and mamma invited him quite courteously to walk up to the house.

Mr. Hudson was a tall, powerful man, with cunning, restless, gray eyes,
was well dressed, and wore a linen duster. He had come, he said, seven
hundred miles to see Ida. Upon reaching the house, he followed mamma
into the dining-room where Marguerite, Gabrielle, and I were sitting at
work.

"Ah, Miss Gabrielle!" he said, "I supposed you were at school."

One or two other rational remarks of the sort, and mamma's perfect
_sang-froid_ so deceived me that I decided the supposed lunatic must be
perfectly sane. In a moment, however, he looked somewhat uneasy, and
said:

"I have a long story to tell your niece, ma'am, but I feel a little
bashful about speaking before so many young ladies."

"Would you like to see me alone, then?" said mamma promptly; "you would
not object to telling your story to a married woman."

Then signing to us to leave the room, she followed us to the door, and
_breathing_ rather than whispering, "Run for Bernard," returned.

It appears that the man grew more excitable when alone with mamma, and
the story he told her was not a cheerful one to hear.

"It began," he said, "five years ago, by my father cutting his throat
with a razor. They say he was crazy, and," with a fiendish chuckle,
"some people say I am crazy too."