Beadle's Half Dime Library No. 686

This issue of *Beadle and Adams* (Vol. XXVIL, No. 686, September 16, 1890) features the serialized romance "The Tarnished Name," by Col. Prentiss Ingraham, subtitled "A Romance of Execration, Expatriation, Expiation, and Exalted Honor." The opening establishes an Irish Gothic premise: Lord Crayon Cassidy of Castle Kenmore receives a letter from Captain Orlando, a pirate, revealing a dark secret. Twenty years prior, after a shipwreck on the Irish coast, Lord Cassidy exchanged his newborn daughter for an infant boy to secure an heir, believing his wife dying. The boy, Orlando's actual son, now stands to inherit Kenmore. Orlando arrives at the castle during a storm to propose marriage between the two foundlings—his son and Lord Cassidy's daughter (now called Kathleen). When Lord Cassidy learns his biological daughter was raised unaware among commoners, he attempts to kill Orlando with his father's sword. The narrative shifts to a British naval vessel, the *Racer*, anchored off the English coast during a gale, carrying urgent dispatches for London. An officer volunteers to take a boat ashore through dangerous seas.