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Updated: June 23, 2025
"Wait a moment, my good friend," said Halloran, "we have a little work which you of all persons are best fitted to perform for us ere we proceed." Old Adam, the grave digger, looked at the tall gentleman before him in some little perplexity, answering, slowly: "I hope you will not take it amiss, sir, if I answer that I do not fully comprehend your words."
"I guess you'll go, Andrew," he said; "you wouldn't want a man drowned right at your door-yard." "You can't live in it," said Andrew. He lifted his face to the light. Far to the east a boat crawled against it. "It'll strike in five minutes," he said. "Like enough," said Uncle William "like enough. Easy there!" He seized the stern of the Andrew Halloran and sprang on board.
He was about to draw a flask from his breast pocket, but Halloran put a restraining hand on his arm. "Remember that is your besetting sin," he said. "You have had enough of that already. It will require a steady nerve to meet the girl and carry out the deception, for the eyes of love are quick to discern.
Before going on further with the thrilling event which we narrated in our last chapter it will be necessary to devote a few explanatory lines to the still more thrilling scene which led up to it, returning to the real Lester Armstrong, whom we left in the isolated cabin in the custody of Halloran.
I see you do remember," said Halloran grimly, "and you also remember the day the ragged boy, sitting at the right of you, believing no one was looking, reached over and quietly, deftly, inserted his hand in the other's pocket and abstracted the coveted jackknife.
"Well, all this could be mine for the fighting for it as Faynie's husband, who has survived her, but, as Halloran would say, 'It's a deal easier getting the same fortune by marrying the stepmother's daughter, who has come into it by Faynie's father cutting her off at the eleventh hour. "I wonder what the girl Claire is like."
"This must be the place," exclaimed Halloran, in a low voice; "large gabled house, arched gate, serpentine walk; yes, there is the figure of a woman in the shadow of the stone post this way. You are actually trembling. Remember, it's only a young girl you are to face on this occasion, and a deucedly pretty one, at that.
"When you were a boy of about fourteen years you attended the public school on Canal Street." "Yes," said Lester, still mystified. "At that time," went on Halloran, "the school was unusually crowded, owing to the enforcement of the law that the children of the neighborhood must attend school, thus bringing in all the urchins of the poor thereabouts; you surely remember that?"
He knew by Halloran's face that something out of the usual order of events had transpired. "What is the matter?" he cried; "what's up now?" For answer Halloran laid the paper before him, pointing to the column, remarking, grimly: "The game's up now, and we've gone through all this trouble for nothing. Your cousin, Lester Armstrong, is not dead, but instead is alive and well."
"I'll take her," he said. The man laughed shortly. "The Andrew Halloran? I guess not!" He shut his knife with a decisive snap and stood up. "I don't trust her not in such a storm as that's going to be." He waved his arm toward the harbor. The greyness was shifting rapidly. It moved in swift green touches, heavy and clear a kind of luminous dread.
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