22
THE BATTALION.
the consequences of his disgraceful act,
had killed himself.
Filled with horror, the old Judge
turned away in time to catch in his
arms the fainting wife of the fallen
man, suddenly and terribly made
aware that she was now a widow. .
Later, the body was examined, and
in an inner vest pocket was found a
letter addressed to his wife, bidding
her farewell, and stating that he could
not survive the disgrace he had
brought upon her and all connected
with him.
The clothes were the same he wore
when he had gone away from home
a few days before. He had been seen
in them on the streets of Savannah,
in Darien, and on Jekyll Island. There
was no doubt in the mind of any man
as to his identity.
The funeral took place as quietly
as possible; and his wife mourned for
him.
Yes, she mourned. He had certain
ly loved her; and his awful end took
away somewhat from the meanness of
the act which had made it necessary.
It was easy for her to persuade herself
that he had yielded to immense temp
tation in a moment of weakness.
Death flings a mantle over those weak
nesses that make it possible for one
to fall lower and drop into the pit of
degrading crime. Pity at last inclined
her to hold that he must have been
of unsound mind when the deed was
done.
But she was y oung, and naturally
of a buoyant temperament. Wooers
came, the sense of life’s sweetness re
turned, and in time she listened, pleas
ed, to one of them.
Meanwhile, however, the fate of an
other seemed, in some mysterious way,
to have been linked with that of her
lost husband.
Malcolm Tarnish had been his chos
en companion in revels, at the card-
table, and on the race course. It was
known that, when at his wits’ end for
money, Gastreet had more than once
borrowed of Tarnish what he needed;
and it began to be whispered about
that pressure for payment of some of
these loans had urged the unhappy
man to the shameful deed of forgery.
For Tarnish had disappeared about
the time of $he finding of Gastreet’s
body in the Dutart garden.
Tarnish was out of view, with mys
tery and vague suspicion thick about
his memory. Gastreet, it was believed,
had atoned for his fault against so
ciety by Anally ridding society of his
presence. The balance was in favor
of the dead.
With this deeper shade on that of
his former associate relieving some
what the blackness of her first hus
band’s memory, the young widow ven
tured to marry again. Manton West-
wood was an estimable gentleman,
who had loved her almost in her child
hood; she felt sure of happiness with
him.
He was a member of the Georgia
Legislature, which, at that time, held
its sessions in the little town of Mil-
ledgeville. At the time of the inci
dent I am telling, he was in attend
ance on the General Assembly of the
State.
In the absence of her husband, the
young wife lived with no one in the
house except her cousin, Mariam McAL
pine. This girl, a brave maiden, and
sensible, withal, but with just a. touch
of the Highland turn for superstition,
was, as it happened, the cousin also
of Mrs. Westwood’s first husband, and