intelligence of his death. I thought it incumbent upon me, therefore, to seal up the papers of the unhappy man until some persons should come forward entitled to take possession of them. In doing this, from a bundle of letters in faded ink, there fell a worn morocco case. It contained the portrait I had seen on my visit to the dead man. The pensive beauty of the face struck me with new force, and Daly’s wonderful love seemed comprehensible. Soon after I discovered a letter of some years back from the brother of the deceased at Fermoy. I at once wrote to him with an account of his sudden loss.
The attempts to revive the body—the removal of it—the arrangement of the papers—had altogether occupied some hours. It was early morning when I quitted Daly’s lodgings. On my way home I was passing up Bow Street when I observed at the door of the police station a policeman posting a notice on the board outside. Moved by an impulse of curiosity I crossed the road to read the bill. It was just from the printer’s, and was quite wet. It was headed with the words “Found Drowned.” It went on to state that the body of a woman had been that morning found in the Thames. That she was clothed in mourning; was fair in complexion, with black hair slightly tinged with grey; ago about thirty-five; figure thin and tall; but with no evidence upon her of her name or address. A strange feeling rose in my mind, connecting the description in the handbill with the figure I had seen in the park. I spoke to the policeman.
“Well,” he said, “I know as much about it, perhaps, as any man. I live over the water. I’m taking charge of an empty house in Stamford Street. I’d been on duty last night at the Lyceum theatre, and was crossing Waterloo Bridge on my way home. I’d just got half-way across when I met a woman running. Lord, how she did run! I could just see that she was as white as a sheet, and looked quite mad-like, and she’d passed me. I turned round. I thought something had gone wrong. A few yards off she stopped all of a sudden, as though struck by lightning. She was clutching at her throat—panting for breath. She staggered from the pavement on to the road. Then she screamed out—‘I’ve seen him again—again! Dead! dead! dead!’ Such a strange cry—I never heard the like. I ran towards her; it was no use; the quickest thing you ever saw. More like flying than anything else—up with a spring and over. She was as mad as could be!”
“What o’clock was it?”
“Well, you see, it struck twelve by St. Paul’s as I paid the toll to go across. It must have been all within the five minutes after. I ran back, gave the alarm, and we got a boat off. It was no use. The tide was running up strong, and the night dark. It was some time before the body was picked up, and then it was close up to Hungerford. Quite dead, of course.”
The body had been taken to the workhouse, preparatory to the inquest. It was laid out in the same soiled clothes in which it had been drawn from the water. A sad sight. The face was thin and hollow, and there was a deep furrow on the forehead. The hands were emaciated but of beautiful form. The hair streamed down in long, lank lines.
“A sempstress,” said the policeman, as he raised the left hand and pointed to the forefinger, much worn as from the action of a needle. “The old story I suppose. She must have been a good-looking woman once.”
I came away strangely perplexed.
That any identity existed between the body found in the Thames and the Margaret of Daly’s story—that any tie connected the death of the woman at Waterloo Bridge and the death of Daly in the Green Park, could only be maintained upon hypotheses long scouted as supernatural and illusive. I could not accept these in explanation of the strange occurrences that had come to my knowledge. While, on the other hand, I could not ignore those occurrences, or explain them in any other way. Many would have me believe that I have been made the dupe of a madman, and that the figure supposed to have been seen in the Park was an hallucination resulting from an over-strained imagination; that the finding the body of the woman had nothing to do with Daly’s narrative or his sudden death, and was a coincidence in nowise remarkable. The resemblance of the face of the drowned woman to the portrait of Margaret, was certainly faint enough to be a matter of fancy, merely; but then the picture had avowedly been painted many years back, while the similarity of the corpse to the figure believed to have been seen in the Park, so far as I had been able to define it, was unquestionable. Had I then by an accident stumbled, as it were, upon the conclusion of Lane Daly’s story: or had I construed a fictitious whole by joining two fragmentary romances? I shall never know. I cannot even satisfy myself upon the subject, much less any other person. I have simply narrated the events as it seemed to me that they occurred.
The body of the woman was never claimed.
An inquest upon the body of Daly resulted in a verdict that he had died by the visitation of God.
In compliance with directions I received from his relatives in Ireland, his remains were interred in that part of the cemetery at Kensal Green set apart for those holding, as he did, the Roman Catholic faith.
Dutton Cook.
TRUFFLES, AND TRUFFLE HUNTING.
There are few connoisseurs in gastronomy who will not, as soon as the season arrives, ransack Covent Garden Market for truffles, and, regardless of expense, consider themselves fortunate in obtaining such a dainty for eight or ten shillings the pound. But to those to whom economy is an object, truffles are almost unknown, nor will the prudent manager admit them to her table unless she can secure them at reduced prices. In vain, however, does she remonstrate with the truffle-dealer; the answer is always, “We can’t sell them hany cheaper, ma’am, even to our best customers. We can never himport them for less than eight shillings the pound in the best of seasons, and indeed
