CHAPTER XXI

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ANOTHER SCENE AT THE CRAWFORDS'--JOE HARRIS PLAYING THE DETECTIVE, WITH MUSICAL ACCOMPANIMENTS--A STRANGE CONVERSATION, AND A STRANGE VISIT TO A STRANGE DOCTOR.

Some chapters back in this narration, we saw Colonel Egbert Crawford playing volunteer physician to his invalid cousin Richard, and applying a certain bandage more or less suspicious in its character, while Josephine Harris held a very ambiguous position behind the parlor-door and drew certain deductions not complimentary to the character or intentions of the gallant Colonel. To take up the dropped thread of relation at that point--the Colonel left in a few moments afterwards, and Joe, from her position in the room up-stairs, watched his departure. By that time, the fearful agitation which had at first oppressed her, had somewhat moderated, and she was much more capable than before of thinking with clearness and acting with decision. "A perfect little fool" in many of her first confidences (as some of her friends paid her the doubtful compliment of calling her), Josephine Harris had yet a vein of distrust in her character, not difficult to touch; and when that vein was touched there was not "poppy or mandragora" enough in the world to lull to sleep her suspicions, until they were either proved true or fairly exploded.

Frank and generous natures will sometimes discern more clearly than subtle and designing ones, just as the naked eye will sometimes take in

## particulars in any scene more readily than when assisted by the glass.

The power of discernment may be aided, in some degree, by the fact that they are not guarded against as some are because they bear the look or reputation of being dangerous. Many a man has taken off the outer garb of his soul and gone in his mental shirtsleeves (so to speak) from the impression on his mind that he was in the company of the confiding and the unobservant; and many a bad man has found detection and ruin in the experiment.

Josephine Harris had seen something in the eyes of Colonel Egbert Crawford, when directed towards his invalid cousin, which said: "I hate you, and I would put you out of the way if I could!" She had remarked the terrible agitation of Richard Crawford when she made her random observation to that effect. Now she had overheard enough to put her in possession of the conflict of interests; and she had at the same time witnessed the application to the body of the invalid, of a preparation that was expressly ordered to be kept from the knowledge of the physician. Taking all these things together, and jumping at a conclusion with a rash haste which such people will sometimes exhibit--away down in the depths of her mind she whispered the word "_poison_!" She might never have thought of the existence of an outward poison dangerous to human life, but she had read Mrs. Ann S. Stephens' touching story of "The Pillow of Roses," and remembered how the life of the first lover of Mary Stuart had been sacrificed by the introduction of a deadly bane into the silken pillow--the very gift of love on which he so confidingly laid his head. Might not this be something of the same kind--a murderous practice unknown to the great body of people, and yet in the knowledge of some peculiarly instructed? What more likely than that a lawyer whose line of business led him into the company of criminals and made him acquainted with their secret confessions, should have arrived at a knowledge so dangerous and resolved to apply it for his own benefit and the removal of a rival?

Such were the reflections of Josephine Harris, when her blood had a little cooled down from the terrible fever of fright and anxiety into which she had been thrown at the first discovery; and how nearly right she was in the most important particular--the fact of an attempted poisoning by outward application--all will recognize who remember the interview between the lawyer and the Obi woman of Thomas Street, with the _dark paste_ which he brought away with him as the result of that visit.

At all events, the young girl felt that she had seen enough to remove any doubt of the propriety of making farther researches, and to do away with any shame that she had originally felt in playing the part of a spy and listener. Ardent natures like hers may possibly be blamed for adopting so readily the maxim that "the end justifies the means," and for plunging so determinedly into what cannot be considered their own business; but let those blame them who will, the good they accomplish may well be made a set-off for any evil they unwittingly cause; and the parable of the man who "fell among thieves," and the heartless wretches who "passed by on the other side," should make us a little slow in blaming the "good Samaritans" who work so enthusiastically even if uninvited and unskilfully.

The plain English of all which is, that Josephine Harris had determined to fathom the whole of the mystery lying between Richard Crawford and his cousin, no matter what deceptions she might be called upon to pursue in carrying out her plan, or what amount of time and trouble might be necessary for that purpose. She might have applied the rules of Egbert Crawford's own profession to him, in expressing this determination, and said that enough had been proved against the suspected person, to put him on his trial before a fair and impartial jury--that jury being herself in the first instance. Herself and herself only. For once Joe Harris determined to suppress her propensity for talking everywhere and to everybody, and to admit no confidant whatever into a knowledge of her suspicions. What else she intended to do, will in due time develop itself in action.

As a first step, she smoothed down her face with her hands, under some kind of impression that she could in that way remove the redness from her cheeks and the startled look from her eyes. Then she ran into Bell's chamber, assuming all the nonchalance she could pick up on the way, to ascertain whether that young lady was likely to remain away from the parlor for a brief period longer. She found her very busy among a miscellaneous heap of dresses and millinery (this was before the visit to the sorceress, which gave her something else to think about--let it be remembered,) and in that occupation she was safe to remain for an indefinite period. No visitors coming in, then, she was likely to have the field below-stairs to herself for a short time at least, and that time must be used vigorously.

She ran lightly down-stairs and into the empty parlor. There was no sound whatever coming out of the little room of the invalid--he was no doubt still alone. With the same care which she had before taken, she stepped to the glass doors, slid them apart as before, and looked through. Richard Crawford was yet lying on the sofa, and he was _buttoning up his vest_. A very simple and natural movement, and one not at all noticeable under ordinary circumstances; but to Josephine Harris, at that moment, it seemed very significant. There _was_ poison; that poison lay in the bandage; he _had_ suspected his cousin, allowed him to change and replace that bandage, and the moment he believed himself alone and unobserved, had _taken it off_! To say that Joe Harris's eyes sparkled at this proof of her suspicions, would be quite insufficient--they flashed, danced and radiated with delight, in such a manner as made it very fortunate for the peace of mind of the whole male sex that she happened to be alone.

Richard Crawford had taken off that bandage, and that bandage must come into her possession at once, while the preparation was fresh. But how was it to be obtained? Where had he put it? From the fact that he had been re-arranging his clothes while yet in a recumbent position, the chances seemed to be that he had taken off the bandage, if at all, without getting up, and that he then had it somewhere about him, intending to lock it up or put it away when he rose to go to the bed-room. He was very neat in his personal habits, as well as somewhat nervous in disposition; and on the score of cleanliness he was not likely to have put it into one of his pockets, while if he indeed felt it to be poison he would have been quite as unlikely to retain it so near his person. Joe felt that if removed, that bandage must be somewhere about the sofa. How to get it, even then? He would not be at all likely to go to bed, leaving it there; besides, she wanted it _at once_! He must be got suddenly out of the room, and he was too weak and suffering to remove often or on small provocation. The piano!--ah, yes, she would try the piano!

Joe's musical performances were always pyrotechnic; except on particular occasions when the sad soul that underlay the merriment came uppermost, and then they were mournful enough to tempt suicide. To say that she knew nothing about music, would be untrue of any one taught at the same trouble and expense; but to say that she understood it, taking the knowledge of other people as a standard, would be equally incorrect. When studying music under an excellent teacher, it had been found impossible to confine her to any set rules, and quite as impossible to make her execute her lessons properly. When she should have been performing that routine duty, her eolian piano at home was half the time turned into a banjo or a harp, tinkling a serenade, or into an organ, playing some ponderous old anthem or sobbing out some dirge of a broken heart. These were all well enough, in their way, but they were not studying the piano. As a result, she could produce all those effects upon the instrument, that no one else would ever have thought of attempting; the only penalty being, that what any one else could have done, she could not do at all. This did not suit some people, but it suited Miss Joe, exactly; and as she was pleased, perhaps no one else had a right to complain. If any one _did_ complain he or she was likely to be at once treated to one of the lugubrious compositions before mentioned, producing the "dumps" for a month after.

On this occasion Joe threw open the lid of the piano with such dexterity as to tangle the cover inextricably with the lid, set up the stool with a whirl, and dashed into the midst of a composition that might have been conceived by a mad musician and wailed out on an instrument possessed, like Paganini's fiddle, one night when the demons of the storm were playing at hide-and-seek among the Hartz Mountains of Germany. It went from the top to the bottom of the scale, in such moanings, and wailings, and sobbings, intermingled with such fiendish dashes of exultation and laughter, that the nerves of a strong man might have been thrown into permanent disorder by it, while those of a sick one could not do otherwise than suffer the most exquisite torture.

"I think that will do!" said Miss Joe to herself, pausing for an instant and then going on again. She was right, for at the next partial pause she heard the voice of Dick Crawford, from the back-room, yelling out with more energy than the man himself had before thought that he possessed:

"Sto-o-o-op!"

She did stop--ran to the sliding-doors and opened them at once, to find Crawford sitting upon the sofa, with his hands to both ears.

"Eh? what's the matter, Dick? Does the music disturb you?" she asked, as naturally as if she had not before been aware of the fact.

"Disturb me? It _murders_ me--you know it does, you torment!" was the reply of Crawford.

"I am so sorry," said Joe, with the least perceptible pout on her lip. "I suppose that I must go home, then, and play."

"No," said Crawford, who had no idea of being guilty of the ungallantry of driving a lady out of his house, especially dear, delicious, tormenting Joe. "No, don't go home. But if you must play, why not play something Christian and respectable--something that a man can listen to without gritting his teeth and stopping his ears more than half the time?"

"Well, that _is_ complimentary!" sighed Josey. "Just when I was doing the very best that I could! Besides, I wasn't playing for _you_. You were not in the room, but stuck away off there in a corner. I'll tell you what I will do, Mr. Dick Crawford. Let me help you out here to a sofa in _this_ room--the air will not hurt you, but do you good,--and I promise to play for you the very tunes you wish. If not--"

"Oh, you need not mention the alternative," said Crawford, remembering the preceding performance and afraid of a repetition. "Come here, give me your arm, and I _will_ come out for a few minutes."

"Bravo!" thought wild Joe, but she did not say it. Very gently and tenderly she assisted the invalid from his sofa and to a standing position, and then quite as tenderly through the door and to the sofa that stood nearly opposite the piano. Then she ran back and _closed the sliding-doors_ again, for fear, as she said, that there might be too much draught of air on the invalid. So far, so good! Richard Crawford had been coaxed out of his room and into the parlor that he scarcely entered once a month. What next?

"Play me a wreath of Scottish melodies," said Crawford, with the feeling of the old blood coming up within him. "And be sure that you throw in 'Roy's Wife' and 'Annie Laurie.' Will you?--That's a good girl?" Dick spoke more cheerfully than had been his late habit, and settled himself to an easy position on the sofa with more the air of a man ready to enjoy, than he had for some time manifested.

"Has there been an incubus suddenly lifted from his breast?" Joe Harris asked herself, noticing the change.

If there was anything that she really _could_ play on the piano, her forte lay in those very Scottish airs, which she certainly rendered with exquisite feeling and with skill enough for the moderate demands of that class of music. And on this occasion she felt bound to exert herself, to repay the obligation of Crawford's coming out to hear her, though her brain was all in a whirl for fear something might occur to drive the patient back into his room, and her fingers, as they touched the white keys, itched to be busying themselves about the cushions of the invalid's sofa. For a few moments, while "Within a Mile of Edinboro' Town," "Roy's Wife," "Charlie is My Darling," "Bonnie Doon" and half a dozen others of the Scottish wreath were dripping from her fingers, and while Richard Crawford was enjoying his favorite music better than he had before enjoyed anything for many a week,--for this few moments Joe Harris was nonplussed. How should she get out of the room? Oh! Suddenly she remembered that there was some music on one of the tables up-stairs, and she acted upon that excuse for absence.

"Oh, Dick, please lie still a moment. There is a piece up-stairs that I must bring down and play for you. I know you will like it. One of Gottschalk's--'Las Ojos Criollos.'" She had caught sight of that composition lying at the top of the heap of music near her, and without being observed by Crawford she caught the sheet, rolled it up in her hand, and was out of the room in a moment.

"Tut! tut! what a pity that that girl _never_ can be still a moment and do exactly what any one asks her to do!" was the mental comment of that gentleman as her flying skirts disappeared through the door.

Of course Josephine Harris did not go up stairs. She had no real errand whatever in that direction. There was a door opening from Richard's little bed-room, adjoining his study, into the hall; and her hope was to find that door unlocked. If not, some other excuse must be made to get into his room, to invent which she must play a few more tunes, and run a little more risk of being interrupted. She stepped very lightly to the door, with a repetition of that cat-step which seemed that day suddenly to have come to her. She turned the knob--it _was_ unlocked--it opened. One dart through the other door and to the sofa. The cushion was a moveable one, as she knew, and very likely to be made a temporary hiding-place for any small article, by one lying upon it. She lifted the edge of the cushion, her heart beating at trip-hammers again, and her whole being almost as much excited as it had been half an hour before. Human life is full of blunders, but happily there are some movements that are _not_ blunders; and this was one of them. A small, round roll of linen, three or four inches wide, was stuck a little distance under the edge. She drew it out, hastily unrolled it until she saw that a dark plaster lay in the middle, then, with a "Whew!" of triumph, quite as hastily rolled it up again and thrust it into her pocket. Half a minute more, and she had softly ascended a dozen steps of the stairs, and descended again with plenty of noise, springing down with a decided bump on the landing. Then she burst into the parlor with her _piece of music_, and sat down once more to the piano.

"Excuse my running away, Dick. Haven't been long--have I?"

"No, not very long," answered Crawford, whose impressions of Joe's steadiness were not enthusiastic. "You know I should not have been surprised if you had not come back in a week."

"Fie! fie! Dick Crawford! I have half a mind not to play for you at all, after that insult." But she did attempt to play, and to play "Las Ojos Criollos." If she ever could have played that most brilliant and difficult of all Gottschalk's pieces, which was very doubtful, she certainly was not capable of doing it when her fingers were in such a tremor, and with the mysterious package in her pocket; and though it may be an ungallant and improper thing to say of a lady's performance, she "made a mess of it."

"Pshaw!" she said, as naturally as if really vexed. "That piece is very difficult. I thought that I had mastered it, a dozen times, yet here it is bothering me again. Never mind!--I know what I _can_ play--something that you like, or if you do not, you should!" And very much to Crawford's delight, for she did not often sing, though she frequently _hummed_,--she broke out with voice and instrument into that finest, though worst-hackneyed, of modern love-ballads--"Ever of Thee." There are unaccountable fancies, in music as well as in personal regard, and one piece will sometimes make itself the very key-note of a human heart, without being in itself so pre-eminently beautiful as to command that distinction. Crawford had before many times heard Josephine Harris humming that air, or touching it lightly on the keys of the piano, but he had never before heard her _sing_ it. Before half of the first stanza was finished, he knew that it supplied to her a need in music that all the compositions of all the great masters would fail to fill; and before she had finished the last, he believed that some painful secret of her young life must be bound up in it. He was the more painfully confirmed in that belief, when he saw her rise from the piano the moment after she had concluded the song, and dash her hand to her eyes with the unmistakeable gesture of wiping away a tear.

"Joe--dear Joe," he said, "come here a moment."

She crossed the room at once and stood beside him. He held out his hand to her, and she took it as a sister might have taken that of a dearly beloved brother. There was nothing of heat or tremor in the touch, though there was everything of kindness. Absorbed in something else, both had for the moment forgotten the feeling before predominant--Crawford his sickness and crippled condition, and Joe Harris her anxieties and her plans with reference to him.

"Josephine Harris," he said, very kindly, almost tenderly, "answer me one question, as candidly as it is asked. Will you?"

"You could not ask me an improper question," she replied, "and so I could have no reason for refusing to answer you. I will."

"You have been singing 'Ever of Thee,'" he went on. "Your whole heart was in it when you sung, and when you stopped your voice was broken and your eyes were full of tears. Tell me--is there a sad secret of your life connected with that song? Consider me your brother, and do not be afraid or ashamed to answer me."

"Richard Crawford, I _do_ consider you as a brother," the young girl replied--"a _dear_ brother, in whom I would confide as in one of my own blood. I mean to prove to you, some day, what a true sister I am. I am neither afraid or ashamed to answer your question. I have no grief or sad memory connected with 'Ever of Thee,' any more than with any other sadly beautiful piece of music with words of the same character."

"Indeed!--I thought otherwise!" said Crawford, with something of disappointment in his tone. "And yet it moves your light heart very strangely."

"It does," said Josephine Harris. "I never sing it or hear it sung without the tears gathering in my eyes, even if they do not fall."

"And you can give no reason for this peculiar feeling?"

"Oh yes," answered the young girl, "though no doubt you will laugh at my reason when you hear it."

"I think not," said Crawford. "Tell me."

"You think me very gay and merry," said Josephine. "So I am, but I suppose that I have something deeper in my nature, that 'crops out' occasionally, as the geologists say. I suppose that I am a visionary in some respects and among my visions is a love worthily fixed and fully returned. So few seem to find this, that I fear I shall miss it--either miss it altogether or find it too late. The thought is a sad one, and that song seems insensibly to blend with it. When I am singing 'Ever of Thee,' I am singing to my ideal love that may be escaping beyond the reach of my fingers forever."

True woman of the golden heart!--God in heaven grant that to you and such as you this vision may be no dim unreality! God grant you true hearts against which your own may beat, and faithful arms upon which you may lean when the day of your probation is accomplished I And failing this fruition, the same God of love and peace grant you a truer and more enduring union with hearts that pulsate truly to your own, in that land where the sad wail of "Too Late!" is never heard and where no binding link fetters the limbs or galls the spirit!

"I understand you now," said Richard Crawford. "And yet yours is a strange fancy and would be a dangerous one in many minds. But you are a brave girl, I believe, and that makes all the difference. Besides, you have health and strength, and most of the time high spirits. An invalid--a miserable cripple like myself, housed and shut away, can scarcely hope to understand or appreciate anything that comes freshly in out of God's sunshine!" The old sad and repining spirit had once more come over Richard Crawford, perhaps invoked by something in the young girl's words; and she saw the shadow almost as soon as he felt it. From that moment she was the rattle-pate again, and he caught no more glimpses into the sanctuary of her inner heart. He was to catch no more, forever; for the next time they spoke together in private was after certain events already related had occurred--after her hand had lain in another, in so significant a pressure that no time or change could ever take away the tingle of the blood which it communicated--after her eyes began to open on a new phase of destiny--and after "Ever of Thee" ceased to be a sad abstraction.

Just now she rattled on, as she assisted the invalid back to his room, endeavoring to rouse his once-more sinking spirits, with all her old gayety and abandon.

"You call me brave, do you?" she said. "Dick Crawford, if I was not a little ashamed of you for allowing yourself to have these fits of low spirits, I would tell you something to prove how 'brave' I am! Well, I _will_ tell you, because I know that it is exceedingly improper and I ought not to do so. Two or three weeks ago, spending an evening at Mrs. R----'s, her daughters showed me a suit of clothes belonging to a stripling brother, just gone away to the war. One of them bantered me to put on the suit and go down-stairs among the gentlemen. I thought it would be a good joke, and I tried it. The girls said that I made a very handsome boy--hem! and I suppose that I did. At all events, I went down-stairs and opened the parlor-door, bold as a sheep, when--what do you think happened? Why, I thought, all at once, that all the clothes were sticking tight to my limbs; and when one of the gentlemen came towards me, I grabbed the cloth from the centre-table for a cloak, and played hob with some Bohemian glassware and a few Parisian ornaments, finishing by skedaddling up-stairs a good deal more rapidly than I came down. Was not _there_ 'courage' for you?"

"No want of it, certainly," said Crawford, who had been laughing a little, spite of his low spirits, at the naivete of the relation. "It was modesty and not want of personal courage that drove you out of that very funny position."

"Think so?" said the wild girl. "Then as I _am_ a coward and mean to be known for what I am, I must tell you another story. A few weeks ago I went into a menagerie, and one of the lions made a rush at the bars of his cage--probably because he saw _me_. There was about as much danger of his getting out, I suppose, as there would have been of _my_ doing so in the same circumstances; but of course I made a fool of myself, got frightened, yelled, and had all the visitors in the menagerie looking at me. How was _that_? No want of courage? Eh?"

"That," said Richard Crawford, sententiously, "that was the _woman_."

"Humph!" said Joe, as she once more assisted the invalid to dispose himself comfortably on his usual couch. "Now you will not agree to my estimate of _myself_, perhaps you will think better of my estimate of _you_."

"Perhaps so," said Crawford. "Try me."

"Well, then, I have been watching you half the afternoon, and I have made up my mind about you more nearly than ever before."

"And what am I?" asked Crawford, with just a dash of impatience in his tone.

"A hypochondriac!" said Joe. "You are a little sick, and you think yourself much worse. You look better and feel better within the last hour--"

"Eh, what?" said the invalid, startled apparently by some sudden thought connected with the words.

"I say that you look better and feel better, within the last hour, than you have done for weeks. You are getting better, and you have neither the honesty to acknowledge it or the grace to thank God for it! Dick Crawford, if you ever die--and I suppose you will, some time--you will commit suicide by taking an over-dose of low spirits!"

How flippantly the wild girl spoke!--and yet she was right, and Dick Crawford felt that she was right. The supplying cause of his malady removed, such a lecture, from such ready lips, was precisely the thing that he needed, to break up the habit of despondency--the habit of _enjoying and nursing suffering_ (that phrase may express the fact as well as another) which settles so often like a murky cloud upon the minds of those who have been kept for weeks or months as confirmed invalids, after lives of previous activity. She was right, too, as to the suicide of low spirits. The red devils of Pandemonium may be terrible, fresh from the flames of the pit; but they are nothing to their brothers in blue, who people the air, overcloud the eyes and set up torture-chambers in the brain. Bunyan, in that ever-living "Pilgrim's Progress," paints no tyrant so terrible as "Giant Despair," and no obstruction to the way so fatally impassable as the "Slough of Despond." And we have never read over the sorrowful conclusion of the "Bride of Lammermoor" without believing that the young master of Ravenswood, on that sombre November morning, sunk the sooner and the more fatally in the quicksands of the Kelpie's Flow, from the weight of the leaden heart he carried in his bosom.

Suddenly, and before Richard Crawford had quite decided how to answer her last remark, Josephine Harris said, as if the thought had only that instant come to her:

"Oh, Dick, I am going to ask a favor, in return for my good opinion. The carriage is in, I believe. May I ring for it, for an hour?"

"Certainly," said Crawford. Josephine rung the bell, and the order was given.

"It is dusk, you see," said the young girl, apologetically, "and I _must_ go down the Avenue before I go home. Many thanks. Be a good boy and take care of yourself, till I see you again. John will set me down at home when my little errand is over. Good night!" and her kiss fell warm and soft upon his forehead--a sister's kiss, pure and unimpassioned, even if there was no tie of blood between them.

Bell Crawford came down stairs and sat by her brother's side when she heard the carriage roll away with her friend. And whither did that carriage roll? Richard Crawford had no idea that Joe's "little errand" could possibly have any connection with himself; and yet it had--a most intimate and important connection, as will be perceived.

The coachman, at her request, drove out to Fifth Avenue, then down that avenue to Tenth Street, where he opened the door and set her down, receiving orders to wait there for her return. The young girl tripped up from the corner, a few doors on the left hand side, past a church, and entered the front-yard railing of one of two or three unpretending three-story brick-houses standing together. It was now past dusk and the street-lamps were lighted; and looking in at the basement windows of this house, Joe saw that no curtains were drawn, that the gas was burning within, over a table and under a shade; and that at the table sat a man with head bent down and fingers busy at some kind of mechanical contrivance.

"That will do," she muttered to herself. "The Doctor _is_ in, as I believed he might be at this hour, and I shall have no occasion to disturb the people up-stairs."

Passing under the steps she reached the closed door, and instead of ringing, banged half a dozen times against the panels with her hand, very slowly and tragically, as the ghost in "Don Giovanni" might ask to be admitted, provided it had any occasion for using the door. Immediately there was a shuffle inside, and directly the door opened and a tall figure stood in the doorway. There was enough light from the street-lamp to make the young girl's face and figure pretty plainly visible, and the moment he saw her the occupant said:

"I thought so--mischief! I thought I knew that knock! No one else ever takes such liberties with my office-door. What do you want now? But come in, before you forget it!" and seizing both her hands with a playful gesture, he dragged her within the door, closed it, pulled her through the side-door into the front basement which formed the office, drew up a clumsy cushioned operating-chair near the table, sat her down in it, then cast himself into a chair immediately in front of her, threw one leg over the other and his hands behind his head, and said:

"Now I am resigned and prepared. Out with it!"

Had Josephine Harris not been familiar with the place and its occupant, as it was quite evident that she _was_, she would have looked twice at the one and several times at the other. That little basement-room was not only the office in which Doctor LaTurque received professional calls, but it was also the sanctum in which were prepared most of the oddly-trenchant articles in the _Scimetar_, a quarterly medical and critical publication with a habit cutting as its name and a reputation dangerous enough to suit the most sensational fancy. Few persons connected with the practice of medicine in or about the great city, who had not first or last suffered some incision from the trenchant blade of the _Scimetar_, wielded by the wiry arm of the Doctor; and few humbugs but he had pricked and exposed, by the same means or in personal conversation, while he was himself the greatest humbug of all. Others habitually humbugged others: he humbugged himself, or tried to do so, insisting to himself that he was a hard man, an iron man, a brute, a skeptic, and everything that was ugly and detestable; while in fact he had the warm heart of an unspoiled child, and a faith in everything good, that was really part of his being--all combined with the vigor of the experienced surgeon and the close study of the untiring student. He used hard words--rough ones, sometimes, and tried to make himself believe that they were the emanations of a hard disposition; while every rough word was really made under protest from his nature, and few men on the whole earth were more ready to do an act of genuine kindness. It is not for us to say that there was not some intentional affectation of singularity underlying his manner; for he evidently loved notice if not notoriety; and other means than the white coat and disarranged trowsers of the Tribune Philosopher have sometimes been adopted to secure the same end.

Certainly Dr. LaTurque was not remarkably choice in the style of his "den," if he _had_ handsomely furnished apartments in the house above, and if his windows _did_ look out on Fifth Avenue. The ceilings were low, the walls plain, the furniture was very common, and yet a little odd, as became the place. The floor was oil-clothed; a table covered with dark cloth stood in the middle of the room; an old-fashioned secretary, with books piled on either end, stood against the wall on the right as the visitor entered, with a globe half hidden behind it; on the wall opposite hung the print of a muscular Apollo (muscular, because it was drawn anatomically, with no flesh covering the integuments); on either end of the mantel stood a small statue; in the centre was an impudent placard of bronze on japanned tin, announcing that no complimentary visits could possibly be received in that room, while the occupant, if there, was ready to falsify the announcement at any moment; on a small table between the windows, under a glass globe, lay the cast in plaster of a marvellously handsome male Italian face; two or three small pictures, commonly framed, hung over secretary and mantel; in the corner between the mantel and the window stood a stuffed eagle on a low table covered with the suggestive appliances of a fractured leg; and just behind it, on a bit of rug, nestled a disabled pigeon from his pet flock on the roof, that had come down, with excellent judgment, to be nursed and tended by the surgeon.

In the midst of this odd assemblage Dr. LaTurque was himself not by any means the least remarkable object. He was certainly a singular-looking man, and had a fancy (or pretended to have a fancy) that he was a very homely one. He was not so, however, to any eye of taste--only striking. In figure he was tall and rather thin, but the same epithet we have applied to his arm may be used for the whole man--_wiry_. He seemed capable of strong nervous effort and of great endurance; and one could see that something more than fifty years had not diminished the locomotive will or power. In the too large and too aquiline nose (literally a beak)--in the iron-gray moustache, imperial, and heavy brown hair--in the thin cheeks and keen gray eye,--there was a marvellous reminder of the portraits of Louis Napoleon, and at the same time another and a stronger suggestion. There is no close observer of physiognomy but has remarked bird, beast and even reptile reproduced in the faces of different men--one being a human lion, another a human bear, a third a human hyena, and still a fourth a human serpent. It scarcely seemed that it could have been by chance that the gray eagle stood stuffed in the corner; for the observer just as naturally detected the eagle in that human face, as he could ever have detected either of the others named, in different physiognomies, and the dead bird seemed the _totem_ of the living man.

"Well, battle and murder and sudden death!" said the medical Laurence Boythorn, when he had forced the young girl down into a seat. "What is it you want? Who is married or dead, or whom do you intend to kill, or what is it?"

"Are you sober?" asked the young girl, looking into his eyes very gravely.

"Why, you impudent demon in petticoats!" said the Doctor, with a great appearance of indignation. "What do you mean? You know that I am never otherwise than sober."

"From the effects of liquor, of course not," was the reply. "But your hot head, like mine, has the capacity of becoming intoxicated sometimes without any thanks to liquor; and I want to know whether you are cool and clear, or whether you have been puzzling over some bad case, or talking with some man with a stupid skull, until your head is all muddled?"

"Clear as one of the mountain springs that you are some day going with me to see," said the Doctor. "Now out with it."

"Well," said Joe, "I know that you hate chemistry, but in spite of that you _must_ give me a little chemical judgment. I want you to tell me," and she took out the surreptitiously-obtained roll of linen, unrolled it and laid it upon the table, under the full light of the burner--"I want you to tell me what is that dark substance which looks like black paste, whether it is animal, vegetable, or mineral, and what you think its properties."

"And after I _do_ tell you, if I can," said the Doctor, eyeing the suspicious-looking mass, "I suppose that I am to be told why you wish to know?"

"Not one word," said Joe. "At least, not at present. All your reward is to be the honor of conversing with _me_ on the subject."

"Bravo, Empress; I rather like _that_!" said the Doctor, who _did_ like it, nevertheless, to judge by the jolly expression of his face. "You are a refreshing young woman, and some day I expect to see you stretch out your arm with imperial dignity and clear off all the pigmies from the face of the earth with a 'Go away, small people! I have had enough of you! You may leave!'"

"Very likely," said Joe. "But meanwhile I have not quite done with _you_. Please examine that stuff, for I am in a hurry."

"As usual!" commented the Doctor, going on to smell, inspect, and even taste the dark compound on the cloth.

"Take care!" cried the young girl, in alarm, when she saw him apply his tongue to the substance.

"Pshaw!" said the Doctor. "Don't be alarmed. I am so full of dangerous ingredients myself, that the most virulent of poisons could not produce any effect on me."

"I should not like to see you trust it too far--that is, not if I cared for you!" said the lady, as if _she_ had been the chemist and he the neophyte.

"Well," said the Doctor, after a moment's pause and a still closer inspection, "you will give me no particulars, and so I shall give _you_ none. I suppose the main fact is what you want to know. The substance is a little dried, and consequently it has lost some of its aroma. But my impression is that it is a very powerful vegetable poison, compounded from certain simples that grow along running streams in the tropics, and especially in some of the West Indies."

"I thought so!" said Joe, almost involuntarily, and an unmistakeable gleam of pleasure lighting up her face. "But would that poison produce any effect if applied outwardly?"

"I should think so," replied the Doctor, "though, as you say, I hate chemistry. I should think that substance, applied to any vital part of the body, and kept there continuously, would produce racking pains and weakness, and be very likely to result in a disease resembling inflammatory rheumatism, or possibly paralysis, and death."

"Thank you--thank you a dozen times," said Joe, springing up and grasping the Doctor very warmly by the hand. "You do not know how much good you may be doing by this examination; but you _shall_ know, sometime--I will tell you all about it. And now good-night!" rolling up the package and putting it back into her pocket. "My time is up, Mother will be worried about me, and I have a borrowed carriage waiting at the corner."

"Allow me to see you to it," said the Doctor, rising with quick courtesy.

"No farther than the gate, for the world," said the young girl. "For certain reasons, which you shall know some time, I must not be seen in your company to-night, even by the coachman."

She tripped away instantly, the Doctor accompanying her to the gate,--and rolled away homeward at once. What a day that had been to her! And in what a whirl was her brain when she reflected on all she had discovered and tried to arrange in her own mind the details of what she yet felt it necessary to do! It was within forty-eight hours after, and when her mind had not become at all calmed from the thoughts of the crime surrounding her and those she loved, that the visit to the sorceress was made, as before recorded. How much of additional information she may really have expected to gain from the sorceress, it is impossible to say,--or whether this matter of the attempted poisoning was really the matter which sent her to that questionable fountain of intelligence; but it is not at all strange that she should have blended the terrors of the real and the imaginary together, and been powerfully impressed by the events of that day which marked so important an era in her existence.

It may be said here, that two days after the events just narrated, when Bell accompanied her to the sorceress, she did not see Richard Crawford. Thereafter, for many days, she did not visit the house at all, for reasons that will soon make themselves manifest; and consequently the awkwardness of any meeting with the invalid, which might have involved questions she did not care to answer at that moment, was avoided. Joe Harris felt that for once in her life she had a "mission"--something to do, and to do in her own way; and until that work was done, or she had utterly failed in the attempt, she did not mean to let that chattering tongue of hers say one word that could give a clue to her thoughts or intentions. We shall see, presently, how nearly and in what manner her plans were carried out.

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