THE FORCED CONSENT.

The next morning, at day-break, a porter left that tenement-house, carrying a trunk on his shoulder. Some few minutes after a man and a woman followed the direction he had taken, the first carrying a heavy valise in his hand, the other bearing a well-filled satchel. The man who carried the trunk hailed a street-car going up town, and placed his burden in front, with the driver, while the two persons took a seat inside, and soon found themselves at the depot. Here Mr. Hudson bought some tickets, and was checking the valise and trunk, when a hand was laid gently on his arm.

"No so far as that, my dear friend," said Church, in the softest and sweetest voice imaginable. "It would grieve me to part with you so."

Hudson shrank away from the man's touch, and for an instant the look of a gladiator broke into his eyes.

"How dare you follow me in this way," he would have said, but the words died on his lips, for he saw another man just behind Church, watching him narrowly.

"Put that trunk upon the carriage, and take your own seat with the driver," he said, addressing the strange man. "Step in, Hudson; there is room for your valise inside. I will take charge of the young lady."

Hudson turned deadly white, cast a despairing look on his daughter, and stood motionless as a statue while Church moved slowly toward the reception-room. Constance refused to take his arm, or surrender her satchel; but her face turned ashen with sudden terror, and the fierce light in her eyes was like a smouldering fire.

Church gave no explanations, and asked none, but called aloud to Hudson that the carriage was waiting. When Constance was seated, he placed himself quietly by her side, took her hand in his, and kept it with gentle force, as if they had been the best friends on earth.

After awhile the carriage stopped. The stranger, who had affected Hudson so much, got down from his seat, and looked into the carriage, as if for orders. Church leaned forward, and whispered a few words; the man nodded his head, went up the steps of a house, rang the bell, and entered it. Now, for the first time, Church spoke earnestly to his companions.

"Constance, you have promised to marry me."

"No, no!"

"But you have—your father sanctions it."

"He does not! He never will!" cried the girl, passionately.

"But he does sanction it. Ask him."

Constance cast a glance at her father, who sat white and shivering in a corner of the carriage. With that look came back all that he had told her, all the peril he was in—and she too began to shake with the fear that came over her.

"You force him to it; he never did consent of his own free will!"

"I fancy he has done very little of his own free will in many a day," was the cool reply. "That is nothing to me. I do not care for motives, facts are enough."

"But his promise does not bind me."

"Your own promise does."

"But I revoke it. I never gave you one in dead earnest; never in my heart meant to marry you. Is that enough?"

"Not quite. I came here to make you my wife, and mean to do it."

"But I can't and won't be your wife!"

"Nonsense, child! You are angry now; but this trifling is perilous to your father. He ought to teach you better."

"I know what you mean—my father has told me everything. For his sake I might, I would; but it is no longer possible."

"It is both possible and certain that you are my wife before the sun sets, or your father a prisoner—choose which."

Constance looked at her father.

"Is there no one to help us?" she pleaded.

The old man turned his face away in gloomy silence.

"What shall I do? What can I do, father?"

Hudson was newly aroused by this cry; he sat up, and a gleam of color came into his face.

"Have you no mercy?" he said. "I have told you that the poor girl loves another, a worthy man, who would make her a happy and good woman."

"Loves him, does she? Well, I must say, circumstances have not warranted me in thinking so. But all this is of little consequence, the young fellow you speak of is out of my way, and out of the world. If you had read the papers faithfully, I need not have told you this."

"What do you mean?"

Constance seized him by the arm, her white face was close to his, her lips parted in wild terror.

"What do you mean?"

"Did you really care so much for the fellow, pretty Constance, after denying it so stoutly, too? Well, it almost pains me to give you the news; but the Indians have been making some ferocious raids on our railroad people of late, and young Sterling happened to be one of the victims."

Constance grasped his arm with such fierce strength that he winced under it.

"Is this thing true?"

He had no pity for the anguish in that locked face; no compassion for the strained nerves which, for the moment, seemed made of steel, but took a morning journal, some three days old, and a more recent telegram from his pocket.

"Read for yourself," he said, coldly. "You might not believe me."

Constance could not read, the paper shook in her hand; the telegram seemed like a bit of blurred paper, for the letters all ran together.

"Father, can you see? Can you read?" she cried out in her anguish. "Is it true? Oh! is it true?"

Hudson took the paper and read a paragraph which had been sent to the public press, not aloud, he had no voice for that; but he made out the meaning, and told her that it was true. William Sterling had been killed only a few days after he reached the station appointed for his first duties, in a sudden raid of the Indians.

When the paragraph was completed, he dropped the paper and turned to Constance. She had given no sign of distress, not even a sob broke from those ashen lips; but white, and still as death itself, she fell forward into the old man's arms.

A face looked into the carriage-window—the same face that had so startled Hudson.

"He is at home, and ready, sir."

"Too late—the lady is ill!"

"Have you tortured us enough? Can I take this poor child home?" asked Hudson, sternly.

"It is not I that have tortured you, Hudson. As for the girl, you know well enough I would do anything to save her a moment's sorrow. Be reasonable. You were attempting to cheat me, and I outgeneraled you, that is all."

"No; it is not all—you have nearly killed her. More than that, I solemnly believe you have been the cause of that young man's death. No one who crosses your path ever escapes."