the cable will have informed the police of Savannah that these three gentlemen

are badly wanted here upon a charge of murder.”


There is ever a flaw, however, in the best laid of human plans, and the

murderers of John Openshaw were never to receive the orange pips which would

show them that another, as cunning and as resolute as themselves, was upon

their track. Very long and very severe were the equinoctial gales that year. We

waited long for news of the Lone Star of Savannah, but none ever reached

us. We did at last hear that somewhere far out in the Atlantic a shattered

stern-post of a boat was seen swinging in the trough of a wave, with the

letters “L. S.” carved upon it, and that is all which we shall ever

know of the fate of the Lone Star.


VI.THE MAN WITH THE TWISTED LIP

Isa Whitney, brother of

the late Elias Whitney, D.D., Principal of the Theological College of St.

George’s, was much addicted to opium. The habit grew upon him, as I

understand, from some foolish freak when he was at college; for having read De

Quincey’s description of his dreams and sensations, he had drenched his

tobacco with laudanum in an attempt to produce the same effects. He found, as

so many more have done, that the practice is easier to attain than to get rid

of, and for many years he continued to be a slave to the drug, an object of

mingled horror and pity to his friends and relatives. I can see him now, with

yellow, pasty face, drooping lids, and pin-point pupils, all huddled in a

chair, the wreck and ruin of a noble man.


One night—it was in June, ’89—there came a ring to my bell,

about the hour when a man gives his first yawn and glances at the clock. I sat

up in my chair, and my wife laid her needle-work down in her lap and made a

little face of disappointment.


“A patient!” said she. “You’ll have to go out.”


I groaned, for I was newly come back from a weary day.