BY T. W. SPEIGHT.

 

 

Being an account of the circumstances that shadowed the happiness of Felix Drelincourt--Why two persons proclaimed themselves guilty of a fearful crime, on account of which a vagabond's life was placed in jeopardy--The blotting out of an identity brought about by an unexpected legacy.

 

(Complete in This Issue.)

 

 

 

 

 CHAPTER I.

VERY STRANGE TIDINGS.

 

On a certain sunny May morning, about forty years ago, the owner of Wyvern Towers stepped into a lovely glade of Barras Wood, which was a portion of his extensive property.

Felix Drelincourt was a man who stood a little over six feet in height. His black, silky hair had a careless wave in it, and his thin mustache, with its up curled tips, was the cause of his often being taken for a foreigner.

But his eyes were the most striking feature of a striking personality. They were black, and of an extraordinarily piercing quality, with a sort of veiled, somber glow in them at times, as it might be the glow thrown out from between the bars of some hidden furnace, the fire in which was eating its heart away in the flame of its own burning unrest. It was not easy to judge his age, but one might put it down as being somewhere between eight and twenty and four or five and thirty. This morning he was dressed in a velveteen shooting jacket, with cord breeches and leggings, and was wearing a low crowned felt hat.

"What has brought me here on this 

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