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Show '" THE VAMI'IIir. LITE. ; I. A hand was laid upon my fhnnl ler ni I Stood upon the plat for n of the little country coun-try depot, waiting for tlie (rain. I turned and found myself face to fare with Mark liraham. Somelliiti m liU touutemince tart led me. "Why, .Mark, old fellow, how nre you" I said, nhakiiiL' banils with him. "1 didn't , expect to see you here. W'hat H happened ' to you since 1 saw you last? You look as if you had seen a gjiortt.'' "Do I," liesjiid, with a ghastly kind of a mile, and 1 fancied thai his voice had changed aw much u his looks. He was usually one of the- jullienl fellowatobe found anywhere. "Yes, you do," I unsaved. ''What's the trouble r The tmin isn't dm? for half an hour yet. Let's go somewhere and sit down, and you can tell me all about it; thai Is, if there's unything to tell."' We went across, the track to where some ttnnted pines grew, and found a seat under them cjuite free from Intrusion. "So yon think. I look as If I had seen a ghost, eh '' said Mark. "Well,! haven't, but I feel about the same as if I had. You know I waa at Melrose when thai terrible affair happened, 1 suppose." "What terrible afTair:-" I asked. "I have just come from the North woods, and haven't had a letter or seeu a paper fur a mont h " pines for his Uni estate, and Is fading out jf life becau-e the consciousness of the sto uy which he fell cannot be shaken off, and tie i haunted ht and day by the specter of dead hopes and dreams. It was a face that had once been fair to look upou. It had been a strangely powerful fuce in days ,''Mii; by. A mind that had been intense iff action had looked out through those drearj eyes which U"W seemed Ui see nothing but shadows uusvcti Ui others. I saw Ut 9 glance that before me was the wreck, of a strong intellect. He sal there for perhaps an hour, neve; once lookitiut or speaking to me. Indeed he did not seem to be conscious of my presence. By und by he rose n nd walked unsteadily toward the door. Mr. Leith sprang up to assist him, but he waved him back. "Do not come with me," he said, and though Mr. Leith insisted on being allowed al-lowed to help him up the fltaira, he resolutely reso-lutely refused all assistance. "Poor Max," the old man said, coming back and sitting down by me. "His life is In the -shadow thai has fallen so dnrkly about myself and family. He was to have married Alice. He was away from home when she died. He came back on the day after her body was stolen. He lias never been the same person since that he was before. He was always different from other people. He was educated at Heidelberg, Heidel-berg, and I think tJerman metaphysics took too st roug a hold of him for his own good. He camu buck to us a dreamer. Alice loved him, and studied with him, saying over and over. Time went by, aud ' I heeded it not. I fancied that 1 felt a 1 warmth stealing into the hands 1 held, and ; that I saw a faint color coming into the I face 1 watched with such terrible intensity. A wild thrill of exultation leaped like tire l through my veinv- 1 would work a I miracle no other n.n had ever wrought! "At lat. at last! There came a flutter of the eyelid, and then they lifted, and the eyes of Alice looked into mine. 1 felt the breat h coming and going over her lips, and then I fell forward in the gray light of dawn, and lay beside her on the lloor, weak as a child. The tension was removed from my brain, and the reaction was almost al-most like death. For hours I did not stir. But the wild triumph of a work accomplished accom-plished beat hack and forward In my brain like a tide. I had brought back life to the woman I loved. I had conquered death! "The sun was high in the heavens when I rallied strength enough to rouse myself from the lethargy that had fallen upon me. I raised myself to a sitting posture, and touched the hands I had held in mine so long. They were warm and moist, but j there was no response to my clasp in them. ; The eyes were wide open, but they seemed staring Into vacancy. There was color in the cheeks, but the face seemed to lack Lght, and the subtle play of mind on matter mat-ter was not to be seen in the features of of the woman before me. " 'Alice,' I cried, 'Alice, speak to me.' But there was not so much as n movement of lid or lip. A statue would have been more unresponsive than was the form be- Then you didu't know that Alice Leith was dead?" I turned a shocked andatartled fuce upon my friend. Thatt doesn't seem possible, Mark. I left her two months iiko the plct lire of perfect per-fect health. When did uho die?" "About two weeks dKO. She died very suddenly. For the last two weeks ever since the nilit after her death, in fact we have hoen hunting for her body." "My God, Murk, what do you mean?" I cried, startled by his words and look. "Was was she drowned ?" "Xo, (die died at home, hut" and here my friend's voice was low, as if he hardly liked to speak the strange truth aloud her body was stolen the night after her ; death, und we have been searching for it ever sinre, und have found not a single trace of it." I think my fuce must have told Murk how horrilied I was, for he gave a nervous little laugh and said: "It's your turn to look as If you had seen a ghost. Hut 1 suppose you'd like to hear the particulars of thi.s most mysterious affair, af-fair, und 1 will give them brielly. Mi. S3 Leith was taken suddenly ill, and died on the second liny. Several of us were visiting visit-ing at Melrose, and her illness was so brief that none of us had gone uwuy when it ended in death. Being there nt the time it happened, we of course were expectd to stay until after the funeral. Ou the night after she died there were four of us 'watching 'watch-ing with the dead,' as they say in the country. Her body was in the library, and we occupied a small parlor opening off it. Once in lialf an hour we went in to wet the cloth that covered her face, and see that everything was as it should be. It was a very wild und stormy night, and the rain fell in torrents. The wind blew so that nothing could be heard save the dash of thf ruin against the house, and the hours, as we nut there next to the room in which lay the alwitys uwftil mystery of death, seemed an long as days ought to. As the cluck was striking midnight, we went in for the lust time to wet the face cloths. When wo crossed the threshold or the room at half past 12, it was empty. From that time to this no trace has been found of the body of Alice Leith." I could not speak, my friend's story horrified hor-rified me so. 1 half believed that he was trying to impose on my credulity. "We roused the household und begun a fruitless scorch. In tlie soft earth, under one of the library wludowB, we found what seemed to be a track, but the rain hud ulmost washed it out, and it gave us no clue. If I here had been other tracks on the paths, or in tlio highway, either of man, horse, or vehicle, the heuvy ruin had entirely obliterated them. The window was open, ond we could be sure of but one thing, and tlmt was that tho body had been taken through it. Where, or by whom, we knew then, and know now, - no more than you do. We searched the grounds. We roused the neighbors, aud all the remainder re-mainder of that terrible night we wanderer wan-derer hither and thither, seeking a clew but finding none. No one hail heard anything any-thing like the sound of passing wheels. It the storm they could have come und gone, and mode no sound ubovo that of the wind and ruin. When morning cumo begun the search again. Her father summoned uid - from the city, and the matter was put in the hands of expert men who are skillful in unraveling mysteries. Hut, as I have said, not a single clew has been found. It is the most mysterious and horrible afTair I ever had anything to do with. What motive mo-tive one could have in stealing tho body, who could have stolen it, anil where it was taken to these are the questions that have perplexed us, and they seem unanswerable unanswer-able by any information wo can hope to obtain. The excitement has bueii Intense. I have been wandering about, hoping to find some thread that would lend to u solution so-lution of the mystery, and trying to shake off by u change of scene the uightmaro horrorof the ulTair. Hut if clings to me, and haunts me. 1 don't wonder that you thought I looked as if I hud seen a ghost. I seem to live lu u world full of them" and took a deep Interest in his strange funcies, but I never cured to trouble myself my-self about them, lie lias a '.aboratory in the tower you see at tlie corner of the hotifce, and no one ever seta foot in it save himself. Cnder it is his study, and there he remains from morning till night, busy over iiis wild theories. I go there but seldom. sel-dom. The atmosphere seems too heavily charged with uncanny elements to be agreeable to me. What wonderful experiments ex-periments he has tried in that workshop of his none of us know. If Alice had lived she niiiiht have won him from his unhealthy un-healthy books and work, and made him more like the Mux he used to be. Hut he is nearly done with it all now. Poor Maxl" I was very much interested in this strange person. So much so that I hung about the house all next day, fearing that he might come down when I waa away and I should fail to see him. Aliont sunset he cume down the stairs, slowly, weakly, often stopping to rest. I went lo him, and asked if I might not be allowed to help him. "If you pleuse," he said. "I would like to walk atiout the garden a little, if you will let me have your arm." Ilis weight upon me was like that of a child. Our walk about the path wus so alow that it tired me. "I think thi.s Is for the last time," he said by und by, pausing beneath the windows of his tower, and looking up to them as' they gleamed like crimson fire in the light of the setting sun. "For the last time! Some would be glad of that, because they had no fear of what was lo come after, but I om I glad? Am I afraid? Can what is to come be worse than what I suffer here? Somewhere in that book they cull the bible it says something about dying daily. I die daily." He repeated the words slmvly, seeming, all the time to be talking to himself, him-self, as if unmindful of my presence. "Have I not guttered the pans of death? Have I not prayed to die and been refused my plea? But the end men call death is near and after death, what?" - Suddenly he seemed to recollect my presence. "I have something here I want you to read If if anything happens to me," he said, drawing a roll of manuscript from his pocket. "You are not going away for a day or two?" "I shall stay till the end of the week," I answered. "I feel that something will happen very soon, perhaps to-night," he said. "If I die, read this after the discovery of my death, but not before. Promise me this." promised. 'If I am alive when you go away, you n give it back to me. You will not believe be-lieve it when you read it. You will think it the ravings of a mudmau, but it Is true, all true." Presently ho signified his desire to return re-turn to the house, lie allowed me to assist as-sist hitn as fur as the stairs. Further than that, he would not let me go. "When you know all, pity me, pity me," he said. "I have sinned, and for that sin I hove paid a fearful penalty. Oh Godl and tlie penally goes on forever and forever." for-ever." Then he turned away, and west slowly up tho stairs. That wus the last time 1 ever looked upon the living face of Mux Cramer. We were sitting at the breakfast table next morning, when a servantcame in saying say-ing that the door of Max's room was opeu, and he was lying ou the floor. She hud spoken to him, but he had not replied. Becoming Be-coming frightened she had come to Und Mr. Leith. We hurried to his room. Max Cramer had been dead for hours. He wus lying at the foot of the stairs leading to the tower. It seemed as if he hud been attempting their ascent when the springs of his lifo hud given out and he liud fallen at the bottom uf them to die. 111. In my room an hour later J sat down to read the manuscript he hud given me. And this is what 1 read: "I am uccursed. I have attempted the work ot Uod, mid lost my sou 11 "1 am dviiiK slowly. Every day I feel j "A wild fear began to creep over me, : but I shook it off. The ordeid had been so terrible that I had no rigjit to expect i much at first. By and by she would rouse I from the trance of soul and sense. 1 "1 went down to the rooms below and my friends supposed I had just come home, i I was always unlike other men. They had ' become used to my strange ways. They knew what Alice and I had been to each ! other, nnd the fact of her death, and the mysterious loss of her body explained to them any strange conduct on my part. "I got away from them as soon as possible possi-ble and went back to the room in which I had hidden my secret, j "Alice lay there still in the attitude of i death. I knelt down beside her and called t her name. No answer. ' "1 flung buck the curtains with a swift, 1 unutterable terror at heart. I came back and looked at the face lifted dumbly to mine. There was no look of intelligence In it. The eyes stared up at me with not a thought in them. "Then I knew what I had done. I had : called bock the breath of life, but the soul of Alice that which was the Alice I loved ! had not come back. I hud triumphed ; over mutter, but not mind. I had attempted at-tempted the work of a God, 1 had dared to rebel against the fiat of fate. 1 had meddled med-dled with the mysteries of the infinite world, and here wus my punishment. Before Be-fore me lay a breathing form, but the principle of life only was in it. The soul had passed beyond my power. "Can you who read this understand the awful anguish of the moment when I realized real-ized what I had done? No. It would be useless for you to try to. The thought may be terrible to you, but you will fail to comprehend com-prehend the intensity of my remorse. I prayed to die. A thousand fiends seemed laughing at and mocking me. 'You have tlared to interfere with the wil of God,' they cried. 'You have lost your soul, and the women you loved. Oh, lost, lost, lost!' "Oh, my punishment! Day after day J crept to tho motionless form and called (t by the name it had used to bear. No answer an-swer ever came. It lay there, a human form, that breathed a thing from which soul and sense had forever for-ever gone away and nothing more. Nothingmore! Oh, God, could anything be more terrible than the sight of it to me! "Days went by. I felt a Bt range weakness weak-ness creeping over me. My yitality was leaving me. "Do you gvjess the truth? that the life I had called buck was a vampire one, living upon my vitality, draining away from me daily my strength and my life? Such was tlie case. 1 have grown weaker and weaker falflwly but surely, and some day the last drop of the vital element will be drained from me, and then the thing up stairs wU turn to dust, at last, and I God, God, God! have mercy upon me, and blot me utterly out of existence let it be as if I had never been! "I have written this for someone else to read when the end comes. The end, say I? The beginning rather, of an eternity of remorse re-morse for my sin. I sought to baffle God. I dared to raise my voice against the decree de-cree of Omnipotence, and terrible has the punishment been. Pity mo! I was mod. I knew not what I did. But I know now J have lost Alice. I have lost my soul. Oh pity me! But I ask no one to pray for me. Prayers would avail nothing for my punishment is just." The manuscript dropped from my trembling tremb-ling hands as I finished reading it. A Btrange terror took possession of me. I caught sight of my fuce in the glass as I went to the door. It wus white as the face of the dead man up-stairs. I went lo Alice's father and put the Btrange narrative In his bunds. Somehow I could not feel that It wus not true, ,nnd yet, could such things be? When he hud reud it ho rose up from his chair, but his limbs shoA so thut he could hardly stand. His fuce was pule as I felt my own to le. "It reads like a madman's funoloa, but t impresses me with the awful sense of having been written by a man whose con- "It It one of the most awfully mysterious occurrence! 1 have ever hoard of," I said, a I tliouftlit over what lie hail told me. "It hardly noon in possible that such a tiling could happen here, and ainonc; people who occupy the Misilinii the Leitlm do." The whistle of the coining train Hounded sharply down the track, and we rose and went back to the depot. "Where a if you tfolnit nowF" I asked. "I don't, kintw," he answered, "1 would go hack to work if I could shake oIT the incubus in-cubus that is on me, but I can't do that. I hope to got over this haunted fcelincliy nnd by. Vnu can't understand hnw it ha affected every one of us who wore there at the time. Wo hooiu to be searchiiiK for something In another world than the one we used to live in. llimd-byo, old fellow, take care of yourself." and Mark (Jrnlmin wrung my hand, aud bo we parted. Ih In tho tlrst Hush nf spring I was near Melrose, where the mysterious alTalr of which my friend iridium had told me occurred. oc-curred. I had loim been a friend of the Ia'UIih, and 1 concluded to call on them. Living under n shadow which had never been lifted, and through which no light had ever penetrated, they would lie glad to see me. I felt sure. Aud they wore. I was grieved, but not very ntueh surprised, to see the change a year had wrought In them. They looked old nnd broken in health when l hoy should have been in the prime of life's early fall. You have never hoard anything that myself growing weaker. Slowly, hu surely, my life ia being drained away, no noon tlie end will come. And then oh liod! I dare not say my God then "Before I die I must make confession of my awful crime. I dare not die with U untold. "I loved my cousin Alice. To me, she was the one woman of the world. She was more to mu than Rod, or my soul. For love of bur I havo lost her, and my soull "i went away from her, leaving her In tlie flush of rosy, beautiful health. I came bark to tlnd her dead. Dead! The woman I loved had left my world and gone away somewhere into Llie hereafter. "I came back on a night of storm nnd darkness. L'ominir near tho house, 1 saw lights inovint; in the library, and looking through the half-closed shutters, I saw a loin,', grim shape lylnii in the center of the room, about which some men and women stood. When they lifted the cloth that . covered the face I saw that the woman who was lying there dead was my Alice. "Oh, the anguish of that awful inomeiitl Had I lost her? In the land to which her ' foot had wandered would I ever Und her J again? Oh, Clod, not my God! if I had left j It all to Thee, I miulit have found her, j somewhere. . sometime in the after world, but not now, not now! Kor her soul, one world, and for mine another. "Standing there outside tlie window, a thought came to me like a liifhtning tlash. I remembered that once she had said to science forced him to tell the truth, h said. "Of course, though, he was insane and Imagined these things," he added. "This story cannot be true. Experience, reason, everythfng Is un argument against it. But" with a sudden start "he says he stole her body on the night of his return. re-turn. We do not know what became of It. There may be some truth in this, at least. Shall we go up to his room in the tower, and see what evidence that has to give?" I bowed I could not speak. The spell of an indescribable terror waa upon me. We went up stairs, and through Max Cramer's room. I dared not look at the white shape that I knew was lying on the 1 bed in the corner. We seemed to be in the i chamber of an awful mystery, a mystery of the Invisible world more than of this. It was not. the idea of death that. terrified us, but the strange and improbable story we hud read had been powerful enough in its influence to make s fuel, iu a measure, as Us writer must have felt. It had taken possession of our senses with its weird unreal un-real ty. We paused in silent dread at the door of the tower-room. We felt as if we stood before be-fore the door of the other world. What lay beyond its threshold r A gust of wind came shrieking up tho stairw ay as some door below waa opened, nnd the door before us swung open as If by invisible hands. With frightened eyes we looked in. The room was in shadow, and at tlrst we could but dimly discern anything in it. Gradually a shape iu tho center of the room seemed to emerge from the gloom, as our eyes became accus- j tomcd to the dim light along, awfully j suggestive shape lyinn on a low couch, 1 and covered with a white sheet. Beneath that drapery wus distinctly outlined a hu- j man form. We never once looned at each other, j The shape before us held our eyes cap- , ties. It drew them to it lu awful four anil fascination. j Suddenly my companion stepped for- : ward, and, with shaking hands, lit.ed the, 1 cloth. Instead of the skeleton face we i had expected to see, wo saw a face from j which the blood seemed to have but re- ! cently receded in the ebb-tide uf life. The I body of Alice ljcith waa I to fore us, seem- : j lngly but a few hours dead! Etteu iL i Kcxtiird iu Chicago Ledger. threw light on the mystery!"' I asked, as Mr. I'ith and I sat on the veranda. "Not a word," he aifwored. "The mystery mys-tery is the same to-day as it was at 11 rat." Just then I hoard a slow, languid step In the hall, and presently a man with the most unearthly face 1 ever saw came out aud joined us. It was more like a shadowy outline of tlesh and blood I hail like flesh and bltH.il It. .elf. Have you never held i your hand before a candle iu a dark plare, j and seen how transparent it seemeilr It was so with thi- man's face. The soul, the spirit, or whatever it Is that ts the center nnd sou ire of intelligence, scorned to shine I through It. ! "-My nephew. Max Cramer." Mr. I?ith snid, and wheeled an easy chair forwnrd for him. "Max, as you see. is in feeble health, and 1 have timed him to come out and breathe the spring air." "Max Cramer sat down and loaned his head wearily back against tho crimson cloth of the chair. His face against such a background looked fragile as frost-work. The blue veins showed start lingty on his thin hands and almost tleshless temples. He might be of the earth, earthly, but I could not make it seem that he was tlesh and blood, like myself. And such a sorrowful face as It was! It h mm ted me when I looked away, and some kind of strong fascination In It would draw my eyes back to it. Was that shadow In tho far-seeing eyes one of regret, remorse, or repentance? It was one. or all, and he Uiadu mo think of some fallen angel who me that if she wore dead, and I willed that she should come back to me from the other world, she believe! she would com In answer to the call of soul to soul. Was she really lost to me, after all Could I not call back soul und breath lo this form of clayr 'Instantly my mind was absorlwd by that one Idea. To think was to act. 1 climltrd into the room throniih one of the windows, took the body in my arms, and bore it by an used stairway lending from the rear of the library to my mom, and through that in my tower-chamber, where 1 know it would be safe. "1 laid the b.hly down In the solitude of that lonesome room. Then I lighted a lamp, and set it at her head, trembling in st raujjo excitement, yet feeling a strong! h I had never felt before, 1 almost fell myself my-self a God iu that awful moment. Ah. if 1 could have died then! God of heaven and earth, why didst thou not smite me with a shaft from thy strong bow of vengeance? ven-geance? "I knelt down Itoslde her. I took both her hands in mine and held them fast. Then I called up nil the engery of my will, and bent it upon the awful task I hnd undertaken. un-dertaken. 'Alice,' I cried, with tho voice of niv soul, 'come back.' I willed that life should start to action again hi the form before be-fore me. My whole power was concentrated concen-trated in that one idea. If earth hnd gone ; to wreck abont'me then I should not have j known it. j "'Comeback, spirit called life,' I kept |