Chapter I: Front Matter

THE SUMMIT HOUSE MYSTERY OR THE EARTHLY PURGATORY

BY L. DOUGALL

Author of "Beggars All," "The Madonna of a Day," "The Zeit-Geist," etc.

FUNK & WAGNALLS COMPANY NEW YORK and LONDON 1905

COPYRIGHT, 1905, BY FUNK & WAGNALLS COMPANY [Printed in the United States of America]

_Published, March, 1905_

PUBLISHERS' INTRODUCTORY NOTE

"The story's the thing" is a creed to which novel readers are supposed to give unanimous adherence. Art, literary style, study of character, and other of the higher, subtler elements of fiction, good as they are acknowledged to be, must yield first place to "the story," and afterwards shift for themselves the best way they may. How many so-called novel readers adhere to this creed is a matter of question--probably not as many as its exponents believe. Unquestionably there are two forms of fiction--the one in which art, and style, and character are pre-eminent, and control the course of the story, and the one in which "the story's the thing," and often the only thing. But why should not these two forms of fiction be blended? Why should not the art of George Eliot or Mr. Meredith be wedded to the thrilling action and absorbing mystery of Anthony Hope and Sir A. Conan Doyle?

In this story, "The Summit House Mystery," Miss Dougall has illustrated so well the possibilities of combining an exciting story with the charm of real literary art, that it must be considered as a model for a better school of popular fiction. In substance and in form it is unusually satisfying. The mystery with which it deals is so impenetrable as to baffle the cleverest reader until the very sentence in which, literally in a flash of light, the secret is revealed; yet from the beginning the story progresses steadily, logically, and without straining or melodramatic claptrap, to the inevitable solution. It is not, in the ordinary sense, a detective story, altho the two elements of concealment and search are present. It is not a "love story," but love, of the noblest order, supplies the cause and the support of the terrible mystery throughout the book. It is, as one has aptly said, a story of mystery "into which a soul has been infused." The rare distinction of its style and the beauty of its language place it far above stories of its class. A wonderful setting is given, high up on the summit of Deer Mountain, in Georgia, and the story seems to take on a quiet dignity, as well as a deeper atmosphere of mystery, from the lofty solitude. Seldom have the beauties of the mountains, "in all their varying moods of cloud, and mist, and glorious night," been painted in truer colors. "The Summit House Mystery" must inevitably set a higher standard for such novels, and the public will thus gain more than this one good story if it shall have, as it deserves, an immense popular success.

CONTENTS

CHAP. PAGE
I. A Hut in the Precipice 9

II. The Unwelcome Guest 17

III. A Strange Dismissal 24

IV. The Hostess Jailer 28

V. The Northern Ladies 33

VI. Events on Deer Mountain 39

VII. The Godson Possibility 45

VIII. The Wordless Letters 56

IX. The Spectre in the Forest 67

X. A Skeleton in the Fire 75

XI. The Mysterious 'Dolphus 82

XII. The Secret of the Oak 88

XIII. A Sob in the Dark 98

XIV. The Going Out of Eve 104

XV. The Question of Guilt 109

XVI. A Call for Help 119

XVII. Hermione's Advocate 125

XVIII. A Startling Disclosure 132

XIX. Tangled in the Coil 140

XX. The Terrible Confession 146

XXI. Opening the Past 153

XXII. The Earthly Purgatory 169

XXIII. What 'Dolphus Knows 180

XXIV. The Woman with a Secret 189

XXV. Lost in the Maze 205

XXVI. A Tortured Conscience 217

XXVII. A Hound on the Scent 229

XXVIII. Probing a Deep Wound 238

XXIX. Forged Letters 251

XXX. The Vision in the Hut 266

XXXI. A Flash of Light 289

XXXII. What a Terrier Found 296

XXXIII. The Restoration 307

XXXIV. All That Happened 312

XXXV. Readjustments 323