The Argosy, Vol. 45

The Story of Charles Strange This serial installment by Mrs. Henry Wood (author of *East Lynne*) follows Charles Strange and his circle through two dramatic sequences. In the first, Charles returns from Paris to learn his friend Tom Heriot faces legal troubles. After Tom is arrested on charges involving forged bills—accommodation bills placed into circulation with a forged signature—he claims innocence, blaming his manipulation by an accomplice named Anstey who escaped prosecution. Despite the efforts of Serjeant Stillingfar and Charles's desperate intervention, Tom is convicted at the Old Bailey and sentenced to transportation for seven years to Botany Bay aboard the transport vessel *Vengeance*. The narrative then shifts to October, where Charles's acquaintance Arnold Ravensworth and his wife encounter Charles's other friend, Lady Level (formerly Blanche Heriot), unexpectedly at a small Rhine village inn, providing a moment of surprising reunion for exiles from England.