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Alexandra Herald and Central Otago Gazette, Issue 349, 15 January 1903, Page 2

a black velvet rait, neither aboriginal nor Oriental, did not help to enlighten them as to his race or nationality. He began his performance by flinging up a dozen fjlasß balls, catching and keeping them in the air, until one after another -they disappeared, noae could see how nor where; he then next'proceeded to a repertoire of tricks somewhat more novel than those which usually rouse the admiration and marvel of the rustic mind. Instead of producing a globe of gold-fish from his sleeves, or a canary bird from an empty paper bag, he produced a young alligator, which was eventually transformed into,a baby, monkey in a little scarlet coat, a phenomenon which elicited shrieks of joyful excitement from the juvenile spectators. i' He had but a few words to say in the ccurse of these feats, and those were spoken in an accent so decidedly and emphatically foreign as to suggest to s me of his audience the possibility of its being feigned. Before he opened his lips something in his figure and step and bearing had struck Gerard Onslow with a vaguo sense of reminiscence. He could not say what remembrance that figure recalled, when, where, or how! he had seen it before, yet it seemed a recent impression in bis mind. Bnt the Masked Wizard had barely uttered 'a few words when a flash of memory cleared the question; . the answer struck him like a shot. It was the figure, the voice—yes, in spite of the assumed foreign accent, it was the very voice of the stranger in the light overcoat in the garden on tho night of his aunt's ball, the stranger who was no invited j. nest, who was lurking, sknlking in the darkness to meet Clarice Hamilton.

Yet could it bo possible? Was this, indeed, the manP He looked at Clarice, and saw that there was no mistake. It was the man; and she knew it—had known it before, for there was nothing of startled amazement cr dismay in her look; She was watching the performance with a smile, bnt it was a forced smile, in which her lips seemed strained; and set ; her cheek was paler than usual,' her hands were fidgeting nervously with a little handkerchief bag in her lap; her eyes avoided Gerard's. He had turned pale too, white with suppressed wrath. Who and what was this fellow, a common conjuror posturing in a common show, with whom Clarice Hamilton was carrying on a clandestine understanding, making secret appointments ? What a fool, worse than fco*, he had been to waste a thought on this girl, involved in some low intrigue with a common circus .fellow! Yet even then; beneath the angry smart of his mortified pride, there lay, although he would not have owned it, a half resentful concern for her, an angry pity, anxiety to save her from her own folly, shield her and screen her, little as she deserved such consideration on his part. She had not turned her face towards him, but was looking straight before herShe did not know that be' had, exchanged words with the stranger that night, that he would know the voice or be quick to recognise the figure. She had no reason to look in his face or to suspect that he suspected. She had, it would have appeared, still less reason to look at Harold Frayne; and yet, when she looked around, it was to Fray ne that her eyes turned with a shrinking glance, a strain of secret anxiety that deepened to apprehension as she read the look of startled: suspicion in his face. She had not looked at Onslow, she h«d no cause to think that he recognised face or voice, but she saw too plainly that Frayne didThere was nothing in the Wizard's manner to arouse remark or notice; yet to both Onslow and Frayne, their suspicions on the alert, it seemed that now and again he looked intently at Clarice Hamilton; and when he came to atrick with a sealed envelope and a slip of paper which turned first into a bank-note and then into a blank sheet, it was to Clarice '. he turned with the stereotyped request; « Will this young lady kindly hold the envelops in her hand ?' Nettie was absorbed in the trick, and no more idea occurred to her than to the rest of the interested and delighted audience that it might be easy for the juggler's skilled fdeight-cf-hand to avail himself of the opportunity as a means of communication with the lady between whose hand and his own the envelope passed. But to both the young men of the party the strsphion of this possibility did occur, although neither of them would' embarrass Ciarice by too close attention and observation. The Wizard's part in the entertainment was over'; and none of the quartette bit Nettie took interest in ths .remainder of the performance; the other three were all in greater or If as degree disturbed by troubled thoughts. After the stage entertainment they followed the move of the majority, and went, round behind the scenes to see the menagerie, Tesuoied their acquaintance with the calculating dog and his brother Newfoundland) the dancing bear, the baby elephant, and the other highly trained members of the collection, and interviewed the less gifted -animals through the iron bare—in especially desirable intermediary in the case of the Nubian lion and the great Bengal tiger, - the prde of the menagerie, whom Gerard Onslow contemplated with the critical and familiar air of one who had the doubtful pleasure of encountering him or his brother in their native wilda. ' A regular man-eater,'- he observed. ' Friend Stripes, I'd rather meet you here than in tbe jungle !' The tiger, pacing up and down with careless turn behind the bars—a streak of sunlight glinting on his barbaric richness of colouring, striped flank and snowy breast, noiseless, silent, deadly, superb in his terrible beauty, with fiercely bristling whisker and savage emerald eye—looked back at Onslow as if" he on his part was reflecting that his native forest was jast the place where he would like to have this human intruder. On the way out they passed several of the human performers of the troupe, now clotted and in their right mind, with the exception of the Wizard, of whom they caught a passing ghmp3e, but who, as even that glimpse assured them, had made bo change in hie habiliments, and still wore his mask. * I "wonder if he's diefignted in any dreadful way ?' paid Nettie, to her cousin. * Do you remember, Gerard, our reading a horrible story of a woman who had a face like a death's-head and always wore a blaci velvet mask !' (To be continued.)