have explained sufficient to satisfy you, and on my part I should have learnt the inconceivable fact, that Clarice Beauchamp was Clarice Chesney. Now and then there has been something in Lucy's face—ay, and in yours—that has put me in mind of her.
"But, my darling, if I allude to this—your finding of the letter—I do it not to reproach you. On the contrary, I write only to give you my full and free forgiveness. The betrayal of me, I am certain, was not intentional, and I know that you are feeling it keenly. I forgive you, Laura, with all my loving heart.
"I could not go to rest without this word of explanation. Think of me with as little harshness as you can, Laura."Your unhappy husband,
Lady Jane returned to the policeman. There was no answer then, she said; but bade him tell Mr. Carlton that Lady Laura would write to him in the course of the day.
Mr. Policeman Bowler recommenced his promenade back again. Inclining his head with gracious condescension from side to side when the public greeted him, as it was incumbent on an officer confidentially engaged in so important a cause to do. Half a hundred would have assailed him with questions and remarks, but Mr. Bowler knew his dignity better than to respond, and bore on, his blue body erect, and his glazed head in the air.
Little Wilkes the barber was standing at his shop door and ran up to him; the two were on terms of private friendship, and Mr. Bowler was sometimes regaling himself surreptitiously with supper in the barber's back parlour when he was supposed to be on zealous duty. "I say, Bowler, do tell! Is the hour ten or eleven that the case is coming on?"
"Ten, sharp," replied Bowler. "I'll get you a place if you are there an hour beforehand."
As he spoke the last words, and went on, a slight turning in the street brought him in view of the lock-up. And there appeared to be some sort of stir going on within that official building. A hum of voices could be heard even at this distance, and three or four persons were dashing out of it in a state of commotion.
"What's up?" cried Mr. Bowler to himself, as he increased his speed. "What's up?" he repeated aloud, catching hold of the first runner he met.
"It's something about Mr. Carlton," was the answer. "They are saying he has escaped. There seems a fine hubbub in the lock-up."
Escaped! Mr. Carlton escaped! Mr. Policeman Bowler did the least sensible thing he could have done while a prisoner was escaping: he stood still and stared. A question was rushing wildly through his mind: could he—he himself, have left by misadventure the strong room unbarred?
PIERCING THE ALPS.
Hannibal, according to various authors, "broke through the peaks, and cleft the mountain with vinegar." Modern sceptics have ventured to question this statement, or at any rate to explain it away. Certainly, though the difficulty of a supply of the corrosive fluid adequate to the demand of engineering operations on a large scale might be obviated by the use of "vin du pays," much of which is an excellent substitute for vinegar, the story does seem to smack of an age of showers of blood, speaking oxen, and those other marvels, which adorn the pages of the older chroniclers. However, be the truth in this case what it may, at no great distance from the probable scene of the Carthaginian's passage, "restless labour" is now engaged in piercing the watershed of Europe; so that what Louis XIV. rashly asserted of the Pyrenees may soon be truly said of it—"the Alps are no more."
As my wanderings among the mountains had led me over most of the great roads across the main chain, I was naturally anxious to visit a work which will so effectually elude the dangers of the storm and the avalanche, and open in summer and winter alike "a way to friend and foe." This desire was gratified during the summer of 1863, and before describing my excursion a few words on the exact position and construction of the tunnel will not be out of place. The popular voice has named it the "Tunnel under the Mont Cénis," a title about as incorrect as it well can be, as the following bit of geography will show:—
Almost due west of Turin there is a large re-entering angle pointing westward in the contour of the principal chain of the Alps; a peak, Mont Tabor by name, stands at the apex of this angle and sends out a long spur towards the west, separating the valley of the Arc from those of the Romanche and Durance. The great road of the Mont Cénis, after ascending along the river in the first of these to within about twenty miles of the glaciers, whence it rises, scales by six long zigzags the northern slope of the watershed, crosses the level plateau among the hills at the top, and descends at once upon Susa, in the valley of the Dora Riparia. This river has now passed over some thirty miles or more since it left its humble source on