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                           THE PACE THAT KILLS

                               A Chronicle

                             By EDGAR SALTUS


    "_Pourquoi la mort? Dites, plutot, pourquoi la vie?_"
    --RADUSSON

    CHICAGO, NEW YORK, AND SAN FRANCISCO
    BELFORD, CLARKE & COMPANY
    PUBLISHERS
    London: H. J. DRANE, Lovell's Court, Paternoster Row

    Copyright, 1889,
    BY EDGAR SALTUS.


    TO
    JOHN A. RUTHERFURD.
    NEW YORK, _June 10, 1889_.




PART I.




I.


"I wish you a happy New Year, sir."

It was the servant, green of livery, the yellow waistcoat slashed with
black, bearing the coffee and fruit.

"Put it there, please," Roland answered. And then, in recognition of the
salutation, he added, "Thanks: the same to you."

"H'm," he mused, as the man withdrew, "I ought to have tipped him, I
suppose."

He leaned from the bed, poured some milk into a cup, and for a second
nibbled at a slice of iced orange. Through the transom came a faint odor
of home-made bread, and with it the rustle of a gown and a girl's clear
laugh. The room itself was small. It was furnished in a fashion which
was unsuggestive of an hotel, and yet did not resemble that of a
private house. The curtain had been already drawn. Beyond was a lake,
very blue in the sunlight, bulwarked by undulant hills. Below, on the
road, a dogcart fronted by a groom was awaiting somebody's pleasure.

"It is late," he reflected, and raised a napkin to his lips. As he did
so he noticed a package of letters which the napkin must have concealed.
He took up the topmost and eyed it. It had been addressed to the
Athenaeum Club, Fifth Avenue; but the original direction was erased, and
Tuxedo Park inserted in its stead. On the upper left-hand corner the
impress of a firm of tailors shone in blue. Opposite was the engraving
of a young woman supported by 2-1/2_d._ He put it down again and glanced
at the others. The superscriptions were characterless enough; each bore
a foreign stamp, and to one as practised as was he, each bore the token
of the dun.

"If they keep on bothering me like this," he muttered, "I shall
certainly place the matter in the hands of my attorney." And thereat,
with the air of a man who had said something insultingly original, he
laughed aloud, swallowed some coffee, and dashed his head in the pillow.
In and out of the corners of his mouth a smile still played; but
presently his fancy must have veered, for the muscles of his lips
compressed, and as he lay there, the arms clasped behind the head, the
pink silk of his sleeves framing and tinting his face, and in the eyes
the expression of one prepared to meet Fate and outwit it, a possible
observer who could have chanced that way would have sat himself down to
study and risen up perplexed.

Anyone who was at Columbia ten years ago will remember Roland
Mistrial,--Roland Mistrial 3d, if you please,--and will recall the wave
of bewilderment which swept the campus when that young gentleman, on the
eve of graduation, popularity on one side and honors on the other,
suddenly, without so much as a p. p. c., left everything where it was
and betook himself to other shores. The flight was indeed erratic, and
numerous were the rumors which it excited; but Commencement was at hand,
other issues were to be considered, bewilderment subsided as
bewilderment ever does, the college dispersed, and when it assembled
again the Mistrial mystery, though unelucidated, was practically forgot.

In the neighborhood of Washington Square, however, on the northwest
corner of Tenth Street and Fifth Avenue to be exact, there were others
whose memories were more retentive. Among them was Roland's grandfather,
himself a graduate, founder of the Mistrial fellowship, and judge of the
appellate court. And there was Roland's father, a graduate too, a
gentleman widely respected, all the more so perhaps because he had run
for the governorship and lost it. And again there was Roland's aunt, a
maiden lady of whom it is recorded that each day of her life she got
down on her knees and thanked God he had made her a Mistrial. In
addition to these, there were, scattered along the Hudson, certain
maternal relatives--the Algaroths, the Baxters, and the Swifts; Bishop
Algaroth in particular, who possessed such indomitable vigor that when
at the good old age of threescore and ten he decided to depart this
life, the impression prevailed that he had died very young for him. None
of these people readily forgot. They were a proud family and an
influential one--influential not merely in the social sense, but
influential in political, legal, in church and university circles as
well; a fact which may have had weight with the Faculty when it