LITERATURE.

Globe, Volume VIII, Issue 876, 16 April 1877, Page 3

LITERATURE.

THE MYSTERY OF NO. 7.

(By Johnny Ludlow.) {Continued)

' Jane Cross was her fellow-servant at Mr Peahern's. She who was killed by falling down the staircase."

' Yes, poor thing, I remembered the name. But, to go one. In the evening, after the finding of this letter % I and Mrs Cattledon were startled by a disturbance in the kitchen, cries and se-reams, and loud, passionate words. Miss Cattledon ran down ; I stayed at the top of the stairs. She found Hall, Matilda, and one of the others there, Matilda in a perfect storm of fury, attacking Hall like a maniac. She tore handfuls out of her hair, she bit her thumb until her teeth met it it: Hall, though by far the bigger person of the two, and I should have thought the stronger, had no chance against her; sbe seemed to be as a very reed in her hands, passion enduing Matilda with a strength perfectly unnatural. George, who had been ont on an errand, came in at the moment, and by his help the women were parted. Cattledon maintains that Matilda, durinj the scene, was nothing le°s than a demon ; quite mad. When it was over, the girl fell on the iloor utterly exhausted, and lay like a dead thing, every bit of strength, almost of life, gone out of her.' 'I never could have believed it of Matilda. '

' Nor I, Johnny. I grant that the girl had just causo to be angry. How should we like to have our private places ritl and their contents exhibited to and mocked at by the world : contents which to us seeui sacred ? But to have put herself into that wild rage was both unseemly and unaccountable. Her state then, and her state immediately afterwards, made me think—l speak it with all reverence, Johnny—of the poor people in holy writ from whom the evil spirits were cast out.' ' Ay. It seems to be just such a case, Miss Deveen.'

' Hall's thumb was so much injured that a doctor had to come daily to it for nine or ten days,' continued Miss Deveen. 'Of course, after this climax, I could not retain Matilda in my service ; neither would she have remained ia it. She indulged a feeling of the most bitter hatred to the women servants, to Hall especially she had not m"ch liked them befoie, as you may readily guess—and she said that nothing would indues her to remain with them, even had I been willing to keep her. So she has obtained a situation with some acquaintances of mine who live in this neighbourhood, and s:oe3 to it next week. That is why Matilda leaves me, Johnny.' In my heart I could not help being sorry for her, and said so. She looked so truly, sadly unhappy ! ' I am very sorry for her,' assented Miss Deveen. ' And had I known the others were making her life here uncomfortable, I should have taken means to stop their pastime. Of the actual facts, with regard to the letter, I cannot be at any certainty—l

mean in my own mind. Hall is a respectable servant, and I have never ha.i cause to think her untruthful during the three years she has lived with ire : and she most posiively holds to it that the little trunk was standing open on the table and the letter lying open beside it. Allowing that it was so, she had, of course, no right to touch either trunk, or letter, still less to take the letter downstairs and exhibit it to the others, and I don't defend her conduct: but yet it is different from having rifled the lock of the trunk and filched the letter out.'

' And Matilda accuses her of doing that ?' ' Yes : and, on her side, holds to it just as positively. What Matilda tells me is this : On that day it chanced that Miss 'attledon had paid the women servants their quarter's wages. Matilda carried hers toiler chamber, took this said little trunk out of her large hot, where she keep 3 it, unlocked it, and puts the money into it. She disturbed nothing in the trunk ; she says she had wrapt the sovereigns in a bit of paper, and she just slipped them inside, touching nothing else. She was shutting down the lid when she heard herself called to by me on the landing below. She waited to lock the box but not to put it up, leaving it standing on the table. I quite well remembered calling to the girl, having heard her run upstairs. I wauted her in my room.'

Miss "evcen pausjd a minute, apparently thinking.

' Matilda has assured ree again and again that she is quite sure she locked the little trunk, that there can be no mistake on that point. Moreover she asserts that the letter in question was lying at the bottom of the trunk beneath other things, and that she had not taken n from thence or touched it for months and months.'

' And when she went upstairs again—did she find the little trunk open or shut ?' She says she found it shut: shut and locked just as she had left it; and she replaced it in her la»-ge box, unconscious that anybody had been to it.'

4 Was she lung in your room, Miss Deveen?'

' Yes. Johnny, the best part of an hour. I wanted a little sewing done in a hurry, and told her to sit down there and then to do it. It was during this timethecook, goingupstairs herself, saw the trunk, and took the opportunity to do what she did do.' ' I don't know that, Johnny. 1 can hardly believe that a respectable woman, as Hall undoubtedly is, would deliberately unlock a fellow-servant's box with a false key. Whence did she get the key to do it ? Had she previously provided herself with one ? The lock is of the most simple description, for I have seen the trunk (since, and Hall might possess a key that would readily fit it: but if so, as the woman herself says, how could she know it ? In short, Johnny, it is one woman's word against another's : and, until this happened, I had deemed each of them to he equally credible.'

To be sure there was reason in that. I sat thinking. ' Were it proved to have been as Matilda says, still I could not keep her," resumed Miss Deveen. ' Mine is a peaceable, wellordered houshold, and I should not like to know that one, subject to insane fits of temper, was a member of it. Though Hall in that case would get her discharge also.' ' Do the people where Matilda is going know why she leaves?'

' Mrs and Miss Soauies. Yes. I told thrni all about it. But I told them at the same time, what I had then learnt —that Matilda's temper had doubtlessly been much tried here. It would not be tried in their house, they believed, and took ber readily. She is an excellent servant, Johnny, let wh will get her ' I could not resist the temptation of speaking to Matilda about this, an opportunity offering that same day. She came into the room with some letters just left by the postman.

' I thought my mistress was here, sir,' she said, hesitating with the tray in her hand. ' Miss Deveen will be hero in a minute ; you can leave the letters. So you are going fco take tlight, Matilda ! I have heard, all ab nit it. What a silly thing you must be to put yourself into that wonderful tantrum.' ' She broke into my box, and turned over its contents, and stole my letter to mock me,' retorted Matilda, her fever-lighted eyea taking a momentary fierceness. ' Who, put in my place, would not have gone into a tantrum, sir ?'

' But she says she did not break into it.' ' As surely as that is heaven's sun above us, she did it, Mr Johnny. She has been full of spite towards me for a long time, and she thought she would pay me out. I did but unluck the box, and slip the little paper of money in, and I locked it again instantly and brought the key away with me : I can never say anything truer than that, sir : to make a mistake about it is not possible.'

No pen could convey the solemn earnestness with which she spoke Somehow it impressed me. I hoped Hall would get served out.

' Yes, the wrong has triumphed for once. As far as I can see, sir, it often does triumph. Miss Deveen thinks great things of Hall, but she is deceived in her ; and I daresay she will find her out sometime. It was Hall who ought to have been turned away instead of me. Not that I would stay here longer if I could.' 'But yon like Miss Deveen? ' ' Very much indeed, sir; she is a good lady and a kind mistress. She spoK* very well indeed of me to the new family where I am going, and 1 daresay I shall do well enough there. Have you been to Saltwater lately, sir ? ' sbe added abruptly. • Never since. Do you get news from the pla-e?' She shook her head. * I have never heard a word from any soul in it. I have written to nobody, and nobody has written to me.' 'And nothing more ''as come out about poor Jane < 'ross. It is still a mystery.' 'And likely to be one,' she replied, in a low tone.

' Perhaps so. Do you know what Owen the milkman thought ?' She had been speaking the last sentence or two with her eyes bent, riddling with the silver waiter. Now they were raised

quickly. ' Owen thought that j r ou could clear up the mystery if you liked, Matilda. At least, that you possessed some clue to it. He told me so.'

' Owen as good as said the same to me before I left,' she replied, after a pause. "He is wrong, sir : but he must think it if he will. Is he is he at Saltwater still ?' 1 For all I know to the contrary. This letter, that the servants have got at, was one you were beginning to write to Owen. Did '

{2b be continued.)

Avoid Excitement, Dissipation and Late Hottks.—lf you are not naturally nervous they will be apt to make you so, unless you have a constitution of iron. If you are nervous, there is still greater reason to shun them. The best remedy for weakness of the nerves, as well as for its almost invariable concomitant —a deficiency of constitutional vigor —is Udolpiio Wolfe's Schiedam Aromatic Schnapps, which multiplies the physical energies, promotes assimilation of the food, and tranquilises the brain.