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“I will swear that you were aboard my ship with me every hour of the night on which the crime of which you stand accused was committed. An absolute alibi alone can save you. May God forgive you! May God forgive me! and may the people of Massachusetts pardonPerjured Jack Dunlap.”

“I will swear that you were aboard my ship with me every hour of the night on which the crime of which you stand accused was committed. An absolute alibi alone can save you. May God forgive you! May God forgive me! and may the people of Massachusetts pardon

Perjured Jack Dunlap.”

Such was the letter sent by the sailor, by well paid and trusty hand, to the successful suitor for Lucy’s hand, now closely mewed within the prison walls of Boston’s strongest jail.

Could any man’s love be greater than the love of him who sent that letter?

The court room was crowded, not only by the casual visitors to such places, who are ever in search of satisfaction to their morbid curiosity, but also by the most fashionable of Boston’s elite society.

The preliminary examination in the case of the Commonwealth vs. Walter Burton was on the docket for hearing that day.

Nearly a month had elapsed since the arrest; all that an unlimited amount of money could accomplish had been done to ameliorate the terrible position of the prisoner. More than a million dollars was offered in bail for the accused, and it was hoped that by a preliminary examination such a strong probability of the establishment of an alibi could be presented, that the Court would make an order permitting the acceptance of bail for the appearance of the accused after the report of the Grand Jury.

Neither old John Dunlap nor Burton’s wife was present. Jack had insisted that they must not be in the court-room when he was called upon to give his evidence.

Lieutenant Thomas Maxon, bronzed, stalwart, and serious, sat beside his friend Jack Dunlap among the witnesses for the defense.

With a face of ghastly white, Jack Dunlap, his arm still in a sling, stared straight before him, heedless of the stir and flutter around him while the audience was waiting the appearance of the judge and the accused.

There was a look of desperate resolve and defiance on Burton’s face as he entered the court-room between two officers and took his seat at the counsel table behind the lawyers who appeared for the defense.

The prosecuting attorney proceeded, when the case was called, to present the case for the Commonwealth with the coldness and emotionless precision that marks the movements of an expert surgeon as he digs and cuts among the vitals of a subject on the operating table.

Chapman was much embarrassed and very nervouson the witness stand; his testimony was fairly dragged from his livid, unwilling lips; he interjected every doubt and possible suspicion that might weigh against his evidence and weaken the case of the Commonwealth. When he left the stand he staggered like one intoxicated as he walked back to his seat among the witnesses.

When the case of the people was closed, the leading counsel for the defense, one most learned in the law, arose and, making a few well-chosen introductory remarks, turned to a bailiff and said,

“Call Captain John Dunlap.”

For the first time in his life Jack Dunlap seemed afraid to look men in the eyes. Neither glancing right nor left, he strode with a determined air to the witness stand and took his seat. His face wore the hue of death. His jaws were so clamped together that they seemed to crush his teeth between them.

They asked his name, age and occupation and then his whereabout on the night of the crime for which the prisoner stood accused.

The witness made answer briefly to each of these questions without removing his gaze fromthe wall above the heads of the audience, and seemed collecting himself for an ordeal yet to come.

“Who was with you on board your ship, the ‘Adams,’ that night?” was the next question of the lawyer for the defense.

“Stop! Do not answer, Jack!” came in clear, commanding tones from the mouth of the prisoner as he sprang to his feet. His lawyers about him tried to pull him down into his chair, but he struggled and shook himself free and stood where all could see him.

Burton looked around him defiantly at the assembled crowd in the court-room, holding up his hand with palm turned toward Jack, in protest against his giving answer to the last question. Then, throwing back his head, he said in a loud and steady voice,

“I must and do protest against this further sacrifice in my behalf on the part of that noble, generous, grand man on the stand. Already he has far exceeded the belief of the most credulous in sacrificing himself for those whom he loves. That I may prevent this last and grandest offering, thehonor of that brave man, I tell you all that I am guilty of the crime as charged, and further, I hurl into your teeth the fact that by your accursed affectation of social equality between the White and Negro races, which can never exist, you are responsible in part for my crime, and you are wholly answerable for much agony to the most innocent and blameless of mortals on earth. Your canting, maudlin, sentimental cry of social intercourse between the races has caused wrong, suffering, sorrow, crime, and now causes my death.”

As Burton ceased speaking he swiftly threw a powder between his lips and quickly swallowed it.

The audience, judge, lawyers, bailiffs, all sat still, chained in a trance of astonishment as the accused man uttered this unexpected phillipic against a sometime tradition of New England, and likewise pronounced his guilt by this open and voluntary confession.

None seemed to realize that the prisoner’s speech was also his valedictory to life, until they saw him reel, and, ere the nearest man could reach him, fall, face downward, upon the court-room floor, dead.

Like the last ray of the setting sun, Burton’s expiring speech and deed had been the parting gleam of the nobility begotten by the blood of the superior race within his veins, and reflected on the bright surface of the civilization and culture of the white race. The predominance of animalism in the negro nature precludes the possibility of suicide in even the extremest cases of conscious debasement. Suicide is almost unknown among the negro race.

“Chapman found dead at his desk in the office! My God! What more must I bear in my old age! Oh! God, have mercy upon an old man!”

Poor old John Dunlap fell upon Jack’s shoulder and wept from very weakness and misery, and so the sailor supported and held him until the paroxysm of wretchedness had passed; then he gently led the broken old gentleman to the easiest chair in the parlor of the Dunlap house and begged him to sit down and compose his overwrought feelings.

“You say, Jack, that the porter found himseated at his desk this morning; that he thought he was sleeping, as my faithful employee’s head rested on his arms, and that it was only when he touched him and noticed how cold he was that he realized that Chapman was dead. My God! How awful!” groaned the distressed speaker.

“Yes, sir, and when the head clerks of the different departments arrived and raised him they saw lying on his desk before him ready for publication the notice of the closing of the business career of the house of J. Dunlap, and they took from the dead man’s stiffened fingers the long record of the firm to which he clung even in death.”

“I saw the poor fellow’s face grow pale and his features twitch as if in pain when I told him that the career of our house was ended. I urged him to rest here until he was better, but he only shook his head and hurried from my presence.”

Mr. Dunlap spoke sadly and after a pause of several minutes, during which an expression of deepest melancholy settled over his countenance, he continued sorrowfully,

“Poor David Chapman, good and faithful servant!He loved the old house of ‘J. Dunlap’ with all of his soul, and when he knew that the end had come, it broke that intense heart of his.”

“Why did you determine, sir, to take the old sign down, and close those doors that for two hundred years have stood open every day except holidays?” asked Jack, full of sympathy for the grief-stricken kinsman beside him.

“I cannot bear the sight of my loved boyhood’s home, dear old Boston, at present. It has been the scene of so much agony and horror for me within the past year that I must, for my own sake, get away from the agonizing associations all about me here. Lucy absolutely must be taken away now that her mind is restored to its normal condition, or she will surely go mad from weeping and grieving. As soon as she is able to travel we shall go to Europe to be absent months,—years. I am an old man, maybe I shall never see Boston again.” The old man stopped to choke back a sob and then said,

“It is hard, very hard, on me that I should be obliged to close the house my brother James loved so well, and that has been a glory to the Dunlapname for two centuries. It may break my heart, too, lad.”

The white head sunk on the heaving chest and an audible sob now shook the bended frame. Jack watched his good godfather with manly tears filling his honest eyes. Then, laying his hand softly on the old man’s arm, he said,

“Cousin John, would you feel less wretched if I promised to leave the sea, and do my best to keep the old sign, ‘J. Dunlap,’ in its place in the crooked street where it has hung for two hundred years?”

John Dunlap raised his head almost as soon as his namesake began to speak, and when Jack had finished he had him around the neck and was hugging the sturdy sailor, crying all the time,

“God bless you, boy! Will you do that for your old kinsman? Will you, lad?” And then wringing Jack’s hand he cried,

“A young J. Dunlap succeeds the old; all the ships, trade and the capital remain as before! You and Lucy are sole heirs to everything! The chief clerks will shout for joy to know that the house still goes on; they will help you faithfullyfor love of my brother James and me. And oh! Jack, when I am far away it will make my heart beat easier to know that the Dunlap red ball barred with black still floats upon the ocean, and that the old sign is still here; that I was not the one of my long line to take it from its place.”

Five times has Boston Common, old, honored in history’s story, slept beneath its snowy counterpane, all damaskeened by winter sunbeam’s glory.

Five times have brooks in Yankee vales burst icy chains to flee, with gladsome shouts of merriment, on joyous journey to the sea.

Five times have Massachusetts hills and dales been garbed in cloak of emerald, embroidered wide in gay designs of daffodils and daisies since the grand old Commonwealth was shocked by the commission of a horrid crime by one called Burton.

An old sign still swings before an even older building, in one of Boston’s most crooked streets. “J. Dunlap, Shipping and Banking,” is what the passersby may read on the old sign.

Sometimes an old man is seen to enter the building above the door of which is suspended this sign; he is much bent and white of hair, butsturdy still, despite some four-score years. All men of Boston accord great respect to this handsome old gentleman.

The man who is head and manager of all the business done within the old building where that sign is seen, has the tanned and rugged look of one who had long gazed upon the bright surface of the sea. While he is only seen in landsmen’s dress, it seems that clothing of a nautical cut would best befit his stalwart figure.

This head man at J. Dunlap’s office is cavalier-in-chief to three old ladies, with whom he often is seen driving in Boston’s beautiful suburbs; one of these white-haired old dames he addresses as “Mother,” another as “Mrs. Church,” and the most withered one of the three he calls “Miss Arabella.”

He has been seen, too, with a sweet, sad, yet very lovely young woman in whose glorious crown of gold-brown hair silver silken threads run in and out.

“Lucy, I have always loved you.”Page 340

“Lucy, I have always loved you.”

Page 340

A big, jovial naval man periodically drives up before the old sign and shouting out, “Jack, come here and see the latest!” exhibits a baby to thesailor-looking manager. The last time he roared in greatest glee, “It’s a girl, named Bessie, for her mother.”

Kind harvest moon, send forth your tenderest glances, that fall betwixt the tall elm’s branches on that sad, sweet face that lies so restfully against a sailor’s loyal bosom.

“Lucy, I have always loved you!” Jack Dunlap kissed his “Little Princess” and put his strong arms around her.

Everlasting time, catch up those words, and bear them on forever, as motto of most faithful lover.

An old man, standing at a window in the Dunlap mansion, watched the man and woman in the moonlight between the elm trees, and what he witnessed seemed to bring a great joy to his good, kind heart, for he reverently raised his eyes to heaven and said,

“My God, I thank Thee!”

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