Shoulder-Straps: A Novel of New York and the Army, 1862 Read online

  CHAPTER V.

  THE MYSTERY OF THE RED WOMAN--ANOTHER OF TOM LESLIE'S LONG STORIES--ANINCIDENT OF PARIS IN 1860--THE VISION OFMTHE WHITE MIST--TWO MEN WITHONE WONDER AND ONE PURPOSE.

  "And who was the red woman?"

  It has been indicated in a former chapter that both Tom Leslie andWalter Lane Harding intended, at one period of the night, to go to bedas soon as possible. The event was that neither found that luxury untilthe milkman was bawling under the windows. Harding had contrived toraise a large amount of curiosity, especially about the "red woman" andher possible connection with the events of the evening, and Leslie tiredand satisfied him, collectively and at intervals, with another longstory before they separated. Only in his own words can that story be soconveyed as to be intelligible.

  "I had returned from Vienna to Paris," he said, "late in 1860. No matterwhat I was doing in Paris; and as we are upon a serious subject, don'tlet me hear a word about 'grisettes' or the 'back room of a baker'sshop.' I lodged in the little Rue Marie Stuart, not far from the RueMontorgeuil, and only two or three minutes' walk from the Louvre, forthe long picture galleries of which I had an unfortunate weakness. I hada tradesman with a pretty wife for my landlord, and a cozy little roomin which three persons could sit down comfortably, for my domicil. As Idid not often have more than two visitors, my room was quite sufficient;and as I spent a large proportion of my evenings at other places than mylodgings, the space was three quarters of the time more than I needed.

  "One of my intimates, a young Prussian by the name of Adolph Von Berg,had a habit of visiting mediums, clairvoyants, and, not to put too finea point upon it, fortune-tellers. Though I had been in company withclairvoyants in many instances, I had never, before my return to Parisin the late summer of 1860, entered any one of those places in whichprofessional fortune-tellers carried on their business. It was early inSeptember, I think, that at the earnest solicitation of Von Berg, whohad been reading and smoking with me at my lodgings, I went with him,late in the evening, to a small two-story house in the Rue La ReynieOgniard, a little street down the Rue Saint Denis toward the quays ofthe Seine, and running from Saint Denis across to the Rue Saint Martin.The house seemed to me to be one of the oldest in Paris, although builtof wood; and the wrinkled and crazy appearance of the front waseminently suggestive of the face of an old woman on which time had longbeen plowing furrows to plant disease. The interior of the house, whenwe entered it by the dingy and narrow hall-way, that night, wellcorresponded with the exterior. A tallow candle in a tin sconce wasburning on the wall, half hiding and half revealing the grime on theplastering, the cobwebs in the corners, and the rickety stairs by whichit might be supposed that the occupants ascended to the second story.

  "My companion tinkled a small bell that lay upon a little uncoveredtable in the hall (the outer door having been entirely unfastened, toall appearance), and a slattern girl came out from an inner room. Onrecognizing my companion, who had visited the house before, she led theway, without a word, to the same room she had herself just quitted.There was nothing remarkable in this. A shabby table, and two or threestill more shabby chairs, occupied the room, and a dark wax-taper stoodon the table, while at the side opposite the single window a curtain ofsome dark stuff shut in almost one entire side of the apartment. We tookseats on the rickety chairs, and waited in silence, Adolph informing methat the etiquette (strange name for such a place) of the house did notallow of conversation, not with the proprietors, carried on in thatapartment sacred to the divine mysteries.

  "Perhaps fifteen minutes had elapsed, and I had grown fearfully tired ofwaiting, when the corner of the curtain was suddenly thrown back, andthe figure of a woman stood in the space thus created. Every thingbehind her seemed to be in darkness; but some description of brightlight, which did not show through the curtain at all, and which seemedalmost dazzling enough to be Calcium or Drummond, shed its rays directlyupon her side-face, throwing every feature, from brow to chin, into boldrelief, and making every fold of her dark dress visible. But I scarcelysaw the dress, the face being so remarkable beyond any thing I had everwitnessed. I had looked to see an old, wrinkled hag--it being thegeneral understanding that all witches and fortune-tellers must be longpast the noon of life; but instead, I saw a woman who could not havebeen over thirty-five or forty, with a figure of regal magnificence, anda face that would have been, but for one circumstance, beautiful beyonddescription. Apelles never drew and Phidias never chiselled nose or browof more classic perfection, and I have never seen the bow of Cupid inthe mouth of any woman more ravishingly shown than in that feature ofthe countenance of the sorceress.

  "I said that but for one circumstance that face would have beenbeautiful beyond description. And yet no human eye ever looked upon aface more hideously fearful than it was in reality. Even a momentaryglance could not be cast upon it without a shudder, and a longer gazeinvolved a species of horrible fascination which affected one like anightmare. You do not understand yet what was this remarkable and mosthideous feature. I can scarcely find words to describe it to you so thatyou can catch the full force of the idea--I must try, however. You haveoften seen Mephistopheles in his flame-colored dress, and caught somekind of impression that the face was of the same hue, though the factwas that it was of the natural color and only affected by the luridcharacter of the dress and by the Satanic pencilling of the eyebrows!Well, this face was really what that seemed for the moment to be. It wasredder than blood--red as fire, and yet so strangely did the flame-colorplay through it that you knew no paint laid upon the skin could haveproduced the effect. It almost seemed that the skin and the whole massof flesh were transparent, and that the red color came from some kind offire or light within, as the red bottle in a druggist's window mightglow when you were standing full in front of it and the gas was turnedon to full height behind. Every feature--brow, nose, lips, chin, eventhe eyes themselves, and their very pupils, seemed to be pervaded andpermeated by this lurid flame; and it was impossible for the beholder toavoid asking himself whether there were indeed spirits offlame--salamandrines--who sometimes existed out of their own element andlived and moved as mortals.

  "Have I given you a strange and fearful picture? Be sure that I have notconveyed to you one thousandth part of the impression made upon myself,and that until the day I die that strange apparition will remain stampedupon the tablets of my mind. Diabolical beauty! infernal ugliness!--Iwould give half my life, be it longer or shorter, to be able to explainwhence such things can come, to confound and stupefy all humancalculation!

  "Well, as I was saying, there stood my horribly beautiful fiend, andthere I sat spell-bound before her. As for Adolph, though he had told menothing in advance of the peculiarities of her appearance, he had beenfully aware of them, of course, and I had the horrible surprise all tomyself. I think the sorceress saw the mingled feeling in my face, andthat a smile blended of pride and contempt contorted the proud featuresand made the ghastly face yet more ghastly for one moment. If so, theexpression soon passed away, and she stood, as before, the incarnationof all that was terrible and mysterious. At length, still retaining herplace and fixing her eyes upon Von Berg, she spoke, sharply, brusquely,and decidedly:

  "'You are here again! what do you want?'

  "'I come to introduce my friend, the Baron Charles Denmore, of England,'answered Von Berg, 'who wishes--'

  "'Nothing!' said the sorceress, the word coming from her lips with anunmistakably hissing sound. 'He wants nothing, and he is _not_ the BaronCharles Denmore! He comes from far away, across the sea, and he wouldnot have come here to-night but that you insisted upon it! Take himaway--go away yourself--and never let me see you again unless you havesomething to ask or you wish me to do you an injury!'

  "'But--' began Von Berg.

  "'Not another word!' said the sorceress, 'I have said. Go, before yourepent having come at all!'

  "'Madame,' I began to say, awed out of the feeling at least of equalitywhich I should have felt to be proper under such circumstances
, and onlyaware that Adolph, and possibly myself, had incurred the enmity of abeing so near to the supernatural as to be at least dangerous--'Madame,I hope that you will not think--'

  "But here she cut _me_ short, as she had done Von Berg the instantbefore.

  "'Hope nothing, young man!' she said, her voice perceptibly less harshand brusque than it had been when speaking to my companion. 'Hopenothing and ask nothing until you may have occasion; then come to me.'

  "'And then?'

  "'Then I will answer every question you may think proper to put to me.Stay! you may have occasion to visit me sooner than you suppose, or Imay have occasion to force knowledge upon you that you will not have theboldness to seek. If so, I shall send for you. Now go, both of you!'

  "The dark curtain suddenly fell, and the singular vision faded with thereflected light which had filled the room. The moment after, I heard theshuffling feet of the slattern girl coming to show us out of the room,but, singularly enough, as you will think, not out of the _house_!Without a word we followed her--Adolph, who knew the customs of theplace, merely slipping a twenty-franc piece into her hand; and in amoment more we were out in the street and walking up the Rue SaintDenis. It is not worth while to detail the conversation which followedbetween us as we passed up to the Rue Marie Stuart, I to my lodgings andAdolph to his own, further on, close to the Rue Vivienne and not farfrom the Boulevard Montmartre. Of course I asked him fifty questions,the replies to which left me quite as much in the dark as before. Heknew, he said, and hundreds of other persons in Paris knew, thesingularity of the personal appearance of the sorceress, and herapparent power of divination, but neither he nor they had any knowledgeof her origin. He had been introduced at her house several monthsbefore, and had asked questions affecting his family in Prussia and thechances of descent of certain property, the replies to which hadastounded him. He had heard of her using marvellous and fearfulincantations, but had never himself witnessed any thing of them. In twoor three instances, before the present, he had taken friends to thehouse and introduced them under any name which he chose to apply to themfor the time, and the sorceress had never before chosen to call him toaccount for the deception, though, according to the assurances of hisfriends after leaving the house, she had never failed to arrive at thetruth of their nationalities and positions in life. There must have beensomething in myself or my circumstances, he averred, which had producedso singular an effect upon the witch, (as he evidently believed her tobe,) and he had the impression that at no distant day I should againhear from her. That was all, and so we parted, I in any other conditionof mind than that promising sleep, and really without closing my eyes,except for a moment or two at a time, during the night which followed.When I did attempt to force myself into slumber, a red spectre stoodcontinually before me, an unearthly light seemed to sear my coveredeyeballs, and I awoke with a start. Days passed before I sufficientlywore away the impression to be comfortable, and at least two or threeweeks before my rest became again entirely unbroken.

  "You must be partially aware with what anxiety we Americans temporarilysojourning on the other side of the Atlantic, who loved the country wehad left behind on this, watched the succession of events which precededand accompanied the Presidential election of that year. Some supposethat a man loses his love for his native land, or finds it comparativelychilled within his bosom, after long residence abroad. The very oppositeis the case, I think! I never knew what the old flag was, until I saw itwaving from the top of an American consulate abroad, or floating fromthe gaff of one of our war-vessels, when I came down the mountains tosome port on the Mediterranean. It had been merely red, white and bluebunting, at home, where the symbols of our national greatness were to beseen on every hand: it was the _only_ symbol of our national greatnesswhen we were looking at it from beyond the sea; and the man whose eyeswill not fill with tears and whose throat will not choke a little withoverpowering feeling, when catching sight of the Stars and Stripes wherethey only can be seen to remind him of the glory of the country of whichhe is a part, is unworthy the name of patriot or of man!

  "But to return: Where was I? Oh! I was remarking with what interest weon the other side of the water watched the course of affairs at home,during that year when the rumble of distant thunder was just heraldingthe storm. You are well aware that without extensive and long-continuedconnivance on the part of sympathizers among the leading people ofEurope--England and France especially--secession could never have beenaccomplished so far as it has been; and there never could have been anyhope of its eventual success if there had been no hope of one or boththese two countries bearing it up on their strong and unscrupulous arms.The leaven of foreign aid to rebellion was working even then, both inLondon and Paris; and perhaps we had opportunities over the water for anearer guess at the peril of the nation, than you could have had in themidst of your party-political squabbles at home.

  "During the months of September and October, when your Wide-Awakes onthe one hand, and your conservative Democracy on the other, wereparading the streets with banners and music, as they or theirpredecessors had done in so many previous contests, and believing thatnothing worse could be involved than a possible party defeat and somebad feelings, we, who lived where revolutions were common, thought thatwe discovered the smouldering spark which would be blown to revolutionhere. The disruption of the Charleston Convention and through it of theDemocracy; the bold language and firm attitude of the Republicans; thewell-understood energy of the uncompromising Abolitionists, and the lessdefined but rabid energy of the Southern fire-eaters: all these wereknown abroad and watched with gathering apprehension. Americannewspapers, and the extracts made from them by the leading journals ofFrance and England, commanded more attention among the Americo-Frenchand English than all other excitements of the time put together.

  "Then followed what you all know--the election, with its radical resultand the threats which immediately succeeded, that 'Old Abe Lincoln'should never live to be inaugurated! 'He shall not!' cried the South.'He shall!' replied the North. To us who knew something of the Spanishknife and the Italian stiletto, the probabilities seemed to be that hewould never live to reach Washington. Then the mutterings of the thundergrew deeper and deeper, and some disruption seemed inevitable, evidentto us far away, while you at home, it seemed, were eating and drinking,marrying and giving in marriage, holding gala-days and enjoyingyourselves generally, on the brink of an arousing volcano from whichthe sulphurous smoke already began to ascend to the heavens! So timepassed on; autumn became winter, and December was rolling away.

  "I was sitting with half-a-dozen friends in the chess-room at Very's,about eleven o'clock on the night of the twentieth of December, talkingover some of the marvellous successes which had been won by Paul Morphywhen in Paris, and the unenviable position in which Howard Staunton hadplaced himself by keeping out of the lists through evident fear of theNew-Orleanian, when Adolph Von Berg came behind me and laid his hand onmy shoulder.

  "'Come with me a moment,' he said, 'you are wanted!'

  "'Where?' I asked, getting up from my seat and following him to thedoor, before which stood a light _coupe_, with its red lights flashing,the horse smoking, and the driver in his seat.

  "'I have been to-night to the Rue la Reynie Ogniard!' he answered.

  "'And are you going there again?' I asked, my blood chilling a littlewith an indefinable sensation of terror, but a sense of satisfactionpredominating at the opportunity of seeing something more of themysterious woman.

  "'I am!' he answered, 'and so are _you_! She has sent for you! Come!'

  "Without another word I stepped into the _coupe_, and we were rapidlywhirled away. I asked Adolph how and why I had been summoned; but heknew nothing more than myself, except that he had visited the sorceressat between nine and ten that evening, that she had only spoken to himfor an instant, but ordered him to go at once and find his friend, _theAmerican_, whom he had falsely introduced some months before as theEnglish baron. He had been irresistibly impressed w
ith the necessity ofobedience, though it would break in upon his own arrangements for thelater evening, (which included an hour at the Chateau Rouge;) had pickedup a _coupe_, looked in for me at two or three places where he thoughtme most likely to be at that hour in the evening, and had found me atVery's, as related. What the sorceress could possibly want of me, he hadno more idea than myself; but he reminded me that she had hinted at thepossible necessity of sending for me at no distant period, and Iremembered the fact too well to need the reminder.

  "It was nearly midnight when we drove down the Rue St. Denis, turnedinto La Reynie Ogniard, and drew up at the antiquated door I had onceentered nearly three months earlier. We entered as before, rang the bellas before, and were admitted into the inner room by the same slatterngirl. I remember at this moment one impression which this person madeupon me--that she did not wash so often as four times a year, and thatthe _same old dirt_ was upon her face that had been crusted there at thetime of my previous visit. There seemed no change in the room, exceptthat _two_ tapers, and each larger than the one I had previously seen,were burning upon the table. The curtain was down as before, and when itsuddenly rose, after a few minutes spent in waiting, and the blood-redwoman stood in the vacant space, all seemed so exactly as it had done onthe previous visit, that it would have been no difficult matter tobelieve the past three months a mere imagination, and this the samefirst visit renewed.

  "The illusion, such as it was, did not last long, however. The sorceressfixed her eyes full upon me, with the red flame seeming to play throughthe eyeballs as it had before done through her cheeks, and said, in avoice lower, more sad and broken, than it had been when addressing me onthe previous occasion:

  "'Young American, I have sent for you, and you have done well to come.Do not fear--'

  "'I do _not_ fear--you, or any one!' I answered, a little piqued thatshe should have drawn any such impression from my appearance. I may havebeen uttering a fib of magnificent proportions at the moment, but onehas a right to deny cowardice to the last gasp, whatever else he mustadmit.

  "'You do not? It is well, then!' she said in reply, and in the same low,sad voice. 'You will have courage, then, perhaps, to see what I willshow you from the land of shadows.'

  "'Whom does it concern?' I asked. 'Myself or some other?'

  "'Yourself, and many others--all the world!' uttered the lips of flame.'It is of your country that I would show you.'

  "'My country? God of heaven! what has happened to my country?' brokefrom my lips almost before I knew what I was uttering. I suppose thewords came almost like a groan, for I had been deeply anxious over thestate of affairs known to exist at home, and perhaps I can be nearer toa weeping child when I think of any ill to my own beloved land, than Icould be for any other evil threatened in the world.

  "'But a moment more, and you shall see!' said the sorceress. Then sheadded: 'You have a friend here present. Shall he too look on what I haveto reveal, or will you behold it alone?'

  "'Let him see!' I answered. 'My native land may fall into ruin, but shecan never be ashamed!'

  "'So let it be, then!' said the sorceress, solemnly. 'Be silent, look,and learn what is at this moment transpiring in your own land!'

  "Beneath that adjuration I was silent, and the same dread stillness fellupon my companion. Suddenly the sorceress, still standing in the sameplace, waved her right hand in the air, and a strain of low, sad music,such as the harps of angels may be continually making over the descentof lost spirits to the pit of suffering, broke upon my ears. Von Bergtoo heard it, I know, for I saw him look up in surprise, then apply hisfingers to his ears and test whether his sense of hearing had suddenlybecome defective. Whence that strain of music could have sprung I didnot know, nor do I know any better at this moment. I only know that, tomy senses and those of my companion, it was definite as if the thundersof the sky had been ringing.

  "Then came another change, quite as startling as the music and even moredifficult to explain. The room began to fill with a whitish mist,transparent in its obscurity, that wrapped the form of the sybil andfinally enveloped her until she appeared to be but a shade. Anon,another and larger room seemed to grow in the midst, with columnedgalleries and a rostrum, and hundreds of forms in wild commotion,moving to and fro, though uttering no sound. At one moment, it seemedthat I could look through one of the windows of the phantom building,and I saw the branches of a palmetto tree waving in the winter wind.Then amidst and apparently at the head of all, a white-haired man stoodupon the rostrum, and as he turned down a long scroll from which heseemed to be reading to the assemblage, I read the words that appearedon the top of the scroll: 'An ordinance to dissolve the union heretoforeexisting between the State of South Carolina and the several States ofthe Federal Union, under the name of the United States of America.' Mybreath came thick, my eyes filled with tears of wonder and dismay, and Icould see no more.

  "'Horror!' I cried. 'Roll away the vision, for it is false! It cannot bethat the man lives who could draw an ordinance to dissolve the Union ofthe United States of America!'

  "'It is so! That has this day been done!' spoke the voice of thesorceress from within the cloud of white mist.

  "'If this is indeed true,' I said, 'show me what is the result, for theheavens must bow if this work of ruin is accomplished!'

  "'Look again, then!' said the voice. The strain of music, which hadpartially ceased for a moment, grew louder and sadder again, and I sawthe white mist rolling and changing, as if a wind were stirring it.Gradually again it assumed shape and form; and in the moonlight, beforethe Capitol of the nation, its white proportions gleaming in the wintryray, the form of Washington stood, the hands clasped, the head bare, andthe eyes cast upward in the mute agony of supplication.

  "'All is not lost!' I shouted more than spoke, 'for the Father of hisCountry still watches his children, and while he lives in the heavensand prays for the erring and wandering, the nation may yet bereclaimed.'

  "'It may be so,' said the voice through the mist, 'for look!'

  "Again the strain of music sounded, but now louder and clearer, andwithout the tone of hopeless sadness. Again the white mists rolled by inchanging forms, and when once more they assumed shape and consistency,I saw great masses of men, apparently in the streets of a large city,throwing out the old flag from roof and steeple, lifting it to heaven inattitudes of devotion, and pressing it to their lips with those wildkisses which a mother gives to her darling child when it has been justrescued from a deadly peril.

  "'The nation lives!' I shouted. 'The old flag is not deserted and thepatriotic heart yet beats in American bosoms! Show me yet more, for thenext must be triumph!'

  "'Triumph indeed!' said the voice. 'Behold it, and rejoice at it whilethere is time!' I shuddered at the closing words, but another change inthe strain of music roused me. It was not sadness now, nor yet therising voice of hope, for martial music rung loudly and clearly, andthrough it I heard the roar of cannon and the cries of combatants inbattle. As the vision cleared, I saw the armies of the Union in fightwith a host almost as numerous as themselves, but savage, ragged andtumultuous, and bearing a mongrel flag that I had never seen before--onethat seemed robbed from the banner of the nation's glory. For a momentthe battle wavered and the forces of the Union seemed driven backward;then they rallied with a shout, and the flag of stars and stripes wasrebaptized in glory. They pressed the traitors backward at everyturn--they trod rebellion under their heels--they were everywhere, andeverywhere triumphant.

  "'Three cheers for the Star-Spangled Banner!' I cried, forgetting placeand time in the excitement of the scene. 'Let the world look on andwonder and admire! I knew the land that the Fathers founded andWashington guarded could not die! Three cheers--yes, nine--for theStar-Spangled Banner and the brave old land over which it floats!'

  "'Pause!' said the voice, coming out once more from the cloud of whitemist, and chilling my very marrow with the sad solemnity of its tone.'Look once again!' I looked, and the mists went rolling by as before,w
hile the music changed to wild discord; and when the sight became clearagain, I saw the men of the nation struggling over bags of gold andquarrelling for a black shadow that flitted about in their midst, whilecries of want and wails of despair went up and sickened the heavens! Iclosed my eyes and tried to close my ears, but I could not shut out thevoice of the sorceress, saying once more from her shroud of white mist:

  "'Look yet again, and for the last time! Behold the worm that gnaws awaythe bravery of a nation and makes it a prey for the spoiler!'Heart-brokenly sad was the music now, as the vision changed once more,and I saw a great crowd of men, each in the uniform of an officer of theUnited States army, clustered around one who seemed to be their chief.But while I looked, I saw one by one totter and fall, and directly Iperceived that the _epaulette or shoulder-strap on the shoulder of eachwas a great hideous yellow worm, that gnawed away the shoulder andpalsied the arm and ate into the vitals_. Every second, one fell anddied, making frantic efforts to tear away the reptile from its grasp,but in vain. Then the white mists rolled away, and I saw the strangewoman standing where she had been when the first vision began. She wassilent, the music was hushed, Adolph Von Berg had fallen back asleep inhis chair, and drawing out my watch, I discovered that only ten minuteshad elapsed since the sorceress spoke her first word.

  "'You have seen all--go!' was her first and last interruption to thesilence. The instant after, the curtain fell. I kicked Von Berg to awakehim, and we left the house. The _coupe_ was waiting in the street andset me down at my lodgings, after which it conveyed my companion to his.Adolph did not seem to have a very clear idea of what had occurred, andmy impression is that he went to sleep the moment the first strain ofmusic commenced.

  "As for myself, I am not much clearer than Adolph as to how and why Isaw and heard what I know that I did see and hear. I can only say thaton that night of the twentieth of December, 1860, the same on which, asit afterward appeared, the ordinance of secession was adopted atCharleston, I, in the little old two-story house in the Rue la ReynieOgniard, witnessed what I have related.

  "I left Havre in the old Arago only a fortnight afterwards. Perhaps theincident helped to drive me home. At all events I was ashamed to remainabroad when the country was in danger. Now you know quite as much of theaffair as myself--which is not saying much!"

  "Ugh!" said Harding, drawing an evident sigh of relief at the conclusionof so long a story, which had yet been so absorbingly interesting tohim, under the circumstances, that he could not go to sleep in the midstof it--"Ugh! your idea--I beg your pardon!--your _relation_ of the greatyellow worms and their affinity to shoulder-straps, is almost enough tomake a man, however patriotic, shudder at the thought of assuming such adecoration."

  "I believe you, my boy!" said Leslie, quoting an expressive vulgarismwhich Orpheus C. Kerr had just been making so extensively popular.

  "And that female combination of ghastly red and magical knowledge--"

  "That remarkable combination," said Leslie, anticipating andinterrupting the half-sneer that was coming--"is the red woman whom Isaw to-night in the house on Prince Street, just before I fell out ofthe tree; and it was her voice that I heard on the piazza yonder justbefore the door opened. What do you think of it?"

  "Think?" said Harding, earnestly this time. "I am altogether too muchwrapped in that remarkable white mist that you have been shaking roundme, to _think_! Then the events of to-night--so much crowded in a littlespace, and that woman coming into the midst of it all! My life has beena rather plain one, so far, and I have had to do with very fewmysteries; but here I am tumbling into the midst of one thicker than thefog on the East River in a February thaw!"

  "And yet the mystery of the two houses, and of the red woman so far aspossible, I am going to go through like the proverbial streak oflightning through a gooseberry-bush, before I have done with it!" saidLeslie, his habitual good opinion of his own powers coming once moreinto play. "You are ready to go with me?"

  "All the way!" said Harding, graphically; and it was then that after afew words of arrangement the two friends parted, to catch what mightstill remain of uneasy morning slumber, in which red women, flyingcarriage-lamps and respectable young men skulking in doorways and areas,were very likely to be prominent.