To love; and I, my Dora,
If once I fancied so,
It was a brief delusion,
And over, long ago."

XIII.

Between the Past and Present,
Oil that bleak moment's height,
She stood. As some lost traveller
By a quick flash of light
Seeing a gulf before him,
With dizzy, sick despair,
Reels to clutch backward, but to find
A deeper chasm there.

XIV.

The twilight grew still darker,
The fragrant flowers more sweet,
The stars shone out in heaven,
The lamps gleatn'd down the street;
And hours pass'd in dreaming
Over their new found fate,
Ere they could think of wondering
Why Bertha was so late.

XV.

She came, and calmly listen'd;
In vain they strove to trace
If Herbert's memory shadow'd
In grief upon her face.
No blame, no wonder show'd there,
No feeling could be told;
Her voice was not less steady,
Her manner not more cold.

XVI.

They could not hear the anguish
That broke in words of pain
Through that calm summer midnight,—
"My Herbert—mine again!"
Yes, they have once been parted,
But this day shall restore
The long lost one: she claims him:
"My Herbert—mine once more!"

XVII.

Now Christmas Eve returning,
Saw Bertha stand beside
The altar, greeting Dora,
Again a smiling bride;
And now the gloomy evening
Sees Bertha pale and worn,
Leaving the house for ever,
To wander out forlorn.

XVIII.

Forlorn—nay, not so. Angnish
Shall do its work at length;
Her soul, pass'd through the fire,
Shall gain still purer strength.
Somewhere there waits for Bertha
An earnest noble part;
And, meanwhile, God is with her,—
God, and her own true heart!

——

I could warmly and sincerely praise the
little poem, when Jarber had done reading
it; but I could not say that it tended in any
degree towards clearing up the mystery of
the empty House.

Whether it was the absence of the
irritating influence of Trottle, or whether it was
simply fatigue, I cannot say, but Jarber did
not strike me, that evening, as being in his
usual spirits. And though he declared that
he was not in the least daunted by his want
of success thus far, and that he was resolutely
determined to make more discoveries, he
spoke in a languid absent manner, and shortly
afterwards took his leave at rather an early
hour.

When Trottle came back, and when I
indignantly taxed him with Philandering, he
not only denied the imputation, but asserted
that he had been employed on my service,
and, in consideration of that, boldly asked
for leave of absence for two days, and for a
morning to himself afterwards, to complete
the business, in which he solemnly declared
that I was interested. In remembrance of
his long and faithful service to me, I did
violence to myself, and granted his request.
And he, on his side, engaged to explain
himself to my satisfaction, in a week's time, on
Monday evening the twentieth.

A day or two before, I sent to Jarber's
lodgings to ask him to drop in to tea. His
landlady sent back an apology for him that
made my hair stand on end. His feet were
in hot water; his head was in a flannel
petticoat; a green shade was over his eyes; the
rheumatism was in his legs; and a mustard-poultice
was on his chest. He was also a
little feverish, and rather distracted in his
mind about Manchester Marriages, a Dwarf,
and Three Evenings, or Evening Parties—his
landlady was not sure which—in an empty
House, with the Water Rate unpaid.

Under these distressing circumstances, I
was necessarily left alone with Trottle. His
promised explanation began, like Jarber's
discoveries, with the reading of a written
paper. The only difference was that Trottle
introduced his manuscript under the name of
a Report.

TROTTLE'S REPORT.

THE curious events related in these pages
would, many of them, most likely never have
happened, if a person named Trottle had not
presumed, contrary to his usual custom, to
think for himself.

The subject on which the person in question
had ventured, for the first time in his life,
to form an opinion purely and entirely his
own, was one which had already excited
the interest of his respected mistress in
a very extraordinary degree. Or, to put it
in plainer terms still, the subject was no
other than the mysteiry of the empty House.

Feeling no sort of objection to set a
success of his own, if possible, side by
side, with a failure of Mr. Jarber's, Trottle
made up his mind, one Monday evening,
to try what he could do, on his own account,
towards clearing up the mystery of the
empty House. Carefully dismissing from
his mind all nonsensical notions of former
tenants and their histories, and keeping the