Was it another mocking, maddening vision that she saw?  She rubbed her eyes in wild affright, and then raised her hands aloft with a piercing shriek.

There, before her, lay the dead body of her father.  In the centre of his ghastly forehead was a small wound, from which the blood had trickled over the temples, bedabbling his thin gray hairs, and forming a small red pool by his side.  Near him, on the floor, was a club with an iron tip, which had done the dreadful deed.  She recognized it at once as a part of the machine.

The monstrous vision of the night was true!  Her father was dead!  Mr. Wilkeson was his murderer!  She was an orphan!

These agonizing thoughts flashed through her brain in the single instant.  She felt her head turning, and her limbs failing under her.  She had only strength to shriek, “Murder! murder!  Help! help!” and then she fell headlong and senseless upon her father’s dead body.

BOOK SEVENTH.

JOURNEYINGS AGAINST FATE.

CHAPTER I.

PEA-SHOOTING AS A SCIENCE.

Be it said to the credit of Wesley Tiffles, that he always paid bills promptly when he could borrow money to do it.  The funds that he had raised from Marcus Wilkeson, and others, for the panorama, had been faithfully applied to that great object.  If he could have borrowed money from other people to repay those loans, that act of financial justice would also have been done; and so on without end, like a round robin.

When Tiffles bestowed the last instalment of compensation upon Patching, that individual shrugged his shoulders, and smiled.  “The paltry price of artistic degradation,” said he.  “Remember, I would have done this job only for a friend.  The world must not know it is a Patching—­though I fear that even on this hasty daub I have left marks of my style which will betray me.”

“You are safe, my dear fellow,” said Tiffles.  “I have already ordered the posters and bills; and the name of Andrea Ceccarini will appear thereon as the artist.  Ceccarini has an Italian look, which is an advantage; and, you will pardon me for saying, is rather more imposing than Patching.”

The artist was sensitive touching his name.  It had been punned upon in some of the comic papers.  He could not take offence at the innocent remark of a friend, but he felt hurt, and vindictively rammed the large roll of one-dollar bills into his vest pocket without counting them.  (Whenever it was practicable, Tiffles paid his debts in bills of that denomination.  He had a theory that the amount looked larger, and was more satisfactory to the receiver.)

As Tiffles saw how lightly the artist regarded the money, not even counting it, he felt a momentary pang at the thought that he had paid him.

The panorama of Africa had not only been finished and paid for, but it had been exhibited to a large number of clergymen of all denominations, at the lecture room of an up-town church.  The clergymen, being debarred from attending secular amusements, as a class, had gladly accepted the invitation of “Professor Wesley” (Tiffles’s panoramic name), and brought with them their wives and a number of children apiece.