It is a week since the disastrous day. Gilead Beck has sold the works of art with which he intended to found his Grand National Collection; he has torn up his great schemes for a National Theatre, a Grand National Paper; he has ceased to think, for the delectation of the Golden Butterfly, about improving the human race. His gratitude to that prodigy of Nature has so far cooled that he now considers it more in the light of a capricious sprite, a sort of Robin Good-fellow, than as a benefactor. He has also changed his views as to the construction of the round earth, and all that is therein. Ile, he says, may be found by other lucky adventures; but Ile is not to be depended on for a permanence. He would now recommend those who strike Ile to make their Pile as quickly as may be, and devote all their energies to the safety of that pile. And as to the human race, it may slide.

"What's the good," he says to Jack Dunquerque, "of helpin' up those that are bound to climb? Let them climb. And what's the good of tryin' to save those that are bound to fall? Let them fall. I'm down myself; but I mean to get up again."

It is sad to record that Mr. Burls, the picture-dealer, refused to buy back again the great picture of "Sisera and Jael." No one would purchase the work at all. Mr. Beck offered it to the Langham Hotel as a gift. The directors firmly declined to accept it. When it was evident that this remarkable effort of genius was appreciated by no one, Gilead Beck resolved on leaving it where it was. It is rumoured that the manager of the hotel bribed the owner of a certain Regent Street restaurant to take it away; and I have heard that it now hangs, having been greatly cut down, on the wall of that establishment, getting its tones mellowed day by day with the steam of roast and boiled. As for the other pictures, Mr. Burls expressed his extreme sorrow that temporary embarrassment prevented him purchasing them back at the price given for them. He afterwards told Mr. Beck that the unprincipled picture-dealer who did ultimately buy them, at the price of so much a square foot, and as second-rate copies, was a disgrace to his honourable profession. He, he said, stood high in public estimation for truth, generosity, and fair dealing. None but genuine works came from his own establishment; and what he called a Grooze was a Grooze, and nothing but a Grooze.

As for the Pile, Gilead's power of attorney had effectually destroyed that. There was not a cent left; not one single coin to rub against another. All was gone in that great crash.

He called upon Gabriel Cassilis. The financier smiled upon him with his newly-born air of sweetness and trust; but, as we have seen, he could no longer speak, and there was nothing in his face to express sorrow or repentance.

Gilead found himself, when all was wound up, the possessor of that single cheque which Joseph Jagenal had placed in his hands, and which, most fortunately for himself, he had not paid into the bank.

Four hundred pounds. With that, at forty-five, he was to begin the world again. After all, the majority of mankind at forty five have much less than four hundred pounds.

He heard from Canada that the town he had built, the whole of which belonged to him, was deserted again. There was a quicker rush out of it than into it. It stands there now, more lonely than Empire City—its derricks and machinery rusting and dropping to pieces, the houses empty and neglected, the land relapsing into its old condition of bog and marsh. But Gilead Beck will never see it again.

He kept away from Twickenham during this winding-up and settlement of affairs. It was a week later when, his mind at rest and his conscience clear of bills and doubts, because now there was nothing more to lose, he called at the house where he had spent so many pleasant hours.

Mrs. L'Estrange received him. She was troubled in look, and the traces of tears were on her face.

"It is a most onfortunate time," Gilead said sympathetically; "a most onfortunate time."

"Blow after blow, Mr. Beck," Agatha sobbed. "Stroke upon stroke."

"That is so, madam. They've got the knife well in, this time, and when they give it a twist we're bound to cry out. You've thought me selfish, I know, not to inquire before."

"No, Mr. Beck; no. It is only too kind of you to think of us in your overwhelming disaster. I have never spent so wretched a week. Poor Lawrence has literally not a penny left, except what he gets from the sale of his horses, pictures and things. Captain Ladds is the same; Phillis has no longer a farthing; and now, Oh dear, Oh dear. I am going to lose her altogether!"

"But when she marries Mr. Dunquerque you will see her often."

"No, no. Haven't they told you? Jack has got almost nothing—only ten thousand pounds altogether; and they have made up their minds to emigrate. They are going to Virginia, where Jack will buy a small estate."

"Is that so?" asked Gilead meditatively.

"Lawrence says that he and Captain Ladds will go away together somewhere; perhaps back to Empire City."

"And you will be left alone—you, Mrs. L'Estrange—all alone in this country, and ruined. It mustn't be." He straightened himself up, and looked round the room. "It must not be, Mrs. L'Estrange. You know me partly—that is you know the manner of man I wish to seem and try to be; you know what I have been. You do not know, because you cannot guess, the things which you have put into my head."

Mrs. L'Estrange blushed and began to tremble. Could it be possible that he was actually going to—

He was.

"You and I together, Mrs. L'Estrange, are gone to wreck in this almighty hurricane. I've got one or two thousand dollars left; perhaps you will have as much, perhaps not. Mrs. L'Estrange, you will think it presumptuous in a rough American—not an American gentleman by birth and raising—to offer you such protection and care as he can give to the best of women? We, too, will go to Virginia with Mr. Dunquerque and his wife; we will settle near them, and watch their happiness. The Virginians are a kindly folk, and love the English people, especially if they are of gentle birth. Say, Mrs. L'Estrange."

"O Mr. Beck! I am forty years of age!"

"And I am five and forty."

Just then Phillis and Jack burst into the room. They did not look at all like being ruined; they were wild with joy and good spirits.

"And you are going to Virginia, Mr. Dunquerque?" said Gilead. "I am thinking of going, too, if I can persuade this lady to go with me."

"O Agatha! come with us!"

"Come with me," corrected Gilead.

Then Phillis saw how things lay—what a change in Phillis, to see so much?—and half laughing, but more in seriousness than in mirth, threw her arms round Agatha's neck.

"Will you come, dear Agatha? He is a good man, and he loves you; and we will all live near together and be happy."

Three short scenes to conclude my story.

It is little more than a year since Agatha L'Estrange, as shy and blushing as any maiden—much more shy than Phillis—laid her hand in Gilead's, with the confession, half sobbed out, "And it isn't a mistake you are making, because I am not ruined at all. It is only you and these poor children and Lawrence."

We are back again to Empire City. It is the early fall, September. The yellow leaves clothe all the forests with brown and gold; the sunlight strikes upon the peaks and ridges of the great Sierra, lights up the broad belt of wood making shadows blacker than night, and lies along the grass grown streets of the deserted Empire City. Two men in hunting-dress are making their way slowly through the grass and weeds that choke the pathway.

"Don't like it, Colquhoun," says one; "more ghostly than ever."

They push on, and presently the foremost, Ladds, starts back with a cry.

"What is it?" asks Colquhoun.

They push aside the brambles, and behold a skeleton. The body has been on its knees, but now only the bones are left. They are clothed in the garb of the celestial, and one side of the skull is broken in, as if with a shot.

"It must be my old friend Achow," said Colquhoun calmly. "See, he's been murdered."

In the dead of night Ladds awakened Colquhoun.

"Can't help it," he said; "very sorry. Ghosts walking about the stairs. Says the ghost of Achow to the shade Leeching, 'No your piecy pidgin makee shootee me.' Don't like ghosts, Colquhoun."

Next morning they left Empire City. Ladds was firm in the conviction that he had heard and seen a Chinaman's ghost, and was resolute against stopping another night in the place.

Just outside the town they made another discovery.

"Good Lord!" cried Ladds, frightened out of sobriety of speech. "It rains skeletons. Look there; he's beckoning!"

And, to be sure, before them was raised, with finger as of invitation, a skeleton hand.

This, too, belonged to a complete assortment of human bones clad in Chinese dress. By its side lay a rusty pistol. Lawrence picked it up.

"By Gad!" he said, "it's the same pistol I gave to Leeching. How do you read this story, Ladds?"

Ladds sat down and replied slowly. He said that he never did like reading ghost stories, and since the apparition of the murdered Achow, the night before, he should like them still less. Ghost stories, he said, are all very well until you come to see and hear a ghost. Now that he had a ghost story of his own—an original one in pigeon English—he did not intend ever to read another. Therefore Colquhoun must excuse him if he gave up the story of Leeching's skeleton entirely to his own reading. He then went on to say that he never had liked skeletons, and that he believed Empire City was nothing but a mouldy old churchyard without the church, while, as a cemetery, it wasn't a patch upon Highgate. And the mention of Highgate, he said, reminded him of Phillis; and he proposed they should both get to Virginia, and call upon Jack and his wife.

All this took time to explain; and meanwhile Lawrence was poking the butt end of his gun about in the grass to see if there was anything more. There was something more. It was a bag of coarse yellow canvas, tied by a string round what had been the waist of a man. Lawrence cut the string, and opened the bag.

"We're in luck, Tommy. Look at this."

It was the gold so laboriously scraped together by the two Chinamen, which had caused, in a manner, the death of both.

"Lift it, Tommy." Colquhoun grew excited at his find. "Lift it—there must be a hundred and fifty ounces, I should think. It will be worth four or five hundred pounds. Here's a find!"

To this pair, who had only a year ago chucked away their thousands, the luck of picking up a bag of gold appeared something wonderful.

"Tommy," said Colquhoun, "I tell you what we will do. We will add this little windfall to what Beck would call your little pile and my little pile. And we'll go and buy a little farm in Virginia, too; and we will live there close to Jack and Phillis. Agatha will like it too. And there's capital shooting."

Gabriel Cassilis and his wife reside at Brighton. The whole of the great fortune being lost, they have nothing but Victoria's settlement. That gives them a small income. "Enough to subsist upon," Victoria tells her friends. The old man—he looks very old and fragile now—is wheeled about in a chair on sunny days. When he is not being wheeled about he plays with his child, to whom he talks; that is, pours out a stream of meaningless words, because he will never again talk coherently. Victoria is exactly the same as ever—cold, calm, and proud. Nor is there anything whatever in her manner to her husband, if she accidentally meets him, to show that she has the slightest sorrow, shame, or repentance for the catastrophe she brought about. Joseph Jagenal is working the great Dyson will case for them, and is confident that he will get the testator's intentions, which can now be only imperfectly understood, set aside, when Gabriel Cassilis will once more become comparatively wealthy.

On a verandah in sunny Virginia, Agatha Beck sits quietly working, and crooning some old song in sheer content and peace of heart. Presently she lifts her head as she hears a step. That smile with which she greets her husband shows that she is happy in her new life. Gilead Beck is in white, with a broad straw hat, because it is in hot September. In his hand he has a letter.

"Good news, wife; good news," he says. "Jack and Phillis are coming here to-day, and will stay till Monday. Will be here almost as soon as the note. Baby coming, too."

"Of course, Gilead," says Agatha, smiling superior. "As if the dear girl would go anywhere without her little Philip. And six weeks old to-morrow."

(Everybody who has appreciated how very far from clever Jack Dunquerque was will be prepared to hear that he committed an enormous etymological blunder in the baptism of his boy, whom he named Philip, in the firm belief that Philip was the masculine form of Phillis.)

"Here they come! Here they are!"

Jack comes rattling up to the house in his American trap, jumps out, throws the reins to the boy, and hands out his wife with the child. Kisses and greetings.

Phillis seems at first, unchanged, except perhaps that the air of Virginia has made her sweet delicacy of features more delicate. Yet look again, and you find that she is changed. She was a child when we saw her first; then we saw her grow into a maiden; she is a wife and a mother now.

She whispers her husband.

"All right, Phil, dear.—Beck, you've got to shut your eyes for just one minute. No, turn your back so. Now you may look."

Phillis has hung round the neck of her unconscious baby, by a golden chain, the Golden Butterfly. It seems as strong and vigorous as ever; and as it lies upon the child's white dress, it looks as if it were poised for a moment's rest, but ready for flight.

"That Inseck!" said Gilead sentimentally. "Wal, it's given me the best thing that a man can get"—he took the hand of his wife—"love and friendship. You are welcome, Phillis, to all the rest, provided that all the rest does not take away these."

"Nay," she said, her eyes filling with the gentle dew of happiness and content; "I have all that I want for myself. I have my husband and my boy—my little, little Philip! I am more than happy; and so I give to tiny Phil all the remaining Luck of the Golden Butterfly."

THE END.