"Ladies and gentlemen! This unhappy maniac is in my charge. I will take care of him. Go out at once, and quietly, but speedily. In his mad frenzy this poor man has set fire to his own theatre, and it is already burning. There is only time for you to escape."

In five minutes more the Opera House was empty; in half-an-hour it was a smouldering ruin. Tom Wibbald bore the struggling Medybemps from the flames and gave him into safe keeping. Then he flew to assure Azalia of his safety, and himself that she was safe.

Old Krank had grown mad by nursing his hatred. A word let drop in his daughter's presence made her suspect that he had hired the unknown assassin to attack Wibbald. The detective easily found means to worm his secret from the demented man. It was agents furnished by him whom Krank had hired to burn Wibbald's theatre on that eventful night, and it was with poison bought for him by the detective that he had attempted to destroy his daughter's life. He had been closely watched all that evening, but still with a maniac's cunning had managed to secrete the dagger and to set fire to the theatre under the stage.

Tom Wibbald still monopolises theatricals in Sauk.

He has a

happy home; and a feeble, harmless, white-haired old man, who is somewhat imbecile, nurses the children, and tells them keckling old stories that might be vastly funny, but have somehow lost their point in the telling. People call him Old Krank Medybemps, and say he was a great actor once.

MY MAN FRIDAY.

EDWARD SPENCER.

IT

T was Saturday afternoon, and there was the usual gathering at Percetti's store. The neighbors were laying in their weekly supply of groceries: flour and sugar in infinitesimal quantities, and tobacco and whiskey ad libitum. There was drinking and smoking and quarrelling and swearing; and through it all Percetti bowed and smiled, and served his customers with true Minorcan politeness. I was not much given to frequenting Percetti's shebang on Saturday afternoons, but on this occasion I was obliged to go there, for one of my necessaries- smoking tobacco- was running low, and I was afraid it would not hold out till Monday. My neighbors greeted me with flattering cordiality; the most intoxicated of them all reiterated that he was "hap-hap-happy, oh! so happy to see me "; but I did not care to linger among them, and making my way to the counter I

speedily completed my purchase and took leave. As I was quitting the store I noticed for the first time a seedy-looking stranger, who was perched upon an empty barrel, smoking a pipe and casting quick glances in every direction. The man had an unkempt look and a not very prepossessing expression of countenance, but he was strikingly handsome, and I paused half-a-minute to look at him while pretending to examine a pair of Batchelor's brogans. Although he was dressed very much like the other occupants of Percetti's store, I could see that he was among them but not of them. He was evidently a stranger in a strange land.

"Who is he?" asked I of one of the loiterers around the door. "God Almighty may know," was the reply, "but nobody else does. He has been hanging around Percetti's all the afternoon, and aint said nothin' to nobody."

As I had nothing to say in reply to this satisfactory piece of information, I walked on to the place where my horse was fastened, and was unhitching the animal when I perceived that the stranger had followed me. I waited for him to come up, and then said interrogatively: "Well?"

"I have come to ask you for work," said the stranger.

"What can you do?" asked I.

"Anything," was the reply.

"What mought be your name?" asked I, making use of the popular idiom.

"It mought be Larry Hodges," replied the stranger.

I looked at the man. There was nothing of the Hodges in his appearance, but then appearances are often deceptive, and after all what's in a name?

"Well, Larry," said I, "could you help a fellow clear up a piece. of new ground?"

Larry expressed a willingness to consign his soul to instant and eternal perdition if he were not the best clearer of new ground in all East Florida; and he looked so very much in earnest, and withal so big and strong, that I engaged him on the spot.

"Come early Monday morning," I was beginning, when he interrupted me with a whistle.

"Monday morning? I'll be starved to death by Monday morning!" exclaimed he. "I haven't a nickel in my pocket, and I can't live on coonty and cabbage-palmetto. Stranger, I reckon I am the poorest man in East Florida. I may say that I am sublimely poor, and if I don't get a square meal pretty soon I feel that I shall be up to something desperate."

"Come on, my friend," said I; "it does me good to see a man who is poorer than myself; so come straight home with me, and if you don't get a square meal, it will be because you are too lazy to help me cook it."

My ranche was about three miles from Percetti's, and the road to it lay partly over pine-barren and partly through hummock. I was about to mount my horse, when I glanced at the weary and waysore stranger, and changed my mind. Larry," said I, "just get on the outside of this horse and make tracks for my shebang. There is

only one road, so you can't possibly lose your way. You will find some cold venison in the cupboard: pitch into it, and make yourself at home. I may be making a fool of myself in sending you off on my horse, but I will risk it this time."

It was rough walking through the deep sand and over the palmetto roots on the pine-barren, and the recent rains had left the hummock land in a deplorably muddy condition; but I trudged along uncomplainingly, for I had taken a fancy to Larry, and I thought how he must enjoy his ride on the best horse in the county.

I had lived for several years all alone with my glory, for the unlooked-for termination of the war had left me in a condition too impecunious to allow me to indulge in any thoughts of matrimony. I had therefore left civilisation behind me, and cast my lot among the cattle-drovers of East Florida, hoping thereby to better my fortunes. This state of exile was not altogether unpleasant to me; for having spent four years in the cavalry, I had become somewhat of a centaur in my habits, and never felt perfectly at home except on horseback. There was not much companionship in that benighted country, but I managed to keep a supply of new publications on hand, and kept up with the political times by taking about a dozen newspapers. Once in a while I had a visit from some friend in search of a new location, but generally I had my ranche to myself; which I was not sorry for, for the sylvan scenes by which I was surrounded were peopled with habitants so little in keeping with themselves that I often found myself repeating the lines of the hymn,

"Every prospect pleases,
And only man is vile."

When I reached home I found Larry lounging in my easiest chair, smoking his pipe. He had stabled my horse very carefully, but there his labors had ceased.

"Did you find your way to the venison?" asked I.

"No; I didn't care about spoiling my appetite for supper," replied Larry lazily, as he watched me kindle a fire in the cooking-stove. He superintended the cooking of that supper with unceasing vigilance, but did not once offer his assistance. "He is a fraud," thought I, "but I will not tell him so to-night." However, the next morning I changed my mind about him, for by the time I was well awake he had breakfast ready for us.

"I think I have done pretty well for the first attempt," said he. "I learned how to cook last night from watching you."

"The mischief you did!" exclaimed I. "Why, Larry, you are a culinary genius!"

In the course of the next few days I discovered that Larry was not only a culinary, but a universal genius. My only objection to him was that he went at everything with too much energy, and threw my very moderate style of laboring completely in the shade. I was asked a number of questions in regard to his antecedents, but as I had asked none myself, I was unable to answer them. Those among my neighbors who were sufficiently advanced in belles lettres to be familiar with Robinson Crusoe, congratulated me upon my good luck

in possessing such an efficient Man Friday, and many were the attempts made to entice him away from me, but Larry would not listen to them.

"You took my fancy from the first," said he to me. "You are none too handsome, and when you have on your deer-skin shirt and raw-hide boots, I can't say that I consider you genteelly dressed; but when you came into Percetti's that afternoon, I noticed that you did not drink with anybody, did not higgle about the price of the tobacco, and did not say a single cuss-word, whereupon, thinks I to myself, if I have to nigger it for anybody, he is my man."

“Larry," said I gravely, "are you not a gentleman ? "

"What in thunder put such an idiotic notion in your head?" asked Larry.

"A great many things. For instance, your hands."

"My hands! What is the matter with them?"

"They are white and soft, and suggestive of kid-gloves. And then you often speak grammatically, and the other day you got half-way through a quotation from Horace before you remembered yourself. Old Uncle Hiram, too, who works at the mill, remarked to me yesterday that you were a heap more like dem gemmen who used to come in dere carriages to his old marster's house in Souf Caliny, than dese here poor buckrah people.' Old Hiram is a very observant person, and he has been a particular favorite of mine ever since he told me that he knew the first time he laid eyes on me that I was a collegebred man. But to return to our muttons, if the question is not an impertinent one, are you not a gentleman?"

"Yes," said Larry, "I am, or rather I was. I was the adopted son of a rich old uncle, who squandered money on me for a number of years, and then suddenly disinherited me."

"For what, if I may be so inquisitive?" asked I.

"Because I objected to going into mercantile business; but principally because I wouldn't marry a one-eyed heiress. We had a row about it, and then I went down town and got tight, in which condition I drank my sweetheart's health in a public saloon, with her confounded brother standing in full hearing. She raised hail calamity about it next day when I went to tell her good-bye; returned my ring, and demanded her photograph. When I told her what had happened to me, she began to show symptoms of coming round, but she had riled me so by that time that I wouldn't meet her advances, and I left the house in a huff. After that there wasn't anything to work for, so I have been drifting with the tide ever since, living from hand to mouth, and not knowing one day what I was going to do the next. I have heard that my aged relative wishes to make it up, but I have got into such a habit of roving that somehow I don't feel much like settling down into respectability, and besides I hear that my sweetheart is going to throw herself away on another fellow."

"Did you send back that photograph?" asked I.

"No; I told her I had lost it. Of course she didn't believe me, but she pretended she did, and said nothing more about the matter, so I brought it off with me. Here it is."

And Larry took from his satchel a pocket Bible, from between the

leaves of which he drew forth the photograph of a pretty, saucy-looking girl, dressed in the height of fashion, whose general appearance bore unmistakable evidence that she belonged to those fortunate lilies of the field who toil not neither do they spin.

"A very nice-looking girl, Larry," said I; "but what the mischief do you want with the picture of another fellow's wife?"

Larry muttered something which didn't sound pious, and throwing my gun over his shoulder, marched away into the woods. I leaned back in my chair and smoked lazily, thinking of Larry and his affairs, particularly that of his heart. I was musing on these things when I beheld a vision a lady on horseback, riding along the old Indian trail which ran immediately in front of my ranche.

"Do I sleep? Do I dream?"" exclaimed I, as I removed my pipe and rubbed my eyes. But by the time I had settled this point the fair equestrian was out of sight. The animal she rode had a familiar look to me, it closely resembled my neighbor Dupont's roan pony; and then it flashed across my mind that Hiram had told me that Mr. Dupont had some "quality folks" staying with him, some folks who had come up the river on the last boat, and had a sick lady among them, who was always a-coughin'. Mr. Dupont, whose residence actually boasted of four rooms, often had quality folks at his house, invalids who came to try the lung-healing climate of East Florida; but as my "store clothes" were now quite out of fashion, I did not give myself the pleasure of calling on them, and therefore Hiram's news had made little impression on me. But I liked the way that girl sat on her pony, and I kept on thinking about her that day as I worked on my fish-net. The next morning I was on the watch for her, and I was not disappointed; but what was my surprise when she alighted at my door and quietly walked up the front steps? Larry was cutting wood in the back-yard, so I received her by myself.

"Dog tied?" asked she, adopting the vernacular greeting. "Dog's tied," rejoined I; "that is, there isn't any dog at all." "Well, that's a blessing," returned she. "Do you know what I have come for?"

"I cannot imagine."

"Eggs."

"I am sorry, but I have none on hand."

"Oh, what a story! When there is such a cackling going on in the back-yard that I can hardly hear myself think!"

"I admit there are hens, and they sometimes bring up families; but I never could find their nests."

"Let me go and look for them. I am death on finding nests, and I am perfectly desperate about eggs, for my sick sister-in-law thinks she can eat them. I was out all day yesterday prospecting, and I saw more signs of poultry here than anywhere else. Mrs. Dupont has only got one hen, and she is on the retired list. May I go?"

"Certainly, if you don't mind walking through a bachelor's establishment."

"I dote on bachelors' establishments; they are so delightfully free from anything like stiffness in their arrangements."

So saying, the young lady followed me without hesitation into the