ROBERT CARTER AND BROTHERS,

In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the United States for the
Southern District of New York.



Stereotyped by SMITH & MCDOUGAL, 82 & 84 Beekman St.

Printed by E.O. JENKINS, 20 North William St.

[Transcriber's note: This edition of the novel was badly typeset in
places. Many small errors--missing periods, missing apostrophes, missing
closing quotes--have been corrected for reading ease. When the author
spelled a word as 'ankle' nine times and 'ancle' twice, occurrences of
'ancle' have been corrected to 'ankle'--and so forth. Other errors,
such as the persistent misspelling of 'visitor' as 'visiter', have been
left, as these are more likely to represent the author's convictions as
to spelling.]


MELBOURNE HOUSE.




CHAPTER I.


A little girl was coming down a flight of stairs that led up from a