



Produced by Al Haines









[Illustration: Cover art]





THE GATES BETWEEN.

BY

ELIZABETH STUART PHELPS,


_AUTHOR OF_

"THE GATES AJAR," "GYPSY BREYNTON," Etc




  Write the things which thou hast seen,
  and the things which are,
  and the things which shall be hereafter.
       REVELATION.




WARD, LOCK AND Co.,

LONDON, NEW YORK, AND MELBOURNE.

[_All rights reserved_].


1887




THE GATES BETWEEN.


CHAPTER I.

If the narrative which I am about to recount perplex the reader, it can
hardly do so more than it has perplexed the narrator.  Explanations,
let me say at the start, I have none to offer.  That which took place I
relate.  I have had no special education or experience as a writer;
both my nature and my avocation have led me in other directions.  I can
claim nothing more in the construction of these pages than the
qualities of a faithful reporter.  Such, I have tried to be.

It was on the twenty-fifth of November of the year 187-, that I,
Esmerald Thorne, fell upon the event whose history and consequences I
am about to describe.

Autobiographies I do not like.  I should have been positive at any time
during my life of forty-nine years, that no temptation could drag me
over that precipice of presumption and illusion which awaits the man
who confides himself to the world.  As it is the unexpected which
happens, so it is the unwelcome which we choose.  I do not tell this
story for my own gratification.  I tell it to fulfil the heaviest
responsibility of my life.  However I may present myself upon these
pages is the least of my concern; whether well or ill, that is of the
smallest possible consequence.  Touching the manner of my telling the
story, I have heavy thoughts; for I know that upon the manner of the
telling will depend effects too far beyond the scope of any one human
personality for me to regard them indifferently.  I wish I could.  I
have reason to believe myself the bearer of a message to many men.
This belief is in itself enough, one would say, to deplete a man of
paltry purpose.  I wish to be considered only as the messenger, who
comes and departs, and is thought of no more.  The message remains, and
should remain, the only material of interest.

Owing to some peculiarities in the situation, I am unable to delegate,
and do not see my