From Chambers's Journal. A DEAD MAN'S REVENGE. CHAPTER I.-THE REVENGE. "OPEN the window, wife, and let in some air. Phew! this place is enough to choke one." his eccentricities being well known, no one troubled themselves about the matter. The next day, it was reported early in the morning, that the old miser had had a fit; by noon, it was said that he had hung himself in his garters from a beam in the garret; and lastly, towards evening, it was asserted that It was a close, sickening atmosphere, truly. he had been murdered by thieves, who had The chamber was dark and low, and on the plundered the house, and escaped over the old tester-bed, hung round with checked cur- back-wall. Whereupon, a consultation was tains, lay something covered with a ragged convened at the pump, by the matrons of the counterpane. court, as to what ought to be done under the The speaker approached the bed, drew circumstances, and various resolutions were aside the soiled coverlet, and started back as he beheld a ghastly face, with eyes unclosed, and rigid jaws. "Come here, Hannah-come here. Uncle Zebedee's dead!" The man spoke in a low tone, then turned and looked at his wife. She was a neat and gentle-looking woman; he, a fine, broad-shouldered man. proposed. One lady advised trying the effect of a watchman's rattle, and a cry of "Fire!" under the window; another advocated a long ladder, and a descent through the garret; a third was for having a policeman sent for, and breaking open the front-door with the strong arm of the law; while a fourth, an enlightened washerwoman, suggested sending at once "O Richard!" The woman's face and for Richard Mallet, Old Peck's nephew and voice expressed her horror at the sight before nearest relative. This bright idea carried the her. It was death in its most repulsive form. day; and a fleet messenger was at once disAn old man, with pinched and withered fea- patched for the stone-mason and his wife— tures, with beard unshaven, and eyes unclosed," in a case of life and death," as the messenger lay on that wretched bed, staring upwards, as was strictly enjoined to say. though, hovering over his couch, he still beheld the awful presence that had announced his doom. It was Zebedee Peck, the miser, who lay there, stark and dead; and the man, in a stone-mason's dress, standing by the bedside, was Richard Mallet, his nephew, a working mason. "God ha' mercy on him," said the man, after a silence, during which he and his wife stood gazing in awe on the face of the dead. "He'll need it, poor soul! He hadn't much mercy for others." Come, When, therefore, Richard Mallet proceeded to inform the neighbors that his uncle had been found dead in his bed, and nothing more, there was something like disappointment written on their anxious faces. The court had made up its mind to a terrible catastrophe -a suicide at the very least; and now there would be nothing but a coroner's inquest after all. However, with that to look forward to, and the question of the miser's wealth to discuss, it had gained something, and so the court recovered its equanimity. "He's gone then, at last!" "Well, we're all mortal, you see!" "His money's o' no use to him now!" were amongst the pious remarks uttered by the bystanders, as they crowded round the bed. Through the open windows came a murmur of voices from the court below; then there was a noise of footsteps on the stairs. "Here are the neighbors, Hannah. look up, lass. There's lots to be done." Richard Mallet threw the sheet over the face of the dead, and went to the door to meet the new-comers. There was a goodly troop," You mustn't fret, my dear; it's the ways o' principally women. Curiosity was written on every face. Peck's Court had been in a state of excitement for some hours. For two days past, the old miser's house had been shut up, and nobody had seen any thing of its owner. At first, it was supposed to be only one of Daddy Peck's whims, and "Let's hope his money will go into better hands, marm," said the intelligent washerwoman, addressing herself to Mrs. Mallet. Providence, and all for the best, you know." Seeing that Mrs. Mallet had never spoken to the deceased a dozen times all the twelve years of her married life, it required no great amount of resignation on her part not to fret. She was only pale and frightened. "Go home, Hannah," whispered her hus band; "I'll see to things, and get these people away. Don't tell Jess." Mrs. Mallet made her way out of the house, an object of much interest to various members of the court, awaiting, at windows and on door-steps, her re-appearance. It was a trying moment for the good woman. She was before a critical audience. If she carried her head erect, it would be attributed to her pride as the wife of the miser's heir; if she held it down, it would be taken as a hypocritical assumption of sorrow; if she made haste, it would be to avoid "lowering herself" by talking to them; if she loitered, it would be to show herself and receive homage. But Mrs. Mallet cared little for the criticisms going on around her, and hastened home to get her husband's supper ready, looking neither to the right hand nor the left. Richard came home before long. The hearth was swept, the supper ready, the boys in bed, and little Jessie, the lame child, sewing on her stool by the fire. The mason hung up his cap and coat behind the kitchen door, washed off the lime and mortar from his hands, and then-a clean, intelligent-looking man-came and sat down to his supper. "Come here, Jessie," said he, when the meal was finished. The child hobbled to him on her crutch. "You remember Uncle Zeb, don't you? the old man we went to see once, eh?" Richard kissed the child's forehead. Yes, it's true enough. That's what he said, Hannah," remarked Richard, turning to his wife. "I never said a word about it then, nor since, nor has Jess. It was better not. But he told me how as he had made his will, and hadn't forgot this child." "Can't say, my dear. He was cunning as a fox, and deceitful as Old Nick. More likely he's 'a left it to a 'ospital. Anyhow, the will is found, and, as he'll be buried to-morrow, we shall know afore long." Richard Mallet seemed to take the matter very coolly. Not so, however, with his wife. The bare idea of their poor lame child inheriting any of the hoardings of Old Peck, the owner of nearly all the houses in the court, and the reputed possessor of an account at a bank in the city, was too much for her. The wildest hopes were excited in her mind; she could think and talk of nothing else. "Well, Richard," was her concluding remark that night, "we've been very happy all these years, and yet we've never seen the color o' his money; and, after all, we can do without it. If he should leave us any thing, it won't be that we've been seeking for it; nobody can say that. We've had too much pride ever to demean ourselves by courting him for his money's sake; and ever since he abused you so, for marrying me, nobody can say you have cared to have his favor." "You're right there, Hannah. If any of it should come to us, we'll know it's come as it ought. Don't be too sure on it, though. Uncle Zeb was just the man to play us a trick at the last. He never forgave he always said." It was well, perhaps, Richard Mallet added these words; they were some little preparation to his wife for the events of the morrow. When the morrow came, and the miser had been laid in a grave hallowed by no tears nor tender memories, the will was opened in the presence of Richard Mallet and his wife, in one of the deserted rooms of the miser's house. Through the half-open shutters, a scant sunbeam streamed on the wig of the old lawyer reading the will, and made a track of dancing motes across the dusky air. Mrs. Mallet sat on a worm-eaten chest (there was only one chair in the room, that occupied by the lawyer), and Richard, holding his hat in his hand, stood by his wife's side. The old lawyer read the preliminary clauses of the will, to which both his hearers listened attentively; the one with respect for the big words, the other with a patient endeavor to grasp their meaning. The executors apMrs. Mallet almost dropped the loaf of pointed were two gentlemen living in a vilbread in her hand, in her amazement. lage in Kent, where the deceased was born. "You don't think it's true, do you, Rich- Though Zebedee Peck had drawn up his will ard ? " himself, it was all in proper form. He had | "Them is words, sir, as nobody 'as a right commenced life as a pauper-child in a Kentish to use," said he, in a low, hoarse voiceworkhouse, risen, through the progressive stages of hop-picker and errand-boy, to be clerk in a lawyer's office, and, finally, bill-discounter and money-lender in London. Consequently Old Peck knew what he was about, when he made his last will and testament. He had prepared a surprise, however, for whoever should read it. The old lawyer suddenly stopped, blew his nose, and glanced down the parchment. There appeared to be something unusual in the docu ment. "All my real and personal estate, whatsoever and wheresoever "-repeated the lawyer with an uneasy sort of "hem "I give and bequeath to-to-Jessie Mallet" the parents both turned pale, "the daughter of my nephew, Richard Mallet of Little Winkle Street, in this city, and this ". The lawyer glanced over a few words further, and then came to a dead stop. "This is quite irregular-quite out of the course. Really I don't know; I think, my friend, it would be better your wife should step into the next room whilst I continue." "No, sir; go on: she can hear it," said Richard. The lawyer, with a strange look at them both, resumed. "And this is the revenge I have long promised myself. In leaving my money thus, may I be sowing the seed of estrangement between Richard Mallet and his child! May it place a bar between them all their lives! May it divide their household! May it make the daughter ashamed of her father, and the father jealous of his daughter!" "them is words as 'ull rise up in judgment again him one day. Sooner than have one penny o' his money now, I'd-don't pull my hand, Hannah; I know what I'm a saying— I'd see my wife and children lie dead in the streets. Look here, sir-look here; that was Uncle Zeb's work?" The man had suddenly bared his arm, and was pointing to a ring of livid flesh that encircled it. "When I was a lad, he hung me up by that arm, and beat me with a rope, because I wouldn't do his dirty work. I forgave him that though, years ago, for I got on in the world without him, and got married, and was happier than he had ever been. But now that he tries to set my own children agen me, as he once tried to set me agen my wife, I wish the Lord may "O Richard, don't, don't!" His wife put her hand upon his mouth, and stayed the curse upon his lips. "Don't say them bad words; don't, Dick, don't. Remember what you tell the boys always. O my poor man!" She clung to her husband's shoulder, and wept there. "You're right, my lass. I preach, but I don't practice." Richard Mallet drew a deep breath, passed his hand over his wet brow, and sat down on the chest, with the veins all swollen in his face, and his limbs trembling with the efforts to subdue himself. "Is there any thing more to read, sir? I'll know it if there be, if you please." "No; nothing but the usual clauses for giving proper power to the executors-mere matter of detail," replied the old lawyer, ap Mrs. Mallet put out her hand to her husband with a terrified face. Richard stood quite still, but his brow grew black as night.parently very ill at ease. "May wealth be the curse to them it has been to me, and bring discord between kith and kin! It is with the belief that it can and will do this that I leave my money to Richard Mallet's daughter. 'Ill-gotten gains never prosper,' he once told me. Let him remember this-let him take it to heart now, when these same gains have become the legacy of his own child." "Then, sir," said Richard slowly and deliberately, "I'd like to say once for all, in the presence of you and my wife as witnesses, that I 'erby refuse to have, and renounce, for me and for my child, every farthing o' this man's money." The lawyer stopped, for Mrs. Mallet had burst out weeping; but Richard was standing as before, though with great drops of sweat upon his brow, and his wife's hand clenched tightly in his. Richard uttered the words as solemnly as though they had been a proper legal oath of renunciation, and then, with a look of relief, got up and kissed his wife. "Don't cry, my woman; we'll be going our way home again." 66 'Yes; better do so, perhaps better do so, Mr. Mallet," said the lawyer. "But I must remind you that-that the property of same breath. Twenty thousand pounds! It the deceased is left to your child and not to was impossible not to rejoice. Uncle Zeb's yourself. It is in the hands of trustees. maledictions were forgotten for a moment, in You cannot, therefore, renounce what is not the dazzling visions those words raised before your own. However, we'll talk matters over the mother's eyes. together to-morrow, at my office." The cloud that came over Richard Mallet's face at these words did not disappear again that night. He went home in silence, nor spoke one word to his wife all the way. For the first time in his life, he drove Jessie away from him, when she brought her stool and knitting to sit at his feet; and, for the first time since they were born, the boys went to bed without their father's kiss. CHAPTER II.—HOW THE REVENGE WORKED. RICHARD MALLET never closed his eyes that night. He got up at six next morning, had his breakfast, and then, as though nothing had happened, went and did half a day's work before going to the lawyer's office. His wife stood and watched his manly figure as he strode down the street in the blue light of early morning, with his tools on his shoulder; and then, as he turned the corner, she went back to her fireside, and sat and cried as though her heart would break, till the milkman came round with the morning's milk. It was a long day at home. Jessie wondered what made her mother so sad and absent, and why she sat and looked at her so strangely at times. "Are you angry, mother?" asked the child once, as she caught one of those looks fixed upon her. "Angry, bairn? Don't talk-don't talk. Perhaps it would have been better you'd never been born, my poor girl. The Lord only knows;" and the mother turned away from her little daughter with tears in her eyes, and a foreboding heart. When Richard came home, his wife saw by the expression of his face that the matter was decided in some way. "Hannah,” said he, laying down his tools, and wiping his forehead with a handkerchief he took out of his cap-"it's as he said. Our child has got this fortune, and we can't take it from her. He tells me Jessie is worth twenty thousand pounds!" "Twenty thousand pounds, husband! What? Twenty thou! Oh dear, dear." The poor woman laughed and cried in the "Call Jessie here," said Richard, sitting down. And Jessie came to her father's chair, and looked up wistfully into his face. It was something new to feel afraid of father; but Jessie did feel so, as she beheld the way in which he looked at her. "Jessie, my girl, I want to talk to you," began Richard. "Now listen to what I am goin' to say; you're a 'cute little lass, and can understand me, I know. Uncle Zebedee's will has been opened, and we find that he's left all his money to you. You'll be a very rich woman one day, Jessie, and you'll have a big house of your own." The pale face of the child flushed, and her eyes sparkled. "You're very glad, Jess, ain't you?" “Yes, father, I am glad. Shall we have a home of our own, then, and a garden ? " Yes, you will. And you'll wear fine clothes, and live with grand folks, who are a deal cleverer than father and mother." 66 "But I shan't leave you," said the child, with a quick grasp at her father's hand. "Not for always, p'raps; but you must go to school, and learn of somebody who can teach you better than father can." Richard Mallet's face twitched as he thought of the old spelling-book over which he and his child had spent so many happy evenings. They were at an end now. But, looking at his wife, he went on : "Yes, we mustn't keep her like ourselves, Hannah. She must have good schooling, you know. She must be different from us." Jessie stared at her parents with her big brown eyes, and her heart beat fast. She was a clear-headed, reasoning little creature. The life which she had been compelled to lead in consequence of her infirmity—an infirmity more the result of a delicate frame, than actual disease—had quickened her intellect, and rendered her wise and thoughtful beyond her years. So she shed no tears, though her heart was full, but took her chair out of her father's sight, and plied her needles fast in silence. That night Richard Mallet and his wife sat by their fireside till long after midnight discussing the fortunes of their child. At one moment, the poor mother thanked Providence for Jessie's good-luck; at another, she shuddered at the thought of the curse attached to the miser's wealth. "Oh Richard, if his words should come true. If our child should grow to be ashamed of you and me!" do any “Hush, Hannah!" Richard checked his wife angrily. "It's only like a babby to talk ' that way. How can a dead man's words harm!" Though Richard assumed indifference to his uncle's malediction, it troubled him in reality. The first thing on waking, the old miser's terrible words occurred to him. All day long, as he plied hammer and chisel in the stone-yard, fragments of the curse sounded in his ears. As he sat at dinner, under the shed, he found himself mechanically tracing in the dust, with the end of a broken tool, the words:" May it place a bar between them all their lives." Many a night did his wife hear him sigh in his sleep, and mutter and moan about "the gold" and "my own bairn." But by day he would rebuke his wife for being affected by superstitious fancies, and tell her she ought to know better than to trouble herself about such things. He would not have owned for the world that these same fancies were haunting him, sleeping and waking. Richard Mallet was a man of resolution and few words. When he had decided on doing a thing, he did it at once. So, having come to the conclusion that his child must be brought up as befitted her altered circumstances, he lost no time in lending his aid to carry out the necessary changes. Ere six months, Jessie Mallett was the inmate of a handsome home in a boardingschool in Kent, near one of her trustees; and the stone-mason and his wife had returned to the life they were leading before the death of Zebedee Peck. home his earnings every Saturday, and never troubled himself about what the neighbors thought or said as to his affairs. It was at his own hearth that this change was to be seen; at his own hearth, where, when he taught the boys their letters at night, he missed a gentle little voice in his ear, and a soft little hand in his; where his eye often rested on a chair that stood vacant in the corner, with a little crutch by its side. At such times, he would grow hard and stern. There was not the influence in these things that clings to tokens that remind us of the dead: they only recalled a separation founded on injustice and wrong. Uncle Zeb need have prophesied no further; he had already obtained a cruel revenge. The very fear of his curse ever being accomplished was enough to embitter the rest of his nephew's life. 66 Hannah," said Richard Mallet to his wife one Friday morning, "I shan't be home tonight, nor mayhap for these next three days. I'm going to see her." He kissed his wife, put on his best hat, placed a stout stick and a small bundle on his shoulder, and went away. Jessie had been gone nine months. On Tuesday night, his wife stood at her door looking out anxiously for his return. It was nine o'clock, but warm and fine, and the month of June. Ere long, in the dusty twilight, she espied a toil-worn man coming slowly up the street. A neighboring lamp shone on the man's figure, as he approached. Hannah started as she caught sight of her husband's face. It was so worn and jaded, she hardly knew him. "Gi'e me a sup to drink, Hannah," said Richard, when he had entered the house and sat down. The dust upon his dress showed that he had made the journey on foot. "It's a long spell to Canterbury, you see, and I don't think I foot it as I used to do." He was anxious his wife should understand that the cause of his fatigue was physical. It was not the old life, though. Richard was as steady and industrious as ever, as good He took a long draught at the mug of beer, a workman, as kind to his wife, and as fond of put it down, and then, with his elbow on the his two boys; but there was a change in him. | table, and his head resting on his hand, said! It was not that the new position in which he "I can't touch my supper yet awhile. now stood towards his master, his fellow-dog-tired. I'll tell you all about my journey, workmen, or the world, perplexed him. He now, and then we've done with it." He took was not the man to disquiet himself on that off his hat, loosened his neckerchief, and then, score. I'm He held up his head as before, worked without raising his eyes to his wife's face, hard, took a joke good-humoredly, brought | began: |