: Miss Mephistopheles: A Novel (Sequel to Madame Midas.) by Hume Fergus - Detective and mystery stories; Australia Fiction; Jewelry theft Fiction; Murder Investigation Fiction; Theater Fiction; Actresses Fiction; Melbourne (Vic.) Fiction

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hat made me take up writing?" repeated Stewart, staring vaguely into the fire. "Lord knows--destiny, I suppose--I've had a queer sort of life altogether. I was born of poor but honest parents, quite the orthodox style of thing, isn't it?"

"Are your parents alive?"

"Dead!" laconically.

There was a pause of a few moments, during which time Keith was evidently deep in thought.

"According to Sir Walter Scott," he observed at length, "every Scotchman has a pedigree. I've got one as long as the tail of a kite, only not so useful. I'd sell all my ancestors, as readily as Charles Surface did his, for a few pounds. My people claim to be connected with the royal Stewarts."

"Your name is spelt differently."

"It's spelt correctly," retorted Keith coolly, "in the good old Scottish fashion; as for the other, it's the French method acclimatised by Mary Stuart when she married the Dauphin of France."

"Well, now I know your pedigree, what is the story of your life?"

"My life?--oh! I'm like Canning's knife-grinder. 'Story, I've got none to tell.' My father and mother found royal descent was not bread and butter, so they sold the paternal acres and came out to Australia, where I was born. The gold fever was raging then, but I suppose they inherited the bad luck of the Stewarts, for they did not make a penny; then they started a farm in Gippsland and ruined themselves. My father died of a broken heart, and my mother soon followed, so I was left an orphan with next to nothing. I wandered all over Australia, and did anything that turned up. Suppressing the family pride, I took a situation in a Sandhurst store, kept by a man called Proggins, and there I met Eug?nie Rainsford, who, as I told you, taught the juvenile Progginses. I had a desultory sort of education from my father, and having read a good deal, I determined to take to literature, inspired, I suppose, by the poetic melancholy of the Australian bush. I wrote poetry with the usual success; I then went on the stage, and found I wasn't a heaven-born genius by any means, so I became a member of the staff of a small country paper, wrote brilliant articles about the weather and crops, varied by paste-and-scissors' work. Burned the midnight oil, and wrote some articles, which were accepted in Melbourne, so, with the usual prudence of genius, I threw up my billet and came down here to set the Thames, or rather the Yarra, on fire. Needless to remark, I didn't succeed or I shouldn't be here, so there is my history in a nutshell."

"And Miss Rainsford?"

"Oh, I engaged myself to her before I left Sandhurst," said Keith, his face growing tender, "bless her--the letters she has written me have been my bulwark against despair--ah! what a poor devil a man is in this world without a good woman's love to comfort him."

"Are you doing anything now?" said Ezra thoughtfully.

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