A THRILLING ENCOUNTER.

IT happens, once in a while, that even the ordinary routine of the editorial sanctum is broken by incidents and scenes that are fairly dramatic in their character. As we write, there comes back to us the reminiscence of a quiet, sleepy Summer afternoon, only a few short years ago. The very flies in the sanctum buzzed lazily about the room, oppressed by the heat and the quiet loneliness of the place, when the door opened with a quick, sudden snap, and we turned and saw a woman stepping into the room. She was not old, and her face, haggard with care and seamed with trouble, still bore traces of great beauty. She came into the office with a quick, nervous tread, and there was a hunted look in her eyes that betrayed the fugitive. She closed the door behind her, and turned the key in almost the same motion, with the quick instinctive manner of a person who had fallen into the habit of isolating herself from observation and pursuit at every opportunity. She refused to sit down, but said:

“I can tell you all you will want to know about me in very few words—I am a fugitive.”

We told her we had guessed as much, and we besought her to confide nothing to us. We could not help her, we said; our duty as a journalist would not permit us to extend any aid to a person flying from the law. She said:

“I do not want you to aid me in farther flight; I am tired to death. My own conscience, more pitiless than the minions of the law, has pursued me for years with a whip of scorpions. I can not escape its terrible lashings. I can not fly from my punishment if I would, and I am anxious it should be over. Death would be a welcome relief, if it would but come.”

Again we told the panting, weary creature to tell none of her story to us, and advised her to go to the police headquarters and give herself into the hands of the law, which would deal justly, and, we had no doubt, in view of her sufferings and remorse, mercifully with her.

“I can not!” she exclaimed, covering her face with her hands, and breaking into convulsive sobs; “I can not, I can not. You do not know there are other hearts would ache if I gave myself up and told all. I want to tell my story to some one who will pity me and advise me. There are those whose hands are as dark with ineffaceable stains as mine are, but who do not suffer the mental agony that oppresses me. Shall I, in order to escape the lashings of my own conscience, consign these, whose lives are happy and whose hearts know no remorse, to the same punishment for which I yearn?”

We asked her (for our curiosity conquered our caution) if it was possible that one so young and fair was the center of a wide-spreading circle of crime that held in its horrid entanglements so many others beside herself?

“Aye,” she said, bitterly. “If I went to the gallows through a court of justice, I would lead with me, held by the same terrible links of evidence, a guilty train of men hardened in crime, and their hands steeped in innocent blood!”

“Woman, woman!” we exclaimed, in horrified tones, “in the name of heaven, who and what are you?”

“Oh, heaven help me!” she shrieked, in a voice that chilled our marrow—“I am old man Bender!”

A weird, wild whoop rent the silence of the sanctum—and the woman was alone. There was a sound as of a rising journalist scrambling up through the narrow copy tube, and the next instant a bare head, with a quill over one ear, burst through the hatchway in the roof, and, followed by a complete set of editorial anatomy, emerged, and running briskly to the rear wall of the building, disappeared down the lightning-rod, and was seen no more until the next day at three P. M.

We never saw the woman again, and wis not where she is, but we smile in bitter derision whenever we read that the police have arrested an old man answering the description of old man Bender.