Chapter XII: What Was Seen by the Church-Yard Wall

The Sabbath has passed, and night has fallen upon the city once more.

The busy streets are growing deserted, and the great business thoroughfares about lower Broadway, silent at all hours on this the day of rest, have, as the night wears on, become almost entirely abandoned by pedestrians, and have sunk into obscurity and gloom.

As the midnight hour approached, the figure of a young man, roughly dressed in garments of the commonest sort, his face concealed beneath a low slouch hat, his mouth by a heavy black mustache, might have been observed to briskly ascend the Rector street hill, which rises along the church-yard wall, and to take his station at the corner of Broadway, close by the side of the iron fence which divides the old burial ground from the street.

He was evidently waiting for some one, for as he paced up and down beneath the cold light of the glittering stars his eye was from time to time turned upon the clock in the church tower, now about to strike the hour of twelve.

No one that had ever known Frank Mansfield would have recognized the neatly dressed young bank clerk in this rough looking youth who now strode uneasily up and down.

And yet it was none other than Frank himself, cleverly disguised, prompt on the hour of his appointment with Detective Hook.

Nor was that famous officer at all behindhand.

Just as the clock of old Trinity rang out the midnight hour the boy perceived him moving at a rapid pace down Broadway.

Clever as was Frank's disguise, it did not deceive the detective for an instant.

"Well, young man, you are on time, I see?" he said, abruptly, peering beneath the low slouched hat. "What have you learned? You have got the sealed parchment that should accompany the will, I hope? Otherwise, your chances of finding your legacy are mighty slim."

"I have learned nothing, excepting the fact that my mother escaped from the private asylum up-town where she had been confined over a week ago."

"And the parchment?"

"Was not in the box, Mr. Hook. Here it is, with all the papers it contained. I have examined every one of them, and it is not there."

He drew a small tin box from beneath his coat as he spoke and placed it in the detective's hands.

"That's bad for us," replied Caleb Hook, opening the box and examining the papers one by one. "These seem to relate to all sorts of matters. Surely this cannot be the box in which the will was originally contained."

"I can't say--it is all that was found by the boys. I----"

"Seek not the parchment. Watch and wait, for the day of vengeance is at hand!"

Plainly heard by both the man and the boy, these words rang out upon the silence of the deserted street.

"Who spoke?" exclaimed the detective, springing back from the church-yard rail against which he had been leaning.

Save himself and his companion, not a soul was to be seen either on Rector street or Broadway.

With a low cry the boy had seized him by the arm.

"There--there!" he whispered, trembling with excitement, pointing, at the same time to the open expanse of the Trinity church-yard within the rail, by the side of which they stood.

The eyes of Caleb Hook followed the direction indicated by Frank's hand.

There, moving among the headstones in the shadow of the church itself, was the form of a woman, cheaply dressed in a faded calico, an old shawl and a woolen hood.

She was tall and thin, and her long gray hair hung in a tangled mass down her neck and shoulders.

"Great God! if it ain't----"

"My mother!" cried the boy aloud, springing toward the rail. "It is! It is! Look! she faces us now. God have mercy! What can this mean?"

The form had paused, and, turning, gazed sorrowfully toward the astonished pair beneath the stars which glistened above.

But, feeble as was their light, Detective Hook recognized in that care-worn face, at a glance, the features of the strange woman whom he had tracked through the streets on the previous night, and who, to his positive knowledge now lay dead in the city morgue!