Katy's Fortune: In Two Parts. Part I

IN TWO PARTS. PART I.

I.

BEFORE THE LOOKING-GLASS.

EASTWARD of the sun and westward of the moon, and somewhere remote from the sweet influences of the Pleiades, there lies a world like our world contradicted. It is so far that no philosophic tube has sphered its general light into an orb, and yet so near that the flower in the basin and the waterfowl on the lake, stem to stem and breast to breast, see bird and blossom in that other world. Look into the mirror, and you see its phases. It is yourself, your very self, but in reverse. Always that, always a left-handed world that in the very act of identity divides and becomes something sinister. Yet do not turn away. Live as long as you may, and be as introspective as you can, you wall never be nearer to seeing your exact self than the phantom in the glass. Do not believe, however, that this mirror is to exhibit your foibles, dear reader. I only hold up certain experiences, and there is reflected a shadowy contradiction: words, scenes, people, never seen elsewhere than in that fragile world behind your looking-glass. They never were, and never will be, as I have arranged them, yet it amuses me to put these bits of glass, these facets, in shape. There is part of a girl’s diary, a lawyer’s brief, an old woman’s gossip, and scraps of letters. As I fit them, bone to his bone, or like a child’s puzzle, a story comes of it. So once a learned doctor put together the huge bones of a mastodon so ingeniously that all Europe believed it was the veritable skeleton of Gog-Magog, or a huger Goliath, and preached and prayed about it. This is no more a real giant than that; but the bones are all good bones, with proper amount of lime and phosphates. The only imposition is in the art of fitting the incongruities in this shape.

It is an unsettled period, and the glass is blurred and bad. The stale smoke of a long war still lies in flocks and wefts, obscuring the view; and there are soiled spots where the silvering is scratched off. It is the era of a disturbed state under a new system imposed by violence. Its ways are unfamiliar, and novelties in legislation slacken the already loosened ties of business and moral obligation. Public and private faith are demoralized, destroyed. Crudities in politics; diverse opinions of judges; a divided sentiment in church and state, and on every question that can agitate men’s minds, isolate and alienate the elements of society, and make any measures of reform requiring combination impossible. Men, agreed in nothing else, agree in a general distrust. All maxims of business craft are reduced to one formula: Get all you can in any way you can, and pay nothing. In the church it appears in a sordid struggle for valuable eleemosynary and ecclesiastical property; in the state, in proposals to pay the national debt in legal-tender promises to pay; in private affairs, in a sudden scramble for the benefit of the bankrupt law. Man’s moral nature, raised by great moral causes in the war above its normal worth, released, now sprang with compensatory recoil to the other extreme. There was no period, not even in the immediate shock and devastation of armies, in which the helpless and confiding were so put upon and plundered, by those who owed them protection and security.

An example precedes the immediate current of this sketch, some three years, and the principal events turn upon it. The scene is at a real estate broker’s in a Southern border State. It is in the parlor of what had been a private residence, now overflowed by the growth of trade, and perverted in its uses. There are the agent, a gentleman in a blue cloth coat with brass buttons, and a German seated in a beery stupor on a settee, apparently disregarded by the other two.

“ It will not do,” says the blue coat. “ I do not like your settling everything on your wife. I do not like the way you are doing business. You must cash up — must. Give me that $5500 received for Catharine Keith’s warehouse yesterday.”

The agent demurs.

“ Nonsense ! ” says the other; “ it is your way of doing business. You know she will not call for a settlement for months; perhaps a year. You will use her money; if not to pay me, in some other way. In fact, you must or I '11 ” —

He does not say what, but the agent has a cowed, angry look, as if detected, and he gives it up.

“ Of course you must be ready for Miss Keith,” continues the other. “ I have an advisory interest in her affairs; but this we may call settled, and I leave you to your plans. Ha? Yes — no; I would not mention it — this transaction — unless it was necessary.”

The German staggers to his feet. “Mein frau has said mir ” — but the agent bundles him rudely out-of-doors, and the interview closes.

In the days when the judges ruled, there lived on the Southern border a certain widow lady with her daughter. She had suffered loss and affliction in the death of her two sons, who had taken opposing sides in the late unhappy differences, and in the breaking of her husband’s heart and fortune by accumulated disaster, which laid the father with his sons. The poor man left a will, but it was almost all he left, for, on examination, it was found that the present assets of the business firm were consumed by debts, and all outstanding claims were paid by certificates in bankruptcy. This news Colonel Filkerdis, her husband’s friend, was obliged to report to the poor woman; but he added the comforting assurance that her daughter’s, Catharine Keith’s, fortune was unencumbered. This was a legacy from the young girl’s maternal grandfather, and, in the panic of the period, he had coupled the devise with a recommendation to sell, on Katy’s coming to the age of eighteen. This period arrived preceding her father’s death, and her agent was properly empowered to sell. Then came these accumulated misfortunes; the two women lived retired in a little country town, in the house not yet seized by the law. Their farm and garden, some of the wreck saved, and Katy’s rents, supported them. From the last circumstance, it was inferred that the warehouse, Katy’s legacy, was not yet sold; for these two simple women took no account of back rents, possibly accumulated during Katy’s minority, and neither the agent nor their friend, Colonel Filkerdis, wrote them a word of the matter.

I shall not say much of Katy in this place. She was a good little girl. She had been one of those quiet, sedate children, who wear an air of womanliness in infancy, and, as a recompense, obtain the child-like look in after years, to wear it all their lives. She was quite particular in those matters of mint, rue, and anise, which some of us take credit for neglecting; yet not so formal but she gave back the light of heaven, not as a star which only reflects its rays, but as a flower that reveals them in its own hue and fragrance. Your wife, on entering a crowded car, would, by womanly intuition, select this little stranger as a companion, and would talk about how simple and good she was, ever after. She had her faults, no doubt, like the rest of us. She was very shy; so shy that the shop-man who sold her a yard of tape could not become intimate with her. If she was less so with elders, I fear it only added to her faults, for thereby divers widowers and bachelors had been reduced to desperate straits, because love, like other childish ailments, goes harder with us as our years increase. An oath shocked her : more her sense of delicacy, perhaps, than her religious principles, just as a scratch that tears the cuticle gives more immediate pain than the imminent deadly wound.

She was particular in all small proprieties, and if she loved you, any solecism of yours would give her pain. She was pretty; very pretty, I think, but then the prevailing expression of goodness so obscured it, that only a rare excitement called attention to her physical loveliness.

Of course an heiress in a small way, and good and pretty, had lovers, and, as is always the ease with these shy girls, she had picked up a betrothed where bolder beauties were in vain.

This was George Earley Groth, generally known as Earl Groth, eldest son of Fungus Groth, Esq., of that ilk. The young fellow was one of those astonishingly beautiful men seen occasionally. He had the flossiest curls, the blackest moustache, and the most surprisingly genteel presence, and looked indeed like a Prince Camaralzaman. Yet I am ashamed to say he was only bagman for the agricultural implement makers, Plowstock & Harrow. It is more elegant to say commercial traveler, and we will always do that in preference to bagman or drummer, just for Katy’s sake. As to his character, I can only say he drew the longest bow of any young man I ever met. You would think, on his return from a Southern tour, that he could have been governor of half the States he visited, and that all great military, legal, and editorial lights took counsel from him. Half of this, that about the governorships, might be true, and when you saw the confiding simplicity of the little woman who listened to these marvelous tales, I am sure you would not say one word to shake her faith in all of it.

Well, after the sale of the home place, — and what a wretched experience that is! — there began to be some talk of an approaching ceremony. Naturally, the two women made a temporary sojourn with the elder Groth, in whose family Katy was “the dearest thing, you know, and quite, quite rich, you know.” She was to see her agent about selling that warehouse, and then put all the money in Earl’s hands, with a little kiss, perhaps, and a speech, saying, “It is all, all yours; only be good to mamma, that’s a dear.” Of course he would, and buy a partnership in Plowstock & Harrow and settle down, neglectful of all those vast military, financial, political, and legal interests submitted and deferred to his sage advice.

There was just a little disappointment, therefore, at the turn of the street, when he left her, saying that for him to go to the real estate agent’s might be indelicate. There are business partners who, when there is a hard note to meet, go incontinently to bed; just as there are married men who never will hunt up the new house to be rented. Earl Groth was one of these; a good enough business man in the routine, but shy of new transactions. Katy had to digest her disappointment as she might, and she was a little coward with strangers. Still it had to be done; and, calling herself “ a little goose ” many times, in which she usually took comfort, she proceeded on her errand.

The dwelling-house of her grandfather’s day, like a gentleman fallen into trade, had been converted into offices for this real estate agency. The floor was let down flush with the pavement, and trifid pillars supported a frieze along which strutted in gilt, JOHN OVERDO, REAL ESTATE AGENT. Fat letters crawled about the columns, denoting the States for which he was commissioner of deeds, and a hand and scroll pointed to the Real Estate Gazette office. Katy entered through lofty glass doors, and stood embarrassed till the chamberlain of the gold stick ushered her into the sacred recesses of the private office.

The agent was a big man. Not tall or large, though both tall and large; but his periphery is better described by bigness. There was a swollen puffiness about him like an exaggerated boy’s. He was of the baggy style: generally bulbous about the shoulders, joints, and protuberances of his body; but at his visitor’s name he grew flabby, and like a huge, sallow fungus.

Katy took her seat by a dirty window overlooking a moldy court starred with grass in the sun, and mildewed in the shade under a tumbling old kitchen with rotting steps going up, and there heard a story of which the fine front and dirty, neglected back premises were but a symbol.

He had sold her property three years ago, and taken the benefit of the bankrupt act. Her money was involved in the assignment, and was lost. “ It. was very well, surrendering your own property to your creditors,” said Katy, to his shabby excuses, “ but this was mine; my property. I don’t see what it has to do with your poverty or your bankruptcy.”

“ I was a land broker,” said the agent, nervously rubbing his great fat hands, “like any other broker. There was an open account. It was your grandfather’s way and mine; and it all went. It did me no good. I’m sure I wish you had it; it never profited me any.”

“ But are n’t you ever going to pay me any of my money, sure enough?” asked Katy, opening her eyes at the palpable robbery of a refusal. But it was a refusal, and she went out feeling like a child that has been sent on some mistaken errand.

It is well the future is veiled from us, and the knowledge of a misfortune only comes to us in parts. Her simplicity protected her from a full consciousness of the hideous burden thrown upon her inexperience. There was trouble, and there would be difficulty and loss in recovering her own, she thought; but she never supposed the wisdom of all lawgivers, from Moses to the Federal Congress, could be turned to instruments of wrong and oppression like that. She must have help, and she went at once to the law office of Groth & Son. The junior, Ben Groth, was her lover’s younger brother, a simple piece of mechanism, adapted to the law, with some native goodness ; the senior of the firm was her lover’s father. Good friends and true, surely.

The old lawyer drew his heavy brows together over Katy’s story, and Ben looked horror - struck. For all this young fellow’s legal experience, a piece of downright knavery always struck him as an impossible contradiction. His father said to him, —

“ You managed that affair. What dividend did Overdo pay? ”

“ Fifty-five cents on the dollar,” gasped Ben, for he had prided himself on the handsome rate paid by this, his first client in bankruptcy. “It was thought to be unusually good at the time.”

“ Fifty-five per cent, on $5500,” said the father, ignoring all mere opinions, “ is, say $3000. It is bad enough, my child, but it might be worse. You will get over half. Ben, call on the assignee and learn what you can. Sit down, my child, and wait a moment. We will see what can be done. It might be worse, you know. Not that it isn’t bad enough; but it might have been worse.”

Katy thought so indeed, as she nestled into the big leathern chair, reading the paper. The old lawyer watched the trim little figure over his spectacles; the pearl-gray complexion with little shelly flushes in it, and the limpid, shaded eyes, as gray as water. He was uneasy. Why had not Overdo mentioned the dividend? As he thought of a sordid struggle for bread that would result from a total loss, he revolted at the iniquity. The marriage must be broken off; that, he said to himself, was common prudence; but he pitied her as he said it. She would be an indifferent client with a bad cause, if Overdo chose to resist, and he thought the agent would hold on to what he had. A professional obligation bound him to the agent, and he would not break it; but as a friend he would do what he could. His theory, then and after, was to adhere to the agent pro. fessionally, but as a friend to rely on his client’s generosity. That was what he would recommend rather than legal proceedings to recover. He was very gentle with Katy, bending over her with a fatherly interest as he bade her not to fret, but to go quietly home, and they would bring her their best advice at dinner. It was the pugilist’s courtesy. Katy Keith was to suffer much at his hands, and he was to be punished as he had never been, before the contest between this unequal pair was concluded.

The news they brought to her was of the worst. Overdo had taken the benefit of the act; bankruptcy went through its forms; dividends were made, the case settled and assignee discharged, and the certificate declared Overdo absolved from all past liabilities. But Katy’s claim? It was very odd; no one knew anything about it. Overdo insisted he was not to blame; he never got the money or any of it; the assignee swore he paid all approved claims, and that he knew of no others. Katy’s $5500 had melted away; gone to irrigate the thirsty claims of other creditors, and it was nobody’s business to know anything about it.

Could she not recover somewhere? of somebody? Judge Groth thought not; the matter had been neglected too long, and was legally lapsed. To proceed now would be to incur needless expense and certain disadvantage.

So Katy, ‘‘quite rich, you know,” yesterday, is now very poor, and all her way of life in the future changed. Eliphaz the Temanite, Bildad the Shuhite, and Zophar the Naamathite, sat down with her and her mother as with the man of Uz. After the first burst of indignation at the agent’s treachery, the Groths fell into the opinion that it had not profited him, and he was not to blame. But the censorious human mind abhors a vacuum, and it must be that Katy is to blame. They “ hoped it would be a lesson to her to be more careful.” “How could you trust a rascally agent three years without inquiry? ” cried her lover. “ I declare Katy, you must be ” —

“ Don’t say that,” she pleaded; “ think what a child I was; and papa and brothers dead, and no one to advise or help me. How was I to know? I am not much more than a child now, Earl.”

He did stop for the time, and threatened to “ horsewhip it out of the scoundrel.” I wish he had, though I lost a story by it, but he did not. He was only of that querulous nature which wore the poor girl out. To do him justice, though postponement of the marriage was now decided, he would not hear of breaking it off, even from Katy. But that querulous fault-finding spoiled all the satisfaction she might have drawn from his constancy.

She was planning her future. She heard the family talk about a music teacher for Florence, aged fourteen, and applied for the position. How unfortunate ! An Italian countess, a refugee, had shoaled on the hotel-bar, — I had like to have written it, — and Mrs. Groth could not deny herself the honor of a titled instructress in music for her daughter. Colonel Filkerdis, to whom she also applied, had the widow of a Confederate officer engaged, and as that community was in sackcloth and ashes for past loyalty on account of the Southern trade, of course Katy’s hopes were vain. She thought it hard not to get help from her father’s friends. She had, in fact, a great deal to learn about that journey from Jericho to Jerusalem. It is still the passing stranger who lifts us from the ditch, pours oil in the wounds, and leaves two pence with the inn-keeper. But she got advice. Judge Groth told her to " assert her position and the world would grant it;” and that nugget I cannot determine to be pure gold or the brightest of brass; but it did Katy no good. Colonel Filkerdis told his own early experiences of hardship; but as Katy could hardly become porter in a store or member of the night police, it cannot be said to have been practical. Indeed, advice came to be a usual dinner-table exercise. Judge Groth would begin:—

“ To a young lady of education and refinement—a little more of the crust, my dear — seeking a congenial occupation— gravy?—I would recommend the position of traveling governess with some of our wealthy citizens visiting Europe, and — jelly, if you please.”

Mrs. Groth thought something might be done as Mother Superior in a convent, only Katy was not a Catholic; but perhaps that made no difference. Angelica would lecture like Olive Logan and Anna Dickinson. It would be such fun to blow up the men, and get well paid for it. So it was from day to day, until the children got at it, and played “ What shall Katy do for a living,” as a brand new game.

She made one more small effort, at this time, to institute proceedings to recover her property, Ben Groth was the snubbed of that household, who found comfort in Katy’s quiet sympathy. He would drone by the hour about his petty cases, as if he believed the world was thinking of no other subject. All Ben’s clients were injured men, and his opponents unscrupulous villains. As he loved the law so much, Katy once asked him why he did not undertake her case. “ We would undertake it fast enough,” said Ben, “ if you had any; but you see you have none.”

Katy sighed: “It is all those ugly books. I would ask them myself, but then I’m such — a little goose,” biting it off with her thread. “ I must get somebody else.”

Ben stared. It had never occurred to him that the quiet, resolute little woman intended to prosecute her claim in defiance or neglect of his father’s grave opinion. None of us can meet an example of sterling courage without being moved. It stirred Ben now. He tousled his great black head, as he strode up and down, and then stopped abruptly.

“ Try father again,” he said. “ I ’ll try him.” That was all. He gave no further advice, but Katy did try the senior again. She received a long, tedious explanation, with scanty hints about depending on Mr. Overdo’s generosity. Ben tried, and got snubbed and no explanation whatever.

Then a little incident, remote enough, set Katy to thinking. At the breaking up of Mrs. Keith’s household, Aunt Cynthy, the old cook, was confided to the tender mercies of Mr. Overdo, then in good repute with them. The negro was bandied from pillar to post, in refuse tenements, and at last came to Katy with a story that the agent had distrained her wash-tubs for arrears of rent. The quarter, Cynthy insisted, was not yet expired. She handed Katy a card of “ one o’ de young gem’men as owed her a bit,” and “’lowed” she would “go dar jis’ soon’s she done seed young missus.” Katy thrust the card into her glove, with little confidence in a lawyer who Owed a wash-bill, and went to Judge Groth. She got little comfort. Likely the negro was mistaken as to the time, and, by her own account, her witnesses were all negroes, who could not testify in the State courts. If Katy was much interested, perhaps, at her solicitation or request, the agent would release the articles, or she could replevy.

Much against her will, Katy went again to the shiny agency. She and Cynthy were gruffly received, and the negro told to “ bundle out o’ that before Saturday night,” or he, Overdo, would “ slap her in jail for trespass.”

Katy came out insulted, tingling to her finger-tips as she clenched her mimic fists, and, doing so, the card creased the soft palm. She drew it out: “ Brown & Lorn, Attorneys at Law,”—who did not pay their wash-bill. Never mind; she must have somebody, for Katy had made up her mind to fight. She soon found the office; and a young fellow with a big nose, good eyes, and a shabby paletot. He was not very encouraging, but he said “ something always turns up, and they have made one slip; the tenement is outside of the corporation. We ’ll see what we can do with it.”

The landlord’s action brought a swarm of petty creditors; among them the inevitable corner-grocery man with his little bill. But in talking with this person Mr. Lorn, the lawyer, found he could testify from his books as to the date of Cynthy’s entering into possession of the tenement. Here was a white witness. The whole case went overboard, for Aunt Cynthy was right. As Mr. Lorn stood congratulating Katy, Overdo pushed up.

“ Here, I want possession of these lots; let the nigger take her traps and go, rentfree.”

“ Can't see it,” said the lawyer coolly, and to Katy’s surprise. “ You are in the centre of a bad fix. This hut is out of the town limits, and, by the law of country leases, Cynthy holds on to the end of the year, and you can’t move her. At the same time you have sold and given bond in $1000 for immediate possession. Pay $100 down, just what you charged the negro for the lease, and you may go in.”

The agent said he would see Mr. Lorn reprobated first; but Mr. Lorn declined to be reprobated, laughed in his face, and told him that in twelve hours the cost of release should be doubled. “ He will not pay that,” said Katy, timid but pleased. There was a good deal of the Adam in the quiet little girl. “ Oh yes he will,” said Lorn. “ The vulgar dog thought he had the negro in a trap, but he is caught himself. He has no choice; in a week I would charge him $500.”

And then they parted, he strolling down the shady side of the street officewards, crushing an old wool hat in his hand, and crooning a ditty about “ the lavrock in the blue lift,” and —

Katy was thinking, too, what a pity that young men should neglect their wash-bills, and other matters! In fact, from a child, this young thing had a way of poking odds and ends into her work - basket that somehow were the very apt things needed at some moment; and I think she stowed this young chap away just then, as a very suitable article wherewith to rout the dragon, John Overdo, as soon as occasion offered.

II.

KATY'S NEW FRIENDS AND THE SORT OF CHAMPION SHE FOUND.

BUT Katy found other matters pressing upon her more immediately. She felt that she ought no longer to intrude upon the hospitality of the Groths. While it was in her means to return it, and the relationship growing out of her marriage engagement subsisted, she might have continued to do so. Now, though her lover was faithful, after his fashion, she felt that it was wrong. She had saved something like two hundred dollars, her piano, watch, and a riding pony, now at a neighbor’s in the country. Her mother had reserved a little furniture, which was warehoused in the city. Katy felt that she must keep this as well as she could, and set about making her living. It will be hard for the reader in a well-established society, to believe that this last was difficult, with a lady of good character, good family, and of superior education; yet it was so.

As for her immediate friends, the Groths, the bare idea of soliciting employment for a young fiancé e of Earl, her of whose wealth they had boasted, was humiliating. Suppose parties said, “ If she is so good and deserving, why don’t Earl marry her and take care of the mother and be done with it? ” That would never do. In fact, they all began to feel that Katy was doing them a sort of injury by remaining in the city and soliciting employment. They wished her away, and even her friend Colonel Filkerdis, in whose friendship the simple widow and her daughter believed, thought the same way, and spoke of a little country school, in some remote county, as vacant. But accepting this involved a separation, and brave little Katy would not consent to that. “ No, mamma,” she said, “I’m young and strong, and can take care of us both; no matter what they say.” She did not yet know, poor thing, the weight of the burden she had undertaken.

They got temporary and not very desirable boarding at twenty dollars per week for the two. Katy felt that this would never do, and carried the care of seeking other, cheaper quarters along with the rest. If it were pertinent, I would like to dwell on this struggle, but must not. She undertook a set of shirts for Ben Groth and succeeded admirably ; but they could not live on one set of shirts, and eastern competition and machine work spoiled the market. Once, after an excursion to the country, she made a set of photograph frames of rye straw. They were very pretty, and brought her three dollars. It was the first money she had ever earned, and she waved it and danced round her mother like a mad thing, but the first lot over-stocked the market, and she could sell no more. She painted some flowers that were exhibited in H ——’s windows as the " work of an amateur.” They were admired, but not sold. She made some wax-flowers that shared the same fate. She was a nimble little thing with her fingers, as most of these quiet girls are, and attempted very many things; some of which brought her a little, but the most of which failed.

She watched the newspapers in those days, especially the " Wanted ” column. This often led her weary walks and fruitless errands, but she persevered. One day this caught her eye; I copy it from her diary, — if it is a diary and not rather a cookery book: —

WANTED, Ten Good Seamstresses. Constant employment given. No.——, —— Street. TH. KONIGRATZ, Fancy and Trimming Store.

Katy slipped on her bonnet and hastened to the place. There was the conventional fine front, disfigured by an old wooden pump, a worn pavement, and a neglected, broken street. As she opened the door, a bell attachment set up an irritable jangle, and a little flathatted man slouched by, pursued by direful reproaches from the inner depths. A tall, black-haired woman appeared, to whom Katy presented her application. ‘‘Blood of the Saviour!” said the woman with a sudden, trembling voice, like a china jar off a mantel-piece, “I thought you were, a lady. Did you ever go out to sew before? ”

“ No ma’am,” said Katy; " but I am quick with the needle. This is my work. I understand the machine very well, I think.”

“Oh! Never mind that,” said the woman in her quick way, and putting Katy’s sample aside. “ I don’t want any sewing done just now; I wish I did.”

“ I am sorry,” said Katy, lingering. “ I saw the advertisement. If you would just try me, I think I could please you. I can do almost any kind of plain or fancy sewing, and I would leave money with you to the value of any article you might trust me with, if you like. ”

“ Bless you, infant! ” said the woman impetuously. “You have the air gracious and simple of the good tone. Come in back here, and I will tell you.” The building was the sham at Overdo’s repeated, — the handsome front and the moldy back premises.

“ See what a hole it is,” cried the woman, “to bring up one’s infants in! That or the streets — which is worst? and that ladrone, my husband. It was him sneaked by you as you came in.”

“ It is bad,” said Katy, sympathizing, “ I wish I could say something to comfort you. ”

“ Bless you, my infant, you do it in coming in such a place; but I can’t help you. That advertisement, now. All lies. I live mostly on lies; but what is it that I can do? The La Tour and the Bonnetier, they advertise: ‘ Constant employment for tzen, finfteen good seamstress ’ — all lies. But what shall I? If I advertise not, one says, ‘See the Konigratz! She does not’ing. She is out of the worl’.’ There comes this morning, Mr. The-Beast-Lan’lor’. He rub hes littell beard w'ich is the tomorrow, and have not arrive — so! ” extending the fingers like a fan and pushing her open palm over her cocked-up chin. “Holy Virgin! if I haved the beards to sell, it would be my fortune of him. He say, ‘ Konigratz, the two room up-stair. I cannot rent of them. You s’all take them off the hand to me.’ Beast! How can I rent them more as he? See them!” and she led Katy up a crooked, dark back staircase and forward into two rather pleasant large rooms, overlooking the crowded street below.

“ One can come in only by the shop,” said the woman, “ and who like that, hey?”

“ Why don’t you occupy them yourself? ” said Katy. “ I like these better than below.”

“ Why wear I not all the pretty things in the shop? ” asked the woman impetuously. “Is it not, I must eat of them? And must I not eat the roomès of Mr. The-Beast-Lan’lor’, hey?” and she went on chattering in her GermanItalian way, for she was evidently a mixture of Austrian and Italian in her blood, shrieking and scolding about her hardships and the landlord, and seeming, in a way, to lean her great six feet of trouble on the shy little girl at her side.

Katy said very little. She was stowing facts in her work-box again. That fearful outlay of twenty dollars a week preyed upon her. Was there a chance here to avoid it? She must take the thought home and look at it; talk to mamma about it; consult Aunt Cynthy, wise in household expenses of a city, about it; and see if this thing in her work-box is not the very thing she has been looking for.

As she passed out, the woman hastily snatched, a leaden trinket, common enough in Catholic communities, and thrust it upon her. “It is the Blessed Virgin, and as good as gold and diamonds. The Holy Father he has blessed it. She will help you. She would help me, but I get bad, and beat Ludwig Konigratz, and she does not like of that. Much she know of trial,” she added, “of a poor wretch like me; when she have the good Lord to her son. You will come back to me; to the poor Italian-Dutchman. Pazienza! but it is as good as water to drink of your sweet look; ” and she bowed her tall figure and surprised Katy with a kiss, flavored with garlic, and dashed back into her shop.

Poor toiler! the pity, more in tones than Words, had touched the woman’s heart under its coarse crust, and melted it to tears; and, as a reward, Katy found a new and pleasant home in her work-box, which she set up in the two rooms over the fancy and trimming store. It was like home; for the mother and daughter were, so to speak, in their own house, and the good woman was almost oppressively kind at first. Katy found an assistant, and at last a pupil, in one of the children; one of those curious children, shrewd, glib, and prematurely wise, of which newsboys are made. At sight of her books the little fellow broke out in great delight. “ Oh, say; do you know all them? Is they picters in em? I’m hefty on the picter but precious slow an the read. A-b ab ’s a’most as much of it, and that an’t readi'. Who ever see a a-b ab? ” This led, a few weeks later, to a second interview. He had been attending the public school, and Spoke in this way: “ Them schools now. W’at ’s the good on ’em? I comes in late. ‘ Hookey,’ says a little fella. ‘ Whar ye been? ’ says the boss. ‘ Sell’n’ pape’s,’ says I. ‘ You lie! ’ says he; an’ then he larrups me. An’ I don’t learn nothin’. Buky-buck-et, bucket. I done been in that buky-buck-et, bucket more ’n a week. Ef a boy’s lazy, we has to wait until the boss humps him up. That’s w’at’s the matter with Hannah. I say; give ye dollar a week to teach me o’ evenin’s. Mammy says so. Here ’s the stamps,” and be shows his ragged roll. It was agreed to, and that and the work thrown into her hands by the landlady gave Katy a start. She began to think again of recovering her lost fortune, and doing so, referred to the card of Brown & Lorn.

It cost an effort for the shy young girl to do what the reader would have done without thought; that is, to enter the office of Brown & Lorn. There was no one present but a stout old country gentleman, who saluted her at once.

“ Come to see Josh, I reckon. Josh is my son; a reg’lar hoss lawyer o’ the best breed, ’f I do say it. D’ ye know, ma’am, that fellow was n’t fittin’ for nothin’ on a farm? He mout put a plow in right eend, but that furrer 'd be curly as a pig’s tail. He rooted up a field o’ sproutin’ corn wuss ’n a drove o’ shotes; so I let him come to town fur to be a lawyer, an’ he ’s a h—11 of a one. Yes’m, that’s the best sort. That thar boy has caught jedges, regular hoss jedges w’at ’s been a-buckin’ at the law forty year, in rye-dick-less mistakes; police jedges, smart as the thieves therselves; suckit cou’t jedges an’ jedges o’ the cou’t of appeals; high larnt men, as is sowed in the law an’ growed in the law, reg’lar seedlin’s ’s I say, — caught ’em in low-down mistakes; the lowest, wo’st so’t o’ mistakes.”

“ Yes,” said Katy, not very favorably impressed by this bragging.

“ Y^es, hoss — ma’am, I mean,” he continued; “yes ’m, caught'em in it; high larnt men; jedges as is growed in the law, an’ don’t know nothin’ but law. I’m dam ef that boy I jes’ grafted in, ’s I may say, an’t cotched them jedges in low-down mistakes.”

Katy was beginning to be amused, in spite of her nervousness, and indicated her attention.

“ Yes, hoss — ma’am, I mean. Lem me tell ye. Ther’ was a client o’ his’n, Josh’s, was nailed for murder. The jedge of suckit. he condemns him; that’s hangin’, ye know. Josh ’lowed the jedge had done made a leetle mistake. He riz right up and p’inted it out to the cou’t, cool an’ easy; jes’ a-layin’ of hisself back an’ a-comin’ down the quarter, not a-frettin’ a bit. I heered it myself, an’ I tole Susan, my wife, that very night. Yes’m. Josh p’inted it out plain, jes’ stood up an’ sassed the cou’t like a little man. D’ ye b’lieve me? That thar jedge could n’t see it. My wife Susan ’lowed ’t was jes’ one o’ my braggin’ lies, ’bout Josh’s bein’ smarter’n the jedges. No; he could n't see it, an’ he been a-buckin’ at the law, head on, nigh twenty year, come grass. Well, Josh, he tuk it up. That’s to say, he ’pealed the case; an’ them cou't appealers, reg’lar hoss jedges, seedlin’s all, an’ ne’er a graft among ’em, made that same dern mistake; an’ Josh cotched ’em all in it. I call that right piert for a boy as can’t plow a straight furrer.”

“ But what became of your son’s client? ” asked Katy, — “ the murderer? ”

The old fellow scratched his head, as if to make out if that was a part of the ease, and then added slowly, “ Well, they hanged him; all along o’ that ridickless mistake, I reckon; but here ’s Josh, ma’am. I ’low he can tell ye.”

A foxy-faced young fellow, with lively brown eyes, burst into the room as if pursued. A great wad of tobacco disfigured his mobile mouth, which he first spat carefully into his hand, and then threw into the grate. He nodded to his new client, and then turned on a tigerish fellow in just that finery which sloughs off into penitentiary uniform, who had slouched in, half in bravado, half in shame, and said sharply, —

“ For the old market-woman’s sake. Bob, I have given bail for your appearance. I know you, and that you don't care a snap for me or the bond; but if you are not up to time, mind you, I ‘11 not trouble the law. I ’ll shoot you like a dog, wherever I find you. That will do.”

The fellow growled something about “ not a-goin’ to sour on a friend, but he did n’t fear no shootin’ o’ nobody; two could play at that,” and so went out. Then the old man introduced Katy, and added, in guttural intended for a whisper, “ Look sharp, Josh. She’s the livin’ picter o’ your sister Melissey, an' you ’ll do your level best for her, long o’ the old woman at home, and the little gal a-lyin’ under the verbeny-bed.”With that, he blew his nose like a trumpet, and “ ’lowed he’d fetch a walk to see if the hay’s done sold.”

Katy had some difficulty in commencing. The whole appearance of things. unlike the grave respectability of Groth & Son’s office, grated on her. The story, the tobacco, the coarse client, the roughness of the circumstances, made her feel that she had made a mistake. But in the midst of her hesitation the other partner entered, and as his face lighted up with recognition, Katy felt more assured, and told the plain story of her lost fortune. Mr. Lorn’s face grew grave as she proceeded, and, at the conclusion, he asked time. Let us note that his partner pronounced Overdo to be a “ blubber-headed swindler,” and wanted to take out a warrant at once; but the other was more skilled in civil proceedings. These are notes of the brief of the case he submitted to his new client, a few days later: —

In applying for the benefit of the act, the agent had omitted Katy Keith’s name from the schedule, or list of creditors; consequently no notice of the proceedings had been served upon her. If the omission had been in willful fraud, the court, on proof of the fact, could annul the certificate. But the law devolves that difficult proof upon the creditor. Failing that, the bankrupt’s certificate operates as a complete discharge of existing liabilities. In effect, it made the unsuspecting girl’s confidence in her grandfather’s agent a penal offense, attended with forfeiture of the debt. That was Judge Groth’s view of the case, and it may be that of the legal reader.

But Katy Keith’s new adviser argued differently. Every judgment, civil or criminal, presupposes the presence of the parties in court, and that presence can only be brought about by legal notice. The bankrupt’s petition institutes an action in equity forms, and the suit is governed by fixed principles of law. It could not be asserted that Miss Keith was by actual or legal notice, in person or by attorney, in court in this suit in bankruptcy. It was the petitioner’s act or omission that deprived her of the notice which the law so jealously defends as her right, and not any neglect or want of due diligence on her part in obeying it.

Certainly, said Mr. Lorn, the decree in such a case binds all parties thereto, and covers all property attached or surrendered. There is no fraud alleged and provable, whereby the discharge may be annulled; it must be held good to cover the claims and property established of record. But it does not bind those who are not parties to the suit, nor does it pretend to bind them. If Miss Keith, after a time, lost her right, upon discovery, to come upon the distributees of the bankrupt’s assets for her pro rata, there remains her existing legal remedy in personam against the agent and his acquisitions subsequent to the bankruptcy. The bankrupt’s certificate of discharge did not apply to her, innocently and without laches no party to the action. She was free to pursue her remedy in the State courts of law, and this suit the firm of Brown & Lorn, on a contingent fee, were willing to undertake. The meaning of this term was explained to her, greatly to Katy’s satisfaction, as she had secretly grieved over the cost of proceedings she was about to institute.

Our brave little woman was very proud of having set this machinery in motion all by her small self, and had great confidence in her young counselor. He would win her cause, and acquire great distinction for defending the orphan, perhaps be early promoted to a judgeship; for this simple girl had no other thought than that all citizens were actively searching for the most liberal and high-minded men to fill such responsible positions — which is, perhaps, the most singular opinion held by this eccentric young lady.

With that premised, let us look upon the friends she gathered around her in her home over the fancy and trimming store; and first, of course, her lover, Earl Groth. She sits at the window with bright pieces of colored silk about her. Earl sits by, sulky and querulous, as he has been ever since she lost her fortune. At length he breaks out pettishly, —

“ I don’t think you care a cent. I don’t believe you have heard a word.”

“ Five, six, seven,” says Katy counting softly, and then aloud, “ Oh yes; you said ‘care a cent;’ seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven. I’ve dropped one, and I don’t know where.”

“ I never saw such a girl,” says her lover; “ I’ve been trying all morning to get you to say ’ ’ —

“ And you don’t match a bit,” says Katy, rebuking in an under-tone the illsuited shades of silk.

“ I thought I was as secure of your heart as you are of mine,” adds he in a vexed tone.

“ I really must have dropped it, though,” cries Katy, looking around, " ‘ I know I had twelve and — Let me look under the chair. Ah, there you are, all mussed up. Well, an’t you sure of it? ” to Earl, at last.

“ You won’t talk, or hardly let me touch you, or hold your hand, Katy, as you used to,” complains the lover.

“ There! the floss is gone! ” she exclaims. “ Did I ever! No; here it is. Well, there! but you must give it right back to me,” and she pokes out her little needle-scarred finger-tips, as if they were the scissors or a penknife; “ but you must give it right straight back. I am using it — all — the — time,” the last very slowly, for she is comparing the shades of silk held at arms-length, with her head cunningly to one side, as she speaks. The reader knows one cannot compare colors without that, but think of Earl! To clasp the soft, shy fingers under the cardtable, or to press the little pink palm as you walk from church under the dusky shadows, is surely sweet; but to have the negligent little hand thrust at you like a chip! Earl angrily rejects the offering, and she does not even notice the rejection. She takes back that useful little hand, and puts it to work, quietly, unconscious of the rising of the waters. He gets loud and vehement, expostulatory, and she explains, the needle still slipping with snaky glitter through the bright leaves of silk : —

“ Now, Earl, how can you say that? Are we not working, me and Mr. Lorn ? You know you said you could not support me and mamma both, so we must win this case. You don’t study it, like I do. I suppose you don’t even know the petition comes first, and then a summons which means. Come and answer; and so he does answer, or demurs. I should think both. Me and Mr. Lorn know all about it, but you must not hurry us; positively you must not. Law must be cooked very slowly, you know.”

“ Me and Mr. Lorn indeed! ” mimics he. “ I expect you know as much as he does. The governor says it never will come to anything. Even Ben just plays with the case, and trips up your Mr. Lorn, every motion day.”

“ All,” says Katy, in perfect good-humor and satisfaction, and like a pretty, green-coated parrot, “ Ben is very safe on a plain note of hand, but for a thing like this ” — and she shakes her head, as if nothing less than Charles O'Connor, Caleb Cushing, or Mr. Lorn and self were equal to it.

It was no doubt a foolish fancy of the simple little miss, but the thought that in her suit she was partly doing something for Earl which he could not do for himself, was perhaps the only tie of real interest remaining to her between them. This unsatisfactory interview was the last for months; for the commercial traveler had his business engagements to fill. Ben Groth remained on guard. Poor Ben, — the self-instituted watch over the fruit he so dearly coveted for himself, and yet which he was never to taste! He was in love with Katy too. How could he help it, seeing how good and cheerful she was in her adversity? and he was angry as well as jealous at his brother’s cowardly procrastination. He would have married Katy, if he could, and a dozen mothers-in-law, today, while Earl shilly-shallied, and those confounded shysters, Brown & Lorn, hung about her so. He did not cease to deride them to Katy, which, take it altogether, was a more stupid policy than even his brother’s dilatory wooing.

The shysters were certainly becoming attentive; especially Brown. This was an ingenious young professional, who never read a book, never drew a plea, and never made a speech. Yet he would “ talk to the judge about it,” talk to the commonwealth’s attorney, gossip with juries; and so contrived a considerable success in police and criminal business. His female acquaintance, heretofore, had been more limited than select, and, as he confessed be had not been in church since he came to the city, Katy must needs take him. But she was almost sorry for it. For, though awed at first by the novel solemnity, and the grand music, that soon wore off. He fidgeted; he scrawled notes to Katy with the stub of a pencil in the hymn - book. Repressed in that, he winked and made faces at the row of negroes on the back benches, till they exhibited one glittering row of ivories. Caught in the act, he made such a sudden assumption of sombre gravity that Katy struggled with a laugh, and the blacks te-he’d right out.

He took Katy and her mother to visit liis parents, plain, simple country people, well to do in a sufficient humble way, and the guests were welcomed with hearty hospitality. The mother took Katy to that altar under the verbenabed where the dear, good daughter lay, and told her simple story — a story oh! how common. The child better than other children, and brighter, and as one set apart for holier things. As she concluded, she took Katy in her arms and told her she was like her, for all the difference of hair and eyes. No doubt it was true. There are visible resemblances in things spiritual, and of everything that was good this young woman in some way reminded people.

William Angus Lorn was not so frequent a visitor as his partner, and yet he was, perhaps, more inwardly and essentially moved by the sweet patience he saw, than his more mercurial friend. He had returned to his native city after the war, to find everything changed. Many gallant fellows had fallen, but their sweethearts married, and the world smoothed over them. Nothing lies so lightly on earth’s bosom as its dead. He visited law-offices where he used to discuss Tennyson, Longfellow, and The Professor at the Breakfast-Table. They were debating the validity of negro testimony in the courts of law. The college had been a hospital and was now a shell; the sweet old humanities were dead. The feeling seemed to be, The old world is going to pieces, but it will last our day, and there is nothing to do but to make money. At church, lie was told the Lord’s hand was in the war, and religious service seemed generally busy about Cæsar’s business. He had welcomed peace, even at the terrible price he thought that his section had paid, and this faithless, irreligious fever was that civil life he had longed for. It hurt him; for he knew his own Christian morality had been sadly wounded in the storms of four years’ war. He had come home to be refreshed and reinvigorated by that old belief he had received in the old log church. He saw no evidence of such faith about him. No one believes, but every one believes he believes, because he acquiesces. That is the curse of it. There is hope in doubt. An atheist or an infidel is not passive; his mind is awake. But what shall be said of him who believes no more than the infidel believes, yet is so wrapped up in his besotted confidence, that he hears nothing, cares nothing, trusts nothing?

Some such thoughts pass through the young man’s mind as he sits with Katy Keith in church, admiring her simple faith and single, unsullied devotion. He knows her pure soul is at peace in communion with higher things, which he may not approach, and that she will go back to her daily toil, refreshed by an undying hope. It humbles him to think she believes implicitly all the man yonder in the velvet-cushioned pulpit utters, while he believes nothing or almost nothing, and almost scorns it and himself. “No minister,” he says bitterly, “ does his work right who assumes vital truths as premises. It is better to question, to awake the sleeper to doubt, than to leave him to sleep; and for the rest — who cares for all t lie empty thunders of the Vatican? ”

Some of these thoughts he expresses as they walk quietly home, and she is distressed but hopeful. " Pray, only pray,” she says. “ Man cannot help you; God will.”

“ Pray,” he says. “ Yes, if I can. I can frame phrases of entreaty, but the only stir. of vitality within me is the consciousness that it is a lie.”

Still she says, “ Pray; there is much done by prayer: Lord, help thou mine unbelief.” And she too will pray for this poor, erring soul, sick of the world and yet not well toward heaven.

Was he entirely sincere in all this? A great satirist of the age has said that oftenest a mean motive lurks at the bottom of a noble act. May we not as well hope that as often a generous emotion may be at the prompting of a seemingly selfish act? That it was pleasing to excite his kindly listener’s interest we need not doubt; but the pain of an empty longing for a better faith induced the thought.

It pleased Katy very much when her pastor, Mr. Jargony, called while the young lawyer was visiting her, for she believed he would remove those painful doubts. This was the one great blunder Katy made in that period of trial, and it cost her severely. Set a polemic at an honest doubter, and the chances are you will make a heathen. Controversy is provoked; arguments to vindicate, not to elucidate, are hunted up, and vague disbelief becomes pronounced rebellion.

These, therefore, were the associations and influences, the aids and discouragements, that surrounded the young girl when she entered upon her famous battle to recover her property. But to treat of the steps therein deserves a separate chapter.

III.

HER CHAMPION PLAYS AND WINS. GIVE US THIS DAY OUR DAILY BREAD,

IF Brown & Lorn, attorneys at law, had any vague ideas that Groth & Son would not act vigorously in defense of the agent’s interests, they were soon dispossessed of them. The unusual course of proceeding against a bankrupt in the State court of common pleas had rather surprised the old lawyer. Yet, while he pooh-poohed it, he felt that a popularlyelected judge might look at the case very differently from the Federal court, sitting in bankruptcy to review its own proceedings. When Mr. Lorn, therefore, proposed an agreed case, that is, a case in which litigants submit acknowledged facts to legal judgment, it was roughly rejected. " We deny that your client has any case,” said the judge. “ Prove that first, and then we will talk about adjudication.”

Then followed a system of adroit legal procrastination, in which the older firm had the advantage of experience and position. One of the first and simplest things a lawyer learns is the art of baffling his adversary by delays, and he lays it aside only with the profession. A dilatory motion for plausible cause is always easy to concoct and often difficult to resist; and this was the present tactics of the defense.

But other facts were developed as Brown & Lorn prosecuted their necessary inquiries, showing the practical wisdom of the old lawyer’s repugnance to accepting a brief in the case. John Overdo, Esq., with irreproachable bank credit, was perfectly and imperviously law proof. He never let a note go to protest, and he never paid a debt unsecured by that sort of evidence. Ko execution could penetrate to those secret recesses where he stored his ample gains. If Brown & Lorn were presented with a judgment, they would be scarcely nearer any practical result than before.

It would he tedious to enter into the minute details of a suit at law. Mr. Overdo was one of those cautious clients who do not confide entirely in counsel. When he learned that Miss Keith and her mother were lodging with the Konigratz, and that the suit was actually commenced, some facts in his knowledge made him think it advisable to break that household up. In pursuance of this policy lie devised a plan by which he thought it could be accomplished, and a safe investment be secured at the same time. Ben Groth learned the contemplated act, and, not connecting it with the case of Keith v. Overdo, gave Katy warning. It was no less than the purchase and immediate possession of the Konigratz building. Ben brought this news as likely to transpire in a day or two, and added that a cottage of his father’s was now vacant, to which the two women were welcome at a moderate rent.

It put Katy in a flutter, and as soon as he was gone she hastened to confer with her landlady. “Holy Virgin!” exclaimed the woman; “and did I dream three nights running of losing the front door key for nothing? Lauf, Taddy, and bring me the lawyer so quick as never was.”

When Mr. Lorn arrived, he could only say the landlord had a perfect right to sell, and give possession at the expiration of Mrs. Konigratz’s lease, which was now at hand. Of that he had already warned the woman. But his keenest questioning was over the matter of a purchase by Overdo. He said he must learn all the facts quietly, and even employed Taddy Konigratz to assist him. Let us see what he meant by this and what he made of it.

A day later the scene is in the clerk’s office of the county court. Present, John Overdo, Esq., Judge Groth, Mr. Schlater, who is the present owner of the fancy and trimming store premises, his wife, and Mr. Padoun, a stranger to us. The lady sits a little apart, and there are clerks recording and copying, and a stray lawyer or two examining deeds and wills; but nothing of Brown & Lorn. A deputy sheriff, deep in the morning paper, sits near the four gentlemen, who are lively and talkative.

“ Five thousand six hundred and seventy-two dollars and sixteen cents,” remarks Mr. Padoun to the agent. “I have brought the cash, as you preferred it. Stop; here is the cent. That makes it even, if you will give me a receipt,” ami he tenders the money.

The deputy sheriff is not looking at his paper now, but at the money; money in a large, crisp roll is pleasant to look at.

“ Pay it into Groth’s hands,” says Overdo, briskly. “I don’t want to touch it; but here is your receipt as soon as it is counted.”

“ Mr. Schlater,” remarks the judge as he carelessly takes the money, “ your wife must sign her release before the clerk, and not in your presence. By that time I will have the money counted and ready for you.”

This makes the transaction plain. The money paid by Mr. Padoun goes with instantaneous possession through Overdo’s hands to Schlater for the Konigratz property. As the judge say’s “ All right,” Overdo, like a playful elephant, punches Padoun in the side and hands him the receipt. The judge is looking at Schlater, who is approaching with the deed, when the deputy sheriff taps him lightly on the shoulder, lays one hand on the money, and with the other presents a square slip of paper partly written, partly printed. “Five thousand, six, seventy-two, sixteen. I ’ll take the chips if you please.” He says it pleasantly, and draws the money out of the judge’s nerveless fingers.

“The devil!” exclaims Groth, as if he saw the very thing and knew it at once, as he stares at the square of paper.

“ What in the —— do you mean? ” thunders Overdo, frightened out of his obese playfulness.

“ Oh, nothing,” says the deputy, carelessly turning the money over his thumb; “ only a little attachment in the suit of Keith v. Overdo, levying on funds of the defendant in possession of Fungus Groth, Esq.,” and he nods and turns away, and in ten minutes looks as if he had forgotten the whole affair.

“ Only a little attachment,” etc. Why, it locks up Katy’s fortune secure in the treasury vaults of the court, for her. Overdo looks more intensely himself; not an exaggerated boy, but an exaggerated baby. Judge Groth looks like old John Willett after the rioters left him. Schlater looks a little foolish, too, but at the sight of the others’ faces bursts into a laugh, tucks his wife under his arm, and goes out laughing and explaining to that lady, who is simply amazed.

The proceeding was and is quite common. A statutory provision enables a party suspecting his adversary of intention to avoid judgment or conceal his property, upon affidavit, to have an attachment. Of this Overdo was quite aware, and had laid his plans with his usual address but not his usual luck. Perhaps he had grown careless from long impunity; perhaps he had never attempted such a flank movement before two young lawyers smitten with their client. Certainly he had never been so closely watched. For who would suspect a mite of a newsboy who hung about his place of business all day with pricked ears and sharp eyes, of such a design?

The case was tumbled upside down. It only remained to be seen if Lorn could hold it there. The struggle was not for the plaintiff to recover, but for Overdo to quash the attachment, or, failing that, for the defense to press the main suit to a successful issue. All that adroit dilatory tactics was overthrown. Every interest of the defendant favored immediate disposal of the attachment.

Judge Groth was sure it could not hold; was loud that it should not hold. He would quash it like an egg-shell; and he clenched his huge fist as if he already crushed Katy’s puny efforts to recover her debt. He roared about it as lions of that tribe do. As he could not. well blast and damnify a young girl, the orphan daughter of his late dear friend and patron, he swore he would “ take it out ” of her attorney — " that pettifogging rascal who counseled such extraordinary proceedings against one of the first business men of the city; a man who handled a million yearly! ”

There was something leonine about Judge Groth, and he was quite capable of skinning a succulent young attorney, not yet become pachydermatous at the law; and he did it now. Rather roughly to be sure, but the more thoroughly on that account. He distinguished his client as “ proverbial for business integrity in a city, the business character of whose merchants was proverbial.” He stigmatized the “ shameful iniquity ” that “ entrapped a confiding client, a girl, a child, into impeaching the honor of such a man; one disposed to be her friend,” as he, Judge Groth, laying his hand over his ventricles, avouched. He scouted and scarified the image of such au attorney, and kicked him down like a wooden Dagon.

The reporters heard of the excoriation, and came bustling in from the lukewarm insipidities of the police court, and Lorn nerved himself not to interrupt the torrent of abuse, or to claim the protection of the court. But it was hard to bear, those rough claws tearing the flesh, and coarse jaws cracking the bones of his tender, legal frame, yet in the sap and milk of youth. Before the judge concluded, Lorn had settled his revenge. He would take this roaring lion by the beard, and by his very manhood, cudgel it into decency and good behavior; and by and by it was over and they went into the evidence.

It was pretty soon apparent that a great many people did not share in Judge Groth’s good opinion of his client. Marshals, sheriffs, deputies, constables, deputy constables, and a cloud of exofficials who had held those useful offices, were examined, and they all agreed in this. Every man with sense enough to walk out of a shower of rain knew John Overdo had money and property; but no officer had been found adroit enough to lay the salt of an execution on that nimble bird’s tail. He was impregnable; as incapable of legal coercion as the encompassing air. Then followed the suspicious circumstances of the intended purchase; the surreptitious character of the payment; the cautious refusal to touch the money; and the scroll of the deed was produced, showing an allegation in form that the money was paid by Mrs. Overdo. Of this fact there was no other evidence, and Mr. Padoun swore positively that the cash lie paid was to Overdo alone, and Overdo’s receipt in his own name confirmed it. John Overdo, Esq., went into one end of that suit a portly gentleman in the clean linens of a fair average repute; he came out at the other as ragged a beggar as Lazarus in the painted cloth. Judge Groth was astonished at the scarecrow he made, and damned his client under his breath freely. The irreproachable bank credit had been a pitfall into which the judge, in his opinion of his client, had tumbled. He was not out yet. His turn was to come. Mr. Lorn owed a debt, and he paid it.

The ease did not need argument; the evidence had won it. But Mr. Lorn, modestly, would say a few words to the point. He was distressingly civil, studiously choice in his language; but by the side of every shift and trick of the client exposed by the evidence, he drew the inference of a legal adviser, counseling, watching, approving. The presumption was irresistible. Of course it was so; and as he unraveled the skein the audience saw a great lawyer selling his fame and talents to cover shameful, sordid iniquities. He used no name, but every listener fixed on Judge Groth until the judge felt that every breath in the crowded room called him scoundrel and accomplice. There was a cruel affectation of impartiality in this reference to the candor of the hearers’ judgment, which left no choice but to condemn. It seemed to be the facts and not the speaker’s presentation of them that made the old lawyer look base; even baser than his client, base as he was. But at the close, when her counsel came to Katy’s simple story of trust betrayed, the girl, the child’s humble petition for help from her father’s friend, and the refusal because that friend was bought and paid to crush her claim, and gave the adroit arts of discouragement and false promise by which that work was done; then indeed he burst into fierce, whispered invective that stirred the hushed and crowded room, and named Judge Groth as the vile dealer in all this shameless treachery and fraud. The cowed bully of the bar whimpered and claimed the protection of the court. It was not needed; the speech was ended. If it was art, it was that passion of art which men call eloquence. It is given to all professional speakers to make one great or good speech. This was Will Lorn’s best effort; the most terrible and classic chastisement inflicted in that court.

Judge Groth struggled to his feet and was speaking. He said nothing the reader would care to hear. The man was stunned and bewildered, though habit and professional reputation kept him up. He felt that the attachment was clenched and his case terribly prejudiced.

There was some curiosity among those who heard the speeches, to see the reports of them next day. As Brown picked his way over police reports and items, he gave a shout and tossed the paper to Lorn, with “ Here, read that; read it aloud; ” and Lorn did, with a grimace, Brown thrusting his long arms under his partner’s arms and doing the gesticulating: —

A SCENE IN COURT. — The bar and attendants were much entertained yesterday at the excoriation administered on a junior member of the shyster order (“ That’s you,” interpolated Brown) by that forensic Boanerges, Judge Groth, Esq. The casus belli was a perversion of the statute to the scandal of the business character of our esteemed fellowcitizen John Overdo, Esq., the head of many local charities. We trust the rebuke will have its effect in correcting a licentiousness in legal proceedings disgraceful to the profession.

It in no way impaired the influence of this journal that it was conducted on the avowed principle that the Fourth Estate is no moral or public institution, but a mere private enterprise in trade, for the behoof of stockholders, and that the above notice probably emanated from that patron of “ local charities,” John Overdo, Esq. The whole body was diseased, and the press suffered in common.

But John Overdo, defeated in his effort and weakened in his unrighteous hold upon Katy’s fortune, became more desperately earnest in his resolution to break up Katy’s association with the family of the German Konigratz. Certainly the flat-hatted Ludwig, the snubbed and beaten of his eccentric dame, was, apparently, as little to be feared as any worm on this footstool. Yet Ludwig Konigratz was the terror and nightmare of the agent’s life. He applied to an influential friend who was cognizant of the cause of his curious dread, and that friend scouted at it; but at the agent’s earnest solicitation, and perhaps for reasons of his own, “to prevent scandal,” he used his influence, and the Konigratz family were surprised, the day after the newspaper notice, to learn that the beery Ludwig was appointed to some small railroad agency in a neighboring State, with orders to go at once. It was the breaking up of Katy’s pleasant associations. Konigratz went, and his family was to follow in a week. It was curious to observe how the man, even in his own family, rose in respect by this appointment. Even Taddy, habitually the most unfilial critic of his father, had a good word to say of him, and that word startled Katy with hints of a discovery that agitated her, and made her send for her lawyers.

“I tell you, my dad is hunky,” said the boy in his usual slang. “ Ther’ an’t none on ’em teches him when his coppers is hot. Ef it was a drunk world he 'd be king on it. Ye jes’ orto heered him tell how he screwed ole Overdo into a-givin’ o’ mammy these yer premises. Ye see Overdo, he’d done bilked some gal or ’notlier oaten $5500, and dad, he knowed it. He ’lowed if Overdo didn’t ante up, he’d find out the gal an’ h’ist old bladder-head higher 'n a kite, an’ then Overdo, he jes’ wilted.”

Unluckily the partners were not in, aud, from the note, Mr. Lorn did not understand what was wanting. Wishing to avoid the appearance of seeking thanks on his late effort, he turned over the note and business to Brown, who willingly undertook it. The affair was soon dispatched by an interview with Taddy and his mother. The information was meagre enough. Mr. Konigratz had overheard and witnessed the payment of money of Miss Keith to another gentleman who wore a blue dresscoat with brass buttons; but the name of this person was unknown. How had it happened that neither she nor her husband had recognized the young girl’s name in Katy Keith’s? Because, in the family, Katy’s name, taken from her trunks, was given the German pronunciation — Kyte, and there was nothing in the sound to connect her with the name and circumstance attending an indefinite Miss Keet. Mrs. Konigratz undertook to get all the circumstances from her husband, and there was ample time, the case having already gone over to the next term. But this settled, there came another trial to the young woman. She could not fail to know that Mr. Brown loved her. He was just the sort of man never to conceal such a feeling, and Mrs. Konigratz having been called to the shop, there in the little back room he made his declaration in form.

“ Oh! Mr. Brown! ” she said in great distress, “ what am I to say to you? I owe you and Mr. Lorn so much, and I must seem so ungrateful. But indeed, indeed I am not worthy of you, and I have been engaged to—to Mr. Earl Groth, oh! ever so long.”

“ What! that old cock’s — I beg pardon, Judge Groth’s son? oh well, that alters matters. Don’t distress yourself; no doubt I will get on. I an’t a-going to lie about it, and say it don’t hurt; but I ’ll get on. Oh yes, don’t distress yourself; and I’ll stand by you like a brick. Well, good-by; I guess I’d better toddle. Oh yes, we ’ll stand by you for what’s up. Don’t distress yourself about me; I ’ll get on. Good-by,” and he went away, not to return again, and I am sorry to say sought a remedy for his disappointment that brought him into very serious trouble.

But the severity of all these changes fell heaviest on Katy and her mother. With all her prudence, her little stock of money was trenched into. The widow especially, habituated to abundance, could not be brought to economize in little wants, or to know the importance of it. The money leaked out, in spite of all Katy could do; Mr. Lorn did not call the week they remained at Mrs. Konigratz’s, and after that, Katy seemed to be lost to him in the big city. They occupied a close little room next to the roof in a common boarding-house, and were treated with that indifferent disrespect such poorer boarders receive. They felt timidly, or were made to feel it, that they were an encumbrance in the poor lodgings for which they paid extravagantly, and yet they had no other resource. Katy’s bettered prospects in the suit had not helped her or her mother.

At this place, the Rev. Mr. Jargony found them. This good though bigoted man had come to say that it was the season for application for positions in the public schools. It did not make his visit seem kinder because he gave his usual warning against her friend Mr. Lorn, “ who did not believe in the Bible.” Once, when Mr. Lorn was an habitual visitor, Katy heard these warnings with indifference; but now that he came no more, it hurt her. She clung to the tie of influence she still held over the young man. He had promised her “ never to drink,” and she thought of that promise, and believed him. It was a sort of link between the two that her influence was over him though absent, and it comforted and pleased her, perhaps more than it ought, considering her engagement to Earl Groth.

But the immediate duty was preparation for the examination. Mr. Jargony had furnished her a list of text-books. Now it was that she learned the defects in her education. Katy had been educated by the old method. She knew French, a little Latin, music, drawing, painting in water-colors, embroidery, etc. She knew arithmetic, and could multiply or divide 2½ by 3¼. She even knew algebra as ladies do —by sight. But she was woefully deficient. She did not know what her bones were made of; not in the least. They might have been anybody’s bones, or no bones at all, mere chalk and gypsum, for all she knew. She did not know she was burning herself up in breathing, or she might have stopped that expensive habit of cremation; and as for sugar and starch, her knowledge of those abstruse subjects was limited to the sugarbowl, and her cuffs and collars. Katy, however, had been grounded in chemistry and physics, and soon mastered the little shop-made books and was ready for her examination.

The committee of examination and control sit in the superintendent’s office adjoining the large room in which the written examinations proceeded. There is the superintendent, Dr. Cutts, and Messrs. Shuffle and Deal. The young doctor has taken a trusteeship to increase his acquaintance, not from any interest in education.

Katy comes in with her neat paper of work, and they put on a sudden appearance of gravity. She hands it to the Superintendent, and returns for her bonnet and shawl, for she is done. While she is out the superintendent, the only competent judge there, looks at it and exclaims with honest admiration: —

“ It is very neat and all correct; she may he skittish, but she’s smart and handy.”

Then Katy returns. She has to pass through that room. Mr. Deal stops her. Mr. Deal has two or three little catch questions he puts at applicants, and governs his vote and influence accordingly. The written examination is a mere form.

“ Er —ah — see here, my gal: s’posin’ a man has—er—ah—thirteen hosses; thirteen hosses. He wants fur to divide ’em among his three boys, Jeemes, John, and Alford. No, Alford ’s in t’other question — Jeemes, John, and Horry. He’s to give Jim a half, Jack a third, and Horry a quarter. How ’s he to be a-doin’ of it and not cut nary boss ? ”

Poor Katy! She is in a flush and tremor. Her heart sinks with disappointment, for she thought it all over. Now comes this which she feels, intuitively, is to be the real test.

“ He cannot divide thirteen in that way,” she says hesitatingly. “ He can divide twelve in that proportion,” she adds after thinking, “ and the parts will make thirteen. Thirteen itself will not divide into those parts.”

“ So he can’t divide ’em, can’t he? ” says the wretch, exulting over her supposed failure. “ You better say you can’t, my gal; and you think yourself fittin’ to be a teacher.”

If poor little Katy had answered in numbers all would have been well; but her caution overshot the trustees’ small wits. In her mortification she pulls down her veil to hide the rising tears, and hurries out, heedless of Mr. Beal’s important question about the “ bit caliker.” Of course her application failed. When local politicians use the trusteeships as an introduction to city offices, what other result is to be expected? or why see any mystery in the failure of public-school systems in the South?

On her way home she passed a brilliant drinking saloon, and was startled by an oath in a familiar voice. Mr. Lorn was coming out of that place munching a cracker. It came upon her in her distress, to complete her humiliation. The one person who had seemed to understand and to sympathize with her had broken his promise. There could be no more confidence between them. Poor little Katy!

Her mother saw her distress, and ascribed it to her failure. Then gently as she could, she advised her daughter to give up the vain struggle; to accept the love of some of the young men offered to her, and a much-needed home and protector.

Do not blame the mother for not understanding her daughter’s nature. Katy was mortal like ourselves, and it is a part of the individualism of this, our clayey nature, to live in dark areas of isolation. Through these friendship or love may send a slender ray, or anger or ill-will momently reveal that inner self in the cocoon it prepares. But in this world the spirit forever toils alone, like that worm weaving with industrious but lonely art the sacred wings that shall bear it in that world of full knowledge and Companionship. Who can say that the mother who bore him, or the wife who sleeps on his bosom, knows all the various shades of feeling that agitate his life? The vital law of individual existence is solitude, and the passionate yearning of the heart for that full knowledge of one another, we call love.

But the germ in the mother’s mind bore fruit, bitter enough to Katy’s lips. Returning from a weary search for employment, she found Ben Groth in the little skyloft room. He sat low down in his chair, his great feet spread out, supporting his head on his hands with elbows on his knees. It was not a pretty or a pleasant sight, and Katy struggled with her own discomposure to rouse him. He only said he “ had had a row at home,” and sat as before. Sympathy in such a case is a delicate duty, but Katy said, —

“ You are so good, Ben, I cannot think you have done wrong, and so honorable that if you have, you will be the first to acknowledge it.”

“ Do you think so? ” said he. “ Do you like me, Katy? In fact, it was all about you.”

“ About me! ” said she, shrinking at the thought.

“ Yes, about taking up your suit; ” and then he spoke. He offered to undertake her case, if she would marry him. “ It will cost me my partnership,” said he. “ I don’t mind that, and I don’t blame father. Will you have me Katy? I don’t mind asking you before her, now.”

“ You have my approval,” said the widow, who had perhaps brought this about, and she was rising to go when Katy stopped her.

“ Stay, mamma,” said she; “ I could not be the cause of division between you and yours, Ben, and I could not marry you because I do not love vou well enough. If I did, I would willingly give up my poor little case fur you ; but I do not.”

That was her answer, and so another good friend fell off from them, and came no more.

In all this time she found no steady occupation of any kind. She had gone the round of her little feminine accomplishments, and failed. Then finding the occupations of her sex monopolized, she undertook a brave thing: to find employment in some lighter duties usually retained by the other. She went about it systematically. She would go up one side of a business street and down the other, applying at every door. There is something inexpressibly touching to me in the picture of this childwoman soliciting help from that harsh, sordid society. I see her as she enters each place of business among crowds of men, trembling with that piteous embarrassment that made it an actual and physical pain, with her, to speak to a stranger. She lifts up that child-like face and presents her poor little petition: “ If you please, sir, have you any work a young woman could do? I write a good hand; that is my writing, sir,” and she offers a poor little text of copy-book morality, so different in its humble precepts from the hut, grasping, covetous life around her. Sometimes she adds, “ I would try very hard to please you, sir,” but oftener a smothered sob chokes the utterance. Some answered kindly, some roughly, and a few coarsely. Given, a helpless, pretty girl and a vulgar, beastly man of means, and the equation is easily solved. But her ignorance prevents offense. She walks over the burning plowshares unscathed, protected by her virgin purity. Yet for her mother’s sake, and because it was a part of her sweet nature, she kept her cheerfulness through it all, and when you addressed her, that kind face was always turned to you with the same quiet smile. Surely this world does not know its greatest martyrs.

But with this sketch of her trials, let us return to the case and the lost fortune.

Will Wallace Harney.