present in what is his best emblem-the fiery liquid, and if he did not prompt the speaker in his flights of royal

thought-giving him logic, criticism, pathos, humor, satire, scoffing, and sneers—and laughing from behind the bottle as he listened and wondering at the matchless intellect he had roused to this wild activity.

When we rose there was the same unsteady gait observable in Marquis, and the slight hesitation of speech I had noticed in the morning. Beyond this he exhibited none of the evidences of intoxication. I returned to my lodgings, and on the next day, shutting myself up in my chamber, accomplished the legal business which my friend requested at my hands. It was Marquis's will, as I said, and Providence decreed, in its good pleasure, that many charitable public institutions should know and admire the discriminating benevolence of this singular man.

On the next day, the last of my stay, I was compelled, much against my wishes, to attend a great dinner-party which Marquis had assembled in compliment to me-at which some of the most celebrated statesmen, lawyers, and judges of the day were present-and at this entertainment I saw Mrs. Cotesbury for the only time during my visit. Plainly the intelligence of her brother's awful death had not reached her; or, if she knew of it, her powers of selfcontrol were immense. Marquis was undoubtedly ignorant of it.

The beautiful Caroline Francis of old times was terribly changed. Her countenance had lost all its bloom and roundness; and from the thin, pale face looked forth a pair of haggard eyes, filled with an expression of silent suffering and rigid endurance of pain. Her gait was slow and unsteady, as is seen in confirmed invalids; and when she gravely inclined to me, and gave me her cold, white hand, I felt as though I had exchanged salutations with a ghost. A single daughter had been the result of the marriage, but the child, whose name was Aurora, did not appear at the set dinner.

I shall not dwell upon the splendid banquet, from which Mrs. Cotesbury made her escape at the earliest moment which etiquette would per· mit-gliding past me noiselessly like a shadow, and impressing me more powerfully than before with the idea that she belonged to another state of being. The company were a set of bon vivans, men of the old school, who drank deep and played high, as though to revenge themselves in passionate stimulants for the toil and burden of their public stations. On that evening I saw senators drowse, and heard them stammer witless jests, or unworthy anecdotes; great lawyers exchanged facetic which I will not repeat; judges nodded under the effect of their potations, and abdicated the dignity of Themis for the cap and bells of Harlequin. It was a wild revel, and the wildest reveler of all was Marquis. The quantities of wine which he drank were perfectly astounding. As before, however, the wine produced merely a slight change in his voice, and a species of unsteadiness in walking, when, the banquet over, he led the way to the card-tables.

Here the playing was on a scale corresponding to the excesses which had preceded it. Marquis and Judge · engaged each other, and in an hour Marquis had won two thousand dollars. He lit a fresh cigar, and recommenced. When, an hour afterward, the party broke up, Marquis had lost his winnings and five thousand dollars in addition. He scribbled a line in his checkbook, and tearing out the leaf, pushed it to the Judge with a gay laugh-the most careless imaginable.

But I shall not dwell further upon the party. In half an hour Marquis and myself were left alone. He drew a full decanter of sherry to him, and emptying his glass, said, "A jolly set, eh, Will? All men of distinction. What a humbug distinction is! Here's something better!"

And he refilled his glass. I did not reply.

"You saw Caroline," he continued, a slight shadow passing over his face. "Poor thing! she's not in good health. Some people would say that made them drink, but, you see, I'm more candid, my boy. I drink because it's good for me-my youth comes back to me. Hurrah for youth! Confusion to old age, with its cares and its wrinkles! Eat, drink, and be merry is my motto, mon garçon, even if to-morrow we die. And that reminds me you're going to-morrowand haven't seen my little Aurora. Jugurtha!"

The confidential servant glided from the shadow of the door-way, in which he had been lost, so noiselessly that I almost started.

"Tell nurse to bring Miss Aurora.”

I remonstrated strongly against taking the child from her bed, and declared that it was most unreasonable. But Jugurtha was gone, as he came, like a shadow, and Marquis greeted my remonstrance with a gay laugh. A strange look, like that of a sleep-walker, began to appear in his eyes as he continued to drink; and I gazed in painful absorption at the curious spectacle. It seemed as if no amount of drink could intoxicate this iron man-he dreamed while awake, that was all.

In a few moments the nurse, who had hurriedly dressed herself, appeared, leading in the girl of seven, who wore only a little figured gown over her night-dress, her small, white feet having been hastily thrust into embroidered slippers. She was a child of rare, almost angelic, beauty, with chestnut hair profusely curling, violet eyes, and lips of a sad sweetness.

At sight of her I saw pass over Marquis's face an expression of the deepest love; and when he held out his arms and spoke to her, his strident voice melted into music. But the child for a moment shrank from him-yielding at last to his caresses with a cold respect, and even, it seemed, some fear. The quick and jealous eye of the father discerned it, and a shadow of acute wretchedness made his brow gloomy. There was no anger, however; and releasing her with grave tenderness, he kissed her brow, and bade the nurse reconduct her up-stairs. She disappeared as she came, bestowing upon me as

Roman emperors. But the long-delayed retribution came on surely. One day I was sumAs the door closed Marquis let his powerful moned by a hurried letter from Mrs. Cotesbury hand fall upon the delicate stand containing the to come and see my poor friend. I hastened to wine-carried away, it seemed, by a rush of and again entered the splendid mansion, feeling. The table yielded, and its contents which even now conveys to my mind, whenever were hurled to the floor. Then rising, the un-I pass it, the idea of an arena upon which has happy man for some moments paced the apartment with rapid and unsteady steps, passing his hand more than once across his eyes. When he again fell into his seat, I saw that there were fiery tears in them.

I found Marquis a raving maniac. It was the result of such a train of excesses-they were afterward described to me-as I wonder did not "You are right, Will," he said, at last, in a hurl him, months before, violently into his grave. husky voice. "It's killing me. I'm 'lost' Of late years, they informed me, he had seem-you remember the word. But there's no helped to be possessed of a burning thirst which no for it. You see, my boy, the devil's got hold of - but he has not conquered. You see my hand's steady yet!"