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The Guardian Angel

by Oliver Wendell Holmes · English · Gutenberg #2697 · 709,914 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: The Guardian Angel

Author: Oliver Wendell Holmes


        
Release date: September 29, 2004 [eBook #2697]
                Most recently updated: January 1, 2021

Language: English

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Produced by David Widger





THE GUARDIAN ANGEL

By Oliver Wendell Holmes




TO MY READERS.

“A new Preface” is, I find, promised with my story. If there are any
among my readers who loved Aesop's Fables chiefly on account of the
Moral appended, they will perhaps be pleased to turn backward and learn
what I have to say here.

This tale forms a natural sequence to a former one, which some may
remember, entitled “Elsie Venner.” Like that,--it is intended for two
classes of readers, of which the smaller one includes the readers of the
“Morals” in Aesop and of this Preface.

The first of the two stories based itself upon an experiment which some
thought cruel, even on paper. It imagined an alien element introduced
into the blood of a human being before that being saw the light. It
showed a human nature developing itself in conflict with the ophidian
characteristics and instincts impressed upon it during the pre-natal
period. Whether anything like this ever happened, or was possible,
mattered little: it enabled me, at any rate, to suggest the limitations
of human responsibility in a simple and effective way.

The story which follows comes more nearly within the range of common
experience. The successive development of inherited bodily aspects
and habitudes is well known to all who have lived long enough to see
families grow up under their own eyes. The same thing happens, but less
obviously to common observation, in the mental and moral nature. There
is something frightful in the way in which not only characteristic
qualities, but particular manifestations of them, are repeated from
generation to generation. Jonathan Edwards the younger tells the story
of a brutal wretch in New Haven who was abusing his father, when the old
man cried out, “Don't drag me any further, for I did n't drag my father
beyond this tree.” [The original version of this often-repeated story
may be found in Aristotle's Ethics, Book 7th, Chapter 7th.] I have
attempted to show the successive evolution of some inherited qualities
in the character of Myrtle Hazard, not so obtrusively as to disturb the
narrative, but plainly enough to be kept in sight by the small class of
preface-readers.

If I called these two stories Studies of the Reflex Function in its
higher sphere, I should frighten away all but the professors and the
learned ladies. If I should proclaim that they were protests against
the scholastic tendency to shift the total responsibility of all human
action from the Infinite to the finite, I might alarm the jealousy of
the cabinet-keepers of our doctrinal museums. By saying nothing
about it, the large majority of those whom my book reaches, not being
preface-readers, will never suspect anything to harm them beyond the
simple facts of the narrative.

Should any professional alarmist choose to confound the doctrine of
limited responsibility with that which denies the existence of any
self-determining power, he may be presumed to belong to the class of
intellectual half-breeds, of which we have many representatives in our
new country, wearing the garb of civilization, and even the gown of
scholarship. If we cannot follow the automatic machinery of nature into
the mental and moral world, where it plays its part as much as in the
bodily functions, without being accused of laying “all that we are evil
in to a divine thrusting on,” we had better return at once to our
old demonology, and reinstate the Leader of the Lower House in his
time-honored prerogatives.

As fiction sometimes seems stranger than truth, a few words may
be needed here to make some of my characters and statements appear
probable. The long-pending question involving a property which had
become in the mean time of immense value finds its parallel in the great
De Haro land-case, decided in the Supreme Court while this story was in
progress (May 14th, 1867). The experiment of breaking the child's
will by imprisonment and fasting is borrowed from a famous incident,
happening long before the case lately before one of the courts of
a neighboring Commonwealth, where a little girl was beaten to death
because she would not say her prayers. The mental state involving utter
confusion of different generations in a person yet capable of forming
a correct judgment on other matters, is almost a direct transcript
from nature. I should not have ventured to repeat the questions of
the daughters of the millionaires to Myrtle Hazard about her family
conditions, and their comments, had not a lady of fortune and position
mentioned to me a similar circumstance in the school history of one of
her own children. Perhaps I should have hesitated in reproducing Myrtle
Hazard's “Vision,” but for a singular experience of his own related to
me by the late Mr. Forceythe Willson.

Gifted Hopkins (under various alliasis) has been a frequent
correspondent of mine. I have also received a good many communications,
signed with various names, which must have been from near female
relatives of that young gentleman. I once sent a kind of encyclical
letter to the whole family connection; but as the delusion under which
they labor is still common, and often leads to the wasting of time,
the contempt of honest study or humble labor, and the misapplication of
intelligence not so far below mediocrity as to be incapable of affording
a respectable return when employed in the proper direction, I thought
this picture from life might also be of service. When I say that no
genuine young poet will apply it to himself, I think I have so far
removed the sting that few or none will complain of being wounded.

It is lamentable to be forced to add that the Reverend Joseph Bellamy
Stoker is only a softened copy of too many originals to whom, as a
regular attendant upon divine worship from my childhood to the present
time, I have respectfully listened, while they dealt with me and mine
and the bulk of their fellow-creatures after the manner of their sect.
If, in the interval between his first showing himself in my story and
its publication in a separate volume, anything had occurred to make
me question the justice or expediency of drawing and exhibiting such a
portrait, I should have reconsidered it, with the view of retouching its
sharper features. But its essential truthfulness has been illustrated
every month or two, since my story has been in the course of
publication, by a fresh example from real life, stamped in darker colors
than any with which I should have thought of staining my pages.

There are a great many good clergymen to one bad one, but a writer
finds it hard to keep to the true proportion of good and bad persons in
telling a story. The three or four good ministers I have introduced in
this narrative must stand for many whom I have known and loved, and some
of whom I count to-day among my most valued friends. I hope the best and
wisest of them will like this story and approve it. If they cannot all
do this, I know they will recognize it as having been written with a
right and honest purpose.

BOSTON, 1867.




PREFACE TO THE NEW EDITION.

It is a quarter of a century since the foregoing Preface was written,
and that is long enough to allow a story to be forgotten by the public,
and very possibly by the writer of it also. I will not pretend that I
have forgotten all about “The Guardian Angel,” but it is long since
I have read it, and many of its characters and incidents are far from
being distinct in my memory. There are, however, a few points which hold
their place among my recollections. The revolt of Myrtle Hazard from the
tyranny of that dogmatic dynasty now breaking up in all directions has
found new illustrations since this tale was written. I need only refer
to two instances of many. The first is from real life. Mr. Robert
C. Adams's work, “Travels in Faith from Tradition to Reason,” is the
outcome of the teachings of one of the most intransigeant of our New
England Calvinists, the late Reverend Nehemiah Adams. For an example in
fiction,--fiction which bears all the marks of being copied from real
life,--I will refer to “The Story of an African Farm.” The boy's honest,
but terrible outburst, “I hate God,” was, I doubt not, more acceptable
in the view of his Maker than the lying praise of many a hypocrite who,
having enthroned a demon as Lord of the Universe, thinks to conciliate
his favor by using the phrases which the slaves of Eastern despots are
in the habit of addressing to their masters. I have had many private
letters showing the same revolt of reasoning natures against doctrines
which shock the more highly civilized part of mankind in this nineteenth
century and are leading to those dissensions which have long shown as
cracks, and are fast becoming lines of cleavage in some of the largest
communions of Protestantism.

The principle of heredity has been largely studied since this story
was written. This tale, like “Elsie Venner,” depends for its deeper
significance on the ante-natal history of its subject. But the story
was meant to be readable for those who did not care for its underlying
philosophy. If it fails to interest the reader who ventures upon it,
it may find a place on an unfrequented bookshelf in common with other
“medicated novels.”

Perhaps I have been too hard with Gifted Hopkins and the tribe of
rhymesters to which he belongs. I ought not to forget that I too
introduced myself to the reading world in a thin volume of verses; many
of which had better not have been written, and would not be reprinted
now, but for the fact that they have established a right to a place
among my poems in virtue of long occupancy. Besides, although the
writing of verses is often a mark of mental weakness, I cannot forget
that Joseph Story and George Bancroft each published his little book,
of rhymes, and that John Quincy Adams has left many poems on record, the
writing of which did not interfere with the vast and important labors of
his illustrious career.

BEVERLY FARMS, MASS., August 7, 1891. O. W. H.





THE GUARDIAN ANGEL




CHAPTER I. AN ADVERTISEMENT.

On Saturday, the 18th day of June, 1859, the “State Banner and Delphian
Oracle,” published weekly at Oxbow Village, one of the principal centres
in a thriving river-town of New England, contained an advertisement
which involved the story of a young life, and stained the emotions of
a small community. Such faces of dismay, such shaking of heads, such
gatherings at corners, such halts of complaining, rheumatic wagons, and
dried-up, chirruping chaises, for colloquy of their still-faced tenants,
had not been known since the rainy November Friday, when old Malachi
Withers was found hanging in his garret up there at the lonely house
behind the poplars.

The number of the “Banner and Oracle” which contained this advertisement
was a fair specimen enough of the kind of newspaper to which it
belonged. Some extracts from a stray copy of the issue of the date
referred to will show the reader what kind of entertainment the paper
was accustomed to furnish its patrons, and also serve some incidental
purposes of the writer in bringing into notice a few personages who are
to figure in this narrative.

The copy in question was addressed to one of its regular
subscribers,--“B. Gridley, Esq.” The sarcastic annotations at
various points, enclosed in brackets and italicised that they may be
distinguished from any other comments, were taken from the pencilled
remarks of that gentleman, intended for the improvement of a member of
the family in which he resided, and are by no means to be attributed to
the harmless pen which reproduces them.

Byles Gridley, A. M., as he would have been styled by persons acquainted
with scholarly dignities, was a bachelor, who had been a schoolmaster,
a college tutor, and afterwards for many years professor,--a man of
learning, of habits, of whims and crotchets, such as are hardly to be
found, except in old, unmarried students,--the double flowers of college
culture, their stamina all turned to petals, their stock in the life
of the race all funded in the individual. Being a man of letters, Byles
Gridley naturally rather undervalued the literary acquirements of the
good people of the rural district where he resided, and, having known
much of college and something of city life, was apt to smile at the
importance they attached to their little local concerns. He was, of
course, quite as much an object of rough satire to the natural observers
and humorists, who are never wanting in a New England village,--perhaps
not in any village where a score or two of families are brought
together,--enough of them, at any rate, to furnish the ordinary
characters of a real-life stock company.

The old Master of Arts was a permanent boarder in the house of a very
worthy woman, relict of the late Ammi Hopkins, by courtesy Esquire,
whose handsome monument--in a finished and carefully colored
lithograph, representing a finely shaped urn under a very nicely groomed
willow--hung in her small, well-darkened, and, as it were, monumental
parlor. Her household consisted of herself, her son, nineteen years of
age, of whom more hereafter, and of two small children, twins, left upon
her doorstep when little more than mere marsupial possibilities, taken
in for the night, kept for a week, and always thereafter cherished by
the good soul as her own; also of Miss Susan Posey, aged eighteen, at
school at the “Academy” in another part of the same town, a distant
relative, boarding with her.

What the old scholar took the village paper for it would be hard to
guess, unless for a reason like that which carried him very regularly to
hear the preaching of the Rev. Joseph Bellamy Stoker, colleague of the
old minister of the village parish; namely, because he did not believe a
word of his favorite doctrines, and liked to go there so as to growl to
himself through the sermon, and go home scolding all the way about it.

The leading article of the “Banner and Oracle” for June 18th must have
been of superior excellence, for, as Mr. Gridley remarked, several of
the “metropolitan” journals of the date of June 15th and thereabout
had evidently conversed with the writer and borrowed some of his ideas
before he gave them to the public. The Foreign News by the Europa at
Halifax, 15th, was spread out in the amplest dimensions the type of the
office could supply. More battles! The Allies victorious! The King and
General Cialdini beat the Austrians at Palestro! 400 Austrians drowned
in a canal! Anti-French feeling in Germany! Allgermine Zeiturg talks of
conquest of Allsatia and Loraine and the occupation of Paris! [Vicious
digs with a pencil through the above proper names.] Race for the Derby
won by Sir Joseph Hawley's Musjid! [That's what England cares for!
Hooray for the Darby! Italy be deedeed!] Visit of Prince Alfred to
the Holy Land. Letter from our own Correspondent. [Oh! Oh! A West
Minkville?] Cotton advanced. Breadstuffs declining.--Deacon Rumrill's
barn burned down on Saturday night. A pig missing; supposed to have
“fallen a prey to the devouring element.” [Got roasted.] A yellow
mineral had been discovered on the Doolittle farm, which, by the report
of those who had seen it, bore a strong resemblance to California gold
ore. Much excitement in the neighborhood in consequence [Idiots! Iron
pyrites!] A hen at Four Corners had just laid an egg measuring 7 by 8
inches. Fetch on your biddies! [Editorial wit!] A man had shot an eagle
measuring six feet and a half from tip to tip of his wings.--Crops
suffering for want of rain [Always just so. “Dry times, Father Noah!”]
The editors had received a liberal portion of cake from the happy couple
whose matrimonial union was recorded in the column dedicated to Hymen.
Also a superior article of [article of! bah!] steel pen from the
enterprising merchant [shopkeeper] whose advertisement was to be found
on the third page of this paper.--An interesting Surprise Party [cheap
theatricals] had transpired [bah!] on Thursday evening last at the house
of the Rev. Mr. Stoker. The parishioners had donated [donated! GIVE is
a good word enough for the Lord's Prayer. DONATE our daily bread!] a
bag of meal, a bushel of beans, a keg of pickles, and a quintal of
salt-fish. The worthy pastor was much affected, etc., etc. [Of course.
Call'em. SENSATION parties and done with it!] The Rev. Dr. Pemberton and
the venerable Dr. Hurlbut honored the occasion with their presence.--We
learn that the Rev. Ambrose Eveleth, rector of St. Bartholomew's Chapel,
has returned from his journey, and will officiate to-morrow.

Then came strings of advertisements, with a luxuriant vegetation of
capitals and notes of admiration. More of those PRIME GOODS! Full
Assortments of every Article in our line! [Except the one thing you
want!] Auction Sale. Old furniture, feather-beds, bed-spreads [spreads!
ugh!], setts [setts!] crockery-ware, odd vols., ullage bbls. of this
and that, with other household goods, etc., etc., etc.,--the etceteras
meaning all sorts of insane movables, such as come out of their
bedlam-holes when an antiquated domestic establishment disintegrates
itself at a country “vandoo.”--Several announcements of “Feed,” whatever
that may be,--not restaurant dinners, anyhow,--also of “Shorts,”--terms
mysterious to city ears as jute and cudbear and gunnybags to such as
drive oxen in the remote interior districts.--Then the marriage column
above alluded to, by the fortunate recipients of the cake. Right
opposite, as if for matrimonial ground-bait, a Notice that Whereas
my wife, Lucretia Babb, has left my bed and board, I will not be
responsible, etc., etc., from this date.--Jacob Penhallow (of the late
firm Wibird and Penhallow) had taken Mr. William Murray Bradshaw into
partnership, and the business of the office would be carried on as usual
under the title Penhallow and Bradshaw, Attorneys at Law. Then came
the standing professional card of Dr. Lemuel Hurlbut and Dr. Fordyce
Hurlbut, the medical patriarch of the town and his son. Following this,
hideous quack advertisements, some of them with the certificates of
Honorables, Esquires, and Clergymen.--Then a cow, strayed or stolen
from the subscriber.--Then the advertisement referred to in our first
paragraph:

MYRTLE HAZARD has been missing from her home in this place since
Thursday morning, June 16th. She is fifteen years old, tall and womanly
for her age, has dark hair and eyes, fresh complexion, regular features,
pleasant smile and voice, but shy with strangers. Her common dress was a
black and white gingham check, straw hat, trimmed with green ribbon.
It is feared she may have come to harm in some way, or be wandering
at large in a state of temporary mental alienation. Any information
relating to the missing child will be gratefully received and properly
rewarded by her afflicted aunt,

MISS SILENCE WITHERS, Residing at the Withers Homestead, otherwise known
as “The Poplars,” in this village.




CHAPTER II. GREAT EXCITEMENT

The publication of the advertisement in the paper brought the village
fever of the last two days to its height. Myrtle Hazard's disappearance
had been pretty well talked round through the immediate neighborhood,
but now that forty-eight hours of search and inquiry had not found her,
and the alarm was so great that the young girl's friends were willing
to advertise her in a public journal, it was clear that the gravest
apprehensions were felt and justified. The paper carried the tidings to
many who had not heard it. Some of the farmers who had been busy all
the week with their fields came into the village in their wagons on
Saturday, and there first learned the news, and saw the paper, and the
placards which were posted up, and listened, open-mouthed, to the whole
story.

Saturday was therefore a day of much agitation in Oxbow Village, and
some stir in the neighboring settlements. Of course there was a great
variety of comment, its character depending very much on the sense,
knowledge, and disposition of the citizens, gossips, and young people
who talked over the painful and mysterious occurrence.

The Withers Homestead was naturally the chief centre of interest. Nurse
Byloe, an ancient and voluminous woman, who had known the girl when she
was a little bright-eyed child, handed over “the baby” she was holding
to another attendant, and got on her things to go straight up to The
Poplars. She had been holding “the baby” these forty years and more,
but somehow it never got to be more than a month or six weeks old. She
reached The Poplars after much toil and travail. Mistress Fagan, Irish,
house-servant, opened the door, at which Nurse Byloe knocked softly, as
she was in the habit of doing at the doors of those who sent for her.

“Have you heerd anything yet, Kitty Fagan?” asked Nurse Byloe.

“Niver a blissed word,” said she. “Miss Withers is upstairs with Miss
Bathsheby, a cryin' and a lamentin'. Miss Badlam's in the parlor. The
men has been draggin' the pond. They have n't found not one thing, but
only jest two, and that was the old coffeepot and the gray cat,--it's
them nigger boys hanged her with a string they tied round her neck and
then drownded her.” [P. Fagan, Jr., Aet. 14, had a snarl of similar
string in his pocket.]

Mistress Fagan opened the door of the best parlor. A woman was sitting
there alone, rocking back and forward, and fanning herself with the
blackest of black fans.

“Nuss Byloe, is that you? Well, to be sure, I'm glad to see you, though
we 're all in trouble. Set right down, Nuss, do. Oh, it's dreadful
times!”

A handkerchief which was in readiness for any emotional overflow was
here called on for its function.

Nurse Byloe let herself drop into a flaccid squab chair with one of
those soft cushions, filled with slippery feathers, which feel so
fearfully like a very young infant, or a nest of little kittens, as they
flatten under the subsiding person.

The woman in the rocking-chair was Miss Cynthia Badlam, second-cousin
of Miss Silence Withers, with whom she had been living as a companion at
intervals for some years. She appeared to be thirty-five years old, more
or less, and looked not badly for that stage of youth, though of course
she might have been handsomer at twenty, as is often the case with
women. She wore a not unbecoming cap; frequent headaches had thinned her
locks somewhat of late years. Features a little too sharp, a keen, gray
eye, a quick and restless glance, which rather avoided being met, gave
the impression that she was a wide-awake, cautious, suspicious, and,
very possibly, crafty person.

“I could n't help comin',” said Nurse Byloe, “we do so love our
babies,--how can we help it, Miss Badlam?”

The spinster colored up at the nurse's odd way of using the possessive
pronoun, and dropped her eyes, as was natural on hearing such a speech.

“I never tended children as you have, Nuss,” she said. “But I 've known
Myrtle Hazard ever since she was three years old, and to think she
should have come to such an end,--'The heart is deceitful above all
things and desperately wicked,'”--and she wept.

“Why, Cynthy Badlam, what do y' mean?” said Nurse Byloe. “Y' don't think
anything dreadful has come o' that child's wild nater, do ye?”

“Child!” said Cynthia Badlam,--“child enough to wear this very gown I
have got on and not find it too big for her neither.” [It would have
pinched Myrtle here and there pretty shrewdly.]

The two women looked each other in the eyes with subtle interchange of
intelligence, such as belongs to their sex in virtue of its specialty.
Talk without words is half their conversation, just as it is all the
conversation of the lower animals. Only the dull senses of men are dead
to it as to the music of the spheres.

Their minds travelled along, as if they had been yoked together, through
whole fields of suggestive speculation, until the dumb growths
of thought ripened in both their souls into articulate speech,
consentingly, as the movement comes after the long stillness of a Quaker
meeting.

Their lips opened at the same moment. “You don't mean”--began Nurse
Byloe, but stopped as she heard Miss Badlam also speaking.

“They need n't drag the pond,” she said. “They need n't go beating the
woods as if they were hunting a patridge,--though for that matter Myrtle
Hazard was always more like a patridge than she was like a pullet.
Nothing ever took hold of that girl,--not catechising, nor advising, nor
punishing. It's that dreadful will of hers never was broke. I've always
been afraid that she would turn out a child of wrath. Did y' ever watch
her at meetin' playing with posies and looking round all the time of
the long prayer? That's what I've seen her do many and many a time. I'm
afraid--Oh dear! Miss Byloe, I'm afraid to say--what I'm afraid of. Men
are so wicked, and young girls are full of deceit and so ready to listen
to all sorts of artful creturs that take advantage of their ignorance
and tender years.” She wept once more, this time with sobs that seemed
irrepressible.

“Dear suz!” said the nurse, “I won't believe no sech thing as wickedness
about Myrtle Hazard. You mean she's gone an' run off with some
good-for-nothin' man or other? If that ain't what y' mean, what do y'
mean? It can't be so, Miss Badlam: she's one o' my babies. At any rate,
I handled her when she fust come to this village,--and none o' my babies
never did sech a thing. Fifteen year old, and be bringin' a whole family
into disgrace! If she was thirty year old, or five-an'-thirty or more,
and never'd had a chance to be married, and if one o' them artful
creturs you was talkin' of got hold of her, then, to be sure,--why, dear
me!--law! I never thought, Miss Badlam!--but then of course you could
have had your pickin' and choosin' in the time of it; and I don't mean
to say it's too late now if you felt called that way, for you're better
lookin' now than some that's younger, and there's no accountin' for
tastes.”

A sort of hysteric twitching that went through the frame of Cynthia
Badlam dimly suggested to the old nurse that she was not making her
slightly indiscreet personality much better by her explanations. She
stopped short, and surveyed the not uncomely person of the maiden lady
sitting before her with her handkerchief pressed to her eyes, and
one hand clenching the arm of the reeking-chair, as if some spasm
had clamped it there. The nurse looked at her with a certain growing
interest she had never felt before. It was the first time for some years
that she had had such a chance, partly because Miss Cynthia had often
been away for long periods,--partly because she herself had been busy
professionally. There was no occasion for her services, of course, in
the family at The Poplars; and she was always following round from place
to place after that everlasting migratory six-weeks or less old baby.

There was not a more knowing pair of eyes, in their way, in a circle of
fifty miles, than those kindly tranquil orbs that Nurse Byloe fixed
on Cynthia Badlam. The silver threads in the side fold of hair, the
delicate lines at the corner of the eye, the slight drawing down at
the angle of the mouth,--almost imperceptible, but the nurse dwelt upon
it,--a certain moulding of the features as of an artist's clay model
worked by delicate touches with the fingers, showing that time or pain
or grief had had a hand in shaping them, the contours, the adjustment of
every fold of the dress, the attitude, the very way of breathing, were
all passed through the searching inspection of the ancient expert,
trained to know all the changes wrought by time and circumstance. It
took not so long as it takes to describe it, but it was an analysis of
imponderables, equal to any of Bunsen's with the spectroscope.

Miss Badlam removed her handkerchief and looked in a furtive,
questioning way, in her turn, upon the nurse.

“It's dreadful close here,--I'm 'most smothered,” Nurse Byloe said; and,
putting her hand to her throat, unclasped the catch of the necklace of
gold beads she had worn since she was a baby,--a bead having been added
from time to time as she thickened. It lay in a deep groove of her large
neck, and had not troubled her in breathing before, since the day when
her husband was run over by an ox-team.

At this moment Miss Silence Withers entered, followed by Bathsheba
Stoker, daughter of Rev. Joseph Bellamy Stoker.

She was the friend of Myrtle, and had come to comfort Miss Silence, and
consult with her as to what further search they should institute. The
two, Myrtle's aunt and her friend, were as unlike as they could well
be. Silence Withers was something more than forty years old, a shadowy,
pinched, sallow, dispirited, bloodless woman, with the habitual look of
the people in the funeral carriage which follows next to the hearse, and
the tone in speaking that may be noticed in a household where one of its
members is lying white and still in a cool, darkened chamber overhead.
Bathsheba Stoker was not called handsome; but she had her mother's
youthful smile, which was so fresh and full of sweetness that she seemed
like a beauty while she was speaking or listening; and she could never
be plain so long as any expression gave life to her features. In perfect
repose, her face, a little prematurely touched by sad experiences,--for
she was but seventeen years old,--had the character and decision stamped
in its outlines which any young man who wanted a companion to warn,
to comfort, and command him, might have depended on as warranting the
courage, the sympathy, and the sense demanded for such a responsibility.
She had been trying her powers of consolation on Miss Silence. It was a
sudden freak of Myrtle's. She had gone off on some foolish but innocent
excursion. Besides, she was a girl that would take care of herself;
for she was afraid of nothing, and nimbler than any boy of her age, and
almost as strong as any. As for thinking any bad thoughts about her,
that was a shame; she cared for none of the young fellows that were
round her. Cyprian Eveleth was the one she thought most of; but Cyprian
was as true as his sister Olive, and who else was there?

To all this Miss Silence answered only by sighing and moaning, For two
whole days she had been kept in constant fear and worry, afraid every
minute of some tragical message, perplexed by the conflicting advice
of all manner of officious friends, sleepless of course through the two
nights, and now utterly broken down and collapsed.

Bathsheba had said all she could in the way of consolation, and hastened
back to her mother's bedside, which she hardly left, except for the
briefest of visits.

“It's a great trial, Miss Withers, that's laid on you,” said Nurse
Byloe.

“If I only knew that she was dead, and had died in the Lord,” Miss
Silence answered,--“if I only knew that but if she is living in sin, or
dead in wrong--doing, what is to become of me?--Oh, what is to become of
me when 'He maketh inquisition far blood'?”

“Cousin Silence,” said Miss Cynthia, “it is n't your fault, if that
young girl has taken to evil ways. If going to meeting three times every
Sabbath day, and knowing the catechism by heart, and reading of good
books, and the best of daily advice, and all needful discipline, could
have corrected her sinful nature, she would never have run away from
a home where she enjoyed all these privileges. It's that Indian blood,
Cousin Silence. It's a great mercy you and I have n't got any of it in
our veins! What can you expect of children that come from heathens and
savages? You can't lay it to yourself, Cousin Silence, if Myrtle Hazard
goes wrong”--

“The Lord will lay it to me,--the Lord will lay it to me,” she moaned.
“Did n't he say to Cain, 'Where is Abel, thy brother?'”

Nurse Byloe was getting very red in the face. She had had about enough
of this talk between the two women. “I hope the Lard 'll take care of
Myrtle Hazard fust, if she's in trouble, 'n' wants help,” she said;
“'n' then look out for them that comes next. Y' 're too suspicious, Miss
Badlam; y' 're too easy to believe stories. Myrtle Hazard was as pretty
a child and as good a child as ever I see, if you did n't rile her;
'n' d' d y' ever see one o' them hearty lively children, that had n't
a sperrit of its own? For my part, I'd rather handle one of 'em than a
dozen o' them little waxy, weak-eyed, slim-necked creturs that always do
what they tell 'em to, and die afore they're a dozen year old; and never
was the time when I've seen Myrtle Hazard, sence she was my baby, but
what it's always been, 'Good mornin', Miss Byloe,' and 'How do you do,
Miss Byloe? I'm so glad to see you.' The handsomest young woman, too, as
all the old folks will agree in tellin' you, s'ence the time o' Judith
Pride that was,--the Pride of the County they used to call her, for her
beauty. Her great-grandma, y' know, Miss Cynthy, married old King David
Withers. What I want to know is, whether anything has been heerd, and
jest what's been done about findin' the poor thing. How d' ye know she
has n't fell into the river? Have they fired cannon? They say that busts
the gall of drownded folks, and makes the corpse rise. Have they looked
in the woods everywhere? Don't believe no wrong of nobody, not till y'
must,--least of all of them that come o' the same folks, partly, and
has lived with yo all their days. I tell y', Myrtle Hazard's jest as
innocent of all what y' 've been thinkin' about,--bless the poor child;
she's got a soul that's as clean and sweet-well, as a pond-lily when it
fust opens of a mornin', without a speck on it no more than on the fust
pond-lily God Almighty ever made!”

That gave a turn to the two women's thoughts, and their handkerchiefs
went up to their faces. Nurse Byloe turned her eyes quickly on Cynthia
Badlam, and repeated her close inspection of every outline and every
light and shadow in her figure. She did not announce any opinion as
to the age or good looks or general aspect or special points of Miss
Cynthia; but she made a sound which the books write humph! but which
real folks make with closed lips, thus: m'!--a sort of half-suppressed
labio-palato-nasal utterance, implying that there is a good deal which
might be said, and all the vocal organs want to have a chance at it, if
there is to be any talking.

Friends and neighbors were coming in and out; and the next person that
came was the old minister, of whom, and of his colleague, the Rev.
Joseph Bellamy Stoker, some account may here be introduced.

The Rev. Eliphalet Pemberton Father Pemberton as brother ministers
called him, Priest Pemberton as he was commonly styled by the country
people--would have seemed very old, if the medical patriarch of the
village had not been so much older. A man over ninety is a great comfort
to all his elderly neighbors: he is a picket-guard at the extreme
outpost; and the young folks of sixty and seventy feel that the enemy
must get by him before he can come near their camp. Dr. Hurlbut, at
ninety-two, made Priest Pemberton seem comparatively little advanced;
but the college catalogue showed that he must be seventy-five years old,
if, as we may suppose, he was twenty at the time of his graduation.

He was a man of noble presence always, and now, in the grandeur of
his flowing silver hair and with the gray shaggy brows overhanging his
serene and solemn eyes, with the slow gravity of motion and the measured
dignity of speech which gave him the air of an old pontiff, he was an
imposing personage to look upon, and could be awful, if the occasion
demanded it. His creed was of the sternest: he was looked up to as a
bulwark against all the laxities which threatened New England theology.
But it was a creed rather of the study and of the pulpit than of
every-day application among his neighbors. He dealt too much in the
lofty abstractions which had always such fascinations for the higher
class of New England divines, to busy himself as much as he might have
done with the spiritual condition of individuals. He had also a good
deal in him of what he used to call the Old Man, which, as he confessed,
he had never succeeded in putting off,--meaning thereby certain
qualities belonging to humanity, as much as the natural gifts of the
dumb creatures belong to them, and tending to make a man beloved by his
weak and erring fellow-mortals.

In the olden time he would have lived and died king of his parish,
monarch, by Divine right, as the noblest, grandest, wisest of all that
made up the little nation within hearing of his meeting-house bell. But
Young Calvinism has less reverence and more love of novelty than its
forefathers. It wants change, and it loves young blood. Polyandry is
getting to be the normal condition of the Church; and about the time a
man is becoming a little overripe for the livelier human sentiments, he
may be pretty sure the women are looking round to find him a colleague.
In this way it was that the Rev. Joseph Bellamy Stoker became the
colleague of the Rev. Eliphalet Pemberton.

If one could have dived deep below all the Christian graces--the
charity, the sweetness of disposition, the humility--of Father
Pemberton, he would have found a small remnant of the “Old Man,” as the
good clergyman would have called it, which was never in harmony with the
Rev. Mr. Stoker. The younger divine felt his importance, and made his
venerable colleague feel that he felt it. Father Pemberton had a fair
chance at rainy Sundays and hot summer-afternoon services; but the
junior pushed him aside without ceremony whenever he thought there was
like to be a good show in the pews. As for those courtesies which
the old need, to soften the sense of declining faculties and failing
attractions, the younger pastor bestowed them in public, but was
negligent of them, to say the least, when not on exhibition.

Good old Father Pemberton could not love this man, but he would not hate
him, and he never complained to him or of him. It would have been of no
use if he had: the women of the parish had taken up the Rev. Mr. Stoker;
and when the women run after a minister or a doctor, what do the men
signify?

Why the women ran after him, some thought it was not hard to guess. He
was not ill-looking, according to the village standard, parted his hair
smoothly, tied his white cravat carefully, was fluent, plausible, had a
gift in prayer, was considered eloquent, was fond of listening to their
spiritual experiences, and had a sickly wife. This is what Byles Gridley
said; but he was apt to be caustic at times.

Father Pemberton visited his people but rarely. Like Jonathan Edwards,
like David Osgood, he felt his call to be to study-work, and was
impatient of the egotisms and spiritual megrims, in listening to which,
especially from the younger females of his flock, his colleague had won
the hearts of so many of his parishioners. His presence had a wonderful
effect in restoring the despondent Miss Silence to her equanimity; for
not all the hard divinity he had preached for half a century had spoiled
his kindly nature; and not the gentle Melanchthon himself, ready to
welcome death as a refuge from the rage and bitterness of theologians,
was more in contrast with the disputants with whom he mingled, than
the old minister, in the hour of trial, with the stern dogmatist in his
study, forging thunderbolts to smite down sinners.

It was well that there were no tithing-men about on that next day,
Sunday; for it shone no Sabbath day for the young men within half a
dozen miles of the village. They were out on Bear Hill the whole day,
beating up the bushes as if for game, scaring old crows out of their
ragged nests, and in one dark glen startling a fierce-eyed, growling,
bobtailed catamount, who sat spitting and looking all ready to spring at
them, on the tall tree where he clung with his claws unsheathed, until a
young fellow came up with a gun and shot him dead. They went through and
through the swamp at Musquash Hollow; but found nothing better than
a wicked old snapping-turtle, evil to behold, with his snaky head and
alligator tail, but worse to meddle with, if his horny jaws were near
enough to spring their man-trap on the curious experimenter. At Wood-End
there were some Indians, ill-conditioned savages in a dirty tent, making
baskets, the miracle of which was that they were so clean. They had seen
a young lady answering the description, about a week ago. She had bought
a basket. Asked them if they had a canoe they wanted to sell.--Eyes like
hers (pointing to a squaw with a man's hat on).

At Pocasset the young men explored all the thick woods,--some who ought
to have known better taking their guns, which made a talk, as one might
well suppose it would. Hunting on a Sabbath day! They did n't mean to
shoot Myrtle Hazard, did they? it was keenly asked. A good many said it
was all nonsense, and a mere excuse to get away from meeting and have
a sort of frolic on pretence that it was a work of necessity and mercy,
one or both.

While they were scattering themselves about in this way, some in
earnest, some rejoicing in the unwonted license, lifting off for a
little while that enormous Sabbath-day pressure which weighs like forty
atmospheres on every true-born Puritan, two young men had been since
Friday in search of the lost girl, each following a clue of his own, and
determined to find her if she was among the living.

Cyprian Eveleth made for the village of Mapleton, where his sister Olive
was staying, trusting that, with her aid, he might get a clue to the
mystery of Myrtle's disappearance.

William Murray Bradshaw struck for a railroad train going to the great
seaport, at a station where it stops for wood and water.

In the mean time, a third young man, Gifted Hopkins by name, son of
the good woman already mentioned, sat down, with tears in his eyes, and
wrote those touching stanzas, “The Lost Myrtle,” which were printed in
the next “Banner and Oracle,” and much admired by many who read them.




CHAPTER III. ANTECEDENTS.

The Withers Homestead was the oldest mansion in town. It was built on
the east bank of the river, a little above the curve which gave the name
to Oxbow Village. It stood on an elevation, its west gable close to the
river's edge, an old orchard and a small pond at the foot of the slope
behind it, woods at the east, open to the south, with a great row of
Lombardy poplars standing guard in front of the house. The Hon. Selah
Withers, Esq., a descendant of one of the first colonists, built it
for his own residence, in the early part of the last century. Deeply
impressed with his importance in the order of things, he had chosen to
place it a little removed from the cluster of smaller dwellings about
the Oxbow; and with some vague fancy in his mind of the castles that
overlook the Rhine and the Danube, he had selected this eminence on
which to place his substantial gambrel roofed dwelling-house. Long
afterwards a bay-window, almost a little room of itself, had been thrown
out of the second story on the west side, so that it looked directly
down on the river running beneath it. The chamber, thus half suspended
in the air, had been for years the special apartment of Myrtle Hazard;
and as the boys paddling about on the river would often catch glimpses,
through the window, of the little girl dressed in the scarlet jacket she
fancied in those days, one of them, Cyprian Eveleth had given it a name
which became current among the young people, and indeed furnished to
Gifted Hopkins the subject of one of his earliest poems, to wit, “The
Fire-hang-bird's Nest.”

If we would know anything about the persons now living at the Withers
Homestead, or The Poplars, as it was more commonly called of late years,
we must take a brief inventory of some of their vital antecedents. It
is by no means certain that our individual personality is the single
inhabitant of these our corporeal frames. Nay, there is recorded an
experience of one of the living persons mentioned in this narrative,--to
be given in full in its proper place, which, so far as it is received
in evidence, tends to show that some, at least, who have long been dead,
may enjoy a kind of secondary and imperfect, yet self-conscious life,
in these bodily tenements which we are in the habit of considering
exclusively our own. There are many circumstances, familiar to common
observers, which favor this belief to a certain extent. Thus, at one
moment we detect the look, at another the tone of voice, at another some
characteristic movement of this or that ancestor, in our relations or
others. There are times when our friends do not act like themselves, but
apparently in obedience to some other law than that of their own proper
nature. We all do things both awake and asleep which surprise us.
Perhaps we have cotenants in this house we live in. No less than eight
distinct personalities are said to have coexisted in a single female
mentioned by an ancient physician of unimpeachable authority. In this
light we may perhaps see the meaning of a sentence, from a work which
will be repeatedly referred to in this narrative, viz.: “This body in
which we journey across the isthmus between the two oceans is not a
private carriage, but an omnibus.”

The ancestry of the Withers family had counted a martyr to their faith
before they were known as Puritans. The record was obscure in some
points; but the portrait, marked “Ann Holyoake, burned by ye bloudy
Papists, ano 15..” (figures illegible), was still hanging against
the panel over the fireplace in the west parlor at The Poplars. The
following words were yet legible on the canvas: “Thou hast made a
covenant O Lord with mee and my Children forever.”

The story had come down, that Ann Holyoake spoke these words in a prayer
she offered up at the stake, after the fagots were kindled. There had
always been a secret feeling in the family, that none of her descendants
could finally fall from grace, in virtue of this solemn “covenant.”

There had been also a legend in the family, that the martyred woman's
spirit exercised a kind of supervision over her descendants; that she
either manifested herself to them, or in some way impressed them, from
time to time; as in the case of the first pilgrim before he cast his
lot with the emigrants,--of one Mrs. Winslow, a descendant in the third
generation, when the Indians were about to attack the settlement where
she lived,--and of another, just before he was killed at Quebec.

There was a remarkable resemblance between the features of Ann Holyoake,
as shown in the portrait, and the miniature likeness of Myrtle's mother.
Myrtle adopted the nearly obsolete superstition more readily on this
account, and loved to cherish the fancy that the guardian spirit which
had watched over her ancestors was often near her, and would be with her
in her time of need.

The wife of Selah Withers was accused of sorcery in the evil days of
that delusion. A careless expression in one of her letters, that “ye
Parson was as lyke to bee in league with ye Divell as anie of em,” had
got abroad, and given great offence to godly people. There was no doubt
that some odd “manifestations,” as they would be called nowadays, had
taken place in the household when she was a girl, and that she presented
many of the conditions belonging to what are at the present day called
mediums.

Major Gideon Withers, her son, was of the very common type of hearty,
loud, portly men, who like to show themselves at militia trainings,
and to hear themselves shout orders at musters, or declaim patriotic
sentiments at town-meetings and in the General Court. He loved to wear
a crimson sash and a military cap with a large red feather, in which the
village folk used to say he looked as “hahnsome as a piny,”--meaning a
favorite flower of his, which is better spelt peony, and to which it was
not unnatural that his admirers should compare him.

If he had married a wife like himself, there might probably enough have
sprung from the alliance a family of moon-faced children, who would
have dropped into their places like posts into their holes, asking no
questions of life, contented, like so many other honest folks, with the
part of supernumeraries in the drama of being, their wardrobe of flesh
and bones being furnished them gratis, and nothing to do but to walk
across the stage wearing it. But Major Gideon Withers, for some reason
or other, married a slender, sensitive, nervous, romantic woman, which
accounted for the fact that his son David, “King David,” as he was
called in his time, had a very different set of tastes from his father,
showing a turn for literature and sentiment in his youth, reading
Young's “Night Thoughts,” and Thomson's “Seasons,” and sometimes in
those early days writing verses himself to Celia or to Chloe, which
sounded just as fine to him as Effie and Minnie sound to young people
now, as Musidora, as Saccharissa, as Lesbia, as Helena, as Adah and
Zillah, have all sounded to young people in their time,--ashes of roses
as they are to us now, and as our endearing Scotch diminutives will be
to others by and by.

King David Withers, who got his royal prefix partly because he was rich,
and partly because he wrote hymns occasionally, when he grew too old
to write love-poems, married the famous beauty before mentioned, Miss
Judith Pride, and the race came up again in vigor. Their son, Jeremy,
took for his first wife a delicate, melancholic girl, who matured into a
sad-eyed woman, and bore him two children, Malachi and Silence.

When she died, he mourned for her bitterly almost a year, and then put
on a ruffled shirt and went across the river to tell his grief to Miss
Virginia Wild, there residing. This lady was said to have a few drops of
genuine aboriginal blood in her veins; and it is certain that her
cheek had a little of the russet tinge which a Seckel pear shows on its
warmest cheek when it blushes.--Love shuts itself up in sympathy like a
knife-blade in its handle, and opens as easily. All the rest followed in
due order according to Nature's kindly programme.

Captain Charles Hazard, of the ship Orient Pearl, fell desperately in
love with the daughter of this second wife, married her, and carried her
to India, where their first and only child was born, and received the
name of Myrtle, as fitting her cradle in the tropics. So her earliest
impressions,--it would not be exact to call them recollections,--besides
the smiles of her father and mother, were of dusky faces, of loose white
raiment, of waving fans, of breezes perfumed with the sweet exhalations
of sandal-wood, of gorgeous flowers and glowing fruit, of shady
verandas, of gliding palanquins, and all the languid luxury of the
South. The pestilence which has its natural home in India, but has
journeyed so far from its birth place in these later years, took her
father and mother away, suddenly, in the very freshness of their early
maturity. A relation of Myrtle's father, wife of another captain, was
returning to America on a visit, and the child was sent back, under her
care, while still a mere infant, to her relatives at the old homestead.
During the long voyage, the strange mystery of the ocean was wrought
into her consciousness so deeply, that it seemed to have become a part
of her being. The waves rocked her, as if the sea had been her mother;
and, looking over the vessel's side from the arms that held her with
tender care, she used to watch the play of the waters, until the rhythm
of their movement became a part of her, almost as much as her own pulse
and breath.

The instincts and qualities belonging to the ancestral traits which
predominated in the conflict of mingled lives lay in this child in
embryo, waiting to come to maturity. It was as when several grafts,
bearing fruit that ripens at different times, are growing upon the same
stock. Her earlier impulses may have been derived directly from her
father and mother, but all the ancestors who have been mentioned, and
more or less obscurely many others, came uppermost in their time, before
the absolute and total result of their several forces had found
its equilibrium in the character by which she was to be known as an
individual. These inherited impulses were therefore many, conflicting,
some of them dangerous. The World, the Flesh, and the Devil held
mortgages on her life before its deed was put in her hands; but sweet
and gracious influences were also born with her; and the battle of life
was to be fought between them, God helping her in her need, and her own
free choice siding with one or the other. The formal statement of this
succession of ripening characteristics need not be repeated, but the
fact must be borne in mind.

This was the child who was delivered into the hands of Miss Silence
Withers, her mother's half--sister, keeping house with her brother
Malachi, a bachelor, already called Old Malachi, though hardly entitled
by his years to such a venerable prefix. Both these persons had
inherited the predominant traits of their sad-eyed mother. Malachi,
the chief heir of the family property, was rich, but felt very poor. He
owned this fine old estate of some hundreds of acres. He had moneys
in the bank, shares in various companies, wood-lots in the town; and a
large tract of Western land, the subject of a lawsuit which seemed as if
it would never be settled, and kept him always uneasy.

Some said he hoarded gold somewhere about the old house, but nobody knew
this for a certainty. In spite of his abundant means, he talked much of
poverty, and kept the household on the narrowest footing of economy.
One Irishwoman, with a little aid from her husband now and then, did all
their work; and the only company they saw was Miss Cynthia Badlam, who,
as a relative, claimed a home with them whenever she was so disposed.

The “little Indian,” as Malachi called her, was an awkward accession to
the family. Silence Withers knew no more about children and their ways
and wants than if she had been a female ostrich. Thus it was that she
found it necessary to send for a woman well known in the place as the
first friend whose acquaintance many of the little people of the town
had made in this vale of tears.

Thirty years of practice had taught Nurse Byloe the art of handling the
young of her species with the soft firmness which one may notice in cats
with their kittens,--more grandly in a tawny lioness mouthing her cubs.
Myrtle did not know she was held; she only felt she was lifted, and
borne up, as a cherub may feel upon a white-woolly cloud, and smiled
accordingly at the nurse, as if quite at home in her arms.

“As fine a child as ever breathed the breath of life. But where did them
black eyes come from? Born in Injy,--that 's it, ain't it? No, it's her
poor mother's eyes to be sure. Does n't it seem as if there was a
kind of Injin look to 'em? She'll be a lively one to manage, if I know
anything about childun. See her clinchin' them little fists!”

This was when Miss Silence came near her and brought her rather severe
countenance close to the child for inspection of its features. The
ungracious aspect of the woman and the defiant attitude of the child
prefigured in one brief instant the history of many long coming years.

It was not a great while before the two parties in that wearing conflict
of alien lives, which is often called education, began to measure
their strength against each other. The child was bright, observing, of
restless activity, inquisitively curious, very hard to frighten, and
with a will which seemed made for mastery, not submission.

The stern spinster to whose care this vigorous life was committed
was disposed to discharge her duty to the girl faithfully and
conscientiously; but there were two points in her character and belief
which had a most important bearing on the manner in which she carried
out her laudable intentions. First, she was one of that class of human
beings whose one single engrossing thought is their own welfare,--in the
next world, it is true, but still their own personal welfare. The Roman
Church recognizes this class, and provides every form of specific to
meet their spiritual condition. But in so far as Protestantism
has thrown out works as a means of insuring future safety, these
unfortunates are as badly off as nervous patients who have no drops,
pills, potions, no doctors' rules, to follow. Only tell a poor creature
what to do, and he or she will do it, and be made easy, were it a
pilgrimage of a thousand miles, with shoes full of split peas instead of
boiled ones; but if once assured that doing does no good, the drooping
Little-faiths are left at leisure to worry about their souls, as
the other class of weaklings worry about their bodies. The effect
on character does not seem to be very different in the two classes.
Metaphysicians may discuss the nature of selfishness at their leisure;
if to have all her thoughts centring on the one point of her own
well-being by and by was selfishness, then Silence Withers was supremely
selfish; and if we are offended with that form of egotism, it is no more
than ten of the twelve Apostles were, as the reader may see by
turning to the Gospel of St. Matthew, the twentieth chapter and the
twenty-fourth verse.

The next practical difficulty was, that she attempted to carry out a
theory which, whatever might be its success in other cases, did not work
kindly in the case of Myrtle Hazard, but, on the contrary, developed a
mighty spirit of antagonism in her nature, which threatened to end in
utter lawlessness. Miss Silence started from the approved doctrine,
that all children are radically and utterly wrong in all their motives,
feelings, thoughts, and deeds, so long as they remain subject to their
natural instincts. It was by the eradication, and not the education, of
these instincts, that the character of the human being she was moulding
was to be determined. The first great preliminary process, so soon
as the child manifested any evidence of intelligent and persistent
self-determination, was to break her will.

There is no doubt that this was a legitimate conclusion from the
teaching of Priest Pemberton, but it required a colder and harder
nature than his own to carry out many of his dogmas to their practical
application. He wrought in the pure mathematics, so to speak, of
theology, and left the working rules to the good sense and good feeling
of his people.

Miss Silence had been waiting for her opportunity to apply the great
doctrine, and it came at last in a very trivial way.

“Myrtle does n't want brown bread. Myrtle won't have brown bread. Myrtle
will have white bread.”

“Myrtle is a wicked child. She will have what Aunt Silence says she
shall have. She won't have anything but brown bread.”

Thereupon the bright red lip protruded, the hot blood mounted to her
face, the child untied her little “tire,” got down from the table,
took up her one forlorn, featureless doll, and went to bed without
her supper. The next morning the worthy woman thought that hunger and
reflection would have subdued the rebellious spirit. So there stood
yesterday's untouched supper waiting for her breakfast. She would not
taste it, and it became necessary to enforce that extreme penalty of
the law which had been threatened, but never yet put in execution. Miss
Silence, in obedience to what she felt to be a painful duty, without any
passion, but filled with high, inexorable purpose, carried the child up
to the garret, and, fastening her so that she could not wander about and
hurt herself, left her to her repentant thoughts, awaiting the moment
when a plaintive entreaty for liberty and food should announce that the
evil nature had yielded and the obdurate will was broken.

The garret was an awful place. All the skeleton-like ribs of the roof
showed in the dim light, naked overhead, and the only floor to be
trusted consisted of the few boards which bridged the lath and plaster.
A great, mysterious brick tower climbed up through it,--it was the
chimney, but it looked like a horrible cell to put criminals into. The
whole place was festooned with cobwebs,--not light films, such as
the housewife's broom sweeps away before they have become a permanent
residence, but vast gray draperies, loaded with dust, sprinkled with
yellow powder from the beams where the worms were gnawing day and night,
the home of old, hairy spiders who had, lived there since they were eggs
and would leave it for unborn spiders who would grow old and huge like
themselves in it, long after the human tenants had left the mansion
for a narrower home. Here this little criminal was imprisoned, six,
twelve,--tell it not to mothers,--eighteen dreadful hours, hungry until
she was ready to gnaw her hands, a prey to all childish imaginations;
and here at her stern guardian's last visit she sat, pallid, chilled,
almost fainting, but sullen and unsubdued. The Irishwoman, poor stupid
Kitty Fagan, who had no theory of human nature, saw her over the lean
shoulders of the spinster, and, forgetting all differences of condition
and questions of authority, rushed to her with a cry of maternal
tenderness, and, with a tempest of passionate tears and kisses, bore her
off to her own humble realm, where the little victorious martyr was fed
from the best stores of the house, until there was as much danger from
repletion as there had been from famine. How the experiment might have
ended but for this empirical and most unphilosophical interference,
there is no saying; but it settled the point that the rebellious nature
was not to be subjugated in a brief conflict.

The untamed disposition manifested itself in greater enormities as
she grew older. At the age of four years she was detected in making a
cat's-cradle at meeting, during sermon-time, and, on being reprimanded
for so doing, laughed out loud, so as to be heard by Father Pemberton,
who thereupon bent his threatening, shaggy brows upon the child, and,
to his shame be it spoken, had such a sudden uprising of weak, foolish,
grandfatherly feelings, that a mist came over his eyes, and he left
out his “ninthly” altogether, thereby spoiling the logical sequence of
propositions which had kept his large forehead knotty for a week.

At eight years old she fell in love with the high-colored picture of
Major Gideon Withers in the crimson sash and the red feather of his
exalted military office. It was then for the first time that her aunt
Silence remarked a shade of resemblance between the child and the
portrait. She had always, up to this time, been dressed in sad colors,
as was fitting, doubtless, for a forlorn orphan; but happening one
day to see a small negro girl peacocking round in a flaming scarlet
petticoat, she struck for bright colors in her own apparel, and carried
her point at last. It was as if a ground-sparrow had changed her gray
feathers for the burning plumage of some tropical wanderer; and it
was natural enough that Cyprian Eveleth should have called her the
fire-hang-bird, and her little chamber the fire-hang-bird's nest,--using
the country boy's synonyme for the Baltimore oriole.

At ten years old she had one of those great experiences which give new
meaning to the life of a child.

Her uncle Malachi had seemed to have a strong liking for her at one
time, but of late years his delusions had gained upon him, and under
their influence he seemed to regard her as an encumbrance and an
extravagance. He was growing more and more solitary in his habits, more
and more negligent of his appearance. He was up late at night, wandering
about the house from the cellar to the garret, so that, his light being
seen flitting from window to window, the story got about that the old
house was haunted.

One dreary, rainy Friday in November, Myrtle was left alone in the
house. Her uncle had been gone since the day before. The two women were
both away at the village. At such times the child took a strange delight
in exploring all the hiding-places of the old mansion. She had the
mysterious dwelling-place of so many of the dead and the living all to
herself. What a fearful kind of pleasure in its silence and loneliness!
The old clock that Marmaduke Storr made in London more than a hundred
years ago was clicking the steady pulse-beats of its second century. The
featured moon on its dial had lifted one eye, as if to watch the child,
as it had watched so many generations of children, while the
swinging pendulum ticked them along into youth, maturity, gray hairs,
deathbeds,--ticking through the prayer at the funeral, ticking without
grief through all the still or noisy woe of mourning,--ticking without
joy when the smiles and gayety of comforted heirs had come back again.
She looked at herself in the tall, bevelled mirror in the best chamber.
She pulled aside the curtains of the stately bedstead whereon the heads
of the house had slept until they died and were stretched out upon it,
and the sheet shaped itself to them in vague, awful breadth of outline,
like a block of monumental marble the sculptor leaves just hinted by the
chisel.

She groped her way up to the dim garret, the scene of her memorable
punishment. A rusty hook projected from one of the joists a little
higher than a man's head. Something was hanging from it,--an old
garment, was it? She went bravely up and touched--a cold hand. She
did what most children of that age would do,--uttered a cry and ran
downstairs with all her might. She rushed out of the door and called to
the man Patrick, who was doing some work about the place. What could be
done was done, but it was too late.

Uncle Malachi had made away with himself. That was plain on the face
of thing. In due time the coroner's verdict settled it. It was not so
strange as it seemed; but it made a great talk in the village and all
the country round about. Everybody knew he had money enough, and yet he
had hanged himself for fear of starving to death.

For all that, he was found to have left a will, dated some years before,
leaving his property to his sister Silence, with the exception of a
certain moderate legacy to be paid in money to Myrtle Hazard when she
should arrive at the age of twenty years.

The household seemed more chilly than ever after this tragical event.
Its depressing influence followed the child to school, where she learned
the common branches of knowledge. It followed her to the Sabbath-day
catechisings, where she repeated the answers about the federal headship
of Adam, and her consequent personal responsibilities, and other
technicalities which are hardly milk for babes, perhaps as well as other
children, but without any very profound remorse for what she could not
help, so far as she understood the matter, any more than her sex or
stature, and with no very clear comprehension of the phrases which the
New England followers of the Westminster divines made a part of the
elementary instruction of young people.

At twelve years old she had grown tall and womanly enough to attract the
eyes of the youth and older boys, several of whom made advances towards
her acquaintance. But the dreary discipline of the household had sunk
into her soul, and she had been shaping an internal life for herself,
which it was hard for friendship to penetrate. Bathsheba Stoker was
chained to the bedside of an invalid mother. Olive Eveleth, a kind,
true-hearted girl, belonged to another religious communion; and this
tended to render their meetings less frequent, though Olive was still
her nearest friend. Cyprian was himself a little shy, and rather held
to Myrtle through his sister than by any true intimacy directly with
herself. Of the other young men of the village Gifted Hopkins was
perhaps the most fervent of her admirers, as he had repeatedly shown by
effusions in verse, of which, under the thinnest of disguises, she was
the object.

William Murray Bradshaw, ten years older than herself, a young man of
striking aspect and claims to exceptional ability, had kept his eye on
her of late; but it was generally supposed that he would find a wife
in the city, where he was in the habit of going to visit a fashionable
relative, Mrs. Clymer Ketchum, of 24 Carat Place. She, at any rate,
understood very well that he meant, to use his own phrase, “to go in for
a corner lot,”--understanding thereby a young lady with possessions and
without encumbrances. If the old man had only given his money to Myrtle,
William Murray Bradshaw would have made sure of her; but she was not
likely ever to get much of it. Miss Silence Withers, it was understood,
would probably leave her money as the Rev. Mr. Stoker, her spiritual
director, should indicate, and it seemed likely that most of it would go
to a rising educational institution where certain given doctrines were
to be taught through all time, whether disproved or not, and whether
those who taught them believed them or not, provided only they would say
they believed them.

Nobody had promised to say masses for her soul if she made this
disposition of her property, or pledged the word of the Church that she
should have plenary absolution. But she felt that she would be making
friends in Influential Quarters by thus laying up her treasure, and that
she would be safe if she had the good-will of the ministers of her sect.

Myrtle Hazard had nearly reached the age of fourteen, and, though not
like to inherit much of the family property, was fast growing into a
large dower of hereditary beauty. Always handsome, her features shaped
themselves in a finer symmetry, her color grew richer, her figure
promised a perfect womanly development, and her movements had the grace
which high-breeding gives the daughter of a queen, and which Nature now
and then teaches the humblest of village maidens. She could not long
escape the notice of the lovers and flatterers of beauty, and the time
of danger was drawing near.

At this period of her life she made two discoveries which changed the
whole course of her thoughts, and opened for her a new world of ideas
and possibilities.

Ever since the dreadful event of November, 1854, the garret had been a
fearful place to think of, and still more to visit. The stories that
the house was haunted gained in frequency of repetition and detail of
circumstance. But Myrtle was bold and inquisitive, and explored its
recesses at such times as she could creep among them undisturbed. Hid
away close under the eaves she found an old trunk covered with dust and
cobwebs. The mice had gnawed through its leather hinges, and, as it had
been hastily stuffed full, the cover had risen, and two or three volumes
had fallen to the floor. This trunk held the papers and books which her
great-grandmother, the famous beauty, had left behind her, records of
the romantic days when she was the belle of the county,--storybooks,
memoirs, novels, and poems, and not a few love-letters,--a strange
collection, which, as so often happens with such deposits in old
families, nobody had cared to meddle with, and nobody had been willing
to destroy, until at last they had passed out of mind, and waited for a
new generation to bring them into light again.

The other discovery was of a small hoard of coin. Under one of the
boards which formed the imperfect flooring of the garret was hidden
an old leather mitten. Instead of a hand, it had a fat fist of silver
dollars, and a thumb of gold half-eagles.

Thus knowledge and power found their way to the simple and secluded
maiden. The books were hers to read as much as any other's; the gold and
silver were only a part of that small provision which would be hers by
and by, and if she borrowed it, it was borrowing of herself. The tree of
the knowledge of good and evil had shaken its fruit into her lap, and,
without any serpent to tempt her, she took thereof and did eat.




CHAPTER IV. BYLES GRIDLEY, A. M.

The old Master of Arts was as notable a man in his outside presentment
as one will find among five hundred college alumni as they file in
procession. His strong, squared features, his formidable scowl, his
solid-looking head, his iron-gray hair, his positive and as it were
categorical stride, his slow, precise way of putting a statement,
the strange union of trampling radicalism in some directions and
high-stepping conservatism in others, which made it impossible to
calculate on his unexpressed opinions, his testy ways and his generous
impulses, his hard judgments and kindly actions, were characteristics
that gave him a very decided individuality.

He had all the aspects of a man of books. His study, which was the best
room in Mrs. Hopkins's house, was filled with a miscellaneous-looking
collection of volumes, which his curious literary taste had got together
from the shelves of all the libraries that had been broken up during
his long life as a scholar. Classics, theology, especially of the
controversial sort, statistics, politics, law, medicine, science, occult
and overt, general literature,--almost every branch of knowledge was
represented. His learning was very various, and of course mixed up,
useful and useless, new and ancient, dogmatic and rational,--like his
library, in short; for a library gathered like his is a looking-glass in
which the owner's mind is reflected.

The common people about the village did not know what to make of such
a phenomenon. He did not preach, marry, christen, or bury, like the
ministers, nor jog around with medicines for sick folks, nor carry cases
into court for quarrelsome neighbors. What was he good for? Not a great
deal, some of the wiseacres thought,--had “all sorts of sense but common
sense,”--“smart mahn, but not prahctical.” There were others who read
him more shrewdly. He knowed more, they said, than all the ministers put
together, and if he'd stan' for Ripresentative they 'd like to vote for
him,--they hed n't hed a smart mahn in the Gineral Court sence Squire
Wibird was thar.

They may have overdone the matter in comparing his knowledge with that
of all the ministers together, for Priest Pemberton was a real scholar
in his special line of study,--as all D. D.'s are supposed to be, or
they would not have been honored with that distinguished title. But Mr.
Byles Gridley not only had more learning than the deep-sea line of the
bucolic intelligence could fathom; he had more wisdom also than they
gave him credit for, even those among them who thought most of his
abilities.

In his capacity of schoolmaster he had sharpened his wits against those
of the lively city boys he had in charge, and made such a reputation
as “Master” Gridley, that he kept that title even after he had become
a college tutor and professor. As a tutor he had to deal with many
of these same boys, and others like them, in the still more vivacious
period of their early college life. He got rid of his police duties when
he became a professor, but he still studied the pupils as carefully as
he used once to watch them, and learned to read character with a skill
which might have fitted him for governing men instead of adolescents.
But he loved quiet and he dreaded mingling with the brawlers of the
market-place, whose stock in trade is a voice and a vocabulary. So
it was that he had passed his life in the patient mechanical labor
of instruction, leaving too many of his instincts and faculties in
abeyance.

The alluvium of all this experience bore a nearer resemblance to worldly
wisdom than might have been conjectured; much nearer, indeed, than it
does in many old instructors, whose eyes get fish-like as their blood
grows cold, and who are not fit to be trusted with anything more
practical than a gerund or a cosine. Master Gridley not only knew a good
deal of human nature, but he knew how to keep his knowledge to himself
upon occasion. He understood singularly well the ways and tendencies
of young people. He was shrewd in the detection of trickery, and very
confident in those who had once passed the ordeal of his well-schooled
observing powers. He had no particular tendency to meddle with the
personal relations of those about him; but if they were forced upon him
in any way, he was like to see into them at least as quickly as any of
his neighbors who thought themselves most endowed with practical skill.

In leaving the duties of his office he considered himself, as he said
a little despondently, like an old horse unharnessed and turned out to
pasture. He felt that he had separated himself from human interests, and
was henceforth to live in his books with the dead, until he should be
numbered with them himself. He had chosen this quiet village as a
place where he might pass his days undisturbed, and find a peaceful
resting-place in its churchyard, where the gravel was dry, and the
sun lay warm, and the glowing woods of autumn would spread their
many-colored counterpane over the bed where he would be taking his rest.
It sometimes came over him painfully that he was never more to be of any
importance to his fellow-creatures. There was nobody living to whom he
was connected by any very near ties. He felt kindly enough to the good
woman in whose house he lived; he sometimes gave a few words of counsel
to her son; he was not unamiable with the few people he met; he bowed
with great consideration to the Rev. Dr. Pemberton; and he studied with
no small interest the physiognomy of the Rev. Joseph Bellamy Stoker,
to whose sermons he listened, with a black scowl now and then, and a
nostril dilating with ominous intensity of meaning. But he said sadly to
himself, that his life had been a failure,--that he had nothing to show
for it, and his one talent was ready in its napkin to give back to his
Lord.

He owed something of this sadness, perhaps, to a cause which many would
hold of small significance. Though he had mourned for no lost love,
at least so far as was known, though he had never suffered the pang
of parting with a child, though he seemed isolated from those joys and
griefs which come with the ties of family, he too had his private urn
filled with the ashes of extinguished hopes. He was the father of a dead
book.

Why “Thoughts on the Universe, by Byles Gridley, A. M.,” had not met
with an eager welcome and a permanent demand from the discriminating
public, it would take us too long to inquire in detail. Indeed; he
himself was never able to account satisfactorily for the state of things
which his bookseller's account made evident to him. He had read and
re-read his work; and the more familiar he became with it, the less was
he able to understand the singular want of popular appreciation of what
he could not help recognizing as its excellences. He had a special copy
of his work, printed on large paper and sumptuously bound. He loved to
read in this, as people read over the letters of friends who have long
been dead; and it might have awakened a feeling of something far removed
from the ludicrous, if his comments on his own production could have
been heard. “That's a thought, now, for you!--See Mr. Thomas Babington
Macaulay's Essay printed six years after thus book.” “A felicitous
image! and so everybody would have said if only Mr. Thomas Carlyle had
hit upon it.” “If this is not genuine pathos, where will you find it, I
should like to know? And nobody to open the book where it stands written
but one poor old man--in this generation, at least--in this generation!”
 It may be doubted whether he would ever have loved his book with such
jealous fondness if it had gone through a dozen editions, and everybody
was quoting it to his face. But now it lived only for him; and to him it
was wife and child, parent, friend, all in one, as Hector was all in all
to his spouse. He never tired of it, and in his more sanguine moods he
looked forward to the time when the world would acknowledge its merits,
and his genius would find full recognition. Perhaps he was right: more
than one book which seemed dead and was dead for contemporary readers
has had a resurrection when the rivals who triumphed over it lived only
in the tombstone memory of antiquaries. Comfort for some of us, dear
fellow-writer.

It followed from the way in which he lived that he must have some means
of support upon which he could depend. He was economical, if not over
frugal in some of his habits; but he bought books, and took newspapers
and reviews, and had money when money was needed; the fact being, though
it was not generally known, that a distant relative had not long before
died, leaving him a very comfortable property.

His money matters had led him to have occasional dealings with the late
legal firm of Wibird and Penhallow, which had naturally passed into
the hands of the new partnership, Penhallow and Bradshaw. He had entire
confidence in the senior partner, but not so much in the young man who
had been recently associated in the business.

Mr. William Murray Bradshaw, commonly called by his last two names, was
the son of a lawyer of some note for his acuteness, who marked out his
calling for him in having him named after the great Lord Mansfield.
Murray Bradshaw was about twenty-five years old, by common consent
good-looking, with a finely formed head, a searching eye, and a
sharp-cut mouth, which smiled at his bidding without the slightest
reference to the real condition of his feeling at the moment. This was
a great convenience; for it gave him an appearance of good-nature at
the small expense of a slight muscular movement which was as easy as
winking, and deceived everybody but those who had studied him long and
carefully enough to find that this play of his features was what a watch
maker would call a detached movement.

He had been a good scholar in college, not so much by hard study as
by skilful veneering, and had taken great pains to stand well with the
Faculty, at least one of whom, Byles Gridley, A. M., had watched him
with no little interest as a man with a promising future, provided he
were not so astute as to outwit and overreach himself in his excess of
contrivance. His classmates could not help liking him; as to loving him,
none of them would have thought of that. He was so shrewd, so keen, so
full of practical sense, and so good-humored as long as things went on
to his liking, that few could resist his fascination. He had a way of
talking with people about what they were interested in, as if it were
the one matter in the world nearest to his heart. But he was commonly
trying to find out something, or to produce some impression, as a
juggler is working at his miracle while he keeps people's attention by
his voluble discourse and make-believe movements. In his lightest talk
he was almost always edging towards a practical object, and it was an
interesting and instructive amusement to watch for the moment at which
he would ship the belt of his colloquial machinery on to the tight
pulley. It was done so easily and naturally that there was hardly a sign
of it. Master Gridley could usually detect the shifting action, but the
young man's features and voice never betrayed him.

He was a favorite with the other sex, who love poetry and romance, as
he well knew, for which reason he often used the phrases of both, and in
such a way as to answer his purpose with most of those whom he wished
to please. He had one great advantage in the sweepstakes of life: he was
not handicapped with any burdensome ideals. He took everything at its
marked value. He accepted the standard of the street as a final fact for
to-day, like the broker's list of prices.

His whole plan of life was laid out. He knew that law was the best
introduction to political life, and he meant to use it for this end.
He chose to begin his career in the country, so as to feel his way more
surely and gradually to its ultimate aim; but he had no intention of
burning his shining talents in a grazing district, however tall its
grass might grow. His business was not with these stiff-jointed,
slow-witted graziers, but with the supple, dangerous, far-seeing men who
sit scheming by the gas-light in the great cities, after all the lamps
and candles are out from the Merrimac to the Housatonic. Every strong
and every weak point of those who might probably be his rivals were laid
down on his charts, as winds and currents and rocks are marked on those
of a navigator. All the young girls in the country, and not a few in the
city, with which, as mentioned, he had frequent relations, were on his
list of possible availabilities in the matrimonial line of speculation,
provided always that their position and prospects were such as would
make them proper matches for so considerable a person as the future Hon.
William Murray Bradshaw.

Master Gridley had made a careful study of his old pupil since they had
resided in the same village. The old professor could not help admiring
him, notwithstanding certain suspicious elements in his character; for
after muddy village talk, a clear stream of intelligent conversation was
a great luxury to the hard-headed scholar. The more he saw of him,
the more he learned to watch his movements, and to be on his guard in
talking with him. The old man could be crafty, with all his simplicity,
and he had found out that under his good-natured manner there often
lurked some design more or less worth noting, and which might involve
other interests deserving protection.

For some reason or other the old Master of Arts had of late experienced
a certain degree of relenting with regard to himself, probably brought
about by the expressions of gratitude from worthy Mrs. Hopkins for acts
of kindness to which he himself attached no great value. He had been
kind to her son Gifted; he had been fatherly with Susan Posey,
her relative and boarder; and he had shown himself singularly and
unexpectedly amiable with the little twins who had been adopted by
the good woman into her household. In fact, ever since these little
creatures had begun to toddle about and explode their first consonants,
he had looked through his great round spectacles upon them with a
decided interest; and from that time it seemed as if some of the human
and social sentiments which had never leafed or flowered in him, for
want of their natural sunshine, had begun growing up from roots which
had never lost their life. His liking for the twins may have been an
illustration of that singular law which old Dr. Hurlbut used to lay
down, namely, that at a certain period of life, say from fifty to
sixty and upward, the grand-paternal instinct awakens in bachelors, the
rhythms of Nature reaching them in spite of her defeated intentions;
so that when men marry late they love their autumn child with a twofold
affection,--father's and grandfather's both in one.

However this may be, there is no doubt that Mr. Byles Gridley was
beginning to take a part in his neighbors' welfare and misfortunes, such
as could hardly have been expected of a man so long lost in his books
and his scholastic duties. And among others, Myrtle Hazard had come in
for a share of his interest. He had met her now and then in her walks to
and from school and meeting, and had been taken with her beauty and her
apparent unconsciousness of it, which he attributed to the forlorn kind
of household in which she had grown up. He had got so far as to talk
with her now and then, and found himself puzzled, as well he might be,
in talking with a girl who had been growing into her early maturity in
antagonism with every influence that surrounded her.

“Love will reach her by and by,” he said, “in spite of the dragons up at
the den yonder.

    “'Centum fronte oculos, centum cervice gerebat
     Argus, et hos unus saepe fefellit amor.'”

But there was something about Myrtle,--he hardly knew whether to call it
dignity, or pride, or reserve, or the mere habit of holding back
brought about by the system of repression under which she had been
educated,--which kept even the old Master of Arts at his distance. Yet
he was strongly drawn to her, and had a sort of presentiment that he
might be able to help her some day, and that very probably she would
want his help; for she was alone in the world, except for the dragons,
and sure to be assailed by foes from without and from within.

He noticed that her name was apt to come up in his conversations with
Murray Bradshaw; and, as he himself never introduced it, of course the
young man must have forced it, as conjurers force a card, and with some
special object. This set him thinking hard; and, as a result of it, he
determined the next time Mr. Bradshaw brought her name up to set him
talking.

So he talked, not suspecting how carefully the old man listened.

“It was a demonish hard case,” he said, “that old Malachi had left
his money as he did. Myrtle Hazard was going to be the handsomest girl
about, when she came to her beauty, and she was coming to it mighty
fast. If they could only break that will, but it was no use trying. The
doctors said he was of sound mind for at least two years after making
it. If Silence Withers got the land claim, there'd be a pile, sure
enough. Myrtle Hazard ought to have it. If the girl had only inherited
that property--whew? She'd have been a match for any fellow. That old
Silence Withers would do just as her minister told her,--even chance
whether she gives it to the Parson-factory, or marries Bellamy Stoker,
and gives it to him after his wife's dead. He'd take it if he had to
take her with it. Earn his money, hey, Master Gridley?”

“Why, you don't seem to think very well of the Rev. Joseph Bellamy
Stoker?” said Mr. Gridley, smiling.

“Think well of him? Too fond of using the Devil's pitchfork for my
fancy! Forks over pretty much all the world but himself and his lot
into--the bad place, you know; and toasts his own cheese with it with
very much the same kind of comfort that other folks seem to take in that
business. Besides, he has a weakness for pretty saints--and sinners.
That's an odd name he has. More belle amie than Joseph about him, I
rather guess!”

The old professor smiled again. “So you don't think he believes all the
mediaeval doctrines he is in the habit of preaching, Mr. Bradshaw?”

“No, sir; I think he belongs to the class I have seen described
somewhere. 'There are those who hold the opinion that truth is only safe
when diluted,--about one fifth to four fifths lies,--as the oxygen of
the air is with its nitrogen. Else it would burn us all up.'”

Byles Gridley colored and started a little. This was one of his own
sayings in “Thoughts on the Universe.” But the young man quoted it
without seeming to suspect its authorship.

“Where did you pick up that saying, Mr. Bradshaw?”

“I don't remember. Some paper, I rather think. It's one of those good
things that get about without anybody's knowing who says 'em. Sounds
like Coleridge.”

“That's what I call a compliment worth having,” said Byles Gridley to
himself, when he got home. “Let me look at that passage.”

He took down “Thoughts on the Universe,” and got so much interested,
reading on page after page, that he did not hear the little tea-bell,
and Susan Posey volunteered to run up to his study and call him down to
tea.




CHAPTER V. THE TWINS.

Miss Suzan Posey knocked timidly at his door and informed him that tea
was waiting. He rather liked Susan Posey. She was a pretty creature,
slight, blonde, a little too light, a village beauty of the second or
third grade, effective at picnics and by moonlight,--the kind of girl
that very young men are apt to remember as their first love. She had a
taste for poetry, and an admiration of poets; but, what was better, she
was modest and simple, and a perfect sister and mother and grandmother
to the two little forlorn twins who had been stranded on the Widow
Hopkins's doorstep.

These little twins, a boy and girl, were now between two and three years
old. A few words will make us acquainted with them. Nothing had ever
been known of their origin. The sharp eyes of all the spinsters had
been through every household in the village and neighborhood, and not
a suspicion fixed itself on any one. It was a dark night when they were
left; and it was probable that they had been brought from another town,
as the sound of wheels had been heard close to the door where they were
found, had stopped for a moment, then been heard again, and lost in the
distance.

How the good woman of the house took them in and kept them has been
briefly mentioned. At first nobody thought they would live a day, such
little absurd attempts at humanity did they seem. But the young doctor
came and the old doctor came, and the infants were laid in cotton-wool,
and the room heated up to keep them warm, and baby-teaspoonfuls of milk
given them, and after being kept alive in this way, like the young of
opossums and kangaroos, they came to a conclusion about which they did
not seem to have made up their thinking-pulps for some weeks, namely, to
go on trying to cross the sea of life by tugging at the four-and-twenty
oars which must be pulled day and night until the unknown shore is
reached, and the oars lie at rest under the folded hands.

As it was not very likely that the parents who left their offspring
round on doorsteps were of saintly life, they were not presented for
baptism like the children of church-members. Still, they must have names
to be known by, and Mrs. Hopkins was much exercised in the matter. Like
many New England parents, she had a decided taste for names that were
significant and sonorous. That which she had chosen for her oldest
child, the young poet, was either a remarkable prophecy, or it had
brought with it the endowments it promised. She had lost, or, in her
own more pictorial language, she had buried, a daughter to whom she had
given the names, at once of cheerful omen and melodious effect, Wealthy
Amadora.

As for them poor little creturs, she said, she believed they was rained
down out o' the skies, jest as they say toads and tadpoles come. She
meant to be a mother to 'em for all that, and give 'em jest as good
names as if they was the governor's children, or the minister's. If Mr.
Gridley would be so good as to find her some kind of a real handsome
Chris'n name for 'em, she'd provide 'em with the other one. Hopkinses
they shall be bred and taught, and Hopkinses they shall be called. Ef
their father and mother was ashamed to own 'em, she was n't. Couldn't
Mr. Gridley pick out some pooty sounding names from some of them great
books of his. It's jest as well to have 'em pooty as long as they don't
cost any more than if they was Tom and Sally.

A grim smile passed over the rugged features of Byles Gridley. “Nothing
is easier than that, Mrs. Hopkins,” he said. “I will give you two very
pretty names that I think will please you and other folks. They're new
names, too. If they shouldn't like to keep them, they can change them
before they're christened, if they ever are. Isosceles will be just the
name for the boy, and I'm sure you won't find a prettier name for the
girl in a hurry than Helminthia.”

Mrs. Hopkins was delighted with the dignity and novelty of these two
names, which were forthwith adopted. As they were rather long for common
use in the family, they were shortened into the easier forms of Sossy
and Minthy, under which designation the babes began very soon to thrive
mightily, turning bread and milk into the substance of little sinners at
a great rate, and growing as if they were put out at compound interest.

This short episode shows us the family conditions surrounding Byles
Gridley, who, as we were saying, had just been called down to tea by
Miss Susan Posey.

“I am coming, my dear,” he said,--which expression quite touched Miss
Susan, who did not know that it was a kind of transferred caress from
the delicious page he was reading. It was not the living child that was
kissed, but the dead one lying under the snow, if we may make a trivial
use of a very sweet and tender thought we all remember.

Not long after this, happening to call in at the lawyer's office, his
eye was caught by the corner of a book lying covered up by a pile of
papers. Somehow or other it seemed to look very natural to him.
Could that be a copy of “Thoughts on the Universe”? He watched his
opportunity, and got a hurried sight of the volume. His own treatise,
sure enough! Leaves Uncut. Opened of itself to the one hundred and
twentieth page. The axiom Murray Bradshaw had quoted--he did not
remember from what,--“sounded like Coleridge”--was staring him in the
face from that very page. When he remembered how he had pleased himself
with that compliment the other day, he blushed like a school-girl; and
then, thinking out the whole trick,--to hunt up his forgotten book, pick
out a phrase or two from it, and play on his weakness with it, to win
his good opinion,--for what purpose he did not know, but doubtless to
use him in some way,--he grinned with a contempt about equally divided
between himself and the young schemer.

“Ah ha!” he muttered scornfully. “Sounds like Coleridge, hey? Niccolo
Macchiavelli Bradshaw!”

From this day forward he looked on all the young lawyer's doings with
even more suspicion than before. Yet he would not forego his company and
conversation; for he was very agreeable and amusing to study; and this
trick he had played him was, after all, only a diplomatist's way of
flattering his brother plenipotentiary. Who could say? Some time or
other he might cajole England or France or Russia into a treaty with
just such a trick. Shallower men than he had gone out as ministers of
the great Republic. At any rate, the fellow was worth watching.




CHAPTER VI. THE USE OF SPECTACLES.

The old Master of Arts had a great reputation in the house where he
lived for knowing everything that was going on. He rather enjoyed it;
and sometimes amused himself with surprising his simple-hearted landlady
and her boarders with the unaccountable results of his sagacity. One
thing was quite beyond her comprehension. She was perfectly sure that
Mr. Gridley could see out of the back of his head, just as other people
see with their natural organs. Time and again he had told her what
she was doing when his back was turned to her, just as if he had been
sitting squarely in front of her. Some laughed at this foolish notion;
but others, who knew more of the nebulous sciences, told her it was
like's not jes' so. Folks had read letters laid ag'in' the pits o' their
stomachs, 'n' why should n't they see out o' the backs o' their heads?

Now there was a certain fact at the bottom of this belief of Mrs.
Hopkins; and as it world be a very small thing to make a mystery of so
simple a matter, the reader shall have the whole benefit of knowing all
there is in it,--not quite yet, however, of knowing all that came of it.
It was not the mirror trick, of course, which Mrs. Felix Lorraine and
other dangerous historical personages have so long made use of. It was
nothing but this: Mr. Byles Gridley wore a pair of formidable spectacles
with large round glasses. He had often noticed the reflection of objects
behind him when they caught their images at certain angles, and had got
the habit of very often looking at the reflecting surface of one or the
other of the glasses, when he seemed to be looking through them. It put
a singular power into his possession, which might possibly hereafter
lead to something more significant than the mystification of the Widow
Hopkins.

A short time before Myrtle Hazard's disappearance, Mr. Byles Gridley had
occasion to call again at the office of Penhallow and Bradshaw on some
small matter of business of his own. There were papers to look over, and
he put on his great round-glassed spectacles. He and Mr. Penhallow sat
down at the table, and Mr. Bradshaw was at a desk behind them. After
sitting for a while, Mr. Penhallow seemed to remember something he had
meant to attend to, for he said all at once: “Excuse me, Mr. Gridley.
Mr. Bradshaw, if you are not busy, I wish you would look over this
bundle of papers. They look like old receipted bills and memoranda of no
particular use; but they came from the garret of the Withers place, and
might possibly have something that would be of value. Look them over,
will you, and see whether there is anything there worth saving.”

The young man took the papers, and Mr. Penhallow sat down again at the
table with Mr. Byles Gridley.

This last-named gentleman felt just then a strong impulse to observe
the operations of Murray Bradshaw. He could not have given any very good
reason for it, any more than any of us can for half of what we do.

“I should like to examine that conveyance we were speaking of once
more,” said he. “Please to look at this one in the mean time, will you,
Mr. Penhallow?”

Master Gridley held the document up before him. He did not seem to find
it quite legible, and adjusted his spectacles carefully, until they were
just as he wanted them. When he had got them to suit himself, sitting
there with his back to Murray Bradshaw, he could see him and all his
movements, the desk at which he was standing, and the books in the
shelves before him,--all this time appearing as if he were intent upon
his own reading.

The young man began in a rather indifferent way to look over the papers.
He loosened the band round them, and took them up one by one, gave a
careless glance at them, and laid them together to tie up again when
he had gone through them. Master Gridley saw all this process, thinking
what a fool he was all the time to be watching such a simple proceeding.
Presently he noticed a more sudden movement: the young man had found
something which arrested his attention, and turned his head to see if
he was observed. The senior partner and his client were both apparently
deep in their own affairs. In his hand Mr. Bradshaw held a paper folded
like the others, the back of which he read, holding it in such a way
that Master Gridley saw very distinctly three large spots of ink upon
it, and noticed their position. Murray Bradshaw took another hurried
glance at the two gentlemen, and then quickly opened the paper. He ran
it over with a flash of his eye, folded it again, and laid it by itself.
With another quick turn of his head, as if to see whether he were
observed or like to be, he reached his hand out and took a volume down
from the shelves. In this volume he shut the document, whatever it was,
which he had just taken out of the bundle, and placed the book in a very
silent and as it were stealthy way back in its place. He then gave a
look at each of the other papers, and said to his partner: “Old bills,
old leases, and insurance policies that have run out. Malachi seems to
have kept every scrap of paper that had a signature to it.”

“That 's the way with the old misers, always,” said Mr. Penhallow.

Byles Gridley had got through reading the document he held,--or
pretending to read it. He took off his spectacles.

“We all grow timid and cautious as we get old, Mr. Penhallow.” Then
turning round to the young man, he slowly repeated the lines,

   “'Multa senem circumveniunt incommoda, vel quod
     Quaerit et inventis miser abstinet, ac timet uti;
     Vel quod res omnes timide, gelideque ministrat'

“You remember the passage, Mr. Bradshaw?”

While he was reciting these words from Horace, which he spoke slowly
as if he relished every syllable, he kept his eyes on the young man
steadily, but with out betraying any suspicion. His old habits as a
teacher made that easy.

Murray Bradshaw's face was calm as usual, but there was a flush on
his cheek, and Master Gridley saw the slight but unequivocal signs of
excitement.

“Something is going on inside there,” the old man said to himself. He
waited patiently, on the pretext of business, until Mr. Bradshaw got up
and left the office. As soon as he and the senior partner were alone,
Master Gridley took a lazy look at some of the books in his library.
There stood in the book-shelves a copy of the Corpus Juris Civilis,--the
fine Elzevir edition of 1664. It was bound in parchment, and thus
readily distinguishable at a glance from all the books round it. Now
Mr. Penhallow was not much of a Latin scholar, and knew and cared
very little about the civil law. He had fallen in with this book at
an auction, and bought it to place in his shelves with the other
“properties” of the office, because it would look respectable. Anything
shut up in one of those two octavos might stay there a lifetime without
Mr. Penhallow's disturbing it; that Master Gridley knew, and of course
the young man knew it too.

We often move to the objects of supreme curiosity or desire, not in
the lines of castle or bishop on the chess-board, but with the knight's
zigzag, at first in the wrong direction, making believe to ourselves we
are not after the thing coveted. Put a lump of sugar in a canary-bird's
cage, and the small creature will illustrate the instinct for the
benefit of inquirers or sceptics. Byles Gridley went to the other side
of the room and took a volume of Reports from the shelves. He put it
back and took a copy of “Fearne on Contingent Remainders,” and looked at
that for a moment in an idling way, as if from a sense of having nothing
to do. Then he drew the back of his forefinger along the books on the
shelf, as if nothing interested him in them, and strolled to the shelf
in front of the desk at which Murray Bradshaw had stood. He took down
the second volume of the Corpus Juris Civilis, turned the leaves over
mechanically, as if in search of some title, and replaced it.

He looked round for a moment. Mr. Penhallow was writing hard at his
table, not thinking of him, it was plain enough. He laid his hand on the
FIRST volume of the Corpus Juris Civilis. There was a document shut up
in it. His hand was on the book, whether taking it out or putting
it back was not evident, when the door opened and Mr. William Murray
Bradshaw entered.

“Ah, Mr. Gridley,” he said, “you are not studying the civil law, are
you?” He strode towards him as he spoke, his face white, his eyes fixed
fiercely on him.

“It always interests me, Mr. Bradshaw,” he answered, “and this is a fine
edition of it. One may find a great many valuable things in the Corpus
Juris Civilis.”

He looked impenetrable, and whether or not he had seen more than Mr.
Bradshaw wished him to see, that gentleman could not tell. But there
stood the two books in their place, and when, after Master Gridley had
gone, he looked in the first volume, there was the document he had shut
up in it.




CHAPTER VII. MYRTLE'S LETTER--THE YOUNG MEN'S PURSUIT.

“You know all about it, Olive?” Cyprian Eveleth said to his sister,
after a brief word of greeting.

“Know of what, Cyprian?”

“Why, sister, don't you know that Myrtle Hazard is missing,--gone!--gone
nobody knows where, and that we are looking in all directions to find
her?”

Olive turned very pale and was silent for a moment. At the end of that
moment the story seemed almost old to her. It was a natural ending of
the prison-life which had been round Myrtle since her earliest years.
When she got large and strong enough, she broke out of jail,--that was
all. The nursery-bar is always climbed sooner or later, whether it is a
wooden or an iron one. Olive felt as if she had dimly foreseen just
such a finishing to the tragedy of the poor girl's home bringing-up. Why
could not she have done something to prevent it? Well,--what shall we do
now, and as it is?--that is the question.

“Has she left no letter,--no explanation of her leaving in this way?”

“Not a word, so far as anybody in the village knows.”

“Come over to the post-office with me; perhaps we may find a letter. I
think we shall.”

Olive's sagacity and knowledge of her friend's character had not misled
her. She found a letter from Myrtle to herself, which she opened and
read as here follows:

MY DEAREST OLIVE:--Think no evil of me for what I have done. The
fire-hang-bird's nest, as Cyprian called it, is empty, and the poor bird
is flown.

I can live as I have lived no longer. This place is chilling all the
life out of me, and I must find another home. It is far, far away, and
you will not hear from me again until I am there. Then I will write to
you.

You know where I was born,--under a hot sun and in the midst of strange,
lovely scenes that I seem still to remember. I must visit them again:
my heart always yearns for them. And I must cross the sea to get
there,--the beautiful great sea that I have always longed for and that
my river has been whispering about to me ever so many years. My life is
pinched and starved here. I feel as old as aunt Silence, and I am only
fifteen,--a child she has called me within a few days. If this is to be
a child, what is it to be a woman?

I love you dearly,--and your brother is almost to me as if he were mine.
I love our sweet, patient Bathsheba,--yes, and the old man that has
spoken so kindly with me, good Master Gridley; I hate to give you
pain,--to leave you all,--but my way of life is killing me, and I am too
young to die. I cannot take the comfort with you, my dear friends, that
I would; for it seems as if I carried a lump of ice in my heart, and all
the warmth I find in you cannot thaw it out.

I have had a strange warning to leave this place, Olive. Do you remember
how the angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph and told him to flee into
Egypt? I have had a dream like that, Olive. There is an old belief in
our family that the spirit of one who died many generations ago watches
over some of her descendants. They say it led our first ancestor to come
over here when it was a wilderness. I believe it has appeared to others
of the family in times of trouble. I have had a strange dream at any
rate, and the one I saw, or thought I saw, told me to leave this place.
Perhaps I should have stayed if it had not been for that, but it seemed
like an angel's warning.

Nobody will know how I have gone, or which way I have taken. On Monday,
you may show this letter to my friends, not before. I do not think they
will be in danger of breaking their hearts for me at our house. Aunt
Silence cares for nothing but her own soul, and the other woman hates
me, I always thought. Kitty Fagan will cry hard. Tell her perhaps I
shall come back by and by. There is a little box in my room, with some
keepsakes marked,--one is for poor Kitty. You can give them to the right
ones. Yours is with them.

Good-by, dearest. Keep my secret, as I told you, till Monday. And if you
never see me again, remember how much I loved you. Never think hardly
of me, for you have grown up in a happy home, and do not know how much
misery can be crowded into fifteen years of a young girl's life. God be
with you!

MYRTLE HAZARD.


Olive could not restrain her tears, as she handed the letter to Cyprian.
“Her secret is as safe with you as with me,” she said. “But this is
madness, Cyprian, and we must keep her from doing herself a wrong.

“What she means to do, is to get to Boston, in some way or other, and
sail for India. It is strange that they have not tracked her. There is
no time to be lost. She shall not go out into the world in this way,
child that she is. No; she shall come back, and make her home with us,
if she cannot be happy with these people. Ours is a happy and a cheerful
home, and she shall be to me as a younger sister, and your sister too,
Cyprian. But you must see her; you must leave this very hour; and you
may find her. Go to your cousin Edward, in Boston, at once; tell him
your errand, and get him to help you find our poor dear sister. Then
give her the note I will write, and say I know your heart, Cyprian, and
I can trust that to tell you what to say.”

In a very short time Cyprian Eveleth was on his way to Boston. But
another, keener even in pursuit than he, was there before him.

Ever since the day when Master Gridley had made that over-curious
observation of the young lawyer's proceedings at the office, Murray
Bradshaw had shown a far livelier interest than before in the conditions
and feelings of Myrtle Hazard. He had called frequently at The Poplars
to talk over business matters, which seemed of late to require a deal
of talking. He had been very deferential to Miss Silence, and had
wound himself into the confidence of Miss Badlam. He found it harder to
establish any very near relations with Myrtle, who had never seemed to
care much for any young man but Cyprian Eveleth, and to care for him
quite as much as Olive's brother as for any personal reason. But he
carefully studied Myrtle's tastes and ways of thinking and of life, so
that, by and by, when she should look upon herself as a young woman,
and not as a girl, he would have a great advantage in making her more
intimate acquaintance.

Thus, she corresponded with a friend of her mother's in India. She
talked at times as if it were her ideal home, and showed many tastes
which might well be vestiges of early Oriental impressions. She made
herself a rude hammock,--such as are often used in hot climates,--and
swung it between two elms. Here she would lie in the hot summer days,
and fan herself with the sandal-wood fan her friend in India had sent
her,--the perfume of which, the women said, seemed to throw her into
day-dreams, which were almost like trances.

These circumstances gave a general direction to his ideas, which were
presently fixed more exactly by two circumstances which he learned for
himself and kept to himself; for he had no idea of making a hue and cry,
and yet he did not mean that Myrtle Hazard should get away if he could
help it.

The first fact was this. He found among the copies of the city newspaper
they took at The Poplars a recent number from which a square had been
cut out. He procured another copy of this paper of the same date, and
found that the piece cut out was an advertisement to the effect that
the A 1 Ship Swordfish, Captain Hawkins, was to sail from Boston for
Calcutta, on the 20th of June.

The second fact was the following. On the window-sill of her little
hanging chamber, which the women allowed him to inspect, he found some
threads of long, black, glossy hair caught by a splinter in the wood.
They were Myrtle's of course. A simpleton might have constructed a
tragedy out of this trivial circumstance,--how she had cast herself
from the window into the waters beneath it,--how she had been thrust out
after a struggle, of which this shred from her tresses was the dreadful
witness,--and so on. Murray Bradshaw did not stop to guess and wonder.
He said nothing about it, but wound the shining threads on his finger,
and, as soon as he got home, examined them with a magnifier. They had
been cut off smoothly, as with a pair of scissors. This was part of a
mass of hair, then, which had been shorn and thrown from the window.
Nobody would do that but she herself. What would she do it for? To
disguise her sex, of course. The other inferences were plain enough.

The wily young man put all these facts and hints together, and concluded
that he would let the rustics drag the ponds and the river, and scour
the woods and swamps, while he himself went to the seaport town from
which she would without doubt sail if she had formed the project he
thought on the whole most probable.

Thus it was that we found him hurrying to the nearest station to catch
the train to Boston, while they were all looking for traces of the
missing girl nearer home. In the cars he made the most suggestive
inquiries he could frame, to stir up the gentlemanly conductor's memory.
Had any young fellow been on the train within a day or two, who had
attracted his notice? Smooth, handsome face, black eyes, short black
hair, new clothes, not fitting very well, looked away when he paid his
fare, had a soft voice like a woman's,--had he seen anybody answering
to some such description as this? The gentlemanly conductor had not
noticed,--was always taking up and setting down way-passengers,--might
have had such a young man aboard,--there was two or three students one
day in the car singing college songs,--he did n't care how folks looked
if they had their tickets ready,--and minded their own business,--and,
so saying, he poked a young man upon whose shoulder a ringleted head was
reclining with that delightful abandon which the railroad train seems to
provoke in lovely woman,--“Fare!”

It is a fine thing to be set down in a great, overcrowded hotel, where
they do not know you, looking dusty, and for the moment shabby, with
nothing but a carpet-bag in your hand, feeling tired, and anything but
clean, and hungry, and worried, and every way miserable and mean, and
to undergo the appraising process of the gentleman in the office, who,
while he shoves the book round to you for your name, is making a hasty
calculation as to how high up he can venture to doom you. But Murray
Bradshaw's plain dress and carpet-bag were more than made up for by the
air and tone which imply the habit of being attended to. The clerk saw
that in a glance, and, as he looked at the name and address in the book,
spoke sharply in the explosive dialect of his tribe,--

“Jun! ta'tha'genlm'n'scarpetbag'n'showhimupt'thirtyone!”

When Cyprian Eveleth reached the same hotel late at night, he appeared
in his best clothes and with a new valise; but his amiable countenance
and gentle voice and modest manner sent him up two stories higher, where
he found himself in a room not much better than a garret, feeling lonely
enough, for he did not know he had an acquaintance in the same house.
The two young men were in and out so irregularly that it was not very
strange that they did not happen to meet each other.

The young lawyer was far more likely to find Myrtle if she were in the
city than the other, even with the help of his cousin Edward. He was not
only older, but sharper, better acquainted with the city and its ways,
and, whatever might be the strength of Cyprian's motives, his own were
of such intensity that he thought of nothing else by day, and dreamed
of nothing else by night. He went to work, therefore, in the most
systematic manner. He first visited the ship Swordfish, lying at her
wharf, saw her captain, and satisfied himself that as yet nobody at all
corresponding to the description of Myrtle Hazard had been seen by any
person on board. He visited all the wharves, inquiring on every vessel
where it seemed possible she might have been looking about. Hotels,
thoroughfares, every place where he might hear of her or meet her, were
all searched. He took some of the police into his confidence, and had
half a dozen pairs of eyes besides his own opened pretty widely, to
discover the lost girl.

On Sunday, the 19th, he got the first hint which encouraged him to think
he was on the trail of his fugitive. He had gone down again to the wharf
where the Swordfish, advertised to sail the next day, was lying.
The captain was not on board, but one of the mates was there, and he
addressed his questions to him, not with any great hope of hearing
anything important, but determined to lose no chance, however small.
He was startled with a piece of information which gave him such an
exquisite pang of delight that he could hardly keep the usual quiet of
his demeanor. A youth corresponding to his description of Myrtle Hazard
in her probable disguise had been that morning on board the Swordfish,
making many inquires as to the hour at which she was to sail, and who
were to be the passengers, and remained some time on board, going all
over the vessel, examining her cabin accommodations, and saying he
should return to-morrow before she sailed,--doubtless intending to take
passage in her, as there was plenty of room on board. There could be
little question, from the description, who this young person was. It was
a rather delicate--looking, dark--haired youth, smooth-faced, somewhat
shy and bashful in his ways, and evidently excited and nervous. He
had apparently been to look about him, and would come back at the last
moment, just as the vessel was ready to sail, and in an hour or two be
beyond the reach of inquiry.

Murray Bradshaw returned to his hotel, and, going to his chamber,
summoned all his faculties in state council to determine what course he
should follow, now that he had the object of his search certainly within
reaching distance. There was no danger now of her eluding him; but the
grave question arose, what was he to do when he stood face to face with
her. She must not go,--that was fixed. If she once got off in that ship,
she might be safe enough; but what would become of certain projects in
which he was interested,--that was the question. But again, she was no
child, to be turned away from her adventure by cajolery, or by any such
threats as common truants would find sufficient to scare them back to
their duty. He could tell the facts of her disguise and the manner of
her leaving home to the captain of the vessel, and induce him to send
her ashore as a stray girl, to be returned to her relatives. But this
would only make her furious with him; and he must not alienate her from
himself, at any rate. He might plead with her in the name of duty,
for the sake of her friends, for the good name of the family. She had
thought all these things over before she ran away. What if he should
address her as a lover, throw himself at her feet, implore her to pity
him and give up her rash scheme, and, if things came to the very worst,
offer to follow her wherever she went, if she would accept him in the
only relation that would render it possible. Fifteen years old,--he
nearly ten years older,--but such things had happened before, and this
was no time to stand on trifles.

He worked out the hypothesis of the matrimonial offer as he would have
reasoned out the probabilities in a law case he was undertaking.

1. He would rather risk that than lose all hold upon her. The girl was
handsome enough for his ambitious future, wherever it might carry him.
She came of an honorable family, and had the great advantage of being
free from a tribe of disagreeable relatives, which is such a drawback
on many otherwise eligible parties. To these considerations were to be
joined other circumstances which we need not here mention, of a nature
to add greatly to their force, and which would go far of themselves to
determine his action.

2. How was it likely she would look on such an extraordinary
proposition? At first, no doubt, as Lady Anne looked upon the advances
of Richard. She would be startled, perhaps shocked. What then? She could
not help feeling flattered at such an offer from him,--him, William
Murray Bradshaw, the rising young man of his county, at her feet, his
eyes melting with the love he would throw into them, his tones subdued
to their most sympathetic quality, and all those phrases on his
lips which every day beguile women older and more discreet than this
romantic, long-imprisoned girl, whose rash and adventurous enterprise
was an assertion of her womanhood and her right to dispose of herself as
she chose. He had not lived to be twenty-five years old without knowing
his power with women. He believed in himself so thoroughly, that his
very confidence was a strong promise of success.

3. In case all his entreaties, arguments, and offers made no impression,
should he make use of that supreme resource, not to be employed save
in extreme need, but which was of a nature, in his opinion, to shake a
resolution stronger than this young girl was like to oppose to it? That
would be like Christian's coming to his weapon called All-prayer, he
said to himself, with a smile that his early readings of Bunyan should
have furnished him an image for so different an occasion. The question
was one he could not settle till the time came,--he must leave it to the
instinct of the moment.

The next morning found him early waking after a night of feverish
dreams. He dressed himself with more than usual care, and walked down to
the wharf where the Swordfish was moored. The ship had left the wharf,
and was lying out in the stream: A small boat had just reached her,
and a slender youth, as he appeared at that distance, climbed, not
over-adroitly, up the vessel's side.

Murray Bradshaw called to a boatman near by and ordered the man to row
him over as fast as he could to the vessel lying in the stream. He had
no sooner reached the deck of the Swordfish than he asked for the young
person who had just been put on board.

“He is in the cabin, sir, just gone down with the captain,” was the
reply.

His heart beat, in spite of his cool temperament, as he went down the
steps leading to the cabin. The young person was talking earnestly with
the captain, and, on his turning round, Mr. William Murray Bradshaw had
the pleasure of recognizing his young friend, Mr. Cyprian Eveleth.




CHAPTER VIII. DOWN THE RIVER.

Look at the flower of a morning-glory the evening before the dawn which
is to see it unfold. The delicate petals are twisted into a spiral,
which at the appointed hour, when the sunlight touches the hidden
springs of its life, will uncoil itself and let the day into the chamber
of its virgin heart. But the spiral must unwind by its own law, and the
hand that shall try to hasten the process will only spoil the blossom
which would have expanded in symmetrical beauty under the rosy fingers
of morning.

We may take a hint from Nature's handling of the flower in dealing with
young souls, and especially with the souls of young girls, which, from
their organization and conditions, require more careful treatment than
those of their tougher-fibred brothers. Many parents reproach themselves
for not having enforced their own convictions on their children in the
face of every inborn antagonism they encountered. Let them not be too
severe in their self-condemnation. A want of judgment in this matter
has sent many a young person to Bedlam, whose nature would have opened
kindly enough if it had only been trusted to the sweet influences
of morning sunshine. In such cases it may be that the state we call
insanity is not always an unalloyed evil. It may take the place of
something worse, the wretchedness of a mind not yet dethroned, but
subject to the perpetual interferences of another mind governed by
laws alien and hostile to its own. Insanity may perhaps be the only
palliative left to Nature in this extremity. But before she comes to
that, she has many expedients. The mind does not know what diet it
can feed on until it has been brought to the starvation point. Its
experience is like that of those who have been long drifting about
on rafts or in long-boats. There is nothing out of which it will not
contrive to get some sustenance. A person of note, long held captive for
a political offence, is said to have owed the preservation of his reason
to a pin, out of which he contrived to get exercise and excitement by
throwing it down carelessly on the dark floor of his dungeon, and then
hunting for it in a series of systematic explorations until he had found
it.

Perhaps the most natural thing Myrtle Hazard could have done would have
been to go crazy, and be sent to the nearest asylum, if Providence,
which in its wisdom makes use of the most unexpected agencies, had not
made a special provision for her mental welfare. She was in that arid
household as the prophet in the land where there was no dew nor rain
for these long years. But as he had the brook Cherith, and the bread and
flesh in the morning and the bread and flesh in the evening which the
ravens brought him, so she had the river and her secret store of books.

The river was light and life and music and companionship to her. She
learned to row herself about upon it, to swim boldly in it, for it had
sheltered nooks but a little way above The Poplars. But there was more
than that in it,--it was infinitely sympathetic. A river is strangely
like a human soul. It has its dark and bright days, its troubles from
within, and its disturbances from without. It often runs over ragged
rocks with a smooth surface, and is vexed with ripples as it slides over
sands that are level as a floor. It betrays its various moods by aspects
which are the commonplaces of poetry, as smiles and dimples and wrinkles
and frowns. Its face is full of winking eyes, when the scattering
rain-drops first fall upon it, and it scowls back at the storm-cloud, as
with knitted brows, when the winds are let loose. It talks, too, in its
own simple dialect, murmuring, as it were, with busy lips all the way
to the ocean, as children seeking the mother's breast and impatient of
delay. Prisoners who know what a flower or an insect has been to them
in their solitary cell, invalids who have employed their vacant minds
in studying the patterns of paper-hangings on the walls of their
sick-chambers, can tell what the river was to the lonely, imaginative
creature who used to sit looking into its depths, hour after hour, from
the airy height of the Fire-hang-bird's Nest.

Of late a thought had mingled with her fancies which had given to the
river the aspect of something more than a friend and a companion. It
appeared all at once as a Deliverer. Did not its waters lead, after long
wanderings, to the great highway of the world, and open to her the gates
of those cities from which she could take her departure unchallenged
towards the lands of the morning or of the sunset? Often, after a
freshet, she had seen a child's miniature boat floating down on its side
past her window, and traced it in imagination back to some crystal brook
flowing by the door of a cottage far up a blue mountain in the distance.
So she now began to follow down the stream the airy shallop that held
her bright fancies. These dreams of hers were colored by the rainbows
of an enchanted fountain,--the books of adventure, the romances, the
stories which fortune had placed in her hands,--the same over which the
heart of the Pride of the County had throbbed in the last century, and
on the pages of some of which the traces of her tears might still be
seen.

The literature which was furnished for Myrtle's improvement was chiefly
of a religious character, and, however interesting and valuable to those
to whom it was adapted, had not been chosen with any wise regard to its
fitness for her special conditions. Of what use was it to offer books
like the “Saint's Rest” to a child whose idea of happiness was in
perpetual activity? She read “Pilgrim's Progress,” it is true, with
great delight. She liked the idea of travelling with a pack on one's
back, the odd shows at the House of the interpreter, the fighting, the
adventures, the pleasing young ladies at the palace the name of which
was Beautiful, and their very interesting museum of curiosities. As for
the allegorical meaning, it went through her consciousness like a peck
of wheat through a bushel measure with the bottom out, without touching.

But the very first book she got hold of out of the hidden treasury threw
the “Pilgrim's Progress” quite into the shade. It was the story of
a youth who ran away and lived on an island,--one Crusoe,--a homely
narrative, but evidently true, though full of remarkable adventures.
There too was the history, coming much nearer home, of Deborah Sampson,
the young woman who served as a soldier in the Revolutionary War, with a
portrait of her in man's attire, looking intrepid rather than lovely. A
virtuous young female she was, and married well, as she deserved to, and
raised a family with as good a name as wife and mother as the best of
them. But perhaps not one of these books and stories took such hold of
her imagination as the tale of Rasselas, which most young persons
find less entertaining than the “Vicar of Wakefield,” with which it is
nowadays so commonly bound up. It was the prince's discontent in the
Happy Valley, the iron gate opening to the sound of music, and closing
forever on those it admitted, the rocky boundaries of the imprisoning
valley, the visions of the world beyond, the projects of escape, and
the long toil which ended in their accomplishment, which haunted her
sleeping and waking. She too was a prisoner, but it was not in the Happy
Valley. Of the romances and the love-letters we must take it for granted
that she selected wisely, and read discreetly; at least we know nothing
to the contrary.

There were mysterious reminiscences and hints of her past coming over
her constantly. It was in the course of the long, weary spring before
her disappearance, that a dangerous chord was struck which added to
her growing restlessness. In an old closet were some seashells and
coral-fans, and dried star-fishes and sea, horses, and a natural mummy
of a rough-skinned dogfish. She had not thought of them for years, but
now she felt impelled to look after them. The dim sea odors which still
clung to them penetrated to the very inmost haunts of memory, and called
up that longing for the ocean breeze which those who have once breathed
and salted their blood with it never get over, and which makes the
sweetest inland airs seem to them at last tame and tasteless. She held a
tigershell to her ear, and listened to that low, sleepy murmur, whether
in the sense or in the soul we hardly know, like that which had so often
been her lullaby,--a memory of the sea, as Landor and Wordsworth have
sung.

“You are getting to look like your father,” Aunt Silence said one day;
“I never saw it before. I always thought you took after old Major
Gideon Withers. Well, I hope you won't come to an early grave like poor
Charles,--or at any rate, that you may be prepared.”

It did not seem very likely that the girl was going out of the world
at present, but she looked Miss Silence in the face very seriously, and
said, “Why not an early grave, Aunt, if this world is such a bad place
as you say it is?”

“I'm afraid you are not fit for a better.”

She wondered if Silence Withers and Cynthia Badlam were just ripe for
heaven.

For some months Miss Cynthia Badlam, who, as was said, had been
an habitual visitor at The Poplars, had lived there as a permanent
resident. Between her and Silence Withers, Myrtle Hazard found no rest
for her soul. Each of them was for untwisting the morning-glory without
waiting for the sunshine to do it. Each had her own wrenches and pincers
to use for that purpose. All this promised little for the nurture and
admonition of the young girl, who, if her will could not be broken by
imprisonment and starvation at three years old, was not likely to be
over-tractable to any but gentle and reasonable treatment at fifteen.

Aunt Silence's engine was responsibility,--her own responsibility, and
the dreadful consequences which would follow to her, Silence, if Myrtle
should in any way go wrong. Ever since her failure in that moral coup
d'etat by which the sinful dynasty of the natural self-determining power
was to be dethroned, her attempts in the way of education had been a
series of feeble efforts followed by plaintive wails over their utter
want of success. The face she turned upon the young girl in her solemn
expostulations looked as if it were inscribed with the epitaphs of hope
and virtue. Her utterances were pitched in such a forlorn tone, that
the little bird in his cage, who always began twittering at the sound of
Myrtle's voice, would stop in his song, and cock his head with a look of
inquiry full of pathos, as if he wanted to know what was the matter, and
whether he could do anything to help.

The specialty of Cynthia Badlam was to point out all the dangerous and
unpardonable trangressions into which young people generally, and this
young person in particular, were likely to run, to hold up examples of
those who had fallen into evil ways and come to an evil end, to present
the most exalted standard of ascetic virtue to the lively girl's
apprehension, leading her naturally to the conclusion that a bright
example of excellence stood before her in the irreproachable relative
who addressed her. Especially with regard to the allurements which the
world offers to the young and inexperienced female, Miss Cynthia Badlam
was severe and eloquent. Sometimes poor Myrtle would stare, not seeing
the meaning of her wise caution, sometimes look at Miss Cynthia with a
feeling that there was something about her that was false and forced,
that she had nothing in common with young people, that she had no pity
for them, only hatred of their sins, whatever these might be,--a hatred
which seemed to extend to those sources of frequent temptation, youth
and beauty, as if they were in themselves objectionable.

Both the lone women at The Poplars were gifted with a thin vein of
music. They gave it expression in psalmody, of course, in which Myrtle,
who was a natural singer, was expected to bear her part. This would have
been pleasantry if the airs most frequently selected had been cheerful
or soothing, and if the favorite hymns had been of a sort to inspire a
love for what was lovely in this life, and to give some faint foretaste
of the harmonies of a better world to come. But there is a fondness
for minor keys and wailing cadences common to the monotonous chants
of cannibals and savages generally, to such war-songs as the wild,
implacable “Marseillaise,” and to the favorite tunes of low--spirited
Christian pessimists. That mournful “China,” which one of our most
agreeable story-tellers has justly singled out as the cry of despair
itself, was often sung at The Poplars, sending such a sense of utter
misery through the house, that poor Kitty Fagan would cross herself,
and wring her hands, and think of funerals, and wonder who was going
to die,--for she fancied she heard the Banshee's warning in those most
dismal ululations.

On the first Saturday of June, a fortnight before her disappearance,
Myrtle strolled off by the river shore, along its lonely banks, and came
home with her hands full of leaves and blossoms. Silence Withers looked
at them as if they were a kind of melancholy manifestation of frivolity
on the part of the wicked old earth. Not that she did not inhale their
faint fragrance with a certain pleasure, and feel their beauty as none
whose souls are not wholly shriveled and hardened can help doing, but
the world was, in her estimate, a vale of tears, and it was only by a
momentary forgetfulness that she could be moved to smile at anything.

Miss Cynthia, a sharper-edged woman, had formed the habit of crushing
everything for its moral, until it lost its sweetness and grew almost
odious, as flower-de-luces do when handled roughly. “There's a worm in
that leaf, Myrtle. He has rolled it all round him, and hidden himself
from sight; but there is a horrid worm in it, for all it is so young and
fresh. There is a worm in every young soul, Myrtle.”

“But there is not a worm in every leaf, Miss Cynthia. Look,” she said,
“all these are open, and you can see all over and under them, and there
is nothing there. Are there never any worms in the leaves after they get
old and yellow, Miss Cynthia?”

That was a pretty fair hit for a simple creature of fifteen, but perhaps
she was not so absolutely simple as one might have thought.

It was on the evening of this same day that they were sitting together.
The sweet season was opening, and it seemed as if the whispering of the
leaves, the voices of the birds, the softness of the air, the young life
stirring in everything, called on all creatures to join the universal
chorus of praise that was going up around them.

“What shall we sing this evening?” said Miss Silence.

“Give me one of the books, if you please, Cousin Silence,” said Miss
Cynthia. “It is Saturday evening. Holy time has begun. Let us prepare
our minds for the solemnities of the Sabbath.”

She took the book, one well known to the schools and churches of this
nineteenth century.

“Book Second. Hymn 44. Long metre. I guess 'Putney' will be as good a
tune as any to sing it to.”

The trio began,--

         “With holy fear, and humble song,”

and got through the first verse together pretty well. Then came the
second verse:

         “Far in the deep where darkness dwells,
          The land of horror and despair,
          Justice has built a dismal hell,
          And laid her stores of vengeance there.”

Myrtle's voice trembled a little in singing this verse, and she hardly
kept up her part with proper spirit.

“Sing out, Myrtle,” said Miss Cynthia, and she struck up the third
verse:

         “Eternal plagues and heavy chains,
          Tormenting racks and fiery coals,
          And darts t' inflict immortal pains,
          Dyed in the blood of damned souls.”

This last verse was a duet, and not a trio. Myrtle closed her lips while
it was singing, and when it was done threw down the book with a look of
anger and disgust. The hunted soul was at bay.

“I won't sing such words,” she said, “and I won't stay here to hear them
sung. The boys in the streets say just such words as that, and I am not
going to sing them. You can't scare me into being good with your cruel
hymn-book!”

She could not swear: she was not a boy. She would not cry: she felt
proud, obdurate, scornful, outraged. All these images, borrowed from the
holy Inquisition, were meant to frighten her--and had simply irritated
her. The blow of a weapon that glances off, stinging, but not
penetrating, only enrages. It was a moment of fearful danger to her
character, to her life itself.

Without heeding the cries of the two women, she sprang up-stairs to
her hanging chamber. She threw open the window and looked down into
the stream. For one moment her head swam with the sudden, overwhelming,
almost maddening thought that came over her,--the impulse to fling
herself headlong into those running waters and dare the worst these
dreadful women had threatened her with. Something she often thought
afterwards it was an invisible hand held her back during that brief
moment, and the paroxysm--just such a paroxysm as throws many a young
girl into the Thames or the Seine--passed away. She remained looking, in
a misty dream, into the water far below. Its murmur recalled the whisper
of the ocean waves. And through the depths it seemed as if she saw into
that strange, half--remembered world of palm-trees and white robes and
dusky faces, and amidst them, looking upon her with ineffable love and
tenderness, until all else faded from her sight, the face of a fair
woman,--was it hers, so long, long dead, or that dear young mother's who
was to her less a recollection than a dream?

Could it have been this vision that soothed her, so that she unclasped
her hands and lifted her bowed head as if she had heard a voice
whispering to her from that unknown world where she felt there was a
spirit watching over her? At any rate, her face was never more serene
than when she went to meeting with the two maiden ladies on the
following day, Sunday, and heard the Rev. Mr. Stoker preach a sermon
from Luke vii. 48, which made both the women shed tears, but especially
so excited Miss Cynthia that she was in a kind of half-hysteric
condition all the rest of the day.

After that Myrtle was quieter and more docile than ever before. Could it
be, Miss Silence thought, that the Rev. Mr. Stoker's sermon had touched
her hard heart? However that was, she did not once wear the stormy look
with which she had often met the complaining remonstrances Miss Silence
constantly directed against all the spontaneous movements of the
youthful and naturally vivacious subject of her discipline.

June is an uncertain month, as everybody knows, and there were frosts
in many parts of New England in the June of 1859. But there were also
beautiful days and nights, and the sun was warm enough to be fast
ripening the strawberries,--also certain plans which had been in flower
some little time. Some preparations had been going on in a quiet way, so
that at the right moment a decisive movement could be made. Myrtle knew
how to use her needle, and always had a dexterous way of shaping
any article of dress or ornament,--a natural gift not very rare, but
sometimes very needful, as it was now.

On the morning of the 15th of June she was wandering by the shores of
the river, some distance above The Poplars, when a boat came drifting
along by her, evidently broken loose from its fastenings farther up
the stream. It was common for such waifs to show themselves after heavy
rains had swollen the river. They might have run the gauntlet of nobody
could tell how many farms, and perhaps passed by half a dozen towns
and villages in the night, so that, if of common, cheap make, they were
retained without scruple, by any who might find them, until the owner
called for them, if he cared to take the trouble.

Myrtle took a knife from her pocket, cut down a long, slender sapling,
and coaxed the boat to the side of the bank. A pair of old oars lay
in the bottom of the boat; she took one of these and paddled it into
a little cove, where it could lie hid among the thick alders. Then
she went home and busied herself about various little matters more
interesting to her than to us.

She was never more amiable and gracious than on this day. But she looked
often at the clock, as they remembered afterwards, and studied over
a copy of the Farmer's Almanac which was lying in the kitchen, with a
somewhat singular interest. The days were nearly at their longest, the
weather was mild, the night promised to be clear and bright.

The household was, to all appearance, asleep at the usual early hour.
When all seemed quiet, Myrtle lighted her lamp, stood before her mirror,
and untied the string that bound her long and beautiful dark hair, which
fell in its abundance over her shoulders and below her girdle.

She lifted its heavy masses with one hand, and severed it with a strong
pair of scissors, with remorseless exaction of every wandering curl,
until she stood so changed by the loss of that outward glory of her
womanhood, that she felt as if she had lost herself and found a brother
she had never seen before.

“Good-by, Myrtle!” she said, and, opening her window very gently, she
flung the shining tresses upon the running water, and watched them for a
few moments as they floated down the stream. Then she dressed herself in
the character of her imaginary brother, took up the carpet-bag in
which she had placed what she chose to carry with her, stole softly
down-stairs, and let herself out of a window on the lower floor,
shutting it very carefully so as to be sure that nobody should be
disturbed.

She glided along, looking all about her, fearing she might be seen
by some curious wanderer, and reached the cove where the boat she had
concealed was lying. She got into it, and, taking the rude oars, pulled
herself into the middle of the swollen stream. Her heart beat so that
it seemed to her as if she could hear it between the strokes of the oar.
The lights were not all out in the village, and she trembled lest she
should see the figure of some watcher looking from the windows in
sight of which she would have to pass, and that a glimpse of this boat
stealing along at so late an hour might give the clue to the secret of
her disappearance, with which the whole region was to be busied in the
course of the next day.

Presently she came abreast of The Poplars. The house lay so still, so
peaceful,--it would wake to such dismay! The boat slid along beneath her
own overhanging chamber.

“No song to-morrow from the Fire-hang-bird's Nest!” she said. So she
floated by the slumbering village, the flow of the river carrying her
steadily on, and the careful strokes of the oars adding swiftness to her
flight.

At last she came to the “Broad Meadows,” and knew that she was alone,
and felt confident that she had got away unseen. There was nothing,
absolutely nothing, to point out which way she had gone. Her boat came
from nobody knew where, her disguise had been got together at different
times in such a manner as to lead to no suspicion, and not a human being
ever had the slightest hint that she had planned and meant to carry out
the enterprise which she had now so fortunately begun.

Not till the last straggling house had been long past, not till the
meadows were stretched out behind her as well as before her, spreading
far off into the distance on each side, did she give way to the sense of
wild exultation which was coming fast over her. But then, at last,
she drew a long, long breath, and, standing up in the boat, looked all
around her. The stars were shining over her head and deep down beneath
her. The cool wind came fresh upon her cheek over the long grassy
reaches. No living thing moved in all the wide level circle which lay
about her. She had passed the Red Sea, and was alone in the Desert.

She threw down her oars, lifted her hands like a priestess, and her
strong, sweet voice burst into song,--the song of the Jewish maiden when
she went out before the chorus of, women and sang that grand solo, which
we all remember in its ancient words, and in their modern paraphrase,

    “Sound the loud timbrel o'er Egypt's dark sea!
     Jehovah hath triumphed, his people are free!”

The poor child's repertory was limited to songs of the religious sort
mainly, but there was a choice among these. Her aunt's favorites, beside
“China,” already mentioned, were “Bangor,” which the worthy old New
England clergyman so admired that he actually had the down-east city
called after it, and “Windsor,” and “Funeral Hymn.” But Myrtle was in no
mood for these. She let off her ecstasy in “Balerma,” and “Arlington,”
 and “Silver Street,” and at last in that most riotous of devotional
hymns, which sounds as if it had been composed by a saint who had a
cellar under his chapel,--“Jordan.” So she let her wild spirits run
loose; and then a tenderer feeling stole over her, and she sang herself
into a more tranquil mood with the gentle music of “Dundee.” And again
she pulled quietly and steadily at her oars, until she reached the
wooded region through which the river winds after leaving the “Broad
Meadows.”

The tumult in her blood was calmed, yet every sense and faculty
was awake to the manifold delicious, mysterious impressions of that
wonderful June night, The stars were shining between the tall trees, as
if all the jewels of heaven had been set in one belt of midnight sky.
The voices of the wind, as they sighed through the pines, seemed like
the breath of a sleeping child, and then, as they lisped from the soft,
tender leaves of beeches and maples, like the half-articulate whisper of
the mother hushing all the intrusive sounds that might awaken it. Then
came the pulsating monotone of the frogs from a far-off pool, the harsh
cry of an owl from an old tree that overhung it, the splash of a mink or
musquash, and nearer by, the light step of a woodchuck, as he cantered
off in his quiet way to his hole in the nearest bank. The laurels were
just coming into bloom,--the yellow lilies, earlier than their fairer
sisters, pushing their golden cups through the water, not content, like
those, to float on the surface of the stream that fed them, emblems of
showy wealth, and, like that, drawing all manner of insects to feed
upon them. The miniature forests of ferns came down to the edge of the
stream, their tall, bending plumes swaying in the night breeze. Sweet
odors from oozing pines, from dewy flowers, from spicy leaves, stole out
of the tangled thickets, and made the whole scene more dream-like with
their faint, mingled suggestions.

By and by the banks of the river grew lower and marshy, and in place of
the larger forest-trees which had covered them stood slender tamaracks,
sickly, mossy, looking as if they had been moon-struck and were out
of their wits, their tufts of leaves staring off every way from
their spindling branches. The winds came cool and damp out of the
hiding-places among their dark recesses. The country people about here
called this region the “Witches' Hollow,” and had many stories about
the strange things that happened there. The Indians used to hold their
“powwows,” or magical incantations, upon a broad mound which rose out of
the common level, and where some old hemlocks and beeches formed a dark
grove, which served them as a temple for their demon-worship. There were
many legends of more recent date connected with this spot, some of them
hard to account for, and no superstitious or highly imaginative person
would have cared to pass through it alone in the dead of the night, as
this young girl was doing.

She knew nothing of all these fables and fancies. Her own singular
experiences in this enchanted region were certainly not suggested by
anything she had heard, and may be considered psychologically curious by
those who would not think of attributing any mystical meaning to them.
We are at liberty to report many things without attempting to explain
them, or committing ourselves to anything beyond the fact that so they
were told us. The reader will find Myrtle's “Vision,” as written out at
a later period from her recollections, at the end of this chapter.

The night was passing, and she meant to be as far away as possible from
the village she had left, before morning. But the boat, like all craft
on country rivers, was leaky, and she had to work until tired, bailing
it out, before she was ready for another long effort. The old tin
measure, which was all she had to bail with, leaked as badly as the
boat, and her task was a tedious one. At last she got it in good trim,
and sat down to her oars with the determination to pull steadily as long
as her strength would hold out.

Hour after hour she kept at her work, sweeping round the long bends
where the river was hollowing out one bank and building new shore on the
opposite one, so as gradually to shift its channel; by clipper-shaped
islands, sharp at the bows looking up stream, sharp too at the stern,
looking down,--their shape solving the navigator's problem of least
resistance, as a certain young artist had pointed out; by slumbering
villages; by outlying farm-houses; between cornfields where the young
plants were springing up in little thready fountains; in the midst of
stumps where the forest had just been felled; through patches, where the
fire of the last great autumnal drought had turned all the green beauty
of the woods into brown desolation; and again amidst broad expanses of
open meadow stretching as far as the eye could reach in the uncertain
light. A faint yellow tinge was beginning to stain the eastern horizon.
Her boat was floating quietly along, for she had at last taken in her
oars, and she was now almost tired out with toil and excitement. She
rested her head upon her hands, and felt her eyelids closing in spite of
herself. And now there stole upon her ear a low, gentle, distant murmur,
so soft that it seemed almost to mingle with the sound of her own
breathing, but so steady, so uniform, that it soothed her to sleep, as
if it were the old cradle-song the ocean used to sing to her, or the
lullaby of her fair young mother.

So she glided along, slowly, slowly, down the course of the winding
river, and the flushing dawn kindled around her as she slumbered, and
the low, gentle murmur grew louder and louder, but still she slept,
dreaming of the murmuring ocean.




APPENDIX TO CHAPTER VIII. MYRTLE HAZARD'S STATEMENT.

“A Vision seen by me, Myrtle Hazard, aged fifteen, on the night of June
15, 1859. Written out at the request of a friend from my recollections.

“The place where I saw these sights is called, as I have been told
since, Witches' Hollow. I had never been there before, and did not know
that it was called so, or anything about it.

“The first strange thing that I noticed was on coming near a kind of
hill or mound that rose out of the low meadows. I saw a burning cross
lying on the slope of that mound. It burned with a pale greenish light,
and did not waste, though I watched it for a long time, as the boat I
was in moved slowly with the current and I had stopped rowing.

“I know that my eyes were open, and I was awake while I was looking
at this cross. I think my eyes were open when I saw these other
appearances, but I felt just as if I were dreaming while awake.

“I heard a faint rustling sound, and on looking up I saw many figures
moving around me, and I seemed to see myself among them as if I were
outside of myself.

“The figures did not walk, but slid or glided with an even movement, as
if without any effort. They made many gestures, and seemed to speak,
but I cannot tell whether I heard what they said, or knew its meaning in
some other way.

“I knew the faces of some of these figures. They were the same I have
seen in portraits, as long as I can remember, at the old house where
I was brought up, called The Poplars. I saw my father and my mother as
they look in the two small pictures; also my grandmother, and her father
and mother and grandfather, and one other person, who lived a great
while ago. All of these have been long dead, and the longer they had
been dead the less like substance they looked and the more like shadows,
so that the oldest was like one's breath of a frosty morning, but shaped
like the living figure.

“There was no motion of their breasts, and their lips seemed to be
moving as if they were saying, Breath! Breath! Breath! I thought they
wanted to breathe the air of this world again in my shape, which I
seemed to see as it were empty of myself and of these other selves, like
a sponge that has water pressed out of it.

“Presently it seemed to me that I returned to myself, and then those
others became part of me by being taken up, one by one, and so lost in
my own life.

“My father and mother came up, hand in hand, looking more real than any
of the rest. Their figures vanished, and they seemed to have become a
part of me; for I felt all at once the longing to live over the life
they had led, on the sea and in strange countries.

“Another figure was just like the one we called the Major, who was a
very strong, hearty-looking man, and who is said to have drank hard
sometimes, though there is nothing about it on his tombstone, which I
used to read in the graveyard. It seemed to me that there was something
about his life that I did not want to make a part of mine, but that
there was some right he had in me through my being of his blood, and
so his health and his strength went all through me, and I was always
to have what was left of his life in that shadow-like shape, forming a
portion of mine.

“So in the same way with the shape answering to the portrait of that
famous beauty who was the wife of my great-grandfather, and used to be
called the Pride of the County.

“And so too with another figure which had the face of that portrait
marked on the back, Ruth Bradford, who married one of my ancestors, and
was before the court, as I have heard, in the time of the witchcraft
trials.

“There was with the rest a dark, wild-looking woman, with a head-dress
of feathers. She kept as it were in shadow, but I saw something of my
own features in her face.

“It was on my mind very strongly that the shape of that woman of our
blood who was burned long ago by the Papists came very close to me, and
was in some way made one with mine, and that I feel her presence with me
since, as if she lived again in me; but not always,--only at times,--and
then I feel borne up as if I could do anything in the world. I had a
feeling as if she were my guardian and protector.

“It seems to me that these, and more, whom I have not mentioned, do
really live over some part of their past lives in my life. I do not
understand it all, and perhaps it can be accounted for in some way I
have not thought of. I write it down as nearly as I can give it from
memory, by request, and if it is printed at this time had rather have
all the real names withheld.

“MYRTLE HAZARD.”


NOTE BY THE FRIEND.

“This statement must be accounted for in some way, or pass into the
category of the supernatural. Probably it was one of those intuitions,
with objective projection, which sometimes come to imaginative young
persons, especially girls, in certain exalted nervous conditions. The
study of the portraits, with the knowledge of some parts of the history
of the persons they represented, and the consciousness of instincts
inherited in all probability from these same ancestors, formed the basis
of Myrtle's 'Vision.' The lives of our progenitors are, as we know,
reproduced in different proportions in ourselves. Whether they as
individuals have any consciousness of it, is another matter. It is
possible that they do get a second as it were fractional life in us. It
might seem that many of those whose blood flows in our veins struggle
for the mastery, and by and by one or more get the predominance, so that
we grow to be like father, or mother, or remoter ancestor, or two
or more are blended in us, not to the exclusion, however, it must be
understood, of a special personality of our own, about which these
others are grouped. Independently of any possible scientific value,
this 'Vision' serves to illustrate the above-mentioned fact of common
experience, which is not sufficiently weighed by most moralists.

“How much it may be granted to certain young persons to see, not in
virtue of their intellectual gifts, but through those direct channels
which worldly wisdom may possibly close to the luminous influx, each
reader must determine for himself by his own standards of faith and
evidence.

“One statement of the narrative admits of a simple natural explanation,
which does not allow the lovers of the marvellous to class it with the
quasi-miraculous appearance seen by Colonel Gardiner, and given in
full by Dr. Doddridge in his Life of that remarkable Christian soldier.
Decaying wood is often phosphorescent, as many readers must have seen
for themselves. The country people are familiar with the sight of it in
wild timber-land, and have given it the name of 'Fox-fire.' Two trunks
of trees in this state, lying across each other, will account for the
fact observed, and vindicate the truth of the young girl's story without
requiring us to suppose any exceptional occurrence outside of natural
laws.”




CHAPTER IX. MR. CLEMENT LINDSAY RECEIVES A LETTER, AND BEGINS HIS ANSWER.

It was already morning when a young man living in the town of Alderbank,
after lying awake for an hour thinking the unutterable thoughts that
nineteen years of life bring to the sleeping and waking dreams of young
people, rose from his bed, and, half dressing himself, sat down at his
desk, from which he took a letter, which he opened and read. It was
written in a delicate, though hardly formed female hand, and crossed
like a checker-board, as is usual with these redundant manuscripts. The
letter was as follows:

OXBOW VILLAGE, June 13, 1859.

MY DEAREST CLEMENT,--You was so good to write me such a sweet little bit
of a letter,--only, dear, you never seem to be in quite so good spirits
as you used to be. I wish your Susie was with you to cheer you up; but
no, she must be patient, and you must be patient too, for you are so
ambitious! I have heard you say so many times that nobody could be a
great artist without passing years and years at work, and growing pale
and lean with thinking so hard. You won't grow pale and lean, I hope;
for I do so love to see that pretty color in your cheeks you have always
had ever since I have known you; and besides, I do not believe you
will have to work so very hard to do something great,--you have so much
genius, and people of genius do such beautiful things with so little
trouble. You remember those beautiful lines out of our newspaper I
sent you? Well, Mr. Hopkins told me he wrote those lines in one evening
without stopping! I wish you could see Mr. Hopkins,--he is a very
talented person. I cut out this little piece about him from the paper
on purpose to show you,--for genius loves genius,--and you would like to
hear him read his own poetry,--he reads it beautifully. Please send this
piece from the paper back, as I want to put it in my scrapbook, under
his autograph:--

“Our young townsman, Mr. Gifted Hopkins, has proved himself worthy of
the name he bears. His poetical effusions are equally creditable to his
head and his heart, displaying the highest order of genius and powers
of imagination and fancy hardly second to any writer of the age. He is
destined to make a great sensation in the world of letters.”

Mrs. Hopkins is the same good soul she always was. She is very proud
of her son, as is natural, and keeps a copy of everything he writes. I
believe she cries over them every time she reads them. You don't know
how I take to little Sossy and Minthy, those two twins I have written to
you about before. Poor little creatures,--what a cruel thing it was in
their father and mother not to take care of them! What do you think? Old
bachelor Gridley lets them come up into his room, and builds forts and
castles for them with his big books! “The world's coming to an end,”
 Mrs. Hopkins said the first time he did so. He looks so savage with
that scowl of his, and talks so gruff when he is scolding at things in
general, that nobody would have believed he would have let such little
things come anywhere near him. But he seems to be growing kind to all of
us and everybody. I saw him talking to the Fire-hang-bird the other day.
You know who the Fire-hang-bird is, don't you? Myrtle Hazard her name
is. I wish you could see her. I don't know as I do, though. You would
want to make a statue of her, or a painting, I know. She is so handsome
that all the young men stand round to see her come out of meeting. Some
say that Lawyer Bradshaw is after her; but my! he is ten years older
than she is. She is nothing but a girl, though she looks as if she was
eighteen. She lives up at a place called The Poplars, with an old woman
that is her aunt or something, and nobody seems to be much acquainted
with her except Olive Eveleth, who is the minister's daughter at Saint
Bartholomew's Church. She never has beauxs round her, as some young
girls do--they say that she is not happy with her aunt and another
woman that stays with her, and that is the reason she keeps so much to
herself. The minister came to see me the other day,--Mr. Stoker his name
is. I was all alone, and it frightened me, for he looks, oh, so solemn
on Sundays! But he called me “My dear,” and did n't say anything horrid,
you know, about my being such a dreadful, dreadful sinner, as I have
heard of his saying to some people,--but he looked very kindly at me,
and took my hand, and laid his hand on my shoulder like a brother, and
hoped I would come and see him in his study. I suppose I must go, but I
don't want to. I don't seem to like him exactly.

I hope you love me as well as ever you did. I can't help feeling
sometimes as if you was growing away from me,--you know what I
mean,--getting to be too great a person for such a small person as I am.

I know I can't always understand you when you talk about art, and that
you know a great deal too much for such a simple girl as I am. Oh, if I
thought I could never make you happy!... There, now! I am almost ashamed
to send this paper so spotted. Gifted Hopkins wrote some beautiful
verses one day on “A Maiden Weeping.” He compared the tears falling from
her eyes to the drops of dew which one often sees upon the flowers in
the morning. Is n't it a pretty thought?

I wish I loved art as well as I do poetry; but I am afraid I have not so
much taste as some girls have. You remember how I liked that picture in
the illustrated magazine, and you said it was horrid. I have been afraid
since to like almost anything, for fear you should tell me some time or
other it was horrid. Don't you think I shall ever learn to know what is
nice from what is n't?

Oh, dear Clement, I wish you would do one thing to please me. Don't say
no, for you can do everything you try to,--I am sure you can. I want you
to write me some poetry,--just three or four little verses TO SUZIE. Oh,
I should feel so proud to have some lines written all on purpose for me.
Mr. Hopkins wrote some the other day, and printed them in the paper, “To
M----e.” I believe he meant them for Myrtle,--the first and last letter
of her name, you see, “M” and “e.”

Your letter was a dear one, only so short! I wish you would tell me
all about what you are doing at Alderbank. Have you made that model of
Innocence that is to have my forehead, and hair parted like mine! Make
it pretty, do, that is a darling.

Now don't make a face at my letter. It is n't a very good one, I know;
but your poor little Susie does the best she can, and she loves you so
much!

Now do be nice and write me one little bit of a mite of a poem,--it will
make me just as happy!

I am very well, and as happy as I can be when you are away.

Your affectionate SUSIE.

(Directed to Mr. Clement Lindsay, Alderbank.)

The envelope of this letter was unbroken, as was before said, when
the young man took it from his desk. He did not tear it with the hot
impatience of some lovers, but cut it open neatly, slowly, one would say
sadly. He read it with an air of singular effort, and yet with a
certain tenderness. When he had finished it, the drops were thick on his
forehead; he groaned and put his hands to his face, which was burning
red.

This was what the impulse of boyhood, years ago, had brought him to! He
was a stately youth, of noble bearing, of high purpose, of fastidious
taste; and, if his broad forehead, his clear, large blue eyes, his
commanding features, his lips, firm, yet plastic to every change of
thought and feeling, were not an empty mask, might not improbably claim
that Promethean quality of which the girl's letter had spoken,--the
strange, divine, dread gift of genius.

This poor, simple, innocent, trusting creature, so utterly incapable
of coming into any true relation with his aspiring mind, his large and
strong emotions,--this mere child, all simplicity and goodness, but
trivial and shallow as the little babbling brooklet that ran by his
window to the river, to lose its insignificant being in the swift
torrent he heard rushing over the rocks,--this pretty idol for a weak
and kindly and easily satisfied worshipper, was to be enthroned as the
queen of his affections, to be adopted as the companion of his labors!
The boy, led by the commonest instinct, the mere attraction of biped
to its female, which accident had favored, had thrown away the dearest
possession of manhood,--liberty,--and this bauble was to be his lifelong
reward! And yet not a bauble either, for a pleasing person and a gentle
and sweet nature, which had once made her seem to him the very paragon
of loveliness, were still hers. Alas! her simple words were true,--he
had grown away from her. Her only fault was that she had not grown with
him, and surely he could not reproach her with that.

“No,” he said to himself, “I will never leave her so long as her heart
clings to me. I have been rash, but she shall not pay the forfeit.
And if I may think of myself, my life need not be wretched because she
cannot share all my being with me. The common human qualities are more
than all exceptional gifts. She has a woman's heart; and what talent of
mine is to be named by the love a true woman can offer in exchange for
these divided and cold affections? If it had pleased God to mate me with
one more equal in other ways, who could share my thoughts, who could
kindle my inspiration, who had wings to rise into the air with me as
well as feet to creep by my side upon the earth,--what cannot such a
woman do for a man!

“What! cast away the flower I took in the bud because it does not show
as I hoped it would when it opened? I will stand by my word; I will be
all as a man that I promised as a boy. Thank God, she is true and
pure and sweet. My nest will be a peaceful one; but I must take wing
alone,--alone.”

He drew one long sigh, and the cloud passed from his countenance. He
must answer that letter now, at once. There were reasons, he thought,
which made it important. And so, with the cheerfulness which it was
kind and becoming to show, so far as possible, and yet with a little
excitement on one particular point, which was the cause of his writing
so promptly, he began his answer.

ALDERBANK, Thursday morning, June 16, 1859.

MY DEAR SUSIE,--I have just been reading your pleasant letter; and if
I do not send you the poem you ask for so eloquently, I will give you a
little bit of advice, which will do just as well,--won't it, my dear?
I was interested in your account of various things going on at Oxbow
Village. I am very glad you find young Mr. Hopkins so agreeable a
friend. His poetry is better than some which I see printed in the
village papers, and seems generally unexceptionable in its subjects and
tone. I do not believe he is a dangerous companion, though the habit of
writing verse does not always improve the character. I think I have seen
it make more than one of my acquaintances idle, conceited, sentimental,
and frivolous,--perhaps it found them so already. Don't make too much
of his talent, and particularly don't let him think that because he can
write verses he has nothing else to do in this world. That is for his
benefit, dear, and you must skilfully apply it.

Now about yourself. My dear Susie, there was something in your letter
that did not please me. You speak of a visit from the Rev. Mr. Stoker,
and of his kind, brotherly treatment, his cordiality of behavior, and
his asking you to visit him in his study. I am very glad to hear you say
that you “don't seem to like him.” He is very familiar, it seems to me,
for so new an acquaintance. What business had he to be laying his hand
on your shoulder? I should like to see him try these free-and-easy ways
in my presence! He would not have taken that liberty, my dear! No, he
was alone with you, and thought it safe to be disrespectfully familiar.
I want you to maintain your dignity always with such persons, and I beg
you not to go to the study of this clergyman, unless some older friend
goes with you on every occasion, and sits through the visit. I must
speak plainly to you, my dear, as I have a right to. If the minister
has anything of importance to say, let it come through the lips of some
mature person. It may lose something of the fervor with which it would
have been delivered at first hand, but the great rules of Christian life
are not so dependent on the particular individual who speaks them, that
you must go to this or that young man to find out what they are. If to
any man, I should prefer the old gentleman whom you have mentioned in
your letters, Father Pemberton. You understand me, my dear girl, and the
subject is not grateful. You know how truly I am interested in all that
relates to you,--that I regard you with an affection which--

     HELP!  HELP!  HELP!

A cry as of a young person's voice was heard faintly, coming from the
direction of the river. Something in the tone of it struck to his heart,
and he sprang as if he had been stabbed. He flung open his chamber
window and leaped from it to the ground. He ran straight to the bank
of the river by the side of which the village of Alderbank was built, a
little farther down the stream than the house in which he was living.

Everybody that travels in that region knows the beautiful falls which
break the course of the river just above the village; narrow and swift,
and surrounded by rocks of such picturesque forms that they are sought
and admired by tourists. The stream was now swollen, and rushed in
a deep and rapid current over the ledges, through the rocky straits,
plunging at last in tumult and foam, with loud, continuous roar, into
the depths below the cliff from which it tumbled.

A short distance above the fall there projected from the water a rock
which had, by parsimonious saving during a long course of years, hoarded
a little soil, out of which a small tuft of bushes struggled to support
a decent vegetable existence. The high waters had nearly submerged it,
but a few slender twigs were seen above their surface.

A skiff was lying close to this rock, between it and the brink of the
fall, which was but a few rods farther down. In the skiff was a youth
of fourteen or fifteen years, holding by the slender twigs, the boat
dragging at them all the time, and threatening to tear them away and go
over the fall. It was not likely that the boy would come to shore alive
if it did. There were stories, it is true, that the Indians used to
shoot the fall in their canoes with safety; but everybody knew that at
least three persons had been lost by going over it since the town was
settled; and more than one dead body had been found floating far down
the river, with bruises and fractured bones, as if it had taken the same
fatal plunge.

There was no time to lose. Clement ran a little way up the river-bank,
flung off his shoes, and sprang from the bank as far as he could leap
into the water. The current swept him toward the fall, but he worked
nearer and nearer the middle of the stream. He was making for the rock,
thinking he could plant his feet upon it and at the worst hold the boat
until he could summon other help by shouting. He had barely got his feet
upon the rock, when the twigs by which the boy was holding gave way. He
seized the boat, but it dragged him from his uncertain footing, and
with a desperate effort he clambered over its side and found himself its
second doomed passenger.

There was but an instant for thought.

“Sit still,” he said, “and, just as we go over, put your arms round me
under mine, and don't let go for your life!”

He caught up the single oar, and with a few sharp paddle-strokes brought
the skiff into the blackest centre of the current, where it was deepest,
and would plunge them into the deepest pool.

“Hold your breath! God save us! Now!”

They rose, as if with one will, and stood for an instant, the arms of
the younger closely embracing the other as he had directed.

A sliding away from beneath them of the floor on which they stood, as
the drop fails under the feet of a felon. A great rush of air, and a
mighty, awful, stunning roar,--an involuntary gasp, a choking flood of
water that came bellowing after them, and hammered them down into
the black depths so far that the young man, though used to diving and
swimming long distances underwater, had well-nigh yielded to the fearful
need of air, and sucked in his death in so doing.

The boat came up to the surface, broken in twain, splintered, a load
of firewood for those who raked the river lower down. It had turned
crosswise, and struck the rocks. A cap rose to the surface, such a
one as boys wear,--the same that boy had on. And then--after how many
seconds by the watch cannot be known, but after a time long enough,
as the young man remembered it, to live his whole life over in
memory--Clement Lindsay felt the blessed air against his face, and,
taking a great breath, came to his full consciousness. The arms of
the boy were still locked around him as in the embrace of death. A few
strokes brought him to the shore, dragging his senseless burden with
him.

He unclasped the arms that held him so closely encircled, and laid the
slender form of the youth he had almost died to save gently upon the
grass. It was as if dead. He loosed the ribbon that was round the neck,
he tore open the checked shirt--

The story of Myrtle Hazard's sex was told; but she was deaf to his cry
of surprise, and no blush came to her cold cheek. Not too late, perhaps,
to save her,--not too late to try to save her, at least!

He placed his lips to hers, and filled her breast with the air from his
own panting chest. Again and again he renewed these efforts, hoping,
doubting, despairing,--once more hoping, and at last, when he had almost
ceased to hope, she gasped, she breathed, she moaned, and rolled her
eyes wildly round her, she was born again into this mortal life.

He caught her up in his arms, bore her to the house, laid her on a sofa,
and, having spent his strength in this last effort, reeled and fell, and
lay as one over whom have just been whispered the words,

“He is gone.”




CHAPTER X. MR. CLEMENT LINDSAY FINISHES HIS LETTER--WHAT CAME OF IT.

The first thing Clement Lindsay did, when he was fairly himself again,
was to finish his letter to Susan Posey. He took it up where it left
off, “with an affection which----” and drew a long dash, as above. It
was with great effort he wrote the lines which follow, for he had got
an ugly blow on the forehead, and his eyes were “in mourning,” as the
gentlemen of the ring say, with unbecoming levity.

“An adventure! Just as I was writing these last words, I heard the
cry of a young person, as it sounded, for help. I ran to the river and
jumped in, and had the pleasure of saving a life. I got some bruises
which have laid me up for a day or two; but I am getting over them very
well now, and you need not worry about me at all. I will write again
soon; so pray do not fret yourself, for I have had no hurt that will
trouble me for any time.”

Of course, poor Susan Posey burst out crying, and cried as if her heart
would break. Oh dear! Oh dear! what should she do! He was almost killed,
she knew he was, or he had broken some of his bones. Oh dear! Oh dear!
She would go and see him, there!--she must and would. He would die, she
knew he would,--and so on.

It was a singular testimony to the evident presence of a human element
in Mr. Bytes Gridley that the poor girl, on her extreme trouble, should
think of him as a counsellor. But the wonderful relenting kind of look
on his grave features as he watched the little twins tumbling about his
great books, and certain marks of real sympathy he had sometimes shown
for her in her lesser woes, encouraged her, and she went straight to his
study, letter in hand. She gave a timid knock at the door of that awful
sanctuary.

“Come in, Susan Posey,” was its answer, in a pleasant tone. The old
master knew her light step and the maidenly touch of her small hand on
the panel.

What a sight! 'there were Sossy and Minthy intrenched in a Sebastopol
which must have cost a good half-hour's engineering, and the terrible
Bytes Gridley besieging the fortress with hostile manifestations of the
most singular character. He was actually discharging a large sugar-plum
at the postern gate, which having been left unclosed, the missile would
certainly have reached one of the garrison, when he paused as the door
opened, and the great round spectacles and four wide, staring infants'
eyes were levelled at Miss Susan Posey.

She almost forgot her errand, grave as it was, in astonishment at this
manifestation. The old man had emptied his shelves of half their folios
to build up the fort, in the midst of which he had seated the two
delighted and uproarious babes. There was his Cave's “Historia
Literaria,” and Sir Walter Raleigh's “History of the World,” and a whole
array of Christian Fathers, and Plato, and Aristotle, and Stanley's book
of Philosophers, with Effigies, and the Junta Galen, and the Hippocrates
of Foesius, and Walton's Polyglot, supported by Father Sanchez on one
side and Fox's “Acts and Monuments” on the other,--an odd collection, as
folios from lower shelves are apt to be.

The besieger discharged his sugar-plum, which was so well aimed that
it fell directly into the lap of Minthy, who acted with it as if the
garrison had been on short rations for some time.

He saw at once, on looking up, that there was trouble. “What now, Susan
Posey, my dear?”

“O Mr. Gridley, I am in such trouble! What shall I do? What shall I do?”

She turned back the name and the bottom of the letter in such a way
that Mr. Gridley could read nothing but the few lines relating their
adventure.

“So Mr. Clement Lindsay has been saving a life, has he, and got some
hard knocks doing it, hey, Susan Posey? Well, well, Clement Lindsay is a
brave fellow, and there is no need of hiding his name, my child. Let
me take the letter again a moment, Susan Posey. What is the date of it?
June 16th. Yes,--yes,--yes!”

He read the paragraph over again, and the signature too, if he wanted
to; for poor Susan had found that her secret was hardly opaque to those
round spectacles and the eyes behind them, and, with a not unbecoming
blush, opened the fold of the letter before she handed it back.

“No, no, Susan Posey. He will come all right. His writing is steady, and
if he had broken any bones he would have mentioned it. It's a thing his
wife will be proud of, if he is ever married, Susan Posey,” (blushes,)
“and his children too,” (more blushes running up to her back hair,) “and
there 's nothing to be worried about. But I'll tell you what, my dear,
I've got a little business that calls me down the river tomorrow, and
I shouldn't mind stopping an hour at Alderbank and seeing how our young
friend Clement Lindsay is; and then, if he was going to have a long
time of it, why we could manage it somehow that any friend who had
any special interest in him could visit him, just to while away the
tiresomeness of being sick. That's it, exactly. I'll stop at Alderbank,
Susan Posey. Just clear up these two children for me, will you, my dear?
Isosceles, come now,--that 's a good child. Helminthia, carry these
sugar-plums down--stairs for me, and take good care of them, mind!”

It was a case of gross bribery and corruption, for the fortress was
immediately, evacuated on the receipt of a large paper of red and white
comfits, and the garrison marched down--stairs much like conquerors,
under the lead of the young lady, who was greatly eased in mind by the
kind words and the promise of Mr. Byles Gridley.

But he, in the mean time, was busy with thoughts she did not suspect. “A
young person,” he said to himself,--“why a young person? Why not say a
boy, if it was a boy? What if this should be our handsome truant?--'June
16th, Thursday morning!'--About time to get to Alderbank by the river, I
should think. None of the boats missing? What then? She may have made
a raft, or picked up some stray skiff. Who knows? And then got
shipwrecked, very likely. There are rapids and falls farther along the
river. It will do no harm to go down there and look about, at any rate.”

On Saturday morning, therefore, Mr. Byles Gridley set forth to procure
a conveyance to make a visit, as he said, down the river, and perhaps be
gone a day or two. He went to a stable in the village, and asked if they
could let him have a horse.

The man looked at him with that air of native superiority which the
companionship of the generous steed confers on all his associates, down
to the lightest weight among the jockeys.

“Wal, I hain't got nothin' in the shape of a h'oss, Mr. Gridley. I've
got a mare I s'pose I could let y' have.”

“Oh, very well,” said the old master, with a twinkle in his eye as sly
as the other's wink,--he had parried a few jokes in his time,--“they
charge half-price for mares always, I believe.”

That was a new view of the subject. It rather took the wind out of the
stable-keeper, and set a most ammoniacal fellow, who stood playing with
a currycomb, grinning at his expense. But he rallied presently.

“Wal, I b'lieve they do for some mares, when they let 'em to some folks;
but this here ain't one o' them mares, and you ain't one o' them folks.
All my cattle's out but this critter, 'n' I don't jestly want to
have nobody drive her that ain't pretty car'ful,--she's faast, I tell
ye,--don't want no whip.--How fur d' d y' want t' go?”

Mr. Gridley was quite serious now, and let the man know that he wanted
the mare and a light covered wagon, at once, to be gone for one or two
days, and would waive the question of sex in the matter of payment.

Alderbank was about twenty miles down the river by the road. On arriving
there, he inquired for the house where a Mr. Lindsay lived. There was
only one Lindsay family in town,--he must mean Dr. William Lindsay. His
house was up there a little way above the village, lying a few rods back
from the river.

He found the house without difficulty, and knocked at the door. A
motherly-looking woman opened it immediately, and held her hand up as if
to ask him to speak and move softly.

“Does Mr. Clement Lindsay live here?”

“He is staying here for the present. He is a nephew of ours. He is in
his bed from an injury.”

“Nothing very serious, I hope?”

“A bruise on his head,--not very bad, but the doctor was afraid of
erysipelas. Seems to be doing well enough now.”

“Is there a young person here, a stranger?”

“There is such a young person here. Do you come with any authority to
make inquiries?”

“I do. A young friend of mine is missing, and I thought it possible I
might learn something here about it. Can I see this young person?”

The matron came nearer to Byles Gridley, and said: “This person is a
young woman disguised as a boy. She was rescued by my nephew at the risk
of his life, and she has been delirious ever since she has recovered
her consciousness. She was almost too far gone to be resuscitated,
but Clement put his mouth to hers and kept her breathing until her own
breath returned and she gradually came to.”

“Is she violent in her delirium?”

“Not now. No; she is quiet enough, but wandering,--wants to know where
she is, and whose the strange faces are,--mine and my husband's,--that
's Dr. Lindsay,--and one of my daughters, who has watched with her.”

“If that is so, I think I had better see her. If she is the person I
suspect her to be, she will know me; and a familiar face may bring back
her recollections and put a stop to her wanderings. If she does not know
me, I will not stay talking with her. I think she will, if she is the
one I am seeking after. There is no harm in trying.”

Mrs. Lindsay took a good long look at the old man. There was no
mistaking his grave, honest, sturdy, wrinkled, scholarly face. His voice
was assured and sincere in its tones. His decent black coat was just
what a scholar's should be,--old, not untidy, a little shiny at the
elbows with much leaning on his study-table, but neatly bound at the
cuffs, where worthy Mrs. Hopkins had detected signs of fatigue and come
to the rescue. His very hat looked honest as it lay on the table. It had
moulded itself to a broad, noble head, that held nothing but what was
true and fair, with a few harmless crotchets just to fill in with, and
it seemed to know it.

The good woman gave him her confidence at once. “Is the person you are
seeking a niece or other relative of yours?”

(Why did not she ask if the girl was his daughter? What is that look of
paternity and of maternity which observing and experienced mothers and
old nurses know so well in men and in women?)

“No, she is not a relative. But I am acting for those who are.”

“Wait a moment and I will go and see that the room is all right.”

She returned presently. “Follow me softly, if you please. She is
asleep,--so beautiful,--so innocent!”

Byles Gridley, Master of Arts, retired professor, more than sixty years
old, childless, loveless, stranded in a lonely study strewed with wrecks
of the world's thought, his work in life finished, his one literary
venture gone down with all it held, with nobody to care for him but
accidental acquaintances, moved gently to the side of the bed and looked
upon the pallid, still features of Myrtle Hazard. He strove hard against
a strange feeling that was taking hold of him, that was making his face
act rebelliously, and troubling his eyes with sudden films. He made a
brief stand against this invasion. “A weakness,--a weakness!” he said to
himself. “What does all this mean? Never such a thing for these twenty
years! Poor child! poor child!--Excuse me, madam,” he said, after a
little interval, but for what offence he did not mention. A great deal
might be forgiven, even to a man as old as Byles Gridley, looking
upon such a face,--so lovely, yet so marked with the traces of recent
suffering, and even now showing by its changes that she was struggling
in some fearful dream. Her forehead contracted, she started with a
slight convulsive movement, and then her lips parted, and the cry
escaped from them,--how heart-breaking when there is none to answer
it,--“Mother!”

Gone back again through all the weary, chilling years of her girlhood to
that hardly remembered morning of her life when the cry she uttered was
answered by the light of loving eyes, the kiss of clinging lips, the
embrace of caressing arms!

“It is better to wake her,” Mrs. Lindsay said; “she is having a troubled
dream. Wake up, my child, here is a friend waiting to see you.”

She laid her hand very gently on Myrtle's forehead. Myrtle opened her
eyes, but they were vacant as yet.

“Are we dead?” she said. “Where am I? This is n't heaven--there are
no angels--Oh, no, no, no! don't send me to the other place--fifteen
years,--only fifteen years old--no father, no mother--nobody loved
me. Was it wicked in me to live?” Her whole theological training was
condensed in that last brief question.

The old man took her hand and looked her in the face, with a wonderful
tenderness in his squared features. “Wicked to live, my dear? No
indeed! Here! look at me, my child; don't you know your old friend Byles
Gridley?”

She was awake now. The sight of a familiar countenance brought back a
natural train of thought. But her recollection passed over everything
that had happened since Thursday morning.

“Where is the boat I was in?” she said. “I have just been in the water,
and I was dreaming that I was drowned. Oh! Mr. Gridley, is that you? Did
you pull me out of the water?”

“No, my dear, but you are out of it, and safe and sound: that is the
main point. How do you feel now you are awake?”

She yawned, and stretched her arms and looked round, but did not answer
at first. This was all natural, and a sign that she was coming right.
She looked down at her dress. It was not inappropriate to her sex, being
a loose gown that belonged to one of the girls in the house.

“I feel pretty well,” she answered, “but a little confused. My boat will
be gone, if you don't run and stop it now. How did you get me into dry
clothes so quick?”

Master Byles Gridley found himself suddenly possessed by a large and
luminous idea of the state of things, and made up his mind in a moment
as to what he must do. There was no time to be lost. Every day, every
hour, of Myrtle's absence was not only a source of anxiety and a cause
of useless searching but it gave room for inventive fancies to imagine
evil. It was better to run some risk of injury to health, than to have
her absence prolonged another day.

“Has this adventure been told about in the village, Mrs. Lindsay?”

“No, we thought it best to wait until she could tell her own story,
expecting her return to consciousness every hour, and thinking there
might be some reason for her disguise which it would be kinder to keep
quiet about.”

“You know nothing about her, then?”

“Not a word. It was a great question whether to tell the story and make
inquiries; but she was safe, and could hardly bear disturbance, and, my
dear sir, it seemed too probable that there was some sad story behind
this escape in disguise, and that the poor child might need shelter and
retirement. We meant to do as well as we could for her.”

“All right, Mrs. Lindsay. You do not know who she is, then?”

“No, sir, and perhaps it is as well that I should not know. Then I shall
not have to answer any questions about it.”

“Very good, madam,--just as it should be. And your family, are they as
discreet as yourself?”

“Not one word of the whole story has been or will be told by any one of
us. That was agreed upon among us.”

“Now then, madam. My name, as you heard me say, is Byles Gridley. Your
husband will know it, perhaps; at any rate I will wait until he comes
back. This child is of good family and of good name. I know her well,
and mean, with your kind help, to save her from the consequences which
her foolish adventure might have brought upon her. Before the bells ring
for meeting to-morrow morning this girl must be in her bed at her home,
at Oxbow Village, and we must keep her story to ourselves as far as may
be. It will all blow over, if we do. The gossips will only know that she
was upset in the river and cared for by some good people,--good people
and sensible people too, Mrs. Lindsay. And now I want to see the young
man that rescued my friend here,--Clement Lindsay, I have heard his name
before.”

Clement was not a beauty for the moment, but Master Gridley saw well
enough that he was a young man of the right kind. He knew them at sight,
fellows with lime enough in their bones and iron enough in their blood
to begin with,--shapely, large-nerved, firm-fibred and fine-fibred, with
well-spread bases to their heads for the ground-floor of the faculties,
and well-vaulted arches for the upper range of apprehensions and
combinations. “Plenty of basements,” he used to say, “without attics
and skylights. Plenty of skylights without rooms enough and space enough
below.” But here was “a three-story brain,” he said to himself as he
looked at it, and this was the youth who was to find his complement in
our pretty little Susan Posey! His judgment may seem to have been hasty,
but he took the measure of young men of twenty at sight from long and
sagacious observation, as Nurse Byloe knew the “heft” of a baby the
moment she fixed her old eyes on it.

Clement was well acquainted with Byles Gridley, though he had never seen
him, for Susan's letters had had a good deal to say about him of late.
It was agreed between them that the story should be kept as quiet
as possible, and that the young girl should not know the name of her
deliverer,--it might save awkward complications. It was not likely
that she would be disposed to talk of her adventure, which had ended so
disastrously, and thus the whole story would soon die out.

The effect of the violent shock she had experienced was to change the
whole nature of Myrtle for the time. Her mind was unsettled: she
could hardly recall anything except the plunge over the fall. She was
perfectly docile and plastic,--was ready to go anywhere Mr. Gridley
wanted her to go, without any sign of reluctance. And so it was agreed
that he should carry her back in his covered wagon that very night. All
possible arrangements were made to render her journey comfortable. The
fast mare had to trot very gently, and the old master would stop and
adjust the pillows from time to time, and administer the restoratives
which the physician had got ready, all as naturally and easily as if he
had been bred a nurse, vastly to his own surprise, and with not a little
gain to his self-appreciation. He was a serviceable kind of body on
occasion, after all, was he not, hey, Mr. Byles Gridley? he said to
himself.

At half past four o'clock on Sunday morning the shepherd brought the
stray lamb into the paved yard at The Poplars, and roused the slumbering
household to receive back the wanderer.

It was the Irishwoman, Kitty Fagan, huddled together in such amorphous
guise, that she looked as if she had been fitted in a tempest of
petticoats and a whirlwind of old shawls, who presented herself at the
door.

But there was a very warm heart somewhere in that queer-looking bundle
of

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