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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Vassall Morton, by Francis Parkman
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Vassall Morton
+       A Novel
+
+Author: Francis Parkman
+
+Release Date: May 23, 2012 [EBook #39768]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK VASSALL MORTON ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Ron Swanson (This file was produced from images
+generously made available by The Internet Archive/American
+Libraries)
+
+
+
+
+
+
+VASSALL MORTON.
+
+A Novel.
+
+
+
+
+BY
+
+FRANCIS PARKMAN,
+
+AUTHOR OF "HISTORY OF THE CONSPIRACY OF PONTIAC," AND "PRAIRIE AND
+ROCKY MOUNTAIN LIFE."
+
+
+
+
+  Ecrive qui voudra! Chacun à ce mêtier,
+  Peut perdre impunément de l'encre et du papier.
+                                             BOILEAU.
+
+
+
+
+BOSTON: PHILLIPS, SAMPSON AND COMPANY.
+
+1856.
+
+
+
+
+Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the Year 1856, by
+
+PHILLIPS, SAMPSON AND COMPANY,
+
+In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the District of
+Massachusetts.
+
+
+
+
+STEREOTYPED AT THE BOSTON STEREOTYPE FOUNDRY.
+
+
+
+
+Vassall Morton.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+  Remote from towns he ran his godly race.--_Goldsmith_.
+
+
+"Macknight on the Epistles,--that's the name of the book?"
+
+"Yes, sir, if you please. I am desirous of consulting it with a
+view--"
+
+"Well, this way, Mr. Jacobs. Here's the librarian. Mr. Stillingfleet,
+let me introduce my friend, the Reverend Mr. Jacobs, of West
+Weathersfield."
+
+"I am proud to make your acquaintance, sir," said Mr. Jacobs, taking
+the librarian's hand with an air of diffident veneration.
+
+"Mr. Jacobs wishes to consult Mackwright on the Epistles."
+
+"Macknight, if you please, Dr. Steele."
+
+"O, Macknight. Will you be so kind as to let him have the use of it in
+my name?"
+
+"If you will go with Mr. Rubens, sir," said the librarian, "he will
+show you the book."
+
+"Thank you, sir," replied Mr. Jacobs, to whom the words were
+addressed; and he followed the assistant among the alcoves in a timid,
+tiptoe progress, for, to him, the very air he breathed seemed redolent
+of learning, and the dust beneath his feet consecrated to science.
+
+Dr. Steele remained behind, conversing with the librarian.
+
+"My friend has something of the ancient apostolic simplicity hanging
+about him still. He looks with as much awe at Harvard College library
+as I did myself forty-five years ago, when I came down from Steuben to
+join the freshman class."
+
+"So you came from Steuben! Did not old John Morton come from the same
+place?"
+
+"To be sure he did. He was the glory of the town. He pulled down the
+old clapboard meeting house that his father used to preach in, and
+built a new one for him: besides giving a start in business to half
+the young men of the village."
+
+"Do you see that undergraduate at the end of the hall, standing by the
+last alcove, reading?"
+
+"Yes; what about him? He seems a hardy, good-looking young fellow
+enough."
+
+"He is John Morton's son."
+
+"Is it possible? I remember him when he was a child, but have not seen
+him for these ten years. After his father's death, his mother took him
+to Europe, to be educated; but she never came back; she died in
+Paris."
+
+"He is Mr. Morton's only child--is he not?"
+
+"Yes; his first wife had no children; and after he had buried
+her,--which, by the way, I believe was the happiest hour of his
+life,--he married a very different sort of person, Margaret Vassall,
+this boy's mother."
+
+"What, one of the old Vassall race?"
+
+"Exactly; and, I suppose, the last survivor. I used to know her. She
+was a handsome woman, and, bating her family pride, altogether a very
+fine character. She managed her husband admirably."
+
+"Why, what need had John Morton of being managed?"
+
+"O, Morton was a noble old gentleman, a merchant of the old school,
+and generous as the day; but he had his faults. He made nothing of his
+three bottles of Madeira at dinner, and besides-- Ah, Mr. Jacobs, so
+you have found Macknight."
+
+"Yes, sir," said Mr. Jacobs, coming up, "I have the volumes."
+
+"See that young man, yonder. That's the son of your old friend, Mr.
+Morton."
+
+"Really! upon my word! Ah! Mr. Morton _was_ a friend to me, sir--a
+very kind friend."
+
+And, in the simplicity of his heart, Mr. Jacobs glided up to the
+student, and blandly accosted him.
+
+"How do you do, young gentleman? I knew your worthy father. I knew him
+well. I have often sat at his hospitable board on anniversary week."
+
+Thus addressed, Vassall Morton looked up from his book,--it was
+Froissart's Chronicle,--inclined his head in acknowledgment, and
+waited to hear more.
+
+"Ahem!" coughed Mr. Jacobs, a little embarrassed: "your father was a
+most worthy and estimable gentleman: a true friend of the feeble and
+destitute. Ahem!--what class are you in, Mr. Morton?"
+
+"The junior class," said the young man, a suppressed smile flickering
+at the corner of his mouth.
+
+"Ahem! I hope, sir, that, like your father, you will long live to be
+an honor to your native town."
+
+"Thank you, sir."
+
+"I wish you good morning."
+
+"Good morning, sir," said Morton, divided between an inclination to
+smile at the odd, humble little figure before him, and an
+unwillingness to wound the other's feelings.
+
+"Are you ready to go, Mr. Jacobs?" said Dr. Steele.
+
+"If you please, sir, we will now take our departure;"--gathering the
+four volumes of Macknight on the Epistles under his arm;--"Good
+morning, Mr. Stillingfleet; good morning, Mr. Rubens. I am indebted to
+your kindness, gentlemen--ahem!"
+
+"This is the way out, Mr. Jacobs," said Steele to his diffident friend
+from West Weathersfield, who, in his embarrassment, was going out at
+the wrong door.
+
+"I beg your pardon, sir--ahem!" replied Mr. Jacobs, with a bashful
+smile. And Dr. Steele, pointing to the true exit, ushered his rustic
+and reverend protégé from the sacred precinct of learning.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+  Richt hardie baith in ernist and play.--_Sir David Lyndsay_.
+
+
+"Morton, what was the little old fogy in the white cravat saying to
+you just now in the library?"
+
+"Telling me that my father was a worthy man, and that he hoped I
+should make just such another."
+
+"Ah, that was kind of him."
+
+"What a pile of books you are lugging! Here, let me take half a dozen
+of them for you. You look as if you were training to be a hotel
+porter."
+
+"I am laying in for vacation."
+
+"What sense is there in that? Let alone your Latin, Greek, and
+mathematics; what the deuse is vacation made for? Take to the woods,
+as I do, breathe the fresh air, and see the world at large."
+
+"Do you call it seeing the world at large, to go off into some
+barbarous, uninhabitable place, among mosquitoes, snakes, wolves,
+bears, and catamounts? What sense is there in that? What can you do
+when you get there?"
+
+"Shoot muskrats, and fish for mudpouts. Will you go with me?"
+
+"Thank you, no. There's no one in the class featherwitted enough to go
+with you, except Meredith, and he ought to know better."
+
+"Stay at home, then, and improve your mind. I shall be off to-morrow."
+
+"Alone?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+Mr. Horace Vinal shrugged his shoulders, a movement which caused
+Sophocles and Seneca to escape from under his arm. Morton gathered
+them out of the mud, and thrusting them back again into their place,
+left his burdened fellow-student to make the best of his way towards
+his den in Stoughton Hall.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+  O, love, in such a wilderness as this!--_Gertrude of Wyoming_.
+
+
+Morton, _en route_ for the barbarous districts of which Vinal had
+expressed his disapproval, stopped by the way at a spot which, though
+wild enough at that time, had ceased to be a wilderness. This was the
+Notch of the White Mountains, perverted, since, into a resort of
+_quasi_ fashion. Here, arriving late at the lonely hostelry of one Tom
+Crawford, he learned from that worthy person, to whom his face was
+well known, that other guests, from Boston, like himself, were seated
+at the tea table. Accordingly, descending thither, he saw four
+persons. The first was a quiet-looking man, with the air of a
+gentleman, and something in his appearance which seemed to indicate
+military habits and training. Morton remembered to have seen him
+before. At his side, and under his tutelary care, sat two personages,
+who, from their dimensions, must have been boys of some seven years
+old, but from the solemnity of their countenances, might have passed
+for a brace of ancient philosophers. They looked so much alike that
+Morton thought he saw double. Each was seated on a volume of Clark's
+Commentaries, to raise his chin to the needful height above the table
+cloth. Both were encased in tunics, strapped about them with shining
+morocco belts. Their small persons were terminated at one end by
+morocco shoes of somewhat infantile pattern, and at the other by
+enormous heads, with chalky complexions, pale, dilated eyes, wrinkled
+foreheads, and mouths pursed up with an expression of anxious care,
+abstruse meditation, and the most experienced wisdom.
+
+In amazement at these phenomena, Morton turned next towards the fourth
+member of the party; and here he encountered a new emotion, of a kind
+quite different. Hitherto, in his college seclusion, he had not very
+often met, except in imagination, with that union of beauty, breeding,
+and refinement which belongs to the best life of cities, and which he
+now saw in the person of a young lady, a year or two his junior. He
+longed for a pretext to address her, but found none; when her
+father--for such he seemed--broke silence, and accosted him.
+
+"I beg your pardon; is it possible that you are the son of John
+Morton?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"He was my father's old friend. I thought I could scarcely mistake
+your likeness to your mother."
+
+"I believe I have the pleasure of speaking to Colonel Leslie."
+
+Leslie inclined his head.
+
+"My title clings to me, I find, though I have no right to it now."
+
+He had left the army long before, exchanging the rough frontier
+service for pursuits more to his taste.
+
+"Upon my word," pursued Leslie, after conversing for some time with
+the new comer on the scenery and game of the mountains, "you seem to
+be _au fait_ at this sort of thing."
+
+"At least I ought to be; I have spent half my college vacations here."
+
+"It is unlucky for us that we must set out for home in the morning.
+You might have given us good advice in our sightseeing."
+
+"Crawford will tell you that I am tolerably well qualified to be a
+guide."
+
+"You do not look like a collegian. They are generally thin and pale
+with studying."
+
+"Oftener with laziness and cigar smoke."
+
+"Very likely. You seem too hardy and active for a student."
+
+Morton's weak point was touched.
+
+"I can do well enough, I believe, in that way. Crawford was boasting,
+last year, that he could outwrestle any man in New England. I
+challenged him, and threw him on his back."
+
+"You! Crawford is twice as heavy and strong as you are."
+
+"I am stronger than I seem," replied Morton, with great complacency.
+
+And Leslie, observing him with an eye not unused to measure the thews
+and sinews of men, saw that, though his frame was light, and his
+shoulders not broad, yet his compact proportions, deep chest, and
+muscular limbs, showed the highest degree of bodily vigor.
+
+"You are quite right. I would enlist you without asking the surgeon's
+advice."
+
+Here the nurse, attendant on the two philosophers, appeared at the
+door; and they, obedient to the mute summons, scrambled gravely from
+their seats, and, with solemn steps, withdrew. Miss Leslie presently
+followed, and Morton and her father were left alone.
+
+"You are from Harvard--are you not?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Do you know Horace Vinal?"
+
+"Very well; he is my classmate."
+
+"Is he not thought a very promising young man?"
+
+"He is our first scholar."
+
+"I hear him spoken of as a young man of fine abilities."
+
+"And he knows how to make the best of them."
+
+"Not at all dissipated."
+
+"Not at all."
+
+"And a great student."
+
+"Digs day and night."
+
+"A little ambitious, I suppose."
+
+"A little."
+
+"But very prudent."
+
+"Uncommonly so."
+
+"An excellent young man," exclaimed Leslie; "I think very highly of
+Horace Vinal."
+
+Morton cast a sidelong glance at him, and there was a covert smile in
+his eye. He began to see a weak spot in his companion.
+
+"He will certainly make his way in the world," pursued Leslie.
+
+"No doubt of it."
+
+"He is not so fond of out-door exercises as you seem to be."
+
+"He is good at one kind of exercise."
+
+"What's that?"
+
+"He can draw the long bow."
+
+Leslie did not see Morton's meaning, and took the words literally, as
+the latter intended he should.
+
+"What, have you an archery club at college?"
+
+"No; but there are one or two among us who use the long bow, now and
+then, and Vinal beats them by all odds. But he is very modest on the
+subject, and never alludes to it. In fact, there are very few who know
+his skill in that way."
+
+"It is all the better for his health to have some amusement of the
+kind."
+
+"Yes, it would be a pity if his health should suffer."
+
+"I have often thought that his mind was too active for his
+constitution."
+
+Morton cast another sidelong look at Leslie. Though he admired the
+daughter, he refrained with difficulty from quizzing the father.
+
+"You seem to know Vinal very well."
+
+"Yes, thoroughly; I have known him from childhood; he is the son of my
+wife's sister, and I am his guardian. I watch his progress with great
+interest."
+
+"You will see him, I dare say, reach the top of the ladder. At least,
+it will be no fault of his if he does not."
+
+"I am very glad to hear my good opinion of him confirmed by one who
+has seen so much of him."
+
+And, rising, he left the room.
+
+"A very good young man, this seems to be," he thought to himself, as
+he did so.
+
+"Amiable, good natured, and all that; but very soft, for a man who has
+seen hard service," thought Morton, on his part.
+
+The party reassembled in the inn parlor. Masters William and
+Marlborough, having gained a reprieve from their banishment, busied
+themselves at the table, the one in poring over Brewster on Natural
+Magic, the other in solving a problem of Euclid. Leslie viewed these
+infant diversions by no means with an eye of favor, and soon banished
+the students to a retirement more suited to their tender years. The
+sentence overcame all their philosophy, and they were carried off
+howling.
+
+Morton, meanwhile, was breathing a charmed air; and though diffident
+in the presence of ladies, and not liberally endowed by nature with
+the gift of tongues, his zeal to commend himself to the good opinion
+of Miss Edith Leslie availed somewhat to supply the defect. He had
+never mixed with the world, conventionally so called, and knew as much
+of ladies as of mermaids. But having an ardent temperament and a
+Quixotic imagination; being addicted, moreover, to Froissart and
+kindred writers; and, indeed, visited with a glimmering of that
+antique light which modern folly despises, he would have been ready,
+with the eye of a handsome woman upon him, for any rash and ridiculous
+exploit. This extravagance did him no manner of harm. On the contrary,
+it went far to keep him out of mischief; for in the breast of this
+youngster a chivalresque instinct battled against the urgency of
+vigorous blood, and taught his nervous energies to seek escape rather
+in ceaseless bodily exercises, rowing, riding, and the like, than in
+any less commendable recreations.
+
+The close of the evening found him with an imagination much excited.
+In short, decisive symptoms declared themselves of that wide-spread
+malady, of which he had read much and pondered not a little, but which
+had not, as yet, numbered him among its victims. Among the various
+emotions, novel, strange, and pleasurable, which began to possess him,
+came, however, the dismal consciousness that, with the morning sun,
+the enchantress of his fancy was to vanish like a dream of the night.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+  What pleasure, sir, find we in life, to lock it
+  From action and adventure?--_Cymbeline_.
+
+
+Morning came, and the Leslies departed. Morton watched the lumbering
+carriage till it disappeared down the rugged gorge of the Notch, then
+drew a deep breath, and ruefully betook himself to his day's sport. He
+explored, rod in hand, the black pools and plunging cascades of the
+Saco; but for once that he thought of the trout, he thought ten times
+of Edith Leslie.
+
+Towards night, however, he returned with a basket reasonably well
+filled; and, as he drew near the inn, he saw a young man, of his own
+age, or thereabouts, sitting under the porch. He had a cast of
+features which, in a feudal country, would have been taken as the sign
+of noble birth; and though he wore a slouched felt hat and a rough
+tweed frock, though his attitude was careless, though he held between
+his teeth a common clay pipe, at which he puffed with much relish, and
+though he was conversing on easy terms with two attenuated old Vermont
+farmers, with faces like a pair of baked apples,--yet none but the
+most unpractised eye would have taken him for other than a gentleman.
+
+As soon as Morton saw him, he shouted a joyful greeting, to which Mr.
+Edward Meredith, rising and going to meet his friend, replied with no
+less emphasis.
+
+"I thought," said Morton, "that you meant to do the dutiful this time,
+and stay with your father and family at the sea shore."
+
+"Couldn't stand the sea shore," said Meredith, seating himself again;
+"so I came up to the mountains to see what you were doing."
+
+"You couldn't have done better; but come this way, out of earshot."
+
+"Colonel," said Meredith, in a tone of melancholy remonstrance, "this
+seat is a good seat, an easy seat, a pleasant seat. Why do you want to
+root me up?"
+
+"Come on, man," replied Morton.
+
+"Show the way, then, Jack-a-lantern. But where do you want to lead me?
+I won't sit on the rail fence, and I won't sit on the grass."
+
+"There's a bench here for you."
+
+"Has it a back?"
+
+"Yes, it has a back. There it is."
+
+Meredith carefully removed a few twigs and shavings which lay upon the
+bench, seated himself, rested his arm along the back, and began
+puffing at his pipe again. But scarcely had he thus composed himself
+when the tea bell rang from the house.
+
+"Do you hear that, now? Another move to make! Didn't I tell you so?"
+
+"Not that I remember."
+
+"Please to explain, colonel, what you expect to gain by always bobbing
+about as you do, like a drop of quicksilver."
+
+"To hear you, one would take you for the laziest fellow in the
+universe."
+
+"There's reason in all things. I keep my vital energies against the
+time of need, instead of wasting them in unnecessary gyrations. Ladies
+at the table! New Yorkers in full feather, or I'll be shot! Now, what
+the deuse have lace and ribbons to do in a place like this?"
+
+During the meal, the presence of the strangers was a check upon their
+conversation.
+
+"Crawford," said Meredith, when it was over, "have you had that sofa
+taken into my room?"
+
+"Yes, sir."
+
+"And the arm chair?"
+
+"Yes, sir."
+
+"And the candles?"
+
+"Yes, sir."
+
+"All right. Now, then, colonel, _allons_."
+
+The name of _colonel_ was Morton's college sobriquet. Meredith led the
+way into a room which adjoined his bed chamber, and which, under his
+direction, had assumed an air of great comfort. Morton took possession
+of the sofa; his friend of the arm chair.
+
+"What's the word with you?" began the latter; "are you bound for the
+Adirondacks, the Margalloway, or the Penobscot?"
+
+"To the Margalloway, I think. You mean to go with me, I hope."
+
+"To the Margalloway, or the antipodes, or any place this side of the
+North Pole."
+
+"Then, if you say so, we'll set off to-morrow."
+
+"Gently, colonel. One day's fishing here. We have six weeks before us.
+What sort of thing is that that you are smoking?"
+
+"Try, and judge for yourself," said Morton, handing his cigar case.
+Meredith took a sample of its contents between his fingers, and
+examined it with attention.
+
+"I always thought you were a kind of heathen, and now I know it. Where
+did you pick up that cigar?"
+
+"Do you find it so very bad?"
+
+"It would not poison a man, and perhaps might pass for a little better
+than none at all. But nobody except a pagan would touch it when any
+thing better could be had."
+
+"I forgot to bring any from town, and had to supply myself on the
+way."
+
+"That goes to redeem your character. Fling those away, or give them to
+the landlord; I have plenty of better ones. But a pipe is the best
+thing at a place like this, and especially at camp, in the woods."
+
+"So I have often heard you say."
+
+"Mine, though, made a sensation, not long ago."
+
+"How was that?"
+
+"The whole brood of the Stubbs, bag and baggage, passed here this
+afternoon."
+
+"Thank Heaven they did not stop."
+
+"They came in their private carriage. I nodded to Ben, and touched my
+hat to Mrs. S. You should have seen their faces. They thought there
+must be something out of joint in the mechanism of the universe, when
+a person of their acquaintance could be seen smoking a pipe at a
+tavern door, like a bog-trotting Irishman."
+
+"You should have asked Ben to go with us."
+
+"It would be the worst martyrdom the poor devil ever had to pass
+through. Ben seemed displeased with the scenery. He says that the
+White Mountains are nothing to any one who, like himself, has seen the
+Alps."
+
+"Pray when did Stubb see the Alps?"
+
+"O, the whole family have seen the Alps,--the Alps, Italy, the Rhine,
+the nobility and gentry, and every thing else that Europe affords.
+They all swear by Europe, and hold the soil of America dirt cheap. You
+can see with half an eye what they are--an uncommonly bad imitation of
+an indifferent model."
+
+"Let them pass for what they are worth. Have you come armed and
+equipped--rifle, blanket, hatchet, and so forth?"
+
+"Yes, and I have brought an oil cloth tent."
+
+"So much the better; it is more convenient than a birch bark shanty."
+
+"I give you notice that I mean to take my ease in that tent."
+
+"I hope you will."
+
+"One can be comfortable in the woods, as well as elsewhere. Remember,
+colonel, that we are out for amusement, and not after scalps. Last
+summer, you drove ahead, rain or shine, through thickets, and swamps,
+and ponds, as if you were on some errand of life and death. For this
+once, have mercy on frail humanity, and moderate your ardor."
+
+Morton gave the pledge required. They passed the evening in arranging
+the details of their journey, set forth and spent three or four weeks
+in the forest between the settled districts of Canada and Maine,
+poling their canoe up lonely streams, meeting no human face, but
+smoking their pipes in great contentment by their evening camp fire.
+They chased a bear, and lost him in a _windfall_; killed two moose,
+six deer, and trout without number; and underwent, with exemplary
+patience, a martyrdom of midges, black flies, and mosquitoes. And
+when, at last, they turned their faces homeward, they wiled the way
+with plans of longer journeyings,--more bear, more moose, more deer,
+more trout, more midges, black flies, and mosquitoes.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+  Youth on the prow, and Pleasure at the helm;
+  Regardless of the sweeping whirlwind's sway,
+  That, hushed in grim repose, expects his evening prey.--_Gray_.
+
+
+It was a week before "class day,"--that eventful day which was
+virtually to close the college career of Morton and his
+contemporaries. The little janitor, commonly called Paddy O'Flinn, was
+ringing the evening prayer bell from the cupola of Harvard Hall,--its
+tone was dull and muffled, some graceless sophomore having lately
+painted it white, inside and out,--and the students were mustering at
+the summons. The sedate and the gay, the tender freshman and the
+venerable senior, the prosperous city beau and the awkward country
+bumpkin, one and all were filing from their respective quarters
+towards the chapel in University Hall. The bell ceased; the loiterers
+quickened their steps; the last belated freshman, with the dread of
+the proctor before his eyes, bounded frantically up the steps; and for
+a brief space all was silence and solitude. Then there was a
+murmuring, rushing sound, as of a coming tempest, and University Hall
+disgorged its contents, casting forth the freshmen and juniors at one
+door, and the sophomores and seniors at the other.
+
+Of these last was Morton, who, with three or four of his class, walked
+across the college yard, towards the great gateway. By his side was a
+young man named Rosny, carelessly dressed, but with a lively,
+dare-devil face, and the look of a good-natured game cock.
+
+"I shall be sorry to leave this place," said Morton; "I like it. I
+like the elms, and the gravel walks, and the scurvy old brick and
+mortar buildings."
+
+"Then I am not of your mind," said Rosny; "gravel or mud, brickbats or
+paving stones, they are the same to me, the world over. Halloo, Wren,"
+to a mustachioed youth who just then joined them; "we are bound to
+your room."
+
+"That's as it should be. But where are the rest?"
+
+"Coming--all in good time; here's one of them."
+
+A dapper little person approached, with a shining beaver, yellow kid
+gloves, a switch cane, and a very stiff but somewhat dashing cravat,
+surmounted by a round and rubicund face.
+
+"Ah, Chester!" exclaimed Wren; "the very man we were looking for. Come
+and take a glass of punch at my room."
+
+"Punch, indeed!" replied Chester, whose face had changed from a prim
+expression to one of great hilarity the moment he saw his
+friends--"no, no, gentlemen, I renounce punch and all its works. The
+pure unmixed, the pure juice of the grape for me."
+
+"But, Chester," urged Wren, "won't the pure mountain dew be a
+sufficient inducement?"
+
+"The good company will be a sufficient inducement," said Chester,
+waving his hand,--"the good company, gentlemen,--and the good liquor.
+But what have we here? Meredith and Vinal walking side by side. Good
+Heavens, what a conjunction!"
+
+The objects of Chester's astonishment, on a flattering invitation from
+Wren, joined the party, which, however, was weakened by the temporary
+secession of Rosny, who, pleading an errand in the village, left them
+with a promise to rejoin them soon. His place was in a few moments
+more than supplied by a new party of recruits, among whom was Stubb.
+Arrived at Wren's room, the desk and other appliances of study were
+banished from the table; bottles and glasses usurped their place, and
+the company composed themselves for conversation, most of them
+permitting their chairs to stand quietly on all fours, though one or
+two, like heathen Yankees from the backwoods, forced them to rear
+rampant on the hind legs, the occupant's feet resting on the ledge
+over the fireplace.
+
+A few minutes passed, when a quick, firm step came up the stairs, and
+Rosny entered.
+
+"How are you again, Dick?" said Meredith.
+
+"Good evening, Mr. Rosny," echoed Stubb, who sat alone on the window
+seat.
+
+"Eh? what's that?" demanded Rosny, turning sharp round upon the last
+speaker, with a face divided between indignation and laughter.
+
+"I said, 'Good evening,'" replied Stubb, much disconcerted.
+
+"And why didn't you say, 'Good morning,' yesterday, eh?--when I met
+you in Boston, eh? He gave me the cut direct," turning to the company.
+"Mr. Benjamin Stubb, here, gave me the cut direct! It was the
+pepper-and-salt coat and the thunder-and-lightning breeches that Stubb
+couldn't think of bowing to when he was walking in ---- Street, with a
+lady. Look here, Stubb,"--again facing the victim,--"what do you take
+me for? and what the devil do you take yourself for? I know your dirty
+family history. Your grandfather was a bricklayer, and the Lord knows
+who your great grandfather was. The best Huguenot blood of France runs
+in _my_ veins! My ancestors were fighting at Ivry and Jarnac, while
+yours were peddling coal and potatoes about London streets, or digging
+mud in a ditch, for any thing you or I know to the contrary." Stubb
+gasped. "Your father has a crest painted on his carriage; but where
+did he get it? Why, Cribb, the engraver, stole it for him out of the
+British peerage."
+
+Stubb, who was weak and timorous, here rose in great confusion,
+muttered something about conduct unbecoming to a gentleman, and
+meaning to require an explanation, and abruptly left the room.
+
+"That job is finished," said Rosny, composedly seating himself. "_His_
+bill is settled for him."
+
+"But, Dick," said Morton, who had been laughing in his sleeve during
+the scene, "do you want to be considered as a Frenchman or an
+American?"
+
+"I'm an American," answered Rosny--"an American and a democrat, every
+inch."
+
+Rosny had adopted democratic principles and habits partly out of spite
+against the class to which Stubb belonged, and which he was pleased to
+designate as the "codfish aristocracy," and partly because he thought
+that he could thus most effectually gain the ends of his impatient,
+hankering ambition. His ancestor, the head of an eminent Huguenot
+race, had been driven to America by the persecutions which followed
+the revocation of the edict of Nantes. The family had lived ever since
+in poverty and obscurity; yet this fiery young democrat nourished an
+inordinate pride of birth, and never forgot that he was descended from
+a line of warlike nobles.
+
+"No, no," said Rosny, as Morton pushed a glass towards him, "drinking
+is against my rule-- Well, as it's about the last time,"--filling the
+glass,--"here's to you all."
+
+"The last time!" said Morton; "that's a dismal word. If my next four
+years are as pleasant as these last have been, I will never complain
+of them."
+
+"I tell you, boys," said Meredith, who was tranquilly puffing at his
+cigar, "the cream of our lives is skimmed already. Rough and tumble,
+hurry and worry--that will be the story with most of us, more or less,
+to the end of our days."
+
+"Rough and tumble!" exclaimed Rosny; "so much the better. 'Scots play
+best at the roughest game'--that's just my case. Who wants to be
+always paddling about on smooth water? Close reefed topsails, a gale
+astern, and breakers all round--that's the game."
+
+"Every one to his taste," said Chester, shrugging his shoulders. "I
+suppose a salamander loves the fire, but I don't. 'The race of
+ambition'--'the unconquerable will'--pshaw! _Cui bono?_ One chases
+after his object, and when he has got it, he turns from it, and chases
+another. I profess the philosophy of Horace--enjoy the hour as it
+flies. Ah! he was a model man, a man after my own heart, a gentleman
+and a man of the world. He could drink his Falernian, and thank the
+gods for their gifts."
+
+Rosny whispered in Morton's ear, "Chester ought to have been born a
+century ago, among the John Bulls, up in the cockloft of Brazen Nose
+College, or some such antediluvian hole."
+
+In spite of these derogatory remarks, Chester, besides being one of
+the best scholars in the class, was noted for a social, jovial
+disposition, which, though, like Fluellen's valor, a little out of
+fashion, made him a general favorite.
+
+"Speaking of the next four years," said Wren, "I wonder what plans
+each of us has made for that time. For my part, I have no plan at all,
+and should be glad to profit by the suggestions of the rest. Come,
+Chester, what do you mean to do?"
+
+"Expatiate," said Chester, expanding his hands, and thereby revealing
+an odd little antique ring which he wore; "take mine ease, roaming,
+like the bee, from blossom to blossom. I will leave the earnest
+men--bah!--the men with a mission--to grub on in their vocation. I
+will renounce this land of cotton mills and universal suffrage. First
+for Paris, to walk the Boulevards, and go to the masked balls and the
+opera;--_vive la bagatelle!_--then for Rome, to saunter through the
+Vatican and the picture galleries,--but not to moralize with a long
+face over fallen grandeur, and the mutability of human affairs. No,
+no, gentlemen, I belong to another school of philosophy. I will sit
+among the ruins of the Forum, and laugh, like Democritus, at the image
+of Death. Then I will recreate myself at Capri, like the Cæsars before
+me; then enjoy the _dolce far niente_ at Florence, and read the Tuscan
+poets in the shades of Vallombrosa."
+
+"But, Chester," interposed Wren, "don't you ever mean to marry and
+settle down?"
+
+"I object to that phrase, 'settle down.' It calls up disagreeable
+images. It reminds one of the backwoods, log cabins, men in shirt
+sleeves, and piles of pine boards and lumber. Yes, certainly, I mean
+to marry. What man of taste would leave matrimony out of his scheme of
+life? One likes to gather his treasures round him, his pictures, his
+vases, and statues; and how can he adorn his rooms with an ornament
+more exquisite--where can he find a piece of furniture more charmingly
+moulded--than a beautiful woman?"
+
+This flourish, between jest and earnest, he pronounced with a graceful
+wave of his hand.
+
+"If, when you have married your beautiful woman," said Morton, "you
+find you have caught a Tartar, it will serve you right."
+
+"Hear him," said Chester; "hear the barbarian. He will always be
+conjuring up some image of disquiet. 'Rest, rest, perturbed spirit.'"
+
+"He could not rest, if he tried," said Horace Vinal.
+
+"No, he is one of those unfortunates who lie under a sentence of
+endless activity. It is a disease, with which men are afflicted for
+the sins of their ancestors; and for the sins of mine I was born among
+a whole nation of such. Perpetual motion, bustle and whirl,--I grow
+dizzy to think of it. They cannot rest themselves, and will not let
+any one else rest. Always pursuing, always doing, never enjoying. A
+true American cannot enjoy. He would build a steam saw mill in
+Arcadia, and dam up the four rivers of Paradise for cotton factories."
+
+"But, Chester," said Wren, "that is not at all like Morton; you know
+he hates utilitarianism."
+
+"Yes, but still he cannot rest. He would not build saw mills and dams;
+but he would be sure to fire his rifle at some of Adam's live stock,
+and set all Eden by the ears. Come, Morton, I have told the company my
+plans. Let us hear what yours are."
+
+"My guardian wishes me to enter the law school."
+
+"You are twenty-one now," said Vinal, "and can do as you please."
+
+Vinal was a very tall and slender young man, with a strongly marked
+face, though thin and pale; a grave, thoughtful eye, and compressed
+lips, expressing a kind of nervous self-control. His dress was very
+elaborate and scrupulous, though without the smallest trace of
+foppery. He was less popular in the class than Morton, but had the
+reputation of greater talents. This he owed, perhaps, to his habitual
+reserve; for every one thought that he understood Morton thoroughly,
+while few pretended to fathom the silent and self-contained Vinal.
+
+"I should like well enough to study law," was Morton's non-committal
+answer.
+
+"I thought, Morton, that you were more of a philosopher. Here you are,
+a young fellow, full of blood, and worth half a million, and yet you
+speak of buckling down to the law. That is all well enough for poor
+dogs like me, who go into the mill from necessity. We drudge on for
+twenty years or more, till we have scraped together a competency, or
+something better, perhaps, and then we find that we have forgotten how
+to enjoy it. We have grown so used to harness that we are good for
+nothing out of it, and sacrifice body and soul to our profession. You
+have reached already the point that we are straining for. The world is
+all before you, man; launch out and enjoy yourself."
+
+"Didn't you just say," asked Rosny, "that Morton couldn't rest, if he
+tried?"
+
+"I said he could not rest, but I did not say he could not enjoy
+himself. Look at him: his cheek is ruddier and browner than any of us.
+Nobody would believe that a fellow like that was not made to enjoy
+life. I know Morton. He could roam from blossom to blossom, as Chester
+says, with as good a will as any body. He has an eye for the fair sex,
+correct as he is at present. He knows a pretty face from a plain one.
+The devil will catch him yet with a black eye and a rosy cheek."
+
+"Then," said Morton, "he will show his good opinion of my taste."
+
+Rosny, who had his own reasons for disliking Vinal, here broke in
+without ceremony,--
+
+"Be gad, Vinal, he will bait his hook differently when he fishes for
+you."
+
+"How will that be, Dick?" said Meredith.
+
+"With a five dollar bank note, and a lying puff in a newspaper; and
+Vinal will jump at it like a mackerel at a red rag."
+
+Vinal laughed, but with a bad grace.
+
+"Riches and fame!" said Chester, anxious to smooth away all traces of
+irritation--"riches and fame! I call those legitimate objects of
+pursuit; and the black eye is positively praiseworthy. Come, Morton,
+let us hear your plan. You have not told it yet."
+
+"I defer to Rosny--he is my senior. Dick, some ten or twelve years
+from this, I suppose I shall vote against you for the presidency."
+
+"Thank you. By that time you will have no whig party left to vote
+with. The democrats will have it all their own way."
+
+"I have often wondered what could have induced a driving man of the
+world like you to come to college at all. You have been here more than
+a year; and in the same time, with your previous knowledge, you might
+have learned as much any where else at half the cost. You are not the
+fellow to regard a degree of A. M. with superstitious veneration."
+
+"You are right there, colonel. I am of no kith nor kin to some of your
+New England old fogies, who would give their souls for a D. D. or an
+LL. D.--and get it, too, though they know no more Greek or Hebrew than
+I know of Choctaw, and can barely manage to stumble along through the
+Latin Testament. What's a piece of sheep's skin to me? Humbug is the
+current coin all the world over, and just as much in this free and
+enlightened country as any where else. I have schemes on foot,--not
+political,--no matter what they are,--out in the western country; and
+I happen to know that a degree from Harvard University is the medicine
+that suits my case; with that for my credentials, I shall carry it
+over all competitors. Yes, boys, gammon is the word; and the man who
+would rise in the world must use the stepping stones."
+
+"You're a victim of the national disease, Rosny," said Chester.
+"Rising in the world!--that's the idea that ruins us. It's that that
+makes us lean, starveling, nervous, restless, dyspeptic,
+hypochondriac,--the most prosperous and most uncomfortable people on
+earth. Sit down, man, and take your ease. What garden will thrive if
+every plant in it must be dug up every day, and set out in a better
+place?"
+
+"Ah, that's good doctrine for you. You have got nothing to gain, and a
+good deal to lose. Stand up for the _status quo_, old boy; I would, in
+your place. Look at me, though. I was cut adrift at fourteen,--parents
+dead,--not a cent in my pocket,--and since then I have tumbled along
+through the world as I could. You can't kill me. I have more lives
+than a cat. I have been thrown on my back a dozen times; but the
+harder I was flung down, the higher I bounced up again. Why, I have
+known the time when I was glad to earn a shilling by shovelling snow
+off a sidewalk. I have tried my hand at every thing,--printer's work,
+lecturing, politics, editing, keeping school,--and do you suppose I
+shall be content to rest in the mud all my days? Not a bit of it. I
+know my cue better. The time will come when you'll see me shooting up
+like a rocket."
+
+Here a broad glare against the window interrupted him, and, looking
+out, his auditors saw a bonfire blazing with peculiar splendor under
+the windows of the chamber where the Faculty were at that moment in
+solemn session. Three proctors and a tutor were hastening towards the
+scene of outrage, when a stentorian voice from the adjacent darkness
+roared forth a warning that there was a canister of gunpowder in the
+fire expected every moment to explode. The prudent officers therefore
+kept their distance, busying themselves with noting down the names of
+several innocent spectators, while the bonfire subsided to a natural
+death, the gunpowder hoax having perfectly succeeded.
+
+Mr. Wren's guests resumed their seats, mingling with graver matters
+the usual badinage of a college gathering; and when at length they
+separated, only a lonely light or two glimmered from among the many
+windows of the academic barracks which overlook the college green.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+
+  As if with Heaven a bargain they had made
+  To practise goodness--and to be well paid,
+  They, too, devoutly as their fathers did,
+  Sin, sack, and sugar, equally forbid;
+  Holding each hour unpardonably spent
+  That on the leger leaves no monument.--_Parsons_.
+
+
+Mr. Erastus Flintlock sat at his counting room, in his old
+leather-bottomed arm chair. Vassall Morton, his newly emancipated
+ward, just twenty-one, stood before him, the undisputed master of his
+father's ample wealth.
+
+"What, no profession, Mr. Morton? None whatever, sir?"
+
+"No, sir, none whatever."
+
+The old man's leathery countenance expressed mingled wrath and
+concern.
+
+Flintlock was a stanch old New Englander, boasting himself a true
+descendant of the Puritans, whose religious tenets he inherited, along
+with most of their faults, and not a few of their virtues. He was
+narrow as a vinegar cruet, and just in all his dealings. There were
+three subjects on which he could converse with more or less
+intelligence--politics, theology, and business. Beyond these, he knew
+nothing; and except American history and practical science, he had an
+indistinct idea that any thing more came of evil. He distrusted a
+foreigner, and abhorred a Roman Catholic. All poetry, but Milton and
+the hymn book, was an abomination in his eyes; and he looked upon
+fiction as an emanation of the devil. To the list of the cardinal
+virtues he added another, namely, attention to business. In his early
+days, he had come from his native Connecticut with letters to Morton's
+father, who, seeing his value, took him as a clerk, placed unbounded
+trust in him, and at last made him his partner. He was a youth of slow
+parts, solid judgment, solemn countenance, steady habits, and a most
+unpliable conscience. He had no follies, allowed himself no
+indulgences, and could enjoy no other pleasures than business and
+church-going. He attended service morning, afternoon, and evening, and
+never smiled on Sundays. His old age was as upright and stiff-necked
+as might have been augured from such a youth. He thought the rising
+generation were in a very bad way, and once gave his son a scorching
+lecture on vanity and arrogance, because the latter, who had been two
+years at college, very modestly begged to be excused from carrying a
+roll of sample cotton, a yard and a half long, from his father's store
+at one end of the town, to the shop of a retail dealer at the other.
+
+"What, no profession, Mr. Morton?"
+
+"None whatever, sir."
+
+Morton was prepared for the consequence of these fatal words, and
+sought to arm himself with the needful patience. It would be folly, he
+knew, to debate the point with his guardian, who was tough and
+unmanageable as a hickory stump; who would never see any side of a
+question but his own, and on whose impervious brain reasons fell like
+rain drops on a tarpauline. Flintlock, therefore, opened fire
+unanswered, and discoursed for a full hour on duty, propriety, and a
+due respect for what he called the general sense of the community,
+which, as he assured his auditor, demands that every one should have
+some fixed and stated calling, by which he may be recognized as a
+worthy and useful member of society. Sometimes he grew angry, and
+scolded his ward with great vehemence; then subsided into a pathetic
+strain, and exhorted him, for the sake of his excellent father, not to
+grow old in idleness and frivolity. Morton, respectful, but obdurate,
+heard him to an end, assured him that, though renouncing commerce and
+the professions, his life would by no means be an idle one, thanked
+him for his care of his property, and took his leave; while the old
+merchant sank back into his chair, and groaned dismally, because the
+son of his respected patron was on the road to perdition.
+
+A moment's retrogression will explain the young man's recusancy.
+
+On a May evening, some two months before the close of his college
+career, Morton sat in lonely meditation on a wooden bench, by the
+classic border of Fresh Pond. By every canon of polite fiction, his
+meditation ought to have been engrossed by some object of romantic
+devotion; but in truth they were of a nature wholly mundane and
+sublunary.
+
+He had been much exercised of late upon the choice of a career for his
+future life. He liked none of the professions for itself, and had no
+need to embrace it for support. He loved action, and loved study; was
+ambitious and fond of applause. He had, moreover, enough of the
+American in his composition never to be happy except when in pursuit
+of something; together with a disposition not very rare among young
+men in New England, though seldom there, or elsewhere, joined to his
+abounding health and youthful spirits--a tendency to live for the
+future, and look at acts and things with an eye to their final issues.
+
+Thierry's Norman Conquest had fallen into his hands soon after he
+entered college. The whole delighted him; but he read and re-read the
+opening chapters, which exhibit the movements of the various races in
+their occupancy of the west of Europe. This first gave him an impulse
+towards ethnological inquiries. He soon began to find an absorbing
+interest in tracing the distinctions, moral, intellectual, and
+physical, of different races, as shown in their history, their
+mythologies, their languages, their legends, their primitive art,
+literature, and way of life. The idea grew upon him of devoting his
+life to such studies.
+
+Seated on the wooden bench at the edge of Fresh Pond, he revolved, for
+the hundredth time, his proposed scheme, and summed up what he
+regarded as its manifold advantages. It would enable him to indulge
+his passion for travel, lead him over rocks, deserts, and mountains,
+conduct him to Tartar tents and Cossack hovels, make him intimate with
+the most savage and disgusting of barbarians; in short, give full
+swing to his favorite propensities, and call into life all his
+energies of body and mind. In view of this prospect, he clinched his
+long-cherished purpose, devoting himself to ethnology for the rest of
+his days.
+
+He had a youthful way of thinking that any resolution deliberately
+adopted by him must needs be final and conclusive, and was fully
+convinced that his present determination was a species of destiny,
+involving one of three results--that he should meet an early death,
+which he thought very likely; that he should be wholly disabled by
+illness, which he thought scarcely possible; or that, in the fulness
+of time, say twenty or twenty-five years, his labors would have issue
+in some prodigious work, redounding to his own honor and the
+unspeakable profit of science.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII.
+
+  'Tis a dull thing to travel like a mill horse,
+  Still in the place he was born in, round and blinded.
+                                          _Beaumont and Fletcher_.
+
+
+A novel-maker may claim a privilege which his betters must forego. So,
+in the teeth of dramatic unities, let the story leap a chasm of some
+two years.
+
+Not that the void was a void to Morton. His nature spurred him into
+perpetual action; but his wanderings were over at length; and he and
+Meredith sat under the porch of Morton's house, a few miles from town.
+The features of the latter were swarthy from exposures, while those of
+his friend were somewhat pale, and had the expression of one
+insufferably bored.
+
+"Colonel, you are the luckiest fellow I know. Here you have been
+following the backbone of the continent from Darien to the head of the
+Missouri, mixing yourself up with Spaniards and Aztecs, poking sticks
+into the crater of Popocatapetl, and living hand and glove with
+Blackfeet and Assinnaboins, while I have been doing penance among
+bonds and mortgages, and title deeds and leases. My father has thrown
+up responsibility and gone to Europe--and so has every body else--and
+left all on my shoulders."
+
+"Your time will come."
+
+"I hope so."
+
+"But what news is there?"
+
+"Nothing."
+
+"What, nothing since I went away?"
+
+"The old story. You know it as well as I. Now and then, a new
+engagement came out. Mrs. A. approved it, and Mrs. B. didn't; and then
+characters were discussed on both sides. Something has been said of
+the balls, the opera, and what not; with the usual talk about the
+wickedness of the democrats and the fanaticism of the abolitionists."
+
+"You appear to have led a gay life."
+
+"Very!--we need a war, an invasion,--something of the sort. It would
+put life into us, and rid us of a great deal of nonsense. You were
+born with a stimulus in yourself, and can stand this stagnant sort of
+existence; but I need something more lively."
+
+"Then go with me on my next journey."
+
+"Are you thinking of another already? Rest in peace, and thank Heaven
+that you have come home in a whole skin."
+
+"I have done the North American continent; but there are four more
+left, not to mention the islands."
+
+"And you mean to see them all?"
+
+"Certainly."
+
+"Your science is a convenient hobby. It carries you wherever you fancy
+to go."
+
+"You could not do better than go with me."
+
+"I know it; but, if wishes were horses---- I am training Dick to take
+my place. I am a model elder brother to that youngster in the way of
+cultivating his mind and morals; and when I have him up to the mark, I
+shall gain a year's furlough for my pains. But when is your next
+journey to begin--next week?"
+
+"No, I mean to pin myself down here, and dig like a mole, for the next
+ten months, at least."
+
+"If I had not had ocular proof of what a determined dig you can be, I
+should set down your studies as mere humbug."
+
+"But I wish to hear the news."
+
+"I would tell it willingly, if I knew any."
+
+"Have the Primroses come home from Europe yet?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"And the Everills?"
+
+"I believe not."
+
+"Nor the Leslies, I suppose."
+
+"For a reasonably sensible and straightforward fellow, you have a
+queer way of making inquiries. You question like a lady's letter, with
+the pith in the postscript. You ask after the Primroses and the
+Everills, a stupid, priggish set, for whom you care nothing, as
+earnestly as if you were in love with them, and then grow indifferent
+when you come to the Leslies, whom you like."
+
+"Did I?" said Morton, in some discomposure; "I ask their pardon. Have
+they come home?"
+
+"Not yet, but I believe they mean to come as soon as they have staid
+their year out."
+
+"And that will be very soon--early in the spring, or sooner."
+
+"Now I think of it, I made the acquaintance, a few evenings ago, of a
+person who, I believe, is a relation or connection of yours--Miss
+Fanny Euston."
+
+"O, yes, she is my third, fourth, or fifth cousin, or something of
+that sort; but I have not seen her since she was ten years old. She
+was a great romp, then, and very plain."
+
+"That last failing is cured. She has grown very handsome."
+
+"The first failing ought to be cured, too, by this time."
+
+"I am not so clear on that point. She is a girl with an abundance of
+education, and a good deal of a certain kind of accomplishment--music,
+and so on--but no breeding at all. If she had had the training of good
+society, she would have been one of a thousand. As it is she cares for
+nobody, and does and says whatever comes into her mind, without the
+least regard to consequences or appearances."
+
+"Does she affect naturalness, independence, and all that?"
+
+"No, she affects nothing. The material is admirable. It only needs to
+be refined, polished, and toned down. It's unlucky, colonel, but in
+this world every thing worth having is broken in pieces and mixed with
+something that one doesn't want. It's an even balance, good and bad;
+there's no use in going off into raptures about any thing. One thing
+is certain, though; this cousin of yours has character enough to
+supply material for a dozen Miss Primroses, without any visible
+diminution."
+
+"I should like to see her. I'll go to-morrow."
+
+"You'd better. But now tell me something more about your journey."
+
+And, in reply to his friend's questions, Morton proceeded to relate
+such incidents as had befallen him.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII.
+
+                    Beauty is a witch
+  Against whose charms faith melteth into blood.
+  _D. Pedro_.--If thou wilt hold longer argument,
+  Do it in notes.
+  _Benedick_.--Now, _divine air_, now is his soul ravished.
+                                           _Much Ado about Nothing_.
+
+
+Morton visited his cousin, Miss Fanny Euston, a guest, for a few days,
+at a friend's house in town. By good fortune, as he thought it, he
+found her alone; and, as he conversed with her, he employed
+himself--after a practice usual with him--in studying her character,
+and making internal comments upon it. These insidious reflections,
+condensed into a paragraph, would have been somewhat as follows:--
+
+"A fine figure, and a very handsome face; but there is a lurking devil
+in her eye, and about the corners of her mouth." Here some ten minutes
+of animated dialogue ensued before his observations had shaped
+themselves into further results. "She is exceedingly clever; she knows
+how to think and act for herself. I should not like to cross her will.
+There is fire enough in her to make a hundred women interesting. She
+is none of our frosty New England beauties. She could love a man to
+the death, and hate him as well. She could be a heroine or a tigress.
+Every thing about her is wild and chaotic, the unformed elements of a
+superb woman."
+
+Here, the conversation having lasted a half hour or more, his
+imagination began to disturb the deductions of his philosophy, and he
+was no longer in a mood of just psychological analysis, when, to his
+vexation, his cousin's hostess, Miss Jones, entering, brought his
+_tête-à-tête_ to a close. She displayed a marvellous fluency of
+discourse, and was eloquent upon books, parties, paintings, and the
+opera.
+
+"I need not ask you, Mr. Morton, if you have seen Tennyson's new
+poem."
+
+"Yes--at the bookseller's."
+
+"But surely you have read it."
+
+"No, I am behind the age."
+
+"Then thank Heaven for it," exclaimed his unceremonious cousin; "for
+of all insipidity, and affectation, and fine-spun, wire-drawn trash,
+Tennyson carries away the palm. Every body reads him because he is the
+fashion, and every body admires him because he is the fashion. But he
+is a bubble, a film, a gossamer; there's nothing in him."
+
+This explosion called forth a protest from the poet's admirer.
+
+"May I ask," said Morton to his cousin, "who are your literary
+favorites?"
+
+"Not the latter-day poets--the Tennysonian school; their puling
+mannerism is an insult to the Saxon tongue."
+
+"But," urged Miss Jones, "you are not quite reasonable."
+
+"Of course I am not. It's not a woman's province to be reasonable."
+
+"Do you subscribe to these poetical heresies, Mr. Morton?"
+
+"On the contrary, I think that Tennyson has often great beauties."
+
+"If he sometimes wrote like an angel," pursued Fanny Euston, "I should
+find no patience to see it in a man who could put upon paper such
+parrot rhymes as these:--
+
+  'Not a whit of thy tuwhoo,
+   Thee to woo to thy tuwhit,
+   Thee to woo to thy tuwhit,
+   With a lengthened loud halloo,
+   Tuwhoo, tuwhit, tuwhit, tuwhoo-o-o!'
+
+Bah! it puts one in a passion to hear such twaddle."
+
+"I see," said her friend, "that nothing less than your own music will
+calm your indignation. Pray let us hear the ballad which you set to
+music this morning."
+
+"I will sing, if you wish it; but not that ballad."
+
+And she seated herself before the open piano.
+
+"What do you choose, Mr. Morton?"
+
+"The Marseillaise. That, I think, is in your vein."
+
+"Ah! you can choose well!"
+
+And, running her fingers over the keys, she launched at once into the
+warlike strains of the hymn of revolution. Her voice and execution
+were admirable; and though by no means unconscious that she was
+producing an effect, she sang with a fire, energy, and seeming
+recklessness that thrilled like lightning through her auditor's veins.
+He rose involuntarily from his seat. For that evening his study of
+character was ended, and philosophy dislodged from her last
+stronghold.
+
+Half an hour later he was riding homeward in a mood quite novel to his
+experience. He pushed his horse to a keen trot, as if by fierceness of
+motion to keep pace with the fiery influence that was kindling all his
+nerves.
+
+"I have had my fancies before this," he thought,--"in fact I have
+almost been in love; but that feeling was no more like this than a
+draught from a clear spring is like a draught of spiced wine."
+
+That night he fully expected to be haunted by a vision of Fanny
+Euston; but his slumbers were unromantically dreamless.
+
+Three days later, he ventured another visit; but his cousin had
+returned to her home in the country. By this time he was conscious of
+a great abatement of ardor; and his equanimity was little moved by the
+disappointment. In a week he had learned to look back on his transient
+emotion as an effervescence of the moment, and to regard his relative
+with no slight interest, indeed, yet by no means in a light which
+could blind him to her glaring faults. He summoned up all that he
+could recall of herself and her family, and chiefly of her father,
+whom he remembered in his boyhood as a rough, athletic man, whose
+black and bushy eyebrows were usually contracted into something which
+seemed like a frown. These boyish recollections were far from doing
+Euston justice. He was a man of masculine and determined character.
+His will was strong, his passions violent; he was full of prejudices,
+and when thwarted or contradicted, his rage was formidable. His honor
+was unquestioned; he was most bluntly and unmanageably honest. Yet
+through the rock and iron of his character, there ran, known to but
+few, a delicate vein of poetic feeling. The music of his daughter, or
+the verses of his favorite Burns, could often bring tears to his stern
+gray eyes. For his wife, whom he had married in a fit of pique and
+disappointment, when little more than a boy, he cared nothing; but his
+fondness for his daughter was unbounded. He alone could control her;
+for she loved him ardently, and he was the only living thing of which
+she stood in awe.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX.
+
+  Elle ne manque jamais de saisir promptement
+  L'apparente lueur du moindre attachement,
+  D'en semer la nouvelle avec beaucoup de joie,--_Le Tartufe_.
+
+
+Among Morton's acquaintance was a certain Miss Blanche Blondel. They
+had been schoolmates when children; and as, at a later date, Miss
+Blanche had been fond of making long visits to a friend in Cambridge,
+during term time, Morton, in common with many others, had a college
+acquaintance with her, so that they were now on a footing of easy
+intercourse. Not that he liked her. On the contrary, she had inspired
+him with a very emphatic aversion; but being rather a skirmisher on
+the outposts of society, than enrolled in the main battalion, she was
+anxious to make the most of the acquaintance she had. She had the eyes
+of an Argus, and was as sly, smooth, watchful, and _rusée_ as a
+tortoise shell cat; wonderfully dexterous at finding or making gossip,
+and unwearied in sowing it, broadcast, to the right and left.
+
+One evening Morton was at a ball, crowded to the verge of suffocation.
+At length he found himself in a corner from which there was no
+retreat, while the stately proportions of Mrs. Frederic Goldenberg
+barred his onward progress. But when that distinguished lady chanced
+to move aside, she revealed the countenance of Miss Blondel, beaming
+on him like the moon after an eclipse. She nodded and smiled. There
+was no escape. Morton smiled hypocritically, and said, "Good evening."
+Blanche, as usual, was eager for conversation, and, after a few
+commonplaces, she said, turning up her eyes at him with an arch
+expression,--
+
+"I have a piece of news to tell you, Mr. Morton."
+
+"Ah!" replied Morton, expecting something disagreeable.
+
+"A piece of news that you will be charmed to hear."
+
+"Indeed."
+
+"Why, how cold you are! And I know that, in your heart, you are
+burning to hear it."
+
+"If you think so, you are determined to give my patience a hard
+schooling."
+
+"Well, I will not tantalize you any more. Miss Edith Leslie sailed
+from Liverpool for home last Wednesday."
+
+"Ah!"
+
+"How cold you are again! Are you not glad to hear it?"
+
+"Certainly--all her friends will be glad to hear it."
+
+"Upon my word, Mr. Morton, you are worse and worse. When a gentleman
+dances twice with a young lady on class day, and twice at Mrs.
+Fanfaron's ball, and joins her in the street besides, has she not a
+right to feel hurt when he hears with such profound indifference of
+her coming home after a year's absence?"
+
+Morton could hardly restrain the extremity of his distaste and
+impatience.
+
+"Miss Leslie, I imagine, would spend very little thought upon the
+matter." And he hastened, first to change the conversation, and then
+to close it altogether.
+
+Having escaped from his fair informant, he remained divided between
+pleasure at the tidings, and annoyance at the manner in which they had
+been told.
+
+In a few days Miss Leslie arrived. Her beauty had matured during her
+absence. She was conspicuously and brilliantly handsome, and was
+admired accordingly,--a fact which, though she could not but be
+conscious of it, seemed to affect her very little. Morton found her
+but slightly changed, with the same polished and quiet frankness, the
+same lively conversation, not without a tinge of sarcasm, and the same
+enthusiasm of character, betraying itself by an earnestness of manner,
+and never by any extravagance of expression. He had many opportunities
+of seeing her, Miss Blanche Blondel being but rarely present, and, in
+his growing admiration of her, the charms of his unbridled cousin
+faded more and more from his memory.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X.
+
+  For three whole days you thus may rest
+  From office business, news, and strife.--_Pope_.
+
+
+When the summer heats set in, Meredith, one evening, drove to Morton's
+house, and, arrayed in linen and grass-cloth, smoked his cigar under
+his friend's veranda with as much contentment as the thermometer at
+ninety would permit. The window at his side was that of the room which
+Morton used as his study, and the table was covered with books.
+
+"Colonel," said Meredith, "what a painstaking fellow you are! Ever
+since you left college--except when you were off on that journey,
+which was one of the most rational things you ever did in your
+life--you have been digging here among your books, as if you were some
+half-starved law student, with a prospect of matrimony."
+
+"I've done digging for the present. It's against my principles to work
+much in July and August."
+
+"What do you mean to do?"
+
+"Set out on a journey."
+
+"I suppose so. You are a lucky fellow."
+
+"Give yourself a vacation, and come with me."
+
+"No, I'm in for it for the next two months; but I will have my revenge
+before long."
+
+"Three days from your office will never ruin you or your family. Come
+with me to New Baden, if you can't do better."
+
+"I think I can manage that,--and I will."
+
+Accordingly, on Monday morning, they took the train thitherward.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI.
+
+  The company is 'mixed,' (the phrase I quote is
+  As much as saying, they're below your notice.)--_Byron_.
+
+
+On reaching New Baden, towards night, they learned that there was to
+be a dance that evening, in the hall.
+
+"The deuse!" ejaculated Meredith, as they entered; "have we come all
+this distance to find old faces again at New Baden? Look at that
+corner."
+
+Morton looked, and beheld a solemn group taking no part in the
+amusements, but scrutinizing the scene with the air of superior
+beings. He recognized the familiar countenance of Mrs. Primrose, with
+her daughter, Miss Constance Primrose, and her daughter's friend, Miss
+Wallflower. There, too, was Mr. Benjamin Stubb, Morton's classmate,
+and Miss Primrose's reputed admirer, with several other kindred
+spirits. Stubb was a tall and very slender young man, with a grave and
+pallid visage, and an uncompromising rigidity of cravat. Though his
+brain was unfurnished, his morals were reasonably good, and he went
+regularly to church, believing that there was, he could not tell how,
+an inseparable connection between good society and the ritual of the
+English church. He prided himself on his gentlemanly deportment, and
+regarded a lady as a being who is under no circumstances to be
+approached, except through the medium of certain prescribed forms and
+ceremonies. He seldom noticed those whom he thought his inferiors, and
+was very formal and exact towards the select few whom he acknowledged
+as his equals. As to superiors, he confessed none, except in the
+highest ranks of the English aristocracy, upon whom he looked with
+great reverence. He thought that there was no really good society in
+America, except the society of Boston, of which he regarded himself
+and his connections as the _crême, de la crême_. He cherished a just
+hereditary scorn of upstarts and parvenus; for already nearly half a
+century had expired since the Stubbs began to rise on golden wings
+from their native mud. Nor was this their only claim to ancestral
+eminence; since a judicious investment of a little surplus income at
+the College of Heralds had revealed the gratifying truth that the
+Stubbs of Boston were lineal descendants of King Arthur.
+
+Mrs. Primrose was a very benevolent and estimable person, who knew
+nothing of the world beyond her own circle, and looked with dire
+reprehension on any deviation from the standard of morals and manners
+which she had been accustomed to regard as the correct and proper one.
+Miss Constance Primrose realized Stubb's most exalted ideal of a young
+lady. She was very pretty, but with a face cold and unchanging as
+marble. She carried an unquestionable air of good, not to say of high
+breeding; having in this point an advantage over her mother, whose
+style savored a little of the simplicity of her early surroundings.
+The material, indeed, was very slender; but it had received a
+creditable polish; and though she had nothing to say, she said it with
+an undeniable grace.
+
+Morton and Meredith paid their compliments to the group, the former
+hastening to mingle with the crowd again, while Meredith remained to
+exchange a few words with the pretty, modest, and too-much-neglected
+Miss Wallflower.
+
+"Upon my word, Mr. Meredith," said Mrs. Primrose, "Mr. Morton has
+found a singular pair of acquaintances."
+
+"O, yes," said Meredith; "those are particular friends of his."
+
+"Very singular!" murmured Mrs. Primrose.
+
+Morton was walking slowly up the hall, conversing with an odd-looking
+couple--a heavy, thick set man, in the fantastic finery of a Broadway
+swell, and a woman of five feet ten, thin and gaunt, with a yellow
+complexion, and a pair of fierce, glittering eyes, like an Indian
+squaw in ill humor. She was gorgeous in silk, brocade, and diamonds,
+and her huge, gloveless, bony fingers sparkled with jewelry. Her
+husband, on his part, displayed a mighty breastpin, in the shape of a
+war horse rampant, in diamond frostwork.
+
+"Mr. Meredith," murmured the horrified Mrs. Primrose, "pray who are
+those persons?"
+
+"Aborigines from Red River. Mr. and Mrs. Major Orson, of Natchitoches.
+He is a speculator, I believe, of more wealth than reputation."
+
+"And _are_ they friends of Mr. Morton?"
+
+"O, Morton is a student of humanity. He met them at the tea table, and
+thinks them remarkable specimens of natural history."
+
+Mrs. Primrose did not hear this explanation. The trio had now
+approached within a few yards; and her whole attention was absorbed in
+listening to the high, penetrating voice of the female ogre.
+
+"There's one great and glorious thing about Natchitoches," remarked
+Mrs. Orson.
+
+"What's that?" asked Morton.
+
+"You can get every thing there to eat that heart can wish."
+
+"That's a fact," said the major; "there ain't no discount on that."
+
+"Game, and fish, and fruit, and vegetables," pursued the lady; "any
+thing and every thing. The north can't compete with it, I tell _you_.
+There's the pompano! O, my! Did you ever eat a pompano?"
+
+"Never."
+
+"Then you _have_ got something to look forward to. That's a fish that
+_is_ a fish. Why, sir, you can begin at the tail, and eat him clean
+away to the head, and the bones is just like marrow! It makes my mouth
+water to think of it!"
+
+"O, hush!" cried the major, with sympathetic emotion.
+
+"And then the fruit! Think of the peaches! They beat your nasty little
+northern peaches all holler!"
+
+"Yes," added the major, and to have your own boys to shin up the tree
+and throw 'em down to you; and to sit under the shade all the
+afternoon eating 'em;--that's the way to live!"
+
+"It's all the little niggers is good for, just to pick fruit."
+
+"Troublesome animals, I should think," observed Morton.
+
+"Well, they be; and the growed-up niggers ain't much better. To think
+of that girl, Cynthy, major. My! wasn't she one of 'em! The major is,
+out of all account, too tender to his niggers, and if it warn't for
+me, they wouldn't get a speck of justice done. Why, what are all those
+folks moving for? My! supper's ready. I'll go in with this gentleman,
+major, and you may foller with any pretty gal that you can get to come
+with you. I ain't a jealous woman"--turning to Morton--"I let the
+major do pretty much what he pleases."
+
+Mrs. Primrose drew a deep breath. "There must be"--thus she communed
+with herself--"something essentially vulgar in the mind of that young
+man, if he can neglect a cultivated and refined young lady like
+Constance, and at the same time find pleasure in the conversation of a
+person like that." And she considered within herself whether it would
+not be best to warn Constance not to encourage any advances which he
+might in future make. On second thoughts, reflecting that his position
+was unquestionable, his wealth great, and that she had never heard any
+thing against his morals, she determined to suspend all action for the
+present, keeping a close watch, meanwhile, on his behavior.
+
+While Morton was thus brought to the bar in the matronly breast of
+Mrs. Primrose, while the jury were bringing in a verdict of guilty,
+joined to a recommendation to mercy, the unconscious young man was
+leading his companion to the supper room; where, furnishing her with a
+huge plate of oysters, he left her in perfect contentment.
+
+Not long after, he encountered Meredith.
+
+"How do you like your friend in the diamonds?"
+
+"She's a superb specimen; about as civilized, with all her jewelry, as
+a Pawnee squaw. She has a vein of womanhood, though. I saw her, in the
+tea room, fondle a kitten whose foot had been trodden upon, as
+tenderly as if it had been a child."
+
+"If you had not been so busy with her, you would have met a person
+much better worth your time."
+
+"Who's that?"
+
+"Miss Fanny Euston."
+
+"Do you mean that she is here?"
+
+"She _was_ here,--in that room adjoining. But she has gone; you'll see
+nothing of her to-night."
+
+"Will not her being here induce you to stay?"
+
+The question, as he spoke it, had a sound of frankness; but the
+shameful truth must be confessed, that, in spite of his friendship for
+Meredith, and his admiration of Miss Leslie, he was a little jealous
+of his friend.
+
+"No," replied Meredith, "it's out of the question. I must be off the
+day after to-morrow. By the way, you never told me how you liked Miss
+Euston."
+
+"A rough diamond, needing nothing but to be cut, polished, and set!"
+
+"It's too late, I think, for that. The polishing should have begun
+before eighteen. She is quite unformed, and quite unconscious of being
+so. I'll leave you here to fall in love with her, if you like; but if
+you do, colonel, you'll be a good deal younger than I take you for."
+
+There was something in his friend's tone which led Morton half to
+suspect the truth. Meredith had himself a _penchant_ for Miss Fanny
+Euston, held in abeyance by a very lively perception of her faults.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII.
+
+  Will you woo this wildcat?--_Katharine and Petruchio_.
+
+
+Meredith went away, as he had proposed, leaving Morton at New Baden.
+The latter soon came to the opinion that he had never yet found so
+interesting a subject of psychological observation as that afforded
+him in the person of his relative, Miss Euston. She seemed to him the
+most wayward of mortals; yet in the midst of this lawlessness,
+generous instincts were constantly betraying themselves, and a certain
+native grace, a charm of womanhood, followed her wildest caprices. She
+often gave great offence by her brusqueries; yet those who best knew
+her were commonly her ardent friends.
+
+Mrs. Primrose looked upon her with her most profound and unqualified
+disapprobation. Her daughter copied her sentiments; while Stubb
+thought her an outside barbarian of the most alarming character. Fanny
+Euston's perceptions were very acute. She saw the effect she had
+produced, and seemed to take peculiar delight in aggravating it, and
+shocking the prejudices of her critics still more.
+
+One afternoon, Miss Primrose, Mr. Stubb, Fanny Euston, Morton, and
+several others, set out on a horseback excursion, matronized by Mrs.
+Primrose. At a few miles from New Baden, Morton found himself riding
+at his cousin's side, a little behind the rest.
+
+"Do you know, I came this morning, to ask you to join us on our walk
+to Elk Ridge."
+
+"Ah, I am sorry I was not there."
+
+"You were there; but you seemed so deep in Ivanhoe, or some other of
+your favorites, that I had no heart to interrupt you."
+
+"But that was quite absurd. I should like to have gone."
+
+"I am curious to know what book you were so busy with. Something of
+Scott's--was it not?"
+
+"Not precisely."
+
+"Nor one of the new novels," pursued Morton--"those are not after your
+taste."
+
+"Not at all; they are all full of some grand reform or philanthropic
+scheme, or the sorrows of some destitute, uninteresting little wretch,
+with whom you are required to sympathize."
+
+"You are not moulded after the philanthropic model. But may I ask,
+what book was entertaining you so much?"
+
+"Napier's Life of Montrose."
+
+"And do you like it?"
+
+"Indeed I do."
+
+"And you like Montrose?"
+
+"Certainly I like him."
+
+"I could have sworn it. Do you remember his verses to the lady of his
+heart?"
+
+"That I do," said Fanny Euston,--
+
+  "'Like Alexander I will reign,
+      And I will reign alone;
+    My heart shall evermore disdain
+      A rival on my throne.
+    He either fears his fate too much,
+      Or his deserts are small,
+    Who puts it not unto the touch,
+      To win or lose it all.
+
+  "'But if thou wilt be constant then,
+      And faithful of thy word,
+    I'll make thee famous by my pen,
+      And glorious by my sword;
+    I'll serve thee in such noble ways
+      Was never heard before;
+    I'll dress and crown thee all with bays,
+      And love thee evermore.'"
+
+"Admirable! I thought I had a good memory, but you beat me hollow. You
+repeat the lines as if you liked them."
+
+"Who would not like them?"
+
+"And yet his fashion of wooing would be a little peremptory for the
+nineteenth century."
+
+"There are no Montroses in the nineteenth century."
+
+"They are out of date, like many a good thing besides. Not long ago, I
+saw some verses in a magazine--a kind of ballad on Montrose's
+execution."
+
+"Can you repeat it?"
+
+"I cannot compete with you; but I think I can give you a stanza or
+two:--
+
+  "'The morning dawned full darkly,
+      The rain came flashing down,
+    And the jagged streak of the levin bolt
+      Lit up the gloomy town:
+    The thunder crashed across the heaven,
+      The fatal hour was come;
+    And ay broke in, with muffled beat,
+      The 'larum of the drum.
+    There was madness on the earth below,
+      And anger in the sky,
+    And young and old, and rich and poor,
+      Came forth to see him die.
+
+  "'But when he came, though pale and wan,
+      He looked so great and high,
+    So noble was his manly front,
+      So calm his steadfast eye,--
+    The rabble rout forbore to shout,
+      And each man held his breath,
+    For well they knew the hero's soul
+      Was face to face with death.'"
+
+Fanny Euston's eye kindled, as if at a strain of warlike music.
+
+"Go on."
+
+"I have forgotten the rest."
+
+"Then pray find the verses and send them to me. Why is it that, as you
+say, such men are out of date?"
+
+"What place, or what career, could they find in a commercial country?"
+
+"Then why were we born in a commercial country?"
+
+"You seem to make an ideal hero of Montrose."
+
+"Not I. I am not the school girl you take me for. I have no ideal
+hero. I do not believe in ideal heroes. Montrose was a man, with the
+faults of a man; full of faults, and yet not a bad man either."
+
+"Very far from it."
+
+"He had great faults, but grand qualities to match them,--worth a
+thousand of the small, tame, correct virtues that one sees
+hereabouts."
+
+"Dangerous ideas, those, Mrs. Primrose would tell you."
+
+"Deliver me from Mrs. Primrose!" ejaculated Fanny.
+
+They rode in silence for a few minutes, Morton's companion murmuring
+to herself fragments of the lines which he had just repeated.
+
+"Look!" she cried, suddenly. "How slowly our horses have been walking!
+The rest are almost out of sight. We had better join them. Will you
+race with me?"
+
+"Any thing you please."
+
+"Come on, then."
+
+She touched her horse with the whip, and they set forward at full
+speed. Fanny, who was by far the better mounted, soon gained the day.
+
+"Rein up," cried Morton, as they came near the party, "or your horse
+will startle the others."
+
+Fanny drew the curb, but not quite successfully; and her rapid arrival
+produced some commotion. Stubb's horse, in particular, began to prance
+and curvet in a manner which greatly disturbed his rider's equanimity.
+
+"Whoa! Whoa, boy!" said Stubb. "Steady, now! steady, sir! Whoa!"
+
+Fanny's eyes twinkled with malicious delight. She had a great contempt
+for Stubb, who, on his part, was mortally afraid of her.
+
+"That's a good horse of yours," pushing close to his side.
+
+"Yes, a very fine horse, indeed. Steady, boy! Steady, now!"
+
+"A capital horse; but he needs a spirited hand like yours to manage
+him."
+
+"Whoa! Quiet, now!--poor fellow!"
+
+This last endearing address was checked by a sudden jolt, produced by
+a spasmodic movement of the horse, which shook the cavalier to his
+very centre.
+
+"Punish him well with your spurs, Mr. Stubb, and let him run; that's
+the way to cure him of his tricks. Suppose we try a race together."
+
+"Thank you, Miss Euston, but the fact is-- Whoa, boy! whoa!-- I mean,
+the stableman told me that he is rather short of breath."
+
+"O, never mind the stableman. Come, let's go."
+
+"Thank you, Miss Euston, I believe not to-day."
+
+"You astonish me. I will lay any bet you like--you shall name the
+wager--any thing you please."
+
+"Really, this is a little too bad!" soliloquized the horrified Mrs.
+Primrose. "Miss Euston, I entreat of you--I beg--that we may have no
+more racing. It is very dangerous, besides being----"
+
+"What is it besides being dangerous, Mrs. Primrose?"
+
+"_Very_ indecorous."
+
+"I am very sorry, for I have set my heart on a race with Mr. Stubb."
+
+"Mr. Morton," said the distressed lady, aside to that young gentleman,
+"you are a prudent and sober-minded person; pray use your influence."
+
+She was interrupted by a most uncanonical ejaculation from the author
+of her embarrassments, which, though couched in a foreign language,
+petrified her into silence. A sharp gust of wind had blown away
+Fanny's veil, and she was on the point of dashing off in pursuit of
+it.
+
+"Stop!" cried Morton, "you'll break your neck. Let me get it for you."
+
+The veil sailed away before the wind, and Morton spurred in pursuit,
+delighted to display his horsemanship before ladies, though it had no
+other merit than a tenacious seat and a kind of recklessness, the
+result of an excitable temperament. The ground was rough and broken,
+and studded with rocks and savin bushes, and as he galloped at a
+breakneck speed down the side of the hill, in a vain attempt to catch
+the veil flying, even Fanny held her breath. He secured his prize, as
+it caught against a bush, and returned to the road.
+
+"Now, Miss Euston," said Mrs. Primrose, looking folios at the
+offender, "I trust we shall be allowed to go on in peace."
+
+There was an interval of repose. Stubb regained his peace of mind.
+Miss Primrose, with whom he fancied himself in love, smiled upon him,
+and his self-conceit, before shaken in its stronghold, was returning
+in full force, when Fanny, who nourished a peculiar spite against this
+harmless blockhead, and whom that afternoon a very Satan of mischief
+seemed to possess, again rode to his side, and renewed her
+solicitations for a race.
+
+"Miss Euston," said Mrs. Primrose, "I am certain you would do nothing
+so unladylike as to force Mr. Stubb to race against his will. Consider
+the example you would set to Georgiana Gosling, who always imitates
+what she sees you do."
+
+The words were mild and motherly; but the countenance of the outraged
+matron had an uncompromising look of reprehension, which exasperated
+Fanny's wayward humor beyond measure. She began, it is true, a lively
+conversation on general topics with the intelligent Stubb, but,
+meantime, by alternately checking and exciting her horse, and urging
+him to play a variety of antics, she contrived to infect her
+companion's steed with the like contagion. He pranced, plunged, and
+chafed, till his rider was brought to the verge of despair.
+
+The road had become quite narrow, running through a thick forest,
+frequented chiefly by woodcutters in the winter, and hunters of the
+picturesque in summer. Fanny's imitator, the adventurous Miss Gosling,
+a little girl of fourteen, had ridden a few rods in advance of the
+rest, when suddenly they saw her returning, astonished and
+disconsolate.
+
+"We can't go any farther; there's a great tree fallen across the
+road."
+
+A severe thundergust of the night before had overthrown a hemlock, the
+trunk of which, partly sustained by the roots and branches, formed a
+barrier about four feet from the ground. It was impossible to pass
+through the woods on either side, as they were very dense, and choked
+with a tangled growth of laurel bushes.
+
+"How very annoying!" said Miss Primrose.
+
+"What shall we do?" inquired Miss Gosling.
+
+"Why, jump over it, to be sure," said Fanny. "Mr. Stubb and I will
+show you the way."
+
+"You are surely not in earnest!" cried Mrs. Primrose.
+
+"Of course I am. I have taken higher leaps at the riding school,
+twenty times."
+
+"You had better not," said Morton, who had alighted by the roadside to
+draw his saddle girth.
+
+"It is too dangerous to be thought of for a single moment," added Mrs.
+Primrose.
+
+"Our horses," pursued the indiscreet Stubb, "are not used to leaping,
+and some of the ladies would certainly be hurt."
+
+"The fool!" thought Morton. "He has done it now."
+
+Fanny threw a laughing, caustic glance at her victim.
+
+"_Mine_ will leap, I know; and you are not a lady. Come, Mr. Stubb."
+
+"Miss Euston," interposed the excited Mrs. Primrose, "this must not
+be. I am here in your mother's place, and she will hold me responsible
+for your safety. I forbid you to go, Miss Euston."
+
+Fanny looked for a moment in her face. Morton caught the expression.
+It was one of unqualified, though not ill-natured, defiance.
+
+"Come," cried Fanny again, and ran her horse towards the tree. She
+leaped gallantly, and cleared the barrier; but it was evident that she
+had lost control of the spirited animal, who galloped at a furious
+rate down the road.
+
+Morton was still on foot, busied with his saddle girth.
+
+"The crazy child!" exclaimed Mrs. Primrose; "her horse is running
+away. Go after her--pray!--Mr. Stubb--somebody."
+
+"O, quick! quick!--do," cried little Miss Gosling, who idolized Fanny,
+and was in an agony of fright for her.
+
+Thus exhorted, the desperate Stubb cried, "Get up," and galloped for
+the tree; but his horse balked, and, leaping aside, tumbled him into
+the mud. The ladies screamed. Morton would have laughed, if he had not
+been too anxious for Fanny.
+
+"Get out of the way, Stubb," he cried, mounting with all despatch.
+
+Miss Primrose's admirer gathered himself up, regained his hat, which
+had taken refuge in a puddle, and looked with horror at a ghastly
+white rent across his knee. Morton spurred his hack against the
+barrier, which the beast cleared with difficulty, striking his hind
+hoofs as he went over. After riding a short distance, he discovered
+Fanny, and saw, to his great relief, that she was regaining control
+over her horse. Half a mile farther on, the road divided. The larger
+branch led to the right, Morton did not know whither; the smaller
+turned to the left, and after circling through the woods for two or
+three miles, issued upon the high road. Fanny, who was ignorant of the
+way, took the right hand branch. In a few minutes after, she had
+brought her horse to a trot, and Morton rode up to her side.
+
+"You are wiser than I am, if you know where we are going."
+
+"I thought you knew the way. You were to have been our guide."
+
+"We are on the wrong road. You should have turned to the left."
+
+"But have you no idea where this will lead us?"
+
+"Into a cedar swamp, for what I know. Had we not better turn back?"
+
+"O, don't speak of turning back. I am in no mood for turning back. Let
+us keep on. I am sure this will bring us out somewhere."
+
+"As you please," said Morton, knowing himself to be in the position of
+an angler, whose only chance of managing his salmon is to give it
+line.
+
+"Where are all the rest?"
+
+"Holding a convention behind the tree, I suppose. At least, I left
+them there."
+
+"And did not Mr. Stubb dare the fatal leap?"
+
+"He tried, and was thrown into a mud puddle."
+
+"No bodily harm, I hope."
+
+"No; beaver and broadcloth were the principal sufferers. But his
+conceit is shaken out of him for twenty-four hours, at least."
+
+"Then I have wrought a miracle, and can claim to be canonized on the
+strength of it."
+
+"I hope you may be; but I never expected to see your name in the
+calendar of saints."
+
+"As you will not allow me to be a saint, I suppose you consider me as
+mad. Sanctity and madness, they say, are of kin."
+
+"A hair's breadth, or so, on this side madness."
+
+"Then I am entitled to great credit for keeping my wits at all. What
+reasonable girl would not be driven mad with Mrs. Primrose to watch
+her, and disapprove of her, and correct her? Strange--is it not?--that
+some people--if Mrs. Primrose will allow me to use so inelegant an
+expression--are always rubbing one against the grain."
+
+"To give you your due, I think you have paid off handsomely any grudge
+you may owe in that quarter."
+
+"There is consolation in that. Tell me--you are of the out-spoken
+sort--are you not of my opinion? Let me know your mind. Mr. Stubb
+is----"
+
+"A puppy."
+
+"And the Primroses are----"
+
+"Uninteresting."
+
+"For uninteresting, say insufferable. If Lucifer wishes to gain me
+over to his side, let Mrs. Primrose be made my guardian angel, and his
+work is done."
+
+"Your horse has cast a shoe," said Morton, abruptly,--"yes; and he is
+lame besides."
+
+"It is this broken, stony road. I wish we were at the end of it."
+
+"So do I. If the clouds would break for a moment, and show us the sun,
+I could form some idea of the direction we are following."
+
+"Why," said Fanny, in alarm, looking at her watch, "the sun must be
+very near setting."
+
+Morton began to be very anxious, for his companion's sake, when, a
+moment after, they came upon a broader track, which intersected the
+other, and seemed a main thoroughfare of the woodcutters.
+
+"This looks more promising," said Morton; and turning to the left,
+they pushed their horses to their best pace. Twilight came on, and it
+was quite dark when they emerged at length upon the broad and dusty
+highway. In a few minutes they saw a countryman, with his hands in his
+pockets, and a long nine between his lips, lounging by the roadside.
+
+"How far is it to New Baden?"
+
+"Wal," replied the man, after studying his querist in silence for
+about half a minute, "it's fifteen mile strong."
+
+Morton looked at Fanny, whose horse was very lame, and who, in spite
+of her spirit, began to show unmistakable signs of fatigue.
+
+"Is there a public house any where near?"
+
+"Yas; it ain't far ahead to Mashum's."
+
+"How far?"
+
+"Rather better nor a mile."
+
+On coming to the inn, Morton commended Fanny to the care of the
+landlady, an honest New Hampshire woman, remounted without delay, and
+urged his tired horse to such speed that he reached the hotel before
+half past nine. His arrival relieved the anxieties, or silenced the
+tattle of the inmates; and in the morning Fanny's uncle drove to the
+inn, and brought back the adventurous damsel to New Baden.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII.
+
+  Men will woo the tempest,
+    And wed it, to their cost.--_Passion Flowers_.
+
+  Then fly betimes, for only they
+    Conquer love that run away.--_Carew_.
+
+
+Morton had been for some time of opinion that he had better leave New
+Baden; yet still the philosophic youth staid on,--a week longer,--a
+fortnight longer,--and still he lingered. It would be too much to say
+that he was in love with his handsome, dare-devil cousin; but his mind
+was greatly troubled in regard to her--shaken and tossed with a
+variety of conflicting emotions. The multiplied and constantly
+changing phases of her character, its strong but utterly ungoverned
+resources, its frankness, enthusiasm, detestation of all deceit or
+pretension, and, in spite of her wildness, a deep vein of womanly
+tenderness which now and then betrayed itself, all conspired to keep
+his interest somewhat painfully excited.
+
+One evening he left the crowded piazza of the hotel, and, intending to
+flirt with solitude and a cigar, walked towards a rustic arbor,
+overgrown with a wild grape vine, and standing among a cluster of
+young elms at the foot of the garden. As he drew near, he saw the
+gleam of ladies' dresses, and found the seats already occupied by Miss
+Fanny Euston and two companions. Morton knew them well, and joined the
+party. As neither the affected graces of the one companion nor the
+voluble emptiness of the other had much interest in his eyes, he
+directed his conversation chiefly to Fanny. In a few minutes the two
+girls exchanged glances, rose, and alleging some pretended engagement,
+returned to the hotel, bent on making this casual interview assume the
+air of a flirtation.
+
+Morton and his companion sat for a moment in silence.
+
+"We are cousins--are we not?" said the former, at length.
+
+"At least they would call us so in the Highlands."
+
+"Then give me a cousin's privilege, and allow me to be personal. Are
+you not out of spirits to-night?"
+
+"Why do you think me so?"
+
+"From your look and manner."
+
+"Are you not tired to death of New Baden?"
+
+"Not yet."
+
+"I am. What is it all worth?--weary, and vapid, and flat, and stale,
+and unprofitable! I have had enough of it."
+
+"Then why not change it?"
+
+"To find the same thing in a new shape!"
+
+"Pardon me if I call that a freak of the moment. You are the gayest of
+the gay."
+
+"No, I am not."
+
+"You are a belle here; a centre light. The moths flutter about you,
+though you do, now and then, singe their wings. You frighten them, and
+they repay you with fine speeches."
+
+"I am weary of them. For Heaven's sake, abuse me a little. I know you
+have it often in your heart."
+
+"Abuse is sometimes nothing but flattery in disguise."
+
+"Why do you smile? That smile was at my expense."
+
+"Why should you imagine so?"
+
+"I insist on your telling me its meaning."
+
+"I was only thinking that when tribute in an old shape has become
+wearisome, one may like to have it paid in a new one."
+
+"That certainly is not flattery. Do you know I am beginning to be
+afraid of you?"
+
+"I could not have thought you afraid of any one."
+
+"Yes, I am afraid of you."
+
+"Why?"
+
+"Because you are always observing me. Because you penetrate my
+thoughts and understand me thoroughly."
+
+"I am less deep than you suppose."
+
+"At least you know all my faults. You are always, in a quiet way,
+making gibes and sarcasms at my expense, and touching upon my weakest
+points."
+
+"Does it make you angry?"
+
+"No; I rather like it; but I wish to repay you. I wish to find your
+weaknesses, but cannot. Have you any?"
+
+"Yes, an abundance."
+
+"And will you tell me what they are?"
+
+"What, that you may use them against me! The moment you know them, you
+will attack me without mercy; and if you see me wince, it is all over
+with me."
+
+"What do you mean?"
+
+"I mean that you cease to like one as soon as you find that you can
+gain the least advantage over him. If I could really make you a little
+afraid of me, you would like me all the better for it. No, I will show
+you none of my weaknesses; and perhaps, if I did, you would not find
+them of a kind that you could use against me. I can strike at you, but
+you cannot hurt me. I am armed in proof. I defy you."
+
+In saying this, at least, Morton showed some knowledge of his
+companion's character. To defy her successfully was a great step
+towards gaining her good graces; for with all her wildness she was
+very sensitive to the good or ill opinion of those who could compel
+her to respect them. She became very anxious to know what Morton
+thought of her.
+
+"You say that you do not understand me thoroughly. What is there in me
+that you do not understand?"
+
+"You may say that I do not understand you at all."
+
+"That is mere evasion."
+
+"Who can understand the language of Babel?"
+
+"Do you mean that I speak the language of Babel?"
+
+"Who can understand chaos?"
+
+"And am I chaos? You are beginning your peculiar style of compliment
+again."
+
+"Do not be displeased at it. All the power and beauty of the universe
+rose out of chaos."
+
+"Now you are flattering in earnest."
+
+"You are difficult to satisfy. What may I call you? A wild Arab racer
+without a rider?"
+
+"That will answer better."
+
+"Or a rocket without a stick?"
+
+"I have seen rockets; but I do not know what the stick is. What is it?
+What is it for?"
+
+"To give balance and aim to the rocket--make it, as the
+transcendentalists say, mount skyward, and end in stars and 'golden
+rain.'"
+
+"Very fine! And how if it has no stick?"
+
+"Then it sparkles, and blazes, and hisses on the ground; flies up and
+down, this way and that, plays the deuse with every thing and every
+body, and at last blows itself up to no purpose."
+
+"Ah, I see that the stick is very necessary. I will try to get one."
+
+"You speak in a bantering tone," said Morton, "but you are in
+earnest."
+
+"I am in earnest!" exclaimed Fanny Euston, with a sudden change of
+voice and manner. "Every word that you have spoken is true. I am
+driven hither and thither by feelings and impulses,--some bad, some
+good,--chasing every new fancy like so many butterflies or
+will-o'-the-wisps,--without thinking of
+results--restless--dissatisfied--finding no life but in the excitement
+of the moment. Sometimes I have hints of better things. Glimpses of
+light break in upon me; but they come, and they go again. I have no
+rule of life, no guiding star."
+
+Morton looked at his companion not without a certain sense of victory.
+He saw that he had gained, for the moment at least, an influence over
+her, and roused her to the expression of feelings to which, perhaps,
+she had never given utterance before. Yet his own mind was any thing
+but tranquil. Something more than admiration was stirring within him.
+He felt impelled to explore farther the proud spirit which had already
+yielded up to him some of its secrets. But he felt that, with her eyes
+upon him, he could not speak without committing himself farther than
+he was prepared to do. In this dilemma he determined to retreat--a
+resolution for which he was entitled to no little credit, if its merit
+is to be measured by the effort it cost him. He rose from his seat.
+
+"Find your star, Fanny, and you may challenge the world. But I see
+people coming down the garden towards us. We shall be invaded if we
+stay here. Let us walk back towards the house."
+
+When he found himself alone again, he paced his room in no very
+enviable frame of mind.
+
+"What devil impelled me to speak as I did? It was no part of mine to
+be telling her of her faults. Am I turning philanthropist and
+busybody? If I wished to gain her heart, I suspect I have been taking
+the right course. What with any other lady would have been intolerable
+presumption and arrogance, is the most effectual way to win her
+esteem. And why should I not wish to gain her heart? There is good
+there in abundance, if one could but depend on it. No; I am not
+blinded yet. This last outburst was a momentary impulse, like all the
+rest; and to-morrow she will be reckless as ever. She delights in
+lawlessness, and rejoices in the zest of breaking established bounds.
+Her wayward will is like a cataract, and may carry her, God knows
+whither. No; I will not walk in this path; I will not try to marry
+her. Her heart is untouched--that is clear as the day. I wish she
+could say as much of mine. I will leave this place to-morrow, cost
+what it will."
+
+A letter from Boston gave him a pretext; and bidding farewell to his
+cousin and her mother, he took the early train homewards. The newsboy
+brought him a paper, and his eyes rested on the columns; but his
+thoughts centred on Fanny Euston and his last evening's conversation
+with her at the foot of the garden.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV.
+
+  * * * One fire burns out another's burning,
+    One pain is lessened by another's anguish;
+  Turn giddy, and be holp by backward turning;
+    One desperate grief cures with another's languish.
+  Take thou some new infection to thine eye,
+  And the rank poison of the old will die.--_Romeo and Juliet_.
+
+
+All day the train whirled along, and Morton's troubled thoughts found
+no rest.
+
+"Matherton!" cried the conductor, opening the door of the car, as the
+engine stopped in a large station house, at five o'clock in the
+afternoon. Several passengers got out; two or three came in; the bell
+rang, and with puffing and clanking, the train was on its way again. A
+newsboy passed down the car with a bundle of newspapers and twopenny
+novels. Morton bought one of the latter as an anodyne; but even
+"Orlando Melville, or the Victim of the Press Gang," failed to produce
+the desired soporific effect, and his thoughts soon recurred to their
+former channel. Suddenly a violent concussion, a crashing, thumping,
+and grating sound, the outcries of a hundred passengers,--the women
+screaming, and some of the men not silent,--with a furious rocking and
+tossing of the car, ejected every thought but one of his personal
+safety. All sprang to their feet, he among the rest. The first
+distinct impression which his mind received was that of the man in
+front of him making a flying leap out of the open window of the car,
+carrying the sash with him--a dexterous piece of gymnastics, only to
+be accounted for by the fact that the performer was a distinguished
+artist of the Grand National Olympic Circus. His boots twinkled at the
+window, and he was gone, alighting on his feet like a cat, but Morton
+was too much frightened to laugh. In a few moments the car came to a
+rest, without being overturned, though the front was partly broken in,
+and the whole swung off the rails to an angle of forty-five degrees.
+On looking out at the window, the first object that met Morton's eye
+was the baggage car, thrown on its side, with the door uppermost. As
+he looked, the door opened, and a head emerged--like a triton from the
+deep, or Banquo's ghost from a trap door--white with wrath and fright,
+and swearing with wonderful volubility. Then appeared another, rising
+by the side of the first, equally pallid, but much less profane. The
+heads belonged to two men, who had been seated in the compartment of
+the baggage car allotted to the mails, and when it was flung off the
+track, had been rattled together like dice in a box, suffering various
+bruises, but no serious harm. The breaking of the defective cast iron
+axle of the tender had caused the whole disaster, which would
+doubtless have produced fatal consequences had not the train been
+moving at a very slow rate. As it happened, a few contusions were its
+worst results, and one of the morning papers,
+
+                "for profound
+  And solid lying much renowned,"
+
+solemnly averred that none but Providence was responsible for it.
+
+There was abundant noise and vociferation. The passengers left the
+train, some lending their bungling aid to repair the mischief, while
+others withdrew to an inn which chanced to be in the neighborhood.
+After looking for a time at the downfallen tender and the uprooted
+rails, Morton, from some idle impulse, entered the car which he had
+lately left. It was empty; and, passing through it, he looked into
+that immediately behind, which had remained safely upon the rails.
+This also was empty, with the exception of a single person, a young
+female figure, seated at one of the windows. She was closely veiled,
+yet there was in her air that indefinable something which told Morton
+at a glance that she was a lady. He stepped to the ground,
+conjecturing whether or no she had a companion.
+
+Five minutes after, glancing at the window, he saw the solitary
+traveller seated in the same position as before, and became convinced
+that she was unattended. The women in the train had left it at the
+outset. The busy and clamorous throng of men alone remained; and
+Morton easily conceived that her situation must be an embarrassing
+one. He therefore reëntered the car and approached her.
+
+"I am afraid we shall be detained here for two or three hours, and
+perhaps till late at night. There is a public house a little way off,
+to which the ladies in the train have gone. If you will allow me, I
+will show you the way."
+
+So he spoke; or, rather, so he would have spoken; but he had scarcely
+begun when the veiled head was joyfully raised, and the veil was
+thrown aside, disclosing to his astonished eyes the features of Edith
+Leslie. She explained that she was on her way from her father's
+country seat at Matherton; and that he was to meet her at the station
+on the arrival of the train. When the accident took place, she had
+been led to suppose, from the conversation of two men near her, that
+the train would not be very long detained, and had preferred remaining
+in the car to mingling with the tumultuous throng outside.
+
+"It is too fine an afternoon," said Morton, as they left the spot, "to
+be mured in that tavern. This lane has an inviting look. Have you a
+mind to explore it?"
+
+They walked accordingly in the direction he proposed; and, as they did
+so, Morton cast many a stolen glance at the face of his companion. The
+mind of the young philosopher was that day in a peculiarly susceptible
+state. It seemed as if Fanny Euston had kindled within him a flame
+which could not fix itself upon her, yet must needs find fuel
+somewhere; and as his eye met that of Edith Leslie, he began to feel
+that she held a deeper place in his thoughts than he had ever before
+suspected.
+
+By the side of the lane stood an ancient abode, whose rotten shingles
+supported a rich crop of green mosses; and in the yard an old man, who
+looked like a relic of Bunker Hill fight, was diligently chopping
+firewood.
+
+"What does this lane lead to?" asked Morton, looking over the fence.
+
+The woodchopper leaned on his axe, wiped his brows with the tatters of
+a red handkerchief, and seemed revolving the expediency of
+communicating the desired information.
+
+"Well," he returned, after mature reflection, "if you go fur enough,
+it'll take you down to the Diamond Pool."
+
+"The Diamond Pool," said Miss Leslie; "that has a promising sound."
+
+The lane soon began to lead them down the side of a rugged hill,
+between barberry bushes and stunted savins, with neglected stone
+walls, where the striped ground squirrels chirruped as they dodged
+into the crevices. In a few moments they had a glimpse of the water,
+shining between the branches of the trees below.
+
+"Upon my word," said Morton, as they stood on the margin, "the Diamond
+Pool is not to be despised. We have chosen our walk well, and found a
+tempting place of rest at the end of it."
+
+"A grassy bank,--a clear spring, with cardinal flowers along the
+edge--a cluster of maple trees----"
+
+"And a flat rock at the foot of one of them, for you to rest upon. We
+are well provided for."
+
+"Except that a seat for you seems to have been forgotten."
+
+"No, if I wish to rest, this mound of grass will serve my turn. I am
+used to bivouacs."
+
+The sun had just vanished behind the rocky hill on the farther side of
+the water; a sea of liquid fire, clouds blazoned in gold and crimson,
+betokened his recent presence. The lake lay like a great mirror framed
+in green. Another sunset glowed in its depths; rocks, hills, and trees
+grew downward; and the kingfisher, as he flitted over it, made a dash
+at the surface, as if to peck at the adversary bird, which seemed
+shooting upward to meet him.
+
+"One might imagine," said Miss Leslie, "that we were a hundred miles
+away from railroads, factories, and all abominations of the kind."
+
+"They will follow soon," said Morton; "they are not far off. There is
+no sanctuary from American enterprise."
+
+"I know it is omnipotent at spoiling a landscape; but I hope that this
+one may escape,--at least if there is no mill privilege in the
+neighborhood."
+
+"There is--an excellent one--at the outlet of the pond, beyond the
+three elms yonder. I prophesy that in five years there will be a brick
+factory on that meadow, with a row of one story houses for the
+operatives."
+
+"It will be a scandal and a profanation. It is too beautiful for such
+base uses. But at least that old cedar tree, rooted in a cleft of the
+precipice, has found a safe sanctuary. There it was growing in King
+Philip's time; in its younger days it saw Indian wigwams standing on
+this bank; and there its offspring will grow after it, safe from
+Yankee axes."
+
+"One cannot be sure of that. A time will come yet, when those rocks
+will be blasted to build a town hall, or open another railroad track."
+
+"But they cannot build railroads and factories in the clouds. Our New
+England sunsets will still remain to remind one that there is an ideal
+side of life--something in it besides locomotives and cotton gins."
+
+"There it is that you are wiser than we are. You are mistresses of a
+domain of which men, for the most part, know little or nothing."
+
+"Pray what domain may that be?"
+
+"One that is all mystery to me--a world of thoughts and sentiments
+which to most men is a cloudland, an undiscovered country, of which
+they may possibly recognize the existence, but of whose geography they
+know nothing."
+
+"Why should they be more ignorant of it than women?"
+
+"Because they are commonly given over to practicalities, mixed
+hopelessly with rivalries and ambitions. Even in their highest
+pursuits, they propose to themselves some definite point to be gained,
+some object to be achieved; but women are left to the world of their
+own minds--there they can expatiate at will."
+
+"That is a dangerous privilege."
+
+"They have leisure to muse on the joys and troubles of life, and
+explore depths which we bridge over."
+
+"Either your mind has very much changed, or I have very much mistaken
+it. Pardon me, but I fancied that you were like Iago, 'nothing if not
+critical;' or at least that you sympathized with his slanderous
+opinions of womankind."
+
+"Heaven forbid! What treasonable thought did you suppose me to harbor
+against the better part of humanity?"
+
+"At all events, I never supposed you to believe that the better part
+of humanity passed their leisure time in metaphysical reveries and
+abstruse meditations."
+
+"You were speaking, just now, of ideals. May not I have mine?"
+
+"So your ideal woman is a transcendental philosopher, seated in the
+midst of your undiscovered cloudland."
+
+"Deliver me from such a one! My ideal is full of thought and of
+feeling; but no one yet ever dreamed of branding her as a philosopher.
+But why did you think me so very critical? I am hardly old enough yet
+to make an Iago or a Rochefoucault."
+
+"And yet you used always to have some saying of Rochefoucault at your
+tongue's end."
+
+"I detest him, nevertheless, for a French Mephistopheles,--and all his
+tribe with him."
+
+"When I said as much, you always told me that his sayings had a great
+deal of truth in them."
+
+"And have they not a great deal of truth?"
+
+"I cannot pretend to know mankind well enough to answer; but I
+sincerely hope, not much. Life would be worse than a blank if men and
+women were what he represents them to be."
+
+"I think not; for if one cannot learn to be enthusiastic in regard to
+the actualities of human nature, he can console himself by a boundless
+faith in its possibilities. And now and then, thank
+God,--Rochefoucault to the contrary notwithstanding,--one finds the
+possibility realized."
+
+His companion made no reply; and Morton stood for a moment with his
+eyes bent upon her face, which, to his enamoured fancy, seemed to
+reflect the calm beauty of the landscape on which she was gazing. He
+thought of Fanny Euston; he recalled his last evening's conversation
+with her, and felt blindly impelled to give some form of expression to
+the feeling which began to master him.
+
+"Miss Leslie, were you ever in a storm at sea?"
+
+"Yes, in a slight one; but the ship was strong; there was very little
+danger."
+
+"Then you were never flung about, as I have been, in an indifferent
+egg shell of a craft, out of sight of land, at the mercy of winds and
+waves."
+
+"I did not know that you had been at sea. Ah, yes, you were at school
+in France, when you were a boy--were you not?"
+
+"Yes; but this happened since I have become a man, and not long ago. I
+think I shall never forget it. The sun was bright at one moment, and
+all was black as a hurricane the next. The wind came from every point
+of the compass--always shifting, never resting. I had not an instant's
+peace. It was all watching--all anxiety--and yet there was a kind of
+pleasure in it. If I had had wings, I doubt if I should have found
+heart to use them. It was a strange gale. It blew hot and cold by
+fits; I thought I should lose my reckoning altogether, and be blown
+away, body and soul."
+
+"Really, I cannot imagine where your tempest is going to carry you."
+
+"Nor could I; when, of a sudden, I found myself safe on shore. My good
+star led me to a place beautiful as the May sunshine could make it; a
+scene where art and nature were blended so harmoniously, that they
+seemed to have grown together from the same birth; full of repose, and
+tranquil, graceful power; such a scene, in short, as made me wish that
+Nature would embody herself in a visible form, that I might swear
+homage to her forever."
+
+Had an interpreter been needed, Morton's look and voice must have
+betrayed, at least, some part of his meaning. The color deepened
+slightly on his companion's cheek, but she replied, without any
+further sign of consciousness,--
+
+"I never knew that you were quite so ardent a votary of nature. You
+had better put your emotions into verse, and sell them to the
+magazines, after the true poetic custom. In a little time, I don't
+doubt, Dr. Griswold would find a place for you in his constellation of
+poets."
+
+"Ah," said Morton, "it is cruel of you to fling cold water on my
+rhapsodies. But my flight is over. And now I will try my best to gain
+the esteem in your eyes of a man of sense and a sound mind."
+
+"And now those night-hawks over head are beginning to tell us that we
+had better go back to the railroad. I suppose you will place it among
+the other frailties of women; but I cannot help being a little afraid
+that if we stay longer, that crippled train will run away and leave us
+behind."
+
+"Then good night to the Diamond Pool," said Morton, as they left the
+place. "I shall not forget it; I owe it double thanks. It has shown me
+a pretty landscape, and made me a wiser man."
+
+"I can hardly see how that may be."
+
+"It has taught me not to speak too earnestly with my friend, lest she
+should banter me; and by no means to be drawn into any absurdity, lest
+she should laugh at me outright."
+
+"Do you mean that you thought that I laughed at you?"
+
+"Did you not?"
+
+"If I gave you cause to think that I did, I can only say, frankly and
+heartily, that I am very sorry for it."
+
+"Now I am emboldened to be absurd again, and speak more parables. I
+have found a locked-up treasure--a sealed fountain. I long to open it,
+but cannot."
+
+"Your figures are too deep for me. I can make nothing of them."
+
+"Then I will sink to plain prose. I have a friend whose heart is full
+of warm feeling and earnest thought; but, out of reserve, or Heaven
+knows what, she will express it to nobody but one or two intimate
+companions. She tantalizes the rest with a bantering word; and
+sometimes, when she is most in earnest, she seems to be most in jest.
+But why do you smile?"
+
+"Ask your friend Mr. Sharpe. He is your friend--is he not?"
+
+"I suppose so, though he is old enough to be my father. But why should
+I ask him?"
+
+"Because he once described to me a person very much like the one you
+have just described."
+
+"Who was the person?"
+
+"Mr. Sharpe said that, though he was in general quite frank and
+undisguised, yet, if he were particularly in earnest on any subject,
+he was apt to speak lightly of it, or perhaps ridicule it, to hide his
+real feeling."
+
+"Pray, who was this person? What was his name?"
+
+"Mr. Vassall Morton."
+
+"Did Sharpe say that of me? It is not a month since I was walking with
+him,--his evening constitutional,--and he said the very same thing of
+you. Now, as I hope to live an honest man, I was never half so much
+flattered in my life, as by being slandered in such company."
+
+Here he was interrupted abruptly, for, turning a corner, they came
+full upon the inn, or hotel, as its sign proclaimed it to be.
+Discontented male passengers were lounging about the bar room;
+disconsolate female passengers sat, in bonnets and shawls, in the
+parlor; and an unspeakable air of uneasiness and discomfort pervaded
+the whole place.
+
+"Our walk is over," sighed Morton; "I wish it had a more propitious
+ending. And now let me be your courier, or do your commands in any
+other capacity in which I can serve you."
+
+At eleven o'clock that night the train rolled into the station house
+at Boston, some four hours behind its time.
+
+"My father will certainly be here," said Miss Leslie; but her father
+was nowhere to be seen. Morton conducted her to a carriage. Her trunks
+and his own had already been placed upon it, when, by the lantern of
+one of the porters, Morton descried the agitated colonel threading the
+crowd in anxious search of his daughter. He had been waiting nervously
+since seven o'clock, and, when the train came in, had looked for her
+in every place but the right one. Morton hastened to relieve his
+fears.
+
+"What do you mean to do with yourself to-night?" Leslie asked, as the
+carriage drove towards his house.
+
+"Drive to my house in the country."
+
+"Your people will not expect you, and will be in bed before you can
+get there. You had much better come home with me."
+
+Morton was but too glad to accept the invitation.
+
+Having bade good night to his host and his host's daughter, he passed
+some hours in dreamy cogitation; then tried to sleep; but sleep long
+kept aloof, the consciousness of being under the same roof with Edith
+Leslie brought with it so strange a sensation. But as delicate health,
+that grand auxiliary of sentiment, was quite unknown to him, nature
+prevailed in the end, and at seven the next morning, a servant's knock
+wakened him from a deep sleep, a vision of Mount Katahdin, and an
+imaginary moose hunt.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV.
+
+  Yet even these joys dire jealousy molests,
+  And blackens each fair image in our breasts.--_Lyttleton_.
+
+
+Descending to the breakfast room, he found Leslie, as usual, quiet,
+cordial, and gentlemanly, beguiling the moments of expectancy with a
+newspaper, while his daughter presided at the coffee urn. Leslie
+happened to be in a garrulous mood, and talked incessantly about his
+former military frontier life, of which, though he had detested it in
+the experience, he was very fond in the retrospect. Morton, who had
+some acquaintance with such matters, was a tempting auditor, though he
+would gladly have exchanged the profuse anecdotes of white-wolf
+running and deer shooting for a few moments' conversation with Miss
+Edith Leslie. This her father's busy tongue put out of the question;
+but Morton consoled himself with the thought that to bask in her
+presence was, in itself, no mean privilege.
+
+His cup of nectar, such as it was, was in a few minutes dashed with
+gall; for the street door opened without a summons from the bell, a
+man's step sounded in the hall, and Horace Vinal came in, with a
+bundle of papers in his hand.
+
+Vinal had become of late all-important to his former guardian. He was
+his chief business agent, and Leslie was never tired of expatiating on
+his talents, energy, application, and elevated character. In short, he
+was fast becoming dependent on him, and felt towards him the affection
+which a weak and kindly man may feel towards one of far greater force
+and capacity, whom he believes sincerely attached to him and devoted
+to his interests.
+
+Vinal, as he entered, had the air of a man versed in affairs, and
+acquainted both with that vast and various theatre which men call the
+world, and with those conventional circles which ladies call the
+world. He had been absent for a few days on a mission of business,
+from which he had returned the evening before. Leslie received him
+with a most warm greeting, and his daughter with a smile of easy
+friendship, which was wormwood to the troubled spirit of Morton. The
+two rivals--for such, by a common instinct, each felt the other to
+be--regarded each other with faces of courtesy and hearts of wrath.
+
+"How came this fellow here?" thought Vinal, as he smilingly grasped
+his classmate's hand.
+
+"The devil take him!" thought Morton, as he returned the greeting, but
+with a much worse grace.
+
+They seated themselves on opposite sides of the table, while the Helen
+who had kindled this covert warfare in their breasts dispensed a cup
+of coffee to each in turn.
+
+There was a singular contrast between the adversaries. On the one
+side, the self-dependent Vinal, with little health and no other wealth
+than his busy and able brain; with thin features, wan cheek, and pale,
+firm lip; with piercing observation and rapid judgment;
+self-contained, self-controlled, self-confiding. But for his measuring
+five feet ten, he might have stood for Dryden's Achitophel:--
+
+  "A fiery soul, which, working out its way,
+   Fretted the pygmy body to decay,
+   And o'er informed the tenement of clay."
+
+On the other side sat the pet of fortune, fondled, if he could have
+endured such blandishment, in the very lap of affluence; with a cheek
+brown with wind and weather, and an eye which, as he often boasted,
+could look the sun in the face. His nature was so happily tempered,
+that to the degree of nervous stimulus which engenders, or is
+engendered by, an energetic character, he joined an indefinite
+capacity both of endurance and enjoyment; and yet the possessor of all
+these gifts was just now in a mood of extreme dissatisfaction and
+discomfort.
+
+Leslie began to speak with Vinal upon business. Morton snatched the
+opportunity to converse with the person most interesting to him. Vinal
+glanced at him askance. Each began to hate the other, after his own
+fashion. Morton would gladly have come to open rupture, and flung
+defiance at his rival; but Vinal was far remote from any wish of the
+kind.
+
+Morton remained at the house as long as he in decency could, and then
+bade them good morning, execrating Vinal as he went down the steps.
+
+That very afternoon, as he was walking near his cottage in the
+country, ruminating on Edith Leslie and Horace Vinal, he raised his
+head and saw a lady and gentleman, on horseback, emerging into view
+from a wooded bend of the road. A thrill ran through him from head to
+foot. They were the two persons of whom he was thinking. He bowed to
+Miss Leslie. She replied with a frank bow and smile; and Vinal, as he
+passed, made an easy nonchalant gesture of recognition. The jealous
+pedestrian turned and looked after them. They had ridden a few rods
+when Vinal also turned his head, but, catching Morton's eye, instantly
+averted it again. Morton fairly ground his teeth with anger and
+vexation. To be jealous was bad enough; but that Vinal should be
+conscious of his jealousy, and perhaps triumph in it, goaded him
+beyond endurance. He went home, saddled and bridled a horse with his
+own hands, mounted, and ranged the country for an hour or two, to get
+rid of the vulture that was preying on him. At length he grew more
+rational, and was able to reflect that Vinal's riding with Miss Leslie
+did not necessarily imply that he stood, in any special sense, within
+her favor, since he was the near relative of her mother-in-law, and
+had formerly been for years an inmate of her father's house.
+
+On the next day, at a time when he thought that Vinal must be safe in
+his office, Morton took heart of grace, and called on Miss Leslie. An
+old woman, an ancient dependant of the family, raised, as she would
+have phrased it, in the backwoods of Matherton, opened the door.
+
+"Is Miss Leslie at home?"
+
+"No; she was took sick yesterday, very sudden."
+
+"Miss Leslie!" ejaculated the visitor.
+
+"Yes; the doctor says she's goin' to die, sartin; right away, may be."
+
+"What?" gasped Morton.
+
+"It wasn't only this morning we heered on it," said the old Yankee
+housekeeper, "and Miss Edith's gone up to Matherton, to tend on her."
+
+"O, you mean Mrs. Leslie."
+
+"Yes; Miss Leslie, Miss Edith's mother-in-law; she never was a well
+woman, ever since I've knowed her."
+
+And the old woman closed the door; while Morton walked away, without
+knowing in what direction he was moving.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI.
+
+_Sganarelle_. O, la grande fatigue quo d'avoir une femme, et
+qu'Aristote a bien raison quand il dit qu'une femme est pire qu'un
+démon!--_Le Médecin Malgré Lui_.
+
+  Thus day by day and month by month we past;
+  It pleased the Lord to take my spouse at last--_Pope_.
+
+
+It was nine years since, in an evil hour, Leslie had first seen Miss
+Cynthia Everille, playing on a harp, and accompanying herself in a
+thin, sweet voice, with words of her own composing. His weak heart
+succumbed: he fell in love off hand; and within a year after the death
+of his first wife, Edith's mother, her picture was taken from the
+wall, and a second Mrs. Leslie reigned in her stead.
+
+"Sweet,"--"charming,"--"fascinating,"--were the least of the
+adjectives lavished on the interesting bride. Some of his lady
+acquaintance felicitated him that he had espoused an angel, an
+embodied beatitude not more than half pertaining to this world. In
+fact, there was a certain aerial grace in her movements, a certain
+translucency in her small alabaster features, which might countenance
+such a notion. The winning smile, too, with which she met her visitors
+on her reception Thursdays, savored wholly of the angelic. She
+breathed courtesies around her as the beneficent royalty of Naples
+scatters sugar plums among his loving subjects at the carnival, and,
+on the next day, sends them to prison by the cart load.
+
+The tyranny of the strong is bad enough; but the tyranny of the weak
+is intolerable; and this latter visitation came upon Leslie in its
+most rueful form--that, namely, whose weapons are sobs, sighs, vapors,
+and the dire coercion of hysteric fits. He was a soft-hearted fool,
+and a fair subject for such oppression. Not that his newly-installed
+mistress--his mistress, since she made him her slave--was naturally of
+an ill temper. On the contrary, she was somewhat amiable, or, at
+least, much given to tears and tenderness; but in process of time,
+this profuse sensibility had all centred on herself. In short, she was
+profoundly selfish, though nothing could have astonished her more than
+to tell her so; for, in her own eyes, she seemed a miracle of
+sensibility, as indeed she was, though her sensibility had learned to
+give little response to any woes but her own. What these woes might be
+would be hard to say: she had a wonderful talent for finding and
+inventing grievances. She was submerged and drowned in a sentimental
+melancholy, which wore in turn ten thousand different aspects, each
+worse than the other. She was a sea-anemone, covered with a myriad of
+filaments, all more shrinking and sensitive than a snail's horns.
+
+One reads of famished wretches who have tried to nourish life from the
+current of their own veins. So, in a figurative sense, did she. She
+was always anatomizing her own ridiculous heart; groping among the
+depths of her own sickly fancies, and making them her daily food. She
+was a busy gatherer of tokens, souvenirs, and mementoes, and was beset
+with blighted hopes, vain longings, sad remembrances, and all the
+spectral ills engendered between a frail mind and a depraved stomach.
+She was a great reader, and floated rudderless through a sea of books,
+fishing out of it all that was tender, morbid, and despairing, and
+stowing it up in albums.
+
+It may be thought that some disconsolate memory, some affection nipped
+in the bud, or the like catastrophe, had brought her to this pass. Far
+from it. She mourned that her fate had been too flat and sterile; that
+the rapturous emotions of her heart had never been awakened; that no
+sentimental passion, in short, had ever stirred her soul from its
+depths. This was the grievance which rankled most in her reveries. To
+give her her due, she never told it to her husband; but she brooded
+upon it in secret; and the result was, a multitude of affecting
+verses, which she treasured in her album as anonymous.
+
+Leslie, though none of the wisest of men, was one of the most amiable;
+and, under his wife's discipline, he learned to be one of the most
+discreet. It behooved him to be watchful and circumspect. His married
+life was a voyage through shoals and shallows, and needed sagacious
+pilotage; for no common eye could see where the danger lay. There was
+an endless variety of subjects tabooed to him; matters to all
+appearance quite indifferent, but to which he must never allude,
+because, Heaven knows how, they touched some trembling susceptibility,
+or wakened some grievous memory from its blessed sleep. The penalty,
+if the case were mild, would be a deep-drawn sigh; if more aggravated,
+a flood of tears; if extreme, an hysteric fit. And if, in his efforts
+to console her, he ventured to add any thing in the form of
+remonstrance, or let fall any word which might intimate that her
+conduct was not quite reasonable, the outraged sufferer would cease
+weeping, cast up her eyes reproachfully, and murmuring, "O William, is
+it come to this?" relapse again instantly into the depths of sobbing
+affliction. It was only by the most abject submission, coupled with
+all the resources of conjugal eloquence, that Leslie could succeed at
+length in purchasing a look of resignation and a faint smile of
+forgiveness.
+
+Use, it is said, will blunt the sharpest of troubles. In time, he
+became acclimated to his fate; yet, on one or two occasions, his
+equanimity was quite overset. He thought that his wife was losing her
+wits; for, as he came into her room, she fixed on him a melting gaze,
+sank on his shoulder, and flooded him with such a freshet of tears,
+that he might have complained with De Bracy, that a water fiend
+possessed her. The truth was, she had just been musing on her own
+dissolution, and imagining, in a luxury of woe, her own funeral, with
+all the circumstance of that sad event. As she looked around and
+bethought her how desolate that chamber would be when she was gone,
+and how each trifle that had once been hers would be treasured by
+those she left behind, her sensitive heart had dissolved in
+tenderness, and produced the hydraulic demonstration just mentioned.
+
+This libel on womankind became the mother of a pair of twins--the same
+infant prodigies whom Morton had seen at the White Mountains. Both
+perished at the age of seven, their precocious brains having by that
+time usurped all the vitality of their miserable little bodies. She
+was inconsolable at their death, though, while they lived, her
+delicate nerves could seldom abide their presence for five minutes at
+a time.
+
+There was once an idiot, who, being of a conciliating temper, thought
+to appease a fire and persuade it to go out by feeding it with fuel
+till it should be satisfied, and crave no more. On the same principle
+Leslie tried to satisfy the exacting spirit of his wife by a most
+watchful and anxious devotion to all her whims; but the greater his
+devotion, the more exacting she grew. She felt her power, and used it
+without mercy. She was, withal, intolerably jealous, not so much of
+any living rival, as of the memory of a dead one, Leslie's former
+wife. Here, indeed, she had some show of reason; for the poles are not
+wider asunder than were the characters of herself and her predecessor.
+
+Those who had known the latter in her maidenhood--she married young,
+or perhaps she would never have married Leslie--knew her as the
+dominant belle of the season, conspicuous for her beauty, her
+position, and for a degree of culture rare in America at that time;
+devoted and ardent towards a few close friends, haughty and distant
+towards the many; greatly loved by her few intimates, and either
+greatly admired or greatly disliked by most others around her. Those
+who knew her in the last years of her life knew her as one who had
+passed through a fiery ordeal. Of her many children, only one was
+left. They had fallen around her in a sudden and sharp succession,
+till it seemed to her that a destroying doom had gone forth against
+her race, and that the world of her affections was turned to a field
+of carnage. Leslie felt the shock acutely, not to say intensely, for a
+while; but the storm passed, and left on him very little trace. It
+sank into the deeper nature of his wife with such a penetrating sense
+of the vanity of life and the rottenness of mortal hope, as, in the
+olden time, drew saints and anchorites to renounce the world and give
+themselves to penance and seclusion. It made no anchorite of her. She
+rose from her baptism of fire saddened, but not broken nor unstrung;
+with a rooted faith and an absolute resignation; a nice perception of
+all human suffering; sympathies broad and embracing as the air; a
+benevolence pervading as the sunshine; and a spirit so calm in its
+elevation that no wind of calamity had power to ruffle it.
+
+Edith Leslie was a child when her mother died, yet old enough to feel
+the loss profoundly, and to be greatly shocked and cast down at the
+alacrity with which her father contrived to forget it. Having reduced
+Leslie to obedience, his bride essayed the same experiment on his
+daughter, but failed notably. There was something in the nature of the
+latter which revolted so impatiently against the selfish caprices and
+morbid fooleries which were played off hourly before her,--she was so
+indignant, moreover, at seeing her father sunk inch by inch in the
+slough of matrimonial thraldom,--that the issue might easily have been
+a protracted household feud. None but herself could know with how
+costly an effort she schooled herself to patience. With a caustic wit,
+and a fervent fancy which haunted her with images of an ideal life
+brighter than the work-day world around her, a nature with impulses
+which, less curbed and tempered, might have carried her through all
+the mazes of morbid rebellion, she still bent herself to accept her
+lot as she found it, in the full faith that flowers may be taught to
+grow on the flintiest soil. And now that the imagined maladies of a
+lifetime were turned at last into a mortal reality, and her
+step-mother lay on her death bed, Edith Leslie watched by her side
+with as much care as if this wretched piece of perverted sensibility
+had deserved her affection and esteem.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII.
+
+  Beshrew me, but I love her heartily,
+  For she is wise, if I can judge of her;
+  And fair she is, if that mine eyes be true;
+  And true she is, as she hath proved herself;
+  And therefore, like herself, wise, fair, and true,
+  Shall she be placed in my constant soul.--_Merchant of Venice_.
+
+
+A week after he had heard the tidings from the old housekeeper, Morton
+saw Dr. Steele coming out of a patient's door and getting into his
+chaise.
+
+"Good morning, Dr. Steele."
+
+"Sir, your servant," said the old-fashioned doctor.
+
+"I'm sorry to hear that Mrs. Leslie is so ill."
+
+"It's very sad," said the doctor. "Now, what the deuse is this young
+fellow stopping me for?"--this was his internal comment.
+
+"I hope you don't despair of her."
+
+"Well, sir, she will hold out to-morrow, and the next day, too."
+
+"I beg your pardon. Your check rein is loose. Let me make it right."
+
+"Thank you, Mr. Morton," said the doctor, somewhat mollified.
+
+"Ahem!--Colonel Leslie is well, I hope."
+
+"Apparently so, sir."
+
+"And--ahem!--his family, too."
+
+"I wasn't aware he had a family."
+
+"I mean--that is to say--his daughter--Miss Leslie."
+
+The shrewd doctor turned his gray eyes sideways on the querist.
+
+"Ah, his daughter. What did you wish to know of her, sir?"
+
+"Merely to inquire----" said Morton, stammering and blushing visibly.
+"I mean only to ask if she is well."
+
+"I know nothing to the contrary. She seemed very well when I brought
+her down from Matherton last evening. I dare say, though, she can tell
+you herself a great deal better than I can. Good morning, Mr. Morton."
+
+And with a slight twinkle in his eye, Dr. Steele drove off.
+
+Morton looked after the chaise, as it lumbered down the street.
+
+"May I be hanged and quartered if I ever question you again; you are
+too sharp, by half."
+
+The doctor's information was very welcome, however; and, armed with an
+anxious inquiry after her mother's health, Morton proceeded to call
+upon Miss Leslie. She had come to the city, as he had already judged,
+on some mission connected with the wants of the invalid, and was to go
+back to Matherton, with Dr. Steele, in the afternoon.
+
+Thenceforward, for a week or upwards, he saw her no more; but, during
+the interval, he contrived, by various expedients, to keep himself
+advised of the condition and movements of the family at Matherton.
+Among other incidents, he became aware of two visits made them by
+Vinal, and was tormented, in consequence, with an unutterable
+jealousy. One morning he met the purblind old housekeeper, mousing
+along in spectacles through the crowded street, and, stopping her, to
+her great alarm and perplexity, he made his usual inquiry concerning
+Mrs. Leslie's health. This investigation led to the discovery that
+Miss Edith was coming from Matherton that very afternoon.
+
+Morton, upon this, grew so restless, that he could not refrain from
+going to the railroad station, a little before the train was to come
+in. And here his worst fear was realized; for he beheld, slowly pacing
+along the platform, the hated form of Horace Vinal. Morton retreated
+unseen, went into a neighboring hotel, and seated himself, a little
+withdrawn from a window, where he could see all that passed. The train
+arrived; and soon after Vinal appeared, conducting Miss Leslie to a
+carriage, with an air, as Morton thought, of the most anxious
+devotion. He grasped his walking stick, and burned with a feverish
+longing to break it across his rival's back.
+
+He saw Miss Leslie on the next day, and thus added fuel to a flame
+which already burned high enough. In short, he found himself in that
+most profoundly serious and profoundly ridiculous of all conditions,
+the condition of being over head and ears in love,--and his zeal for
+science was merged utterly in a more engrossing devotion. By one means
+or another, he contrived to keep pace with the course of things at
+Matherton, and learned from day to day that Mrs. Leslie was
+worse,--that she seemed to revive a little,--that she was on the point
+of death,--that she was dead. By the time this sad climax was reached,
+he had been starving a fortnight from the sight of his mistress,
+having the consolation to know that meantime his rival had made at
+least four visits to Matherton.
+
+One morning Morton was pacing the street in an abstracted mood, his
+looks bent on the bricks, when, chancing to look up, he saw those very
+eyes which his fancy had been that moment picturing, employed in
+guiding their owner's steps over a crossing towards him. As Edith
+Leslie stepped upon the sidewalk, she saw him for the first time. He
+bowed, joined her, spoke a few bungling words of condolence, and
+walked on at her side. After the fashion of those who are peculiarly
+anxious to appear at their best advantage, he appeared at his worst.
+And when his companion bade him good morning on the steps of her
+father's house, she left him in a most unenviable mood, muttering
+maledictions against himself and his fate, and brought, indeed, to the
+borders of despair. This depression, however, was not long in
+producing its reaction, under the influence of which, adopting his
+usual panacea against mental ailments, he mounted his horse, and
+spurred into the country.
+
+Here, about sunset, he beheld a horseman, slowly pacing along the road
+in front. On this, he drew rein, and began to look about him for the
+means of escape; for in the person of the rider he recognized his
+classmate Wren, to whose society he was far from partial. Neither lane
+nor by-road was to be seen.
+
+"At the worst," he thought, "it is but a mile or two;" and, setting
+forward at a trot again, he was in a moment at his classmate's side.
+
+"How are you, Wren?"
+
+"Ah, Morton, good evening," exclaimed Wren, with a graceful wave of
+his hand. "I'm delighted to see you. A charming evening--isn't it?"
+
+"Charming."
+
+"That's a fine horse you have."
+
+"Tolerably good."
+
+"Did you ever observe this fellow that I'm riding? Do you see how long
+and straight he is in the back? Well, that's the Arab blood that's in
+him. His grandfather was a superb Arab, that the Pacha of Egypt gave
+my uncle when he was travelling there;" and he proceeded to dilate at
+large on the merits and pedigree of his horse, the truth being that he
+and his ancestry before him had been born and bred in the State of
+Vermont. Morton listened with civil incredulity, and wished his
+companion at the antipodes.
+
+"Ah, there's my cousin's house," exclaimed Wren, pointing to a very
+pretty cottage and grounds which they were approaching--"Mary Holyoke,
+you know--Mary Everard that was some three months ago. What a
+delightful retreat for the honeymoon!"
+
+"Very," said Morton.
+
+"Stop there with me, will you? I'm going in for a few minutes, to wish
+them a pleasant journey. They are going to Niagara to-morrow."
+
+"Thank you, I believe I won't stop."
+
+"As you please, my dear fellow. I think they are quite right to travel
+now; it's a better season than the spring; and a honeymoon journey,
+after all, isn't _all_ romance, you know. Besides, they are going to
+have a charming companion--Miss Leslie."
+
+"I thought that she had just lost her mother-in-law."
+
+"That's the very thing. She's almost ill with watching night after
+night; so Mary,--they used to be friends at school,--has been very
+anxious that she should make the journey with them, for a change of
+scene, you know,--and Colonel Leslie has persuaded her to go."
+
+"When will they leave town?"
+
+"To-morrow. They mean to spend a few days at Trenton, and then go to
+the Falls. But here we are; won't you change your mind, and come in?"
+
+"No, thank you. Good night."
+
+"Good evening, then;" and waving his hand again, Wren trotted up the
+avenue.
+
+"Virtue never goes unrewarded," thought Morton; "if I hadn't joined
+the fellow, I might not have known about this journey."
+
+On the next day he discovered that they had actually gone, and that,
+as Wren had said, Niagara was to be the ultimatum of their tour. On
+the following morning, he himself took the western train, and made all
+speed for the Falls.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII.
+
+  If folly grows romantic, I must paint it.--_Pope_.
+
+
+On the American side of the Niagara, a few miles below the Falls, is a
+deep chasm, bearing the inauspicious christening of the Devil's Hole.
+Near it there is--or perhaps was, for things have changed
+thereabouts--a path winding far down among rocks and forests, till it
+leads to the brink of the river. Here, darkened by the beetling cliffs
+and sombre forests, the Niagara surges on its way, like a compressed
+ocean, raging to break free. At the verge of this watery convulsion
+stood Holyoke and his wife, Miss Leslie, and Morton, whom they had
+chanced to meet that morning.
+
+"It is very fine, no doubt," said the good-natured, though very
+shallow Mrs. Holyoke, "but I have no mind to take cold in these dark
+woods. If we stay much longer, I believe I shall go mad, looking at
+that rushing, foaming water, and throw myself in. Come, Harry, let us
+go back to daylight again."
+
+"Just as you please," said the model husband, offering his arm.
+
+"Come, Edith;--why, she really seems to like it;--Edith!--she don't
+hear me; no wonder, in all this noise;--Edith, we are going back to
+the upper world. You can stay here, if you please, with Mr. Morton."
+
+But Miss Leslie chose to follow her friend; while Morton aided her up
+the rough path.
+
+"I have observed," he said, as they came to smoother ground, "in our
+excursions yesterday and to-day, that Mrs. Holyoke has not much of
+your liking for rocks, trees, and water. I mean, that she has no great
+taste for nature."
+
+"At all events, she has an eye for what is picturesque in it. She is
+an artist, you know, and paints in water colors extremely well."
+
+"Yes, and whenever she sees a landscape, she thinks only how it would
+look on paper or canvas, and judges it accordingly. That is not a
+genuine love of nature. One does not value a friend for good looks, or
+dress, or air; and so, in the same way, is not a true fondness for
+nature independent, to some extent at least, of effects of form, or
+color, or grouping?"
+
+"It does not imply, I think, any artistic talent, or even a good eye
+for artistic effect. And yet I cannot conceive of a great landscape
+artist being without it, any more than a great poet."
+
+"If he were, he would be no better than a refined scene painter. We
+are in a commercial country; so pardon me if I use commercial
+language. This liking for nature is a capital investment. She is
+always a kind mistress, a good friend, always ready with a
+tranquillizing word, never inconstant, never out of humor, never sad."
+
+"And yet sometimes she can speak sadly, too."
+
+Edith Leslie said no more; but there came before her the remembrance
+of her long watchings in the room of the dying Mrs. Leslie, when,
+seated by the window, open in the hot summer nights, she had listened,
+hour after hour, mournfully, drearily, almost with superstitious awe,
+to the chirping of the crickets, the plaintive cry of the
+whippoorwill, and now and then the hooting of a distant owl.
+
+"Here in America," continued Morton, "we ought to make the most of
+this feeling for nature; for we have very little else."
+
+"And yet there is less of it here than in some other countries; in
+England, for instance."
+
+"We are too busy for such vanities. Besides, we are just now in an
+unlucky position. A wilderness is one thing; savageness and solitude
+have a character of their own; and so has a polished landscape with
+associations of art, poetry, legend, and history."
+
+"And we have destroyed the one, and have not yet found the other."
+
+"And so, between two stools we fall to the ground."
+
+"If you have a liking for a wilderness and primitive scenery, I don't
+think that you have much reason to complain; for you, at least, have
+contrived to see something of them."
+
+"And you of the other sort; art and history wedded to nature; at
+Tivoli, for example,--at the Lake of Albano; where else shall I say?"
+
+"Say, at Giardini, in Sicily."
+
+"Why at Giardini? I never heard of it before."
+
+"Not that the view there is finer than in some other places, though
+towards evening it is very beautiful. You see the ocean on one side,
+and the mountains on the other, covered to the top with orange, lemon,
+and olive trees, and Mount Etna rising above them all, with a spire of
+white smoke curling out of its crater, tinted with red, yellow, and
+purple, where the sunset strikes it. On the mountain above you there
+is an ancient theatre, where a Greek audience once sat on the stone
+benches, and after them, in their turn, a Roman. On the peak of the
+mountain over it is a Saracen castle, and, not far off, a Norman
+tower."
+
+"So that the whole is an embodiment of poetry and history from the
+days of the Odyssey downwards."
+
+"Nobody, I think, who has seen that eastern shore of Sicily can have
+escaped without some strong impression from it. The Fourrierites, you
+know, pretend to believe that the earth is a living being, with a
+soul, only a larger one, like ours that creep on the outside of it.
+One is sometimes tempted to adopt their idea, and fancy that the
+changing face of nature is the expression of the earth's thoughts, and
+its way of communicating with us."
+
+"A landscape will sometimes have a life and a language,--that is, when
+one happens to be in the mood to hear it,--and yet, after all,
+association is commonly the main source of its power. The Hudson, I
+imagine, can match the Rhine in point of mere beauty; but a few ruined
+castles, with the memories about them, turn the tables dead against
+us."
+
+"You have always--have you not?--had a penchant for the barbarism of
+the middle ages."
+
+"Not for their barbarism, but for the germs of civilization that lay
+in the midst of it. Religion towards God, devotion towards
+women--these were the vital ideas of the middle ages."
+
+"But how were those ideas acted on? Their religion was not much better
+than a mass of superstitions."
+
+"Not more gross and vulgar than the spirit rapping superstition, the
+last freak into which this age of reason has stumbled. And, for the
+other idea, the fundamental idea of chivalry, we are beginning to
+replace it with woman's rights, Heaven deliver us!"
+
+"Pardon me if I doubt whether ladies in the middle ages were better
+treated than they are now. The theory was admirable, no doubt, but the
+practice, if there were any, seems at this distance a little
+ridiculous."
+
+"Chivalry was like Don Quixote, who stands for it--fantastic and
+absurd enough on the outside, but noble at the core."
+
+"But you would not imply seriously that you would prefer the age of
+chivalry to this nineteenth century."
+
+"No, the reign of shopkeepers is better than the reign of cutthroats.
+But the nineteenth century has no right to abuse the middle ages. The
+best feature of its civilization is handed down from them. That
+feeling which found a place in the rough hearts of our northern
+ancestry, half savages as they were, and gave to their favorite
+goddess attributes more high and delicate than any with which the
+Greeks and Romans, at the summit of their refinement, ever invested
+their Venus; the feeling which afterwards grew into the sentiment of
+chivalry, and, hand in hand with Christianity, has made our modern
+civilization what it is,--that is the heritage we owe to the middle
+ages, and for which we are bound to be grateful to them. It was a
+flower all the fairer for springing in the midst of darkness and
+barbarism; and now that we have it in a kinder soil, we can only hope
+that it is not fast losing its fragrance and brightness."
+
+"Of that, I imagine, a woman is a very poor judge; but if it has lost
+its antique freshness, at all events we can enjoy it in peace and
+tranquillity, and be spared the risk of life and limb in gathering it.
+Those sweetbrier blossoms that grow yonder, down the side of the
+precipice, are very pretty, but it would require nothing less than a
+paladin, or a knight errant, made crazy with the hope of a smile, to
+get them and bring them up."
+
+"Now it is you that asperse the present, and I that will defend it."
+And the words were hardly spoken before the young fool was over the
+edge of the cliff, scarcely hearing his companion's startled cry of
+remonstrance.
+
+The rock sloped steeply to a few feet below the spot where the brier
+grew, and then sank in a sheer precipice of a hundred feet or more, so
+that if hand or foot had failed him, his career would have ended
+somewhat abruptly. To the spectatress above the danger seemed
+appalling; but, with the climber's practised eye and well-strung
+sinews, it was in fact very slight. Once, indeed, a fragment of stone
+loosened under his foot, and fell with a splintering crash upon the
+rocks below, followed by a shower of pebbles and gravel, rattling
+among the trees. But he soon reached his prize, secured it in his
+hatband, and grasping the friendly root of a spruce tree, drew himself
+up to the level top of the cliff.
+
+Here he saw the fruit of his Quixotism. Edith Leslie, pale as death,
+seemed on the very verge of fainting. He sprang in great consternation
+to her aid, supported her to a rock near at hand, on which she could
+rest; and as her momentary dizziness passed away, she began to
+distinguish his eager words of apology and self-reproach.
+
+"You will think that I have grown backward into a child again. Think
+what you will; I deserve your worst thought; only do not believe that
+I could fancy such paltry exploits and paltry risks could be a tribute
+worthy of you; or that you are to be served with such boy's service as
+that. Here are the flowers: throw them away, or keep them as a memento
+of my absurdity; but let them remind you, at the same time, that
+wherever your wish points, there I would go, if it were into the jaws
+of fate."
+
+Here, looking up, he saw the expediency of curtailing his eloquence;
+for not far off appeared their two companions, returning to look for
+them. Both Miss Leslie and he had much ado to explain, the one why her
+face was so pale, the other why his dress was so dusty and disordered.
+The carriage was waiting for them on the road near by; and their
+morning's excursion being finished, they proceeded towards it, Morton
+leading the way in silence.
+
+His first feeling had been one of compunction and indignation at
+himself; but close upon it followed another, very different--a sense
+of mixed suspense and delight. What augury might he not draw from the
+pale cheek and fainting form of his companion?
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX.
+
+  For, in the days of yore, the birds of parts
+  Were bred to speak, and sing, and learn the liberal arts.
+                                        _The Cock and the Fox_.
+
+  Thine is the adventure, thine the victory;
+  Well has thy fortune turned the dice for thee.
+                                        _Palamon and Arcite_.
+
+
+During the rest of the journey, Morton, on Mrs. Holyoke's invitation,
+was one of the party. Again and again he was impelled to learn his
+fate; but recoiled from casting the die, dreading that his hour was
+not come. Still, though every day more helplessly spell-bound, his
+mood was not despondent.
+
+They came to the town of ----, a half day from home.
+
+"My household gods are not far off," said Morton. "My father was born
+at Steuben, a few miles below, where my grandfather used to preach
+against King George, and stir up his parish to rebellion. I have
+relations there still, and have a mind to spend to-morrow with them."
+
+This announcement proceeded much less from family affection than from
+another motive. Mrs. Holyoke saw it in an instant.
+
+"Excellent! Then Miss Leslie can accept her friend's invitation to
+make a day's visit at this place; and you will meet her and escort her
+to Boston."
+
+And Morton, much rejoiced at this successful issue of his diplomacy,
+repaired to his relatives at Steuben; Holyoke and his wife proceeded
+homeward; while Miss Leslie remained to accomplish the visit with her
+country friend.
+
+Morton spent a quiet day in the primitive New England village, a place
+of which boyish association made him fond. On the next morning, Miss
+Leslie was to come to Steuben, with her hostess; but as there was an
+abundance of time before the train would appear, he strolled along a
+quiet road leading back into the country. He soon came to an old inn,
+over whose tottering porch King George's head might once have swung.
+Nothing human was astir. The ancient lilacs flaunted before the door;
+the tall sunflowers peered over the garden fence; the primeval
+well-sweep slanted aloft, far above the mossy shingles of the roof.
+The rural quiet of the place tempted him. He sat under the porch, and
+watched the swallows sailing in and out of the great barn whose doors
+stood wide open, on the opposite side of the road.
+
+A voice broke the silence--a voice from the barn yard. It was the
+voice of a hen mother, the announcement that an egg was born into the
+world. Not the proud, exulting cackle which ordinarily proclaims that
+auspicious event, but a repining, discontented cry, now rising in
+vehement remonstrance with destiny, now sinking into a low cluck of
+disgust. Morton, skilled in the language of birds, construed these
+melancholy cacklings as follows:--
+
+"Whither does all this tend? Why is my happiness blighted, my
+aspirations repressed? Why am I forever penned up within these narrow
+precincts, amid low domestic cares, and sordid, uncongenial,
+unsympathizing associates? And thou, my white and spotless offspring,
+what shall be thy fate? To be steeped in hot water, and eaten with a
+spoon? Or art thou to be the germ of an existence wretched as my own,
+doomed to a ceaseless round of daily parturition? O, weariness! O,
+misery! O, despair!"
+
+And throwing her ruffled feelings into one indignant cackle, the hen
+was silent.
+
+The advent of a human biped here enlivened the scene. This was a young
+gentleman on horseback, a collegian to all appearance, admirably
+mounted, but bestriding his horse with the look of one who has just
+passed his first course under the riding master, and rides by the
+book, as Touchstone quarrelled. This important personage, with an air
+oddly compounded of assumption and timidity, proceeded to call the
+hostler, and order oats for his horse, after which he strutted into
+the house, switching his leg with his whip.
+
+As ample time remained, Morton continued his walk along the road, his
+mood in harmony with the brightness of the morning. He was in a humor
+to please himself with trifles. A ground squirrel chirruped at him
+from a crevice of the wall. He stood watching the small, shy visage,
+as it looked out at him. Then a red squirrel, a much livelier
+companion, uttered its trilling cry from a clump of hazel bushes.
+Morton seated himself on a stone very near it. The squirrel resented
+the intrusion, ran out on a fence rail towards the offender,
+chattered, scolded, swelled himself like a miniature muff, made his
+tail and his whole body vibrate with his wrath; then suddenly dodged
+down behind the rail and peered over it at the trespasser, his nose
+and one eye alone being visible; then bolted into full sight again,
+and scolded as before, jerking himself from side to side in the
+extremity of his petulance; till at last, without the smallest
+apparent cause, he suddenly wheeled about and fled, bounding like the
+wind along the top of the stone wall.
+
+This interview over, Morton looked at his watch, saw that it was time
+to go back towards the village, and began to retrace his steps
+accordingly. He had gone but a few paces, when he saw a countryman, a
+simple-looking fellow, running at top speed, and in great excitement,
+up a byway, which led to the railroad, the latter crossing it by a
+high bridge, at some distance from the station.
+
+"What's the matter?" demanded Morton.
+
+"The railroad cars!" gasped the countryman.
+
+"What of them?"
+
+"They'll all go to smash, and no mistake."
+
+"What!" cried Morton, aghast.
+
+"Fact, mister. Some born devil has been and sawed the bridge timbers
+most through in the middle."
+
+"What!" cried Morton again.
+
+"Sure as I stand here! I seen the heaps of sawdust on the road. That's
+the way I come to take notice. The minute the locomotive gets on the
+bridge, down she'll go, and no two ways about it."
+
+Morton had no doubt that the man was right. The newspapers, within the
+last few weeks, had contained various accounts of impediments, great
+and small, maliciously placed on railroads. It was a species of
+villany which was just then having its run, as incendiarism will
+sometimes have; and a like case of a bridge partly sawed through had
+lately occurred in a neighboring state.
+
+"You fool!" exclaimed Morton, in anguish and despair; "why didn't you
+get on the track, and stop the train?"
+
+"I'd like to see you stop the train!" retorted the man.
+
+Morton turned to run for the road, bent on stopping the engine, or
+letting it pass over him. But as he turned, a new arrival caught his
+eye. This was the cavalier who had baited his horse at the inn, and
+who, seeing the excited looks of the two men, had checked his pace,
+and was looking at them with much curiosity.
+
+Crazed with agitation, and hardly knowing what he did, Morton leaped
+towards him, seized his horse, a powerful and high-mettled animal, by
+the head, and, with a few broken words of explanation, called on him
+to dismount. The astonished collegian did not comply. Morton bore back
+fiercely on the bit; the horse plunged and snorted; the rider clutched
+the pommel; Morton took him by the arm, drew him to the ground,
+mounted at a bound after him, and, as he touched the saddle, struck
+his whalebone walking stick with all his force over the horse's flank.
+The horse leaped forward frantically, and rushed headlong down the
+road. His discarded rider saw his hoofs twinkling for an instant out
+of the cloud of dust, and thought he had had a Heaven-directed escape
+from a madman.
+
+The small village above Steuben, at which Miss Leslie and her friend
+were to take the train, was three miles off. The road ran almost
+directly towards it for more than three fourths of the way, when it
+made a bend to the right. Morton, with his furious riding, very soon
+reached this point. He could see the station house before him, on the
+left, and not more than a third of a mile distant. The space between,
+though uneven, had no visible impediments but a few low fences and
+scattered clumps of bushes. Morton pushed through the barberry growth
+that fringed the road, galloped over the hard pasture, leaped one
+fence, passed a gap in another, and half way to his goal, found
+himself and his horse in a quagmire. At this moment, straining his
+eyes towards the cluster of houses, he saw, with agony at his heart, a
+white puff of vapor rising above the trees beyond. Then the dark
+outline of the train came into view, checking its way, and stopping,
+half hidden behind the buildings.
+
+Morton knew that it would stop only for a moment, and plied his horse
+with merciless blows. The horse plunged through the mire,--the mud and
+water spouting high above his rider's head,--gained the firm ground,
+and bounded forward wild with fright and fury. It was too late. The
+bell rang, and with quicker and quicker pants, the engine began to
+move. Morton shouted,--gesticulated,--still it did not stop, though
+the passengers seemed to take alarm, for a head was thrust from every
+window, while the occupants of an open carriage drawn up on the road
+were bending eagerly towards him.
+
+Morton wheeled to the left, and urged his horse up the embankment in
+front of the train. With a violent effort, he reached the top. The
+engineer was running against time, and cared for nothing but winning
+his match. He blew the steam whistle; and as Morton dragged on the
+curb with desperate strength, the horse reared upright, pawing the
+air. But, as he rose, Morton disengaged his feet, slid over the
+crupper to the ground, and let go the rein. The horse leaped down the
+bank, and scoured over the meadow, mad with terror. Morton took his
+stand in the middle of the track, and facing the advancing train,
+stood immovable as a post. The engineer reversed the engine, brought
+it to a stand within a few yards of him, and, with a profusion of
+oaths, demanded what he wanted.
+
+Before the breathless Morton could well explain himself, the
+passengers began to leap out of the cars, and running forward,
+gathered about him. He soon found words to make the case known. But
+one object alone engrossed him. He pushed on among the throng of
+questioning, eager men, mounted the foremost car, and made his way
+through it, the crowd pushing behind and around him, and plying him
+with questions, to which, in the confusion and abstraction of his
+faculties, he gave wild and random answers. He looked at every face.
+Edith Leslie was not there. He crossed the platform into the next car,
+passed through it, and still could not find her. It was the last in
+the train. And now a strange feeling came over him, a bitterness, a
+sense of disappointment, as if his efforts and his pangs had been
+uncalled for and profitless; for so intensely had his thoughts been
+concentred on one object, that he forgot for the moment the hundred
+men and women whom he had saved from deadly jeopardy.
+
+The train rolled back to the station, the distance being only a few
+rods. Morton got out and leaned against the wall of the house. Men
+thronged about him with questions, exclamations, thanks, praises. The
+reaction of his violent emotion produced in him a frame of mind almost
+childish. He was restless to free himself from the crowd.
+
+"It's nothing; it's nothing," he answered, as fresh praises were
+showered on him. "I saw the train going to the devil, and did what I
+could to save it. Any of you, I dare say, would have done as much. Be
+good enough to let me have a little air."
+
+The crowd gave way, and he walked forward past the corner of the
+building. Here, standing on the road, close at hand, he suddenly saw
+an open carriage, and in it, pale as death, sat Miss Leslie, with her
+friend, and a boy of twelve, her friend's brother. He sprang towards
+it with an irrepressible impulse.
+
+"My God! Miss Leslie, I thought you were in the train."
+
+"And so we should have been," said the boy, "but the cars came in
+three minutes before their time."
+
+Edith Leslie did not utter a word.
+
+Some of the passengers were soon about him again. He repeated to them
+what he knew of the danger, and told them how he had learned it. In a
+few minutes, several men were seen at a distance on the railroad,
+running forward with a handkerchief tied to a stick to warn off the
+train. A few minutes later, a Connecticut pedler, one of the
+passengers, came up to Morton.
+
+"Mister, they're going to do the handsome thing by you. They're
+getting up a subscription to give you a piece of silver plate."
+
+"The deuse they are!" was Morton's ungrateful response.
+
+Going into the room where the passengers were met, he found that the
+pedler had told the truth; on which, for the first and last time in
+his life, he addressed an assemblage of his fellow-citizens. He told
+them that he thanked them for their kind intention; but that if he had
+done them a service, he wished for no other recompense than the
+knowledge of it, and urged them, if they did any thing in the matter,
+to devote their efforts to gaining the arrest and punishment of the
+scoundrel who had attempted the mischief. His oratory was much
+applauded; many, who had thought themselves in for the subscription,
+joyfully buttoned their pockets, and, instead of the plate, he
+received a series of complimentary resolutions, to be published in the
+newspapers.
+
+Meanwhile, having made his speech, he had lost no time in making his
+escape also. Going back to the carriage, Miss Leslie's friend asked
+him to accompany them home, whence they could return to take the
+afternoon train, when the bridge would, no doubt, be repaired. Morton,
+however, declined the invitation, and, having sent two men to catch
+the horse, with instructions to refer the distressed owner to him, he
+drove in a farmer's wagon to Steuben. In a few hours, he rejoined Miss
+Leslie and her friend; and having escorted both safely to town, took
+leave of the former, that evening, at the door of her father's house.
+
+Several of the newspapers next morning contained the resolutions
+passed by the passengers, trumpeting Morton's humanity, presence of
+mind, &c. He himself very well knew that the praise was undeserved,
+since he had neither thought nor cared for the objects of his supposed
+humanity, and, far from acting with presence of mind, had scarcely
+known what he was about.
+
+The bridge had been cut by an Irish mechanic in the employ of the
+road, who, for some misdemeanor, had been reprimanded and turned out,
+and who had passed half the night in preparing his demoniac revenge.
+It afterwards appeared that he had been a state's prison convict in a
+neighboring state, and that he would have been still in confinement,
+had not the officious zeal of certain benevolent persons availed to
+set him loose before his time.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XX.
+
+  For true it is, as _in principio,
+  Mulier est hominis confusio;_
+  Madam, the meaning of this Latin is,
+  That woman is to man his sovereign bliss.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+  A woman's counsel brought us first to woe,
+  And made her man his paradise forego.--
+  These are the words of Chanticleer, not mine;
+  I honor dames, and think their sex divine.--_Dryden_.
+
+
+On the day after their return, Morton visited Miss Leslie to learn if
+she had suffered from the fatigues and alarms of yesterday; and, in
+truth, she had the pale face of one whose rest has been short and
+broken.
+
+"It has been my fate to terrify you," said the anxious Morton.
+
+During his visit, the door bell was most obtrusively busy. Messages,
+parcels, notes, cards, visitors came in, and expelled all hope of a
+_tête à tête_.
+
+Soon after he left the room, Leslie entered.
+
+"Who gave you those flowers, Edith?"
+
+"Mr. Morton, sir."
+
+"Humph!" ejaculated Leslie, with a look by no means of gratification.
+
+Meanwhile, Morton, walking the street in an abstracted mood, overtook
+unawares his bachelor friend Mr. Benedick Sharpe, jurist, philosopher,
+and man of letters--a personage whose ordinary discourse was a
+singular imbroglio of irony and earnest.
+
+"Why, Morton, what problem of ethnology are you at now? the unity of
+the human race, and the descent from Adam--science versus
+orthodoxy--is that it?"
+
+"Nothing so deep."
+
+"What, nothing ethnological?"
+
+"Nothing at all."
+
+"Ah, then I begin to tremble for you. There's but one thing else could
+lose you in such a maze. The flame of a candle is very pretty; but the
+moth that flies into it scorches his wings, poor devil."
+
+"I am too dull to see through your metaphors."
+
+"There's another blind divinity besides Justice. Beware the shoal of
+matrimony! Many a good fellow has been wrecked there."
+
+"Harping on your old string! You are a professed woman hater."
+
+"Who, I? Now that is a scandalous libel. I admire them,--of course."
+
+"And yet there's not a lady of your acquaintance whom I have not heard
+you analyze, criticise, cavil at, and disparage."
+
+"My dear fellow!"
+
+"You have no conscience to deny it."
+
+"I protest I have the greatest--ahem!--admiration for the ladies of
+our acquaintance. We have an excellent assortment,--we have witty
+women; brilliant women; women of taste and genius; exact and
+fastidious women,--a full supply,--accomplished women; finished and
+elegant women,--not too many, but still we have them; learned women;
+gentle, amiable, tender women; sharp and caustic women; sensible and
+practical women; domestic women,--all unimpeachable,--all good in
+their kind."
+
+"Then why is matrimony so dangerous?"
+
+"No, no, not dangerous, exactly,--thanks to discreet nurture and
+northern winters; not dangerous hereabouts as it was in the days of
+the old satirists. A wise man may be safe enough here from any climax
+of matrimonial evil; but there are minor mischiefs, daily
+_désagrémens_."
+
+"What, in spite of that catalogue of feminine virtues which you
+delivered just now?"
+
+"Vanity of vanities! Admirable in the abstract; excellent at a safe
+distance; but to be tied to for life, bed and board, day light and
+candle light,--that's another thing."
+
+"Even the tender and amiable,--is there risk even there?"
+
+"One cloys on perpetual sweetmeats."
+
+"And the domestic women?"
+
+"Who incarcerate themselves in their nurseries, and have no brains but
+for their babies; who are frantic if the infant coughs, and are buried
+and lost among cradles, porringers, go-carts, pills, and
+prescriptions."
+
+"The brilliant woman, then?"
+
+"Brilliant at dinner tables and _soirées_; but, on the next day, your
+Corinne is disconsolate with a headache. Her wit is for the
+world,--her moods and mopings, caprices and lamentations,--those she
+keeps for her husband."
+
+"You are a cynic. The woman of taste and genius; where do you place
+her?"
+
+"What are the rude heart and brain of a man to such exalted
+susceptibilities? What homage is too much for him to render? Be a bond
+slave to the sweet enthusiast. Bow yourself before the delicate
+shrine. Do your devoirs; she will not bate you a jot."
+
+"But there are in the world women governed by reason."
+
+"My dear Morton, are you demented? A woman always rational, always
+sensible, always consistent; a logical woman; one who can distinguish
+the relations of cause and effect, one who marches straight to her
+purpose like a man,--who ever found such a woman; or, finding her, who
+could endure such a one?"
+
+"You fly into extremes; but women may be rational, as well as men."
+
+"I like to see the organ of faith well developed,--yours is a miracle.
+Granted, a rational woman; and with a liberal rendering of the word,
+such, I admit, are now and then seen,--women always even, always
+cheerful, never morbid, always industrious, always practical; busy
+with good works,--charity, for example, or making puddings,--pious
+daughters, model wives, pattern mothers----"
+
+"At last you have found a creditable character."
+
+"Very creditable; but far from interesting. The truth is, Morton, the
+very uncertainty, the flitting gleams and shadows, the opalescent
+light, the chameleon coloring of a woman's mind are what make her
+fascination,--the fascination and the danger,--there lies the dilemma.
+Shun the danger, and you lose the charm as well. A woman's human
+nature is not our human nature; the tissue is more cunningly woven;
+the string more responsive; the essence lighter and subtler,--forgive
+the poetic style,--appropriate to the theme, you know. In their
+virtues and their faults they shoot away into paths where we do not
+track them. They can sink in a more abject abasement; and sometimes,
+again, while we tread the earth, they are aeronauts of the pure ether.
+Stable, stubborn, impassive man holds the steadfast tenor of his walk,
+little moved by influences which, on the one hand, bury his helpmate
+in ruin, or, on the other, wing her on a flight to the zenith. They
+out-sin us, and they out-saint us; weak as a reed, and strong as an
+oak; measureless in folly, profound in wisdom; for the deepest of all
+wisdom springs, not out of a questioning brain, but out of a confiding
+heart; and all human knowledge must find its root at last in a blind
+belief. There, I have given you a sublime touch of eloquence; and, for
+the moral to it,--shun matrimony. It is Satan's slyest mantrap. No,
+not so, at all; it is a blessed institution for perfecting mankind in
+patience, charity, and meekness, and booking their names in the
+catalogue of saints. So be wise, in time. Good by. Look before you
+leap!"
+
+And, with an ironical twinkle in his eye, Sharpe vanished.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXI.
+
+Quelle diable de fantaisie t'es tu allé mettre dans la cervelle? Tu le
+veux, amour; il faut être fou comme beaucoup d'autres.--_Le Malade
+Imaginaire_.
+
+
+Matherton, renowned through both hemispheres for the manufacture of
+glass ware, stands, unless this history errs, on the line of the
+Northern Central Railroad, the distance from its post office to the
+post office at Boston being just thirty-three miles. Four miles from
+the village is the tract of land which Leslie's forefather, far back
+in New England antiquity, bought of the Indians. The original purchase
+covered several square miles, since dwindled to some two hundred
+acres. Here, in a sequestered and very beautiful spot, stands the
+mansion which Leslie's grandfather built some eighty-five years ago.
+In its day it was reputed of matchless elegance, and, with Leslie's
+repairs and improvements, it might still pass as a very handsome old
+country residence. Sagamore Pond, or Lake Sagamore, as the last Mrs.
+Leslie, who had lived in England, insisted on calling it, washes the
+foot of the garden; and along the northern verge of the estate, Battle
+Brook steals down to the pond, under the thick shade of the hemlock
+trees. Here King Philip's warriors once lay in ambush, through a hot
+summer's day; here many pious Puritans were butchered, and many
+carried off into doleful captivity.
+
+At the house at Battle Brook, Leslie, during spring, summer, and
+autumn, had always spent every leisure moment that he could snatch
+from his affairs. Since his connection with Vinal, these intervals had
+become both long and frequent. And, since grief has a privilege, and
+since, moreover, a somewhat alarming cough had lately begun to trouble
+him, he now committed all to Vinal's hands, and, on the day after his
+daughter's return, repaired with her to his favorite homestead, there
+to remain till the autumn frosts should warn them back to town.
+Forthwith Matherton became the focus to which all the thoughts of
+Morton concentred.
+
+Thither, pretext or no pretext, he resolved to go. He went,
+accordingly, and made his quarters at the grand hotel of Matherton.
+Fortunately, Battle Brook was then the best trout stream in
+Massachusetts; and this would give, he flattered himself, some faint
+color to his proceeding. He arrived in the afternoon, and, mounting a
+horse, rode to the inn at the edge of Sagamore Pond, a mile or more
+from Leslie's house.
+
+He had scarcely reached it, when a brief sharp thunder shower came up,
+and passed away as quickly. As the sun was setting, he rowed out in a
+small boat upon the pond. Here, skirting the brink of a sequestered
+cove, which the beech and tupelo trees overhung, and where every thing
+was still but the evening singing of a robin, and the mysterious
+whisper of the rain-drops, falling from innumerable leaves, with
+countless tiny circles on the breathless water,--here, where his boat
+glided as if buoyed on a liquid air, while, over the pebbly bottom,
+the perch and dace fled away from under the shadowing prow,--he
+lingered dreamily for a while, and then, bending to his oars, bore out
+into the middle of the pond. The west was gorgeous with the sunset,
+while, far in front, glimmering among the trees, he could see the
+shrine of his idolatry, the roof that sheltered Edith Leslie.
+
+A light breeze crisped the water, the ripples murmured with a lulling
+sound under his boat, and, lying at ease, he gave himself up to his
+reveries.
+
+His passion-kindled fancies ranged earth, sea, and sky; wandered into
+the past, lost themselves in the future; evoked the shadows of dead
+history; mixed in one phantom conclave the hairy war gods of the
+north, the bright shapes of Grecian fable, the enormities of Egyptian
+mythology; and, looking into the burning depths above him, he mused of
+human hopes, human aspirations, human destiny. That oddly compounded
+malady which had fastened on him had brought with it the intense yet
+tranquil awakening of every faculty with which it will sometimes visit
+those of the ruder sex whom it attacks with virulence.
+
+The magic of earth and sky; the black pines rearing their shaggy tops
+against the blazing west; the shores mingling in many-tinted shadow;
+the fiery sky, where three little clouds hovered like flaming spirits;
+the fiery water, where he and his boat floated as in a crimson sea;
+the whole glowing scene, glowing deeper yet in the fervid light of
+passion,--penetrated him like an enchantment. He scarcely knew
+himself; and in his supreme of intoxication, the familiar world around
+him was sublimed into a vision of Eden.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXII.
+
+               If it were now to die,
+  'Twere now to be most happy; for I fear,
+  My soul hath her content so absolute,
+  That not another comfort like to this
+  Succeeds in unknown fate.--_Othello_.
+
+
+It was a day of cloudless sunshine when Morton set forth for the house
+at Battle Brook; but his mind was far from sharing the brightness of
+the world without. The hope that flowed so full and calmly the night
+before had ebbed and left him dry. He was shaken with doubts,
+misgivings, perturbations. He walked his horse up the avenue, till he
+came within view of the house, a large, square mansion, with a veranda
+on three sides, a quiet-looking place enough, but in Morton's eyes
+priceless as Aladdin's palace, and sacred as Our Lady's house at
+Loretto. A monthly honeysuckle twined about one of the columns of the
+porch; the hall door stood open, and the air played freely through
+from front to rear.
+
+He gave his horse to the charge of an old Scotchman who was mowing the
+lawn, rang at the door, asked for Miss Leslie, and was shown into the
+vacant parlor. With its straw carpeting and light summer furniture, it
+was bright and cheerful as every thing else about it. Engravings from
+Turner and Landseer, framed in black walnut, hung against the walls;
+and on a small table in a corner stood a bird cage, with the door left
+purposely open. The inmate was hopping about the room, without
+attempting to escape, though the windows also were open.
+
+"No wonder it will not leave her," thought the visitor.
+
+He seated himself by the window, and looked out on the fields and the
+groves beyond. Far down in the meadow, the yellow-tufted rye was
+undulating in the warm summer wind, wave chasing wave in graceful
+succession. The birds would not sing,--the afternoon was too hot,--but
+the buzz, and hum, and chirrup of a myriad of insects rose from their
+lurking-places in the grass, while now and then the cicala raised its
+piercing voice from a neighboring apple tree.
+
+Suddenly Morton's heart began to beat; a light step on the staircase
+reached his ear, and the rustling of a dress. Miss Leslie came in with
+her usual natural and quiet ease of manner, while he rose to receive
+her with his heart in his throat. And now, when he needed them most,
+his wits seemed to fail him. He tried to converse, and produced
+nothing but barren commonplace. Again and again the conversation
+flagged; and the hum and chirrup of the insect world without filled
+the pauses between.
+
+He glanced at his companion.
+
+"Be a man, you idiot," he apostrophized himself.
+
+He looked at her again, as she bent over the embroidery with which her
+fingers were employed.
+
+"I must speak out, or die," he thought.
+
+He rested his arm on the table. He leaned towards her. Heaven knows
+what nonsense was on his lips, when the sound of a man's footstep in
+the hall made him subside into his chair, and do his best to look
+nonchalant. Leslie entered, cast an uneasy glance at the visitor, and
+greeted him with somewhat cool courtesy.
+
+"I have just met Miss Weston and her sister," said Leslie to his
+daughter; "I think they will be here in a few minutes."
+
+Morton looked at a Landseer on the wall, and gnawed his lip with
+vexation.
+
+Leslie took a turn or two about the room, looked out at the window,
+remarked that it was a hot afternoon, said that the hay crop had been
+the heaviest ever known, in consequence, he opined, of the joint
+effects of heat, moisture, and guano; and was descanting on the
+ravages committed by the borers on a certain peach tree, when Miss
+Weston and her sister appeared.
+
+"It's all up with me. She does not care for me a straw," thought
+Morton, as he saw the easy cordiality with which Miss Leslie received
+her guests. He was introduced. Miss Weston complimented him on the
+affair of the railroad. His reply was cold and constrained. Leslie
+soon left the room. Morton felt himself _de trop_, yet could not
+muster strength of mind to go. Conversation flagged. Every body became
+constrained. Miss Weston suspected the truth, and glanced at her
+sister that they should take their leave, when, at this juncture, a
+servant came to announce tea.
+
+The ebbs and flows of the human mind are beyond the reach of
+astronomy. As they went into the next room, Morton became conscious of
+a faint and indefinite something in the face of his mistress, which,
+he could not tell why, cast a gleam of light into his darkness, and
+lifted him out of the slough of despond in which he had been
+floundering for the last half hour. A flush of hope dawned on him. His
+constraint passed away, and Miss Weston's opinion of him was
+wonderfully revolutionized. At length, much to his delight, one of the
+visitors remarked to the other, that they had better go home before it
+grew too dark. But here a new alarm seized him. Might he not be
+expected to offer them his escort? Terrified at this idea, and
+oblivious of all gallantry, he made his escape into the garden,
+impelled--so he left them to infer--by a delicate wish to free them
+from the restraint of his presence. Here he walked to and fro behind
+the hedge, in no small agitation, but with all his faculties on the
+alert.
+
+In a quarter of an hour, he heard voices at the hall door; and
+approaching behind a cluster of high laurels, saw Edith Leslie
+accompanying her two friends down the avenue. After walking with them
+a few rods, she bade them good evening, and turned back towards the
+house. Morton went forward to meet her.
+
+"There is a beautiful sunset over the water, beyond the garden. Will
+you walk that way?"
+
+They turned down one of the garden paths.
+
+"What did you think of me this afternoon?" asked Morton--"did you
+think me ill, or bewitched, or turned idiot?"
+
+"Neither. I thought you a little taciturn, at first."
+
+"I am fortunate if that was your worst opinion. I believe I was under
+a spell. Did you never dream--all people, I believe, have something in
+common in their dreams--of being in some great peril, without power to
+move hand or foot to escape?--of being under some desperate necessity
+of speaking, without power to open your lips?--or of seeing before you
+some splendid prize, without power to make even an effort to grasp it?
+Something like that was my case." Here he came to an abrupt stop,
+walked on a pace or two, then turned to his companion with a vehemence
+which startled her--"Miss Leslie, you heard your friend praise me for
+humanity--courage--what not? It was all a mistake--all a delusion. I
+thought you were in the train. I was wild with agony; and when the
+people were crowding after me, I thought that all had been for
+nothing, because I had not saved you. I can hardly tell what I did; it
+was mere blind instinct. I could have ridden into the fire, and
+perhaps not have felt the burning. There _is_ a spell upon me. I am
+changed--life is changed--every thing is changed. I scarcely know
+myself. It mans me, and it makes me a child again. The world puts on a
+new face; just as this sunset lights the earth with purple and
+vermilion, and turns it to a fairy land. Forgive me; I don't know what
+I am saying. I am in fear that all this brightness will change of a
+sudden into winter and night, and cold, rocky commonplace. You know
+what I would say. I have no words fit to say it. You are my judge, to
+lift me up, or cast me down."
+
+Here he stopped again abruptly, and looked at his companion in much
+greater agitation than he would have felt if he had just thrown the
+dice for life or death. She stood for a moment with her eyes fixed on
+the earth, as if waiting for him to go on, then slowly raised them to
+his face.
+
+"You risked your life to save mine. You need not believe that I could
+ever forget it."
+
+Morton's heart sprang to his lips. Nature had not been liberal to him
+in the gift of tongues, but the energy of his emotion supplied the
+defect. Nor were his words thrown away; for with all its outward calm,
+the nature that responded to them was earnest and ardent as his own.
+
+It was an hour or more since the whippoorwills had begun their evening
+cries, when they returned to the house. Candles were lighted, and
+Leslie was sitting with two persons from the neighborhood, an agent of
+the Matherton factories and a lawyer, conversing upon railroad stocks.
+He looked very uneasily at his daughter and Morton, but said nothing.
+The latter was engrossed with one idea; but he forced himself to join
+in the conversation, and favored the company with his views--not very
+lucid on this occasion--upon the topic under discussion. He soon,
+however, contrived to whisper to Miss Leslie, "I shall go in five
+minutes--will you meet me in the hall?" She left the room in a few
+moments; and Morton, after a short interval, took his leave, in much
+alarm lest his intended father-in-law should strain courtesy so far as
+to follow him. Leslie, however, remained quiet; and he found his
+mistress waiting for him at the hall door. Their interview was short,
+but Morton never forgot it. After bidding her good night some eight or
+ten times, he compelled himself to leave the house, mounted his horse,
+waved his hand to Edith Leslie, whom he saw watching him from a side
+window, wheeled, rode down the avenue, turned as he reached the
+entrance of the trees, and waved his hand again towards the window.
+His heart was full to overflowing, and tears, not of sorrow, ran down
+his cheeks. "Good Heaven!" laughed Morton, as he brushed them away,
+"this has not happened to me before these twelve years." He waved a
+farewell once more, and spurring his horse, rode down the avenue into
+the high road.
+
+It was a soft, warm, starlight evening, and, as he passed along, he
+heard the voices of the whippoorwills from far and near, while the
+meadows, the orchards, and the borders of the woods sparkled with
+fireflies. With loosened rein, he suffered his horse to canter lightly
+forward, and gave himself up to the enchantment of his dreams. A
+thousand times in his after life did he recall the visions of that
+evening's ride.
+
+About a mile before reaching the town, the road passed, for a few
+rods, through a belt of thick woods. While riding through the darkest
+of the shadow, a strange cry startled him--a shriek so wild and awful
+that the blood curdled in his veins, and his horse leaped aside with
+fright. There was a rustling among the branches over his head, a
+flapping and fanning of broad pinions, and the dusky form of some
+great bird sailed away into the innermost darkness of the woods.
+Morton knew the sound. It was the voice of the great horned owl,
+rarely found in that part of the country, though he had once or twice
+before heard its midnight yells in the lonely forests of Maine.
+
+The cry long rang in his ears. It seemed fraught with startling
+portent, clouded his spirits, and umbered the rose-tint of his
+reveries. He turned his face to the stars, and breathed a prayer for
+the welfare of his mistress.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIII.
+
+  L'ambition, l'amour, l'avarice, la haine,
+  Tiennent comme un forçat son esprit à la chaîne.--_Boileau_.
+
+
+Nobody knew Vinal but Vinal himself. _Know thyself_ was his favorite
+maxim. He practised upon it, as he flattered himself, with a rigorous
+and unsparing logic, applying the dissecting knife and microscope to
+the secrets of his mind, probing, testing, studying, pitilessly
+ripping up all that would fain hide itself. The aim of all this
+scrutiny was, thoroughly to comprehend the machine, in order to direct
+and perfect it to its highest efficiency.
+
+Vinal, as men go, knew himself very well; and yet there were points of
+his character which escaped him, or which, rather, he misnamed. He
+knew perfectly that he was ambitious, selfish, unscrupulous: this he
+confessed in his own ear, pluming himself much on his philosophic
+candor. But he never would see that he was envious. In his mental map
+of himself, envy was laid down as pride and emulation. The wrestlings
+of human nature are not all of the sort figured in the Pilgrim's
+Progress and set forth in the Catechism. Vinal had an ideal; he had
+cherished it from boyhood, and battled ever since to realize it. He
+would fain make himself the finished man of the world, the
+unflinching, all-knowing, all-potential man of affairs, like a blade
+of steel, smooth and polished, but keen, searching, resistless. This
+was his aim; but nature was always balking him. He was the victim of a
+constitutional timidity, his scourge from childhood. He had been known
+to swoon outright, on being run away with in a chaise, and he never
+could muster nerve enough to fire a gun. Against this defect his pride
+rose in revolt. It thwarted him at every turn, and conflicted with all
+his aspirations. In short, he could not endure its presence, and
+fought against it with an iron energy of will. Thus his life was a
+secret, unremitting struggle, whose mark was written on his pale,
+nervous, resolute features. It's an ill wind that blows no good. This
+painful warfare achieved a singular vigor and concentration of
+character, and would have led to still better issues, had the
+assailing force been marshalled under a better banner. A lofty purpose
+may turn timidity to heroism; but a purpose like Vinal's is by no
+means so efficacious, and the man remains, if not quite a coward, yet
+something very like one.
+
+It would have been well for Vinal if, like Morton, he had been born to
+a fortune. In that case--for he had no aptitude for pleasure
+hunting--his restless energies would probably have spurred him into
+some creditable field of effort, natural science, mathematics, or
+philology, to all of which he inclined. But Fate had not been so
+propitious; and to achieve the task which she had forgotten was the
+zenith of his aspirations.
+
+There was one person who had always been an eyesore to him, and a
+stumbling block in his way. This was Vassall Morton. Morton, at
+twenty-three, was, in feeling, still a boy; Vinal, at twenty-three,
+was a well-ripened man. But the man hated the boy; and the boy
+retorted with a dislike which was largely dashed with scorn. Vinal
+felt the scorn, and it cut him to the quick, the more so, that he
+could not hide from himself that he stood in awe of Morton. He hated
+him, too, because he had that which he, Vinal, lacked--fortune, good
+health, steady nerve. He hated him, because he thought that Morton
+understood him; because the frankness of the latter's nature rebuked
+the secrecy of his own; and, above all, because he saw in him his most
+formidable rival in the affections of Edith Leslie.
+
+Vinal's nature, self-drilled as it was, could not be called a cold
+one. It had in it spots and veins of sensitiveness. When a child, this
+sensitiveness had often been morbidly awake, and had caused him much
+suffering; but as he grew towards manhood, it had been overlaid and
+hidden by very different qualities, not often found in connection with
+it. Of late, however, he had been in love,--with Edith Leslie, as well
+as with her money,--and the dormant susceptibilities of his childhood
+had been in some sort reawakened.
+
+His mind, inharmonious and unhappy as nature and himself had jointly
+made it, had never yet felt a pang so sharp as when, arriving at
+Matherton, he learned privately from Colonel Leslie the engagement
+which had passed between Morton and his daughter. Miss Leslie's twice
+rejected suitor compressed his thin lips in silence; it was his usual
+sign of strong emotion. Leslie pressed his favorite's hand,--he would
+fain have called him son-in-law,--and, turning away abruptly, Vinal
+left the house.
+
+The man whom he envied and hated had triumphed; robbed him of fortune,
+and robbed him of happiness; happiness of which Morton had had already
+his full share, and a fortune which would but swell the ample bulk of
+his possessions. Vinal was frenzied with grief, rage, and jealousy.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIV.
+
+  _Clo_. That she should love this fellow and refuse me!
+         If it be sin to make a true election, she is damned.
+                                                      _Cymbeline_.
+
+
+Morton sat in the reading room of the National, the grand hotel of
+Matherton. It was by no means an elegant apartment. In the middle was
+a table covered with newspapers; at the sides were desks, likewise
+covered with newspapers, padlocked together in files. The walls and
+the ceiling glared a drear monotony of white, broken, however, by
+sundry ornaments, worthy the attention of the curious. Here, framed in
+birdseye maple, was the engraved likeness of "Old Hickory," with hat
+and cane in hand, a cloak to hide the gauntness of his figure, and
+hair bristling in electrified disorder. Here, too, was a colored print
+of the favorite steamboat "Queen of the Lake;" Niagara Falls, by a
+license of art, forming a blue curtain in the background. At its side
+was a lithograph of the Empire Hotel, New York, the sidewalk in front
+being embellished with groups of pedestrians, dressed with matchless
+elegance, after the fashion plates; and, over against this, an
+advertisement of Jessup's steel, encircled with a lithographed halo,
+composed of chisels, axes, hammers, saws, and ploughshares.
+
+The apartment, thus furnished and thus adorned, had, besides Morton,
+but two occupants; the one a factory agent, who stood at a desk,
+absorbed in the New Orleans Picayune; the other a country tailor, who
+displayed the sign of the "Full-dressed Man" at the neighboring
+village of Mudfield, and was now seated at a window, busied in
+polishing a huge garnet ring, which he wore, with a red silk
+handkerchief.
+
+In a window recess, aloof from the tailor's, sat Morton, scarcely
+conscious of any presence but that of his own thoughts. He had found a
+philosopher's stone; and through the rest of his life, this
+comfortless reading room of the Matherton Hotel, this sanctuary of dry
+and weary Yankeedom, was linked in his memory with dreams of golden
+brightness.
+
+A firm, quick step crossed the threshold, and paced the sanded floor.
+Till this moment, Morton had remained absorbed, shut in from the outer
+world; but now an influence, which believers may call magnetism, made
+him look up and bend forward from the recess to see who the sudden
+stranger might be. The stranger turned also, and showed the pale,
+fixed face of Horace Vinal.
+
+Morton was disposed to be on good terms with all the world, and more
+especially with his defeated rival.
+
+"Good morning, Vinal," he said, holding out his hand, which Vinal
+took, his cold, thin fingers trembling in the warm grasp of Morton. He
+had had no thought of finding him there; the encounter was unlooked
+for as it was unwelcome; and, as he muttered a few passing words of
+commonplace, his features grew haggard with the violence of struggling
+emotion. He turned away, went to a desk, pretended to read a newspaper
+for a few moments, and then left the room.
+
+Morton looked after him. He had no doubt that Vinal had heard of his
+misfortune; and the first sense of pain which, since the evening
+before last, the successful lover had felt, now crossed his mind.
+
+"It's devilish hard for him, poor fellow," he thought, as, measuring
+Vinal's passion by his own, a vivid image of the latter's suffering
+rose upon him.
+
+Vinal strode along a corridor of the hotel. There was no one to see
+him. His forehead was knit, his nostrils distended, his jaws clinched.
+A man, whom he knew, came from a side passage. Instantly Vinal's face
+was calm again, and as the other passed he greeted him with a smile.
+He went out into the main street of the town, along which he walked
+for a few rods with his usual air of alert composure; then turned down
+a narrow and unfrequented by-way. Here his whole bearing changed. He
+trod the gravelled sidewalk with a fierce, nervous motion; and with
+hands clinched and eyes fixed on the ground, muttered through his set
+teeth,--
+
+"Fair or foul, by G--, I'll be even with him."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXV.
+
+  O, quha is this has done this deed,
+    This ill deed done to me?
+  To send me out this time o' the zeir,
+    To sail upon the sea.--_Percy Reliques_.
+
+  A slave whose gall coins slanders like a mint.
+                                       _Troilus and Cressida_.
+
+
+"Your proposal flatters me, Mr. Morton; and, in many points of view,
+the connection you offer would be a desirable one,--a very desirable
+one. But I must say to you plainly, that if my wishes alone were
+consulted, my daughter would bestow her hand elsewhere. Perhaps I need
+not tell you that Horace Vinal, who was my ward, and my late wife's
+relation, and who has been my partner in business for a year or more,
+is a young man whom I have looked upon as my son, and whom it was my
+very earnest hope to have seen such in reality. You who have had an
+opportunity of knowing him can hardly be surprised that, after so long
+an intimacy, I should prefer this connection to any other. I have seen
+him in all the relations of life, and the more I have seen the more I
+have learned to esteem him."
+
+"You speak with a good deal of emphasis of his character. May I ask if
+any part of your objection to me rests on that score."
+
+"In a matter like this, I am bound to be frank with you. In many
+quarters, I hear you very highly spoken of,--so highly, in fact, that
+I am disposed to take with every qualification what I have heard to
+your disadvantage."
+
+"Pray, what is that?"
+
+"I was a soldier once, and don't incline to inquire too closely into
+the way young men may see fit to amuse themselves. But on a point
+where my daughter's happiness might be involved----"
+
+"Upon my word, sir, I don't understand you."
+
+"Well, Mr. Morton, I hear--that is, I have learned--that, like other
+young men of leisure, you have had your _bonnes fortunes_, and winged
+other game than partridges and woodcock."
+
+Morton looked at him in surprise. The truth was, that, some time
+before, the discreet and far-sighted Vinal had contrived to inoculate
+his patron with this calumny, which he thought the species most likely
+to take readily. And such had been his tact, that Leslie, though well
+imbued with the idea, would have been puzzled to say whence he had
+received it. A man of shallow-brained uprightness like his, if he
+yields too easy a belief to falsehood, has the advantage of yielding
+also an easy belief to truth. A few words from Morton sufficed to
+carry conviction to the frank-hearted auditor, who, feeling that, at
+least as regarded its worst features, his charge must be groundless,
+hastened to make the _amende_.
+
+"Your word is enough, Mr. Morton, and I owe you an apology for
+imagining that you could be false or heartless in any connection
+whatever. I think, however, that you can see how, without
+disparagement to you, I should still regret that Horace Vinal, who is
+personally so near to me, so devoted to my interests, and so strongly
+attached to my daughter, should be disappointed. I advised him,
+yesterday, to go to Europe, to recruit his health. I am told that you
+had yourself some plan of the kind."
+
+"A very indefinite one, sir; in fact, amounting to none at all."
+
+"Go this autumn; be absent a year,--that is not too long for seeing
+Europe,--and if at the end of that time you and my daughter should
+remain as earnest in this matter as you are now, why, I am not the man
+to persist in opposing her inclination."
+
+The sentence was hard; but there was no appeal. Leslie had told Vinal
+the day before that he would despatch Morton on his travels,
+intimating a hope that a long separation might bring about a change in
+his daughter's feelings. Morton saw nothing for it but acquiescence;
+to which, indeed, Miss Leslie urged him, confiding in the strength of
+his attachment, and happy to reconcile adverse duties and inclinations
+at any price.
+
+Meanwhile, he had not the smallest suspicion of the subtle trick which
+his rival had played him. "This is a charitable world!" he thought;
+"one must keep the beaten track, look demure, and talk virtue, or, in
+one shape or another, it will be the worse for him."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVI.
+
+  Then loathed he in his native land to dwell.--_Childe Harold_.
+
+_Slend_. A gentleman born, Master Parson, who writes himself
+_Armigero_; in any bill, warrant, quittance, or obligation,
+_Armigero_!
+
+_Shal_. Ay, that I do; and have done any time these three hundred
+years.--_Merry Wives of Windsor_.
+
+
+The engagement of Miss Leslie and Morton was to be kept secret till
+the latter's return. None knew it but Leslie and Vinal. Vinal, within
+a few weeks, sailed for Europe, meaning, however, to be absent only
+three or four months. Other motives apart, he felt, and Leslie saw,
+that his health, always shivering in the wind, demanded the change.
+
+Meanwhile, Morton made the best of a six weeks' reprieve; and hampered
+as he was by the injunction of secrecy, and the precautions which it
+demanded, he crowded the short interval with half a lifetime of mixed
+pleasure and pain, expectation and anxiety.
+
+It was past but too quickly; in three days more he must set sail.
+Walking the street in a rueful mood, he met his classmate, Chester,
+who, having made the tour of Europe, had lost his obsolete ways, and
+grown backward into a man of the present world.
+
+"Good morning, Morton. Making calls?--I see it by your face."
+
+"Yes; it's a thing that must be done sometimes."
+
+"_Pour prendre congé_, I suppose. I hear you are off very soon."
+
+"The day after to-morrow."
+
+"You couldn't do a wiser thing. When a man finds himself in a scrape,
+he had better get out of it as soon as possible; therefore, if he
+finds himself born in America, he had better forswear his country."
+
+"Patriotic sentiments those."
+
+"I can't answer for the patriotism; but they are the sentiments of a
+true son of the Pilgrim Fathers, who renounced their country because
+they couldn't stand it, and came over here. I mean to follow their
+example, and go back again. They fled--so the story goes--from
+persecution. I mean to fly from persecution too,--the persecution of a
+social atmosphere that I find hostile to my constitution, and a
+climate not fit for a reasonable being to live in."
+
+"I don't know why you should be so fierce against the climate. By your
+look, you seem to thrive in it."
+
+"The bodily man thrives passably well. It's the immortal part that
+suffers. Fierce! why, the climate makes me fierce. Who can be a
+philosopher in such a climate?--or a poet?--or an artist?--any thing
+but a steam engine? It is a perpetual spur, an unremitting goad.
+Nobody is happy in it except the men who ride on locomotives and
+conduct express trains,--always on the move. O, so you go in here, do
+you?"
+
+"Yes, to see Mrs. Primrose. Will you come too?"
+
+"No, thank you," replied Chester, walking away, with a comical look.
+
+Morton rang the door bell, and found Mrs. Primrose at home.
+
+There was a book on the table. He took it up. It was a novel, lately
+published.
+
+Morton praised it.
+
+Mrs. Primrose dissented, with great emphasis.
+
+"You are severe upon the book."
+
+"Not more so than it deserves," replied Mrs. Primrose; "it is too
+coarse to be permitted for a moment."
+
+"And yet the moral tone seems good enough."
+
+"I do not blame the morality so much as the bad taste. It is full of
+slang dialogue, and was certainly written by a very unrefined person."
+
+"It makes its characters speak as such people speak in real life."
+
+"It is not merely that," said Mrs. Primrose, slightly pursing her
+mouth; "it contains, besides, expressions absolutely reprehensible."
+
+"One does not admire its good taste; but a little blunt Saxon never
+did much harm."
+
+"No daughter of mine shall read it," said Mrs. Primrose, with gravity.
+
+"I imagine that if literature is to reflect human life truly, it can
+hardly be limited to the language of the drawing room."
+
+"Then it should be banished from the drawing room," said Mrs.
+Primrose, with severity.
+
+Here several visitors appeared, and Morton presently took leave.
+
+He was but a few rods from the door, when a quick step came behind
+him.
+
+"Hallo, colonel, where are you going at such a rate?"
+
+Morton turned, and saw his classmate, Rosny.
+
+"Why, Dick, I'm glad to see you."
+
+"They tell me you're bound for Europe."
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Well, it's a good move. If a man has money, he had better enjoy it."
+
+"I shall be driving out of town in an hour. Come and dine with me."
+
+"Sorry, colonel, but it can't be done. I'm out on the stump in the
+cause of democracy. Shall be off westward in two hours, and shake the
+dust from my shoes against this nest of whiggery and old fogyism."
+
+"Democracy is under the weather just now, Dick."
+
+"Just now, I grant you. What with log cabins and hard cider, and
+coons, the enlightened people are pretty well gammoned. But there's a
+good time coming. Before you know it, democracy will be upon you again
+like a load of bricks. Why, what can you expect of a party that will
+take a coon for its emblem? I saw one chained up this morning in the
+yard of Taft's tavern, a dirty, mean-looking beast, about half way
+between a jackal and an owl. He looked uncommonly well in health, and
+could puff out his fur as round as a muff. But, when you looked close,
+there was nothing of him but skin and bone; exactly like the whig
+party. He put up his nose, and smiled at me. I suppose--damn his
+impudence--he took me for a whig. That coon is going into a decline.
+It won't be long before he is taken by the tail and tossed over
+Charles River bridge; and there he'll lie on the mud at low tide, for
+a genuine emblem of the defunct whig party, and a solemn warning to
+all coon worshippers."
+
+"Let the whigs alone, Dick; and if you won't dine with me, come in
+here and drink a glass of claret."
+
+"That I'll do." And they went into the hotel accordingly.
+
+As Rosny took up his glass, Morton observed a large old seal ring on
+his finger.
+
+"Do you call yourself a democrat, and yet always wear that ring of
+yours?"
+
+"Why, what's the matter with the ring?"
+
+"Nothing, except that it is a badge of feudalism, aristocracy, and
+every thing else abominable to your party."
+
+"Pshaw, man. Look here: do you see that crest, cut in the stone? That
+crest followed King Francis to Pavia, and when Henri Quatre charged at
+Ivry, it wasn't far behind him. It is mine by right. It comes down to
+me, straight as a bee line, through twenty generations. And do you
+think I'm going to renounce my birthright? No, be gad!"
+
+"I wouldn't. But what becomes of your democracy?"
+
+"Democracy is tall enough to take care of itself. I wear that ring;
+but it don't follow that I stand on my ancestry. You needn't laugh:
+the case is just this. If the blood in my veins makes me stand to my
+colors where another man would flinch, or hold my head up where
+another would be sprawling on his back; if it gives me a better pluck,
+grit, go-ahead; why, _that's_ what I stand on,--_that's_ my patent of
+nobility. What the deuse are you laughing at?--the personal
+quality,--don't you see?--and not the ancestry."
+
+"If you stand on personal merit, you'll be sure to go under before
+long. The democracy are growing as jealous of that as of ancestry, or
+of wealth either."
+
+"Why, what do you know about politics? You never had any thing to do
+with them. You are no more fit for a politician than for a fiddler."
+
+"I'm glad you think so. If I must serve the country in any public
+capacity, I pray Heaven it may be as a scavenger sooner than as a
+politician. Who can touch pitch and be clean? I'll pay back your
+compliment, Dick. You are a great deal too downright to succeed in
+public life."
+
+"I'll find a way or make one. But I tell you, colonel,"--and a shade
+of something like disappointment passed over his face,--"if a man
+wants the people's votes, it's fifty to one that he's got to sink
+himself lower than the gutter before he gets them."
+
+"Yes, and when the people have turned out of office every man of
+virtue, honor, manliness, independence, and ability, then they will
+fling up their caps and brag that their day is come, and their triumph
+finished over the damned aristocracy."
+
+"You are an unbeliever. You haven't half faith enough in the people.
+Now I put it to your common sense. Isn't there a thousand times more
+patriotism in the laboring classes in this country--yes, and about as
+much intelligence--as in the rabble of sham fashionables at Saratoga,
+or any other muster of our moneyed snobs and flunkeys?"
+
+"Exceptions excepted, yes."
+
+"War to the knife with the codfish aristocracy! They are a kind of
+mongrel beast, expressly devised and concocted for me to kick. I don't
+mean the gentlemen with money; nor the good fellows with money. I know
+what a gentleman is; yes, and a lady, too, though I do make stump
+speeches, and shake hands all round with the sovereign people. That
+sort are welcome to their money. No, sir, it's the moneyed snobs, the
+gilded toadstools, that it's my mission to pitch into."
+
+"Excuse me a moment, Dick," said Morton, suddenly leaping from his
+seat, as a lady passed the window.
+
+"A lady, eh! Then I'll be off."
+
+"No, no, stay where you are. I'll be back again in three minutes."
+
+He ran out of the hotel, and walked at his best pace in pursuit of
+Fanny Euston, who, on her part, was walking with an earnest air, like
+one whose thoughts were engaged with some engrossing subject. He
+reached her side, and made a movement to accost her; but she seemed
+unconscious of his presence.
+
+"Miss Fanny Euston, will you pardon me for breaking in upon your
+reveries?"
+
+She turned and recognized him, but her smile of recognition was a very
+mournful one.
+
+"I have stopped you to take my leave,--a good deal more in short hand
+than I meant it should have been. I shall sail for Europe the day
+after to-morrow."
+
+"Yes? Is not that a little sudden?"
+
+"More sudden than I wish it were. I am not at all in a travelling
+humor. I have been too much pressed for time to ride out, as I meant
+to do, to your father's house."
+
+"We are all in town now. My father came from New Orleans yesterday,
+very ill."
+
+"I did not hear of it. I trust not dangerously ill."
+
+"He is dying. He cannot live a week."
+
+Morton well knew the strength and depth of her attachment to her
+father. He pressed her hand in silent sympathy.
+
+"It grieves me, Fanny," he said, after a moment, "to part from you
+under such a cloud."
+
+"Good by," she replied, returning the friendly pressure. "I wish you
+with all my heart a pleasant and prosperous journey."
+
+Morton turned back, wondering at the sudden dignity of manner which
+grief had given to the wild and lawless Fanny Euston.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVII.
+
+_Ham_. Thou wouldst not think how ill's all here about my heart, but
+it is no matter.
+
+_Hor_. Nay, good my lord----
+
+_Ham_. It is but foolery; but it is such a kind of gain-giving as
+would perhaps trouble a woman.
+
+_Hor_. If your mind dislike any thing, obey it.
+
+_Ham_. Not a whit. We defy augury.
+
+
+Morton's day of departure came. It was a comfortless, savage, gusty
+morning, an east wind blowing in from the bay. The hour to set sail
+was near; he should have been on board; but still he lingered with
+Edith Leslie. The secrecy on which her father insisted made it
+impossible for her to go with him to the ship.
+
+Morton forced himself away; his hand was on the door, but his heart
+failed him, and he turned back again. On the mind of each there was
+something more than the pain of a year's separation. A dark
+foreboding, a cloud of dull and sullen portent, hung over them both.
+The smooth and bright crusting with which habit and training had iced
+over the warm nature of Edith Leslie was broken and swept away; and as
+Morton seized her hands, she disengaged herself, and, throwing herself
+on his neck, sobbed convulsively. Morton pressed her to his heart, and
+buried his face in her clustering tresses; then, breaking from her,
+ran blindly from the house. He repaired to the house of Meredith, who
+met him at the door.
+
+"You've no time to lose. Here's the carriage. Your trunks are all
+right. Come on."
+
+They drove towards the wharf.
+
+"I'd give my head to change places with you," said Meredith.
+
+"I wish you could."
+
+There was so much pain and dejection in his look, that his friend
+could not fail to observe it.
+
+"You don't want to go, then? I have noticed all along that you seemed
+devilish cool about it."
+
+"Ned," said Morton, "I never used to think myself superstitious; but I
+begin now to change my mind. Heaven knows why, but I have strange
+notions running in my brain. My dog howled all last night; and not
+long ago, an owl yelled over my head, and that, too, at a time---- But
+you'll think I have lost my wits."
+
+Meredith, in truth, was greatly amazed at this betrayal of a weakness
+of which, long and closely as he had known his companion, he had never
+suspected him.
+
+"Why, colonel, I have seen you set out on a journey as long and fifty
+times as hazardous as this, as carelessly as if you were going to a
+dinner party."
+
+"I know it; but times are changed with me. I am not quite the child,
+though, that you may suppose."
+
+"If you have such a feeling about going, I would give it up. It's not
+too late."
+
+"No, I haven't sunk yet to that pass." And, as he spoke, the carriage
+stopped at the pier.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVIII.
+
+  I can't but say it is an awkward sight
+  To see one's native land receding through
+  The growing waters.--_Byron_.
+
+
+The day brightened as the steamer bore out to sea, and the sun
+streamed along the fast-receding shore. Morton stood at the ship's
+stern, gazing back longingly towards his native rocks. Though far from
+inclining to echo those set terms of praise which the progeny of the
+Puritans are fond of lavishing on themselves, he felt himself bound
+with enduring cords to the woods and hills of New England, the scene
+of his boyish aspirations, of his pure ambition, and his devoted love;
+and while the crags of Gloucester faded from his sight, his eyes were
+dimmed as he turned them towards those rugged shores.
+
+"Well, young man, seems to me you look a leetle kind o' streak-ed at
+the idee of quitting home," said a husky voice at his elbow.
+
+Morton turned, and saw a small man, with a meagre, hatchet face, and a
+huge pair of black whiskers hedging round a countenance so dead and
+pallid that one could see at a glance that he was in a consumption. He
+had an eye hard as a flint, one that might have faced a Gorgon without
+risk. Morton regarded him with an expression which told him, as
+plainly as words, to go about his business; but he might as well have
+tried to look an image of brass out of countenance.
+
+"Now _I_," pursued the small man, "have some reason to feel bad. It's
+an even bet if ever I see Boston lighthouse again--about six of one
+and half a dozen of the other. I consider myself a gone sucker. I've
+ben going, going, for about two years, and pretty soon I expect I
+shall be going, going, gone."
+
+These words, uttered in a sort of bravado, were interrupted by a
+violent fit of coughing.
+
+"Ever crossed the pond before?" asked the small man, as soon as he
+could gain breath.
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Business?"
+
+"No."
+
+"I thought not. You don't look like a business man. I know a business
+man, a mile off, by the cut of his jib. I'm a business man myself, and
+a hard used one at that."
+
+Here a fresh fit of coughing began.
+
+"Bad health; bad health, and damned hard luck, that's what has
+finished up this child. If it worn't for them, I should be worth my
+hundred thousand dollars this very minute."
+
+Another fit of coughing.
+
+"So you've ben across before. Well, so've I. That was three years ago,
+by the doctors' advice. It's great advice they give a man. It's good
+for their pockets, and there's deused little else it's good for. I
+spent that year over three thousand dollars; and if I'd staid to home,
+and stuck to my business, _I_ should have ben jest about as well, and
+cleared,--well, yes, I should have cleared double the money, at the
+smallest figger."
+
+More coughing.
+
+"I expect you travel for pleasure."
+
+Morton replied by an inarticulate sound, which the other might
+interpret as he pleased. He chose to interpret it in the affirmative.
+
+"Well, that's all very well for a young man like you. You are young
+enough to like to look at the curiosities, and take an interest in
+what's going on; but I'm too old a bird for that. One night I was down
+to Palermo, there was an eruption of Mount Etna going on. We were on
+the piazzy at the back of Marston the consul's house, and there it was
+blazing away to kill, way off on the further side of the island. Well,
+the ladies was all O-ing and Ah-ing like fits. 'Nonsense!' says I; 'it
+ain't a circumstance to the fire that burnt down my splendid new
+freestone-front store on Broadway. Now that was something worth saying
+O at.'"
+
+More coughing.
+
+"There was a young man there from Boston, and we went round to look at
+the churches. He was all for staring at the pictures, and the marble
+images, and the Lord knows what all, while I went and paced off the
+length of the church from the door up to the altar, and then again
+crosswise. There wasn't a church in Palermo worth shaking a stick at
+that I didn't know the size of, and have it all set down on paper."
+
+"And what good did that do you?"
+
+"What good did that do me? Why, I had something to show for my pains,
+something that would keep. They wanted me to ride up on the back of a
+jackass to the top of a mountain to see a cavern where some she saint
+or other used to live,--St. Rosa Lee, or some such nigger-minstrel
+name."
+
+"St. Rosalie, I suppose you mean."
+
+"St. Rosaly or St. Rosa Lee, it comes to pretty much the same. She was
+fool enough to leave a comfortable home--inside of a palace, too, be
+gad--and go and live all alone by herself in that cavern. Well, they
+wanted me to ride up on the jackass and see it. 'No,' says I, 'you
+don't ketch me,' says I; 'if I did, I might as well change places with
+the jackass right away,' says I."
+
+A fresh fit of coughing.
+
+"Yes, sir, bad health and hard luck, that's ben the finishing of me,
+or else this minute I could show you my solid hundred thousand. The
+fire was what begun it all. A splendid freestone-front store, that
+hadn't its beat in all New York, chock full of goods, that worn't more
+than half covered by the insurance, burnt clean down to the sidewalk!
+Then come the great failure you've heard of--Bragg, Dash, and Bustup.
+I tell you, I was sucked in there to a handsome figger. Top of all
+that, my health caved in,--uh,--uh,--uh." Here the coughing grew
+violent. "Well, I'm a gone sucker, and it's no use crying over spilt
+milk. But if it worn't for bad health and damned hard luck, I should
+have been worth a hun--uh--uh--uh--a hundred thousand
+dol--uh--uh--dollars,--uh--uh--uh--uh--uh."
+
+"This wind is too sharp for you," observed Morton.
+
+"Fact," said the invalid; "I can't stand it no how."
+
+He went down to the cabin, Morton's eye following him in pity and
+disgust.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIX.
+
+  The useful science of the world to know,
+  Which books can never teach, nor pedants show.--_Lyttleton_.
+
+
+The steamer, in due time, reached Liverpool; but Morton remained only
+a few days in England, crossing to Boulogne, and thence to Paris. Here
+he arrived late one afternoon; and taking his seat at the _table
+d'hôte_ of Meurice's Hotel, he presently discovered among the guests
+the familiar profile of Vinal, who was just returned from a flying
+tour through the provinces. Vinal seemed not to see him; but at the
+close of the dinner, Morton came behind his chair and spoke to him. At
+his side sat a young man, whose face Morton remembered to have seen
+before. Vinal introduced him as Mr. Richards. When a boy, he had been
+a schoolmate of them both, and now called himself a medical student,
+living on the other side of the Seine. Having been in Paris for two
+years or more, he had, as he prided himself, a thorough knowledge of
+it; that is to say, he knew its sights of all kinds, and places of
+amusement of high and low degree. The sagacious Vinal thought himself
+happy in so able and zealous a guide.
+
+"Mr. Vinal and I are going on an excursion about town to-night," said
+Richards; "won't you go with us?"
+
+"Thank you," replied Morton, "I have letters to write, and do not mean
+to go out this evening."
+
+Vinal and Richards accordingly set forth without him, the latter
+acquitting himself wholly to his companion's satisfaction and his own.
+Vinal, who inclined very little to youthful amusements, contemplated
+all he saw with the eye of a philosopher rather than of a sybarite,
+looking upon it as a curious study of human nature, in the knowledge
+of which he was always eager to perfect himself. In the course of
+their excursion, they entered a large and handsome building on the
+Boulevard des Italiens. Here they passed through a succession of rooms
+filled with men engaged in various games of hazard, more or less deep,
+and came at length to two small apartments, which seemed to form the
+penetralia of the temple.
+
+In the farther of these was a table, about which sat some eight or ten
+well-dressed men, and at the head, a sedate, collected,
+vigilant-looking person, with a little wooden rake in his hand.
+
+"_Messieurs, tout est fait. Rien ne va plus_," he said, drawing
+towards him a plentiful heap of gold coin, almost at the instant that
+Vinal and Richards came in. The game was that moment finished.
+
+As he spoke, a strong, thick-set man rose abruptly from the table,
+muttering a savage oath through his black moustache, and brushing
+fiercely past the two visitors, went out at the door. Richards pressed
+Vinal's arm, as a hint that he should observe him. As the game was not
+immediately resumed, they soon left the room; and after staking and
+losing a few small pieces at another table, returned to the street.
+
+"Did you observe that man who passed us?" asked Richards.
+
+"Yes. He seemed out of humor with his luck."
+
+"He was clean emptied out; I would swear to it. I was afraid he would
+see me as he went by, but he didn't."
+
+"Why, do you know him?"
+
+"O, yes; and you ought to know him too, if you want to understand how
+things are managed hereabouts. He's a
+patriot,--agitator,--democrat,--red republican,--conspirator,--you can
+call him whichever you like, according to taste. He's mixed up with
+all the secret clubs, secret committees, and what not, from one end of
+the continent to the other. He's a sort of political sapper and
+miner,--not exactly like our patriots of '76, but all's fair that aims
+a kick at the House of Hapsburg."
+
+"Has he any special spite in that quarter?"
+
+"He has been intriguing so long in Austria and Lombardy, that now he
+could not show his face there a moment without being arrested. So he
+is living here, where he keeps very quiet at present, for fear of
+consequences."
+
+"What is his name?"
+
+"Speyer,--Henry Speyer."
+
+"A German?"
+
+"No; he's of no nation at all. He belongs to a sort of mongrel breed,
+from the Rock of Gibraltar,--a cross of half the nations in Europe.
+They go by the name of Rock Scorpions. Speyer is a compound of German,
+Spanish, English, French, Genoese, and Moorish, and the result is the
+greatest rascal that ever went unhung. Still you ought to know him; he
+is a curiosity,--one of the men of the times. If you want to know the
+secret springs of the revolution that all the newspapers will be full
+of not many years from this, why, Speyer is one of them."
+
+"But is there not some risk in being in communication with such a
+man?"
+
+"Yes, if one isn't cautious. But, as I'll manage it, it will be
+perfectly safe."
+
+Vinal, though morbidly timorous as respected peril to life or limb,
+was not wholly deficient in the courage of the intriguer--a quality
+quite distinct from the courage of the soldier. Any thing which
+promised to show him human nature under a new aspect, or disclose to
+him a hidden spring of human action, had a resistless attraction in
+his eyes. He therefore assented to Richards's proposal, and promised
+that, at some more auspicious time, he would go with him to the
+patriot's lodging.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXX.
+
+  Those travelled youths whom tender mothers wean
+  And send abroad to see and to be seen,
+  Have made all Europe's vices so well known,
+  They seem almost as natural as our own.--_Churchill_.
+
+
+On the next morning, Vinal, Morton, and two other young Americans were
+seated together in the coffee room at Meurice's. They were discussing
+plans of travel.
+
+"Then you don't intend to stay long in Paris," said one of the
+strangers to Morton.
+
+"Not at present. I shall set out in a few days for Vienna, and then go
+down the Danube."
+
+"That's an original idea. What will you find there worth seeing?"
+
+"It's a fancy of mine. There is no place in Europe where one can see
+such a conglomerate of nations and races as in the provinces along the
+Danube. I like to see the human animal in all his varieties,--that's
+my specialty."
+
+"But what facilities will you find there for travelling?"
+
+"O, I shall be content with any that offer; the vehicles of the
+country, whatever they are. I don't believe in travelling _en grand
+seigneur_. By mixing with the people, and doing at Rome as the Romans
+do, one learns in a month more than he could learn in ten years by the
+other way."
+
+"You'll take your servant with you, I suppose."
+
+"No. I shall discharge him when I leave Paris."
+
+After conversing for some time longer, Morton and the two young men
+left the room, while Vinal still remained faithful to the attractions
+of his omelet. He was interrupted by the advent of the small man who
+had accosted Morton in the steamer, and had since favored him with his
+company from Liverpool to Paris.
+
+"Well, here's a pretty business, damned if there isn't," said the new
+arrival, seating himself indignantly.
+
+"What's the matter?" asked Vinal.
+
+"What's the matter! Why, there's a good deal the matter. There was a
+young man in Philadelphy named Wilkins,--John Wilkins,--I've known him
+ever sence he was knee high to a toad, and a likelier young feller
+there isn't in the States. He was goin' on to make a right smart,
+active, business man, too. Well, he was clerk in one of the biggest
+drug concerns south of New York city,--Gooch and Scammony,--I tell
+you, they do a tall business out west, and no mistake. No, _sir_,
+Gooch and Scammony ain't hardly got their beat in the drug business
+nowhere."
+
+"But what about the clerk?"
+
+"What about him? Why, that's just what I was going on to tell you.
+Well, John, he had a little money laid up; so he thought he'd just
+come out and see a bit of the world. Well, there was a German there at
+Philadelphy who had to cut stick from the old country on account of
+some political muss or other. John and he worn't on good terms;--it
+was about a gal, John says. However, jest about the time John talked
+of coming out to Europe, the German comes and makes it up, and
+pretends to be friends again. 'John,' says he, 'I've got relations out
+to Vienny, where I come from; first-rate, genteel folks; now,' says
+he, 'perhaps you might like me to make you acquainted with 'em. They'd
+do the handsome thing by you, and no mistake.' 'Well,' says John, 'I
+don't mind if you do.' So the German gives him some letters; and, sure
+enough, they treated him very civil; but the very next morning, before
+he was out of bed, up comes the police, and carries him off to jail;
+and that, I guess, would have been about the last we'd ever have seen
+of John Wilkins, if, by the slimmest ghost of a chance, he hadn't got
+word to our minister, and the minister blowed out so hard about it,
+that they just let John go, and said they was very sorry, and it was
+all a mistake, but he'd better make tracks out of Austria in double
+quick time, because if he didn't, they didn't know as there was any
+body there would undertake to be responsible for what might happen."
+
+Here the orator's breath quite failed, and he coughed till his hatchet
+face turned blue. Vinal reflected in silence.
+
+"Wasn't he an Amerikin?" pursued the small man, "and didn't he have an
+Amerikin passport in his pocket? I expect to go where I please, and
+keep what company I please,--uh,--uh,--uh. I'm an Amerikin,--uh,--and
+that's enough; and a considerable wide margin to
+spare,--uh,--uh,--uh."
+
+"But what evidence is there that the German had any thing to do with
+the affair?"
+
+"That's the deused part of the business. There ain't no evidence to
+fix it on him."
+
+"Were the letters he gave your friend sealed?"
+
+"Not a bit of it. They was open, and read jest as fair as need be."
+
+"Probably he was imprudent, and said something which compromised him.
+Stone walls, you know, have ears in Austria."
+
+"Well, I don't know."
+
+"It is very easy for an American to get into trouble with the Austrian
+government. There is a natural antipathy between them."
+
+"Damn such a government."
+
+"Exactly; you're quite right there."
+
+"Why, if you or me was to go down to Austria, and happen to rip out
+what we thought of 'em, where's the guarantee that they wouldn't stick
+us down in some of their prisons, and nobody be any wiser for it?"
+
+"There is no guarantee at all."
+
+"I've heerd said that such things has happened."
+
+"No doubt of it. About this German,--I should advise your friend to be
+cautious how he accuses him of any intention of having him arrested.
+If the letters had been sealed, there might have been some ground for
+suspicion; but as the case stands, I do not see how there can be any.
+And it is a little hard upon a man, when he meant to do a kindness, to
+charge him with playing such a trick as that."
+
+"Well, it may be as you think. It looks like enough, any way."
+
+The small man addressed himself to his breakfast. Vinal sat playing
+with his spoon, his brain filled with busy and feverish thoughts.
+
+In a few minutes, a messenger from an American banking house came in,
+looking about the room as if in search of some person. Observing
+Vinal, whom he had seen before, he asked if he knew where Mr. Morton
+was.
+
+"Letters there for me?" demanded Vinal, taking several which the
+messenger held in his hand, and glancing over the directions.
+
+"No, sir, they are all Mr. Morton's."
+
+At that instant Vinal discovered the well-remembered handwriting of
+Edith Leslie. His pale face grew a shade paler.
+
+"O, Mr. Morton's! I don't know where you will find him," and he gave
+back the letters to the messenger, who presently left the room.
+
+Vinal sat for a few minutes more, brooding in silence; then slowly
+rose, and walked away. In going towards the room of the hotel which he
+occupied, he passed along a corridor, opposite the end of which opened
+a parlor occupied by Morton. The door was open, and Vinal, as he
+advanced, could plainly see his rival within. Morton had been on the
+point of going out. His hat and gloves lay on the table at his side;
+near them were three or four sealed letters; another--Vinal well knew
+from whom--was open in his hands; and as he stood bending over it,
+there was a sunlight in the eye of the successful lover which shot
+deadly envy into the breast of Vinal. Hate and jealousy gnawed and
+rankled at his heart.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXI.
+
+  Though I do hate him as I do hell pains,
+  I must throw out a flag and sign of love.--_Othello_.
+
+
+That day Vinal drove to the Quartier Latin, called upon his friend
+Richards, and asked him to dine at the Trois Frères Provençaux. Mr.
+Richards was never known to decline such an invitation.
+
+To the Trois Frères accordingly they repaired. Richards, whose social
+position at home was much inferior to that of his entertainer, thought
+the latter a capital fellow; especially when Vinal flattered him by
+deferring to his better taste and experience in the ordering of the
+dinner. But when, after nightfall, they issued forth again upon the
+open area of the Palais Royal, the delicate Vinal shivered with the
+cold. A chill wind and a dreary rain had set in, and Vinal, always
+cautious in such matters, said that before proceeding on their
+evening's amusements, he would go to Meurice's and get an overcoat.
+
+The overcoat being found, Vinal, buttoned to the chin, came down the
+stairway, and rejoined Richards.
+
+Morton had just before sent a servant for a carriage, to drive to the
+opera, and was waiting wrapped in his cloak, on the steps outside the
+door.
+
+"What shall our first move be?" asked Richards of Vinal, as they
+passed out.
+
+"Whatever you like."
+
+"You had better give the word."
+
+"Then suppose we go and see your friend, the professor."
+
+"Who the deuse is Richards's friend, the professor?" thought Morton,
+as the others passed without observing him.
+
+"The professor" was a cant term for Mr. Henry Speyer.
+
+Speyer lived in an obscure part of the Latin quarter; and Richards,
+who was vain of his intimacy with this scoundrel, as indicating how
+deeply he was versed in Paris life, approached his lodging with much
+circumspection, by dim and devious routes.
+
+"My name is Wilton, and I hail from New Orleans," said Vinal, as they
+reached the patriot's threshold.
+
+As Mr. Wilton, of New Orleans, then, Vinal became known to Mr. Henry
+Speyer. The latter's quarters were any thing but commodious or
+attractive; and Richards invited him to a _petit souper_ at his own
+lodgings, which were not very remote. Leaving Speyer to make his own
+way thither, he proceeded to summon two additional guests, in the
+persons of two friends of his own, his favorite partners at the
+Chaumière. With the aid of wine and cigars, the party became, in time,
+very animated. Vinal, who had a quick and pungent wit, drew upon
+himself much applause, and Speyer regarded him with especial
+commendation. But while he played his part thus successfully, he was
+studying his companions, as a scholar studies a book; studiously
+keeping himself cool; sipping a few drops of his wine, and slyly
+spilling the rest under the table, while he did his best to stimulate
+the others, and especially Speyer, to drink. Speyer drank, indeed, but
+the wine seemed to produce no more effect on him than water. He
+remained as cool as Vinal himself. The latter, young as he was, was a
+close and penetrating judge of men; and when, at two o'clock in the
+morning, he returned to his hotel, he carried with him the conviction
+that, in his present beggared condition, a few hundred francs would
+bribe the patriot to commit any moderately safe villany.
+
+The evening, however, had had one result which Vinal regretted. Mr.
+Richards, being obfuscated with champagne, had repeatedly called him
+by his true name; so that Speyer was fully aware that his new
+acquaintance was not Mr. Wilton, of New Orleans, but Mr. Horace Vinal,
+of Boston.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXII.
+
+  And, far the blackest there, the traitor friend.--_Dryden_.
+
+
+Several days had passed, during which Vinal contrived to have more
+than one private interview with his new acquaintance, Speyer. He had
+sounded him with much astuteness; found that he could serve him; and
+was confirmed in his assurance that he would.
+
+Morton, he knew, was to leave Paris on the next morning. The time to
+act was now, or never.
+
+At about three in the afternoon, he discovered his rival sauntering
+along an avenue in the garden of the Tuileries; and walking up behind,
+he joined him.
+
+"There are some of us," said Vinal, after a few moments' conversation,
+"going to Versailles to-morrow. Will you go?"
+
+"I mean to leave Paris to-morrow."
+
+"To-morrow! That's very sudden."
+
+"I shall come back again in a few months."
+
+"Your first move is to Italy, I think you said."
+
+"No, to Austria and the Danube."
+
+"O, I remember; it is West who is going to Italy. I think he has
+chosen the better route of the two."
+
+"Yes, as far as history and works of art are concerned. But the
+Austrian provinces are the best field for me. I am mounted on a hobby,
+you know, and my time is so short that I must make the most of what I
+have."
+
+"You wish to see the people--the different races--is that it?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"You ought to be well booked up before you go, or you'll lose time. By
+the way, I made an acquaintance a little while ago in the diligence
+from Strasburg--a very agreeable man, a professor at Berlin----"
+
+"O, the professor whom you and Richards were going to see, the other
+night."
+
+A thrill shot through Vinal's nerves; but the unsuspecting Morton
+almost instantly relieved his terror.
+
+"I was standing on the steps as you went out, and heard you say that
+you were going to visit him. From the way in which you spoke, I
+imagined him to be some professor of the noble art of self-defence."
+
+"Ha, ha!" laughed Vinal, not quite recovered from his surprise; "no,
+not precisely that; Speyer is a philologist--that's his department."
+
+"And Richards knows him, too?"
+
+"Yes, through my introduction."
+
+"From your calling him 'his friend, the professor,' I imagined that
+the acquaintance began the other way."
+
+"Yes, his friend, with a vengeance. Confound the fellow, as I was
+walking with him the other day, we met Speyer, and I, thinking no
+harm, introduced them; but it wasn't twenty-four hours before Richards
+was at him to borrow money, which Speyer let him have. I dare say
+Richards has bled you as well."
+
+"No."
+
+"No? Then you are luckier than I am. I advise you to keep out of his
+way, or he'll pin you before you know it."
+
+"I should judge as much."
+
+"I spoke of Professor Speyer because he was born in some outlandish
+corner of the Austrian empire,--Croatia, I think he told me,--and had
+his head full of political soap bubbles founded on the distribution of
+races in that part of the world. He put me to sleep half a dozen times
+with talking about Pansclavism and the manifest destinies of the
+Sclavic peoples. He is the very man for you; and I am sorry I didn't
+think of it before."
+
+"Well," said Morton, "I must blunder through as I can."
+
+"Are you at leisure? I'll go with you this afternoon, if you like, and
+call on him."
+
+"I dare say my visit would bore him."
+
+"Get him upon the races in the Austrian empire, and he will be more
+apt to bore you. Are you free at four o'clock?" pursued Vinal, looking
+at his watch.
+
+"Yes, quite so."
+
+"Very well. I'm going now to my tailor's. Every genuine American, you
+know, must have a new fit-out in Paris. I'll meet you at Meurice's at
+four, and we'll go from there to Speyer's."
+
+Vinal had three quarters of an hour to spare. He spent a part of them
+in forging the next link of his chain. At four he rejoined Morton, and
+they walked out together.
+
+"I think you'll like Professor Speyer," said Vinal. "I have become
+quite intimate with him, on the strength of a fortnight's
+acquaintance. He urges me to go to Hungary and Transylvania, and
+offered me introductions to his friends there. It would not be a bad
+plan for you to ask him for letters. They would not make you
+acquainted with the Austrian _haut ton_, but they would bring you into
+contact with men of his own stamp,--people of knowledge and
+intelligence, who could be of great service to you, and with whom you
+needn't be on terms of much ceremony.--Here's the place;--he lives
+here."
+
+It was a lodging house on the Rue Rivoli. Vinal rang the bell. The
+porter appeared.
+
+"Is Professor Speyer at home?"
+
+"_Non, monsieur; il est sorti._"
+
+Vinal had just bribed the man to give this answer.
+
+"That's unlucky," he said. "Well, if you like, we can come again this
+evening."
+
+"I am engaged to dine this evening at Madame ----'s."
+
+Vinal had known of this engagement.
+
+"I don't see, then, but that you will lose your chance with Speyer.
+Well, _fortune de guerre_. I should like to have had you see him,
+though."
+
+And they walked towards the Boulevards, conversing on indifferent
+matters.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXIII.
+
+  Whose nature is so far from doing evil
+  That he suspects none; on whose foolish honesty
+  My practices ride easy.--_King Lear_.
+
+
+Early the next morning, Morton was writing in his room, when Vinal
+came in.
+
+"Are you still bent on going off to-day?"
+
+"Yes, within an hour."
+
+"I was passing last evening by Professor Speyer's lodgings, and,
+seeing a light at his window, went in. I told him that I had come to
+find him in the afternoon with an old acquaintance of mine, who was
+going to the Austrian provinces, and that I had advised you to ask
+introductions from him to his friends there. He was a good deal
+interested, as I knew he would be, in what I told him about the
+objects of your journey. 'I'm very sorry,' he said, 'that I did not
+see your friend, for I could have given him letters which I don't
+doubt would have been of great use to him. But wait a few minutes,'
+said he, 'and I'll write a few lines now.' Here they are," continued
+Vinal, giving to Morton four or five notes of introduction. "You can
+put them in your pocket, and use them or not, as you may find
+convenient."
+
+"I'm very much obliged to you," said Morton. "Tell Professor Speyer
+that I am greatly indebted to his kindness, and shall be happy to
+avail myself of it. You are looking very pale; are you ill?"
+
+"No, not at all," stammered Vinal, "but, what is nearly as bad, I have
+been kept awake all night with a raging toothache."
+
+He had been awake all night, but not with toothache.
+
+"There is one consolation for that trouble; cold steel will cure it."
+
+"Yes, but the remedy is none of the pleasantest. I won't interrupt you
+any longer. Good by. I wish you a pleasant journey."
+
+He shook hands with Morton, and, pressing his haggard cheek, as if to
+stifle the pain, left the room.
+
+With a new letter from Edith Leslie before him, Morton saw the world
+in rose tint. Happiness blinded him, and he was in no mood to doubt of
+human nature. He blamed himself for his harsh opinions of Vinal.
+
+"It's very generous of him to interest himself at this time, in my
+affairs. ''Tis my nature's plague to spy into abuses.' I have
+misjudged him. He is a better fellow than I ever took him for."
+
+The notes were written in a peculiarly neat, small hand, and bore the
+signature of Henry Speyer. They all spoke of Morton as interested in a
+common object with the person addressed; but, with this exception,
+there was nothing in them which drew his attention, especially as they
+were in German, a language with which he was not very familiar. As for
+the circumstance of their having been given at all to a person whom
+the writer had never seen, Morton accounted for it on the score of the
+good natured professor's desire to oblige his valued friend Vinal.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXIV.
+
+  Things bad begun make strong themselves by ill.--_Macbeth_.
+
+
+The requisites of a successful villain are manifold. The toughened
+conscience, the ready wit, the sage experience, the mind tutored, like
+Iago, in all qualities of human dealing,--all these, in some
+reasonable measure, Vinal had; but he miserably lacked the vulgar, but
+no less needful requisite of a sound bodily fibre to support the
+workings of his brain. His mind was a good lever with a feeble
+fulcrum; a gun mounted on a tottering rampart. When every breath of
+emotion that touches the fine-strung organism quivers along the
+electric chord to the brain, kindling there strange perturbations,
+then philosophy must lower her tone, and stoicism itself must soon
+confess that its only resource is to avoid the enemy with whom it
+cannot cope. Vinal was but ill fitted to act the part he had
+undertaken. The excitements of villany were too much for him. Peace of
+mind was as needful to him as food and drink. He had been battling all
+his life against what he imagined to be a defect of his mental forces,
+but which had, in the main, no deeper root than in the sensitiveness
+of his bodily constitution. In prudence and common sense, he was bound
+to seek asylum in that blissful serenity, that benignant calm, said to
+be the unfailing attendant on piety and good works. Never did Nature
+give a sharper hint than she gave to Vinal to eschew evil courses, and
+leaving rascality to tougher nerves, to tread the placid paths of
+virtue and discretion. Vinal saw fit to disregard the hint, and the
+consequences became somewhat grievous.
+
+While his intrigue was in progress, his nerves had given him no great
+trouble. Hate and jealousy absorbed him. He was steadfast in his
+purpose to get rid of his rival. But now that the mine was laid, and
+the match lighted, a change began to come upon him. It was his maiden
+felony; his first _début_ in the distinct character of a scoundrel;
+and, though his conscience was none of the liveliest, it sufficed to
+visit him with some qualms. Anxieties, doubts, fears, began to prey
+upon him; sleep failed him; his nerves were set more and more on edge;
+in short, body and mind, mutually acting on each other, were fast
+bringing him to a state quite adverse to the maxims of his philosophy.
+
+When a sophomore in college, his favorite reading had been Foster's
+Essay on Decision of Character, and he had aspired to realize in his
+own person the type of character therein set forth; the man of steel,
+who, in his firm march towards his ends, knows neither doubts, nor
+waverings, nor relentings. Of this ideal he was now falling lamentably
+short; and as, at two o'clock in the morning, he rose from his
+restless bed, and paced his chamber to and fro, vainly upbraiding his
+weakness, and struggling to reason down the rebellious vibration of
+his nerves, he was any thing but the inexorable hero of his boyish
+fancy.
+
+"The thing is done,"--so he communed with himself,--"it was
+deliberately done, and well done. That hound is chained and muzzled,
+or will be so soon. For a time, at least, he is out of my path. But is
+he? What if he should escape the trap? What if those men to whom I
+have sent him are less an abomination in the eyes of the government
+than there is reason to think them? No doubt he will be compromised;
+no doubt he will get into difficulty; but if he should get out again!
+if, within a year from this he should come home to charge me with
+trapanning him! Pshaw! he could prove nothing. He would be thought
+malicious if he accused me. But he may suspect!" and this idea
+sufficed to fill his excited mind with fresh agitation. For three
+nights he had been without sleep; and now his irritable system was
+wrought almost to the point of fever.
+
+"Half measures are nothing! The nail must be driven home and clinched!
+I must make sure of him." And early in the morning he went to find
+Speyer.
+
+Speyer was not to be found. In his eagerness, he went again and again
+to seek him, though he knew that there was risk in doing so. At length
+he succeeded; and in spite of his resolute and long-practised
+self-control, his confederate saw at a glance, in his shining eye,
+flushed cheek, and the nervous compression of his lips, that he was
+under a great, though a painfully repressed excitement.
+
+"Well, monsieur, do you hear any thing from your friend?"
+
+"No, it is not time to hear."
+
+"You will have to wait a long while before the time comes."
+
+"Your letters were very well so far as they go; but the thing should
+be done thoroughly. What I wish you to do is this. Write to him a
+letter, implicating him in your revolutionary plot. He will be under
+suspicion. Every letter sent to him will be stopped and opened by the
+police."
+
+"If that is done, I will warrant you quit of him; at least for some
+years to come."
+
+"They will imprison him," said Vinal, nervously, "but that will be the
+whole,--his life will be in no danger."
+
+"His life!" returned Speyer, glancing sidelong at his visitor; "don't
+be troubled on that score. They won't kill him."
+
+"Then write the letter," said Vinal, laying a rouleau of gold on the
+table, "and write it in such a way that it shall spring the trap on
+him, and keep him caged till doomsday."
+
+The letter was written. Vinal read it, re-read it, sealed it, and with
+a quivering hand thrust it into the post office.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXV.
+
+  Thy hope is young, thy heart is strong, but yet a day may be,
+  When thou shalt weep in dungeon deep, and none thy weeping see.
+                                               _The Count of Saldana_.
+
+
+Morton had left Vienna, and was journeying in the diligence on the
+confines of Styria. The cumbrous machine had been lumbering on all
+night. Awaking at daybreak from his comfortless sleep, and looking
+through the breath-bedimmed panes before him, he saw the postilion's
+shoulders wearily jolting up and down with the motion of the lazy
+horses. He had one fellow-traveller in the compartment which he
+occupied, a man of thirty-five or thereabouts, who had taken the
+diligence late the evening before, and who now, his shoulders
+supported by the leather straps which hung for the purpose from the
+roof, and his head tumbling forward on his chest, was dozing with a
+ludicrously grim expression of countenance. At length a sudden jolt
+awakened him; he started, shook himself, looked about him, inclined
+his head by way of salutation to his fellow-traveller, and opened a
+conversation with a remark on the chillness of the morning. After
+conversing for a time in French, the stranger said in excellent
+English, "I see there is no need of our speaking French, for by your
+accent I judge that you are English. I myself have a little of the
+English about me; that is to say, I was four years at Oxford, though I
+am German by birth."
+
+"I am not English, though my ancestors were."
+
+"You are American, then?" said the stranger, looking at him with some
+curiosity; and from this beginning, their acquaintance ripened fast.
+The German, regarding his companion as a young man of more
+intelligence than experience, conversed with an ease and frankness
+which fast gained upon Morton's confidence. He proved, indeed, a
+storehouse of information, discoursing of the people, the country, and
+even the government, with little reserve, and an admirable copiousness
+and minuteness of knowledge. At length he asked Morton if he had any
+acquaintance in Austria.
+
+"None, excepting one or two persons at Vienna, to whom I had letters."
+
+"Then you have probably made agreeable acquaintances. The society of
+Vienna is a very pleasant one."
+
+"My letters were, or purported to be, to _savans_ and literary men."
+
+"There, too, you should have found persons well worth the meeting."
+
+"I have no doubt of it."
+
+"You do not speak," said the investigating stranger, with a smile,
+"like one who has been much pleased with his experience."
+
+"I have had no opportunity to judge fairly of the Viennese _savans_."
+
+"Your letters gave you no opportunity?"
+
+"They were given me at Paris, in a rather singular way; and, to say
+the truth, the persons to whom they introduced me were so little to my
+taste, that after delivering one or two of them, I determined not to
+use the rest."
+
+"You appear to have been very unfortunate. Will you allow me to ask to
+whom your letters were addressed?"
+
+"They were written by a person whom I never saw, and were given to me
+by a friend,--an acquaintance,--of mine, as a means of gaining
+information about the country; such information as that for which I am
+indebted to you. I have been a good deal perplexed as to the character
+of the persons to whom they were written."
+
+"Very probably I could aid you."
+
+Morton mentioned the names of the men he had seen.
+
+The German at first looked puzzled, then amazed, then distrustful.
+
+"Your letters were got for you by a friend of yours?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"And were written by----"
+
+"A professor from Berlin, named Speyer,--Henry Speyer."
+
+"Henry Speyer!" repeated the German, in astonishment.
+
+"You were saying that you had lived for some years at Berlin. Perhaps
+you can tell me who and what he is."
+
+"I know of no Professor Henry Speyer at Berlin."
+
+"This man, I am told, is well known as a philologist."
+
+"There is a Henry Speyer who is a philologist, so far as speaking
+every language in Europe can make him one; but he was never a
+professor in Berlin or any where else."
+
+Morton looked perplexed. The German studied his face for a moment, and
+then said,--
+
+"You say that a friend of yours gave you letters from Henry Speyer to
+the men you just named?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"I beg your pardon! Have you ever quarrelled with your friend? Are you
+on terms with your friend's mistress? or do you stand between your
+friend and a fortune?"
+
+A cold thrill passed through Morton's frame. There was an approach to
+truth in both the two last suppositions.
+
+"Either you are very much deeper than I know how to comprehend you, or
+else you are the victim of a plot."
+
+"What kind of plot?" demanded the startled Morton; "who is Speyer, and
+who are the other men?"
+
+"I will tell you. Speyer is an intriguer, a revolutionist, a man in
+every way infamous. As for his being a professor, he is no more a
+professor than he is a prime minister, and you may ascribe what
+motives you please to your friend for giving him the name. He dares
+not set foot in Austria. If he did, it would go very hard with him.
+The other men are of the same kidney--his aiders, abetters, fellow
+conspirators; known or suspected to be plotting for the overthrow of
+the government."
+
+"Then why are they at liberty?"
+
+"Do you call it liberty to be day and night under the eye of the
+police--to be dogged and watched every hour of their lives? They serve
+as a sort of decoy. All who hold communication with them are noted
+down as dangerous; and my only wonder is, that you have not before
+this heard from the police."
+
+"And what would you advise me to do?"
+
+"Get out of Austria as soon and as quietly as you can. When you have
+passed the frontier you will be safe, and not before."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXVI.
+
+            Monsieur, j'ai deux mots à vous dire;
+  Messieurs les maréchaux, dont j'ai commandement,
+  Vous mandent de venir les trouver promptement,
+  Monsieur.--_Le Misanthrope_.
+
+
+That evening Morton arrived at the post house at ----. He was alone,
+his companion of the morning, whose route lay in another direction,
+having left him long before. At the head of the ancient staircase, the
+host welcomed him with a "good night," and ushered him into a large,
+low, wooden room, where some thirty men and women were smoking,
+eating, and lounging among the tables and benches. Old Germans talked
+over their beer pots, and puffed at their pipes; young ones laughed
+and bantered with the servant girls. A Frenchman, _en route_ for
+Laibach, gulped down his bowlful of soup, sprang to the window when he
+heard the postilion's horn, bounded back to finish his tumbler of
+wine, then seized his cane, and dashed out in hot haste. A small, prim
+student strutted to the window to watch him, pipe in hand, and an
+amused grin on his face; then turned to roar for more beer, and joke
+with the girl who brought it.
+
+Morton sat alone, incensed, disturbed, anxious. He had resolved to go
+no farther without taking measures to secure his own safety; and a day
+or two, he hoped, would place him out of the reach of danger.
+Meanwhile, what with his horror at the villany which had duped him,
+his anger with himself at being duped, and the consciousness that the
+hundred-handed despotism of Austria might at any moment close its
+gripe upon him, the condition of his mind was far from enviable.
+
+As he surveyed the noisy groups around him, three men appeared at the
+door. Morton sipped his wine, and watched them uneasily out of the
+corner of his eye. One of them was a military officer; another was a
+tall man in a civil dress; the third was the conductor of the
+diligence in which Morton had travelled all day. The conductor looked
+towards him significantly; the tall man inclined his head, as a token
+that he understood the sign. Then approaching, hat in hand, he said
+very courteously, in French,--
+
+"Pardon, monsieur; I regret that I must give you some little trouble.
+I have a carriage below; will you have the goodness to accept a seat
+in it?"
+
+"To go whither?" demanded Morton, in alarm.
+
+"To the office of police, monsieur."
+
+The Austrian Briareus had clutched him at last.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXVII.
+
+  Are you called forth, from out a world of men,
+  To slay the innocent? What is my offence?
+  Where is the evidence that doth accuse me?
+  What lawful quest have given their verdict up
+  Unto the frowning judge?--_Richard III_.
+
+
+"You have trifled long enough," said the commissioner; "declare what
+you know, or you shall be dealt with summarily."
+
+A long journey, manacled like a felon, and guarded by dragoons with
+loaded carbines; a rigorous imprisonment, already five months
+protracted; repeated examinations before a military tribunal;
+cross-questionings, threats, and insults, to extort his supposed
+secrets;--all these had formed a sharp transition from the halcyon
+days of Vassall Morton's prosperity.
+
+"Declare what you know, or you shall be dealt with summarily."
+
+"I know nothing, and therefore can declare nothing."
+
+"You have held that tone long enough. Do you imagine that we are to be
+deceived by your inventions? Tell what you know, or in twenty minutes
+you will be led to the rampart and shot."
+
+"I am in your power, and you can do what you will."
+
+The commissioner spoke in German to the corporal of the guard, who
+took Morton into custody, and was leading him from the room.
+
+"Stop," cried the official, from his seat.
+
+Morton turned.
+
+"You are destroying yourself, young man."
+
+"It is false. You are murdering me."
+
+"Do not answer me. I tell you, you are murdering yourself. Are you the
+fool to fling away your life in a fit of obstinacy?"
+
+"Are you the villain to shoot innocent men in cold blood?"
+
+The commissioner swore a savage oath, and with an angry gesture sent
+the corporal from the room.
+
+The corporal led his prisoner along the corridor, which had grown
+ruefully familiar to Morton's eye; but instead of following the way
+which led to the latter's cell, he turned into a much wider and more
+commodious passage. Here, at his open door, stood Padre Luca,
+confessing priest of the castle.
+
+Padre Luca had mistaken his calling, when he took it upon him to
+discharge such a function. He was too tender of heart, too soft of
+nature; ill seasoned, moreover, to his work, for he had been but a
+week in the fortress, and this was the first victim whom it behooved
+him to prepare for death. And when he saw the young prisoner, and
+learned the instant doom under which he stood, his nerves grew
+tremulous, and he found no words to usher in his ghostly counsels.
+
+Corporal Max Kubitski, with a face unperturbed as a block, unfettered
+Morton's wrists, left him with the confessor, and withdrew, placing a
+soldier on guard at the door without. Morton sat silent and calm. The
+hand of Padre Luca quivered with agitation.
+
+"My son," he began; and here his voice faltered.
+
+"I trust," he said, finding his tongue again, "that you are a faithful
+child of our holy mother, the church, and that the heresies and
+infidelities of these times----"
+
+"Father," said Morton, willingly adopting the filial address to the
+kind-hearted priest, "I am a Protestant. I was born and bred among
+Protestants. I respect your ancient church for the good she has done
+in ages past, and for the good men who have held her faith; but I do
+not believe her doctrine, nor approve her practice."
+
+The priest's face betrayed his discomposure.
+
+"My son, my dear son, it is not too late; it is never too late. Listen
+to the truth; renounce your fatal errors. I will baptize you; and when
+you are gone, I will pray our great saint of Milan to intercede for
+you, and I will say masses for your soul."
+
+Morton smiled faintly, and shook his head.
+
+"I thank you; but it is too late for conversion. I must die in my
+heresy, as I have lived."
+
+"So young!" exclaimed Padre Luca; "and so calm on the brink of
+eternity! Ah, it is hard to die, when so much is left to enjoy; but it
+is worse to plunge from present suffering into everlasting despair."
+And he proceeded to give a most graphic picture of post-mortal
+torments, drawn from the Spiritual Exercises of Saint Ignatius, a work
+very familiar to his meditations. This dire imagery failed to convince
+the dying heretic.
+
+"My mind is made up. I cannot believe your doctrine, but I can feel
+your kindness. You have spoken the first friendly words that I have
+heard for months."
+
+"It is hard that you should die so unprepared, and so young. You have
+relatives? You have friends?"
+
+"More than friends! More than friends!" groaned Morton. And as a flood
+of recollection swept over him, his heart for a moment was sick with
+anguish.
+
+"Come with me," whispered Padre Luca. He led the way into the chapel
+of the castle, which adjoined his room. Here he bowed and crossed
+himself before an altar, over which was displayed a painting of the
+Virgin.
+
+"Our Blessed Mother is full of love, full of mercy. See,--hang this
+round your neck"--placing in his hand a small medal on which her image
+was stamped. "Go and kneel before that altar, and repeat these words,"
+pointing to the Ave Maria in a little book of devotion. "Call on her
+with a true heart, and she will have pity. She cannot see you perish,
+body and soul. She will appear, and teach you the truth."
+
+There was so much of earnestness and sincerity in his words, that
+Morton felt nothing but gratitude as he answered,--
+
+"It would be no better than a mockery, if I should do as you wish. I
+cannot----"
+
+Here a clear, deep voice from the adjacent room interrupted him.
+
+"Mother of heaven!" cried Padre Luca, greatly agitated.
+
+"I am ready," answered Morton, in a voice firm as that which summoned
+him.
+
+He returned to the priest's apartment, and in the doorway stood the
+athletic corporal, like the statue of a modern Mars.
+
+"_Mio figlio! Mio caro figlio!_" faltered Padre Luca, laying a
+tremulous hand on the young man's shoulder. The kindly accents of the
+melodious Italian fell on his ear like a strain of music.
+
+"You must not die now; you are not prepared. I will go to the
+commissioner. He will grant time."
+
+He was pushing past the corporal, when Morton gently checked him.
+
+"I thank you, father, a thousand times; but if I must die, there is no
+mercy in a half hour's delay. Let me go. This sentence may be, after
+all, a kindness."
+
+The corporal took him into custody; and, with three soldiers before
+and three behind, he moved towards his place of execution. He seemed
+to himself like one not fully awake; the stern reality would not come
+home to his thoughts, until, as he was mounting a flight of steps
+leading to the rampart, a vivid remembrance glowed upon him of that
+summer evening when, in her father's garden, Edith Leslie had accepted
+his love. It was with a desperate effort of pride and resolution that
+he quelled the emotion which rose choking to his throat, and murmuring
+a petition for her safety, walked forward with an unchanged face.
+
+A light shone in upon the passage, and they stood in a moment upon the
+rampart, whence a panorama of sunny mountains opened on the view. It
+was a space of some extent, paved with flag-stones, and compassed with
+battlements and walls. On one side stood, leaning on their muskets, a
+file of Bohemian soldiers, in their close frogged uniforms and long
+mustaches. These, with their officer, Corporal Kubitski, with his six
+men, a sub-official acting for the commissioner, and Padre Luca, were
+the only persons present, besides the prisoner. The latter was placed
+before the Bohemians, at the distance of twelve or fourteen paces. The
+corporal and his men drew aside.
+
+"Now," demanded the deputy, "will you confess what you know, or will
+you die?"
+
+"I have told you, once and again, that I have nothing to confess."
+
+"Then take the consequence of your obstinacy."
+
+He motioned to the officer. A word of command was given. Each soldier
+loaded with ball, and the ramrods rattled as they sent home the
+charge. Another command, and the cocked muskets rose to the level,
+concentrating their aim against the prisoner's breast.
+
+"If you will speak, speak now. You have a quarter of a minute to save
+yourself." And the deputy took out his watch.
+
+Morton turned his head slowly, and looked at him for an instant in
+silence.
+
+"Speak, speak," cried Padre Luca, pressing towards him; "tell him what
+you know."
+
+The sharp voice of the officer warned him back.
+
+Morton stood with compressed lips, and every nerve at its tension, in
+instant expectation of the volley; already, in fancy, he felt the
+bullets plunging through his breast; but not a muscle flinched, and he
+fronted the deadly muzzles with an unblenching eye. The deputy
+scrutinized his face, and turned away, muttering. At that moment a
+man, who through the whole scene had stood hidden in the entrance of a
+passage, ran out with a pretence of great haste and earnestness, and
+called to stop the execution, since the commissioner had granted a
+reprieve. In fact, the whole affair was a sham, played off upon the
+prisoner to terrify him into confession.
+
+The Bohemians recovered their muskets, and the bewildered Morton was
+once more in custody of the corporal, who led him, guarded as before,
+back towards his cell. Padre Luca, who thought that an interposition
+of the Virgin had softened the commissioner's heart, hastened to his
+oratory to pray for the heretic's conversion. Faint and heartsick,
+Morton scarcely knew what was passing, till he was thrust in at his
+narrow door. The jailer was there, but the corporal entered also, to
+aid in taking the handcuffs from his wrists.
+
+One might have looked in vain among ten thousand to find a nobler
+model of masculine proportion than this soldier. He stood more than
+six feet high, and Morton, who loved to look upon a man, had often,
+even in his distress, admired his martial bearing and the powerful
+symmetry of his frame. His face, too, was singularly fine in its way,
+and though the discipline of long habit usually banished from it any
+distinct expression, yet the cast of the features, and the manly curve
+of the lip, which the thick brown mustache could not wholly hide,
+seemed to augur a brave, generous, and loyal nature.
+
+More stupefied than cheered at being snatched, as he supposed, from
+the jaws of death, Morton stood passive while his hands were released.
+The jailer left him for a moment, and crossed over to the opposite
+corner of the cell. His back was turned as he did so. The corporal's
+six soldiers were all in the passage without. At that instant, Morton
+felt a warm breath at his ear, and heard whispered in a barbarous
+accent,--
+
+"_Courage, mon ami! Vive la liberté! Vive l'Amerique!_"
+
+He turned; but the martial visage of the corporal was unmoved as
+bronze; and, in a moment more, the iron door clanged behind him as he
+disappeared.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXVIII.
+
+  O Death, why now so slow art thou? why fearest thou to smite?
+                                     _Lamentation of Don Roderick_.
+
+  When all the blandishments of life are gone,
+  The coward sneaks to death, the brave live on.--_Sewell_.
+
+
+The whispered words of the corporal kindled a spark of hope in
+Morton's breast; but it was destined to fade and die. Once he was sure
+that he heard the tones of his voice in the passage without his cell;
+but weeks passed, months passed, and he did not see him again.
+
+And now let the curtain drop for a space of three years.
+
+Morton was still a prisoner. Despair was at hand. He longed to die.
+His longing at length seemed near its accomplishment. A raging fever
+seized him, and for days he lay delirious, balanced on the brink of
+death. But his constitution endured the shock; and late one night he
+lay on his pallet, exhausted, worn to a skeleton, yet fully conscious
+of his situation.
+
+The locks clashed, the hinges jarred, and a physician of the prison, a
+bulky German, stood at his side.
+
+He felt his patient's pulse.
+
+"Shall I die, or not?" demanded the sick man.
+
+"Die!" echoed the German, a laugh gurgling within him, like the first
+symptom of an earthquake; "all men die, but this sickness will never
+kill you. It would have killed ninety-nine out of a hundred; but you
+are as tough as a rhinoceros."
+
+Morton turned to the wall, and cursed the hour when he was born.
+
+The German gave a prescription to his attendant; the locks clashed
+again behind him, and Morton was left alone with his misery.
+
+The lamp in the passage without shone through the grated opening above
+the door, and shed a square of yellow light on the black, damp stones
+of the dungeon. They sweated and trickled with a clammy moisture; and
+the brick pavement was wet, as if the clouds had rained upon it.
+Morton lay motionless as a dead man. The crisis of his disorder was
+past; but its effects were heavy upon him, and his mind shared the
+deep exhaustion of his body. Perilous thoughts rose upon him, spectral
+and hollow-eyed.
+
+"By what right am I doomed to this protracted misery? By what justice,
+when a refuge is at hand, am I forbidden to fly to it? I have only to
+drag myself from this bed, and rest for a few moments on those wet,
+cold bricks, and all the medicines in Austria could not keep me many
+days a prisoner. And who could blame me? Who could say that I
+destroyed myself? It is not suicide. It is but aiding kindly nature to
+do a deed of mercy."
+
+He repelled the thought; but it returned. He repelled it again, but
+still it returned. The insidious demon was again and again at his ear,
+stealing back with a noiseless gliding, smoothly commending her poison
+to his lips, soothing his worn spirit as the vampire fans its
+slumbering victim with its wings. But his better nature, not without a
+higher appeal, fortified itself against her, and struggled to hold its
+ground.
+
+When the French besieged Saragossa; when her walls crumbled before
+their batteries; when, day by day, through secret mine or open
+assault, foot by foot, they won their way inward towards her heart;
+when treason within aided force without, and famine and pestilence
+leagued against her,--still her undespairing children refused to
+yield. Sick men dragged themselves to the barricades, women and boys
+pointed the cannon, and her heroic banner still floated above the
+wreck.
+
+Thus, spent with disease, gnawed with pertinacious miseries, assailed
+by black memories of the past, and blacker forebodings of the future,
+did Morton maintain his weary battle with despair.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXIX.
+
+                   Who would lose,
+  Though full of pain, this intellectual being,
+  These thoughts that wander through eternity?
+
+  To be weak is miserable,
+  Doing or suffering.--_Paradise Lost_.
+
+
+Morton recovered slowly. The influences about him were any thing but
+favorable to a quick convalescence, and it was months before he was
+himself again. Even then, though his health seemed confirmed, a deeper
+cloud remained upon his spirits: his dungeon seemed more dark and
+gloomy, his prospects more desperate.
+
+One day he paced his cell in a mood of more than usual depression.
+
+"Fools and knaves are at large; robbery and murder have full scope;
+vanity and profligacy run their free career; then why is honest effort
+paralyzed, and buried here alive? There are those in these
+vaults,--men innocent of crime as I,--men who would have been an honor
+to their race,--who have passed a score of years in this living death.
+And canting fools would console them with saying that 'all is for the
+best.' I will sooner believe that the world is governed by devils, and
+that the prince of them all is bodied in Metternich. Why is there not
+in crushed hope, and stifled wrath, and swelling anguish, and frenzy,
+and despair, a force to burst these hellish sepulchres, and blow them
+to the moon!
+
+"It is but a weak punishment to which Milton dooms his ruined angel.
+Action,--enterprise,--achievement,--a hell like that is heaven to the
+cells of Ehrenberg. He should have chained him to a rock, and left him
+alone to the torture of his own thoughts; the unutterable agonies of a
+mind preying on itself for want of other sustenance. Action!--mured in
+this dungeon, the starved soul gasps for it as the lungs for air.
+'Action, action, action!--all in all! What is life without it? A
+marsh, a quagmire, a rotten, stagnant pool. It is its own reward. The
+chase is all; the prize nothing. The huntsmen chase the fox all day,
+and, when they have caught her, fling her to their hounds for a
+worthless vermin. Alexander wept that he had no more worlds to
+conquer. What did it profit him that a conquered world lay already at
+his feet? The errant knights who roamed the world with their
+mistress's glove on their helmet, achieving impossibilities in her
+name,--which of them could have endured to live in peace with her for
+a six-month? The crusader master of Jerusalem, Cortes with Mexico
+subdued, any hero when his work is done, falls back to the ranks of
+common men. His lamp is out, his fire quenched; and what avails the
+stale, lack-lustre remnant of his days?
+
+"Action! the panacea of human ills; the sure resource of misery; the
+refuge of bad consciences; a maelstroom, in whose giddy vortex saints
+and villains may whirl alike. How like a madman some great criminal,
+some Macbeth, will plunge on through his slough of blood and
+treachery, frantic to dam out justice at every chink, and bulwark
+himself against fate; clinching crime with crime; giving conscience no
+time to stab; finding no rest; but still plunging on, desperate and
+blind! How like a madman some pious anchorite, fervent to win heaven,
+will pile torture on torture, fast, and vigil, and scourge, made
+wretched daily with some fresh scruple, delving to find some new depth
+of self-abasement, and still struggling on unsatisfied, insatiable of
+penance, till the grave devours him! Human activity!--to pursue a
+security which is never reached, a contentment which eludes the grasp,
+some golden consummation which proves but hollow mockery; to seize the
+prize, to taste it, to fling it away, and reach after another! This
+cell, where I thought myself buried and sealed up from knowledge, is,
+after all, a school of philosophy. It teaches a dreary wisdom of its
+own. Through these stone walls I can see the follies of the world more
+clearly than when I was in the midst of them. A dreary wisdom; and yet
+not wholly dreary. There is a power and a consolation in it. Misery is
+the mind-maker; the revealer of truth; the spring of nobleness; the
+test, the purger, the strengthener of the spirit. Our natures are like
+grapes in the wine press: they must be pressed to the uttermost before
+they will give forth all their virtue.
+
+"Why do I delude myself? What good can be wrung out of a misery like
+mine? It is folly to cheat myself with hope. This hell-begotten
+Austria has me fast, and will not loosen her gripe. Abroad in the free
+world, fortitude will count for much. There, one can hold firm the
+clefts and cracks of his tottering fortunes with the cement of an
+unyielding mind; but here, it is but bare and blank endurance. Yet it
+is something that I can still find heart to face my doom; that there
+are still moments when I dare to meet this death-in-life, this
+slow-consuming horror, face to face, and look into all its hideousness
+without shrinking. To creep on to my end through years of slow decay,
+mind and soul famishing in solitude, sapped and worn, eaten and
+fretted away, by the droppings of lonely thought, till I find my rest
+at last under these cursed stones! God! could I but die the death of a
+man! De Foix,--Dundee,--Wolfe. I grudge them their bloody end. When
+the fierce blood boiled highest, when the keen life was tingling
+through their veins, and the shout of victory ringing in their ears,
+then to be launched at a breath forth into the wilderness of space, to
+sail through eternity, to explore the seas and continents of the vast
+unknown! But I,--I must lie here and rot. You fool! you are tied to
+the stake, and must bide the baiting as you can. Will you play the
+coward? What can you gain by that? You cannot run away. What wretch,
+when misery falls upon him, will not cry out, 'Take any shape but
+that?' In the familiar crowd, in the daily resort, how many an
+unregarded face masks a wretchedness worse than this! some shrunken,
+cankered soul, palsied and world-weary, more hopelessly dungeoned than
+you. Crush down your anguish, choke down your groan, and say,
+'Heaven's will be done.'
+
+"Muster what courage you may. Not those spasms of valor that make the
+hero of an emergency, and when the heart is on fire and the soul in
+arms, bear him on to great achievement. Mine must be an inward flame,
+that warms though it cannot shine; a fire, like the sacred Chaldean
+fire, that must never go out; a perpetual spring, flowing up without
+ceasing, to meet the unceasing need.
+
+"And you, source of my deepest joy and my deepest sorrow,--do not fail
+me now. Come to me in this darkness; let your spirit haunt this tomb
+where I lie buried. In your presence, the evil of my heart shrank
+back, rebuked; its good sprang up and grew in life and freshness. You
+rose upon me like the sun, warming every noble germ into leaf and
+flower. You streamed into my soul, banishing its mists, and gladdening
+it to its depths with summer light. These are no girl's tears. Towards
+myself and my own woes, I have hardened my heart like the barren
+flint. I should be less than man if I did not weep when I think of
+you. You must pass the appointed lot; you must fade with time and
+sorrow; but to me you will be radiant still with youth and beauty. So
+will I bide my hour, anchored on that pure and lofty memory, waiting
+that last release when the winged spirit shall laugh at bolts and
+dungeon bars."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XL.
+
+  Lost liberty and love at once he bore;
+  His prison pained him much, his passion more.--_Palemon and Arcite_.
+
+
+Since his illness, Morton had had some of an invalid's privilege. He
+had been allowed to walk on the rampart for half an hour daily. In the
+distance, a great mountain range bounded the view, and, nearer, the
+Croatian forest stretched its dark and wild frontier. The scene
+recalled kindred scenes at home; and when he was led back to his cell,
+when the heavy door clashed and the bolts grated upon him, he leaned
+his forehead on his hand, and stood in fancy again among the mountains
+of New England, with all their associations of health, freedom, and
+golden hopes. The White Mountains seemed to rise around him like a
+living presence, rugged with their rocks and pines, scarred with
+avalanches, cinctured with morning mists; and, standing again on the
+bank of the Saco, he seemed to feel their breezes and hear the
+brawling of their waters. Then his roused fancy took a wider range;
+carried him across the Alleghanies and along the Ohio, up the
+Mississippi to its source, and downward to the sea, picturing the
+whole like the shifting scene of a panorama.
+
+"Ah," he thought, "if my story could be blown abroad over those
+western waters! How long then should I lie here dying by inches? The
+farmers of Ohio, the planters of Tennessee, the backwoodsmen of
+Missouri, how would they endure such outrage to the meanest member of
+their haughty sovereignty! A hopeless dream! I have looked my last on
+America. My wrongs will find no voice. They and I are smothering
+together, safely walled up in sound and solid mason-work. Strange, the
+power of fancy! Heaven knows how or why, but at this moment I could
+believe myself seated on the edge of the lake at Matherton, under the
+beech trees, on a hot July noon. The leaves will not rustle; the birds
+will not sing; nothing seems awake but the small yellow butterflies,
+flickering over the clover tops, and the heat-loving cicala, raising
+his shrill voice from the dead pear tree. The breathless pines on the
+farther bank grow downward in the glassy mirror. The water lies at my
+feet, pellucid as the air; the dace, the bream, and the perch glide
+through it like spirits, their shadows following them over the quartz
+pebbles; and, in the cove hard by, the pirate pickerel lies asleep
+under the water lilies.
+
+"On such a day, I came down the garden walk, and found Edith reading
+under the shade of the maple grove. On the evening of such a day, I
+heard from her lips the words which seemed to launch me upon a life of
+more than human happiness. Could I have looked into the future! Could
+I have lifted the glowing curtain which my fancy drew before it, the
+gay and gilded illusion which covered the hideous truth! Where is she
+now? Does she still walk in the garden, and read under the grove of
+maples? She thinks me dead: almost four years! She has good cause to
+think so; and perhaps at this moment some glib-tongued suitor, as
+earnest and eager as I was, is whispering persuasion into her ear,
+winning her to his hearth stone and his arms. Powers of hell, if you
+would rack man's soul with torments like your own, show him first a
+gleam of heaven; bathe him in celestial light; then thrust him down to
+a damnation like this."
+
+And he groaned between his set teeth, in the extremity of mental
+torture.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLI.
+
+  The manly heart must sometimes cease to languish,
+  Ruled by the manly brain.--_Bayard Taylor_.
+
+
+One day the jailer came in at his stated hour. He was, by birth, a
+German peasant, stupid and brutish enough; but, his calling
+considered, he might have been worse, and, in the lack of better
+company, Morton had diligently cultivated his acquaintance. On this
+occasion he was more than commonly dogged and impenetrable; and, on
+being taken to task for some neglect or malperformance of his
+functions, he made no manner of reply, by word, look, or gesture.
+Being again upbraided, he turned for a moment towards the prisoner a
+face as expressive as a block of pudding stone, and then sullenly
+continued his work as before. Morton laughed, partly in vexation, and
+resumed his walk, of just three paces, to and fro, the length of his
+cell. He followed the jailer with his eye, as the latter closed the
+door.
+
+"'God made him, and therefore let him pass for a man.' Measure the
+distance from Shakspeare down to that fellow, and then from him again
+down to a baboon, and which measurement would be the longer? It would
+be a knotty problem to settle the question of kindred; and yet, after
+all, a soul to be saved, such as it is, and an indefinite power of
+expansion and refining, give Jacob strong odds against the baboon. He
+has human possibilities, like the rest of us; his unit goes to make up
+the sum of man; man, the riddle and marvel of the universe, the centre
+of interest, the centre of wonder. When I was a boy, I pleased myself
+with planning that I would study out the springs of human action, and
+trace human emotion up to its sources. It was a boy's idea,--to fathom
+the unfathomable, to line and map out the shifting clouds and the
+ever-moving winds. De Staël speaks the truth--'Man may learn to rule
+man, but only God can comprehend him.' View him under one aspect only.
+Seek to analyze that pervading passion, that mighty mystic influence
+which, consciously or unconsciously, directly or indirectly, prevails
+in human action, and holds the sovereignty of the world. It is a vain
+attempt; the reason loses and confounds itself. What human faculty can
+follow the workings of a principle which at once exalts man to the
+stars, and fetters him to the earth; which can fire him with
+triumphant energies, or lull him into effeminate repose; kindle
+strange aspirations and eager longings after knowledge; spur the
+intellect to range time and space, or cramp it within narrow confines,
+among mean fancies and base associations? In its mysterious
+contradictions, its boundless possibilities of good and ill, it is a
+type of human nature itself. The soldier saint, Loyola, was right when
+he figured the conflicts of man's spirit by the collision of two
+armies, ranked under adverse banners; for what is the spirit of man
+but a field of war, with its marches and retreats, its ambuscades,
+stratagems, surprises, skirmishings, and weary life-long sieges; its
+shock of onset, and death-grapple, throat to throat? And whoever would
+be wise, or safe, must sentinel his thoughts, and rule his mind by
+martial law, like a city beleaguered.
+
+"How to escape such strife! There is no escape. It has followed
+hermits to their deserts; and it follows me to my prison. It will find
+no end but in that decay and torpor, that callousness of faculty,
+which long imprisonment is said to bring, but which, as yet, I do not
+feel. Perhaps I may never feel it; for strive as I will to prepare for
+the worst, by inuring my mind to contemplate it, that spark of hope
+which never, it is said, dies wholly in a human heart, is still alive
+in mine. And sometimes, of late, it has kindled and glowed, as now,
+with a strange brightness. Is it a delusion, or the presage of some
+succor not far distant? Let that be as it may, I will still cling to
+the possibility of a better time. Whatever new disaster meets me, I
+will confront it with some new audacity of hope. I will nail my flag
+to the mast, and there it shall fly till all go down, or till flag,
+mast, and hulk rot together."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLII.
+
+  But droop not; fortune at your time of life,
+    Although a female moderately fickle,
+  Will hardly leave you, as she's not your wife,
+    For any length of days in such a pickle.--_Don Juan_.
+
+
+Here his reflections were interrupted by the opening of the outer door
+of his cell, and a voice somewhat sternly pronouncing his name.
+
+It was a regulation of the prison, that twice a day an official should
+visit each cell, to prevent the possibility of the tenant's attempting
+to escape, or hold communication with neighboring prisoners. This duty
+was commonly discharged by non-commissioned officers of certain corps
+in the garrison. Each cell had two doors. The outer one was of massive
+wood, guarded by iron plates and rivets. The inner door, though much
+less ponderous, was secured with equal care; but in the middle of it
+was an oblong aperture, much like that of a post office letter box,
+though shorter and wider. The visiting official opened the outer door,
+and without opening the inner, could see the prisoner by applying his
+eye to this aperture.
+
+"What are you doing there?" demanded the voice, in the usual form of
+the visitor's challenge.
+
+The voice was different from that to which Morton had been accustomed;
+and, as he gave the usual answer, he looked towards the opening. Here
+he saw a full, clear, blue eye, with a brown eyebrow, very well
+formed; altogether a different eye from that which had formerly
+presented itself,--a contracted, blackish, or mud-colored organ,
+furrowed round about with the wrinkles called "crow's
+feet;"--altogether a mean and vulgar-looking eye, belonging, indeed,
+to a rugged old soldier, whose skull might safely have been warranted
+sabre-proof.
+
+Morton looked at the eye, and the eye looked at him, with great
+intentness, seemingly, for some twenty seconds. Then it disappeared,
+but returned, and resumed its scrutiny for some moments longer.
+
+"A new broom sweeps clean," thought Morton; "that fellow means to do
+his duty."
+
+The eye vanished at length, the door closed, and the step of the
+retiring visitor sounded along the flag-stones.
+
+Morton thought little more of the matter, but busied himself with his
+usual masculine employment of stocking knitting, till seven in the
+evening, when the visitor came on his second round, and the same voice
+challenged him through the opening. He looked up, and saw the eye
+again; when to his astonishment, the low, hissing
+sound--"s--s--t"--used by Italians and some other Europeans when they
+wish to attract attention, sounded from the soldier's lips. At the
+next instant, however, something seemed to have alarmed him; for the
+eye disappeared, and the door closed abruptly.
+
+Morton perplexed himself greatly with conjectures about this incident,
+and had half persuaded himself that the whole was a cheat of the
+fancy; when, on the next morning, as he was led back, under a guard,
+from his walk on the rampart, he saw, on entering a long gallery of
+the prison, a tall man approaching from the farther end. He recognized
+him at once. It was Max Kubitski, the corporal, who long before had
+guarded him to his sham execution, and whose friendly whisper in his
+cell had wakened in him a short gleam of hope. As the corporal passed,
+his eye met Morton's for an instant, with, as the latter thought, a
+glance of recognition.
+
+In vain he tried to reason down the new hope that, in spite of
+himself, this meeting kindled. Of one thing he was sure; the
+corporal's eye was the eye that looked in upon him through the hole in
+the door; and he felt assured, moreover, that, from whatever cause,
+the corporal inclined to befriend him.
+
+He waited, in great expectancy and some agitation, for the next visit;
+and at the stated hour, the outer door was opened, and the eye
+appeared.
+
+Morton, as he replied to the challenge, made a gesture of friendly
+recognition.
+
+"You remember me, eh?" whispered a voice, in broken French; "be always
+close to the door when I come. I shall have something to tell you."
+
+The moustached lips whence the whisper issued were withdrawn from the
+opening, and Morton was left to his reflections.
+
+To have a friend near him, however humble, was much, and the hope,
+slender as it seemed, that this friend might aid him, filled him with
+a feverish excitement. Why the corporal should interest himself in his
+behalf, he could not imagine; and he waited restlessly for his next
+coming.
+
+In due time, the eye appeared.
+
+"Look here," whispered Max, and thrust a paper through the opening,
+waiting only long enough to see Morton pick it up.
+
+The chirography was worse, if possible, than the spelling; but Morton
+at last deciphered words to the following purport.
+
+"You are brave. Don't despair. I shall help you, if I can. Long live
+America! Down with the emperor! Only be patient. Be sure to chew this
+paper, and swallow it."
+
+The last injunction had its objections, and the prisoner compromised
+the matter by tearing the paper into small pieces, and stuffing them
+into the crevices of the floor.
+
+At the next appearance of the eye, Morton, in a few rapid words,
+expressed his gratitude; adding that if the corporal would help him to
+escape, and go with him to America, he would make him rich for life.
+
+The intimation probably had its effect; and yet in the case of Max it
+was not needed. Though his tastes and habits savored of the barrack,
+the corporal was one of the most simple-hearted and generous of men,
+with, besides, much of that kind of enthusiasm of character which is
+apt to be rather ornamental than useful to its owner. His birth and
+connections were not quite so low as might have been argued from his
+mean station in the service, in which his life had been spent from
+boyhood. He was a native of Gallicia. Several of his brothers, and
+others of his relatives, had been deeply compromised in the Polish
+rising of 1831, and had suffered heavy and humiliating penalties in
+consequence. His eldest brother, however, had escaped in time, and
+gone to America, where, being very different in character from Max, he
+had thriven wonderfully. After a long absence, he had reappeared,
+travelling with a United States passport, as an American, inveighing
+against European despotisms, and dilating on the glories of his
+adopted country. Max, the only auditor of these declamations, was
+greatly excited by them. He had long been tired of his thankless
+position in the Austrian service; and listening to his brother's
+persuasions, he agreed to desert, and go with him to America, the
+seat, as he began to imagine, of more than earthly beatitude. But
+before he could find opportunity, his cautious brother took alarm; and
+seeing some indications that his identity was suspected by the police,
+decamped with the promptness and alacrity which had always
+distinguished him in times of danger. Max, therefore, was left alone;
+his adviser, for fear of compromising him, not daring to attempt any
+communication.
+
+It was soon after this, that, being on guard in the commissioner's
+inquest room at Ehrenberg, Max first saw Morton, brought in for
+examination, and learned from the questions and replies, that the
+prisoner was an American. His interest was greatly stirred; for he had
+never seen one of the favored race before; and, like the commissioner,
+he had no doubt that Morton had come on a revolutionary mission. His
+interest was inflamed to enthusiasm, when, being ordered to guard
+Morton to his execution, he saw the calmness with which the latter
+faced his expected fate. Indeed, his soldier heart was moved so
+deeply, that in the flush of the moment he conceived the idea of
+helping Morton to escape, and going with him to the land of promise.
+It was an idea more easily conceived than executed; and before he
+could find an opportunity, his corps was removed from the castle, and
+sent on duty elsewhere.
+
+Max had always detested the life of a garrison, and especially of a
+prison garrison, and the change proved very agreeable to him. Though
+brave as the bravest, he had not much energy or forecast, and commonly
+let his affairs take care of themselves. He lived on from day to day,
+neither abandoning his plan of desertion, nor acting upon it; until,
+after more than two years, he was remanded to Ehrenberg, where his old
+disgust returned in greater force than ever. In this state of his
+mind, the duty of visitor was assigned to him, thus bringing him in
+contact with Morton, reviving his half-forgotten feeling, and, at the
+same time, promising him an opportunity to carry his former scheme
+into effect.
+
+To this time, Morton had borne his troubles with as much philosophy as
+could reasonably have been expected; but now that something like a
+tangible hope began to open on him, the excitement became intense. He
+waited the daily visits of the soldier with a painful eagerness and
+suspense. At the stated hours, Max always came; and, at each return,
+some whispered word of friendship greeted the prisoner's ear.
+
+Two days after the first paper, he thrust in another; and Morton read
+as follows:--
+
+"We must wait; but our time will come; perhaps in ten days; perhaps in
+a week. I shall watch for a chance. Only be patient."
+
+Five long and anxious days succeeded; when, on the forenoon of the
+sixth, Max thrust in a third paper; and Morton, with a beating heart,
+read,--
+
+"When the jailer comes this afternoon, make him talk with you, and
+keep him with his back to the door. _I shall come._ Be cool and
+steady. I shall tell you what to do."
+
+Illness and long confinement had wrought upon Morton's system in a
+manner which made it doubly difficult to preserve the coolness which
+the emergency demanded; but he summoned his utmost resolution to meet
+this crisis of his fate.
+
+The jailer was nowise addicted to conversation; and how to engage him
+in it, was a problem of some difficulty. There was only one topic on
+which Morton had ever seen him at all animated. This was the battle of
+Wagram, in which, in his youth, he had taken part, and where he had
+received a sabre cut, which had left a ghastly blue scar across his
+cheek. In dilating on this momentous passage of his life, the old
+German would sometimes be roused into a great excitement; and Morton
+had often amused himself with trying to comprehend the jargon which he
+poured out, in thick gobbling tones, about cannonading and charging,
+sabres and bombshells, pointing continually at his scar, and laboring
+to impress his hearer with the conviction, immovably fixed in his own
+mind, that he, Jacob, was one of the chief heroes of the day.
+
+At his usual hour, about the middle of the afternoon, Jacob appeared.
+As he came in, he closed the outer door, which secured itself by a
+latch. This latch could be moved back from within or without, by a
+species of key in the jailer's keeping, Max also, as visitor, having a
+duplicate. The jailer alone had the key of the inner door; but this,
+during his stay in the cell, he never thought it necessary to close.
+
+Jacob went through his ordinary routine, breathing deeply, meanwhile,
+and talking unconsciously to himself, after his usual manner.
+
+"Do you know, Jacob," said Morton, seating himself on a stool in the
+farther corner, "I was dreaming the other night of you and the battle
+of Wagram."
+
+"Eh!" grunted the jailer.
+
+"What you have been telling me about it is a lie. You were never in
+that battle at all."
+
+"Eh!"
+
+"You were frightened, and ran off before the fighting began."
+
+"Run! I run off!" growled Jacob, the idea slowly penetrating his
+brain.
+
+Morton nodded assent.
+
+The jailer turned and stared at him for a moment with open eyes and
+mouth. Then, as his wrath slowly mounted, he began to pour forth a
+flood of denial, mixed with invective against his assailant, appealing
+to his scar as proof positive of his valor.
+
+"A sabre never made that scar," said Morton, as the other paused in
+his eloquence.
+
+Jacob stared at him, speechless.
+
+"You got it in a drunken row."
+
+At this Jacob's rage seemed to choke his utterance; and Morton thought
+he would attack him bodily, as he stood before him, shaking his fists,
+and stamping on the pavement.
+
+This pantomime was brought to a sudden close by a pair of strong hands
+clinched around Jacob's neck from behind, with the gripe of a vice.
+
+"Shut the door," whispered Max.
+
+On entering, he had left it ajar. Morton hastened to close it. The
+corporal meanwhile laid Jacob flat on the floor of the cell.
+
+"Take my bayonet, and run it through him if he makes a sound."
+
+Morton drew the bayonet from its sheath at the belt of Max, and
+kneeling on the jailer's breast, pressed the point of the weapon
+against his throat. Max then loosed his grasp, and gagged him
+effectually with a piece of wood and a cord which he had brought for
+the purpose. Jacob lay, during the whole, quite motionless, glaring
+upward with glassy, bloodshot eyes, stupefied with fright and
+astonishment.
+
+"You must put on his clothes," said Max.
+
+They accordingly took off the jailer's outer garments, which Morton
+substituted for his own, drawing the deep-visored cap over his eyes.
+Max, at the same time, bound the jailer, hand and foot, with strings
+of leather, which he took from his pocket.
+
+"Look out into the gallery," he said, unclosing the door, "and see if
+there's any body in the way."
+
+Morton, in his jailer's dress, went out, and, looking back, reported
+that the coast was clear. Max followed, and closed the door. The
+helpless Jacob remained a prisoner, till some other functionary of the
+castle should come to his relief.
+
+They passed along the gallery, down one flight of steps, and up
+another, meeting no one but a soldier, to whom Max gave a careless nod
+of recognition. There were several private outlets to the castle, but
+each was guarded by a sentinel; and it was chiefly his preparation
+against this difficulty that had caused Max's delay.
+
+Among his acquaintance was an old soldier, called Peter,--a Prussian
+by birth. He had learned to read and write, and being inordinately
+vain of his superior acquirements, looked upon himself as the most
+learned of men. When off duty, he was commonly to be found in a corner
+of the barrack, poring over a greasy little book, which he always
+carried in his pocket. As his temper was exceedingly sour and
+disagreeable, he was no favorite; indeed, he was the general butt of
+his brother soldiers, who delighted to exasperate his crusty mood.
+Max, however, with a view to the furtherance of his scheme, had of
+late courted his good graces, flattering him on his learning, often
+asking him to drink, and otherwise cajoling him. Finding that, on this
+day, Peter's turn had come to stand guard at a certain postern of the
+prison, he had contrived to drug him with a strong dose of opium,
+mixed with a dram of bitters. Max, who was a singular compound of
+simplicity and finesse, the former the result of nature, the latter of
+circumstance, plumed himself greatly on this exploit.
+
+As they approached the narrow door in question, Max stooped and took
+off his shoes, motioning Morton to do the same. At a few paces farther
+on, they saw the sentinel, walking to and fro on his post, with no
+very military gait.
+
+Max, who was wonderfully cool and composed, pressed Morton's arm.
+
+"_Voilà, monsieur_,"--he was now and hereafter very respectful in his
+manner towards the man he was saving,--"_voilà_; look at the old
+booby; how he reels and staggers about--ah! do you see?"
+
+Peter had stopped in his walk, and was leaning against the wall,
+nodding his head with a look indescribably sleepy and silly. Meanwhile
+his musket was slowly slipping down between his arm and his side, in
+spite of one or two efforts to clutch it. At last the butt struck on
+the pavement. The sound roused the sentinel from his torpor. He shook
+himself, and began his walk again; but in a few moments stopped,
+leaned his shoulder against the wall, on the farther side of the door,
+let his musket this time rest fairly on the floor, and began nodding
+and butting his head, in a most ludicrous manner, into an angle of the
+wall.
+
+Max again pressed Morton's arm, and gliding on tiptoe past the drugged
+sentinel, they went out at the door without alarming him. They were
+now in an obscure and narrow precinct of the castle, flanked on one
+side by a high wall of ancient masonry, and on the other by the rear
+of various outbuildings. The place did no great credit to the neatness
+of the garrison, being littered with a variety of refuse; but no
+living thing was visible; none, that is, but a gray cat sneaking along
+under the wall of a shed, with a newly-killed rat dangling from her
+mouth.
+
+They next passed into a wider area, overlooked on the left by the rear
+of the principal range of barracks.
+
+"Hallo, Max, where are you going?" cried a voice.
+
+Max looked up, and saw a brother corporal leaning out at one of the
+barrack windows, with a fatigue cap on one side of his head, and a
+German pipe between his moustached lips.
+
+"To the village."
+
+"Who gave you leave?"
+
+"The lieutenant."
+
+"It's good company you are in. What are you going to do below?"
+
+"Get me a pipe. Mine is broke. What is a man fit for without his
+pipe?"
+
+The other at the window replied by a joke, not very refined, levelled
+at Max and his companion. Max retorted only by a ludicrous gesture of
+derision, which drew a horse laugh from a soldier at another window,
+under cover of which they passed out of the area, and reached a
+pathway leading down the height.
+
+A natural gully, or shallow ravine, twisted and zigzagged down the
+side of the rock. In wet weather, it became a little watercourse,
+conducting all the rain that fell on the western roofs of the castle
+down to the filthy and picturesque hamlet of Ehrenberg, with its dirty
+population of five hundred Wallack and Croat peasants, and a horde of
+dirtier gypsies, nested in the outskirts. In dry weather, the gully
+served as a pathway, which the soldiers often used in their descents
+to the village.
+
+Max began to descend, and Morton followed at his heels. The fresh
+wind, the open view, the unwonted sense of treading mother earth,
+wrought on him strangely; not, as on the wrestler of old, to nerve him
+with renewed force. He grew faint, dizzy, and half blind; and as he
+staggered after his guide, he felt for the first time how the prison
+had sapped away his strength.
+
+In ten minutes, they were at the bottom, and picking their way past
+the rear of the squalid cottages, among rickety outhouses, broken
+fences, heaps of litter, pigs, children, and other impediments. Most
+of the men were absent; a few women only stared at them as they
+passed. With one very pretty Wallack girl, Max, for the sake of
+appearances, exchanged a few words of bantering gallantry. She stood
+looking after him admiringly. Behind the next cottage, a yellow
+Hungarian shepherd dog, large as a wolf, jumped suddenly from a heap
+of rotten straw, on which he had been dozing, and made a fierce dash
+at Max's leg; but the latter gave him a kick in the teeth, which sent
+him off yelping, followed by a brickbat, and a curse from the Wallack
+damsel.
+
+Beyond the village, the ground was without trees or shrubs for a full
+half mile; yet it was uneven,--not to say broken; and Max, who had
+made a careful reconnaissance, knew that if they could but reach
+unnoticed a hollow some twenty rods from the skirts of the hamlet, no
+eye from the ramparts could see them. Towards this, therefore, he
+walked, with an air of great nonchalance, Morton following, his heart
+in his throat. Their movements were either unseen, or failed to excite
+suspicion; and taking a beaten track into the hollow, they came upon a
+spring at the foot of a rock, where three women were pounding clothes
+on a stone with clubs, by way of washing them; while a lazy boor, in a
+broad felt hat, lay on the ground listlessly watching the process.
+
+In five minutes more, the hollow ceased to conceal them; and, to
+Morton's great dismay, they stood again within eyeshot of the castle.
+Max, however, with the skill of an old deer stalker, soon managed to
+place, first, a large rock, then the rugged shoulder of a hill,
+between themselves and the detested battlements. Next they gained the
+partial shelter of the scattered scrub oaks and pines which formed a
+ragged outskirt to the deeper forest behind, and, in a few moments
+more, reached the dark asylum of its matted boughs and underwood.
+
+Thus far they had walked at the leisurely pace of a pair of idle
+strollers; but no sooner were they well out of sight, than Max cried,
+"Come on!" and set out at a run. When he turned, however, and saw the
+pale face of Morton, already tired with unwonted effort, he took a
+flask of brandy from his pocket. The fiery draught strung Morton's
+sinews afresh. They pushed on, over hills and hollows, by cattle paths
+and brooks, across open glades, and through wooded tracts, dense and
+breathless as an American forest.
+
+"Look!" said Max, stopping on a rising ground, and pointing back over
+the woods. Three miles off, the rock of Ehrenberg rose in view,
+bearing aloft its heavy load of battlements and towers. Morton gave it
+one look, prayed it might be the last, and motioned his companion
+forward again.
+
+They came to a lazy brook, stealing out of a marsh. In the mud by its
+side was the slough where a wild boar had wallowed. The solitude and
+savageness of the place shot a fresh life through Morton's failing
+veins. The sense came upon him that his fate was now in his own hands;
+the resolve that he would never be taken alive. He called Max to stop.
+
+"Have you any weapon besides your bayonet?"
+
+Max produced a pair of pistols, which he had contrived to appropriate;
+and, keeping one of them, handed the other to Morton.
+
+It was dusk before they stopped, in the depth of the woods, on a
+grassy spot, shut in by a tall cliff, and a growth of old beeches,
+oaks, and evergreens. Morton threw himself on the ground. Max made a
+fire, by plugging up the touch-hole of his flint-lock pistol, and
+placing in the pan, by way of tinder, a piece of cotton rag, rubbed
+with a little wet gunpowder. Morton roused himself, and breaking off
+small branches of the firs and spruces, piled them for beds. The loaf
+which the jailer had brought for his next day's meal, with some more
+solid viands which Max produced, served them for supper; and, for
+drink, they scooped water in their hands from the neighboring brook.
+
+It grew dark, and as they sat together by the fire, the red light
+flared against the jagged rock, the shaggy fir boughs, and knotty
+limbs of the oaks. It seemed to Morton as if time and space were done
+away; as if the prison were a dream; and as if, once more on some
+college ramble, he were seated by a camp fire in the familiar forests
+of America. But instead of a vagabond Indian, or the hardy face of a
+Penobscot lumberman, the flame fell on the frogged uniform and long,
+waxed moustache of Corporal Max, as he sat cross-legged, like a Turk,
+on the pile of evergreens.
+
+As Morton looked on his manly face, and thought of the boundless debt
+he owed him, his heart warmed towards him, and he poured forth his
+gratitude as well as he could, in the patchwork of languages which Max
+himself had used as his medium of communication.
+
+The latter soon fell asleep, and lay snoring lustily. With his
+companion sleep was impossible. He lay watching the stars, and the
+dull folds of smoke that half hid them, listening to the wind, and the
+mysterious sounds of the forest, and, as the night drew on, shivering
+with the damp and cold. His mind was a maze of confused emotions,
+suspense, and delight, hope, and fear, mingling in a dreamy chaos;
+till at last fatigue prevailed, and he, too, fell asleep; a sleep
+haunted by hideous images, yet with its intervals of deep peace and
+repose.
+
+He woke, shivering; and rising in the twilight, stirred the half-dead
+embers, and crouched over them for warmth. But, as the fresh odors of
+the morning reached his senses, they brought so vividly upon him the
+memory of his youthful health, and hope, and liberty, that his spirits
+rose almost to defiance of the peril around him. He woke Max, whose
+slumbers were noisy as ever, and they pushed forward again on a
+well-beaten cattle path, leading westward.
+
+About sunrise they found a cow, one of the gray, long-horned breed of
+the country, grazing very peacefully. Max looked about him, and began
+to move with caution. The cow was wild, and would not let them pass
+her, but walked before them along the path. In a few minutes, a great
+number of cattle appeared, grazing on an open glade, with two men
+watching them. They were of the half-savage herdsmen of this district,
+little better than banditti. One of them sat on a rock, the other
+lounged on the grass. Both were dressed in coarse linen shirts and
+trousers, short, heavy woollen cloaks thrown over their shoulders, a
+kind of rude sandals, and broad felt hats. For weapons, one carried a
+club, the other a hatchet, the long handle of which served him for a
+walking stick.
+
+Max whispered to Morton; and stealing unperceived through the bushes,
+they suddenly appeared before the two men, much, as it seemed, to
+their amazement. Max, in a language quite new to his companion,
+desired them to change clothes with Morton and himself. The voice and
+air of the applicant, and the butt of a pistol protruding from the
+breast pocket of each of the strangers, gave warning that the wish
+could not wisely be slighted. The boors complied, the more willingly
+as they would be great gainers by the bargain. Max threw off his
+uniform, and put on the dress of the taller herdsman. Morton satisfied
+himself with the woollen cloak of the other, in exchange for the
+jailer's coat.
+
+The exchange made, he signed to the man to give him the hatchet which
+he carried; but the boor hesitated, scowling very sullenly. Max
+hastened to interpose, and offered a silver coin in return for the
+hatchet, which its owner at once surrendered. It was by no means any
+love of abstract justice which dictated this procedure; but a desire,
+on Max's part, to leave the men in good humor, lest, being offended,
+they might set the soldiers on the track of the fugitives.
+
+They parted on the best terms, and Max and Morton betook themselves
+again to the woods.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLIII.
+
+  Like bloodhounds now they search me out;--
+  Hark to the whistle and the shout!--
+  The chase is up,--but they shall know,
+  The stag at bay's a dangerous foe.--_Lady of the Lake_.
+
+
+Three or four weeks passed. They were deep within the bounds of Tyrol.
+By avoiding towns and highways, travelling often in the night, making
+prize of every stray sheep, pig, or fowl, and a diligent robbing of
+henroosts, they had thus far contrived to elude arrest, and support
+life.
+
+Morton was greatly changed. Body and mind, he was formed for hardship,
+and toils which would have broken a weaker frame had nerved and
+strengthened his. But of late their suffering had increased. They
+found but poor forage among the poverty-pinched mountaineers, and for
+two days, had had no better sustenance than the soft inner bark of the
+pine trees. This, with previous abstinence, had sunk them to the last
+extremity, and brought Max to the verge of despair.
+
+It was a rainy afternoon; rain drizzling in the valleys, clouds
+hanging on the mountains, dark vapors steaming up from the chasms, and
+clinging sullenly to the edge of the pine forests. Max and Morton sat
+under a dripping rock, on a mountain which overhangs a nameless little
+valley, not far to the north of the Val di Sole.
+
+"Keep a good heart, Max," said Morton, "it shall go hard but you and I
+will get out of this scrape yet."
+
+Max shook his head despondingly. His bold spirit was starved out of
+him. Morton's courage, unlike that of his companion, was the result
+more of his mental habits than of a native constitutional intrepidity,
+and was therefore much less subject to the changes of his bodily
+condition. He had proved Max, and knew him to be brave as he was warm
+and true-hearted; but the corporal's valor, like that of Homer's
+heroes, was best displayed on a full stomach.
+
+"There's nothing else for it," said Morton; "we must take the bull by
+the horns. One of those houses below is an inn, or something that
+pretends to be one. I can see the bush fastened to the door post. We
+must go and buy food; or else lie here and die."
+
+"It is better to be shot than starve," said Max.
+
+"Come on, then. You must be spokesman. I am go for nothing in that
+way; but if there's any trouble, I'll stand by you as well as I can."
+
+Max had had a little money in copper and silver, the greater part of
+which he had consigned to the keeping of Morton, as the more careful
+treasurer. With this for their passport, they issued from the cover of
+the woods, and began to cross the mountain slopes and rough pasture
+that lay between them and the hamlet.
+
+The latter, as they drew near, seemed by no means so insignificant as
+at first, a rising ground having hidden a part of it. They came to the
+inn, a low stone building of a most respectable antiquity, and pushing
+open the door, were met by a short man who seemed to be the owner. Max
+produced a handful of kreutzers, and asked for bread and meat. The
+host looked at the strangers, then at their money; seemed satisfied
+with both, and showed them up a flight of broken steps to a large room
+above the half-sunken kitchen. Here, at his call, a girl brought the
+food and placed it on a table. He next asked if they would not have
+beer; and Max assenting, went out to bring it.
+
+The fugitives now addressed themselves to their meal with the keenness
+of starving men; but the prudent Morton took care, at the same time,
+to secure the more portable of the viands for future need. Having
+dulled the edge of his appetite, he began to grow uneasy at the
+landlord's long absence.
+
+"What is that man doing? He might have brewed the beer by this time."
+
+"He _does_ take his time," responded Max, also growing anxious.
+
+"This is no place for us. Take the rest of that biscuit, and let's be
+off."
+
+Max was following this counsel, when---- "Hark!" cried Morton; "what
+noise is that?"
+
+"Go to the window and look."
+
+Morton did so.
+
+"My God!" he exclaimed, recoiling, his face ghastly with dismay.
+
+Max sprang to the window. Below, at the door, four or five men were
+standing, and among them two gendarmes, while others were in the act
+of entering.
+
+The outlandish dress of the two strangers had at once roused the
+landlord's suspicion. Of Max's character he had not a moment's doubt;
+for in him no disguise could hide the look and port of the trained
+soldier. By ill luck, a party of gendarmes were in the village,
+weather-bound on their way from Latsch. Having secured his guests'
+money, the landlord thought to make a farther profit from them; and,
+sure of his reward, reported to the officer in command, that there
+were in his house two men, the taller of whom was certainly a
+deserter, while the other could not be a peasant, though he wore the
+dress of one. The officer mustered his followers, and hastened to beat
+up the game.
+
+He entered as Max turned from the window, and came up to him, sword in
+hand.
+
+"I arrest you. Give yourselves up, you and the other."
+
+But before the words were well out of his mouth, the fist of Max fell
+between his eyes like a battering ram, and dashed him back against the
+soldier next behind him.
+
+"Come on," cried Max to Morton, and leaped through the open window at
+the farther end of the room. Morton followed in time to escape two or
+three bayonet thrusts which were made after him. They both vaulted
+over a fence, and ran through the narrow passage between an old shed
+and a huge square stack of the last year's hay. A musket or two were
+let off at them, but to no effect; and splashing across a shallow
+brook, they made at headlong speed for the shelter of the mountains.
+
+As they reached the base, Max looked back. Seven or eight gendarmes
+were after them, and behind, later joining the chase, ran two or three
+men in a different dress.
+
+"Riflemen!" muttered Max, with an oath.
+
+Breasting the rough heights, clinging to stumps, roots, and bushes,
+they made their way up with all the speed which desperate need could
+give them. They were soon among thick trees, hidden from the pursuers,
+and almost from each other. But the shouts of the soldiers came up
+from below: they all gave tongue like so many hounds.
+
+"Curse your yelping throats!" gasped Morton. Breathless and half
+spent, he was clinging to a sapling on the edge of a steep pitch of
+the hill. One of the soldiers saw him. A musket shot rang from below,
+the hollow hum of the ball passing high above his head.
+
+Max laughed in fierce derision. They ran forward again across a wide
+plateau, nearly void of trees; and before they had fairly gained its
+farther side, the foremost pursuers were at the border of woods they
+had just left. Their late famine made fatal odds against them. The
+gendarmes, indeed, gained little in the race; but the more active
+riflemen were nearer every moment.
+
+Climbing, running, and scrambling among rocks, trees, and bushes, they
+won their way up till they came to another plateau, which broke the
+ascent of the mountain a furlong above the former. Across this they
+dashed at full speed. They were within a rod or two of the woods
+beyond, Max running on Morton's left, a little in advance of him, when
+a musket was fired at them from behind. The aim was so bad, that they
+did not even hear the humming of the bullet. At the next instant, came
+a dull, plunging report, unlike the former. Max leaped four feet into
+the air, and fell forward on his face with a force that seemed to
+shake the earth. Morton kneeled by his side; turned him on his back;
+lifted him by main strength into a sitting posture. Both his hands
+were clutched full of grass and earth.
+
+"Max! Max!" cried Morton, in the extremity of anguish; "speak, Max,
+for God's sake."
+
+But Max said nothing. His hat had fallen off; his eyes rolled wildly
+under his tangled hair; he gasped; blood flowed from his lips; and a
+spot of blood was soaking wider and wider upon the breast of his
+shirt. Then a deathly change came over his dilated eyeballs. Morton
+had seen the throes of the wounded bison, when the fierce eyes,
+glaring with angry life, are clouded of a sudden into a dull, cold
+jelly, fixed unmeaning lumps. It was a change like this that he saw in
+the eyes of Max. His friend was dead. The fatal rifle of Tyrol had
+done its work. The ball had pierced him from back to breast, and torn
+through his heart on its way.
+
+The whole passed in a few moments; but when Morton looked up, nearly
+all the pursuers were in sight on the open ground, and one of them,
+the man who had fired the death shot, was almost upon him. He snatched
+Max's pistol, which had fallen on the grass, and, blind with grief and
+fury, ran forward, levelled, and pulled the trigger. The pistol, wet
+with the rain, missed fire. The man was not four paces off. Morton
+hurled the pistol at his face. The iron barrel clashed against his
+teeth, and sent him reeling backward, bleeding and half stunned.
+Griping his hatchet, his best remaining friend, Morton turned for the
+woods, gained them at three bounds, and tore through the cover like a
+hunted wolf.
+
+Over rocks, among trees, through thickets and brambles, he struggled
+and clambered on, seeking safety, like the Rocky Mountain goat, in the
+rudest and wildest refuge. But in a few minutes, his flight was
+stopped. Rocks rose before him, and rocks on each side. He was caught
+in a complete _cul de sac_. He might have climbed the precipices, but,
+in the act, the shots from below would soon have tumbled him to the
+earth again. There was no escape; and, grinding his teeth in rage and
+desperation, he turned savagely at bay.
+
+Three or four of the men were very near him; and almost as he turned,
+one of them came in sight, pushing through the bushes. As he saw the
+game, he gave a shout, a sort of view halloo. Then appeared another,
+and another, all advancing upon him. In a moment, he would have been
+in their hands, alive or dead; but, without waiting the attack, he
+sprang on the foremost like a tiger, and plunged his hatchet deep in
+the soldier's eyes and brain. Then pushing past another, who, with a
+hesitating movement, was making towards him, he dashed down a sloping
+mass of rocks, dived into a labyrinth of thickets, and thence into a
+dark and hollow gorge of the mountain. Along this he ran like one with
+death's shadow behind him, losing himself deeper and deeper among the
+chaotic rocks and ragged trees. He stopped, at last, and listened. Far
+behind, he could hear his pursuers shouting to each other. The pack
+were at fault, and ranging in vain search after him.
+
+Spent as he was, he pressed on again, following upward for an hour or
+more the course of a brook, which issued from a narrow glen, reaching
+far back into the solitude of the mountains. His mind was dim and
+confused, a cloudland of mixed emotions; deep grief for his murdered
+friend, deep rage that he had been hunted like a wild beast, a longing
+for further vengeance, a sense, almost to despair, of his own
+loneliness and peril. He felt himself outcast from mankind, driven
+back to find a sanctuary among the dens and fastnesses of Nature. She
+alone, amid the general frown, seemed propitious; for of a sudden the
+clouds sundered in the west; a gush of warm light poured across the
+dripping mountains, and flushed the distant glaciers with their
+evening rose-tint. In the depths where he stood, all was shadow; but
+the crags above were basking in the sunshine, and the savage old
+pines, jewelled with rain drops, seemed stretching their shaggy arms
+to welcome the kindly radiance. Morton threw himself on the ground,
+and commended his desperate fortunes to the God of the waste and the
+mountain.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLIV.
+
+  In dread, in danger, and alone,
+  Famished and chilled, through ways unknown,
+  Tangled and steep, he journeyed on.--_Lady of the Lake_.
+
+
+Whoever, journeying southward from Coire, passes through the Via Mala,
+thence through the village of Andeer, and thence turns to the left,
+following a mountain path up the torrent of the Aversa, will soon lose
+himself in the solitudes of the savage valley of Ferrera. Thither
+Morton made his way; but not by so smooth an access. Ignorant of the
+country, and guided chiefly by the sun, he had pushed blindly forward
+by paths best known to the chamois and those who chase them.
+
+His best hope had been to meet some of his travelling countrymen, from
+whom he could gain help. To this end he had once and again approached
+the highways, and as often some real or seeming danger had driven him
+back to the mountains. For a day or more, the food he had taken from
+the inn served to support him. He had flung away Max's pistol, but
+still had his own. It served him to kindle a fire; and by loading it
+with gravel, in place of shot, he contrived to kill thrushes and other
+small birds. Their nests, too, full at this time of eggs and young,
+supplied a meagre resource; and once, being hard pressed, he made a
+Gallic banquet on a party of serenaders who were croaking and trilling
+their evening concert about the edge of a shallow pool. Frogs have
+found warm eulogists; but never did the art of Paris or Bologna
+transmute those delectable reptiles into so savory a repast as did the
+famine-sharpened appetite of Morton.
+
+Upon fare like this, he wandered on, till he stumbled upon the valley
+of Ferrera.
+
+He had found at last an asylum wild enough to content the most pious
+of eremites, or the most desperate of bandits. Below he saw the raging
+water foaming along the depths of its black ravine; above--the
+stupendous ramparts that walled the valley in--cliffs, along whose
+giddy verge the firs were dwindled to feathers. Cascades spouted from
+their tops, scattering to mist and nothingness long before their
+measureless leap was done. The tribute drawn from the clouds the
+lavish mountain flung back to the clouds again. Rocks were piled on
+rocks, ruin on ruin, and, high over all, the glaciers of the Splugen
+shone like cliffs of silver.
+
+Take a savage from his woods or his prairies, and, school him as you
+will, the ingrained savage will still declare itself. Take the most
+polished of mankind, turn him into the wilderness, and forthwith the
+dormant savage begins to appear. Hunt him with enemies, gnaw him with
+hunger, beat him with wind and rain, and observe the result; how the
+delicate tissues of civilization are blown away, how rude passions
+start into life, how his bodily cravings grow clamorous and
+importunate, how he grows reckless of his own blood and the blood of
+others. "Men are as the times." Young Lovelace of the hussars singing
+a duet at Lady Belgrave's _soirée_, would hardly know himself, hewing
+down Russian artillerymen at Balaklava.
+
+Had Meredith met his old comrade as he was making his slow way among
+the rocks and ravines, in dress no better than the meanest peasant,
+his face moustached and bearded, and thin and dark with hardship, he
+would have needed the eyes of a lynx to detect Morton the millionaire.
+The mind of the latter shared, in some sort, the changes of his outer
+man. Proscribed and hunted, starved into fierceness, his best friend
+murdered at his side, his mood was, to say the least, none of the most
+benign. But, as he toiled on his way, he turned aside to rest in a
+sunny nook, deep sheltered among rocks. Here, where the fresh grass
+tempted him, and where, from a jutting crag, the water, trickling from
+some hidden spring, fell in rapid drops, tinkling into a pool below,
+and, as they fell, flashing in the sun like a string of
+diamonds,--here, in this quiet nook, he sat down; and, as he did so,
+he saw by his side, close nestled in the young grass, a little family
+of white and purple blossoms. They were blossoms of the crocus, a
+native of these valleys.
+
+Morton bent over them, and put aside the grass from the delicate
+petals. A flower will now and then find a voice, and that not a weak
+one. As he looked, there came in upon him such a surge of
+recollection, such a memory of New England gardens, such a vision of
+loved faces, and, chief before them all, the face he best loved, such
+an awakening of every tender thought that had once possessed him, and
+all in such overpowering contrast with his present misery, that the
+famished outlaw burst into a flood of tears.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLV.
+
+  The lamentable change is from the best;
+  The worst returns to laughter. Welcome, then,
+  Thou unsubstantial air that I embrace.--_Lear_.
+
+
+The Honorable Charles Augustus Murray, recreating himself with a
+hunting tour among the Pawnees, killed a buffalo; and being, as he
+assures us, ravenously hungry, proceeded to regale himself on his
+game, without asking the aid of the cook. Morton, in his wandering,
+had the good luck to kill a straggling sheep; and being twice as
+hungry as the Honorable Charles Augustus Murray, it may be set down
+largely to his credit, if he did not follow that gentleman's example.
+At all events, the sheep was a windfall of the first magnitude. Morton
+had woodcraft enough to turn the fleece into a receptacle for carrying
+such parts of the flesh as best answered his purposes; and thus he was
+well provisioned for several days.
+
+After various roamings, by night and by day, he came upon a broad
+road, clearly one of the great alpine passes. Which of them he could
+not tell. He would have given the world to learn; for he knew nothing
+of his whereabouts, and thought himself still in Tyrol, or, at the
+best, in Bormio. His attempts to gain information from the peasants
+had always failed, and, in one or two instances, had seemed to
+threaten serious consequences. Though brave enough in the front of an
+open danger, the secret toils which had been about him so long had
+taught him to shrink from the face of man. Moreover, he could not
+speak the prevalent language of the district, and his Italian, which
+might sometimes have served him, was none of the best. A little local
+knowledge could have saved him a world of suffering; but, in the lack
+of it, he pushed blindly on, resolved to die on the mountains rather
+than risk another prison.
+
+The sky for some days had been overclouded. He had lost the points of
+the compass; and when he saw the great highway stretching before him,
+dim and lonely in the gray of the morning, he thought, or hoped, that
+it would lead him into the heart of Switzerland. It was the pass of
+the Splugen, where it leaves the Rheinwald. Turning his back on
+safety, he began to plod on towards the lion's jaws.
+
+Seeing a small cottage, in a recess of the forest, he reconnoitred it,
+with the laudable view of robbing a henroost. While thus employed, he
+saw two men leave the house, and betake themselves to their work in
+some remote part of the mountain. After a long reconnaissance, he
+could see no one about the place but a young woman, about six feet
+high, who, fork in hand, was busying herself in a field with labors
+much less elegant than useful. Morton watched her for a time, then,
+taking heart of grace, walked towards her from his lurking-place,
+holding between his fingers, as a talisman, a piece of silver, part of
+the scanty trust which Max had left him.
+
+When he beheld her lusty proportions, her white teeth, grinning
+between perplexity at his appearance and pleasure at sight of the
+coin, and her broad cheeks, ruddy with health, good-nature, and
+stupidity, his apprehensions vanished. She seemed not at all afraid of
+him. In truth, she and her pitchfork might between them have put two
+common men to flight. He spoke to her in bad Italian, and asked for
+food, proffering the money in exchange. She answered in a _patois_
+which was Greek to him, mixed with a few words of Italian, worse than
+his own. She seemed, however, to catch his meaning very clearly; for,
+running to the house, she presently emerged with a loaf of barley
+bread and a formidable piece of bacon. These she gave him, and, taking
+the silver, tied it up with much care in a corner of her apron.
+
+Thus far successful, Morton next tried to learn something touching the
+country and the routes; but here his failure was signal. Where food
+and drink were the topics in hand, and especially when her wits were
+quickened by the sight of silver, she had contrived to understand him;
+but with matters more abstruse her faculties had never been trained to
+grapple. She showed, however, no lack of good-will, nodding, laughing,
+and answering, "_Si, si!_" to all his questions indiscriminately. With
+this he had to content himself. He bade her "_addio_," received a
+friendly nod and grin in return, and went on his way, much less bitter
+against mankind than he had been ten minutes before.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLVI.
+
+_Auf._ Your hand! Most welcome.
+
+_1 Serv._ Here's a strange alteration!
+
+_2 Serv._ By my hand, I had thought to have strucken him with a
+cudgel; and yet my mind gave me his clothes made a false report of
+him.--_Coriolanus_.
+
+
+In passing the Splugen, Morton journeyed chiefly in the night, making
+a wide detour over the crusted snow to avoid the station at the
+summit. By day, he found some safe retreat where he could rest and
+sleep in tolerable ease and warmth. His night progress was, for the
+most part, on a broad, clear road, very different from that rugged
+path by the Cardinel, where, some forty-seven years before, the
+avalanches cut through Macdonald's columns, and swept men and horses
+to bottomless ruin.
+
+The sky was still clouded; but there was a full moon behind the
+clouds, and the mountains reflected its light, from their vast
+surfaces of snow. He could hear any approaching foot from a great
+distance, for there was nothing to break the stillness but the hollow
+fall of torrents, and the whisper and moan of winds through ravines
+and gorges.
+
+On the third night, he was descending the defiles that lead from Campo
+Dolcino to Chiavenna. He passed Chiavenna, and soon a new scene opened
+upon him. The Alps were behind him, cliff and chasm, torrent and
+ravine, and the icy sheen of glaciers. Italy received him, robed in
+her "fatal gift of beauty;" in the midst of her shame, radiant as in
+her day of honor; breathing still of history, and art, and poetry.
+
+Standing on the heights behind Colico, he saw the Lake of Como
+stretching southward, its banks studded with villas, its hills green
+with the chestnut and the laurel, the fig, pomegranate, and vine. But,
+to the north, the sheer cliffs rose like a battlement, and, higher
+yet, towered cold white peaks, aloof in stern and lofty desolation.
+
+Reality will now and then make fancy blush for herself. The Easter
+illumination of St. Peter's may match the wildest dream of the Arabian
+Nights; and this scene on the Lake of Como, with the sunset upon it,
+may outvie the highest wrought counterfeit of Claude or Salvator, or
+both combined. The world, much abused as she is, does her part. She is
+profuse of beauties; but, in the midst of them, one still drags with
+him his own work-day identity. Go where he will, his old Adam still
+hangs about him; and the spell-breaking sense that he is himself and
+no other scatters every charm that Art and Nature would cast over him.
+
+Morton, poor devil, had other matters to think of than scenery. Hunger
+and danger are a cure for the most rabid love of landscape. His bread
+and bacon had given out, and the phantom of an Austrian _sbirro_ rode
+him like a nightmare. Mustering his best recollections of geography,
+he came to the belief that he was either on the Lake of Como, or, as
+seemed to him much more likely, on the lake farther eastward, that of
+Garda. One thing was certain: he was on a great route of travel. His
+best course, as he thought, was to watch for the chance of a meeting
+with some American or English tourist, to whom he could make his case
+known; and meanwhile, though a worse actor never appeared on any
+stage, to pass himself off, if he could, as a beggar.
+
+He passed a night on the hills above Colico, and happily for him,
+above the malaria; woke half famished from his miserably broken sleep,
+and wearily walked on his way, wondering if, in support of his
+character, he could ever find grace to say, "_Datemi qualche cosa_."
+There was something in the idea of thus sneaking through a country
+that grated on him with peculiar discomfort; and to have headed the
+forlorn hope of a storming party would have been less trying to his
+nerve.
+
+The thought how to content the cravings of his hunger soon absorbed
+all other thoughts. Looking about him, he saw a small white house,
+standing alone on the road by the shore of the lake; and over the door
+he could read from afar the sign, "_Spaccio di Vino_." Famine got the
+better of caution. He approached warily, ensconced himself behind an
+old wall, and, quite unseen, began his observations. The house was but
+a few rods off, on the other side of the road. An old wayfarer sat in
+the porch, busy in breakfasting on curds, pressed hard like a cheese,
+a slice of very black and solid-looking bread serving him for a plate.
+In a few moments, the landlord, a freckled-faced Italian, came to the
+door, and began to chat with his customer. Morton took a coin from his
+pocket, walked forth from his hiding-place, and was approaching, still
+unnoticed, when he was startled by the sound of a horse's tread, on
+the road beyond the house. A single glance at the rider told him that
+there was no danger, and made his heart beat with sudden hope.
+
+"_Il signor Inglese_," remarked the host to his friend.--"_Buon'
+giorno, eccellenza, buon' giorno_,"--lifting his white night cap, and
+bowing with a great flourish.
+
+The young man touched his hat with a careless smile, and half-turning
+his horse, asked,--
+
+"Padrone, has my man passed this way?"
+
+He had, to Morton's eye, rather the easy manner of a well-bred
+American, than the more distant bearing common with an English
+gentleman.
+
+"_Eccellenza, si,_" replied the padrone,--"he passed a quarter of an
+hour ago, with the birds your excellency has shot."
+
+The young man rode on, passing Morton, as he stood by the roadside.
+
+"I have seen that face before," said the latter to himself--"in a
+dream, for what I know, but I have seen it."
+
+It was a frank and open face, manly, yet full of kindliness, not
+without a tinge of melancholy.
+
+"Come of it what will," thought the fugitive, "I will speak to him."
+
+He walked after the retiring horseman, and when an angle of the road
+concealed him from the inn, quickened his pace almost to a run. But at
+that moment the Englishman struck into a sharp trot, and disappeared
+over the ridge of a hill. Morton soon gained sight of him again, and
+kept him in view for about a mile, when he saw him enter the gateway
+belonging to a small villa, between the road and the water. It was a
+very pretty spot; the grounds terraced to the edge of the lake; with
+laurels, cypresses, box hedges, a fountain or two, an artificial
+grotto, and a superb diorama of water and mountains.
+
+Morton stood waiting at the gate. At length he saw a female domestic,
+evidently Italian, passing through the shrubbery before the house, and
+disappearing behind it. In a few minutes more, a solemn personage
+appeared at the door, whom he would have known at a mile's distance
+for an old English servant. He stood looking with great gravity out
+upon the grounds. Morton approached, and accosting him in Italian,
+asked to see his master.
+
+John was not a proficient in the tongue of Ariosto and Dante. Indeed,
+in his intercourse with the natives, he had seen occasion for one
+phrase alone, and that a somewhat pithy and repellant one,--_Andate al
+diavolo_.
+
+He glared with supreme and savage scorn on the tatterdemalion
+stranger, and uttered his talismanic words,--
+
+"_Andarty al devillio!_"
+
+Morton changed his tactics; and, looking fixedly at the human mastiff,
+said in English,--
+
+"Go to your master, sir, and tell him that I wish to speak with him."
+
+The Saxon words and the tone of authority coming from one whom he had
+taken for a vagrant beggar, astonished the old man beyond utterance.
+He stared for a moment,--turned to obey,--then turned back again,--
+
+"Mr. Wentworth is at breakfast, sir."
+
+The last monosyllable was spoken in a doubtful tone, the speaker being
+perplexed between respect for the tone and language of the stranger,
+and contempt for his vagabond attire.
+
+"Then bring me pen, ink, and paper--I will write to him."
+
+And pushing past the servant, he seated himself on a chair in the
+hall.
+
+John went for the articles required, first glancing around to see what
+items of plunder might be within the intruder's reach. Morton in his
+absence opened several books which lay upon a table; and in one of
+them he saw, pencilled on the fly leaf, the name of the owner, Robert
+Wentworth.
+
+The pen, ink, and paper arriving, he wrote as follows, John meanwhile
+keeping a vigilant guard over him:--
+
+Sir: I am a native of the United States, who, for the past four years,
+have been a prisoner in the Castle of Ehrenberg, confined for no
+offence, political or otherwise, but on a groundless suspicion. I
+escaped by the assistance of a soldier in the garrison, and have made
+my way thus far in the dress of a peasant. I am anxious to reach
+Genoa, or some other port beyond the power of Austria, but am
+embarrassed and endangered by my ignorance of the routes and the state
+of the country. Information on these points, and the means of
+communicating with an American consul, are the only aid of which I am
+in necessity; and I take the liberty of applying to you in the hope of
+obtaining it. By giving it, you will oblige me in a matter of life and
+death. The people of the country cannot be trusted; but I may rely
+securely on the generosity of an English gentleman.
+
+                                  Your obedient servant,
+                                              VASSALL MORTON.
+
+He sealed the note, and gave it to the old servant. The latter mounted
+the stairs, and reappearing in a few moments, said, in his former
+doubtful tone, "Please to walk up."
+
+Morton followed him to the door of a small room looking upon the lake.
+Near the window stood the young man whom he had seen at the inn, with
+the note open in his hand. Morton entered, inclining his head
+slightly. The other returned his salutation, looked at him for an
+instant without speaking, and then, coming forward, gave him his hand,
+and bade him welcome with the utmost frankness.
+
+Astonished, and half overcome, Morton could only stammer his
+acknowledgments for such a reception of one who came with no passport
+but his own word.
+
+"O," said Wentworth, smiling, "when I meet an honest man, I know him
+by instinct, as Falstaff knew the true prince. Sit down; I am glad to
+see you; and shall be still more glad if I can help you."
+
+The old servant received some whispered directions, and left the room.
+Morton gave a short outline of his story, to which his host listened
+with unequivocal signs of interest.
+
+"I wish," said Wentworth, "that you were the only innocent victim of
+Austrian despotism. It is a monstrous infamy, built on fraud and
+force, but too refined, too artificial, too complicated to endure."
+
+"Bullets and cold steel are the medicines for it," said Morton.
+
+Here the servant reappeared.
+
+"Here, at all events, you are safe. Stay with me to-day, and I think I
+can promise you that in a few days more you may stand on the deck of
+an American frigate. If you will go with John, he will help you to get
+rid of that villanous disguise."
+
+Morton followed the old man into an adjoining room, where he found a
+bath, a suit of clothes, and the various appliances of the toilet
+prepared for him. And here he was left alone to indulge his
+reflections and revolutionize his outward man.
+
+Meanwhile Wentworth sat musing by the window: "His face haunts me; and
+yet, for my life, I cannot remember where I have seen him before. I
+would stake all on his truth and honor. That firm lip and undespairing
+eye are a history in themselves. Strange--the difference between man
+and man. How should I have borne such suffering? Why, gone mad, I
+suppose, or destroyed myself. One sorrow--no, nor a hundred--would
+never unman _him_, and make him dream away his life, watching the sun
+rise and set, here by the Lake of Como. I scarcely know why, but my
+heart warms towards him like an old friend. Cost what it may, I will
+not leave him till he is out of danger."
+
+He was still musing in this strain, when Morton returned, a changed
+man in person and in mind. It seemed as if, in casting off his squalid
+livery of misery and peril, a burden of care had fallen with it; as if
+the sullen cloud that had brooded over him so long had been pierced at
+length by a gladdening beam of sunlight, and the sombre landscape were
+smiling again with pristine light and promise. His buoyant and defiant
+spirit resumed its native tone; and a strange confidence sprang up
+within him, as if a desperate crisis of his destiny had been safely
+passed.
+
+Wentworth saw the change at a glance.
+
+"Why, man, I see freedom in your eye already. But sit down; 'it's ill
+talking between a full man and a fasting,' and you must be half
+starved."
+
+Morton was so, in truth. He seated himself at the table, and addressed
+himself to the repast provided for him with the keenness of a mountain
+trapper, while his entertainer played with his knife and fork to keep
+him in countenance.
+
+"Do you know," said Wentworth, at length--"I am sure I have seen you
+before."
+
+"And I have seen you--I could swear to it; and yet I do not know
+where."
+
+"Were you ever in England?"
+
+"Only for a few days."
+
+"I was once in America."
+
+"When?"
+
+"In 1839. I was at Boston in March of that year."
+
+Morton shook his head. "I remember that time perfectly. I was in New
+Orleans in March, and afterwards in Texas."
+
+"From Boston I went westward--up the Missouri and out upon the
+prairies."
+
+Morton paused a moment in doubt; then sprang to his feet with a joyful
+exclamation,--
+
+"The prairies! Have you forgotten the Big Horn Branch of the Yellow
+Stone, and the camp under the old cottonwood trees!"
+
+Wentworth leaped up, and grasped both his guest's hands.
+
+"Forgotten! No; I shall never forget the morning when you came over to
+us with that tall, half-breed fellow, in a Canadian capote."
+
+"Yes,--Antoine Le Rouge."
+
+"We should have starved if you had not found us, and perhaps lost our
+scalps into the bargain."
+
+"The Rickarees had made a clean sweep of your horses."
+
+"Not a hoof was left to us. Our four Canadians were scared to death; I
+was ill; not one of us was fit for service but Ireton; and we had not
+three days' provision. If you had not given us your spare mules and
+horses, and seen us safe to Fort Cass, the wolves would have made a
+supper of some of us."
+
+"And do you remember," said Morton, "after we broke up camp that
+morning, how the Rickaree devils came galloping at us down the hill,
+and thought they could ride over us, and how we fought them all the
+forenoon, lying on our faces behind the pack saddles and baggage?"
+
+"I remember it as if it were yesterday. I can hear the crack of the
+rifles now, and the yelling of those bloodthirsty vagabonds."
+
+"It is strange," pursued Wentworth, "that I did not recognize you at
+once. I have thought of you a thousand times; but it is eight years
+since we met, and you are very much changed. Besides we were together
+only two days. And yet I can hardly forgive myself."
+
+"Any wandering trapper would have done as much for you as I did; or,
+if he had not, he would have deserved a cudgelling. What has become of
+the young man, or boy, rather, who was with you?"
+
+"You mean Ireton. Dead, poor fellow--dead."
+
+"I am very sorry. He was the coolest of us all in the fight. He had a
+singular face, but a very handsome one. I can recall it distinctly at
+this moment."
+
+Wentworth took a miniature from a desk, opened it, and placed it
+before Morton.
+
+"These are his features," said the latter, "but this is the portrait
+of a lady."
+
+"His sister--his twin sister. Dead too!"
+
+There was a change, as he spoke, in his voice and manner, so marked
+that Morton forbore to pursue the subject farther. He studied the
+picture in silence. It was a young and beautiful face, delicate, yet
+full of fire; and by some subtilty of his craft, the artist had given
+to the eyes an expression which reminded him of the restless glances
+which he had seen a caged falcon at the Garden of Plants cast upwards
+at the sky, into which he was debarred from soaring.
+
+In a few moments, Wentworth spoke in his accustomed tone.
+
+"The point first to be thought of, is to get you out of this
+predicament. I have a man who took to his bed this morning, and is at
+present shaking in an ague fit. He is of about your age, height, and
+complexion; and by wearing his dress, you could travel under his
+passport. I am not at all a suspected person, and if my friend will
+pass for a few days as my servant, I do not doubt that we shall reach
+Genoa without interruption."
+
+Morton warmly expressed his gratitude, but protested against
+Wentworth's undertaking the journey on his account.
+
+"O, I am going to Genoa for my pleasure, and shall be glad of your
+company. The steamer for Como touches here this afternoon. 'Dull not
+device by coldness and delay;' we will go on board, and be in Milan
+to-morrow."
+
+They conversed for an hour, when Morton withdrew to adjust his new
+disguise. Wentworth followed him with his eye as he disappeared; then
+sank into the musing mood which had grown habitual to him.
+
+"When I saw him last,"--so his thoughts shaped themselves,--"my drama
+was opening; and now it is played out--light and darkness, smiles and
+tears--and the curtain is dropped forever. When I saw him last, I was
+gathering the prairie flowers and dedicating them to her,--though she
+did not suspect it,--and dreaming of her by camp fires and in night
+watches."
+
+The miniature still lay on the table. He drew it towards him and gazed
+on it fixedly:--
+
+"Mine for a space, and now--gone--vanished like a dream. You were a
+meteor between earth and sky, with a light that flickered and blazed
+and darkened, but a warmth constant and unchanged. Of all who admired
+the brightness of that erratic star, how few could know what gladness
+it shed around it, what desolation it has left behind!"
+
+He gazed on the picture till his eyes grew dim; then sat for a few
+moments, listless and abstracted; then rose, with an effort, and bent
+his mind to the task before him.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLVII.
+
+  O that a man might know
+  The end of this day's business ere it come.--_Julius Cæsar_.
+
+
+The diligence rolled into Genoa. Wentworth was in the _coupé_, and on
+the top sat Morton, as his servant. They had made the journey without
+interruption.
+
+Morton reported himself to the American consul, and told his story.
+The wrath and astonishment of that official were great; but they were
+as nothing to the patriotic fury of three New York dry goods
+importers, who, mingling pleasure with business, were just arrived
+from Paris. Nothing was talked of but an immediate bombardment of
+Trieste, and a probable assault of Vienna.
+
+Escaping as soon as he could from this demonstration, Morton bade his
+fervid countrymen good morning, and went out with Wentworth, who
+introduced him to his banker. He learned from the consul that a
+merchant brig was in port, nearly ready to sail for home, and gladly
+took passage in her.
+
+And now at last he was safe; and safety should have brought with it a
+lightening of the spirits, a sense of relief. In fact, however, it
+brought little or nothing of the kind. The human mind, happily, cannot
+well hold more than one crowning evil at a time. One black thought,
+firmly lodged, will commonly keep the rest at bay. The fear of famine
+and a prison had left him no leisure to plague himself with less
+imminent mischiefs; but now, this fear being ousted, a new devil
+leaped into its empty seat. At the first moment when he could find
+himself alone, he wrote to Edith Leslie, telling her how he had been
+imprisoned, how, for almost five wretched years, her image had been
+his constant friend, how he had escaped, and how he was hastening
+homeward to claim the fulfilment of her word. He hinted nothing of his
+conviction that Vinal had been instrumental to his detention. He began
+divided between hope and fear, but as he wrote, a foreboding grew upon
+him that she was no longer living, or, at least, no longer living for
+him. The letter, despatched post haste, would reach home a full
+fortnight before his own arrival.
+
+Having seen his friend in safety, Wentworth set out on his return;
+and, as they shook hands at parting, their eyes met with a look that
+showed how clearly the two men understood each other.
+
+Wentworth smiled as Morton tried to express his gratitude.
+
+"You have cleared that score. I do not mean now the old affair on the
+Big Horn. I have been dreaming, lately, and you have waked me."
+
+"I should never have imagined that you were dozing."
+
+"Call it what you will. The truth is," added Wentworth, with some
+hesitation, "an old memory has been hanging about me, and I believe
+has made a girl of me. But that is past and done. I shall leave the
+Lake of Como. There is a career for me at home, and a good one, if I
+will but take it. Come to England, and you will find me there."
+
+Morton went with him past the gates, and, with a heavy heart, watched
+him on his way northward.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLVIII.
+
+                      His restless eye
+  Glanced forward frequently, as if some ill
+  He dared not meet were there.--_Willis_.
+
+
+After some days' delay, the brig put to sea, Morton on board. The
+cliffs behind Gibraltar came in sight at last, and a fresh levanter
+blew her out like an arrow upon the Atlantic. They were becalmed off
+the Azores. The sea was like glass; the turtles came up to sleep at
+the top; the tar melted out of the seams; and as the vessel moved on
+the long, lazy swells, the masts kept up their weary creaking from
+morning till night, and from night till morning. Morton walked the
+deck in a fever of impatience.
+
+At length an east wind sprang up, and with studding sails spread like
+wings, the brig ran before it, reeling like a drunken sea-gull.
+
+On the forty-first day, the Neversink heights rose on the horizon.
+Vessels innumerable passed--steamers, merchantmen, war ships. The
+highlands of Staten Island, with its villages and villas, lay close on
+their left, and the Bay of New York opened before them, sparkling in
+the morning sun, and alive with moving sails. On the right lay a
+forest of masts; in front, the Castle lifted its ugly familiar front;
+and farther on, the spire of Trinity towered over the wilderness of
+brick.
+
+Morton called a boat alongside, embarked his luggage, and went on
+shore. And, in spite of that depression which follows long and deep
+excitement, in spite of the anxieties that engrossed him, he felt a
+thrill of delight as his foot pressed American soil.
+
+This pleasure, however, was short. The thought of Edith Leslie had
+been so long the solace of his confinement, that it seemed to have
+grown into a part of himself; at all events, now that his doubts were
+on the verge of decision, for good or evil, it drove every other
+thought from his mind. Reaching his hotel, he found that he could not
+set out for Boston till the afternoon; and to get rid of the interval,
+he turned over the Boston newspapers in the reading room, searching
+for the mention of any familiar names. Here he was more successful
+than he cared to be; for he presently discovered the name of Horace
+Vinal, figuring in the list of directors of a joint stock company.
+
+"The hound!" muttered Morton; "so he is alive yet!"
+
+And leaving the hotel, he walked up the crowded sidewalk of Broadway,
+in a mood any thing but tranquil.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLIX.
+
+  Affliction is enamoured of thy parts,
+  And thou art wedded to calamity.--_Romeo and Juliet_.
+
+
+He had not gone far, when he became aware of a footstep closely
+following him. He was about to look back, when a little man passed
+before him, glancing furtively in his face with a ludicrous expression
+of doubt, amazement, and curiosity. Morton at once recognized the
+features of an odd, simple-minded classmate, named Shingles.
+"Charley," he exclaimed, "how do you do?"
+
+"It _is_ you," cried Shingles, with an ejaculation of profound
+astonishment; "solid flesh and blood!"--grasping Morton's extended
+hand--"and not your ghost. Why, we all thought you were dead!"
+
+"Not quite," said Morton.
+
+"Dead and buried," repeated Shingles, "off in Transylvania, or some
+such place."
+
+"I _was_ buried, but they buried me alive."
+
+Shingles, who had a taste for the horrible, took the assertion
+literally, and dilated his eyes like an owl on the lookout for a
+mouse.
+
+"But how did you manage to get out?"
+
+"I contrived to break loose, after a few years."
+
+Shingles stared in horror and perplexity.
+
+"Don't be frightened, Charley. I'm all right,--neither ghost nor
+vampire. But we shall be pushed off the sidewalk, if we stand here."
+
+"Come down into Florence's, then, and let me hear about it. Hang me if
+I ever expected to see you again. I shouldn't like to have met you
+alone, at night, any where near a graveyard. At our last class
+meeting, we were all talking about you, and saying you were a deused
+good fellow, and what a pity it was. And here you are alive; it was
+all for nothing!"
+
+"That's very unlucky," said Morton, as they descended into the
+restaurant.
+
+"By Jove," exclaimed Shingles, whose amazement was still strong upon
+him, "I was never so much astonished in my life as when I saw you just
+now. I was coming out of a shop, as you passed along the sidewalk. I
+felt as if I had seen a spirit. I followed behind you, and wasn't
+quite sure it was you, till I saw your trick of rapping your cane
+against the bricks as you walked along. Then I said to myself, it's
+he, or else old Beelzebub, in his likeness. But come, tell us how it
+was. How did you get off alive?"
+
+Morton briefly recounted his imprisonment and escape, interrupted by
+the wondering ejaculations of his auditor.
+
+"Who would have thought," exclaimed Shingles, "when you and I used to
+go up to Elk Pond, on Saturdays, to catch perch and pickerel, that you
+would ever have been shut up in the dungeon of an Austrian castle? You
+remember those old times--don't you?"
+
+"That I do," said Morton.
+
+"Do you remember the old tavern, where we used to lunch, and the
+pretty girl that waited on the table?"
+
+"The girl that you raved about all the way home? Yes, I remember."
+
+"By Jove, to think you've been shut up in a dungeon! Well, I haven't
+any very brilliant account to give of _my_self. I began to practise
+law, but I was never meant for a lawyer; so I gave it up, and have
+been ever since at my father's old place, just pottering about, you
+know. I was born in the country, and brought up there, and I mean to
+live there, only now and then I come down to New York, on a
+bend,--just for a change."
+
+"I suppose you can tell me the news. How are all the fellows? How is
+Meredith?"
+
+"Very well, I believe. He is living in Boston."
+
+"Married, or single?"
+
+"Single. We are not much of a marrying class. Wren was the first. Was
+that before you went away, or after? We voted to send him a cradle;
+but he did not know how to take it. He thought we were fooling him,
+and got quite angry. No, we are not at all a marrying class, nor a
+dying class either, for that matter. There are not more than five or
+six dead, and twelve or fourteen married; we reckoned them up last
+class meeting."
+
+"Vinal--what of him?"
+
+"O, he's alive, and married, too."
+
+Morton turned pale. "Married!--to whom?"
+
+"Well, they say he's made a first-rate match. I don't know her myself.
+I'm not a party-going man; I never was, you know. I haven't been
+thrown in much with that kind of people. But they tell me he couldn't
+have done better."
+
+"What's her name?" demanded Morton.
+
+"Miss Leslie--Colonel Leslie's daughter. But what's the matter? Are
+you ill?"
+
+"It's nothing," gasped Morton; "I had a fever in prison, and have
+never been quite well since. I grow dizzy, sometimes."
+
+"You _will_ grow dizzy, with a vengeance, if you drink wine in that
+way."
+
+"It's nothing," repeated Morton; "it will be over in a minute. What
+were you saying?"
+
+"About the fellows that have married,--O, Vinal,--I was saying that he
+had just got married."
+
+"Well, what about it?"
+
+"Why, nothing particular."
+
+"When was it?"
+
+"Last month."
+
+"Within a month! Are you sure?"
+
+"O, yes. I was in Boston myself at the time, and heard all about it.
+Her father was ill; so the marriage was private. Vinal is a sort of
+fellow that somehow I never cottoned to much. I don't think he's very
+disinterested. I like a fellow that will swear when he is angry, and
+not keep close shut up, like an oyster."
+
+The tattle of his rustic companion was become intolerable to Morton.
+He had received his stab, and wished to hear no more. In a few
+minutes, he rose from the table. "Charley, I am sorry to leave you so
+suddenly, but I am not well. The fresh air and a hard walk are all
+that will set me up. I shall see you again."
+
+"But where are you staying?"
+
+"At Blancard's. Good morning, old fellow."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER L.
+
+_Fab._ . . . Elle est----.
+
+_Sev._                      Quoi?
+
+_Fab._                             Mariée!
+
+_Sev._ . . . . . Ce coup de foudre est grand!--_Polyeucte_.
+
+  The world's my oyster, which I with sword will open.--_Henry IV_.
+
+  Put money in thy purse; follow these wars.--_Othello_.
+
+
+Morton walked down Broadway at a rapid pace, entered his hotel,
+mounted to his room, seated himself, rested his forehead on his hand,
+and, with fixed eyes and compressed lips, remained in this position
+for some minutes, motionless as if carved out of oak. Then, rising, he
+paced the room, buried his face in his hands, and groaned with
+irrepressible anguish. Suddenly the door was burst open, and an Irish
+servant, apparently in a great hurry, bolted in, and tossed a card on
+the table, saying at the same time,--"Gen'lman down stairs wants to
+see you."
+
+Morton broke into a rage, to hide the traces of a different passion.
+
+"Why do you come in without knocking? Learn better manners, or I shall
+teach them to you."
+
+"I beg pardon, sir," said the servant, reduced at once to the depth of
+obsequiousness, "there's a gentleman, sir--an officer, sir,--would
+like to see you, sir."
+
+"An officer!--I don't know any officers. There's some mistake."
+
+"He _said_ Mr. Morton, sir. This is his card, sir."
+
+Morton looked at the card, and read the name of his classmate Rosny.
+
+"Very well. Ask the gentleman to come up.--No,--here,"--as the servant
+was retreating along the passage,--"where is he?"
+
+"In the reading room, sir."
+
+"Tell him I will come down in a moment."
+
+"Yes, sir, I will, sir."
+
+Morton adjusted his dress, strove to banish from his features all
+traces of the emotion which had just overwhelmed him, went down
+stairs, and met Rosny with an air of as much cordiality as if there
+were nothing in his mind but the pleasure of seeing an old friend.
+Rosny, his first welcome over, surveyed him from head to foot.
+
+"A good deal changed! Thinner,--darker complexioned, decidedly older.
+And yet you've weathered it well. It's a thing that I could never
+stand,--to be boxed up in four stone walls. I would throttle the
+jailer first, and then knock my brains out against the stones."
+
+"Did Shingles tell you of my being here?"
+
+"Yes, I met him just now, with his eyes bigger than ever. When I saw
+him making a dive at me across the street, among the omnibuses and
+carriages, I knew that something extraordinary was to pay."
+
+"_You_ have changed your outward man, too, since I saw you last," said
+Morton, looking at his companion's costume, which consisted of a gray
+volunteer uniform.
+
+"Yes, I'm in Uncle Sam's pay now.--Off for Mexico in a day or
+two;--revel in the Halls of the Montezumas, you know."
+
+"What rank do you hold in the service, Dick?"
+
+"You'll please to address me as Major Rosny; that is, till good luck
+and the Mexican bullets make a colonel of me.--I have just dropped in
+to shake hands with you. I have an appointment to keep in five
+minutes. You have nothing particular to do to-day--have you?"
+
+"Nothing very particular," said Morton, hesitating.
+
+"Then come and dine with me at Delmonico's at four o'clock. What!--you
+don't mean to say no, do you?--Is that the way you treat your friends?
+Come, I shall be here at four, precisely. _Au revoir._"
+
+And, with his usual celerity of motion, Rosny left the hotel.
+
+Morton slowly remounted to his room, locked the door this time, to
+keep out intruders, seated himself, and gave himself up to his dark
+and morbid reveries.
+
+"God! of what is this world made! Villany thrives, and innocent men
+are racked with the pangs of hell. Poverty starving its
+victims,--luxury poisoning them;--the passions of tigers and the mean
+vices of reptiles;--treacherous hatred, faithless love;--deceitful
+hope, vain struggles, endless suffering,--a hell of misery and
+darkness. A fair sunrise, to cheat the eye;--then clouds and storms,
+blackness and desolation! To look back over the last five years! Then
+I was basking in sunshine; and out of that brightness what a doom is
+fallen on me! My life--my guiding star quenched in a vile morass--lost
+forever in the arms of this accursed villain!"
+
+Morton rose abruptly, went to the window, and stood looking out with a
+fixed gaze, wholly unconscious of what was before him. In a moment he
+turned again, and there was a wild and deadly light in his eyes. A
+thought had struck him, shooting an electric life through all his
+veins, and kindling him into a kind of fierce ecstasy. He would go to
+Vinal, charge him with his perfidy, challenge him, and put him to
+death. He paced the room in great disorder. A resistless power seemed
+to have seized upon him, sweeping him forward with the force of a
+torrent. He clinched his teeth and breathed deeply. The thought of
+action and of vengeance lighted up his perturbed and gloomy mind as
+the baleful glare of a conflagration lights up a stormy midnight.
+Suddenly he stopped, seated himself again, and remained for some
+minutes in violent mental conflict. "I thank God," he murmured at
+length, apostrophizing his enemy, "that you were not just now within
+my reach. You have ruined me for this life; you shall not ruin me for
+the next. Live, and work out your own destruction."
+
+He walked the room again, calmly enough, but in great dejection. "It
+may be," he thought, "that I am not his only victim. Perhaps the same
+art that snared me, has, by some infernal machination, entrapped her
+also. I believe it;--at least, I will try to believe it."
+
+He looked from the window upon the keen and busy crowds passing below
+in unbroken streams, to and from their places of business; and his
+mind tinged them with its own moody coloring.
+
+"You flight of human vultures! How many of you can show lives governed
+by any generous purpose or noble thought? Behind how many of those
+sharp and sallow features, furrowed with early wrinkles, lies the soul
+of a man? Desperate chasers after wealth, which, when you have won it,
+you have never been taught to use;--reckless pleasure hunters,
+beguiling others that your victims may beguile in turn, and both sink
+to perdition together. What you win with trickery, you throw away in
+vanity or debauch. The counting room or the broker's board by
+day;--brandy, billiards, and the rendezvous by night;--so you go,--a
+short, quick road;--driving to your doom with a high-pressure power of
+rapacity, vain glory, and lust. Man!--the thistledown of fortune, the
+shuttlecock of passion;--whirled on to destruction by the wildfire in
+his veins, unless by struggling and by prayer he can keep the narrow
+adamantine track laid down for his career!"
+
+In such distempered reflections he passed some time. Even in the
+darkest passages of his imprisonment, his mind had scarcely been
+shaken so far from its habitual poise. Growing weary at length of
+solitude, he went out of the house; and, avoiding the great
+thoroughfares, where he might perhaps meet an acquaintance, he
+threaded at a rapid pace those meaner streets and lanes, where even
+the best balanced mind may find abundant food for gloomy meditation.
+From time to time, as the image of his enemy rose before him, the
+desire for vengeance came upon him afresh, like a fever fit. He burned
+to seize Vinal by the throat, and, at least, force him to unmask his
+iniquity to the world.
+
+As he was passing down Water Street, he recollected, with some
+vexation, that Rosny had promised to call for him at four o'clock, and
+retraced his steps to the hotel, where, true to the minute, that
+punctual adventurer presently appeared.
+
+"Come," said Rosny; "if you are ready, we will walk down street."
+
+They repaired to Delmonico's, where, in a private room, a sumptuous
+repast had been made ready. Morton, over his companion's claret, was
+obliged to recount the circumstances of his imprisonment. Rosny, on
+his part, gave an outline of his own fortunes since they had last met.
+He had been once or twice on the point of very considerable success,
+but his vaulting ambition had always overleaped itself, and by too
+great eagerness and grasping at too much, he had repeatedly failed of
+his prize, only, however, to rally after every reverse with
+undiminished confidence and spirit. Such, at least, were the
+conclusions which Morton drew from his companion's somewhat inflated
+account of himself.
+
+After the cloth had been removed, Rosny bit off the end of a cigar,
+lighted it, puffed at it two or three times, and then, holding it
+between his fingers, went on with an harangue which the operations of
+the waiter had interrupted.
+
+"I tell you, these are great times that we live in. The world has seen
+nothing like them since the days of Columbus and Cortes. These are the
+times and this is the country for a man of merit to thrive in. Let him
+identify himself with the progressive movements of the age,--yes,
+faith, let him be a leader of them,--and there's nothing too large for
+him to hope for. Why, sir, the day is not far off, when the stars and
+stripes will be seen from Hudson's Bay to Panama. Cuba will come next;
+Brazil next. Lord knows where we shall stop. There's a field for a man
+of ability and pluck!"
+
+Morton smiled. Rosny relighted his cigar, which, in the fervor of his
+declamation, he had allowed to go out, gave a vigorous whiff or two,
+and proceeded.
+
+"We have just lost a splendid chance. I _did_ flatter myself that
+there was going to be a row with England, on the Oregon question; but
+it was a flash in the pan; it all ended in smoke."
+
+"Why do you want to fight with John Bull?" asked Morton.
+
+"For two good reasons. In the first place, I hate him. I hate him in
+right of my French ancestors, and I hate him as a true American
+democrat. Then, over and above all that, a war with the English would
+be the making of me. I should rise then. I would be their Hannibal.
+But now we have nothing better to do than giving fits to these yellow
+Mexican vagabonds."
+
+"A shabby employment," said Morton, "and yet I think I should like
+it."
+
+"You would, ey?--then go with me to Mexico."
+
+"It's a temptation," said Morton, his eyes lighted with a sudden
+gleam,--"I am in a mood for any thing, I do not care what."
+
+"I knew there was something ailing you," said Rosny; "why, you have
+had no appetite. You've lost all your spirits. Has any thing happened?
+Are you ill?"
+
+"Nothing to speak of. I am well enough in health."
+
+"Well, come with me to Mexico. When a man is under a cloud, he always
+makes the better soldier for it. If you have had bad luck, why, you
+can fight like a Trojan."
+
+"I could storm Hell Gates to-day," exclaimed Morton, giving a
+momentary vent to his long pent up emotion.
+
+"Good! I always knew that there was stuff in you, though you _are_
+worth half a million. It isn't that, though--is it? You haven't lost
+property--have you?"
+
+"Not that I know. Never mind, Dick; every man has his little
+vexations, sometimes, and is entitled to the privilege of swearing at
+them."
+
+"Well, I am not the man to pry into your private affairs. Come with me
+to Mexico. I can promise you a captain's commission,--perhaps I can
+get you a major's. I am not a cipher in the democratic party, I'd have
+you know, though I am not yet what I shall be soon. I helped Polk to
+his election, and my word will go for something. But, pshaw!--what am
+I talking about? With your money, and a little management, you can get
+any thing you want."
+
+"I have more than half a mind," said Morton, hesitating; "but, no,--I
+won't go."
+
+"Pshaw, man! You don't know what you are saying. You don't know what
+chances you are throwing away. Look at it. It isn't the military
+fame,--the glorification in the newspapers,--seeing pictures of
+yourself in the shop windows, charging full tilt among the Mexicans,
+and all that. You can take that for what it's worth. Tastes differ in
+such matters. But, I tell you, the men who distinguish themselves in
+Mexico are going to carry all before them in the political world. The
+people will go for them, neck or nothing. I know what our enlightened
+democracy is made of."--Here a slight grin flickered for an instant
+about the corners of his mouth; but he grew serious again at
+once.--"Yes, sir, a new world is going to begin. The old
+incumbents--Webster, Clay, Calhoun, and the rest--will pass off the
+stage, before long, and make room for younger men--men who will keep
+up with the times. Then will be our chance! Put brass in your
+forehead,--you have money enough in your purse already,--get a halo of
+Mexican glory round your head,--and you will shoot up like a rocket.
+First go to the war, then dive into politics, and you and I will be
+the biggest frogs in the puddle."
+
+"There's a fallacy in your conclusions," said Morton; "the officers of
+rank, the generals and colonels, will carry off the glory; and we
+shall have nothing but the blows."
+
+"The Mexican bullets will make that all right. I tell you, they are
+going to fly like hail. They will dock off the heads above us, and
+make a clear path for us to mount by."
+
+"Suppose that they should hit the wrong man," suggested Morton.
+
+"Pshaw!" exclaimed Rosny, "we won't look at the matter in that light."
+
+There was a momentary pause.
+
+"Now's your time," urged Rosny. "Come, say the word."
+
+Morton paced the room with knit brows and lips pressed together.
+
+"Glory,"--exclaimed his military friend, summing up the advantages of
+a Mexican campaign,--"glory,--preferment,--life, of the fastest
+kind,--what more would you have?"
+
+Morton had a strong native thirst for adventure, and a _penchant_ for
+military exploit. In his present frame of mind, he felt violently
+impelled to cut loose from all his old ideas and scruples, and launch
+at once upon a new life, fresh, unshackled, and reckless,--to plunge
+headlong into the tumult of the active world; fight its battles, run
+its races, give and take its blows, strain after its prizes,--forget
+the past and all its associations in the fever of the present. Mexico
+rose before his thoughts--snowy volcanoes, and tropical forests; the
+cocoa, the palm, and the cactus; bastioned cities and intrenched
+heights; the rush and din of battle; war with its fierce excitements
+and unbounded license. To his disordered mood, the scene had
+fascinations almost resistless, and he burned to play his part in the
+fiery drama.
+
+"And why not?"--so his thoughts ran,--"why not obey what fate and
+nature dictate? Calm, and peace, and happiness,--farewell to them!
+That stake is played and lost. I am no more fit now for domestic life
+than a prairie wolf. I should answer better for an Ishmaelite or a
+Pawnee. _Deus vult._ Why should I fly in the face of Providence?"
+
+Rosny, his uniform coat half unbuttoned for the sake of ease, sat
+lolling back in his chair, puffing wreaths of cigar smoke from his
+lips, eying Morton as he paced the room, and throwing out, from time
+to time, a word of encouragement to stimulate his resolution. He was
+about to lose all patience at his companion's pertinacious silence,
+when the latter stopped, and turned towards him with the air of one
+whose mind is made up.
+
+"Dick," said Morton, "when I was in college, I laid down my plan of
+life, and adopted one maxim--to which I mean to hold fast."
+
+"Well, what was that?" demanded the impatient Rosny.
+
+"Never to abandon an enterprise once begun; to push on till the point
+is gained, in spite of pain, delay, danger, disappointment,--any
+thing."
+
+"Good, so far. What next?"
+
+"Some years ago, I entered upon certain plans, which have not yet been
+accomplished. I have been interrupted, balked, kicked and cuffed by
+fortune, till I am more than half disgusted with the world. But I mean
+still to take up the broken thread where I left it, and carry it
+forward as before."
+
+"The moral of that is, I suppose, that you won't go to Mexico."
+
+"Precisely."
+
+"Well, I shan't try to debate the matter with you. I know you of old.
+When your foot is once down, it's useless for me to try to make you
+lift it up again. But remember what I say,--you will repent not taking
+my advice."
+
+Rosny finished his cigar, and they left the restaurant together. On
+their way up the street, they stopped at a recruiting office. "Captain
+Rumbold, my friend Mr. Morton," said Rosny, who soon after, however,
+entered into an earnest conversation with the officer upon some affair
+of business, leaving Morton at leisure to observe six or eight
+volunteers, who were about to be sent to Governor's Island, in charge
+of a sergeant.
+
+"What do you think of our boys?" asked Rosny, casting a comical look
+at Morton, as they went down stairs.
+
+"I never saw such a gang of tobacco-chewing, soap-locked rascals."
+
+"Food for powder," said Rosny, "they'll fill a ditch as well as
+better. The country needs a little blood-letting. These fellows are
+not like Falstaff's, though. They will fight. Not a man of them but
+will whip his weight in wildcats."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LI.
+
+  A raconter ses maux, souvent on les soulage.--_Polyeucte_.
+
+
+"Do you remember Buckland?" asked Rosny, as they walked up Broadway.
+
+"The Virginian? Yes, perfectly."
+
+"There he is."
+
+Morton, following the direction of his companion's eye, saw, a little
+in advance, a tall man, slenderly but gracefully formed, walking
+slowly, with a listless air, as if but half conscious of what was
+going on around him. They checked their pace, to avoid overtaking him.
+
+"Poor fellow!" said Rosny; "he's in a bad way."
+
+"I am sorry to hear it. He was a lively, pleasant fellow when I knew
+him,--very fond of the society of ladies."
+
+"That's all over now. He has been very dissipated for the last two or
+three years, and is broken down completely, body and mind. It's a
+great pity. I am very sorry for him," said Rosny, in whom,
+notwithstanding his restless ambition, there was a vein of warm and
+kindly feeling.
+
+"Is he living in New York?"
+
+"Yes, he has been here ever since leaving college. He began to
+practise as a lawyer. It's much he ever did or ever will do at the
+law! There was never any go-ahead in him--no energy, no decision--and
+he does nothing now, but read a little, and lounge about, in a moody,
+abstracted way, with his wits in the clouds. Get him into good
+company, and wind him up with a glass of brandy, and he is himself
+again for a while,--tells a story and sings a song as he used to
+do,--but it is soon over. Do you want to speak to him?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Come on, then. How are you, Buckland? Here's an old friend,
+redivivus."
+
+Hearing himself thus accosted, Buckland turned towards the speaker a
+face which, though pale and sallow, was still handsome. His dress,
+contrary to his former habit, was careless and negligent; and, though
+he could not have been more than thirty, a few gray hairs had begun to
+mingle with his long, black moustache. Changed as he was, he had that
+air of quiet and graceful courtesy which can only be acquired by
+habitual intercourse with polished society in early life; and Morton
+saw in him the melancholy wreck of a highly-bred gentleman.
+
+When the first surprise of the meeting was over, Rosny related the
+story of Morton's imprisonment to the wondering ear of Buckland.
+Having urgent business on his hands, he soon after took leave of his
+two companions. Morton and Buckland, after strolling for a time up and
+down Broadway, entered the restaurant attached to Blancard's hotel,
+and took a table in a remote corner of the room, which was nearly
+empty.
+
+Buckland was, as Rosny had described him, moody and abstracted, often
+seeming at a loss to collect his thoughts. He sipped his chocolate in
+silence, and, even when spoken to, sometimes returned no answer.
+Morton, in little better spirits than his companion, sat leaning his
+forehead dejectedly on his hand.
+
+"I am sorry," said Buckland, after one of his silent fits, "to be so
+wretched a companion; but I am not the man I used to be."
+
+"We are but a melancholy pair," replied Morton.
+
+"I saw from the first that you were very much out of spirits,--not at
+all what one would expect a man to be who had just escaped from
+sufferings like yours. There is some trouble on your mind."
+
+Morton was fatigued and sick at heart. He had practised self-control
+till he was tired of it; and he allowed a shade of emotion to pass
+across his face.
+
+"There is a woman in it," said Buckland, regarding him with a
+scrutinizing eye.
+
+"Why do you say that?" demanded Morton, startled and dismayed at this
+home thrust.
+
+"Are not women the source of nine tenths of our sufferings?" replied
+Buckland. "The world is a huge, clashing, jangling, disjointed piece
+of mechanism, and they are the authors of its worst disorder."
+
+"Sometimes," said Morton, "men will blame women for sufferings which
+they might, with better justice, lay at their own doors."
+
+Buckland raised his head quickly, and looked in his companion's face.
+"It may be so," he said, after a moment's pause. "Perhaps you are
+right,--perhaps you are right. But, let that be as it will, there are
+no miseries in life to match those which spring out of the relation of
+the sexes."
+
+Morton, for reasons of his own, did not care to pursue the subject,
+and his companion relapsed into his former silence. After a time, they
+went into the smoking room, where Buckland lighted a cigar. Morton
+observed that, as he did so, his fingers trembled in a manner which
+showed that his whole nervous system was shattered and unstrung.
+
+"I would not advise you to smoke much," said Morton; "you have not the
+constitution to bear it."
+
+Buckland smiled bitterly. He had grown reckless whether he injured
+himself or not.
+
+They seated themselves near the window; but Buckland soon grew uneasy,
+alternately looking at his watch and gazing into the street. At length
+he rose, and asked Morton to walk out with him. The latter, on the
+principle that misery loves company, readily complied; and they went
+down Broadway nearly to the Bowling Green. Here Buckland turned, and
+they retraced their steps to within a few squares of the Astor House.
+This they repeated several times, Morton's companion constantly
+resisting every movement on his part to vary in the least the course
+of their promenade. While their walk was up the street, Buckland,
+though evidently restless and uneasy, had the same abstracted air as
+before; but when they moved in the opposite direction, his whole
+manner changed, and he seemed anxiously on the watch, as if for some
+person whom he expected every moment to meet. It was about eight in
+the evening. The street was brilliant with gas; crowds of people, men
+and women, were moving along the sidewalk; and upon each group, as it
+approached, Buckland bent a gaze of eager scrutiny.
+
+They were passing a large bookstore, when Morton felt his companion
+suddenly press the arm on which he was leaning. Hastily stepping
+aside, and dragging Morton with him, he ensconced himself behind the
+board on which the bookseller pasted his advertising placards, which
+partially concealed him, and, together with the projection over the
+shop door, screened him from the light of the neighboring gas lamp.
+Here he stood motionless, his eyes riveted on some approaching object.
+Following the direction of his gaze, Morton saw a tall man in the
+uniform of an army officer of rank, and, leaning on his arm, a light
+and delicate female figure, elegantly, but not showily dressed. They
+were close at hand when he discovered them, and in a moment they had
+passed on under the glare of the lamp, and mingled with the throng
+beyond; but Morton retained a vivid impression of features beautifully
+moulded, and a pair of restless dark eyes, roving from side to side
+with piercing, yet furtive glances.
+
+Buckland, stepping from his retreat, made a hesitating, forward
+movement, as if undecided whether to follow them or not. He stopped
+with a kind of suppressed groan, and taking Morton's arm again, moved
+slowly with him down the street. Two or three times, Morton spoke to
+him, but he seemed not to hear, or, at best, answered in
+monosyllables, with an absent air. When they reached the hotel, then
+recently established on the European plan, near the Bowling Green,
+Buckland entered, called for brandy, and, his companion declining to
+join him, hastily drank the liquor with the same trembling hand which
+Morton had before remarked. On leaving the house, they continued their
+walk downward till they reached the Battery. And as they entered the
+shaded walks of that promenade, the moon was shining on the trees, and
+on the quiet waters of the adjacent bay.
+
+"You must think very strangely of me," said Buckland, at length
+breaking his long silence; "in fact, I scarcely know myself. I am a
+changed man,--a lost and broken man, body and soul,--a sea-weed
+drifting helplessly on the water."
+
+"You take too dark a view," said Morton, greatly moved; "there is good
+hope for you yet, if you will not fling it away."
+
+Buckland shook his head. "I wish I had been born such a man as Rosny.
+He is a practical man of the world, always in pursuit of something,
+with nothing to excite or trouble him but the success or failure of
+his schemes. He cannot understand my feelings. Yes, I wish to Heaven I
+had been born a practical, hard-headed man,--such, for instance, as
+your cool, common sense Yankees. What do they know or care for the
+troubles that are wearing me away by inches?"
+
+"Buckland," said Morton, "your nerves are very much weakened and
+disordered, and particular troubles weigh upon and engross you, as
+they could not if you were well. What you most need is a good
+physician."
+
+"'Could he minister to a mind diseased?' Come, sit down here--on this
+bench. Perhaps you have never felt--I hope you have never had occasion
+to feel--impelled to relieve some torment pressing on your mind, by
+telling it to a friend. Genuine friends are rare. When one meets them,
+he knows them by instinct. I need not fear you; you will not laugh at
+me to yourself, and tell me, as some others do, that a man of force
+and energy would fling off an affair like mine, and not suffer it to
+weigh upon him like a nightmare."
+
+"When you have recovered your health, perhaps I may tell you so; but
+not till then."
+
+"I am like the Ancient Mariner," continued Buckland, with a faint
+smile; "when I find the man who must hear my story, I know him the
+moment I see his face. Your good sense will tell you that I have been
+a knave and a fool; but your good heart will prevent your showing me
+that you think so."
+
+Morton looked with deep compassion on his old comrade, and wondered
+what follies or misfortunes could have sunk his former gallant spirit
+so far. In his weakened and depressed condition, Buckland seemed to
+lean for support on his friend's firmer and better governed nature,
+and to draw strength from the contact.
+
+"After all," he said in a livelier tone, "what right have I to bore
+you with this story of mine?"
+
+"Any thing that you are willing to tell," answered Morton, "I shall be
+glad to hear."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LII.
+
+  On me laisse tout croire; on fait gloire de tout;
+  Et cependant mon coeur est encore assez lâche
+  Pour ne pouvoir briser la chaîne qui l'attache.--_Le Misanthrope_.
+
+
+"I had an old friend," Buckland began, with some glimmering of his
+former vivacity,--"De Ruyter,--I don't think you ever knew him. He was
+the representative of a family great in its day and generation, but
+broken in fortune, and without means to support its pretensions. This
+did not at all tend to diminish their pride,--precisely of that kind
+which goeth before destruction. De Ruyter was a good fellow, however,
+and, if he had had twenty thousand a year, he would have spent it all.
+One summer, four years ago, he went with his child--his wife had died
+the year before--and his two sisters to spend a few weeks at a quiet
+little watering-place on the Jersey shore, frequented by people of
+good standing, but not fashionably inclined. De Ruyter praised the
+sporting in the neighborhood, and persuaded me to go with him.
+
+"His sisters were very agreeable women,--cultivated and lively, but
+proud as Lucifer, and desperately exclusive. A _nouveau riche_ was, in
+their eyes, equivalent to every thing that is odious and detestable;
+and to call a man a _parvenu_ was to steep him in infamy forever. The
+men at the house were, for the most part, of no great account--chiefly
+old bachelors, or sober family men run to seed, with a number of
+awkward young boobies not yet in bloom. The two ladies liked the
+company of a lazy fellow like me, a butterfly of society, with the
+poets, at least the sentimental ones, on my tongue's end, and the
+latest advices from the fashionable world. I staid there a week, and
+when that was over they persuaded me to stay another.
+
+"On the day after, there was a fresh arrival,--a gentleman from
+Philadelphia, with his sister and his daughter. He only remained for
+the night, and went away in the morning, leaving the ladies behind.
+The sister was a starched old person,--a sort of purblind duenna, with
+grizzled hair, gold spectacles, and cap. The daughter I need not
+describe, for you saw her half an hour ago.
+
+"Her family was good enough; her father a lawyer in Philadelphia. She
+was well educated--played admirably, and spoke excellent French and
+Italian. How much or how little she had frequented cultivated society,
+I do not know,--her own assertions went for nothing; but she had the
+utmost ease and grace of manner, and an invincible self-possession.
+Her ruling passion was a compound of vanity and pride, an insatiable
+craving for admiration and power. Whatever associates she happened to
+be among, nothing satisfied her but to be the cynosure of all eyes,
+the centre of all influence. I have known women enough,--women of all
+kinds, good, bad, and indifferent; but such a one as she I never met
+but once. I shall not soon forget the evening when I first saw her,
+seated opposite me at the tea table. She was a small, light
+figure,--as you saw her just now,--the features, perhaps, a trifle too
+large. I never recall her, as she appeared at that time, without
+thinking of Byron's description of one of his mischief-making
+heroines:--
+
+  "'Her form had all the softness of her sex,
+      Her features all the sweetness of the devil,
+    When he put on the cherub to perplex
+      Eve, and paved--God knows how--the road to evil.'
+
+"She was utterly unscrupulous. The depth of her artifice was
+unfathomable. She soon became the moving spirit of that little cockney
+watering-place--some admiring her, some hating her, some desperately
+smitten with her. I can see through her manoeuvres now, but then I was
+blind as a mole. She understood every body about her, and held out to
+each the kind of bait which was most likely to attract him. There was
+a sort of _dilettante_ there whose heart she won by talking to him of
+the Italian poets, which, by the way, she really loved, for there was
+a dash of genius in her. She aimed to impress each one with the idea
+that in her heart she liked him better than any one else; and it was
+her game to appear on all occasions perfectly impulsive and
+spontaneous, while, in fact, every look, word, or act of hers had an
+object in it. In short, she was an accomplished actress; and, had her
+figure been more commanding, she might have rivalled Rachel on the
+stage. No two people were exactly agreed in opinion concerning her;
+but all--I mean all the men--thought her excessively interesting; and
+I remember that two young collegians had nearly fought a duel about
+her, each thinking that she was in love with him. Nothing delighted
+her more than to become the occasion of the jealousy of married women
+towards their husbands,--nothing, that is, except the still greater
+delight of fascinating a certain young New Yorker who had come to the
+house on a visit to his betrothed.
+
+"For some time every one supposed her to be unmarried. She did her
+best, indeed, to encourage the idea, since she thus gained to herself
+more notice and more marked attentions. At length, to the astonishment
+of every body, it came out that she had been, for more than a year,
+married to a cousin of her own, a weak and imbecile youngster, as I
+afterwards learned, who was then absent on an East India voyage, and
+who, happily for himself, has since died.
+
+"I said that all the men in the house were interested in her; but you
+should have seen the commotion she raised among the women! There were
+three or four simple girls about her who admired her, and were her
+devoted instruments; but with the rest she was at sword's point. There
+were a thousand ways in which they and she could come into collision;
+and, of course, they soon found her out, while the men remained in the
+dark. If they were handsome and attractive, she hated them; and if
+they would not conform to her will, she could never forgive it. The
+disputes, the jars, the jealousies, the backbitings, the tricks and
+stratagems of female warfare that I have seen in that house, and all
+of her raising! She was a dangerous enemy. Her tongue could sting like
+a wasp; and all the while she would smile on her victim as if she were
+reporting some agreeable compliment. She had a satanic dexterity in
+dealing out her stabs, always choosing the time, place, and company,
+where they would tell with the sharpest effect.
+
+"With all her insincerity, there was still a tincture of reality in
+her. Her passions and emotions were strong; and she was so addicted to
+falsehood, that I am confident she did not always know whether the
+feeling she expressed were real or pretended.
+
+"The grace and apparent _abandon_ of her manner, her beauty, her wit,
+her singular power of influencing the will of others, and the dash of
+poetry, which, strange as you may think it, still pervaded her, made
+her altogether a very perilous acquaintance. I, certainly, have cause
+to say so. I lingered a week, a fortnight, a month, and still could
+not find resolution to go. I had an air, a name in society, and the
+reputation of being dangerous. She thought me worth angling for, put
+forth all her arts, and caught me.
+
+"I have read an Indian legend of a fisherman who catches a fish and
+drags him to the surface, but in the midst of his triumph, the fish
+swallows him, canoe and all. The angler, however, kills him by
+striking at his heart with his flinty war club, and then makes his
+escape by tearing a way through his vitals. The case of the fish is
+precisely analogous to mine. She caught me, as I said before; but I
+caught her in turn. She fell in love with me, wildly and desperately.
+Her passions were as fierce and as transient as a tropical hurricane.
+She had no scruples; and I had not as many as I should have had. One
+evening we were gone, and two days after we were out of sight of land
+on board one of the Cunard steamers.
+
+"For the next two months, I was in paradise. Then came a purgatory, or
+something worse. Her passion for me subsided as quickly as it had
+arisen. She was herself again. Her vanity and artifice, her insatiable
+love of intrigue and adventure, returned with double force. I wore
+myself out with watching, vexation, and anxiety. She tried every means
+to attract attention and draw admirers, and every where she succeeded.
+I remember that one night at Naples she insisted on going with me to
+the theatre of San Carlo, in the dress of a young man, and wearing a
+moustache. The disguise was detected, as she meant it should be, and
+eyes centred upon her from all the boxes. I tried to travel with her
+through remote and unfrequented countries, such as the interior of
+Sicily; but it was all in vain. There was no resisting her fiery will,
+and I was compelled to go wherever she wished.
+
+"One afternoon, at Messina, at the _table d'hôte_, we met a lively
+young Spanish nobleman. She caught his eye; I saw them exchange
+glances. In spite of all my precautions, messages, billets, and
+momentary interviews passed between them. I challenged the Spaniard,
+gave him a severe flesh wound, and thought I had taught him a lesson.
+Not at all. On the next day, coming to my lodgings, I found her gone,
+no one could tell whither. I was desperate, and could have done any
+thing; but there was nothing to be done. I could not find her, and if
+I had it would have availed me nothing.
+
+"I returned to America, wrought up to the verge of a nervous fever;
+and, by mingling in amusements of every kind, tried to forget her. In
+six or eight months I had partially succeeded. My health was not good,
+and I had made a journey of a few weeks to the west; when, on
+returning,--it was a sultry July afternoon,--I remember it as if it
+were yesterday,--sitting in the reading room window of the New York
+Hotel, I saw her passing down Broadway in an open carriage; and, with
+the sight, my passion awoke again at fever heat. She had left the
+Spaniard, and come to America with a New York gentleman, who had lived
+for some time in Paris. I had an interview with her, and she promised
+to join me again; but she broke her word. She saw at once what a power
+she still held over me; and she has used it most mercilessly ever
+since. She practises all her arts on me, as if I were a new lover,
+whom she wished to insnare. Sometimes she flatters me; sometimes she
+repels me; now and then she allows me stolen interviews, or long walks
+or rides with her. She plays me as an angler plays a salmon that he
+has hooked, till he brings him gasping to his death. I have plunged
+into dissipations of all kinds, to drown the memory of her. It is all
+useless. She knows the torments I am suffering, and she rejoices in
+them. Perhaps she remembers that it was I who made her what she is,
+and takes this for her revenge. But, pshaw!--if I had not eloped with
+her, some one else would have done so soon; and that she perfectly
+well knows. It is her vanity--nothing but her vanity: she delights to
+hold me in bondage; she knows that I am her slave, and she glories in
+it."
+
+"But why, in Heaven's name," demanded Morton, "do you not break away
+from this miserable fascination?"
+
+"There it is!" Buckland answered; "I only wish that I had the power. I
+have resolved twenty times to leave New York, and my resolution has
+failed me as often."
+
+"Who takes charge of her now?"
+
+"Colonel ----. He seems as crazy after her as I was."
+
+"I can hardly comprehend," pursued Morton, "how, understanding her
+character as you do, you can still remain so infatuated with her."
+
+"Neither can I comprehend it. I can only feel it. Strange--is it
+not?--that I, who used to be regarded as a mere flirt; who, as a lady
+acquaintance once told me, had a great deal too much sentiment, but no
+heart at all; I, who, in my time, have written love verses to twenty
+different ladies,--should be so enchained at last by this black-eyed
+witch!"
+
+"Very strange."
+
+"And now what would you recommend? what advice do you give me? You see
+in what a predicament I stand. What ought I to do?"
+
+"With your broken health and weakened nerves," said Morton, "it is
+useless for you to attempt contending against this fancy that has
+taken possession of you. You must run away from it. Take a long
+voyage; the longer the better. I will go with you to engage your
+passage to-morrow."
+
+Buckland hesitated at first, slowly shaking his head; but in a moment
+he said, with some animation, "Yes, I will go, on one condition; you
+must promise to go with me."
+
+The will, the motive power,--never very strong in him,--was now
+completely relaxed. He was unfitted for action of any kind, and was,
+as he himself said, no better than a sea weed drifting on the water.
+Morton walked the streets with him for some hours. He seemed to cling
+to his companion, like an ivy to the supporting trunk, and was
+evidently reluctant to resign his company. At length, Morton, who was
+exhausted with the excitements of the day, pleaded fatigue, and bade
+him good night. He turned again, however, and, by the blaze of the gas
+lamps, followed with his eye Buckland's slowly receding figure.
+
+"A few hours ago," he said to himself, "I thought myself unhappy; but
+what is my suffering compared to his? I am not, thank God, the builder
+of my own misfortunes, nor pursued with the reflection that they are a
+just retribution for my own misdeeds. With health, liberty,
+self-respect, and a good conscience, what man has a right to call
+himself miserable?"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LIII.
+
+  The paths of glory lead but to the grave.--_Gray's Elegy_.
+
+
+Mr. Shingles had an acquaintance among the gentlemen of the press;
+and, chancing to meet his quill-driving friend, he told him Morton's
+story. It appeared, accordingly, beautifully embellished, in one of
+the evening papers, and was copied, the next morning, into several
+others. Consequently, Morton had scarcely risen from breakfast, when
+he was visited by half a dozen persons, editors and others, eager to
+hear his adventures, for the gratification of their own curiosity, or
+that of the public. As he detested such visitations, and as several of
+his callers, from their countenances alone, inspired him with an
+earnest longing to kick them down stairs, he hastened to avoid the
+nuisance by escaping into the street. Since the tidings he had heard
+from Shingles, his native town had lost all attraction for him; in
+fact he shrank from going thither, and willingly lingered another day
+in New York.
+
+Going to Buckland's lodgings, he renewed his persuasions of the
+evening before, and strongly urged him to leave New York. Buckland
+assented to every thing he said; and, hearing of a ship about to sail
+for the East Indies, Morton went with his friend to the merchant to
+whom she belonged, and induced him to engage a passage in her.
+
+Returning to his hotel at about two o'clock, a waiter brought him a
+card, telling him that a boy had just left it for him. It was Rosny's;
+and on it were scrawled with a pencil the following concise and
+characteristic words:--
+
+Dear M.: Uncle Sam in a deuse of a hurry. Ordered to the island this
+afternoon. Off for Mexico to-morrow. Sorry not to see you, but haven't
+a minute to spare. Good luck.--_Au revoir._
+
+                       Yours till doomsday,
+                                                       ROSNY.
+
+Morton went to the recruiting office where he had been with Rosny on
+the day before, learned the time and place of the embarkation, was on
+the spot at the hour named, and in a few minutes saw Rosny striding
+down the wharf in most unmilitary haste, his hair fluttering in the
+wind. He was so engrossed in making certain arrangements, and issuing
+his mandates to the soldiers who were to row him and some other
+officers to Governor's Island, that he did not observe Morton, who
+stood quietly leaning against a post.
+
+"Hallo, Dick," said the latter at length. "Haven't you eyes to see
+your friends?"
+
+Rosny turned, in great surprise, and greeted him most emphatically.
+
+"Come, Morton," he said, as he was stepping into the boat, "you'll
+change your mind after all,--won't you?--and meet me at Vera Cruz."
+
+"I'll sit at home, and read your exploits in the papers," replied
+Morton.
+
+"Well; a wilful man must have his way. Adieu."
+
+"Good by. May you live to be a general, or any thing else you like,
+short of the presidency."
+
+"Why, shouldn't I make a good president?"
+
+"No."
+
+"What? too progressive,--too wide awake,--too enlightened, ey?"
+
+"Yes, and too pugnacious."
+
+"There you are again, Boston all over. I'll be president yet, if only
+to spite the Bostonites. You shall write my life, and I'll give you an
+office for it. Farewell."
+
+Morton watched the receding boat till it was almost out of sight,
+waved his hat to Rosny, who waved his own in return, and walked back
+to the hotel, wondering what would be the issue of his old classmate's
+ambitious schemes.
+
+How, among a throng of brave men, Rosny gained a name for determined
+daring;--how, on every occasion that offered, he displayed the fire of
+the Frenchman, and the stubborn mettle of the Saxon, whose blood
+mingled in his veins;--how, though sick and wounded, he dragged
+himself from the hospital at Puebla, and, mounting his horse, pushed
+forward with the advancing columns;--how gallantly, under the
+murdering storm of musketry and grape, he led his intrepid blackguards
+up the rocks of Chapultepec;--how, while shouting among the foremost,
+he climbed the hostile rampart, a bullet plunged into his brain, and
+dashed him, quivering and dead, to the foot of the scaling
+ladders;--all this, and more likewise, is it not written in the New
+York Herald?
+
+About a year after Rosny's departure, Morton chanced to be again in
+New York, when, in going out one morning, he beheld all the symptoms
+of some impending solemnity. Flags, festooned with crape, were strung
+across Broadway from building to building. The shops were half closed,
+and the streets were fast filling with people. Patriot citizens,
+exchanging the yardstick for the sword, strode the sidewalk in
+gorgeous panoply; and now and then a mounted warrior cantered along
+the pavement, struggling to keep his balance on his fiery coach horse.
+In an hour or two more, the pageant was in full operation. Looking
+from his hotel window Morton beheld a radiant river of shining
+bayonets, many colored plumes, and martial millinery, solemnly flowing
+down the middle of Broadway, to strange and lugubrious music, between
+melancholy shores of black broadcloth and beaver hats. At length a
+train of hearses appeared slowly advancing to the wailing music of the
+bands, encircled by the harmless sabres of the civic warriors, playing
+soldier, around the remains of those who had borne the part in tragic
+earnest. Over every hearse the national flag was drooping, and upon
+each was inscribed the name of its unconscious tenant. They were
+officers slain in battle during the last Mexican campaign. Four of the
+hearses passed. Morton read the names. They were all unknown to him;
+but as the fifth approached, he looked, started, and looked again; for
+wrought in white upon the sable drapery he saw, distinct and clear,
+the name of Rosny. Descending to the street, he joined the procession;
+he even underwent the funeral oration at the City Hall; and when it
+was over, shouldering through the crowd, he stood by the side of all
+that remained of his old classmate. Rosny's cap, and the sword he had
+used so well, lay on the lid of the coffin; and Morton turned away,
+with eyes not quite dry, as he recalled his many genial traits and his
+undaunted spirit.
+
+To resume. On returning to his hotel after taking leave of Rosny,
+Morton found a note awaiting him, directed in a female hand. He opened
+it, and read the signature,--Ellen Ashland,--the name of a lady whom
+he had well known in Boston, and who, just before he had sailed for
+Europe, had been married to an eminent lawyer of his acquaintance. She
+wrote that she had seen an account of his escape from prison, and
+arrival in New York, in the morning paper,--expressed an earnest wish
+to see him, and invited him to visit her at the New York Hotel, where
+she was spending a few days with her husband.
+
+As the time named was almost come, Morton called a coach, and drove up
+town. His friend received him with a peculiar warmth and earnestness
+of manner. Morton had known her as a person of marked character and
+strong but strictly governed emotions, not always permitting the
+expression of a feeling to keep pace with the feeling itself. He
+greatly liked and esteemed her, and her presence disarmed him, in a
+great degree, of his usual reserve.
+
+Her husband had been absent all day in Brooklyn, and would not return
+till late in the evening.
+
+"It is five years since I have spoken to a lady," said Morton, as he
+seated himself at the tea table.
+
+As he was not scrupulous to wear a mask before her, she quickly
+discovered the depressed condition of his mind; and on her charging
+him with being very much out of spirits, he admitted that he was so.
+
+"One would think," she observed, "that after the sufferings that you
+have passed, you would have come home in a different mood of mind."
+
+"And so I did," said Morton.
+
+"You seem in no great haste to see your friends and relations in
+Boston."
+
+"I have no near relations there."
+
+"But you have friends."
+
+"Yes; I have heard from them. I met an acquaintance yesterday."
+
+"You have heard, then----" And she bent her eyes upon his face, with a
+look searching but full of kindness, as if studying his thoughts.
+
+"Five years," she continued, "is a long time. Great changes may have
+taken place."
+
+"Changes _have_ taken place," said Morton.
+
+"You have lost none of your intimate friends, as far as I know them;
+but some have left Boston, and some are married."
+
+Morton did not look up; but an undefined expression passed across his
+face, like the shadow of a black cloud. When, a moment after, he
+raised his eyes, he saw those of Mrs. Ashland fixed upon him with the
+same earnest gaze as before. Such scrutiny from another would have
+been intolerable to him; but in her it gave him no uneasiness.
+
+A servant entering changed for a time the character of their
+conversation. A quarter of an hour afterwards they were again alone,
+and Morton was seated near the window, when his friend approached him,
+her features kindling with a look of ill-suppressed feeling, laid her
+hand on his shoulder, and said, "Vassall,"--she had always before
+addressed him as Mr. Morton,--"my heart bleeds for you--for you and
+for Edith Leslie."
+
+Morton looked up till he met her eyes. The surprise, the sudden
+consciousness that she was privy to his grief, the warm and heartfelt
+woman's sympathy that he read in every line of her face, were too much
+for his manhood, and he burst into tears.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LIV.
+
+  Elle n'est point parjure, elle n'est point légère;
+  Son devoir m'a trahi, mon malheur, et son père.--_Polyeucte_.
+
+
+Morton's evening with Mrs. Ashland, and the story which she told him,
+removed at least one pain from his breast. He learned that Edith
+Leslie was not in fault; and that, great as his misfortune might be,
+his idol was not turned to clay.
+
+His friend's narrative, however, was very defective. She could give
+results merely, not knowing, or suspecting, the hidden springs which
+produced them; and Morton was left to form his own conclusions. The
+following is a more explicit statement.
+
+Morton embarked for Europe, and the return steamer brought, in due
+course, a letter to Edith Leslie. With the next steamer came another;
+with the next, a third; all as absurd epistles as the most exacting
+mistress could desire. The succeeding mail was silent. She wondered
+and hoped; but when the next arrived, and brought no tidings, her
+heart began to fail. The winter wore away, and still no letter came.
+She was living, at that time, with her father, at his country seat.
+Leslie's health was declining, and when Vinal returned from his short
+European tour, he consigned to his hands the care of his affairs, and
+spent the greater part of his time at Matherton; for he had a strong
+love for the home of his boyhood.
+
+Spring returned, and blossomed into summer; but nothing was heard of
+Morton. The season ripened; the fringed gentian sprang in the meadow,
+and the aster by the roadside; but no word came. In the forests, the
+October frosts began their gorgeous work. The ash put on its purple;
+the oak its varied coloring; the sumach its blood-red glare; and at
+evening, the sun went down in cold, stern splendors behind the painted
+mountains. Dry leaves whirled upon the ground; chill clouds mustered
+in the sky; and flakes of snow, the harbingers of storm, were blown
+along the frozen road. Then winter sank upon the landscape, and deeper
+winter on the heart of the unhappy girl.
+
+Time passed on, and the hope of Morton's return grew fainter. Leslie,
+seeing his daughter's deep distress, made a journey to Europe; but his
+search was fruitless. Meredith, who spent a year on the continent,
+pursued the same inquiries, but could trace his friend no farther than
+the town of Neuburg, in Bavaria. Morton, before his departure, had
+made his will, and in the ardor of his attachment, had left the bulk
+of his property to his betrothed, distributing a comparatively small
+residue among a number of poor relations, none of whom had either the
+means or the worldly knowledge to take measures for ascertaining his
+fate.
+
+Meanwhile, Leslie had fallen into a decline; and there was no hope
+that his life could be protracted beyond a year or two. He became more
+than ever dependent upon Vinal, who now assumed nearly the whole
+charge of his affairs, acquitting himself with great ability, and, in
+this instance, with entire faithfulness. A rickety manufacturing
+concern, which for years had been a drain upon Leslie's purse, began,
+under Vinal's control, to yield a good profit; and the former saw all
+his resources quickened and replenished, as if by an infusion of new
+life.
+
+Vinal was mounting very high in the general esteem. His polished
+address,--a little too precise, however,--his acknowledged
+scholarship, his character for honor and integrity, and his energy and
+capacity for business, commended him to all classes. He passed current
+alike in ball rooms and on change. Men of the world never doubted him;
+and, after all, this confidence was not quite groundless, for Vinal,
+who had a sage eye to his own interest, had embraced the maxim that,
+in matters of business, a course of absolute integrity is, under all
+ordinary circumstances, the only wise policy.
+
+As, in process of time, the conviction of Morton's death was
+confirmed, Leslie's old wish for a union between his daughter and
+Vinal began again to grow strong within him. Some two years after her
+lover's disappearance, he ventured to speak to her of this favorite
+plan; but it was long before he dared allude to it again. Meanwhile,
+Vinal's attentions had been assiduous and constant, yet so tempered as
+to convey the idea that he despaired of any other reward than the
+continuance of her friendship. At length, however, certain of her
+father's countenance, and assuming Morton's death as now beyond a
+doubt, he began, with all possible delicacy and caution, to renew his
+former addresses. He was not long in discovering that his cause was
+quite hopeless, unless he could produce some positive proof that
+Morton was no longer alive.
+
+During the third summer of the latter's absence, Vinal went, for two
+or three months, to Europe, the state of his health being the alleged
+motive. While in Paris, he tried to find his former confederate,
+Speyer, but could only learn that he was no longer in that city. On
+returning to America, he told Leslie that he had inquired after
+Morton, on all sides, without the least success, but had taken
+measures which, he thought it not impossible, might in time lead to
+some discovery. In various parts of Germany, there was, as he
+affirmed, a class of travelling merchants and commercial agents, who,
+from the nature of their avocations, had every facility for making
+inquiries within the districts which they frequented. He had taken
+pains, he said, to become acquainted with a large number of these men,
+to whom he had stated the case of Morton's disappearance, and promised
+a reward for any information concerning him.
+
+Some time after this, he told Leslie that he had had word from one of
+these correspondents. The latter, he affirmed, had heard that a young
+man, said to be an Englishman, had died very suddenly three or four
+years before, in an unfrequented part of Bohemia. The German declared
+himself ready, if desired, to go to the district in question, and
+inquire into the matter. Leslie was anxious that the inquiry should be
+made; upon which Vinal, though seeming not at all sanguine as to any
+result, gave him the name of his imaginary correspondent, and advised
+that he should write to him. Leslie, however, as Vinal had foreseen,
+desired that the latter should carry on the correspondence. He
+accordingly wrote a letter, directed to Jacob Hatz. This he showed to
+Leslie, and mailed it in his presence, consigning it to a long repose
+in some continental dead letter office. At the same time, he secretly
+despatched another letter, directed to Henry Speyer; for he had
+meanwhile discovered the address of this serviceable person. This
+letter was as follows:--
+
+Dear Sir: You cannot have forgotten some interviews and correspondence
+which formerly passed between us concerning a person who soon after
+was unfortunate enough to fall under the notice of the Austrian
+police. Nothing has since been heard of him, and it is commonly
+believed here that he is dead. It is my desire to have this opinion
+confirmed; and having found you honorable and efficient on another
+occasion, I cannot doubt that I shall find you so in this. May I beg
+your services in the following particulars?
+
+1st. To take an imaginary journey into Bohemia, Moravia, or parts
+adjacent.
+
+2d. To discover that, three years or more ago, a young man, an
+American, named ---- ----, travelling alone on horseback in an
+unfrequented part of the country, (this was his habit,) was attacked
+by cholera, or any other violent disease prevalent thereabouts, which
+carried him off in less than three days.
+
+3d. That he died at a small village inn; that a Lutheran clergyman
+took charge of his effects, and wrote to his friends; but that the
+letter may have miscarried, or the clergyman may have played false,
+and kept the windfall that had come to him.
+
+4th. That two years ago, the clergyman removed into Hungary, but that
+the innkeeper, a stupid, beetle-headed fellow, showed you a headstone
+in the Protestant burial ground, with ----'s name upon it. The
+innkeeper may describe him as a young man of twenty-four, or less, but
+must not remember too much, as this might attract further inquiry.
+
+This is the outline, and will serve to indicate the kind of thing
+required. Vary it, in respect to details, as your judgment and your
+knowledge of the customs of the country may suggest. Names are
+omitted. Please observe the ciphers which stand in their places. You
+will soon receive, through another channel, means to supply the
+deficiency, if, indeed, your memory will not do so unaided.
+
+Sign your letter _Jacob Hatz_. There is another point, which I beg you
+to observe particularly. Mention that on the gravestone, besides the
+name, was carved a figure, like an urn or cup, with a large ball above
+it. Date of death, also;--December 7, 1841.
+
+I herewith enclose five hundred francs. On receiving your reply, _with
+this letter enclosed_, I shall immediately send you five hundred more.
+If I were not a poor man, and expecting always to be so, I could
+remunerate your services better.
+
+With the fullest reliance on your honor and discretion, I remain,
+
+                          Yours, truly, ---- ----.
+
+P. S. For your better direction, I subjoin a formula to be followed in
+the beginning of your letter. You can word the rest in your own way.
+Write in French.
+
+Vinal, if he had dared, would gladly have forged such a letter as he
+required, instead of trusting to another person; but art or nature had
+not gifted him with the needful skill; and he was anxious, moreover,
+to have the foreign postmarks stamped upon it in form.
+
+In due time, Speyer's answer came. He had neglected to return Vinal's
+letter, as desired; but in other respects, his performance gave his
+employer ample satisfaction. The latter showed it to Leslie, who
+seemed convinced by it; while his daughter, on reading it, abandoned
+at once the hope to which she had hitherto clung, that Morton might
+still be living.
+
+"I remember this Hatz very well," said Vinal; "he seemed to be a
+plain, honest sort of man,--an agent, I believe, of a merchant in
+Strasburg. And yet the reward I promised might have been too great a
+temptation."
+
+"Then," said Leslie, "you would not receive this as a proof of Mr.
+Morton's death?"
+
+"No, I would not: that is, I should not but for one thing;--it is so
+very much like Vassall Morton to be travelling alone, on horseback, in
+an out-of-the-way part of the country."
+
+"Did you observe," pursued Leslie, "what he says of figures of an urn
+and ball cut on the gravestone?"
+
+"I saw it, but did not observe it particularly."
+
+Leslie gave him the letter, and Vinal read the part referred to.
+
+"What can it mean?" asked Leslie.
+
+"I can't conceive," replied Vinal.
+
+"It is the vase and sun," said Edith Leslie; "the device of his
+mother's family, the Vassalls."
+
+"Ah," exclaimed Vinal, looking up with a face of mournful interest,
+"you must be right; the same figures are carved on the tomb of the
+Vassalls, in the old churchyard at Cambridge."
+
+"They were cut," pursued Miss Leslie, "on a garnet ring, which he
+always used as a seal."
+
+"I remember his showing me that ring," said her father, "and telling
+me that it was older than the voyage of the Mayflower. It was a kind
+of heirloom, which his mother had left him."
+
+"Yes," suggested the sympathizing Vinal, who had long known that
+Morton used no other seal than this ring; "and the device on it was
+supposed to be his armorial bearing, and so cut on the gravestone, as
+it is on the Vassall tomb at Cambridge."
+
+All doubt of Morton's death was now dispelled. His betrothed stored
+his image in her thoughts, as that of one lost for this world; and
+Vinal saw the field clear before him. Leslie was failing fast; and, as
+his life ebbed, his wish for his daughter's marriage with Vinal grew
+and strengthened. He urged her, daily, to listen to his suit;
+extolling his favorite's talents, energy, acquirements, and
+unimpeachable character--praises which she believed to be wholly just.
+Vinal, on his part, seconded these parental efforts with most earnest,
+beseeching, not to say abject importunities. The compassion which he
+contrived to excite, an idea of duty, and an urgent wish to gratify
+her dying father, at length prevailed with her; and laying before
+Vinal the true state of her feelings, she consented, on such terms, to
+accept his suit.
+
+Vinal had gained his point; but he had scarcely done so, when his
+spirits were dashed by an untoward incident, the nature of which may
+be guessed hereafter. And, as it never rains but it pours, this
+reverse of luck was soon followed by a second, of another kind.
+
+One afternoon, returning from his customary constitutional ride, he
+was in the act of turning the upper corner of a street which slopes
+downward somewhat steeply till it meets a main thoroughfare of the
+town. A small ragamuffin boy was standing on the curbstone, with a
+blade of grass between his thumbs, through which he blew with might
+and main, evidently to startle Vinal's horse, whose head was within a
+yard of him. He succeeded to his complete satisfaction. Vinal switched
+at the youngster with his whip; but this only made matters worse. The
+horse galloped down the street at a rate which his rider's weak arm
+could not check; and, at the corner of the main street, wheeling
+suddenly to the left, he slipped on the wet pavement, and fell with a
+crash on his side. Horse and man lay motionless, till a city teamster,
+running up, raised the former by the bridle. Two or three passers by
+came to Vinal's aid; but as they lifted him, he set his teeth with
+pain. The horse had fallen on his left leg, breaking it above the
+knee.
+
+Vinal was timid to excess in time of danger; but he could bear pain
+with the firmness of a stoic. While he felt himself run away with, and
+at the moment of his fall, he had been greatly confused. He no sooner
+saw that the worst was over, than he rallied his faculties, and
+asserted his usual self-mastery. His face was fast growing pale with
+violence of pain; but he was quite himself again.
+
+A crowd gathered about him, as he lay leaning on the steps of the
+neighboring church.
+
+"Shall we carry you to the ---- Hotel?" asked a gentleman.
+
+"Yes, if you please. But first be kind enough to bring a shutter. They
+will give you one at the school round the corner. When a man is
+killed, drunk, or maimed, there is nothing like a shutter. How do you
+do, Edwards?"--to a man whom he recognized in the crowd.
+
+"I hope you are not badly hurt."
+
+"My leg is broken."
+
+"Are you in great pain?"
+
+"Yes; a bad business, I think. Will you oblige me by seeing that my
+horse is led to the stable in ---- Street?"
+
+The shutter was soon brought.
+
+"Thank you. Lift me very gently."
+
+As they moved him he clinched his teeth again in silent torture.
+
+"All right. Now one take the shutter at the head, and one at the feet.
+You'll find me a light weight."
+
+And thus, between two men, escorted by a procession of schoolboys just
+let loose, Vinal was carried to the hotel.
+
+The event justified his presage. He was forced to lie motionless for
+weeks, suffering greatly from bodily pain, and no less from certain
+anxieties which of late had harassed him. Leslie, on his part, was in
+great distress at the disaster. He felt, or fancied himself, near his
+end; and the wish next his heart was to see the marriage accomplished
+before he died. It was therefore determined that, notwithstanding the
+inauspicious plight of the bridegroom, it should take place at the
+time before fixed upon, four months after the beginning of the
+engagement.
+
+The ceremony was very private. None were present but two or three
+friends of Miss Leslie, the dying father, borne thither in a chair,
+the disabled bridegroom, and the pale and agitated bride; for that
+morning, standing before Morton's picture, a strange misgiving and a
+dark foreboding had fallen upon her, and the sun never shone on a
+bride more wretched. Her nearest friend, Mrs. Ashland, was at her
+side. She was the only person, besides her father and Vinal, who knew
+of her engagement to Morton, and, indeed, had been her confidante from
+first to last. Soon after Morton's disappearance, an accident had
+brought them together, reviving an old school intimacy; and Edith
+Leslie, in her suspense and misery, was but too glad to find a friend
+in whom she could trust without reserve.
+
+The rite was ended, and Edith Leslie was Edith Vinal. Days and weeks
+passed; Leslie slowly declined, and Vinal slowly recovered. She
+divided her time between them, passing the greater part of the day
+with the latter, and returning at evening to watch by her father's bed
+or rest within sound of his voice. At length, three weeks after her
+marriage, on a morning the horror of which remained scarred always in
+her memory, Morton's letter from Genoa was put into her hands; and the
+long-disciplined patience with which she had armed herself, the
+religion which she had called to her aid, all the guards and defences
+of her mind, were borne down, for a time, by the resistless flood of
+passion, which, like a river bursting its barriers, swept all before
+it.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LV.
+
+  We twain have met like ships upon the sea,
+  Who hold an hour's converse,  *  *  *
+  One little hour! and then away they speed
+  On lonely paths, through mist, and cloud, and foam,
+  To meet no more.--_Alexander Smith_.
+
+
+"Good morning, Ned," said Morton to his friend Meredith. He had come
+to Boston the day before, and had already seen Meredith more than
+once.
+
+"Going already? Sit down, man. Why are you in such a hurry?"
+
+"I shall look in again before night."
+
+"You are not well. I never thought you could look so worn and
+haggard."
+
+"Try the prison of Ehrenberg for four or five years, and see how you
+will look when you get out. It's nothing, though. A little rest will
+make all right again."
+
+"You are not very likely to get it. You are a lion now, and people
+will not leave you alone."
+
+"They shall. I am not in the humor for balls and dinner parties."
+
+He went to the house of Mrs. Ashland, whom he had accompanied homeward
+from New York.
+
+"Have you the letter for me?"
+
+The letter was that which had come from Europe with the story of his
+death. On hearing Mrs. Ashland's account, he had at once conjectured
+that this was but another stroke of Vinal's diplomacy; but he had been
+careful not to intimate to his friend the least suspicion against the
+latter.
+
+The commission of obtaining from Edith the letter in question was far
+from an agreeable one; but Mrs. Ashland had accomplished it, and now
+placed the paper in Morton's hands.
+
+The signature was not that of Speyer; but at the first glance, Morton
+was sure that the small, neat handwriting was the same with that of
+the treacherous notes of introduction given him by Vinal at Paris. As
+he studied the letter, reading and re-reading it, his companion, who
+remembered him chiefly as a frank, good-humored young man, was
+startled at the stern and almost fierce expression which once or twice
+came over his features, and seemed to be banished by an effort. A
+vague suspicion of some mystery rose in her mind, but Morton hastened
+to divert her.
+
+"I hope that Edith will not refuse a visit from me."
+
+Here, again, Mrs. Ashland promised to mediate for him, and in the
+afternoon he received a note from her, saying that Vinal's wife would
+see him on the next morning.
+
+At the hour named, he rang at the door, forced his lips to inquire for
+"Mrs. Vinal," gave his name to the servant, and was shown into the
+drawing room.
+
+It was nearly five years since he had last seen that well-remembered
+room. Nothing was changed. It remained precisely as he had known it
+when he stood prosperously on the farther verge of that dreary chasm
+of time; and as each familiar object met his eye, such a flood of
+bitter recollection came upon him, that for a moment he bent his head
+upon his breast.
+
+He raised it, and started as he did so. Reflected in the mirror at the
+end of the room, as if the art of some new Cornelius had evoked it,
+stood, pale as marble, the form that had so long attended his sleeping
+and waking dreams. Morton turned quickly, and saw Edith standing
+motionless in the doorway.
+
+He advanced towards her, and took her hand in both his own. She raised
+her eyes to his face in silence. He tried to speak, but tried in vain.
+At length he found utterance.
+
+"I know it all. Ellen Ashland has told me every thing. I do not blame
+you;--no one can blame you."
+
+"Thank God that you think so."
+
+"Yes, thank God; for when I thought that you had forgotten me----"
+
+"Then you _did_ think so?"
+
+"For a time; and it seemed to me as if no more constancy were left on
+earth; as if it had been sapped and undermined in its very citadel."
+
+"Do not believe that I forgot you for a single hour; or that I can
+ever forget you. You and I have been joined at least in an equal
+sorrow and suspense. We have walked through depths together, and drank
+the same gall and bitterness."
+
+"That one month--four miserable weeks--should have worked all this!
+One month sooner, and this black picture of our lives would have been
+bright again as the sunshine. I could believe that some infernal power
+had taken the reins of our fate."
+
+"Do not say so, nor think so. You have fronted death; you have braved
+despair; and now bear this blow victoriously as you have borne the
+rest."
+
+"The crowning blow is the heaviest of all."
+
+"Look into my heart,--if you could look into it,--and see on which of
+us it has fallen with the more sickening and withering force."
+
+Morton looked into her face. It was like a deep lake becalmed, into
+which strong springs are boiling up from rocks at the bottom. The
+surface is still; but looking more closely, one may discern faint
+gliding undulations and trembling lines, which betray the turmoil
+below. Morton saw them, and felt their purport.
+
+"I would to God," he said, "I could bear your burden for you."
+
+Edith buried her face, and burst into a flood of weeping.
+
+Grief, mixed with more ardent emotion, wrought with such violence in
+Morton's breast, that he scarcely restrained his impulse to throw
+himself at her feet. In a few moments, she raised her head.
+
+"Do not think from this, that I am not resigned to what has fallen on
+us. It is best. Incomprehensible as it is, it is best for us both."
+
+A passionate denial rose to Morton's lips; but he did not utter it.
+
+"I overrated my strength. I am weaker than I hoped to have found
+myself. You wish to bear my burden! You have had enough to bear of
+your own, Vassall; but with you, endurance is not the whole. You still
+have youth, health, vigor. To one of your instincts, the world has
+noble tasks enough. With a heart steeled by dangers, refined by
+sufferings, tempered in fires of anguish, what path need you fear to
+tread? Forget the past;--no, do not forget it; only forget all in it
+that may damp your courage or weaken your hand. When I knew you first,
+you were full of zeal in a worthy and generous enterprise. Cling to it
+still. Let me see the tree which I knew in its blossoming bear a full
+fruit at maturity. Let me see the ardent and earnest spirit which I
+knew in the beginning, not quelled or flagging by the way, but holding
+on its course to the end. The pure chivalry of your heart which
+constrained me to love you, the instinct which turned towards honor
+and nobleness as a tree turns its branches to the sun,--do not part
+from it; keep it unstained for my sake, and let it brighten and
+strengthen all your life."
+
+"If preachers could speak with your tongue," exclaimed Morton, "the
+world would forget itself and grow virtuous. The love that I have lost
+on earth I will set among the stars. It shall be my beacon till the
+day I die."
+
+"We are too delicate and timorous to bear a part in the active
+struggles of life; but it is a woman's office to raise and purify the
+thoughts of those who do. You, whose strong natures are formed for
+warfare, cannot be so sensitive as we are to every spot that dims the
+brightness of your armor. It is easy for me, before one whom I have
+loved as I have loved you, to hold this tone, and be borne up for a
+time above the thought of grief and renouncement. But it is a
+different task to still, through all a lifetime, the longings of a
+woman's heart, and the impatient surgings of a woman's temperament.
+This is the task assigned me, and I accept it. Life--action--are
+before you. Patience is my medicine; the slow talisman which must open
+in the end my door of promise."
+
+Morton pressed her hand to his lips.
+
+"'There is some soul of goodness in things evil.' A sorrow under
+which, feebly borne, the mind would wither to the earth, borne well
+will lift it above the clouds. Do not believe that I have deceived any
+one. He knows on what terms he takes me. I feel respect, esteem,
+confidence, warm friendship for him."
+
+"May you never be undeceived," thought Morton to himself.
+
+"But for any more ardent love,--that, I told him, was buried in the
+grave with you."
+
+She was silent for a moment, and then went on.
+
+"It will not be wise, or right, for us to see each other often. In
+time, you will meet some one with whom you can forget the pain of this
+separation."
+
+Morton shook his head.
+
+"Yes--at least I trust you will. But we can never forget what we have
+been to each other. Our reality is melted into a dream, but we must
+not allow it to remain a dream. Let it be to us a fountain of high
+thoughts, whose streams may water all our lives."
+
+"You are an alchemist, Edith," said Morton; "you have found the secret
+to change lead and iron into pure gold. And yet you make me feel, more
+than ever, if that can be, what a crown I have lost."
+
+When Morton left the house, after a half hour's interview, the
+agitation with which he had entered it had sunk into quiet; for an
+influence had fallen upon him as soothing and elevating as if he had
+been listening to the paschal music in the chapel of the choir at St.
+Peter's. And as an aeronaut, tossed among tempestuous clouds, is borne
+of a sudden above the turmoil, and floats serene in a calmer sky, so
+the troubled mind of Morton felt itself buoyed up for a space above
+the tumult of passionate and bitter thought.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LVI.
+
+  For close designs and crooked counsels fit,
+  Sagacious, bold, and turbulent of wit.--_Dryden_.
+
+
+On the next morning he was walking near the Court House, when a man
+accosted him, touching his hat with one hand, and holding out the
+other in the way of friendly salutation. Morton, however, was at a
+loss to recognize him. He had an air which may most conveniently be
+described as _raffish_, a hat set on one side of his head, and a
+good-natured, easy, devil-may-care face.
+
+"Richards is my name," said the stranger. "I met you at Paris, just
+before you went into Austria."
+
+This was quite enough. Morton, who had repeatedly revolved all the
+circumstances connected with his arrest, at once recalled the accident
+by which he had discovered Richards and Vinal, on their way together
+to visit Speyer. Morton determined to cultivate this new acquaintance;
+which, however, seemed likely to grow without much tillage.
+
+"I went on two or three excursions about the city with you, Mr. Vinal,
+and the rest. Perhaps you have not forgotten it."
+
+"Not in the least; but you are changed since then."
+
+"Yes," said Richards, touching the place where his moustaches had once
+grown, "I cut them off when I went into practice here in Boston. I
+found they were ruining my character as a professional man."
+
+"How long were you in Paris after I saw you?"
+
+"Two years, off and on. I wish I were there now." And taking Morton's
+arm, he proceeded to catechize him touching his imprisonment and
+escape, of which he said he had first read in the New York Herald.
+Morton satisfied his curiosity, taking care to give him no suspicion
+of Speyer's connection with the affair, and allowing him to infer that
+the arrest was caused by an accidental concurrence of suspicious
+circumstances. Richards, at the end, broke out into a savage, red
+republican tirade against Metternich and the Austrian government.
+
+"By the way," said Morton, when his companion's heat had subsided, "do
+you happen to remember a man called Speyer, or something like it,--a
+republican propagandist, at Paris? I believe you knew him."
+
+"I never knew any body else," replied Richards, adopting a
+cis-Atlantic figure of speech for which rhetoricians have as yet found
+no name.
+
+"Do you know where he is now?"
+
+"What, have you lent money to Speyer, too?"
+
+"He is heavily in my debt," said Morton, evasively.
+
+"That's odd. He seems to have been borrowing money all round. I
+remember, about a year or more ago, I met Mr. Vinal, and he began to
+talk about Paris. 'By the way,' said he to me, 'do you happen to
+remember a man named Spires, or Speyers, or some such thing? I lent
+him five hundred francs.' 'I wish you may get it,' said I. 'Well,'
+said Vinal, 'I have a friend going to Paris, who will try what can be
+done for me.' So I set him on the track. I don't know whether he got
+his money or not, but I saw him talking with Speyer in the street, one
+evening last spring, and Vinal looked as sour as if he had swallowed a
+bottle of vitriol."
+
+"Talking with Speyer last spring!" repeated Morton; "has he been to
+Paris?"
+
+"Speyer has come out to America. There is not a country in Europe but
+has grown too hot for him. He was under surveillance in Paris, all the
+time I knew him."
+
+"When did he come?"
+
+"Six or eight months ago."
+
+"Where is he to be found?"
+
+"In New York, chiefly. If you could have caught him when he was here
+in Boston, in the spring, you might have got something out of him; for
+he seemed flush of money."
+
+"What, after you saw him with Vinal?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Have you seen him more than once in Boston?"
+
+"Yes, two or three times."
+
+"Is he in New York now?"
+
+"I suppose so; but I would not advise your trying to do any thing with
+him. You had better pocket your loss, and let him go. However, if you
+want to try, I can refer you to a man who can probably help you to
+find his whereabouts."
+
+"Thank you; there's no harm in making the attempt. I don't know Speyer
+well. What kind of man is he?"
+
+"Well, I will draw his portrait for you. He is sly as a fox; always
+contriving, plotting, and working under ground. Intrigue is his native
+element. He takes to it like a chameleon to air, or a salamander to
+fire."
+
+"An artful, managing fellow, not bold enough to make a direct attack?"
+
+"Bold! There is nothing on the earth, or under it, that he fears. He
+will not make a direct attack, if he can help it, because it is
+against his instinct; but press upon him--crowd him a little--and he
+will show his teeth like a Bengal tiger. He is always in hot water;
+for he never could be happy out of it. He has his weaknesses, though.
+A woman whom he takes a fancy to can turn him round her finger. I
+never knew a man so desperate in that way, or such a devil incarnate
+when a fit of jealousy seizes him."
+
+"You draw a flattering likeness of your friend," said Morton."
+
+"O," said Richards, laughing, "I cut half my foreign acquaintance, now
+that I am at home."
+
+Before leaving his new companion, Morton obtained from him the name
+and direction of the person of whom he had spoken as likely to know
+where Speyer was to be found. Left alone at length, he pondered on
+what he had heard:--
+
+"So Vinal applied to Richards, to learn Speyer's address, when he
+wrote to him to report me dead. Speyer in America!--having interviews
+with Vinal!--and flush of money! Can it be possible that this agent of
+his villany has become the instrument of his punishment?--that the
+Furies are already on his track? If Speyer kept Vinal's letter, as,
+under the circumstances, such a calculating knave would be apt to do,
+he has that in his hands which would make my friend open his purse
+strings; yes, make him coin his life blood, to satisfy him. It is past
+doubting; Vinal has it now; this cormorant is preying upon him."
+
+That afternoon Morton took the night train to New York, in search of
+Speyer.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LVII.
+
+              Though those that are betrayed
+   Do feel the treason sharply, yet the traitor
+   Stands in worse case of woe.--_Cymbeline_.
+
+
+Vinal sat alone, propped and cushioned in an arm chair, when a clerk
+from his office came to bring him his morning letters. He looked over
+the superscriptions till he saw one in a foreign hand. Vinal
+compressed his pale lips. When the clerk had left the room, he glanced
+about him nervously, tore open the letter, and read it in haste.
+
+"The bloodsucker! Money; more money! He soaks it up like a sponge; or,
+rather, I am the sponge, and he means to wring me dry. In jail! Well,
+he has found his place, for once. Six hundred dollars! That, I
+suppose, is to pay his fine; to uncage the wild beast, and set him
+loose. I wish he were sentenced for ten years; then he might lie
+there, and rot. I must send him something--enough to keep him in play.
+No, I will send him nothing. He is in trouble; and I may turn it to
+account. I will write to him that, if he will return me my letters, I
+will give him a thousand dollars now, and an annuity of five hundred
+for six years to come. I shall do well if I can draw the viper's teeth
+at that price. Then I can breathe again; unless Morton should have
+suspected the trick I played him, or--what if he should meet with
+Speyer! But that is not likely, for he never knew him, nor saw him,
+and Speyer will shun him as he would the plague. I wish they had shot
+him in the prison, as I am told they meant to do. There would have
+been one stumbling block away; one lion out of my path. But now the
+sword hangs over me by a hair; I am racked and torn like a toad under
+a harrow; no rest, no peace! What if Speyer should do as he threatens,
+print my letters, and placard them about the streets! I will buy them
+out of his hands if it cost all I have. And even then I shall not be
+safe, as long as this ruffian is above ground. With him and Morton to
+haunt me, my life is a slow death, a purgatory, a hell."
+
+He tore Speyer's letter into small fragments, rolled and crushed them
+together, and scattered them under the grate.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LVIII.
+
+When rich villains have need of poor ones, poor ones may make what
+price they will.--_Much Ado about Nothing_.
+
+
+Morton reached New York, and found the person to whom he had been
+referred by Richards. He proved to be a German, of respectable
+appearance enough; but Morton could learn nothing from him. He
+admitted that he had once known Speyer; but stubbornly denied all
+present knowledge concerning him; and after various inquiry elsewhere,
+which brought him into contact with much vile company, without helping
+him towards his end, Morton gave over the search, and returned to
+Boston.
+
+A day or two after, he met Richards in the street.
+
+"Well, Mr. Richards, I was in New York the other day, and saw your
+man; but he knew nothing about Speyer."
+
+Richards laughed.
+
+"I dare say not; just let me write to him; he will tell me a different
+story. I used to be hand and glove with all these refugees; and I will
+lay you any bet I find Speyer's whereabouts within a week."
+
+Accordingly, three or four days after, Richards called at Morton's
+lodgings, with an air of great self-satisfaction.
+
+"I have spotted your game for you, sir, and he won't run away in a
+hurry, either. He'll be sure to wait till you come. He's in jail."
+
+"What, for debt?"
+
+"No, for an assault on a Frenchman. It was about a woman, a friend of
+Speyer's. You know I told you what a jealous fellow he is." And he
+proceeded to recount what further information he had gained.
+
+"Odd," pondered Richards, after parting from Morton, "that a
+millionnaire like him, and not at all a mean man either, should
+trouble himself so much about any picayune debt that Speyer can owe
+him. There is something in this business more than I can make out."
+
+While Richards occupied himself with these reflections, Morton
+repaired to his lodgings and made his preparations. On the next
+morning, he was in New York again.
+
+He went to the jail where Speyer was confined, and readily gained
+leave to see him. A somewhat loquacious officer, who was to conduct
+him to the prisoner's room, confirmed what Richards had told him, and
+gave him some new particulars. Speyer, he said, had never before, to
+his knowledge, come under the notice of the police. He had been living
+in good lodgings, and in a somewhat showy style. The person who had
+occasioned the quarrel was an Italian girl. "She comes every day to
+see him," said the policeman--"she's a wild one, I tell you; and he
+frets himself to death because he is shut up here, and can't be round
+to look after her."
+
+"So much the better," thought Morton, who hoped that this impatience
+would aid him in his intended negotiation.
+
+"For how long a time is he sentenced?" he asked.
+
+"For three weeks; unless he can find somebody to pay his fine for
+him."
+
+On entering the prisoner's room, Morton saw a man of about forty, well
+dressed, though in a jail, but whose sallow features, deep-set eyes,
+and square, massive lower jaw, well covered with a black beard,
+indicated a character likely to be any thing but tractable. If he had
+been either a gentleman on the one hand, or a common ruffian on the
+other, his visitor might have better known how to deal with him; but
+he had the look of one to whom, whatever he might be at heart, a
+various contact with mankind had armed with an invincible
+self-possession, and guarded at all points against surprise.
+
+Morton was a wretched diplomatist, and had sense enough to know it. He
+knew that if he tried to manoeuvre with his antagonist, the latter
+would outflank him in a moment, and he had therefore resolved on a
+sudden and direct attack. But when he saw Speyer, he could not repress
+a lingering doubt whether he were in fact the person of whom he was in
+search. His chief object was to gain from him, if possible, any
+letters of Vinal which might be in his hands. There was no direct
+evidence that he had any such letters; yet Morton thought that the
+only hope of success lay in assuming his having them as a certainty,
+and pretending a positive knowledge, where, in truth, he had no other
+ground of action than conjecture. So he smothered his doubts, and as
+soon as the policeman was gone, made a crashing onset on the enemy.
+
+"My name is Vassall Morton. I escaped four months ago from the Castle
+of Ehrenberg. I have known something of you through Mr. Vinal."
+
+If Morton were in doubt before, all his doubts were now scattered, for
+a look of irrepressible surprise passed across Speyer's features,
+mingled with as much dismay as his nature was capable of feeling. At
+the next instant, every trace of it had disappeared; and slowly
+shaking his head, to indicate unconsciousness, he looked at Morton
+inquiringly, with an eye perfectly self-possessed and impenetrable.
+His visitor, however, was not to be so deceived.
+
+"I have no enmity against you, nor any wish to injure you. On the
+contrary, I will pay your fine, and set you free, if you will have it
+so. You have letters concerning me, written to you by Vinal. Give them
+to me, and I will do as I say. No harm shall come to you, and I will
+give you money to carry you to any part of the world you wish."
+
+"What letters?" asked Speyer.
+
+"We will have no bush-beating. You wish to get out of jail, and have
+good reason for wishing to get out at once. If you will give me those
+letters, you shall be free in three hours, and safe. If you will not,
+I may give you some trouble."
+
+Speyer was silent for a moment.
+
+"I know the letters are of use to you. You can play a profitable game
+with them; but I can stop your game at any moment I please."
+
+"I can get four thousand dollars for them to-morrow," said Speyer.
+
+"Then why are you here in jail?"
+
+"Vinal offers it; here it is." And taking a note from his pocket,
+Speyer read Vinal's proposal to buy the letters.
+
+"Let me see it," said Morton, taking the note from Speyer's hand.
+"This, of itself, is evidence against him. With your leave, I will
+keep it. Now hear my offer. Give me the letters, and I will pay your
+fine. Then go with me to Boston, and I will make Vinal pay you on the
+spot every dollar that he has offered, on condition that you promise
+to leave the United States, and never return."
+
+Speyer reflected. He came to the conclusion that Morton did not mean
+to expose Vinal; but only, like himself, to extort money from him; and
+wished that he, Speyer, should leave the country in order to get rid
+of a competitor. Morton's object was quite different. He could not
+foresee to what extremities Speyer's extortion might drive its victim;
+and he aimed to check it, by no means out of any tenderness for Vinal,
+but lest his wife might suffer from its consequences.
+
+Speyer, on his part, fevered with jealousy, was chafing to be at large
+again.
+
+"When will you pay my fine?"
+
+"Now."
+
+"Then I accept your proposal."
+
+"Can I rely on your promise to leave the country, and make no further
+drafts on Vinal?"
+
+Speyer cast a glance at him, as if he had read his mind.
+
+"I will promise."
+
+"Will you swear?"
+
+Speyer readily took the oath, insisting that Morton should swear in
+turn to keep his part of the condition.
+
+"Now let me see the letters."
+
+"I must send to my lodgings for them. If you will come back in two
+hours, you shall have them."
+
+"I should have thought you would keep them by you."
+
+"No; but they are safe. Come back at twelve with the money for my
+fine, and they shall be here for you."
+
+Morton had no sooner left the room, than Speyer despatched an
+underling of the jail to buy for him a few sheets of the thin,
+half-transparent paper in common use for European correspondence. This
+being brought, he opened his trunk, and delving to the bottom, drew up
+a leather case, from which he took the letters in question. Laying the
+thin paper over them, he proceeded to trace with a pen an exact
+facsimile. He was well practised at such work, and after one or two
+failures, succeeded perfectly. Folding his counterfeits after the
+manner of the originals, he placed them in the envelopes belonging to
+the latter; and within a half hour after his task was finished, Morton
+reappeared.
+
+Speyer gave him one of the facsimiles. He read it attentively, without
+seeing the imposture. The handwriting, though disguised, was evidently
+Vinal's; but it had neither the signature of the writer, nor Morton's
+name. The place of each was supplied by a cipher.
+
+"Reference is made here to another letter. Where is it?"
+
+Speyer gave him the second counterfeit. The envelope bore a postmark
+of a few days later than the first. The note contained merely the
+names of Morton and Vinal, with ciphers affixed, referring to those in
+the first letter.
+
+"Have you no more of Vinal's papers?"
+
+Speyer shook his head. Indeed, the letters, if genuine, would have
+been amply sufficient to place their writer in Morton's power. The
+latter at once took the necessary measures to gain the prisoner's
+release. Speyer no sooner found himself at liberty than he hastened to
+search out the fair object of his anxieties, promising to meet Morton
+on the steamboat for Boston in the afternoon. His doubts were strong
+whether the other would keep faith with him; but he amply consoled
+himself with the thought that, at the worst, he still had means to
+bring Vinal to terms.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LIX.
+
+  What spectre can the charnel send
+  So dreadful as an injured friend?--_Rokeby_.
+
+
+"Strange," thought Vinal, "that I hear nothing from him."
+
+It was three days since he had written to Speyer; and his chief
+anxiety was, lest his note should have miscarried. Pain and long
+confinement had wrought heavily upon him. Every emotion, every care,
+thrilled with a morbid keenness upon his brain and nerves; but
+hitherto he had ruled his sensitive organism with an iron
+self-control, and calmed its perturbations with a fortitude which in a
+better man would have been heroic.
+
+His wife was in the room, and, as his eye rested on her, it kindled
+with a kind of troubled delight, for he loved her strongly, after his
+fashion. He had remarked of late a singular assiduity and tenderness
+in her devotion to him. Her position, in fact, was not unlike that of
+one who, broken and overborne by some irreparable sorrow, had
+renounced the world and its happiness, to embrace a new life, and
+build up for herself a new hope in the calm sanctuary of a convent. In
+the same spirit, Edith Leslie, bidding farewell to her girlish dream
+of life, its morning rose tint, and cloud draperies of gold and
+purple, gave herself to the practical duties before her, and sought,
+in their devoted fulfilment, to strengthen herself against the flood
+which for a time had overwhelmed her.
+
+Vinal, who, acute as he was, could not understand the state of mind
+from which her peculiar kindness of manner towards him rose, pleased
+himself with the idea that his rival's return was not so great a shock
+to her as he had at first feared, and that, after all, she was more
+fond of him than of Morton. This notion consoled his disturbed
+thoughts not a little. Still he was abundantly anxious and harassed.
+
+"If Morton should suspect! He has not come to see me; but that is
+natural enough, under the circumstances. And if he does suspect, he
+can have no proof. No one here suspects me. They say it was strange
+that my European correspondent should have made such a mistake; but
+that is all. No one dreams that I had a hand in it; and why should
+they? No one knew of Edith's engagement to him, except herself, her
+father, and her confidantes. I suppose she has confidantes--all girls
+have them. I wish their epitaphs were written, whoever they are. Well,
+
+  'Come what come may,
+   Time and the hour run through the roughest day.'
+
+But this is a dangerous business--a cursed business. Why does not
+Speyer write?"
+
+As his thoughts ran in this strain, he looked up, and his eye caught
+that of his wife. She was struck with his troubled expression.
+
+"You look anxious and care-worn. Are you ill?"
+
+"Come to me, Edith," said Vinal, with a faint smile.
+
+She came to the side of his chair, and he took her hand.
+
+"Edith, I am not well to-day. My head swims. This long confinement is
+eating away my life by inches."
+
+"In a week more, I trust, you will be able to move again. The country
+air will give you new life. But why do you look so troubled?"
+
+"Dreams, Edith,--bad dreams, like Hamlet's, I suppose. It is very
+strange,--I cannot imagine why it is,--but to-day I have felt
+oppressed, weighed down, shadowed as if a cloud hung over me. I am not
+myself. A man is a mere slave to his nervous system, and when that is
+overthrown, his whole soul is shaken with it. The country is my hope,
+Edith. We will go there together, soon, and begin life anew."
+
+A knock at the door interrupted him.
+
+"Come in," cried Vinal, in his usual quick, decisive tone.
+
+A servant entered.
+
+"Well, what is it?"
+
+"A gentleman wishes to see you, sir."
+
+"Did he give his name?"
+
+"Mr. Edwards, sir."
+
+"Ask him to come up."
+
+"A man whom I expected this morning on business," he said, in
+explanation to his wife, as the servant closed the door. "I wish he
+were any where but here. And so you are going away."--She was dressed
+to go out.--"He will be here only a moment; do not be gone long."
+
+"No, I will be with you again in an hour."
+
+"Do not forget," said Vinal, pressing her hand, "for when you leave
+the room, Edith, it is as if a sunbeam were shut out."
+
+As Vinal, sick in body and mind, thus leaned in his distress on the
+victim of his villany, he cast into her face a look that was almost
+piteous. She, seeing nothing but his love for her, warmed towards him
+with compassion; the more so since, till that moment, she had known
+him as a calm, firm man, a model, to her eyes, of masculine
+self-government. A mind tortured with suspense, acting upon a weak and
+morbidly sensitive body, had betrayed him into this unwonted
+imbecility.
+
+The step of the visitor sounded in the passage; and returning the
+pressure of his hand, his wife went out at the door of a small
+adjoining room, opening upon the side passage by which she commonly
+entered and left the hotel.
+
+After a few minutes' interview, Edwards took his leave, and Vinal,
+left alone, fell into his former train of thought. In a moment, he was
+again interrupted by a knock at the door, quite unlike the hasty rap
+of the hotel servant.
+
+"Come in," cried Vinal.
+
+The door opened, and Vassall Morton entered. He had learned from the
+retiring visitor that Vinal was alone.
+
+"My dear fellow!" exclaimed Vinal, his face beaming with a transport
+of welcome. "My dear fellow!"
+
+But Morton stood without taking his proffered hand. The smile remained
+frozen on Vinal's face, and cold drops of doubt and fear began to
+gather on his forehead.
+
+"There is another friend of yours in the passage," said Morton.--"Come
+in, Speyer."
+
+Speyer entered, bowing with his usual composure. Vinal sank back in
+his chair, collapsing like a man withered with a palsy stroke.
+
+"Vinal," said Morton, after a silence of some moments, "you have a
+cool way of receiving your acquaintances."
+
+He made no answer, but still sat, or rather crouched, in the depths of
+his easy chair, where the thick bounding of his heart almost choked
+him. Morton stood for some time longer, looking at him. He had not
+reached such a point of Christian forgiveness as not to find pleasure
+in his enemy's tortures, and he saw that his silence tortured him more
+than words.
+
+"Vinal," he said at length, "I used to know you in college for a liar
+and a coward; and since then you have grown well in both ways. You
+have hatched into a full-fledged villain; and now that I have found
+you out, you crouch like a whipped cur."
+
+No answer was returned, and Morton's anger began to yield to a
+different feeling. If he could have seen the condition of Vinal's mind
+and body, he might, between pity and contempt, have spared him.
+
+"I came to upbraid you with your knaveries; but I find you hardly
+worth the trouble. Do you see this letter? It is the same that you
+wrote to this man at Marseilles, instructing him to forge a story that
+I was dead, and that he had seen my gravestone, with my mother's
+family device upon it. Will you dare deny that you wrote it? You will
+not! I thought as much. I have unravelled you from first to last. Five
+years ago, you bribed Speyer, here, to compromise me with the Austrian
+police. Pretending to be my friend, you gave me letters which betrayed
+me into a prison, where you hoped that I would end my days; and, next,
+you contrived this trickery to prove me dead. Is there any name in the
+English tongue too vile to mark you?"
+
+Vinal sat as if stricken dumb.
+
+"I know your reputation," pursued Morton. "You are in high feather
+here. You pass for a man of virtue, integrity, and honor. You make
+speeches at public meetings; Fourth of July orations; Phi Beta
+orations; charity harangues--any thing that smacks of philanthropy and
+goodness; any thing that will varnish you in the public eye. Why am I
+not bound to lay bare this whitewashed lie? What withholds me from
+grinding you like a scorpion under my boot-heel, or flinging you on
+the pavement to be stared at like a scotched viper? A word from me,
+and you are ruined. You need not fear it. Stay, and enjoy your honors
+as you can; but my foot shall be on your neck. This letter of yours is
+the spell by which I will rule you, body and soul."
+
+Here he paused again; but Vinal's tongue was powerless.
+
+"I tell you again, for I would not have you desperate, that I do not
+mean to ruin you. Bear yourself wisely, and you are safe, at least
+from me. Have you lost your speech? Are you turned dumb?"
+
+Vinal muttered inarticulately.
+
+"There is another danger which I have done my best to ward off from
+you. This man, who had you at his mercy, has sworn to leave the
+country, and never to return; on which score you will please to pay
+him the money you offered him for the purchase of your letters."
+
+Vinal seemed confused and stupefied, and Morton was forced to be more
+explicit in his demands. At length, the former signed a note for the
+amount, though not without stammering objections to his name appearing
+on it in connection with Speyer's. Morton, however, turned a deaf ear
+to these remonstrances.
+
+"Here is your pay," he said to Speyer. "Any bank will discount this
+for you. Now, to what place do you mean to go?"
+
+"To Venezuela. I have a friend there in the army. He will get a
+commission for me."
+
+"Very well. See that you stay there; or, at all events, do not come
+back to the United States. If you do, you will perjure yourself. Now,
+go; I have done with you. Vinal, I will leave you to your reflections;
+and when you can sleep in peace, free from Speyer's persecutions,
+remember to whom you owe it."
+
+Vinal sat like a withered plant, his head sinking between his
+shoulders, while his hand, still unconsciously holding the pen, rested
+on the arm of his chair. There was something in his appearance at once
+so abject and so piteous, that a changed feeling came over Morton as
+he looked on him. By a sudden impulse, akin to pity, he stepped
+towards him, and took his wrist. The pen dropped from his pale
+fingers, which quivered like an aspen bough; and as Morton stood
+gazing on him, Vinal's upturned eyes met his, as if riveted there by a
+helpless fascination.
+
+"You unhappy wretch! You are burning already with the pains of the
+damned. Flint and iron could not see you without softening. I have
+saved you,--not out of mercy, nor forgiveness,--not for _your_
+sake;--but I have saved you. I have pushed away the sword that hung
+over you by a hair. You are free now to be happy."
+
+But as he spoke this last word, so fierce a pang shot into his heart,
+remembering what he had lost, and what Vinal had won, that his pity
+was scattered like mist before a thunder squall. He flung back the
+passive hand against the breast of its terrified owner, turned
+abruptly, and left the room.
+
+No sooner had the door closed behind him, than the door of the
+anteroom opposite was flung open, and Edith Leslie, rushing in, stood
+before Vinal with the wild look of one who gasps for breath. She
+attempted to speak, but broken words and inarticulate sounds were all
+her lips would utter. Strength failed her in the effort, and pressing
+her hands to her forehead, she sank fainting to the floor.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LX.
+
+               I will not go with thee;
+  I will instruct my sorrows to be proud.--_King John_.
+
+
+On the next morning, Vinal learned that his wife was ill, and confined
+to her room in her father's house. On the day following, he was told
+that she was no better; but on the third morning, a letter, in her
+handwriting, was given him. He opened it, and read as follows:--
+
+I heard all. I have learned, at last, to know you. These were your bad
+dreams! This was the cloud that overshadowed you! No wonder that your
+eye was anxious, your forehead wrinkled, and your cheek pale. To have
+led that brave and loyal heart through months and years of
+anguish!--to have buried him from the light of day!--to have buried
+him in darkness and despair, if despair could ever touch a soul like
+his! And there he would have been lost forever, if you had had your
+will,--if a higher hand had not been outstretched to save him. One
+whom you dared not meet face to face; one as far above your sphere as
+the eagle is above the serpent to which he likened you! You have
+taught me how sin can cringe and cower under the anger of a true and
+deeply outraged man. That I should have lived to hear my husband
+called a villain!--and still live to tell him that the word was just!
+My husband! You are _not_ my husband. It was not a criminal, a
+traitorous wretch, whom I pledged myself to love and honor. You have
+insnared me; you have me, for a time, safely entangled in your meshes.
+The same cause which led me to this yoke must withhold me from casting
+it off. I cannot imbitter my father's dying moments. I cannot bring
+distress and horror to his tranquil death bed. For his sake, I will
+play the hypocrite, and stoop to pass in the world's eye as your wife.
+For the few weeks he has to live, I will lodge, if I must, under your
+roof; I will sit, if I must, at your table; but when my father is
+gone, let the world impute to me what blame it will, I will leave you
+forever. You need not fear that I shall expose your crimes. If _he_
+could spare you, it does not become me to speak. Live on, and make
+what atonement you may; but meanwhile there is a gulf between us wider
+than death.
+
+                                                EDITH LESLIE.
+
+An accident, arising out of her very devotion to Vinal, had made known
+his secret to her. In the anteroom which led from the side passage of
+the hotel to his apartment, and through which, on the morning of his
+interview with Morton, she had intended to pass on her way out, was a
+table, covered with books and engravings, with which the invalid had
+been amusing his leisure. The sight of them reminded her that she had
+promised to get for him a series of German etchings, which he had
+expressed a wish to see. She seated herself, to write a request to the
+friend who had them, that he would send them to the hotel. Her hand
+was on the bell, to call the servant, when the peculiarly emphatic and
+earnest manner with which Vinal greeted some new visitor caught her
+attention. The door had sprung ajar on the lock; the speakers were
+very near it, and Morton's tone was none of the softest. She remained
+as if charmed to her seat; and every word fell on her ear as clearly
+as if she had stood in the same room.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LXI.
+
+  I hold the world but as the world, Gratiano,
+  A stage where every man must play a part,
+  And mine a sad one.--_Merchant of Venice_.
+
+  The past is past. I see the future stretch
+  All dark and barren as a rainy sea.--_Alexander Smith_.
+
+
+Morton took possession again of his house in the country, which still
+remained in the keeping of one of his humble relatives, into whose
+charge he had given it. He turned the key of his long-deserted
+library. A loving influence had presided here in his absence, and,
+even when he was given up for lost, every thing had been scrupulously
+kept as he had left it.
+
+Here he immured himself; avoided all society but that of a few
+personal friends; and by plunging into the studies which had formerly
+engrossed him, tried to escape the persecution of his own thoughts. It
+was a forced and painful task. The marks in his books, the pencil
+notes on their margins, his voluminous piles of memoranda, were all so
+many sharp memorials of the past, to remind him that he was resuming
+in darkness and despondency the work that he had left in sunshine.
+
+In process of time, however, his ancient interest in his favorite
+pursuit began to rekindle. He began to feel that the years of his
+imprisonment had not been the dead and barren blank which he had
+inclined to think them. His mind had ripened in its solitude, and the
+studies which he had before followed with the zeal of a boy, more
+eager than able to deal with the broad questions which they involved,
+he could now grasp with the matured intellect of a man.
+
+But while Morton was thus laboring on, Edith Leslie was passing
+through an ordeal incomparably more severe. Month after month dragged
+on, and her father still lingered, sinking again and again to the very
+edge of the grave, and then rallying, as if with a fresh life. Vinal,
+meanwhile, was in a good measure recovered from the effects of his
+accident. His home and hers, if it could be called a home, was now a
+house in town, which her father had fitted up for her in view of her
+marriage. She had a painful and delicate part to act--at her father's
+bedside, to appear as the happy and contented wife; at home, to endure
+the presence of the man whose treachery filled her with horror, and
+whose love for her, though she had never spoken a word of reproof, had
+changed into fear and hatred. Of his actual presence, however, she had
+to endure little; for he shunned her studiously; and her house was to
+her a solitude, where she passed hours of a suffering more intense
+than Morton had ever known in the dungeons of Ehrenberg.
+
+Meanwhile, the servants, those domestic spies, did not fail to rumor
+abroad the singular mode of life of the bride and bridegroom; that
+Vinal avoided the house; that they seldom met, even at meals; and that
+no word or look of sympathy or confidence seemed ever to pass between
+them. Such rumors found their currency among the busier gossips of the
+town; but Morton, secluded among his books, remained wholly ignorant
+of them.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LXII.
+
+  Old friends, like old swords, still are trusted best.--_Webster_.
+
+
+It was nearly a year since he had landed at New York, and Morton still
+remained a literary hermit. Society was stale and distasteful to him.
+He passed three fourths of his day in his library, and the rest on
+horseback. At length, however, it happened that a cousin of his
+mother, one of his few relatives in the city, was to give a ball on
+occasion of her daughter's _début_; and lest his refusal should be
+thought unkind, Morton promised to come. He drove to town in the
+afternoon; and walking through a somewhat obscure street, suddenly, on
+turning a corner, saw, some four or five rods before him, a
+well-remembered face. It was the face of Henry Speyer. The discovery
+was mutual. Speyer instantly turned down a by-lane. Morton quickened
+his pace, and reached the head of the lane in time to see the broad
+shoulders of the patriot in full retreat. He soon lost sight of him
+among a wilderness of back yards and squalid houses. The incident
+greatly disturbed and exasperated him. "A broken oath is nothing to
+him," he thought to himself; "he is at Vinal again, dragging at his
+veins like a vampire."
+
+The evening drew on, and he entered the ball room in a gloomy and
+dejected frame of mind. After a few words to his relatives, he took
+his stand among a group who were watching the dancers; and had
+scarcely done so, when he saw a young lady, simply, but very richly
+dressed, whose fine figure and powerfully expressive beauty arrested
+his eye at once. The indifference and listlessness with which he had
+entered vanished. He soon observed that she was not an object of
+attention to him alone; for near him stood a certain old beau, well
+known about town, and a young collegian, both following her with their
+eyes. The music ceased, and her partner led her to a seat at the
+farther side of the room. Glancing at his two neighbors, Morton saw
+that they were in the act of moving towards her; but he, being nearer,
+had the advantage. Gliding through the dissolving fragments of the
+dance, he stood by her side.
+
+"Miss Fanny Euston, I see two persons coming to ask you to dance. May
+I hope that you will reject them for an old friend's sake, and let me
+be your partner?"
+
+She raised her eyes with a perplexed look, which instantly changed to
+a bright gleam of recognition, and cordially took his proffered hand.
+
+"So," said Morton, "you have not forgotten me. And yet, as I see you,
+I hardly dare to take up again the broken thread of our old intimacy.
+I used to call you Fanny."
+
+"Call me Fanny still," she said, "if only for the memory of auld lang
+syne."
+
+"I hoped to have seen you before, but you have been away."
+
+"Yes, with my relations, and yours, at Baltimore. I have heard a great
+deal about you. Your story is the talk of the town. You might be the
+lion of the season; but I have not seen you at parties."
+
+"No, I have outlived my liking for such matters."
+
+"I cannot wonder at it. What horrors you have suffered! what dangers
+you have passed!"
+
+"I have weathered them, though."
+
+"You were more than four years in a dungeon."
+
+"Yes, but I gave them the slip."
+
+"You were led out to be shot by the soldiers."
+
+"They thought better of it, and saved their ammunition."
+
+"And yet I see," said Miss Euston, smiling, "that you still remain
+your former self. I remember telling you that, if you were sentenced
+to the rack, you would go to it with a gibe on your tongue, and speak
+of it afterwards as a pleasant diversion. But," she added, with a
+changed look, "you have not come off unscathed. Your face is darker
+and thinner than it used to be, and there are lines in it that were
+not there before."
+
+"Fortune fondled me till she grew tired of me; then turned at me,
+tooth and nail."
+
+"You banter with your lips, but your look belies your words. You have
+suffered greatly; you have suffered intensely."
+
+Morton looked grave in spite of himself.
+
+"Perhaps you are right. I have very little heart left for jesting."
+
+The eyes of his companion, as they met his, assumed a peculiar
+softness.
+
+"You must have suffered beyond all power of words to speak it. The
+world to you was fresh and full of interest. You were ambitious; full
+of ardor and energy; loving hardship for its own sake, and obstacles
+for the sake of conquering them. You were formed for action. It was
+your element--your breath; and without it you did not care to live.
+You were high in confidence, and believed that whatever you had once
+resolved on must, sooner or later, come to pass."
+
+"Why are you saying this?" demanded Morton, in great surprise.
+
+"Out of this life you were suddenly snatched and buried in a dungeon;
+shut off from all intercourse with men; your energies stifled; your
+restless mind left to prey upon itself, or sustain a weary siege
+against despair. Pain or danger you could have faced like a man; but
+this passive misery must to you have been a daily death."
+
+"Who," interrupted Morton, "taught you, a woman, to penetrate the
+nature of a man, and describe sufferings that you never felt?"
+
+"Your mind was like a spring of steel, springing up the more strongly
+the harder it was pressed down. The suffering must have been deep
+indeed from which you could not rebound. To have escaped, to have
+reached home, and to have found any thing but relief and delight----"
+
+"Home!" ejaculated Morton, bitterly, as a sharp memory of the anguish
+which had met him on the threshold came over him. "A prison may be
+borne with patience. Those are fortunate who have felt no keener
+stabs."
+
+The words, equivocal as they were, were scarcely spoken, when he had
+repented them. Fanny Euston was silent for a moment. "Can it be
+possible," she thought, "that the stories whispered about, that before
+he went away he was engaged to Edith Leslie, are something more than
+an idle rumor?"
+
+"Why do you look at me so searchingly?" thought Morton, on his part,
+as, raising his eyes, he saw those of his friend fixed on him in a
+gaze in which a woman's curiosity was mingled with a fully equal share
+of a woman's kindliness and sympathy. He hastened to escape from the
+critical ground which he had approached.
+
+"I can retort upon you," he said. "You have had your ordeal, too."
+
+"What, do you see its traces? Do you find me scorched and withered?"
+
+"I see," said Morton, "such traces as on gold that has passed through
+the furnace."
+
+"Truly, I have cause to rejoice, then; for I remember that, among
+other compliments, you once intimated your opinion that I was
+possessed with a devil."
+
+"I am afraid that I pushed to its farthest limit my privilege of
+cousinship."
+
+"And yet, when I look back to that time, I cannot help thinking that
+you had some reason for believing that an influence from the nether
+world had some share in me."
+
+"Now pardon me, if I am rude again. Looking at you, I can see the same
+devil still."
+
+"Indeed, and you will console me now, as you did then, by telling me
+that a dash of viciousness is necessary to make a character
+interesting."
+
+"I should prune and explain my speech. By a devil, I did not mean a
+malicious imp of darkness, wholly bent on evil. I meant nothing more
+than certain impulses and emotions,--passions, if I may call them
+so,--very turbulent tenants, yet of admirable use when well dealt
+with. These were the devil whom I used to see in you, and whom I see
+still."
+
+"I shall tremble at myself."
+
+"Then you are not so brave as you were when you leaped the fallen tree
+at New Baden. Your demon has ceased to have an alarming look. I think
+you have turned him to good account. Shall I illustrate from the
+legends of the saints?"
+
+"In any way you please; but I should never have expected you to resort
+to so pious a source."
+
+"St. Bernard, crossing the Alps on some holy errand, was met by Satan,
+who, being anxious to prevent his journey, broke one of his carriage
+wheels. But St. Bernard caught him, sprinkled him with holy water,
+doubled him into a wheel, and put him upon the carriage in place of
+the broken one. The legend says that he answered the purpose
+admirably, and bore the saint safely to the end of his journey."
+
+"Your legend is absurd enough; but I think I catch your meaning, and
+wish I could think you wholly in the right. It is singular that you
+and I have never met without our conversation becoming personal to
+ourselves. We are always studying each other--always trying to
+penetrate each other's thoughts."
+
+"On one side, at least, the success has been complete. As you look at
+me, I feel that you are reading me like a book, from title page to
+finis."
+
+"You greatly overrate my penetration. I am conscious, at this moment,
+of movements in your mind which I do not understand."
+
+"And would you have me confess them to you?"
+
+"You might repent it afterwards; and that would make a breach between
+us."
+
+"You are a miraculous woman, to postpone your curiosity to a scruple
+like that. No, I would not have spoken of confession, if I should ever
+repent it. Do you know, I would rather open my mind to you than to any
+one else I am now acquainted with."
+
+"But you have male friends; very old and intimate ones."
+
+"Excellent in their way; but I would as soon confess to my horse. Find
+me a woman of sense, with a brain to discern, a heart to feel, passion
+to feel vehemently, and principle to feel rightly, and I will show her
+my mind; or, if not, I will show it to no one. Now, after this
+preamble, you have a right to think that I should begin to confess
+something at once. But first, I will ask you a question."
+
+"What is it?"
+
+"Tell me what effect you think any long and severe suffering ought to
+have on a man--something, I mean, that would bring him to the brink of
+despair, and keep him there for months and years."
+
+"What kind of man do you mean?"
+
+"Suppose one given over to pleasure, ambition, or any other engrossing
+pursuit not too disinterested."
+
+"It would depend on how the suffering was taken."
+
+"Suppose him resolved to make the best of a bad bargain."
+
+"Why, the effect ought to be good, I suppose,--so the preachers say."
+
+"I do not wish to know what the preachers say. I wish your own
+opinion."
+
+"Are you quite in earnest?"
+
+"Quite."
+
+"Such suffering, rightly taken, would strip life of its disguises, and
+show it in its naked truth. It would teach the man to know himself and
+to know others. It would awaken his sympathies, enlarge his mind, and
+greatly expand his sphere of vision; teach him to hold present
+pleasure and present pain in small account, and to look beyond them
+into a future of boundless hopes and fears."
+
+"Now," said Morton, "you have betrayed yourself."
+
+"How have I betrayed myself?" asked his friend, in some discomposure.
+
+"You have shown me the secrets of your own mind. You have given me a
+glimpse of your own history, since we last met."
+
+"And so, under pretence of confessing to me, you have been plotting to
+make me confess to you!"
+
+"No, you shall hear my confession. I have it now, such as it is, at my
+tongue's end."
+
+"I have no faith in you."
+
+"Perhaps you will have still less when you have heard this great
+secret. You remember me before I went away. I was a very exemplary
+young gentleman,--quiet, orderly, well behaved,--of a studious
+turn,--soberly and virtuously given."
+
+"You give yourself an excellent character."
+
+"And what should be the results of the discipline of a dungeon on such
+a person?"
+
+"Discipline would be a superfluity, considering your perfections."
+
+"So I thought myself. Nevertheless, for four years, or so, I was shut
+up, with nothing to look at but stone walls, under circumstances most
+favorable for the culture of patience, resignation, forgiveness, and
+all the Christian virtues; and yet the devil has never been half so
+busy with me as since I came out; never whispered half so many
+villanous suggestions into my ears, nor baited me with such scandalous
+temptations."
+
+"That is very strange," said Fanny Euston, who was looking at him
+intently.
+
+"For example," pursued Morton, "a little more than a year ago, in New
+York, he said to me, 'Renounce all your old plans, and habits, and
+antiquated scruples--reclaim your natural freedom--fling yourself
+headlong into the turmoil of the world--chase whatever fate or fortune
+throws in your way--enjoy the zest of lawless pleasures--launch into
+mad adventure--embark on schemes of ambition--care nothing for the
+past or the future--think only of the present--fear neither God nor
+man, and follow your vagrant star wherever it leads you."
+
+Morton knew that, restrained and governed as it might be, there was
+quicksilver enough in his companion's veins to enable her to
+understand what he had said, and prevent her being startled at it. But
+he was by no means prepared for the close attack she proceeded to make
+on him.
+
+"Such a state of mind is foreign to your nature. You have prudence and
+forecast. You used to make plans for the future, and study the final
+results of every thing you did. There is something upon your mind. It
+is not imprisonment only that has caused that compression of your
+lips, and marked those lines on your face. You have met with some deep
+disaster, some overwhelming disappointment. Nothing else could have
+wrought such a convulsion in you."
+
+Morton was taken by surprise; and, as he struggled to frame an answer,
+his features betrayed an emotion which he could not hide. Fanny Euston
+hastened to relieve his embarrassment, and assuage, as far as she
+could, the tumult she had called up.
+
+"With whatever fate you may have had to battle, your wounds are in the
+front,--all honorable scars. Your desperation is past;--it was only
+for the hour;--and for the other extreme, it is not in you to suffer
+that."
+
+"What other extreme?"
+
+"Idle dreaming;--melancholy;--weak pining at disappointment."
+
+"No, thank God, it is not in me to lie and whine like a sick child."
+
+"You are the firmer for what you have passed. Manhood, the proudest of
+all possession to a man, is strengthened and deepened in you."
+
+"What do you call this manhood, which you seem to hold in such high
+account?"
+
+"That unflinching quality which, strong in generous thought and high
+purpose, bears onward towards its goal, knowing no fear but the fear
+of God; wise, prudent, calm, yet daring and hoping all things; not
+dismayed by reverses, nor elated by success; never bending nor
+receding; wearying out ill fortune by undespairing constancy;
+unconquered by pain or sorrow, or deferred hope; fiery in attack,
+steadfast in resistance, unshaken in the front of death; and when
+courage is vain, and hope seems folly, when crushing calamity presses
+it to the earth, and the exhausted body will no longer obey the still
+undaunted mind, then putting forth its hardest, saddest heroism, the
+unlaurelled heroism of endurance, patiently biding its time."
+
+"And how if its time never come?"
+
+"Then dying at its post, like the Roman sentinel at Pompeii."
+
+Her words struck a chord in Morton's nature, and roused his early
+enthusiasm, dormant for years.
+
+"Fanny," he said, "I thank you. You give me back my youth. An hour
+ago, the world was as dull to me as a November day; but you have
+brought June back again. You would make a coward valiant, and breathe
+life into a dead man."
+
+Miss Euston seemed, for a moment, in embarrassment what to reply;
+indeed, she showed some signs of discomposure, contrasting with her
+former frankness. They were still in the recess of the window. She was
+visible to those in the room; while he, standing opposite, was hidden
+by a curtain. At this moment, a gentleman, with a slight limp in his
+gait, approaching quickly, accosted Miss Euston, smiling with an air
+of the most earnest affability. She looked up to reply, but, as she
+did so, her eyes were arrested by a sudden change in the features of
+her companion, who was bending on the new comer a look so fierce and
+threatening, that she scarcely repressed an ejaculation of surprise.
+Mr. Horace Vinal followed the direction of her gaze, and saw himself
+face to face with the victim of his villany. He started as if he had
+found a grizzly bear behind the curtain. The smile vanished from his
+lips, the color from his cheeks, and he hastily drew back, and mingled
+with the crowd.
+
+This sudden apparition, breaking in upon the brightening mood of the
+moment, incensed Morton almost to fury; and his anger, absurdly
+enough, was a little tinged with a feeling not wholly unlike jealousy.
+He made an involuntary movement to follow his enemy, but recollecting
+himself, smoothed his brow and calmed his ruffled spirit as he best
+might.
+
+"You seem to know that man very well," he said to Miss Euston.
+
+"Yes, I know him."
+
+"He seems to think himself on excellent terms with you."
+
+"He has charge of my mother's property."
+
+"You are good at reading faces. I hope you liked the expression on
+his, as he slunk away just now."
+
+"It was fear--abject fear. Why are you so angry? Why is he so
+frightened?"
+
+"His nerves, you may have observed, are something of the weakest. He
+is my attendant genius, my familiar. A word from me, and he will run
+my errand like a spaniel."
+
+"How could you gain such power over him?" she asked, in great
+astonishment.
+
+"Magnetism, Fanny, magnetism. The effects of the mesmeric fluid are
+wonderful. See, the polking is over; they are forming a quadrille.
+Shall we take our places in the set?"
+
+During the dance, Morton looked for his enemy, but could not discover
+him till it was over, and he had led his partner to a seat.
+
+"Look," he said, "there is our friend again; in the next room, just
+beyond the folding doors, talking with Mrs. ---- and Mrs. ----. He
+seems to have got the better of the shock to his nerves; at least, he
+stands up manfully against it. Mr. Horace Vinal has a stout heart, and
+needs nothing but valor, and one other quality, to make a hero. But
+his face is flushed. I fear he suffers in his health. See, he makes
+himself very agreeable. Vinal was always famous for his wit. Pardon me
+a moment; I have a word for my friend's ear."
+
+Fanny Euston looked at him doubtingly.
+
+"Pray, don't be discomposed. There's no gunpowder impending. Vinal is
+not a fighting man; nor am I. What I have to say is altogether
+pacific, loving, and scriptural."
+
+And passing into the adjoining room, he approached Vinal, who no
+sooner saw the movement, than he showed a manifest uneasiness. His
+forced animation ceased, his manner became constrained, and while
+Morton stood near, waiting an opportunity to speak to him, he withdrew
+to another part of the room. Morton followed, and pronounced his name.
+Vinal, with pretended unconsciousness, mingled with the crowd. Morton
+again tried to accost him, and again Vinal moved away. Impatient and
+exasperated, Morton stepped behind him, touched his shoulder, and
+whispered in his ear,--
+
+"You fool, do you know your danger? Speyer is looking for you. I saw
+him this afternoon. He looks as if he needed your charity. You had
+better be generous with him. He is a tiger, and will be upon you
+before you know it."
+
+Anger and terror, of which the latter vastly predominated, gave a
+ghastly look to Vinal's face, as he turned it towards Morton. But he
+drew back without a word, and soon left the room.
+
+"Where is Mr. Vinal?" asked the wondering Fanny Euston, as her
+companion returned to her side. The momentary interview had been
+invisible from where she sat.
+
+"Obeyed the magic word, and vanished. Never doubt again the power of
+magnetism. Now you may see that the claptrap of the charlatans about
+the mutual influence of congenial spheres is not quite such trash as
+one might think. Vinal and I, being congenial spheres, put each other,
+the one into a passion, the other into a fright. But I have a request
+to you. Whoever knows you, knows, in spite of the libellers, a woman
+who can keep counsel; and as I am modest in respect to my magnetic
+gifts, I shall beg it of you, that you will not mention these
+experiments to any one. Good evening. I have revived to-night an old
+and valued friendship. If I can help it, it shall not die again."
+
+He took leave of his hostess, wrapped his cloak about him, and walked
+out into the drizzling night.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LXIII.
+
+             Nought's had, all's spent,
+  Where our desire is got without content.
+  'Tis safer to be that which we destroy,
+  Than by destruction dwell in doubtful joy.--_Macbeth_.
+
+
+Morton walked the street, on the next day, in a mood less grave than
+had lately been his wont, but in one of any thing but self-approval.
+
+"It is singular," he thought, "I could never meet her without
+forgetting myself,--without being betrayed into some absurdity or
+other. I thought by this time that I had grown wiser, or, at least,
+was well fenced against that kind of risk. But it is the same now as
+ever. I was a fool at New Baden, and I was a fool again last night,
+though after a different fashion. After all, when a fresh breeze
+comes, why should I not breathe it? when a ray of sun comes, why
+should I not bask in it? But what impelled me to insult that wretch,
+who I knew dared not and could not answer me?"
+
+He pondered for a moment, then turned and walked slowly towards
+Vinal's place of business.
+
+"Is Mr. Vinal here?" he asked of one of the clerks.
+
+"Yes, sir, he is in that inner room."
+
+"Is any one with him?"
+
+"No, sir." And Morton opened the door and entered.
+
+Vinal sat before a table, on which letters and papers were lying; but
+he was leaning backward in his chair, with a painfully knit brow, and
+a face of ghastly paleness. It flushed of a sudden as Morton appeared,
+and his whole look and mien showed an irrepressible agitation.
+
+Morton closed the door. "Vinal," he said, "you need not fear that I
+have come with any hostile purpose. On the contrary, I will serve you,
+if I can. Last night I used words to you which I have since regretted.
+I beg you to accept my apology."
+
+Vinal made no reply.
+
+"I saw Speyer in the street last evening, and tried to speak with him,
+but could not stop him. He can hardly have any other purpose in
+breaking his oath and coming here again, than to get more money from
+you. Has he been to you?"
+
+Still Vinal was silent.
+
+"I think," continued Morton, "that you cannot fail to see my motive. I
+wish to keep him from you, not on your account, but on your wife's. If
+you let him, he will torment you to your death. Have you seen him
+since last evening?"
+
+Vinal inclined his head.
+
+"Where is he now?"
+
+"I don't know."
+
+"Has he left the city?"
+
+"I don't know. I suppose so."
+
+"And you gave him money?"
+
+Vinal was silent again. Morton took his silence for assent.
+
+"When he comes again, tell me of it, and let me speak to him. Possibly
+I may find means to rid you of him. Meantime remember this. He has
+given your letter up to me. He has no proofs to show against you,
+unless he has other letters of yours;--is that the case?"
+
+Vinal shook his head.
+
+"Then, if he proclaims you, his word will not be taken, unless I
+sustain it; and I shall keep silent unless you give me some new cause
+to speak. I do not see that he can harm you much without my help; so
+give him no more money, and set him at defiance."
+
+Morton left the room; but his words had brought no relief to the
+wretched Vinal. Speyer had shown him his letter, and told him the
+artifice by which he had kept it, and palmed off a counterfeit on
+Morton. He felt himself at the mercy of a miscreant as rapacious,
+fierce, and pitiless, as a wolverene dropping on its prey.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LXIV.
+
+            Ah, would my friendship with thee
+  Might drown the memory of all patterns past!--_Suckling_.
+
+
+Some few days after, riding, as usual, in the afternoon, Morton saw on
+the road before him a lady on horseback, riding in the same direction.
+At a glance, he recognized the air and figure of Fanny Euston. This
+remnant, at least, of her former spirit remained to her,--she did not
+hesitate to ride unattended. Morton checked his horse, reflected for a
+little, then touched him with the spur, and in a moment was at her
+side. After they had conversed for a while, she said,--
+
+"I have heard a great deal of your imprisonment from others, but
+nothing from yourself. Will you not let me hear your story from your
+own lips?"
+
+"It was a long and dull history to live through, and will be a short
+and dull one to tell."
+
+"I have never been able to hear clearly why you were arrested at all."
+
+"It was a simple matter. The Austrian government is like a tyrant and
+a coward, frightened at shadows. I had one or two acquaintances at
+Vienna who had been implicated, though I did not know it, in plots
+against the government. I, being an American, was imagined to be, as a
+matter of course, a democrat, and in league with them. It needed very
+little more; and they shut me up, as they have done many an innocent
+man before me."
+
+"Looking back at your imprisonment, it must seem to you a broad, dark
+chasm in your life."
+
+"Broad and black enough; but not quite so void as I once thought."
+
+"No; in struggling through it, I can see that you have not come out
+empty handed."
+
+"Not I; I should be glad to rid myself of the larger part of the load.
+One is sometimes punished with the fulfilment of his own whims. I
+remember wishing--and that not so many years back--that I might sound
+all the strings of human joys and sufferings,--try life in all its
+phases,--in peace and war, a dungeon, if I remember right, inclusive.
+I have had my fill of it, and do not care to repeat the experiment."
+
+"Some of the damp and darkness of your dungeon still clings about you,
+and out of the midst of it, you look back over the gulf to a shore of
+light and sunshine, where you were once standing."
+
+"You read me like a sibyl, as you always do. None but a child or a
+fool will seriously regret any shape of experience out of which he has
+come with mind and senses still sound, though it may have changed the
+prismatic colors of life into a neutral tint, a universal gray, a
+Scotch mist, with light enough to delve by, and nothing more."
+
+"One's life is a series of compromises, at best. One must capitulate
+with Fate, gain from her as much good as may be, and as little evil."
+
+"And then set his teeth and endure. As for myself, though, if gifts
+were portioned out among mankind in equal allotments, I should count
+myself, even now, as having more than my share."
+
+"That idea of equalized happiness is a great fallacy."
+
+"Every idea of mortal equality is a great fallacy; and all the systems
+built on it are built on a quicksand. There is no equality in nature.
+There are mountains and valleys, deserts and meadows, the fertile and
+the barren. There is no equality in human minds or human character.
+Who shall measure the distance from the noblest to the meanest of men,
+or the yet vaster distance from the noblest to the meanest of women?
+The differences among mankind are broader than any but the greatest of
+men can grasp. With pains enough, one may comprehend, in a measure,
+the minds on a level with his own or below it; but, above, he sees
+nothing clearly. To follow the movements of a great man's mind, he
+must raise himself almost to an equal greatness."
+
+"A hopeless attempt with most. Every one has a limit."
+
+"But men make more limits for themselves than Nature makes for them."
+
+"You seem to me a person with a singular capacity of growth. You push
+forth fibres into every soil, and draw nutriment from sources most
+foreign to you."
+
+"An indifferent stock needs all the aliment it can find. I am
+fortunate in my planting. Companionship is that which shapes us; and I
+have found men, and what is more to the purpose, women, who have met
+my best requirement. One's friends have all their special influence
+with which they affect him. Yours, to me, was always a rousing and
+wakening influence, an electric life. You have shot a ray of sun down
+into my shadow, and I am bound at least to thank you for it."
+
+"I hope, for old friendship's sake, that your shadow may soon cease to
+need such farthing-candle illumination.--Here is my mother's house.
+She will be glad to see you."
+
+"I thank you: I will come soon, but not to-day."
+
+And, taking leave of his companion, he turned his horse homeward.
+
+"A vain attempt! I thought a light might kindle again; but it is all
+dust and ashes, with only a sparkle or two. No more flame; the fuel is
+burnt out. Shall I go on? Shall I offer what is left of my heart? A
+poor tribute for her. She should command a better; and there is
+something in her manner, warm and cordial as she is, that tells me
+that I should offer it in vain."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LXV.
+
+           Art thou so blind
+  To fling away the gem whose untold worth,
+  Hid 'neath the roughness of its native mine,
+  Tempts not the eye? Touched by the artist's wheel,
+  The hardest stone flashes the diamond's light.--_Anon_.
+
+
+A few days later, Morton was seated with his friend Meredith.
+
+"Ned, this is a slow life. Do you know, I have made up my mind to
+change it."
+
+"You have been so busy this year past, that I thought you would be
+content to stay where you are."
+
+"On the contrary, my vocation takes me abroad."
+
+"Where will you go?"
+
+"To Egypt, Arabia, India, the East Indies, the South Sea Islands."
+
+"All in the cause of science?"
+
+"At any rate, the thing is necessary to my plans."
+
+"The old Adam sticks to you still. Are you sure that no Pequot blood
+ever got into your veins?"
+
+"I don't know as to that. My ancestors were Puritans to the backbone,
+witch-burners, Quaker-killers, and Indian-haters. I only know that
+when I am bored, my first instinct is to cut loose, and take to the
+woods. It comes over me like an ague-fit. There are two places where a
+man finds sea room enough; one is a great metropolis, the other is a
+wilderness. There is no freedom in a place like this. One can only be
+independent here by living out of the world as I have been doing."
+
+"Here in America, we have political freedom _ad nauseam_; and we pay
+for it with a loss of social freedom."
+
+"You remember an agreement of ours, years ago, that you and I should
+travel together. Now, will you stand to it, and go with me?"
+
+"Other considerations apart, I should like nothing better; but, as
+matters stand with me now, it's quite out of the question."
+
+Morton was silent for a moment. "Ned," he said, at length, "I heard a
+rumor yesterday. It is no part of mine to obtrude myself into your
+private affairs, and I should not speak if I had not a reason, the
+better half of which is, that I think I can serve you. I heard that
+you were paying your addresses to Miss Euston."
+
+"One cannot look twice at a lady without having it noted down in black
+and white, and turned into tea-table talk."
+
+"I met Miss Euston a few evenings ago. I used to know her before I
+went to Europe, but had not seen her since. If what I heard is true, I
+think you have shown something more than good taste."
+
+"You remember her," said Meredith, after a pause, "as she was the
+summer when you and I went to New Baden."
+
+"Yes, I knew her then very well."
+
+"I liked her better at that time than you ever supposed. She was very
+young; just out of school, in fact. She had lived all her life in the
+suburbs, and had grown up like an unpruned rose bush,--a fine stock in
+a strong soil, but throwing out its shoots quite wildly and at
+random."
+
+"I know it; but all that is changed, I can't conceive how."
+
+"I can tell you. The one person whom she loved and stood in awe of was
+her father. He was a man, and a strong one. He died suddenly about the
+time you went away. It was the first blow she had ever felt; and his
+death was only the beginning of greater troubles. You remember her
+brother Henry."
+
+"I remember him when he was at school--a good-natured, high-spirited
+little fellow, whom every body liked."
+
+"With wild blood enough for a regiment, and as careless, thoughtless,
+and easy-tempered as a child, such as he was, in fact. His father,
+being out of the country on his affairs, sent him to New York, where
+he fell in with a bad set, and grew very dissipated. Then, to get him
+out of harm's way, they shipped him off to Canton, where he soon began
+to ruin himself, hand over hand. At last, a few months after his
+father's death, his mother and sister heard that he was on his way
+home, with his health completely broken. The next news was, that he
+was at Alexandria, dangerously ill of a slow fever. His mother, who,
+with all respect, is the weakest of mortals, broke down at once into a
+state of helplessness, and could do nothing but weep and lament. The
+whole burden fell upon his sister. She went with her mother and a man
+servant to Alexandria, and took charge of her brother, whose fever
+left him in such an exhausted state that he fell into a decline. She
+brought him as far as Naples, but he could go no farther; and here she
+attended him for five months, till he died; her mother sinking,
+meanwhile, into a kind of moping imbecility. By that time, her uncle
+had found grace to come and join them. Then her turn came; her
+strength failed her, and she fell violently ill. For a week, her life
+was despaired of; but she rallied, against all hope. I was in Naples
+soon after, and used to meet her every morning, as she drove in an
+open carriage to Baiæ. I never saw such a transformation. She was pale
+as death, but very beautiful; and her whole expression was changed.
+She had always been very fond of her brother. There were some points
+of likeness between them. He had her wildness, and her kindliness of
+disposition, but none of her vigorous good sense, and was altogether
+inferior to her in intellect. Now you can have some idea why you find
+her so different from what you once knew her to be."
+
+"I knew," said Morton, "that she had passed through the fire in some
+way; but how I could not tell. I think, now, still better of your
+judgment, Ned."
+
+"Then you see why I will not go with you. I must bring this matter to
+an issue. For good or evil, I must know how it goes with me. It is not
+a new thing. It is of longer date than you imagined, or she either.
+What the end of it may be, Heaven only knows; but one thing is
+certain,--you will not see me in the South Seas before this point is
+cleared."
+
+"Then I shall never see you there."
+
+"Why do you say that?"
+
+"Your travelling days are over. At least I think so."
+
+"Do you mean----?"
+
+"That you are playing at a game where I think you will win."
+
+"What reason have you to think so?" demanded Meredith, nervously.
+
+"Take the opinion, and let the reason go. On such an argument a good
+reason will sometimes dwindle into nothing when one tries to explain
+it."
+
+His hand was on the door as he spoke, and bidding his friend good
+morning, he left him to his meditations.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LXVI.
+
+  Why waste thy joyous hours in needless pain,
+  Seeking for danger and adventure vain?--_Fairy Queen_.
+
+
+Morton mounted his horse, and rode to the house of Mrs. Euston. He
+found her daughter alone.
+
+"I have come to take leave of you. I am on my travels again."
+
+"Again! You are always on the wing. I supposed that you must have
+learned, by this time, to value home, or, at least, be reconciled to
+staying there in peace."
+
+"My home is a little lonely, and none of the liveliest. Movement is my
+best repose."
+
+"You are wholly made up of restlessness."
+
+"That is Nature's failing, not mine; or if Nature declines to bear the
+burden of my shortcomings, I will put them upon Destiny, and with much
+better cause. But this is not restlessness; or, if it is, it has
+method in it. This journey is a plan of eight years' standing. I
+concocted it when I was a junior, half fledged, at college, and never
+lost sight of it but once, and then for a cause that does not exist
+now."
+
+"Where are you going?"
+
+Morton gave the outline of his journey.
+
+"But is not that very difficult and dangerous?"
+
+"Not very."
+
+"You will not be alone, surely."
+
+"I provided for a companion years ago. My friend Meredith and I struck
+an agreement, that when I went on this journey he should go with me."
+
+An instant shadow passed across the face of Fanny Euston.
+
+"So you will have a companion," she replied, with a nonchalance too
+distinct to be genuine.
+
+"Not at all. He breaks his word. He won't hear of going."
+
+The cloud vanished.
+
+"I take it ill of him; for I had relied on having him with me. He and
+I are old fellow-travellers. I have tried him in sunshine and rain,
+and know his metal." And he launched into an emphatic eulogy of his
+friend, to which Fanny Euston listened with a pleasure which she could
+not wholly hide.
+
+"He best knows why he fails me. It is some cogent and prevailing
+reason; no light cause, or sudden fancy. Some powerful motive, mining
+deep and moving strongly, has shaken him from his purpose; so I
+forgive him for his falling off."
+
+As Morton spoke, he was studying his companion's features, and she,
+conscious of his scrutiny, visibly changed color.
+
+"Dear cousin," he said, with a changed tone, "if I must lose my
+friend, let me find, when I return, that my loss has been overbalanced
+by his gain. I will reconcile myself to it, if it may help to win for
+him the bounty that he aspires to."
+
+The blush deepened to crimson on Fanny Euston's cheek; and without
+waiting for more words, Morton bade her farewell.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LXVII.
+
+  Mais ai-je sur son ame encor quelque pouvoir,
+  Quelque reste d'amour s'y fait il encor voir.--_Polyeucte_.
+
+
+With a slow step and a sinking heart, Morton entered Mrs. Ashland's
+drawing room. He told her of his proposed journey; told her that he
+should leave the country within a few days, to be absent for a year or
+two at least, and asked her mediation to gain for him a parting
+interview with Edith Leslie.
+
+Mrs. Ashland, and she only, knew the whole misery of her friend's
+position, and feared lest, exhausted as she was by mental pain and
+long watching, and divided between her unextinguished love for Morton,
+and her abhorrence of the criminal who by name and the letter of the
+law was her husband, the meeting might put her self-mastery to too
+painful a proof. She therefore, though with a very evident reluctance,
+dissuaded Morton from it.
+
+"Edith has been taxed already to the farthest limit of her strength.
+She is not ill, but quite worn and spent. She is almost constantly
+with her father, who, now, can hardly be said to live, and needs
+constant care. To see you at this time would agitate her too much."
+
+"Can the sight of me still have so much power to move her?"
+
+"You know what she is. A feeling once rooted in her mind does not
+loosen its hold. There are very few who comprehend her. Her character
+is so balanced and so harmonious, so quiet and noiseless in its
+movement, that no one suspects the force, and faith, and energy that
+are in it. It is not in words or in looks that she shows herself. It
+is in action, in emergencies, that she declares her power over herself
+and over others."
+
+Morton's passion glowed upon him with all its early fervor.
+
+"I will tell her what you wish. But her cup is full already, and you
+can hardly be willing to shake it to overflowing. It is impossible
+that her father should linger many days more; and when that is over,
+it will bring her a relief, though she may not think it so, in more
+ways than one."
+
+Morton assented to his friend's reasons, and leaving his farewell for
+Edith Leslie, mournfully took his leave.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LXVIII.
+
+          Grief and patience, rooted in her both,
+  Mingle their spurs together.--_Cymbeline_.
+
+
+Leslie was dead; beyond the reach of wounds and sorrow; and the only
+tie which held his daughter to Vinal was at last broken. She left him,
+as she had promised, and made her abode with Mrs. Ashland, in her
+cottage by the sea shore.
+
+She sat alone at an open window, looking out upon the sea, an
+illimitable dreariness, waveless and dull as tarnished lead; clouded
+with sullen mists, but still rocking in long, dead swells with the
+motion of a past storm.
+
+Her thoughts followed on the track of the absent Morton.
+
+"It is best for you to have gone; to have made for yourself a relief
+in your man's element of action and struggle. Such a change is
+happiness, after the misery you have known. It was a bitter schooling;
+a long siege, and a dreary one; but you have triumphed, and you wear
+its trophy,--the heroic calm, the mind tranquil with consciousness of
+power. You have wrung a proud tribute out of sorrow; but has it
+yielded you all its treasure? Could you but have rested less loftily
+on your own firm resolve and unbending pride of manhood! Could you but
+have learned that gentler, deeper, higher philosophy which builds for
+itself a temple out of ruin, and makes weakness invincible with
+binding its tendrils to the rock!
+
+"Your fate and mine have not been a bed of roses; but the fierceness
+of yours is past, and I must still wait the issues of mine. I have
+renounced this fraud and mockery of empty words which was to have
+bound me to a life-long horror. The world will think very strangely of
+me. That must be borne, too; and such a load is light, to the burden I
+have borne already."
+
+A few days later, tidings came that Vinal was ill. Edith Leslie
+rejoined him; but, finding that her presence was any thing but
+soothing to him, she left him in the care of others, and returned to
+her friend's house. It was but a sudden and short attack, from which
+he recovered in a week or two.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LXIX.
+
+_Fal._--Reason, you rogue, reason; thinkest thou I'll endanger my soul
+gratis?--_Merry Wives of Windsor_.
+
+_Pistol._--Base is the slave that pays.--_Henry V_.
+
+
+Time had been when, his youth considered, Vinal was a beaming star in
+the commercial heaven. On 'change,
+
+      "His name was great,
+  In mouths of wisest censure."
+
+The astutest broker pronounced him good; the sagest money lender took
+his paper without a question. But of late, his signature had lost a
+little of its efficacy. It was whispered that he was not as sound as
+his repute gave out; that his operations were no longer marked by his
+former clear-headed forecast; that he was deep in doubtful and
+dangerous speculation. In short, his credit stood by no means where it
+had stood a twelvemonth earlier.
+
+Possibly these rumors took their first impulse, not on 'change, but at
+tea tables, and in drawing rooms. His wife's separation from him had
+given ample food to speculation; and gossip had for once been just,
+asserting, with few dissenting voices, that there must needs be some
+fault, and a grave one, on the part of Vinal. The event had ceased to
+be a very recent one; but surmise was still rife concerning its
+mysterious cause.
+
+Meanwhile, Vinal was being goaded into recklessness, frightened out of
+his propriety, haunted, devil-driven, maddened into desperate courses.
+Late one night, he was pacing his library, with a quick, disordered
+step. His servants were in their beds, excepting a man, nodding his
+drowsy vigil over the kitchen fire. Vinal's affairs were fast drawing
+to a crisis. A few weeks must determine the success or failure of a
+broad scheme of fraud, on which he had staked his fortunes and
+himself, and whose issues would sink him to disgrace and ruin, or lift
+him for a time to the pinnacle of a knave's prosperity. But,
+meanwhile, how to keep his head above water! Claims thickened upon
+him; he was meshed in a network of perplexities; and, with him,
+bankruptcy would involve far more than a loss of fortune.
+
+There was a ring at the door bell. Vinal stopped short in his feverish
+walk, raised his head with a startled motion, and listened like a fox
+who hears the hounds. His instinct foreboded the worst. His cheek
+flushed, and his eye brightened, not with spirit, but with
+desperation.
+
+The bell rang again. This time, the sleepy servant roused himself.
+Vinal heard his step along the hall; heard the opening of the street
+door, and a man's voice pronouncing his name. The moment after, his
+evil spirit stood before him, in the shape of Henry Speyer.
+
+Vinal gave him no time to speak, but shutting the door in the
+servant's face, turned upon his visitor with such courage as a cat
+will show when a bulldog has driven her into a corner.
+
+"Again! Are you here again? It is hardly a month since you were here
+last. What have you done with what I gave you then? Do you think I am
+made of gold? Do you take me for a bank that you can draw on at will?"
+
+"I am sorry to trouble you so soon, but I am very hard pressed."
+
+"Hard pressed! So am I hard pressed. Here for a year and more I have
+been supporting you in your extravagance--you and your mistresses; you
+have been living on me like princes,--dress, drinking, feasting,
+horses, gambling!--among you, you make my money spin away like water.
+Every well has a bottom to it, and you have got to the bottom of
+mine."
+
+Speyer laughed with savage incredulity.
+
+"Any thing in reason I am ready to do for you; but it's of no use.
+More! more! is always the word. You think you have found a gold mine.
+You mistake. Here I have a note due to-morrow; and another on
+Monday--that was for money I borrowed to give you. Heaven knows how I
+shall pay them. Go back, and come again a month from this."
+
+"It won't do. I must have it now."
+
+"I tell you, I have none to give you."
+
+"Do you see this?" said Speyer, producing a roll of printed papers,
+and giving one to Vinal.
+
+It was Vinal's letter, in the form of a placard, with a statement of
+the whole affair prefixed. Speyer had had it printed secretly in New
+York, the names of Morton and Vinal being left blank, and ingeniously
+filled in by himself with a pen.
+
+"Give me the money, or show me how to get it, or I will have you
+posted up at every street corner in town. I have your letter here. I
+shall send it to your friend, the editor of the Sink."
+
+The Sink was a scurrilous newspaper, which the virtuous Vinal, always
+anxious for the morals of the city, had once caused to be prosecuted
+as a nuisance, for which the editor bore him a special grudge.
+
+But Vinal at last was brought to bay. Threats, which Speyer thought
+irresistible, had lost their power. He threw back the paper, and said
+desperately, "Do what you will."
+
+Speyer made a step forward, and faced his prey.
+
+"Will you give me the money?"
+
+"By G--, no!"
+
+"By G--, you shall!"
+
+And Speyer seized him by the breast of his waistcoat.
+
+Vinal had been trained in the habits of a gentleman. He had never
+known personal outrage before. He grew purple with rage. The veins of
+his forehead swelled like whipcord, and his eyes glittered like a
+rattlesnake's.
+
+"Take off your hand!"
+
+The words were less articulated than hissed between his teeth.
+
+"Take off your hand."
+
+Speyer clutched him with a harder gripe, and shook him to and fro.
+Quick as lightning, Vinal struck him in the face. Speyer glared and
+grinned on his victim like an enraged tiger. For a moment, he shook
+him as a terrier shakes a rat; then flung him backward against the
+farther side of the room. Here, striking the wall, he fell helpless,
+among the window curtains and overturned chairs. Speyer would probably
+have followed up his attack; but at the instant, the servant, who, by
+a happy accident, was at the side door, in the near neighborhood of
+the keyhole, ran in in time to save Vinal from more serious
+discomfiture.
+
+Speyer hesitated; turned from one to the other with murder in his
+look; then, slowly moving backwards, left the room, whence the
+servant's valor did not mount to the point of following him.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LXX.
+
+  He is composed and framed of treachery,
+  And fled he is upon this villany.--_Much Ado about Nothing_.
+
+
+Edward Meredith, the affianced bridegroom of Miss Fanny Euston,
+sailing on a smooth sea, under full canvas, towards the pleasing but
+perilous bounds of matrimony, was walking in the morning towards the
+post office, in the frame of mind proper to his condition. He passed
+that place of unrest where the Law hangs her blazons from every
+window, and approached the heart and brain of the city, the precinct
+sacred to commerce and finance. Here, gathered about a corner, he saw
+a crowd, elbowing each other with unusual vehemence. Meredith, with
+all despatch, crossed over to the opposite side. But here, again, his
+attention was caught by a singular clamor among the rabble of
+newsboys, as noisy and intrusive as a flight of dorr-bugs on a June
+evening. And, not far off, another crowd was gathered at the office of
+the Weekly Sink. Curiosity became too strong for his native antipathy.
+He saw an acquaintance, with a crushed hat, and a face of bewildered
+amazement, just struggling out of the press.
+
+"What's the row?" demanded Meredith.
+
+"Go and read that paper," returned the other, with an astonished
+ejaculation, of more emphasis than unction.
+
+Meredith shouldered into the crowd, looked over the hats of some,
+between the hats of others, and saw, pasted to the stone door post, a
+placard large as the handbill of a theatre. Over it was displayed a
+sheet of paper, on which was daubed, in ink, the words, _Astounding
+Disclosures!!! Crime in High Life!!!!_ And on the placard he beheld
+the names of his classmate Horace Vinal, and his friend Vassall
+Morton.
+
+Meredith pushed and shouldered with the boldest, gained a favorable
+position, braced himself there, and ran his eye through the whole.
+Then, with a convulsive effort, he regained his liberty, beckoned a
+newsboy, and purchased the extra sheet of the Weekly Sink. Here,
+however, he learned very little. The editor, taught wisdom by
+experience, had tempered malice with caution. He spoke of the duty he
+owed to the public, his position as guardian and censor of the public
+morals, and affirmed that, in this capacity, he had that morning
+received through the post office the original of the letter of which a
+copy was printed on the placards posted in various parts of the city.
+With the letter had come also an anonymous note, highly complimentary
+to himself in his official capacity, a copy of which he subjoined. As
+for the letter, he did not think himself called upon to give it
+immediate publicity in his columns; but he would submit it for
+inspection to any persons anxious to see it, after which he should
+place it in the hands of the police.
+
+Though the editor of the Sink was thus discreet, the letter, in the
+course of the day, found its way into several of the penny papers, to
+which copies of the placard containing it had been mailed. From the
+dram shop to the drawing room, the commotion was unspeakable. The mass
+of readers floundered in a sea of crude conjecture; but those who knew
+the parties, recalling a faint and exploded rumor of Morton's
+engagement to Miss Leslie, and connecting it with her separation from
+Vinal, gained a glimpse of something like the truth.
+
+The only new light thrown upon the matter came from the servant, who
+told all that he knew, and much more, of the nocturnal scene between
+Speyer and Vinal, affirming, with much complacency, that he had saved
+his master's life. Miss Leslie and Mrs. Ashland studiously kept
+silent. Morton was at the antipodes; while the unknown divulger of the
+mystery eluded all attempts to trace him. Speyer, in fact, having
+sprung his mine, had fled from his danger and his debts, and taking
+passage for New Orleans, sailed thence to Vera Cruz.
+
+Meredith, perplexed and astounded, wrote a letter to Morton, directing
+it to Calcutta, whither the latter was to repair, after voyaging among
+the East India Islands.
+
+Meanwhile, great search was made for Vinal; but Vinal was nowhere to
+be found.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LXXI.
+
+Now would I give a thousand furlongs of sea for an acre of barren
+ground.--_Tempest_.
+
+                    Let the great gods,
+  That keep this dreadful pother o'er our heads,
+  Find out their enemies now. Tremble, thou wretch,
+  That hast within thee undivulged crimes
+  Unwhipped of justice! Hide, thou bloody hand;
+  Thou perjured and thou simular man of virtue,
+  That art incestuous! Caitiff, to pieces shake,
+  That under covert and convenient seeming,
+  Hast practised on man's life!--_Lear_.
+
+
+At one o'clock at night, in the midst of the Atlantic, a hundred
+leagues west of the Azores, the bark Swallow, freighted with salt cod
+for the Levant, was scudding furiously, under a close-reefed foresail,
+before a fierce gale. On board were her captain, two mates, seven men,
+a black steward, a cabin boy, and Mr. John White, a passenger.
+
+The captain and his mates were all on deck. John White, otherwise
+Horace Vinal, occupied a kind of store room, opening out of the cabin.
+Here a temporary berth had been nailed up for him, while on the
+opposite side were stowed a trunk belonging to him, and three barrels
+of onions belonging to the vessel's owners, all well lashed in their
+places.
+
+The dead lights were in, but the seas, striking like mallets against
+the stern, pierced in fine mist through invisible crevices,
+bedrizzling every thing with salt dew. The lantern, hanging from the
+cabin roof, swung angrily with the reckless plungings of the vessel.
+
+Vinal was a good sailor; that is to say, he was not very liable to
+that ocean scourge, seasickness, and the few qualms he had suffered
+were by this time effectually frightened out of him. As darkness
+closed, he had lain down in his clothes; and flung from side to side
+till his bones ached with the incessant rolling of the bark, he
+listened sleeplessly to the hideous booming of the storm. Suddenly
+there came a roar so appalling, that he leaped out of his berth with
+terror. It seemed to him as if a Niagara had broken above the vessel,
+and was crushing her down to the nethermost abyss. The rush of waters
+died away. Then came the bellow of the speaking trumpet, the trampling
+of feet, the shouts of men, the hoarse fluttering of canvas. In a few
+moments he felt a change in the vessel's motion. She no longer rocked
+with a constant reel from side to side, but seemed flung about at
+random, hither and thither, at the mercy of the storm.
+
+She had been, in fact, within a hair's breadth of foundering. A huge
+wave, chasing on her wake, swelling huger and huger, towering higher
+and higher, had curled, at last, its black crest above her stern, and,
+breaking, fallen on her in a deluge. The captain, a Barnstable man of
+the go-ahead stamp, was brought at last to furl his foresail and lie
+to.
+
+Vinal, restless with his fear, climbed the narrow stairway which led
+up to the deck, and pushed open the door at the top; but a blast of
+wind and salt spray clapped it in his face, and would have knocked him
+to the foot of the steps, if he had not clung to the handrail. He
+groped his way as he could back to his berth. Here he lay for a
+quarter of an hour, when the captain came down, enveloped in
+oilcloths, and dripping like a Newfoundland dog just out of the water.
+Vinal emerged from his den, and presenting himself with his haggard
+face, and hair bristling in disorder, questioned the bedrenched
+commander touching the state of things on deck. But the latter was in
+a crusty and savage mood.
+
+"Hey! what is it?"--surveying the apparition by the light of the
+swinging lantern,--"well, you _be_ a beauty, I'll be damned if you
+ain't."
+
+"I did not ask you how I looked; I asked you about the weather."
+
+"Well, it ain't the sweetest night I ever see; but I guess you won't
+drown this time."
+
+"My friend," said Vinal, "learn to mend your way of speaking, and use
+a civil tongue."
+
+The captain stared at him, muttered an oath or two, and then turned
+away.
+
+Day broke, and Vinal went on deck. It was a wild dawning. The storm
+was at its height. One rag of a topsail was set to steady the vessel;
+all the rest was bare poles and black dripping cordage, through which
+the gale yelled like a forest in a tornado. The sky was dull gray; the
+ocean was dull gray. There was no horizon. The vessel struggled among
+tossing mountains, while tons of water washed her decks, and the men,
+half drowned, clung to the rigging. Vast misshapen ridges of water
+bore down from the windward, breaking into foam along their crests,
+struck the vessel with a sullen shock, burst over her bulwarks,
+deluged her from stem to stern, heaved her aloft as they rolled on,
+and then left her to sink again into the deep trough of the sea.
+
+Vinal was in great fear; but nothing in his look betrayed it. He soon
+went below to escape the drenching seas; but towards noon, Hansen, the
+second mate, a good-natured old sea dog, came down with the welcome
+news that the gale had suddenly abated. Vinal went on deck again, and
+saw a singular spectacle. The wind had strangely lulled; but the waves
+were huge and furious as ever; and the bark rose and pitched, and was
+flung to and fro with great violence, but in a silence almost perfect.
+Water, in great quantities, still washed the deck, but found ready
+escape through a large port in the after part of the vessel, the lid
+of which, hanging vertically, had been left unfastened.
+
+The lull was of short space. A hoarse, low sound began to growl in the
+distance like muffled thunder. It grew louder,--nearer,--and the gale
+was on them again. This time it blew from the north-west, and less
+fiercely than before. The venturous captain made sail. The yards were
+braced round; and leaning from the wind till her lee gunwale scooped
+the water, the vessel plunged on her way like a racehorse. The clouds
+were rent; blue sky appeared. Strong winds tore them apart, and the
+sun blazed out over the watery convulsion, changing its blackness to a
+rich blue, almost as dark, where the whirling streaks of foam seemed
+like snow wreaths on the mountains. Jets of foam, too, spouted from
+under the vessel's bows, as she dashed them against the opposing seas;
+and the prickling spray flew as high as the main top. The ocean was
+like a viking in his robust carousals,--terror and mirth, laughter and
+fierceness, all in one.
+
+But the mind of Vinal was blackness and unmixed gall. His game was
+played and lost. The worst that he feared had befallen him. Suspense
+was over, and he was freed from the incubus that had ridden him so
+long. A something like relief mixed itself with his bitter and
+vindictive musings. He had not fled empty handed. He and Morton's
+friend Sharpe had been joint trustees of a large estate, a part of
+which, in a form that made it readily available, happened to be in
+Vinal's hands at the time of his crisis. Dread of his quick-sighted
+and vigilant colleague had hitherto prevented him from applying it to
+his own uses. But this fear had now lost its force. He took it with
+him on his flight, and converted it into money in New York, where he
+had embarked.
+
+At night the descent of Hansen to supper was a welcome diversion to
+his lonely thoughts. The old sailor seated himself at the table:--
+
+"I've lost all my appetite, and got a horse's. Here, steward, you
+nigger, where be yer? Fetch along that beefsteak. What do you call
+this here? Well, never mind what you call it, here goes into it, any
+how."
+
+A silent and destructive onslaught upon the dish before him followed.
+Then, laying down his knife and fork for a moment,--
+
+"I've knowed the time when I could have ate up the doctor
+there,"--pointing to the steward,--"bones and all, and couldn't get a
+mouthful, no way you could fix it." Then, resuming his labors, "Tell
+you what, squire, this here agrees with me. Come out of that berth
+now, and sit down here alongside o' me. Just walk into that beefsteak,
+like I do. That 'ere beats physicking all holler."
+
+Thus discoursing, partly to himself and partly to Vinal, and, by
+turns, berating the grinning steward in a jocular strain, Mr. Hansen
+continued his repast. When, at last, he left the cabin, Vinal found
+the solitude too dreary for endurance; and, to break its monotony, he
+also went on deck.
+
+The vessel still scoured wildly along; and as she plunged through the
+angry seas, so the moon was sailing among stormy clouds, now eclipsed
+and lost, now shining brightly out, silvering the seething foam, and
+casting the shadows of spars and rigging on the glistening deck. Vinal
+bent over the bulwark and looked down on the bubbles, as they fled
+past, flashing in the moon.
+
+His thoughts flew backward with them, and dwelt on the hated home from
+which he was escaping.
+
+"What an outcry! what gapes of wonder, and eyes turned up to heaven!
+Gulled, befooled, hoodwinked! and now, at last, you have found it out,
+and make earth and heaven ring with your virtuous spite. I knew you
+all, and played you as I would play the pieces on a chess board. The
+game was a good one in the main, but with some blunders, and for those
+I pay the price. If I had had that villain's brute strength, and the
+brute nerve that goes with it, there would have been a different story
+to tell. Before this, I would have found a way to grind him to the
+earth, and set my foot on his neck. They think him virtuous. He thinks
+himself so. The shallow-witted idiots! Their eyes can only see
+skin-deep. They love to be cheated. They swallow fallacies as a child
+swallows sweetmeats. The tinsel dazzles them, and they take it for
+gold. Virtue! a delusion of self-interest--self-interest, the spring,
+lever, and fulcrum of the world. It is for my interest, for every
+body's interest, that his neighbors should be honest, candid, open,
+forgiving, charitable, continent, sober, and what not. Therefore, by
+the general consent of mankind,--the inevitable instinct of
+self-interest,--such qualities are exalted into sanctity; christened
+with the name of virtues; draped in white, and crowned with halos;
+rewarded with praises here and paradise hereafter. Drape the skeleton
+as you will, the bare skeleton is still there. Paint as thick as you
+will, the bare skull grins under it,--to all who have the eyes to see,
+and the hardihood to use them. How many among mankind have courage to
+face the naked truth? Not one in a thousand. Cannot the fools draw
+reason out of the analogy of things? Can they not see that, as their
+bodies will be melted and merged into the bodily substance of the
+world, so their minds will be merged in the great universal mind,--the
+_animus mundi_,--out of which they sprang, like bubbles on the water,
+and into which they will sink again, like bubbles when they burst?
+Immortality! They may please themselves with the name; but of what
+worth is an immortality where individuality is lost, and each
+conscious atom drowned in the vast immensity? What a howling and
+screeching the wind makes in the rigging! If I were given to
+superstition, I could fancy that a legion from the nether world were
+bestriding the ropes, yelping in grand jubilation at the sight of----"
+
+Here his thoughts were abruptly cut short. A combing wave struck the
+vessel. She lurched with violence, and a shower of foam flew over her
+side. Vinal lost his balance. His feet slipped from under him. He
+fell, and slid quickly across the wet and tossing deck. Instinctively
+he braced his feet to stop himself against the bulwark on the lee
+side. But at the point where they touched it was the large port before
+mentioned. Though closed to all appearance, the bolt was still
+unfastened. It flew open at his touch. Vinal clutched to save himself.
+His fingers slipped on the wet timbers, and with a cry of horror, he
+was shot into the bubbling surges. There was a blinding in his eyes, a
+ringing in his ears; then, for an instant, he saw the light, and the
+black hulk of the vessel fled past like a shadow. Then a wave swept
+over him: all was darkness and convulsion, and a maddened sense of
+being flung high aloft, as the wave rolled him towards its crest like
+a drift sea weed. Here again light broke upon him; and flying above
+the merciless chaos, he saw something like the white wing of a huge
+bird. It was the reefed main-topsail of the receding vessel. He
+shrieked wildly. A torrent of brine dashed back the cry, and foaming
+over his head, plunged him down into darkness again. Again he rose,
+gasping and half senseless; and again the ravenous breakers beat him
+down. A moment of struggle and of agony; then a long nightmare of
+dreamy horror, while, slowly settling downward, he sank below the
+turmoil of the storm; slowly and more slowly still, till the denser
+water sustained his weight. Then with limbs outstretched, he hovered
+in mid ocean, lonely, void, and vast, like a hawk poised in mid-air,
+while his felon spirit, bubbling to the surface, winged its dreary
+flight through the whistling storm.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LXXII.
+
+  Adventure and endurance and emprise
+  Exalted his mind's faculties, and strung
+  His body's sinews.--_Bryant_.
+
+
+On a rock, at the end of the promontory which forms the harbor of
+Beyrout, stood Vassall Morton; and at his side his friend Buckland,
+whom he had met in New York just after his return from Austria. They
+had encountered again in the East Indies, and had made together a long
+and varied journey, not without hardship and danger, among the tribes
+of Upper India and Central Asia. Buckland was greatly changed. His
+look and bearing betokened recovered health and spirit; while his
+companion, in the fulness of masculine vigor, was swarthy as an Arab
+with the long burning of the Eastern sun.
+
+"Our travels are over, Buckland. We have nothing to do, now, but to
+get on board ship, and lie still for a few weeks, and we shall be at
+home again. I hardly know why it is that I wish so much to shorten the
+space, unless from a cat-like propensity to haunt old places."
+
+"And to see your friends again."
+
+"Yes, that is something--a good deal. I have friends enough, unless
+they have died since I last heard from them. But for household gods, I
+have none; or, rather, my ancestral Lares have no better abode than an
+old clapboarded parsonage in an up-country Yankee village. You are
+much more fortunate in that respect. You go home again, besides, a new
+man, rejuvenated in mind and body."
+
+"Thanks to you for that. I was a wreck till you set me afloat and
+refitted me."
+
+"I gave you a shove off shore; but the refitting came afterwards, and
+was no doing of mine. I should hardly know you for the same man."
+
+"That infatuation seems to me like a dream, as I remember you
+prophesied on the evening when we sat together on the Battery."
+
+"Half of a woman's weakness springs from the sensitiveness of her
+bodily organization; and three fourths of your infatuation may be laid
+to the same account. One may say that, without any tendency to
+flounder into materialism. You are a man again now; and even if you
+had not heard of your sorceress's death, you might go back, I think,
+without the least fear of her spells."
+
+"I hope so; but I wish that, like you, I had some engrossing object to
+return to."
+
+"I wish that, like you, I had a family, and a fixed home to return to.
+My travels are finished, though. I have roamed the world enough. My
+objects are accomplished, as well as I could ever accomplish them. I
+have not wandered for nothing; and now I shall bend myself to make my
+journeyings bear what fruit I can. By the sun, and by my watch, it is
+time for the consul to have returned. Did not his servant say that he
+would come ashore from the frigate at about six?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"If he does not, I will get a boat and go to find him. He must have
+letters for one or the other of us."
+
+"I will ride to the town, and see if he has come."
+
+"Very well; I will wait for you here."
+
+Their horses were near at hand, in the keeping of an Arab servant.
+Buckland mounted his own, and rode off.
+
+Morton seated himself on a jutting edge of the rock overhanging the
+bay, and gave himself up to his thoughts.
+
+"Two years of wandering! Two years more, and I should grow like the
+man in Anastasius, never happy at rest, never content in motion. I
+have had my fill of adventure. I must learn repose before it is too
+late. Why is it that I look so longingly towards America? Except half
+a dozen near friends, I have no ties there that are worth the name.
+America is the paradise of the laboring class, the purgatory of those
+of educated tastes. What career is open to me there, that I could not
+better follow elsewhere? I have chosen my path. I have an object which
+fills and engrosses me, and would fill the lifetime of twenty men
+abler than I. America is not my best field of labor; but where else
+should I plant myself? I could not live in England. I am of English
+race, but of an altered type; too like, and too unlike, to find
+harmony there. The continent is more cosmopolitan; but it would be a
+dreary life. I should grow homesick, thinking of the old woods and
+rocks. I will go home, buckle to my work, and end my days where I
+began them.
+
+"My life has been, in its small way, a varied one; very hard, at
+times, but perhaps none too much so. Blows are good for most men, and
+suffering, to the farthest limit of their endurance, what they most
+need. It is a child's part to complain under any fate; and what color
+of complaint have I, or any man sound in mind and body, and with the
+world free before him? And yet I turn girl-hearted when I think of
+that summer evening by the lake at Matherton. What is my fate to Edith
+Leslie's? How will a few years of suffering, with one deadening memory
+in their wake, compare with her life-long endurance? A woman's nature,
+it is said, will mould itself into conformity with her husband's. I
+will rather believe that Vinal's presence, instead of drawing her to
+itself, has repelled her upward into a higher atmosphere, and made her
+life as lofty as it must be sad. I wish to go back, and yet I shrink
+from this voyage. I have some cause, remembering my last welcome home.
+Heaven knows what I may learn of her this time. It was her marriage
+then; perhaps it will be her death now. And which of the two will have
+been the worse either for me to hear or for her to undergo? Perhaps
+these letters may bring some word of her; though that is not likely,
+for none of my friends, but one, know that I should have any special
+interest in hearing it. If they write of her, it will be some news of
+disaster."
+
+These dismal forebodings weighed upon him, and his desire to have them
+resolved soon grew so importunate, that mounting his horse, he
+followed Buckland's track towards the town. Threading the busy
+streets, he stopped before a door adorned with the effigy of a spread
+eagle wearing a striped shield about his neck, and clutching
+thunderbolts and olive boughs in his claws. He threw the rein to his
+servant, mounted the consular stair, and at the head met Buckland
+emerging.
+
+"Is the consul come?"
+
+"Yes; and letters for you. I am sorry for you, if you mean to answer
+them all."
+
+And he gave Morton a formidable packet. Morton cut the string.
+
+"These are all six or eight months old. They are postmarked from
+Calcutta."
+
+"Yes, they came after we had gone up the country, and were sent back
+to this place to meet you. Wait a moment; here are more. These two
+have just come from England."
+
+Morton took them; recognized on one the handwriting of Meredith; on
+the other, that of his friend Mrs. Ashland. His heart leaped to his
+throat; he tore open the seal, and glanced down the page.
+
+Buckland saw his agitation.
+
+"No bad news, I trust."
+
+"I had an enemy, and he is dead. You shall know more of it to-morrow."
+
+And hastening from the house, he mounted again, and through the midst
+of mules, donkeys, dromedaries, men, children, and old women, rode at
+an unlawful speed towards his lodging.
+
+Here, with a beating heart, he explored his profuse correspondence
+from beginning to end. By the Calcutta packet, he learned how his
+native town had been thrown into commotion by the exposure and flight
+of Vinal, and how his friends were eager and impatient to hear his
+explanation of the affair. The more recent letters bore tidings still
+more startling. The bark Swallow had touched at Gibraltar, and a
+letter from her captain to her owners, forwarded by the Oriental
+steamer on her return voyage, told how his passenger, John White, had
+been lost overboard during a gale, two of the crew having seen the
+accident; how, arriving at Gibraltar, his trunks had been opened in
+the consul's presence, to learn his address; and how, along with a
+large amount of money in gold, letters and papers had been found,
+showing that he was not John White, but Horace Vinal, of Boston.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+On the next morning, Morton despatched a letter to Meredith. In it, he
+told his friend the whole course of his story; and these were the
+closing words:--
+
+"One thing you may well believe--that, before you will have had this
+letter many days, I shall follow it. There will be no rest for me till
+I touch American soil. An old passion, only half stifled under a load
+of hopelessness, springs into fresh life again, and burns, less
+brightly, perhaps, but I can almost believe, more deeply and fervently
+than ever. I was consoling myself yesterday with trying to think that
+blows were my mind's best medicine; but I feel now, that after being
+broken with the plough and harrow, it will yield the better for the
+summer sunshine. Yet I am afraid to flatter myself with too bright a
+prospect. Miss Leslie loved me, and the planets in their course are
+not more constant and unswerving; but I cannot tell what may have been
+the effect of so much suffering, or what determination, fatal to my
+hope, it may not have impelled her to embrace. She will soon know my
+mind. I have written to her, and begged her to send her reply to New
+York, where, if my reckoning does not fail, I shall arrive about the
+middle of June. By it I shall be able to judge to what fortune I am to
+look forward.
+
+"You have so lately passed your own anxieties, that you will easily
+appreciate mine. I can wish for them nothing more than that they may
+find as happy an issue; and I will take it as an earnest of the
+intentions of destiny towards me that it has just brought together my
+two best friends."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LXXIII.
+
+  Joy never feasts so high
+  As when his first course is of misery.--_Suckling_.
+
+
+Again the Jersey heights rose on the eye of Morton, and the woods and
+villas of Staten Island. Again the broad breast of New York harbor
+opened before him, sparkling in the June sun; the rugged front of the
+Castle, and the tapering spire of Trinity. He bethought him of his
+last return, and its unforgotten blackness threw its shadow across his
+mind. He turned, doubting and tremulous, towards the future; but here
+his horizon brightened as with the sunrise, shooting to the zenith its
+shafts of tranquil light.
+
+Meanwhile, the telegraph had darted to Boston a notice that the
+approaching steamer had been signalled off the coast. Meredith took
+the night train to meet his friend; but, arriving, he learned that
+Morton was already on shore. Driving from one hotel to another, he
+found, at length, the latter's resting-place.
+
+"Shall I take up your name, sir?"
+
+"No, show me his room; I will go myself."
+
+He knocked at the door. There was no answer. He knocked again, and a
+voice replied suddenly, like that of a man roused from a revery.
+
+He entered; and at the next moment, Morton grasped his hand.
+
+"You have found yourself again," said Meredith; "you have grown back
+again to your old look."
+
+Morton's eye glistened.
+
+"I think I know the handwriting of that letter. Miss Leslie's,--I will
+call her so still--it is hers, is it not?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"She writes, I trust, what you hoped to hear."
+
+"All that I hoped, and much more."
+
+"I am glad of it from my heart. Fortune has been hard enough upon you.
+She was bound to pay you her score."
+
+"She has done so with usury."
+
+"Are you going to Boston this afternoon?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Then you have just two hours to spare. If you have any leisure for
+such sublunary matters, we had better get dinner at once. Romeo
+himself, at his worst case, asks his friend when they shall dine."
+
+Three hours later, the eastward-bound steamer was ploughing the Sound,
+and Morton and Meredith paced her deck.
+
+"I have told you now the whole history, from first to last. I need not
+ask you to forgive my having kept it secret from you so long."
+
+"Why should you ask me? Every man has a right to his own secrets, and
+I like him the better for keeping them. Vinal, at all events, had good
+cause to thank you."
+
+"He is dead; and his memory, if it will, had better die with him."
+
+"You said in your letter that his agent was called Henry Speyer. I
+thought, at the time, that I had seen the name before; and a day or
+two since, I found it accidentally again. The newspapers, two months
+or more ago, mention a foreigner called Henry Speyer as an officer in
+this last piratical forray into Cuba. His party lost their way, fell
+into an ambuscade of government soldiers, and Speyer was shot through
+the head."
+
+"He found a better end than his principal."
+
+"And deserved a better one. A professed rascal is better than a
+pharisee."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LXXIV.
+
+       The rainbow to the storms of life;
+  The evening beam that smiles the clouds away.--_Bride of Abydos_.
+
+
+Morton rode along the edge of the lake at Matherton. He passed under
+the shadowy verdure of the pines, and approached the old family
+mansion of the Leslies. It was years since he had seen it. His
+imprisonment, his escape, his dreary greeting home, all lay between.
+He was the same man, yet different;--with a mind calmed by experience,
+and strong by action and endurance; an ardor which had lost all of its
+intoxication, but none of its force; and which, as the past and the
+present rose upon his thoughts, was tempered with a melancholy which
+had in it nothing of pain.
+
+The hall door stood open, as if to welcome him. The roses and the
+laurels were in bloom; the grass, ripe for the scythe, was waving in
+the meadow; and, by glimpses between the elm and maple boughs, the
+lake, crisped in the June wind, was sparkling with the sunlight.
+
+Morton dismounted; his foot was on the porch; but he had no time for
+thought; for a step sounded in the hall, and Edith met him on the
+threshold.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+That evening, at sunset, Miss Leslie and Morton stood on the brink of
+the lake, at the foot of the garden. It was the spot which had been
+most sweet and most bitter in the latter's recollections.
+
+"Do you remember, Edith, when we last stood here?"
+
+"How could I ever forget?"
+
+"The years that have passed since are like a nightmare. I could
+believe them so, but that I feel their marks."
+
+"And I, as well; we were boy and girl then."
+
+"At least, I was a boy; and, do you know, I find you different from
+what I had pictured you."
+
+"Should I be sorry for it, or glad?"
+
+"I had pictured you as I saw you last, very calm, very resolute, very
+sad; but you are like the breaking of a long, dull storm. The sun
+shines again, and the world glows the brighter for past rain and
+darkness."
+
+"Could I have welcomed you home with a sad face? Could I be calm and
+cold, now that I have found what I thought was lost forever?--when the
+ashes of my life have kindled into flame again? Because I, and others,
+have known sorrow, should I turn my face into a homily, and be your
+lifelong _memento mori_?"
+
+"It is a brave heart that can hide a deep thought under a smile."
+
+"And a weak one that is always crouching among the shadows."
+
+"There is an abounding spirit of faith in you; the essence which makes
+heroes, from Joan of Arc to Jeanie Deans."
+
+"I know no one with faith like yours, which could hold to you through
+all your years of living burial."
+
+"Mine! it was wrenched to its uttermost roots. I thought the world was
+given over to the devil."
+
+"But that was only for the moment."
+
+"I consoled myself with imagining that I had come to the worst, and
+that any change must needs be for the better; but now I am lifted of a
+sudden to such a pitch of fortune, that I tremble at it. Many a man,
+my equal or superior, no weaker in heart or meaner in aim than I, has
+been fettered through his days by cramping poverty, while I stand
+mailed and weaponed at all points. Many a man of noble instincts and
+high requirements has found in life nothing but a mockery of his
+imaginings,--a bright dream, matched with a base reality. Who can
+blame him if he turn cynic? I have dreamed a dream, too; wakened, and
+found it a living truth."
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Vassall Morton, by Francis Parkman
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+
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Vassall Morton, by Francis Parkman
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Vassall Morton
+       A Novel
+
+Author: Francis Parkman
+
+Release Date: May 23, 2012 [EBook #39768]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK VASSALL MORTON ***
+
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+Produced by Ron Swanson (This file was produced from images
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+Libraries)
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+</pre>
+
+<h1>VASSALL MORTON.</h1>
+<h3>A Novel.</h3>
+<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+<center>BY</center>
+<h2>FRANCIS PARKMAN,</h2>
+<center><small>AUTHOR OF "HISTORY OF THE CONSPIRACY OF PONTIAC,"<br>AND "PRAIRIE AND
+ROCKY MOUNTAIN LIFE."</small></center>
+<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+<table align="center" summary="quote1">
+	<tr><td><small>Ecrive qui voudra! Chacun à ce mêtier,<br>
+	Peut perdre impunément de l'encre et du papier.<br>
+	&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
+	&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
+	&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
+	&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
+	&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
+	&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
+	&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
+	B<small>OILEAU</small>.</small></td></tr>
+</table>
+<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+<h4>BOSTON:<br>
+PHILLIPS, SAMPSON AND COMPANY.<br>
+1856.</h4>
+<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+<center><small>Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the Year 1856, by<br>
+
+P<small>HILLIPS</small>, S<small>AMPSON AND</small> C<small>OMPANY</small>,<br>
+In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the District of
+Massachusetts.</small></center>
+<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+<center><small><small>STEREOTYPED AT THE<br>
+BOSTON STEREOTYPE FOUNDRY.</small></small></center>
+<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+<table align="center" border="1" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="10" summary="contents">
+	<tr><td colspan="8" align="center">C<small>HAPTERS</small></td></tr>
+	<tr><td align="center"><a href="#chap1">I</a></td>
+		<td align="center"><a href="#chap11">XI</a></td>
+		<td align="center"><a href="#chap21">XXI</a></td>
+		<td align="center"><a href="#chap31">XXXI</a></td>
+		<td align="center"><a href="#chap41">XLI</a></td>
+		<td align="center"><a href="#chap51">LI</a></td>
+		<td align="center"><a href="#chap61">LXI</a></td>
+		<td align="center"><a href="#chap71">LXXI</a></td></tr>
+	<tr><td align="center"><a href="#chap2">II</a></td>
+		<td align="center"><a href="#chap12">XII</a></td>
+		<td align="center"><a href="#chap22">XXII</a></td>
+		<td align="center"><a href="#chap32">XXXII</a></td>
+		<td align="center"><a href="#chap42">XLII</a></td>
+		<td align="center"><a href="#chap52">LII</a></td>
+		<td align="center"><a href="#chap62">LXII</a></td>
+		<td align="center"><a href="#chap72">LXXII</a></td></tr>
+	<tr><td align="center"><a href="#chap3">III</a></td>
+		<td align="center"><a href="#chap13">XIII</a></td>
+		<td align="center"><a href="#chap23">XXIII</a></td>
+		<td align="center"><a href="#chap33">XXXIII</a></td>
+		<td align="center"><a href="#chap43">XLIII</a></td>
+		<td align="center"><a href="#chap53">LIII</a></td>
+		<td align="center"><a href="#chap63">LXIII</a></td>
+		<td align="center"><a href="#chap73">LXXIII</a></td></tr>
+	<tr><td align="center"><a href="#chap4">IV</a></td>
+		<td align="center"><a href="#chap14">XIV</a></td>
+		<td align="center"><a href="#chap24">XXIV</a></td>
+		<td align="center"><a href="#chap34">XXXIV</a></td>
+		<td align="center"><a href="#chap44">XLIV</a></td>
+		<td align="center"><a href="#chap54">LIV</a></td>
+		<td align="center"><a href="#chap64">LXIV</a></td>
+		<td align="center"><a href="#chap74">LXXIV</a></td></tr>
+	<tr><td align="center"><a href="#chap5">V</a></td>
+		<td align="center"><a href="#chap15">XV</a></td>
+		<td align="center"><a href="#chap25">XXV</a></td>
+		<td align="center"><a href="#chap35">XXXV</a></td>
+		<td align="center"><a href="#chap45">XLV</a></td>
+		<td align="center"><a href="#chap55">LV</a></td>
+		<td align="center"><a href="#chap65">LXV</a></td>
+		<td align="center">&nbsp;</td></tr>
+	<tr><td align="center"><a href="#chap6">VI</a></td>
+		<td align="center"><a href="#chap16">XVI</a></td>
+		<td align="center"><a href="#chap26">XXVI</a></td>
+		<td align="center"><a href="#chap36">XXXVI</a></td>
+		<td align="center"><a href="#chap46">XLVI</a></td>
+		<td align="center"><a href="#chap56">LVI</a></td>
+		<td align="center"><a href="#chap66">LXVI</a></td>
+		<td align="center">&nbsp;</td></tr>
+	<tr><td align="center"><a href="#chap7">VII</a></td>
+		<td align="center"><a href="#chap17">XVII</a></td>
+		<td align="center"><a href="#chap27">XXVII</a></td>
+		<td align="center"><a href="#chap37">XXXVII</a></td>
+		<td align="center"><a href="#chap47">XLVII</a></td>
+		<td align="center"><a href="#chap57">LVII</a></td>
+		<td align="center"><a href="#chap67">LXVII</a></td>
+		<td align="center">&nbsp;</td></tr>
+	<tr><td align="center"><a href="#chap8">VIII</a></td>
+		<td align="center"><a href="#chap18">XVIII</a></td>
+		<td align="center"><a href="#chap28">XXVIII</a></td>
+		<td align="center"><a href="#chap38">XXXVIII</a></td>
+		<td align="center"><a href="#chap48">XLVIII</a></td>
+		<td align="center"><a href="#chap58">LVIII</a></td>
+		<td align="center"><a href="#chap68">LXVIII</a></td>
+		<td align="center">&nbsp;</td></tr>
+	<tr><td align="center"><a href="#chap9">IX</a></td>
+		<td align="center"><a href="#chap19">XIX</a></td>
+		<td align="center"><a href="#chap29">XXIX</a></td>
+		<td align="center"><a href="#chap39">XXXIX</a></td>
+		<td align="center"><a href="#chap49">XLIX</a></td>
+		<td align="center"><a href="#chap59">LIX</a></td>
+		<td align="center"><a href="#chap69">LXIX</a></td>
+		<td align="center">&nbsp;</td></tr>
+	<tr><td align="center"><a href="#chap10">X</a></td>
+		<td align="center"><a href="#chap20">XX</a></td>
+		<td align="center"><a href="#chap30">XXX</a></td>
+		<td align="center"><a href="#chap40">XL</a></td>
+		<td align="center"><a href="#chap50">L</a></td>
+		<td align="center"><a href="#chap60">LX</a></td>
+		<td align="center"><a href="#chap70">LXX</a></td>
+		<td align="center">&nbsp;</td></tr>
+</table>
+<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+<h2>Vassall Morton.</h2>
+<hr align="center" width="100">
+<br>
+<br><a name="chap1"></a>
+<br>
+<br>
+<h3>CHAPTER I.</h3>
+
+<center><small>Remote from towns he ran his godly
+race.&mdash;<i>Goldsmith</i>.</small></center>
+
+<br>
+<br>
+<p>"Macknight on the Epistles,&mdash;that's the name of the book?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, sir, if you please. I am desirous of consulting it with a
+view&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Well, this way, Mr. Jacobs. Here's the librarian. Mr. Stillingfleet,
+let me introduce my friend, the Reverend Mr. Jacobs, of West
+Weathersfield."</p>
+
+<p>"I am proud to make your acquaintance, sir," said Mr. Jacobs, taking
+the librarian's hand with an air of diffident veneration.</p>
+
+<p>"Mr. Jacobs wishes to consult Mackwright on the Epistles."</p>
+
+<p>"Macknight, if you please, Dr. Steele."</p>
+
+<p>"O, Macknight. Will you be so kind as to let him have the use of it in
+my name?"</p>
+
+<p>"If you will go with Mr. Rubens, sir," said the librarian, "he will
+show you the book."</p>
+
+<p>"Thank you, sir," replied Mr. Jacobs, to whom the words were
+addressed; and he followed the assistant among the alcoves in a timid,
+tiptoe progress, for, to him, the very air he breathed seemed redolent
+of learning, and the dust beneath his feet consecrated to science.</p>
+
+<p>Dr. Steele remained behind, conversing with the librarian.</p>
+
+<p>"My friend has something of the ancient apostolic simplicity hanging
+about him still. He looks with as much awe at Harvard College library
+as I did myself forty-five years ago, when I came down from Steuben to
+join the freshman class."</p>
+
+<p>"So you came from Steuben! Did not old John Morton come from the same
+place?"</p>
+
+<p>"To be sure he did. He was the glory of the town. He pulled down the
+old clapboard meeting house that his father used to preach in, and
+built a new one for him: besides giving a start in business to half
+the young men of the village."</p>
+
+<p>"Do you see that undergraduate at the end of the hall, standing by the
+last alcove, reading?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes; what about him? He seems a hardy, good-looking young fellow
+enough."</p>
+
+<p>"He is John Morton's son."</p>
+
+<p>"Is it possible? I remember him when he was a child, but have not seen
+him for these ten years. After his father's death, his mother took him
+to Europe, to be educated; but she never came back; she died in
+Paris."</p>
+
+<p>"He is Mr. Morton's only child&mdash;is he not?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes; his first wife had no children; and after he had buried
+her,&mdash;which, by the way, I believe was the happiest hour of his
+life,&mdash;he married a very different sort of person, Margaret Vassall,
+this boy's mother."</p>
+
+<p>"What, one of the old Vassall race?"</p>
+
+<p>"Exactly; and, I suppose, the last survivor. I used to know her. She
+was a handsome woman, and, bating her family pride, altogether a very
+fine character. She managed her husband admirably."</p>
+
+<p>"Why, what need had John Morton of being managed?"</p>
+
+<p>"O, Morton was a noble old gentleman, a merchant of the old school,
+and generous as the day; but he had his faults. He made nothing of his
+three bottles of Madeira at dinner, and besides&mdash; Ah, Mr. Jacobs, so
+you have found Macknight."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, sir," said Mr. Jacobs, coming up, "I have the volumes."</p>
+
+<p>"See that young man, yonder. That's the son of your old friend, Mr.
+Morton."</p>
+
+<p>"Really! upon my word! Ah! Mr. Morton <i>was</i> a friend to me, sir&mdash;a
+very kind friend."</p>
+
+<p>And, in the simplicity of his heart, Mr. Jacobs glided up to the
+student, and blandly accosted him.</p>
+
+<p>"How do you do, young gentleman? I knew your worthy father. I knew him
+well. I have often sat at his hospitable board on anniversary week."</p>
+
+<p>Thus addressed, Vassall Morton looked up from his book,&mdash;it was
+Froissart's Chronicle,&mdash;inclined his head in acknowledgment, and
+waited to hear more.</p>
+
+<p>"Ahem!" coughed Mr. Jacobs, a little embarrassed: "your father was a
+most worthy and estimable gentleman: a true friend of the feeble and
+destitute. Ahem!&mdash;what class are you in, Mr. Morton?"</p>
+
+<p>"The junior class," said the young man, a suppressed smile flickering
+at the corner of his mouth.</p>
+
+<p>"Ahem! I hope, sir, that, like your father, you will long live to be
+an honor to your native town."</p>
+
+<p>"Thank you, sir."</p>
+
+<p>"I wish you good morning."</p>
+
+<p>"Good morning, sir," said Morton, divided between an inclination to
+smile at the odd, humble little figure before him, and an
+unwillingness to wound the other's feelings.</p>
+
+<p>"Are you ready to go, Mr. Jacobs?" said Dr. Steele.</p>
+
+<p>"If you please, sir, we will now take our departure;"&mdash;gathering the
+four volumes of Macknight on the Epistles under his arm;&mdash;"Good
+morning, Mr. Stillingfleet; good morning, Mr. Rubens. I am indebted to
+your kindness, gentlemen&mdash;ahem!"</p>
+
+<p>"This is the way out, Mr. Jacobs," said Steele to his diffident friend
+from West Weathersfield, who, in his embarrassment, was going out at
+the wrong door.</p>
+
+<p>"I beg your pardon, sir&mdash;ahem!" replied Mr. Jacobs, with a bashful
+smile. And Dr. Steele, pointing to the true exit, ushered his rustic
+and reverend protégé from the sacred precinct of learning.</p>
+<br>
+<br><a name="chap2"></a>
+<br>
+<br>
+<h3>CHAPTER II.</h3>
+<center><small>Richt hardie baith in ernist and
+play.&mdash;<i>Sir David Lyndsay</i>.</small></center>
+<br>
+<br>
+<p>"Morton, what was the little old fogy in the white cravat saying to
+you just now in the library?"</p>
+
+<p>"Telling me that my father was a worthy man, and that he hoped I
+should make just such another."</p>
+
+<p>"Ah, that was kind of him."</p>
+
+<p>"What a pile of books you are lugging! Here, let me take half a dozen
+of them for you. You look as if you were training to be a hotel
+porter."</p>
+
+<p>"I am laying in for vacation."</p>
+
+<p>"What sense is there in that? Let alone your Latin, Greek, and
+mathematics; what the deuse is vacation made for? Take to the woods,
+as I do, breathe the fresh air, and see the world at large."</p>
+
+<p>"Do you call it seeing the world at large, to go off into some
+barbarous, uninhabitable place, among mosquitoes, snakes, wolves,
+bears, and catamounts? What sense is there in that? What can you do
+when you get there?"</p>
+
+<p>"Shoot muskrats, and fish for mudpouts. Will you go with me?"</p>
+
+<p>"Thank you, no. There's no one in the class featherwitted enough to go
+with you, except Meredith, and he ought to know better."</p>
+
+<p>"Stay at home, then, and improve your mind. I shall be off to-morrow."</p>
+
+<p>"Alone?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes."</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Horace Vinal shrugged his shoulders, a movement which caused
+Sophocles and Seneca to escape from under his arm. Morton gathered
+them out of the mud, and thrusting them back again into their place,
+left his burdened fellow-student to make the best of his way towards
+his den in Stoughton Hall.</p>
+<br>
+<br><a name="chap3"></a>
+<br>
+<br>
+<h3>CHAPTER III.</h3>
+<center><small>O, love, in such a wilderness as
+this!&mdash;<i>Gertrude of Wyoming</i>.</small></center>
+<br>
+<br>
+<p>Morton, <i>en route</i> for the barbarous districts of which Vinal had
+expressed his disapproval, stopped by the way at a spot which, though
+wild enough at that time, had ceased to be a wilderness. This was the
+Notch of the White Mountains, perverted, since, into a resort of
+<i>quasi</i> fashion. Here, arriving late at the lonely hostelry of one Tom
+Crawford, he learned from that worthy person, to whom his face was
+well known, that other guests, from Boston, like himself, were seated
+at the tea table. Accordingly, descending thither, he saw four
+persons. The first was a quiet-looking man, with the air of a
+gentleman, and something in his appearance which seemed to indicate
+military habits and training. Morton remembered to have seen him
+before. At his side, and under his tutelary care, sat two personages,
+who, from their dimensions, must have been boys of some seven years
+old, but from the solemnity of their countenances, might have passed
+for a brace of ancient philosophers. They looked so much alike that
+Morton thought he saw double. Each was seated on a volume of Clark's
+Commentaries, to raise his chin to the needful height above the table
+cloth. Both were encased in tunics, strapped about them with shining
+morocco belts. Their small persons were terminated at one end by
+morocco shoes of somewhat infantile pattern, and at the other by
+enormous heads, with chalky complexions, pale, dilated eyes, wrinkled
+foreheads, and mouths pursed up with an expression of anxious care,
+abstruse meditation, and the most experienced wisdom.</p>
+
+<p>In amazement at these phenomena, Morton turned next towards the fourth
+member of the party; and here he encountered a new emotion, of a kind
+quite different. Hitherto, in his college seclusion, he had not very
+often met, except in imagination, with that union of beauty, breeding,
+and refinement which belongs to the best life of cities, and which he
+now saw in the person of a young lady, a year or two his junior. He
+longed for a pretext to address her, but found none; when her
+father&mdash;for such he seemed&mdash;broke silence, and accosted him.</p>
+
+<p>"I beg your pardon; is it possible that you are the son of John
+Morton?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes."</p>
+
+<p>"He was my father's old friend. I thought I could scarcely mistake
+your likeness to your mother."</p>
+
+<p>"I believe I have the pleasure of speaking to Colonel Leslie."</p>
+
+<p>Leslie inclined his head.</p>
+
+<p>"My title clings to me, I find, though I have no right to it now."</p>
+
+<p>He had left the army long before, exchanging the rough frontier
+service for pursuits more to his taste.</p>
+
+<p>"Upon my word," pursued Leslie, after conversing for some time with
+the new comer on the scenery and game of the mountains, "you seem to
+be <i>au fait</i> at this sort of thing."</p>
+
+<p>"At least I ought to be; I have spent half my college vacations here."</p>
+
+<p>"It is unlucky for us that we must set out for home in the morning.
+You might have given us good advice in our sightseeing."</p>
+
+<p>"Crawford will tell you that I am tolerably well qualified to be a
+guide."</p>
+
+<p>"You do not look like a collegian. They are generally thin and pale
+with studying."</p>
+
+<p>"Oftener with laziness and cigar smoke."</p>
+
+<p>"Very likely. You seem too hardy and active for a student."</p>
+
+<p>Morton's weak point was touched.</p>
+
+<p>"I can do well enough, I believe, in that way. Crawford was boasting,
+last year, that he could outwrestle any man in New England. I
+challenged him, and threw him on his back."</p>
+
+<p>"You! Crawford is twice as heavy and strong as you are."</p>
+
+<p>"I am stronger than I seem," replied Morton, with great complacency.</p>
+
+<p>And Leslie, observing him with an eye not unused to measure the thews
+and sinews of men, saw that, though his frame was light, and his
+shoulders not broad, yet his compact proportions, deep chest, and
+muscular limbs, showed the highest degree of bodily vigor.</p>
+
+<p>"You are quite right. I would enlist you without asking the surgeon's
+advice."</p>
+
+<p>Here the nurse, attendant on the two philosophers, appeared at the
+door; and they, obedient to the mute summons, scrambled gravely from
+their seats, and, with solemn steps, withdrew. Miss Leslie presently
+followed, and Morton and her father were left alone.</p>
+
+<p>"You are from Harvard&mdash;are you not?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes."</p>
+
+<p>"Do you know Horace Vinal?"</p>
+
+<p>"Very well; he is my classmate."</p>
+
+<p>"Is he not thought a very promising young man?"</p>
+
+<p>"He is our first scholar."</p>
+
+<p>"I hear him spoken of as a young man of fine abilities."</p>
+
+<p>"And he knows how to make the best of them."</p>
+
+<p>"Not at all dissipated."</p>
+
+<p>"Not at all."</p>
+
+<p>"And a great student."</p>
+
+<p>"Digs day and night."</p>
+
+<p>"A little ambitious, I suppose."</p>
+
+<p>"A little."</p>
+
+<p>"But very prudent."</p>
+
+<p>"Uncommonly so."</p>
+
+<p>"An excellent young man," exclaimed Leslie; "I think very highly of
+Horace Vinal."</p>
+
+<p>Morton cast a sidelong glance at him, and there was a covert smile in
+his eye. He began to see a weak spot in his companion.</p>
+
+<p>"He will certainly make his way in the world," pursued Leslie.</p>
+
+<p>"No doubt of it."</p>
+
+<p>"He is not so fond of out-door exercises as you seem to be."</p>
+
+<p>"He is good at one kind of exercise."</p>
+
+<p>"What's that?"</p>
+
+<p>"He can draw the long bow."</p>
+
+<p>Leslie did not see Morton's meaning, and took the words literally, as
+the latter intended he should.</p>
+
+<p>"What, have you an archery club at college?"</p>
+
+<p>"No; but there are one or two among us who use the long bow, now and
+then, and Vinal beats them by all odds. But he is very modest on the
+subject, and never alludes to it. In fact, there are very few who know
+his skill in that way."</p>
+
+<p>"It is all the better for his health to have some amusement of the
+kind."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, it would be a pity if his health should suffer."</p>
+
+<p>"I have often thought that his mind was too active for his
+constitution."</p>
+
+<p>Morton cast another sidelong look at Leslie. Though he admired the
+daughter, he refrained with difficulty from quizzing the father.</p>
+
+<p>"You seem to know Vinal very well."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, thoroughly; I have known him from childhood; he is the son of my
+wife's sister, and I am his guardian. I watch his progress with great
+interest."</p>
+
+<p>"You will see him, I dare say, reach the top of the ladder. At least,
+it will be no fault of his if he does not."</p>
+
+<p>"I am very glad to hear my good opinion of him confirmed by one who
+has seen so much of him."</p>
+
+<p>And, rising, he left the room.</p>
+
+<p>"A very good young man, this seems to be," he thought to himself, as
+he did so.</p>
+
+<p>"Amiable, good natured, and all that; but very soft, for a man who has
+seen hard service," thought Morton, on his part.</p>
+
+<p>The party reassembled in the inn parlor. Masters William and
+Marlborough, having gained a reprieve from their banishment, busied
+themselves at the table, the one in poring over Brewster on Natural
+Magic, the other in solving a problem of Euclid. Leslie viewed these
+infant diversions by no means with an eye of favor, and soon banished
+the students to a retirement more suited to their tender years. The
+sentence overcame all their philosophy, and they were carried off
+howling.</p>
+
+<p>Morton, meanwhile, was breathing a charmed air; and though diffident
+in the presence of ladies, and not liberally endowed by nature with
+the gift of tongues, his zeal to commend himself to the good opinion
+of Miss Edith Leslie availed somewhat to supply the defect. He had
+never mixed with the world, conventionally so called, and knew as much
+of ladies as of mermaids. But having an ardent temperament and a
+Quixotic imagination; being addicted, moreover, to Froissart and
+kindred writers; and, indeed, visited with a glimmering of that
+antique light which modern folly despises, he would have been ready,
+with the eye of a handsome woman upon him, for any rash and ridiculous
+exploit. This extravagance did him no manner of harm. On the contrary,
+it went far to keep him out of mischief; for in the breast of this
+youngster a chivalresque instinct battled against the urgency of
+vigorous blood, and taught his nervous energies to seek escape rather
+in ceaseless bodily exercises, rowing, riding, and the like, than in
+any less commendable recreations.</p>
+
+<p>The close of the evening found him with an imagination much excited.
+In short, decisive symptoms declared themselves of that wide-spread
+malady, of which he had read much and pondered not a little, but which
+had not, as yet, numbered him among its victims. Among the various
+emotions, novel, strange, and pleasurable, which began to possess him,
+came, however, the dismal consciousness that, with the morning sun,
+the enchantress of his fancy was to vanish like a dream of the night.</p>
+<br>
+<br><a name="chap4"></a>
+<br>
+<br>
+<h3>CHAPTER IV.</h3>
+<table align="center" summary="quote2">
+	<tr><td><small>What pleasure, sir, find we in life, to lock it<br>
+	From action and adventure?&mdash;<i>Cymbeline</i>.</small></td></tr>
+</table>
+<br>
+<br>
+<p>Morning came, and the Leslies departed. Morton watched the lumbering
+carriage till it disappeared down the rugged gorge of the Notch, then
+drew a deep breath, and ruefully betook himself to his day's sport. He
+explored, rod in hand, the black pools and plunging cascades of the
+Saco; but for once that he thought of the trout, he thought ten times
+of Edith Leslie.</p>
+
+<p>Towards night, however, he returned with a basket reasonably well
+filled; and, as he drew near the inn, he saw a young man, of his own
+age, or thereabouts, sitting under the porch. He had a cast of
+features which, in a feudal country, would have been taken as the sign
+of noble birth; and though he wore a slouched felt hat and a rough
+tweed frock, though his attitude was careless, though he held between
+his teeth a common clay pipe, at which he puffed with much relish, and
+though he was conversing on easy terms with two attenuated old Vermont
+farmers, with faces like a pair of baked apples,&mdash;yet none but the
+most unpractised eye would have taken him for other than a gentleman.</p>
+
+<p>As soon as Morton saw him, he shouted a joyful greeting, to which Mr.
+Edward Meredith, rising and going to meet his friend, replied with no
+less emphasis.</p>
+
+<p>"I thought," said Morton, "that you meant to do the dutiful this time,
+and stay with your father and family at the sea shore."</p>
+
+<p>"Couldn't stand the sea shore," said Meredith, seating himself again;
+"so I came up to the mountains to see what you were doing."</p>
+
+<p>"You couldn't have done better; but come this way, out of earshot."</p>
+
+<p>"Colonel," said Meredith, in a tone of melancholy remonstrance, "this
+seat is a good seat, an easy seat, a pleasant seat. Why do you want to
+root me up?"</p>
+
+<p>"Come on, man," replied Morton.</p>
+
+<p>"Show the way, then, Jack-a-lantern. But where do you want to lead me?
+I won't sit on the rail fence, and I won't sit on the grass."</p>
+
+<p>"There's a bench here for you."</p>
+
+<p>"Has it a back?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, it has a back. There it is."</p>
+
+<p>Meredith carefully removed a few twigs and shavings which lay upon the
+bench, seated himself, rested his arm along the back, and began
+puffing at his pipe again. But scarcely had he thus composed himself
+when the tea bell rang from the house.</p>
+
+<p>"Do you hear that, now? Another move to make! Didn't I tell you so?"</p>
+
+<p>"Not that I remember."</p>
+
+<p>"Please to explain, colonel, what you expect to gain by always bobbing
+about as you do, like a drop of quicksilver."</p>
+
+<p>"To hear you, one would take you for the laziest fellow in the
+universe."</p>
+
+<p>"There's reason in all things. I keep my vital energies against the
+time of need, instead of wasting them in unnecessary gyrations. Ladies
+at the table! New Yorkers in full feather, or I'll be shot! Now, what
+the deuse have lace and ribbons to do in a place like this?"</p>
+
+<p>During the meal, the presence of the strangers was a check upon their
+conversation.</p>
+
+<p>"Crawford," said Meredith, when it was over, "have you had that sofa
+taken into my room?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, sir."</p>
+
+<p>"And the arm chair?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, sir."</p>
+
+<p>"And the candles?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, sir."</p>
+
+<p>"All right. Now, then, colonel, <i>allons</i>."</p>
+
+<p>The name of <i>colonel</i> was Morton's college sobriquet. Meredith led the
+way into a room which adjoined his bed chamber, and which, under his
+direction, had assumed an air of great comfort. Morton took possession
+of the sofa; his friend of the arm chair.</p>
+
+<p>"What's the word with you?" began the latter; "are you bound for the
+Adirondacks, the Margalloway, or the Penobscot?"</p>
+
+<p>"To the Margalloway, I think. You mean to go with me, I hope."</p>
+
+<p>"To the Margalloway, or the antipodes, or any place this side of the
+North Pole."</p>
+
+<p>"Then, if you say so, we'll set off to-morrow."</p>
+
+<p>"Gently, colonel. One day's fishing here. We have six weeks before us.
+What sort of thing is that that you are smoking?"</p>
+
+<p>"Try, and judge for yourself," said Morton, handing his cigar case.
+Meredith took a sample of its contents between his fingers, and
+examined it with attention.</p>
+
+<p>"I always thought you were a kind of heathen, and now I know it. Where
+did you pick up that cigar?"</p>
+
+<p>"Do you find it so very bad?"</p>
+
+<p>"It would not poison a man, and perhaps might pass for a little better
+than none at all. But nobody except a pagan would touch it when any
+thing better could be had."</p>
+
+<p>"I forgot to bring any from town, and had to supply myself on the
+way."</p>
+
+<p>"That goes to redeem your character. Fling those away, or give them to
+the landlord; I have plenty of better ones. But a pipe is the best
+thing at a place like this, and especially at camp, in the woods."</p>
+
+<p>"So I have often heard you say."</p>
+
+<p>"Mine, though, made a sensation, not long ago."</p>
+
+<p>"How was that?"</p>
+
+<p>"The whole brood of the Stubbs, bag and baggage, passed here this
+afternoon."</p>
+
+<p>"Thank Heaven they did not stop."</p>
+
+<p>"They came in their private carriage. I nodded to Ben, and touched my
+hat to Mrs. S. You should have seen their faces. They thought there
+must be something out of joint in the mechanism of the universe, when
+a person of their acquaintance could be seen smoking a pipe at a
+tavern door, like a bog-trotting Irishman."</p>
+
+<p>"You should have asked Ben to go with us."</p>
+
+<p>"It would be the worst martyrdom the poor devil ever had to pass
+through. Ben seemed displeased with the scenery. He says that the
+White Mountains are nothing to any one who, like himself, has seen the
+Alps."</p>
+
+<p>"Pray when did Stubb see the Alps?"</p>
+
+<p>"O, the whole family have seen the Alps,&mdash;the Alps, Italy, the Rhine,
+the nobility and gentry, and every thing else that Europe affords.
+They all swear by Europe, and hold the soil of America dirt cheap. You
+can see with half an eye what they are&mdash;an uncommonly bad imitation of
+an indifferent model."</p>
+
+<p>"Let them pass for what they are worth. Have you come armed and
+equipped&mdash;rifle, blanket, hatchet, and so forth?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, and I have brought an oil cloth tent."</p>
+
+<p>"So much the better; it is more convenient than a birch bark shanty."</p>
+
+<p>"I give you notice that I mean to take my ease in that tent."</p>
+
+<p>"I hope you will."</p>
+
+<p>"One can be comfortable in the woods, as well as elsewhere. Remember,
+colonel, that we are out for amusement, and not after scalps. Last
+summer, you drove ahead, rain or shine, through thickets, and swamps,
+and ponds, as if you were on some errand of life and death. For this
+once, have mercy on frail humanity, and moderate your ardor."</p>
+
+<p>Morton gave the pledge required. They passed the evening in arranging
+the details of their journey, set forth and spent three or four weeks
+in the forest between the settled districts of Canada and Maine,
+poling their canoe up lonely streams, meeting no human face, but
+smoking their pipes in great contentment by their evening camp fire.
+They chased a bear, and lost him in a <i>windfall;</i> killed two moose,
+six deer, and trout without number; and underwent, with exemplary
+patience, a martyrdom of midges, black flies, and mosquitoes. And
+when, at last, they turned their faces homeward, they wiled the way
+with plans of longer journeyings,&mdash;more bear, more moose, more deer,
+more trout, more midges, black flies, and mosquitoes.</p>
+<br>
+<br><a name="chap5"></a>
+<br>
+<br>
+<h3>CHAPTER V.</h3>
+<table align="center" summary="quote3">
+	<tr><td><small>Youth on the prow, and Pleasure at the helm;<br>
+	Regardless of the sweeping whirlwind's sway,<br>
+	That, hushed in grim repose, expects his evening prey.&mdash;<i>Gray</i>.</small></td></tr>
+</table>
+<br>
+<br>
+<p>It was a week before "class day,"&mdash;that eventful day which was
+virtually to close the college career of Morton and his
+contemporaries. The little janitor, commonly called Paddy O'Flinn, was
+ringing the evening prayer bell from the cupola of Harvard Hall,&mdash;its
+tone was dull and muffled, some graceless sophomore having lately
+painted it white, inside and out,&mdash;and the students were mustering at
+the summons. The sedate and the gay, the tender freshman and the
+venerable senior, the prosperous city beau and the awkward country
+bumpkin, one and all were filing from their respective quarters
+towards the chapel in University Hall. The bell ceased; the loiterers
+quickened their steps; the last belated freshman, with the dread of
+the proctor before his eyes, bounded frantically up the steps; and for
+a brief space all was silence and solitude. Then there was a
+murmuring, rushing sound, as of a coming tempest, and University Hall
+disgorged its contents, casting forth the freshmen and juniors at one
+door, and the sophomores and seniors at the other.</p>
+
+<p>Of these last was Morton, who, with three or four of his class, walked
+across the college yard, towards the great gateway. By his side was a
+young man named Rosny, carelessly dressed, but with a lively,
+dare-devil face, and the look of a good-natured game cock.</p>
+
+<p>"I shall be sorry to leave this place," said Morton; "I like it. I
+like the elms, and the gravel walks, and the scurvy old brick and
+mortar buildings."</p>
+
+<p>"Then I am not of your mind," said Rosny; "gravel or mud, brickbats or
+paving stones, they are the same to me, the world over. Halloo, Wren,"
+to a mustachioed youth who just then joined them; "we are bound to
+your room."</p>
+
+<p>"That's as it should be. But where are the rest?"</p>
+
+<p>"Coming&mdash;all in good time; here's one of them."</p>
+
+<p>A dapper little person approached, with a shining beaver, yellow kid
+gloves, a switch cane, and a very stiff but somewhat dashing cravat,
+surmounted by a round and rubicund face.</p>
+
+<p>"Ah, Chester!" exclaimed Wren; "the very man we were looking for. Come
+and take a glass of punch at my room."</p>
+
+<p>"Punch, indeed!" replied Chester, whose face had changed from a prim
+expression to one of great hilarity the moment he saw his
+friends&mdash;"no, no, gentlemen, I renounce punch and all its works. The
+pure unmixed, the pure juice of the grape for me."</p>
+
+<p>"But, Chester," urged Wren, "won't the pure mountain dew be a
+sufficient inducement?"</p>
+
+<p>"The good company will be a sufficient inducement," said Chester,
+waving his hand,&mdash;"the good company, gentlemen,&mdash;and the good liquor.
+But what have we here? Meredith and Vinal walking side by side. Good
+Heavens, what a conjunction!"</p>
+
+<p>The objects of Chester's astonishment, on a flattering invitation from
+Wren, joined the party, which, however, was weakened by the temporary
+secession of Rosny, who, pleading an errand in the village, left them
+with a promise to rejoin them soon. His place was in a few moments
+more than supplied by a new party of recruits, among whom was Stubb.
+Arrived at Wren's room, the desk and other appliances of study were
+banished from the table; bottles and glasses usurped their place, and
+the company composed themselves for conversation, most of them
+permitting their chairs to stand quietly on all fours, though one or
+two, like heathen Yankees from the backwoods, forced them to rear
+rampant on the hind legs, the occupant's feet resting on the ledge
+over the fireplace.</p>
+
+<p>A few minutes passed, when a quick, firm step came up the stairs, and
+Rosny entered.</p>
+
+<p>"How are you again, Dick?" said Meredith.</p>
+
+<p>"Good evening, Mr. Rosny," echoed Stubb, who sat alone on the window
+seat.</p>
+
+<p>"Eh? what's that?" demanded Rosny, turning sharp round upon the last
+speaker, with a face divided between indignation and laughter.</p>
+
+<p>"I said, 'Good evening,'" replied Stubb, much disconcerted.</p>
+
+<p>"And why didn't you say, 'Good morning,' yesterday, eh?&mdash;when I met
+you in Boston, eh? He gave me the cut direct," turning to the company.
+"Mr. Benjamin Stubb, here, gave me the cut direct! It was the
+pepper-and-salt coat and the thunder-and-lightning breeches that Stubb
+couldn't think of bowing to when he was walking in &mdash;&mdash; Street, with a
+lady. Look here, Stubb,"&mdash;again facing the victim,&mdash;"what do you take
+me for? and what the devil do you take yourself for? I know your dirty
+family history. Your grandfather was a bricklayer, and the Lord knows
+who your great grandfather was. The best Huguenot blood of France runs
+in <i>my</i> veins! My ancestors were fighting at Ivry and Jarnac, while
+yours were peddling coal and potatoes about London streets, or digging
+mud in a ditch, for any thing you or I know to the contrary." Stubb
+gasped. "Your father has a crest painted on his carriage; but where
+did he get it? Why, Cribb, the engraver, stole it for him out of the
+British peerage."</p>
+
+<p>Stubb, who was weak and timorous, here rose in great confusion,
+muttered something about conduct unbecoming to a gentleman, and
+meaning to require an explanation, and abruptly left the room.</p>
+
+<p>"That job is finished," said Rosny, composedly seating himself. "<i>His</i>
+bill is settled for him."</p>
+
+<p>"But, Dick," said Morton, who had been laughing in his sleeve during
+the scene, "do you want to be considered as a Frenchman or an
+American?"</p>
+
+<p>"I'm an American," answered Rosny&mdash;"an American and a democrat, every
+inch."</p>
+
+<p>Rosny had adopted democratic principles and habits partly out of spite
+against the class to which Stubb belonged, and which he was pleased to
+designate as the "codfish aristocracy," and partly because he thought
+that he could thus most effectually gain the ends of his impatient,
+hankering ambition. His ancestor, the head of an eminent Huguenot
+race, had been driven to America by the persecutions which followed
+the revocation of the edict of Nantes. The family had lived ever since
+in poverty and obscurity; yet this fiery young democrat nourished an
+inordinate pride of birth, and never forgot that he was descended from
+a line of warlike nobles.</p>
+
+<p>"No, no," said Rosny, as Morton pushed a glass towards him, "drinking
+is against my rule&mdash; Well, as it's about the last time,"&mdash;filling the
+glass,&mdash;"here's to you all."</p>
+
+<p>"The last time!" said Morton; "that's a dismal word. If my next four
+years are as pleasant as these last have been, I will never complain
+of them."</p>
+
+<p>"I tell you, boys," said Meredith, who was tranquilly puffing at his
+cigar, "the cream of our lives is skimmed already. Rough and tumble,
+hurry and worry&mdash;that will be the story with most of us, more or less,
+to the end of our days."</p>
+
+<p>"Rough and tumble!" exclaimed Rosny; "so much the better. 'Scots play
+best at the roughest game'&mdash;that's just my case. Who wants to be
+always paddling about on smooth water? Close reefed topsails, a gale
+astern, and breakers all round&mdash;that's the game."</p>
+
+<p>"Every one to his taste," said Chester, shrugging his shoulders. "I
+suppose a salamander loves the fire, but I don't. 'The race of
+ambition'&mdash;'the unconquerable will'&mdash;pshaw! <i>Cui bono?</i> One chases
+after his object, and when he has got it, he turns from it, and chases
+another. I profess the philosophy of Horace&mdash;enjoy the hour as it
+flies. Ah! he was a model man, a man after my own heart, a gentleman
+and a man of the world. He could drink his Falernian, and thank the
+gods for their gifts."</p>
+
+<p>Rosny whispered in Morton's ear, "Chester ought to have been born a
+century ago, among the John Bulls, up in the cockloft of Brazen Nose
+College, or some such antediluvian hole."</p>
+
+<p>In spite of these derogatory remarks, Chester, besides being one of
+the best scholars in the class, was noted for a social, jovial
+disposition, which, though, like Fluellen's valor, a little out of
+fashion, made him a general favorite.</p>
+
+<p>"Speaking of the next four years," said Wren, "I wonder what plans
+each of us has made for that time. For my part, I have no plan at all,
+and should be glad to profit by the suggestions of the rest. Come,
+Chester, what do you mean to do?"</p>
+
+<p>"Expatiate," said Chester, expanding his hands, and thereby revealing
+an odd little antique ring which he wore; "take mine ease, roaming,
+like the bee, from blossom to blossom. I will leave the earnest
+men&mdash;bah!&mdash;the men with a mission&mdash;to grub on in their vocation. I
+will renounce this land of cotton mills and universal suffrage. First
+for Paris, to walk the Boulevards, and go to the masked balls and the
+opera;&mdash;<i>vive la bagatelle!</i>&mdash;then for Rome, to saunter through the
+Vatican and the picture galleries,&mdash;but not to moralize with a long
+face over fallen grandeur, and the mutability of human affairs. No,
+no, gentlemen, I belong to another school of philosophy. I will sit
+among the ruins of the Forum, and laugh, like Democritus, at the image
+of Death. Then I will recreate myself at Capri, like the Cæsars before
+me; then enjoy the <i>dolce far niente</i> at Florence, and read the Tuscan
+poets in the shades of Vallombrosa."</p>
+
+<p>"But, Chester," interposed Wren, "don't you ever mean to marry and
+settle down?"</p>
+
+<p>"I object to that phrase, 'settle down.' It calls up disagreeable
+images. It reminds one of the backwoods, log cabins, men in shirt
+sleeves, and piles of pine boards and lumber. Yes, certainly, I mean
+to marry. What man of taste would leave matrimony out of his scheme of
+life? One likes to gather his treasures round him, his pictures, his
+vases, and statues; and how can he adorn his rooms with an ornament
+more exquisite&mdash;where can he find a piece of furniture more charmingly
+moulded&mdash;than a beautiful woman?"</p>
+
+<p>This flourish, between jest and earnest, he pronounced with a graceful
+wave of his hand.</p>
+
+<p>"If, when you have married your beautiful woman," said Morton, "you
+find you have caught a Tartar, it will serve you right."</p>
+
+<p>"Hear him," said Chester; "hear the barbarian. He will always be
+conjuring up some image of disquiet. 'Rest, rest, perturbed spirit.'"</p>
+
+<p>"He could not rest, if he tried," said Horace Vinal.</p>
+
+<p>"No, he is one of those unfortunates who lie under a sentence of
+endless activity. It is a disease, with which men are afflicted for
+the sins of their ancestors; and for the sins of mine I was born among
+a whole nation of such. Perpetual motion, bustle and whirl,&mdash;I grow
+dizzy to think of it. They cannot rest themselves, and will not let
+any one else rest. Always pursuing, always doing, never enjoying. A
+true American cannot enjoy. He would build a steam saw mill in
+Arcadia, and dam up the four rivers of Paradise for cotton factories."</p>
+
+<p>"But, Chester," said Wren, "that is not at all like Morton; you know
+he hates utilitarianism."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, but still he cannot rest. He would not build saw mills and dams;
+but he would be sure to fire his rifle at some of Adam's live stock,
+and set all Eden by the ears. Come, Morton, I have told the company my
+plans. Let us hear what yours are."</p>
+
+<p>"My guardian wishes me to enter the law school."</p>
+
+<p>"You are twenty-one now," said Vinal, "and can do as you please."</p>
+
+<p>Vinal was a very tall and slender young man, with a strongly marked
+face, though thin and pale; a grave, thoughtful eye, and compressed
+lips, expressing a kind of nervous self-control. His dress was very
+elaborate and scrupulous, though without the smallest trace of
+foppery. He was less popular in the class than Morton, but had the
+reputation of greater talents. This he owed, perhaps, to his habitual
+reserve; for every one thought that he understood Morton thoroughly,
+while few pretended to fathom the silent and self-contained Vinal.</p>
+
+<p>"I should like well enough to study law," was Morton's non-committal
+answer.</p>
+
+<p>"I thought, Morton, that you were more of a philosopher. Here you are,
+a young fellow, full of blood, and worth half a million, and yet you
+speak of buckling down to the law. That is all well enough for poor
+dogs like me, who go into the mill from necessity. We drudge on for
+twenty years or more, till we have scraped together a competency, or
+something better, perhaps, and then we find that we have forgotten how
+to enjoy it. We have grown so used to harness that we are good for
+nothing out of it, and sacrifice body and soul to our profession. You
+have reached already the point that we are straining for. The world is
+all before you, man; launch out and enjoy yourself."</p>
+
+<p>"Didn't you just say," asked Rosny, "that Morton couldn't rest, if he
+tried?"</p>
+
+<p>"I said he could not rest, but I did not say he could not enjoy
+himself. Look at him: his cheek is ruddier and browner than any of us.
+Nobody would believe that a fellow like that was not made to enjoy
+life. I know Morton. He could roam from blossom to blossom, as Chester
+says, with as good a will as any body. He has an eye for the fair sex,
+correct as he is at present. He knows a pretty face from a plain one.
+The devil will catch him yet with a black eye and a rosy cheek."</p>
+
+<p>"Then," said Morton, "he will show his good opinion of my taste."</p>
+
+<p>Rosny, who had his own reasons for disliking Vinal, here broke in
+without ceremony,&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"Be gad, Vinal, he will bait his hook differently when he fishes for
+you."</p>
+
+<p>"How will that be, Dick?" said Meredith.</p>
+
+<p>"With a five dollar bank note, and a lying puff in a newspaper; and
+Vinal will jump at it like a mackerel at a red rag."</p>
+
+<p>Vinal laughed, but with a bad grace.</p>
+
+<p>"Riches and fame!" said Chester, anxious to smooth away all traces of
+irritation&mdash;"riches and fame! I call those legitimate objects of
+pursuit; and the black eye is positively praiseworthy. Come, Morton,
+let us hear your plan. You have not told it yet."</p>
+
+<p>"I defer to Rosny&mdash;he is my senior. Dick, some ten or twelve years
+from this, I suppose I shall vote against you for the presidency."</p>
+
+<p>"Thank you. By that time you will have no whig party left to vote
+with. The democrats will have it all their own way."</p>
+
+<p>"I have often wondered what could have induced a driving man of the
+world like you to come to college at all. You have been here more than
+a year; and in the same time, with your previous knowledge, you might
+have learned as much any where else at half the cost. You are not the
+fellow to regard a degree of A. M. with superstitious veneration."</p>
+
+<p>"You are right there, colonel. I am of no kith nor kin to some of your
+New England old fogies, who would give their souls for a D. D. or an
+LL. D.&mdash;and get it, too, though they know no more Greek or Hebrew than
+I know of Choctaw, and can barely manage to stumble along through the
+Latin Testament. What's a piece of sheep's skin to me? Humbug is the
+current coin all the world over, and just as much in this free and
+enlightened country as any where else. I have schemes on foot,&mdash;not
+political,&mdash;no matter what they are,&mdash;out in the western country; and
+I happen to know that a degree from Harvard University is the medicine
+that suits my case; with that for my credentials, I shall carry it
+over all competitors. Yes, boys, gammon is the word; and the man who
+would rise in the world must use the stepping stones."</p>
+
+<p>"You're a victim of the national disease, Rosny," said Chester.
+"Rising in the world!&mdash;that's the idea that ruins us. It's that that
+makes us lean, starveling, nervous, restless, dyspeptic,
+hypochondriac,&mdash;the most prosperous and most uncomfortable people on
+earth. Sit down, man, and take your ease. What garden will thrive if
+every plant in it must be dug up every day, and set out in a better
+place?"</p>
+
+<p>"Ah, that's good doctrine for you. You have got nothing to gain, and a
+good deal to lose. Stand up for the <i>status quo</i>, old boy; I would, in
+your place. Look at me, though. I was cut adrift at fourteen,&mdash;parents
+dead,&mdash;not a cent in my pocket,&mdash;and since then I have tumbled along
+through the world as I could. You can't kill me. I have more lives
+than a cat. I have been thrown on my back a dozen times; but the
+harder I was flung down, the higher I bounced up again. Why, I have
+known the time when I was glad to earn a shilling by shovelling snow
+off a sidewalk. I have tried my hand at every thing,&mdash;printer's work,
+lecturing, politics, editing, keeping school,&mdash;and do you suppose I
+shall be content to rest in the mud all my days? Not a bit of it. I
+know my cue better. The time will come when you'll see me shooting up
+like a rocket."</p>
+
+<p>Here a broad glare against the window interrupted him, and, looking
+out, his auditors saw a bonfire blazing with peculiar splendor under
+the windows of the chamber where the Faculty were at that moment in
+solemn session. Three proctors and a tutor were hastening towards the
+scene of outrage, when a stentorian voice from the adjacent darkness
+roared forth a warning that there was a canister of gunpowder in the
+fire expected every moment to explode. The prudent officers therefore
+kept their distance, busying themselves with noting down the names of
+several innocent spectators, while the bonfire subsided to a natural
+death, the gunpowder hoax having perfectly succeeded.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Wren's guests resumed their seats, mingling with graver matters
+the usual badinage of a college gathering; and when at length they
+separated, only a lonely light or two glimmered from among the many
+windows of the academic barracks which overlook the college green.</p>
+<br>
+<br><a name="chap6"></a>
+<br>
+<br>
+<h3>CHAPTER VI.</h3>
+<table align="center" summary="quote4">
+	<tr><td><small>As if with Heaven a bargain they had made<br>
+	To practise goodness&mdash;and to be well paid,<br>
+	They, too, devoutly as their fathers did,<br>
+	Sin, sack, and sugar, equally forbid;<br>
+	Holding each hour unpardonably spent<br>
+	That on the leger leaves no monument.&mdash;<i>Parsons</i>.</small></td></tr>
+</table>
+<br>
+<br>
+<p>Mr. Erastus Flintlock sat at his counting room, in his old
+leather-bottomed arm chair. Vassall Morton, his newly emancipated
+ward, just twenty-one, stood before him, the undisputed master of his
+father's ample wealth.</p>
+
+<p>"What, no profession, Mr. Morton? None whatever, sir?"</p>
+
+<p>"No, sir, none whatever."</p>
+
+<p>The old man's leathery countenance expressed mingled wrath and
+concern.</p>
+
+<p>Flintlock was a stanch old New Englander, boasting himself a true
+descendant of the Puritans, whose religious tenets he inherited, along
+with most of their faults, and not a few of their virtues. He was
+narrow as a vinegar cruet, and just in all his dealings. There were
+three subjects on which he could converse with more or less
+intelligence&mdash;politics, theology, and business. Beyond these, he knew
+nothing; and except American history and practical science, he had an
+indistinct idea that any thing more came of evil. He distrusted a
+foreigner, and abhorred a Roman Catholic. All poetry, but Milton and
+the hymn book, was an abomination in his eyes; and he looked upon
+fiction as an emanation of the devil. To the list of the cardinal
+virtues he added another, namely, attention to business. In his early
+days, he had come from his native Connecticut with letters to Morton's
+father, who, seeing his value, took him as a clerk, placed unbounded
+trust in him, and at last made him his partner. He was a youth of slow
+parts, solid judgment, solemn countenance, steady habits, and a most
+unpliable conscience. He had no follies, allowed himself no
+indulgences, and could enjoy no other pleasures than business and
+church-going. He attended service morning, afternoon, and evening, and
+never smiled on Sundays. His old age was as upright and stiff-necked
+as might have been augured from such a youth. He thought the rising
+generation were in a very bad way, and once gave his son a scorching
+lecture on vanity and arrogance, because the latter, who had been two
+years at college, very modestly begged to be excused from carrying a
+roll of sample cotton, a yard and a half long, from his father's store
+at one end of the town, to the shop of a retail dealer at the other.</p>
+
+<p>"What, no profession, Mr. Morton?"</p>
+
+<p>"None whatever, sir."</p>
+
+<p>Morton was prepared for the consequence of these fatal words, and
+sought to arm himself with the needful patience. It would be folly, he
+knew, to debate the point with his guardian, who was tough and
+unmanageable as a hickory stump; who would never see any side of a
+question but his own, and on whose impervious brain reasons fell like
+rain drops on a tarpauline. Flintlock, therefore, opened fire
+unanswered, and discoursed for a full hour on duty, propriety, and a
+due respect for what he called the general sense of the community,
+which, as he assured his auditor, demands that every one should have
+some fixed and stated calling, by which he may be recognized as a
+worthy and useful member of society. Sometimes he grew angry, and
+scolded his ward with great vehemence; then subsided into a pathetic
+strain, and exhorted him, for the sake of his excellent father, not to
+grow old in idleness and frivolity. Morton, respectful, but obdurate,
+heard him to an end, assured him that, though renouncing commerce and
+the professions, his life would by no means be an idle one, thanked
+him for his care of his property, and took his leave; while the old
+merchant sank back into his chair, and groaned dismally, because the
+son of his respected patron was on the road to perdition.</p>
+
+<p>A moment's retrogression will explain the young man's recusancy.</p>
+
+<p>On a May evening, some two months before the close of his college
+career, Morton sat in lonely meditation on a wooden bench, by the
+classic border of Fresh Pond. By every canon of polite fiction, his
+meditation ought to have been engrossed by some object of romantic
+devotion; but in truth they were of a nature wholly mundane and
+sublunary.</p>
+
+<p>He had been much exercised of late upon the choice of a career for his
+future life. He liked none of the professions for itself, and had no
+need to embrace it for support. He loved action, and loved study; was
+ambitious and fond of applause. He had, moreover, enough of the
+American in his composition never to be happy except when in pursuit
+of something; together with a disposition not very rare among young
+men in New England, though seldom there, or elsewhere, joined to his
+abounding health and youthful spirits&mdash;a tendency to live for the
+future, and look at acts and things with an eye to their final issues.</p>
+
+<p>Thierry's Norman Conquest had fallen into his hands soon after he
+entered college. The whole delighted him; but he read and re-read the
+opening chapters, which exhibit the movements of the various races in
+their occupancy of the west of Europe. This first gave him an impulse
+towards ethnological inquiries. He soon began to find an absorbing
+interest in tracing the distinctions, moral, intellectual, and
+physical, of different races, as shown in their history, their
+mythologies, their languages, their legends, their primitive art,
+literature, and way of life. The idea grew upon him of devoting his
+life to such studies.</p>
+
+<p>Seated on the wooden bench at the edge of Fresh Pond, he revolved, for
+the hundredth time, his proposed scheme, and summed up what he
+regarded as its manifold advantages. It would enable him to indulge
+his passion for travel, lead him over rocks, deserts, and mountains,
+conduct him to Tartar tents and Cossack hovels, make him intimate with
+the most savage and disgusting of barbarians; in short, give full
+swing to his favorite propensities, and call into life all his
+energies of body and mind. In view of this prospect, he clinched his
+long-cherished purpose, devoting himself to ethnology for the rest of
+his days.</p>
+
+<p>He had a youthful way of thinking that any resolution deliberately
+adopted by him must needs be final and conclusive, and was fully
+convinced that his present determination was a species of destiny,
+involving one of three results&mdash;that he should meet an early death,
+which he thought very likely; that he should be wholly disabled by
+illness, which he thought scarcely possible; or that, in the fulness
+of time, say twenty or twenty-five years, his labors would have issue
+in some prodigious work, redounding to his own honor and the
+unspeakable profit of science.</p>
+<br>
+<br><a name="chap7"></a>
+<br>
+<br>
+<h3>CHAPTER VII.</h3>
+<table align="center" summary="quote5">
+	<tr><td><small>'Tis a dull thing to travel like a mill horse,<br>
+	Still in the place he was born in, round and blinded.<br>
+	&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
+	&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
+	&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
+	&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
+	&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
+	<i>Beaumont and Fletcher</i>.</small></td></tr>
+</table>
+<br>
+<br>
+<p>A novel-maker may claim a privilege which his betters must forego. So,
+in the teeth of dramatic unities, let the story leap a chasm of some
+two years.</p>
+
+<p>Not that the void was a void to Morton. His nature spurred him into
+perpetual action; but his wanderings were over at length; and he and
+Meredith sat under the porch of Morton's house, a few miles from town.
+The features of the latter were swarthy from exposures, while those of
+his friend were somewhat pale, and had the expression of one
+insufferably bored.</p>
+
+<p>"Colonel, you are the luckiest fellow I know. Here you have been
+following the backbone of the continent from Darien to the head of the
+Missouri, mixing yourself up with Spaniards and Aztecs, poking sticks
+into the crater of Popocatapetl, and living hand and glove with
+Blackfeet and Assinnaboins, while I have been doing penance among
+bonds and mortgages, and title deeds and leases. My father has thrown
+up responsibility and gone to Europe&mdash;and so has every body else&mdash;and
+left all on my shoulders."</p>
+
+<p>"Your time will come."</p>
+
+<p>"I hope so."</p>
+
+<p>"But what news is there?"</p>
+
+<p>"Nothing."</p>
+
+<p>"What, nothing since I went away?"</p>
+
+<p>"The old story. You know it as well as I. Now and then, a new
+engagement came out. Mrs. A. approved it, and Mrs. B. didn't; and then
+characters were discussed on both sides. Something has been said of
+the balls, the opera, and what not; with the usual talk about the
+wickedness of the democrats and the fanaticism of the abolitionists."</p>
+
+<p>"You appear to have led a gay life."</p>
+
+<p>"Very!&mdash;we need a war, an invasion,&mdash;something of the sort. It would
+put life into us, and rid us of a great deal of nonsense. You were
+born with a stimulus in yourself, and can stand this stagnant sort of
+existence; but I need something more lively."</p>
+
+<p>"Then go with me on my next journey."</p>
+
+<p>"Are you thinking of another already? Rest in peace, and thank Heaven
+that you have come home in a whole skin."</p>
+
+<p>"I have done the North American continent; but there are four more
+left, not to mention the islands."</p>
+
+<p>"And you mean to see them all?"</p>
+
+<p>"Certainly."</p>
+
+<p>"Your science is a convenient hobby. It carries you wherever you fancy
+to go."</p>
+
+<p>"You could not do better than go with me."</p>
+
+<p>"I know it; but, if wishes were horses&mdash;&mdash; I am training Dick to take
+my place. I am a model elder brother to that youngster in the way of
+cultivating his mind and morals; and when I have him up to the mark, I
+shall gain a year's furlough for my pains. But when is your next
+journey to begin&mdash;next week?"</p>
+
+<p>"No, I mean to pin myself down here, and dig like a mole, for the next
+ten months, at least."</p>
+
+<p>"If I had not had ocular proof of what a determined dig you can be, I
+should set down your studies as mere humbug."</p>
+
+<p>"But I wish to hear the news."</p>
+
+<p>"I would tell it willingly, if I knew any."</p>
+
+<p>"Have the Primroses come home from Europe yet?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes."</p>
+
+<p>"And the Everills?"</p>
+
+<p>"I believe not."</p>
+
+<p>"Nor the Leslies, I suppose."</p>
+
+<p>"For a reasonably sensible and straightforward fellow, you have a
+queer way of making inquiries. You question like a lady's letter, with
+the pith in the postscript. You ask after the Primroses and the
+Everills, a stupid, priggish set, for whom you care nothing, as
+earnestly as if you were in love with them, and then grow indifferent
+when you come to the Leslies, whom you like."</p>
+
+<p>"Did I?" said Morton, in some discomposure; "I ask their pardon. Have
+they come home?"</p>
+
+<p>"Not yet, but I believe they mean to come as soon as they have staid
+their year out."</p>
+
+<p>"And that will be very soon&mdash;early in the spring, or sooner."</p>
+
+<p>"Now I think of it, I made the acquaintance, a few evenings ago, of a
+person who, I believe, is a relation or connection of yours&mdash;Miss
+Fanny Euston."</p>
+
+<p>"O, yes, she is my third, fourth, or fifth cousin, or something of
+that sort; but I have not seen her since she was ten years old. She
+was a great romp, then, and very plain."</p>
+
+<p>"That last failing is cured. She has grown very handsome."</p>
+
+<p>"The first failing ought to be cured, too, by this time."</p>
+
+<p>"I am not so clear on that point. She is a girl with an abundance of
+education, and a good deal of a certain kind of accomplishment&mdash;music,
+and so on&mdash;but no breeding at all. If she had had the training of good
+society, she would have been one of a thousand. As it is she cares for
+nobody, and does and says whatever comes into her mind, without the
+least regard to consequences or appearances."</p>
+
+<p>"Does she affect naturalness, independence, and all that?"</p>
+
+<p>"No, she affects nothing. The material is admirable. It only needs to
+be refined, polished, and toned down. It's unlucky, colonel, but in
+this world every thing worth having is broken in pieces and mixed with
+something that one doesn't want. It's an even balance, good and bad;
+there's no use in going off into raptures about any thing. One thing
+is certain, though; this cousin of yours has character enough to
+supply material for a dozen Miss Primroses, without any visible
+diminution."</p>
+
+<p>"I should like to see her. I'll go to-morrow."</p>
+
+<p>"You'd better. But now tell me something more about your journey."</p>
+
+<p>And, in reply to his friend's questions, Morton proceeded to relate
+such incidents as had befallen him.</p>
+<br>
+<br><a name="chap8"></a>
+<br>
+<br>
+<h3>CHAPTER VIII.</h3>
+<table align="center" summary="quote6">
+	<tr><td><small>
+	&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
+	&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
+	&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Beauty is a witch<br>
+	Against whose charms faith melteth into blood.<br>
+	<i>D. Pedro</i>.&mdash;If thou wilt hold longer argument,<br>
+	Do it in notes.<br>
+	<i>Benedick</i>.&mdash;Now, <i>divine air</i>, now is his soul ravished.<br>
+	&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
+	&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
+	&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
+	&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
+	&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
+	<i>Much Ado about Nothing</i>.</small></td></tr>
+</table>
+<br>
+<br>
+<p>Morton visited his cousin, Miss Fanny Euston, a guest, for a few days,
+at a friend's house in town. By good fortune, as he thought it, he
+found her alone; and, as he conversed with her, he employed
+himself&mdash;after a practice usual with him&mdash;in studying her character,
+and making internal comments upon it. These insidious reflections,
+condensed into a paragraph, would have been somewhat as follows:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"A fine figure, and a very handsome face; but there is a lurking devil
+in her eye, and about the corners of her mouth." Here some ten minutes
+of animated dialogue ensued before his observations had shaped
+themselves into further results. "She is exceedingly clever; she knows
+how to think and act for herself. I should not like to cross her will.
+There is fire enough in her to make a hundred women interesting. She
+is none of our frosty New England beauties. She could love a man to
+the death, and hate him as well. She could be a heroine or a tigress.
+Every thing about her is wild and chaotic, the unformed elements of a
+superb woman."</p>
+
+<p>Here, the conversation having lasted a half hour or more, his
+imagination began to disturb the deductions of his philosophy, and he
+was no longer in a mood of just psychological analysis, when, to his
+vexation, his cousin's hostess, Miss Jones, entering, brought his
+<i>tête-à-tête</i> to a close. She displayed a marvellous fluency of
+discourse, and was eloquent upon books, parties, paintings, and the
+opera.</p>
+
+<p>"I need not ask you, Mr. Morton, if you have seen Tennyson's new
+poem."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes&mdash;at the bookseller's."</p>
+
+<p>"But surely you have read it."</p>
+
+<p>"No, I am behind the age."</p>
+
+<p>"Then thank Heaven for it," exclaimed his unceremonious cousin; "for
+of all insipidity, and affectation, and fine-spun, wire-drawn trash,
+Tennyson carries away the palm. Every body reads him because he is the
+fashion, and every body admires him because he is the fashion. But he
+is a bubble, a film, a gossamer; there's nothing in him."</p>
+
+<p>This explosion called forth a protest from the poet's admirer.</p>
+
+<p>"May I ask," said Morton to his cousin, "who are your literary
+favorites?"</p>
+
+<p>"Not the latter-day poets&mdash;the Tennysonian school; their puling
+mannerism is an insult to the Saxon tongue."</p>
+
+<p>"But," urged Miss Jones, "you are not quite reasonable."</p>
+
+<p>"Of course I am not. It's not a woman's province to be reasonable."</p>
+
+<p>"Do you subscribe to these poetical heresies, Mr. Morton?"</p>
+
+<p>"On the contrary, I think that Tennyson has often great beauties."</p>
+
+<p>"If he sometimes wrote like an angel," pursued Fanny Euston, "I should
+find no patience to see it in a man who could put upon paper such
+parrot rhymes as these:&mdash;</p>
+<table align="center" summary="quote7">
+	<tr><td><small>'Not a whit of thy tuwhoo,<br>
+	&nbsp;Thee to woo to thy tuwhit,<br>
+	&nbsp;Thee to woo to thy tuwhit,<br>
+	&nbsp;With a lengthened loud halloo,<br>
+	&nbsp;Tuwhoo, tuwhit, tuwhit, tuwhoo-o-o!'</small></td></tr>
+</table>
+
+<p>Bah! it puts one in a passion to hear such twaddle."</p>
+
+<p>"I see," said her friend, "that nothing less than your own music will
+calm your indignation. Pray let us hear the ballad which you set to
+music this morning."</p>
+
+<p>"I will sing, if you wish it; but not that ballad."</p>
+
+<p>And she seated herself before the open piano.</p>
+
+<p>"What do you choose, Mr. Morton?"</p>
+
+<p>"The Marseillaise. That, I think, is in your vein."</p>
+
+<p>"Ah! you can choose well!"</p>
+
+<p>And, running her fingers over the keys, she launched at once into the
+warlike strains of the hymn of revolution. Her voice and execution
+were admirable; and though by no means unconscious that she was
+producing an effect, she sang with a fire, energy, and seeming
+recklessness that thrilled like lightning through her auditor's veins.
+He rose involuntarily from his seat. For that evening his study of
+character was ended, and philosophy dislodged from her last
+stronghold.</p>
+
+<p>Half an hour later he was riding homeward in a mood quite novel to his
+experience. He pushed his horse to a keen trot, as if by fierceness
+of motion to keep pace with the fiery influence that was kindling all
+his nerves.</p>
+
+<p>"I have had my fancies before this," he thought,&mdash;"in fact I have
+almost been in love; but that feeling was no more like this than a
+draught from a clear spring is like a draught of spiced wine."</p>
+
+<p>That night he fully expected to be haunted by a vision of Fanny
+Euston; but his slumbers were unromantically dreamless.</p>
+
+<p>Three days later, he ventured another visit; but his cousin had
+returned to her home in the country. By this time he was conscious of
+a great abatement of ardor; and his equanimity was little moved by the
+disappointment. In a week he had learned to look back on his transient
+emotion as an effervescence of the moment, and to regard his relative
+with no slight interest, indeed, yet by no means in a light which
+could blind him to her glaring faults. He summoned up all that he
+could recall of herself and her family, and chiefly of her father,
+whom he remembered in his boyhood as a rough, athletic man, whose
+black and bushy eyebrows were usually contracted into something which
+seemed like a frown. These boyish recollections were far from doing
+Euston justice. He was a man of masculine and determined character.
+His will was strong, his passions violent; he was full of prejudices,
+and when thwarted or contradicted, his rage was formidable. His honor
+was unquestioned; he was most bluntly and unmanageably honest. Yet
+through the rock and iron of his character, there ran, known to but
+few, a delicate vein of poetic feeling. The music of his daughter, or
+the verses of his favorite Burns, could often bring tears to his stern
+gray eyes. For his wife, whom he had married in a fit of pique and
+disappointment, when little more than a boy, he cared nothing; but his
+fondness for his daughter was unbounded. He alone could control her;
+for she loved him ardently, and he was the only living thing of which
+she stood in awe.</p>
+<br>
+<br><a name="chap9"></a>
+<br>
+<br>
+<h3>CHAPTER IX.</h3>
+<table align="center" summary="quote8">
+	<tr><td><small>Elle ne manque jamais de saisir promptement<br>
+	L'apparente lueur du moindre attachement,<br>
+	D'en semer la nouvelle avec beaucoup de joie,&mdash;<i>Le Tartufe</i>.</small></td></tr>
+</table>
+<br>
+<br>
+<p>Among Morton's acquaintance was a certain Miss Blanche Blondel. They
+had been schoolmates when children; and as, at a later date, Miss
+Blanche had been fond of making long visits to a friend in Cambridge,
+during term time, Morton, in common with many others, had a college
+acquaintance with her, so that they were now on a footing of easy
+intercourse. Not that he liked her. On the contrary, she had inspired
+him with a very emphatic aversion; but being rather a skirmisher on
+the outposts of society, than enrolled in the main battalion, she was
+anxious to make the most of the acquaintance she had. She had the eyes
+of an Argus, and was as sly, smooth, watchful, and <i>rusée</i> as a
+tortoise shell cat; wonderfully dexterous at finding or making gossip,
+and unwearied in sowing it, broadcast, to the right and left.</p>
+
+<p>One evening Morton was at a ball, crowded to the verge of suffocation.
+At length he found himself in a corner from which there was no
+retreat, while the stately proportions of Mrs. Frederic Goldenberg
+barred his onward progress. But when that distinguished lady chanced
+to move aside, she revealed the countenance of Miss Blondel, beaming
+on him like the moon after an eclipse. She nodded and smiled. There
+was no escape. Morton smiled hypocritically, and said, "Good evening."
+Blanche, as usual, was eager for conversation, and, after a few
+commonplaces, she said, turning up her eyes at him with an arch
+expression,&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"I have a piece of news to tell you, Mr. Morton."</p>
+
+<p>"Ah!" replied Morton, expecting something disagreeable.</p>
+
+<p>"A piece of news that you will be charmed to hear."</p>
+
+<p>"Indeed."</p>
+
+<p>"Why, how cold you are! And I know that, in your heart, you are
+burning to hear it."</p>
+
+<p>"If you think so, you are determined to give my patience a hard
+schooling."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, I will not tantalize you any more. Miss Edith Leslie sailed
+from Liverpool for home last Wednesday."</p>
+
+<p>"Ah!"</p>
+
+<p>"How cold you are again! Are you not glad to hear it?"</p>
+
+<p>"Certainly&mdash;all her friends will be glad to hear it."</p>
+
+<p>"Upon my word, Mr. Morton, you are worse and worse. When a gentleman
+dances twice with a young lady on class day, and twice at Mrs.
+Fanfaron's ball, and joins her in the street besides, has she not a
+right to feel hurt when he hears with such profound indifference of
+her coming home after a year's absence?"</p>
+
+<p>Morton could hardly restrain the extremity of his distaste and
+impatience.</p>
+
+<p>"Miss Leslie, I imagine, would spend very little thought upon the
+matter." And he hastened, first to change the conversation, and then
+to close it altogether.</p>
+
+<p>Having escaped from his fair informant, he remained divided between
+pleasure at the tidings, and annoyance at the manner in which they had
+been told.</p>
+
+<p>In a few days Miss Leslie arrived. Her beauty had matured during her
+absence. She was conspicuously and brilliantly handsome, and was
+admired accordingly,&mdash;a fact which, though she could not but be
+conscious of it, seemed to affect her very little. Morton found her
+but slightly changed, with the same polished and quiet frankness, the
+same lively conversation, not without a tinge of sarcasm, and the same
+enthusiasm of character, betraying itself by an earnestness of manner,
+and never by any extravagance of expression. He had many opportunities
+of seeing her, Miss Blanche Blondel being but rarely present, and, in
+his growing admiration of her, the charms of his unbridled cousin
+faded more and more from his memory.</p>
+<br>
+<br><a name="chap10"></a>
+<br>
+<br>
+<h3>CHAPTER X.</h3>
+<table align="center" summary="quote9">
+	<tr><td><small>For three whole days you thus may rest<br>
+	From office business, news, and strife.&mdash;<i>Pope</i>.</small></td></tr>
+</table>
+<br>
+<br>
+<p>When the summer heats set in, Meredith, one evening, drove to Morton's
+house, and, arrayed in linen and grass-cloth, smoked his cigar under
+his friend's veranda with as much contentment as the thermometer at
+ninety would permit. The window at his side was that of the room which
+Morton used as his study, and the table was covered with books.</p>
+
+<p>"Colonel," said Meredith, "what a painstaking fellow you are! Ever
+since you left college&mdash;except when you were off on that journey,
+which was one of the most rational things you ever did in your
+life&mdash;you have been digging here among your books, as if you were some
+half-starved law student, with a prospect of matrimony."</p>
+
+<p>"I've done digging for the present. It's against my principles to work
+much in July and August."</p>
+
+<p>"What do you mean to do?"</p>
+
+<p>"Set out on a journey."</p>
+
+<p>"I suppose so. You are a lucky fellow."</p>
+
+<p>"Give yourself a vacation, and come with me."</p>
+
+<p>"No, I'm in for it for the next two months; but I will have my revenge
+before long."</p>
+
+<p>"Three days from your office will never ruin you or your family. Come
+with me to New Baden, if you can't do better."</p>
+
+<p>"I think I can manage that,&mdash;and I will."</p>
+
+<p>Accordingly, on Monday morning, they took the train thitherward.</p>
+<br>
+<br><a name="chap11"></a>
+<br>
+<br>
+<h3>CHAPTER XI.</h3>
+<table align="center" summary="quote10">
+	<tr><td><small>The company is 'mixed,' (the phrase I quote is<br>
+	As much as saying, they're below your notice.)&mdash;<i>Byron</i>.</small></td></tr>
+</table>
+<br>
+<br>
+<p>On reaching New Baden, towards night, they learned that there was to
+be a dance that evening, in the hall.</p>
+
+<p>"The deuse!" ejaculated Meredith, as they entered; "have we come all
+this distance to find old faces again at New Baden? Look at that
+corner."</p>
+
+<p>Morton looked, and beheld a solemn group taking no part in the
+amusements, but scrutinizing the scene with the air of superior
+beings. He recognized the familiar countenance of Mrs. Primrose, with
+her daughter, Miss Constance Primrose, and her daughter's friend, Miss
+Wallflower. There, too, was Mr. Benjamin Stubb, Morton's classmate,
+and Miss Primrose's reputed admirer, with several other kindred
+spirits. Stubb was a tall and very slender young man, with a grave and
+pallid visage, and an uncompromising rigidity of cravat. Though his
+brain was unfurnished, his morals were reasonably good, and he went
+regularly to church, believing that there was, he could not tell how,
+an inseparable connection between good society and the ritual of the
+English church. He prided himself on his gentlemanly deportment, and
+regarded a lady as a being who is under no circumstances to be
+approached, except through the medium of certain prescribed forms and
+ceremonies. He seldom noticed those whom he thought his inferiors, and
+was very formal and exact towards the select few whom he acknowledged
+as his equals. As to superiors, he confessed none, except in the
+highest ranks of the English aristocracy, upon whom he looked with
+great reverence. He thought that there was no really good society in
+America, except the society of Boston, of which he regarded himself
+and his connections as the <i>crême, de la crême</i>. He cherished a just
+hereditary scorn of upstarts and parvenus; for already nearly half a
+century had expired since the Stubbs began to rise on golden wings
+from their native mud. Nor was this their only claim to ancestral
+eminence; since a judicious investment of a little surplus income at
+the College of Heralds had revealed the gratifying truth that the
+Stubbs of Boston were lineal descendants of King Arthur.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Primrose was a very benevolent and estimable person, who knew
+nothing of the world beyond her own circle, and looked with dire
+reprehension on any deviation from the standard of morals and manners
+which she had been accustomed to regard as the correct and proper one.
+Miss Constance Primrose realized Stubb's most exalted ideal of a young
+lady. She was very pretty, but with a face cold and unchanging as
+marble. She carried an unquestionable air of good, not to say of high
+breeding; having in this point an advantage over her mother, whose
+style savored a little of the simplicity of her early surroundings.
+The material, indeed, was very slender; but it had received a
+creditable polish; and though she had nothing to say, she said it with
+an undeniable grace.</p>
+
+<p>Morton and Meredith paid their compliments to the group, the former
+hastening to mingle with the crowd again, while Meredith remained to
+exchange a few words with the pretty, modest, and too-much-neglected
+Miss Wallflower.</p>
+
+<p>"Upon my word, Mr. Meredith," said Mrs. Primrose, "Mr. Morton has
+found a singular pair of acquaintances."</p>
+
+<p>"O, yes," said Meredith; "those are particular friends of his."</p>
+
+<p>"Very singular!" murmured Mrs. Primrose.</p>
+
+<p>Morton was walking slowly up the hall, conversing with an odd-looking
+couple&mdash;a heavy, thick set man, in the fantastic finery of a Broadway
+swell, and a woman of five feet ten, thin and gaunt, with a yellow
+complexion, and a pair of fierce, glittering eyes, like an Indian
+squaw in ill humor. She was gorgeous in silk, brocade, and diamonds,
+and her huge, gloveless, bony fingers sparkled with jewelry. Her
+husband, on his part, displayed a mighty breastpin, in the shape of a
+war horse rampant, in diamond frostwork.</p>
+
+<p>"Mr. Meredith," murmured the horrified Mrs. Primrose, "pray who are
+those persons?"</p>
+
+<p>"Aborigines from Red River. Mr. and Mrs. Major Orson, of Natchitoches.
+He is a speculator, I believe, of more wealth than reputation."</p>
+
+<p>"And <i>are</i> they friends of Mr. Morton?"</p>
+
+<p>"O, Morton is a student of humanity. He met them at the tea table, and
+thinks them remarkable specimens of natural history."</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Primrose did not hear this explanation. The trio had now
+approached within a few yards; and her whole attention was absorbed in
+listening to the high, penetrating voice of the female ogre.</p>
+
+<p>"There's one great and glorious thing about Natchitoches," remarked
+Mrs. Orson.</p>
+
+<p>"What's that?" asked Morton.</p>
+
+<p>"You can get every thing there to eat that heart can wish."</p>
+
+<p>"That's a fact," said the major; "there ain't no discount on that."</p>
+
+<p>"Game, and fish, and fruit, and vegetables," pursued the lady; "any
+thing and every thing. The north can't compete with it, I tell <i>you</i>.
+There's the pompano! O, my! Did you ever eat a pompano?"</p>
+
+<p>"Never."</p>
+
+<p>"Then you <i>have</i> got something to look forward to. That's a fish that
+<i>is</i> a fish. Why, sir, you can begin at the tail, and eat him clean
+away to the head, and the bones is just like marrow! It makes my mouth
+water to think of it!"</p>
+
+<p>"O, hush!" cried the major, with sympathetic emotion.</p>
+
+<p>"And then the fruit! Think of the peaches! They beat your nasty little
+northern peaches all holler!"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," added the major, and to have your own boys to shin up the tree
+and throw 'em down to you; and to sit under the shade all the
+afternoon eating 'em;&mdash;that's the way to live!"</p>
+
+<p>"It's all the little niggers is good for, just to pick fruit."</p>
+
+<p>"Troublesome animals, I should think," observed Morton.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, they be; and the growed-up niggers ain't much better. To think
+of that girl, Cynthy, major. My! wasn't she one of 'em! The major is,
+out of all account, too tender to his niggers, and if it warn't for
+me, they wouldn't get a speck of justice done. Why, what are all those
+folks moving for? My! supper's ready. I'll go in with this gentleman,
+major, and you may foller with any pretty gal that you can get to come
+with you. I ain't a jealous woman"&mdash;turning to Morton&mdash;"I let the
+major do pretty much what he pleases."</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Primrose drew a deep breath. "There must be"&mdash;thus she communed
+with herself&mdash;"something essentially vulgar in the mind of that young
+man, if he can neglect a cultivated and refined young lady like
+Constance, and at the same time find pleasure in the conversation of a
+person like that." And she considered within herself whether it would
+not be best to warn Constance not to encourage any advances which he
+might in future make. On second thoughts, reflecting that his position
+was unquestionable, his wealth great, and that she had never heard any
+thing against his morals, she determined to suspend all action for the
+present, keeping a close watch, meanwhile, on his behavior.</p>
+
+<p>While Morton was thus brought to the bar in the matronly breast of
+Mrs. Primrose, while the jury were bringing in a verdict of guilty,
+joined to a recommendation to mercy, the unconscious young man was
+leading his companion to the supper room; where, furnishing her with a
+huge plate of oysters, he left her in perfect contentment.</p>
+
+<p>Not long after, he encountered Meredith.</p>
+
+<p>"How do you like your friend in the diamonds?"</p>
+
+<p>"She's a superb specimen; about as civilized, with all her jewelry, as
+a Pawnee squaw. She has a vein of womanhood, though. I saw her, in the
+tea room, fondle a kitten whose foot had been trodden upon, as
+tenderly as if it had been a child."</p>
+
+<p>"If you had not been so busy with her, you would have met a person
+much better worth your time."</p>
+
+<p>"Who's that?"</p>
+
+<p>"Miss Fanny Euston."</p>
+
+<p>"Do you mean that she is here?"</p>
+
+<p>"She <i>was</i> here,&mdash;in that room adjoining. But she has gone; you'll see
+nothing of her to-night."</p>
+
+<p>"Will not her being here induce you to stay?"</p>
+
+<p>The question, as he spoke it, had a sound of frankness; but the
+shameful truth must be confessed, that, in spite of his friendship for
+Meredith, and his admiration of Miss Leslie, he was a little jealous
+of his friend.</p>
+
+<p>"No," replied Meredith, "it's out of the question. I must be off the
+day after to-morrow. By the way, you never told me how you liked Miss
+Euston."</p>
+
+<p>"A rough diamond, needing nothing but to be cut, polished, and set!"</p>
+
+<p>"It's too late, I think, for that. The polishing should have begun
+before eighteen. She is quite unformed, and quite unconscious of being
+so. I'll leave you here to fall in love with her, if you like; but if
+you do, colonel, you'll be a good deal younger than I take you for."</p>
+
+<p>There was something in his friend's tone which led Morton half to
+suspect the truth. Meredith had himself a <i>penchant</i> for Miss Fanny
+Euston, held in abeyance by a very lively perception of her faults.</p>
+<br>
+<br><a name="chap12"></a>
+<br>
+<br>
+<h3>CHAPTER XII.</h3>
+<center><small>Will you woo this wildcat?&mdash;<i>Katharine and
+Petruchio</i>.</small></center>
+<br>
+<br>
+<p>Meredith went away, as he had proposed, leaving Morton at New Baden.
+The latter soon came to the opinion that he had never yet found so
+interesting a subject of psychological observation as that afforded
+him in the person of his relative, Miss Euston. She seemed to him the
+most wayward of mortals; yet in the midst of this lawlessness,
+generous instincts were constantly betraying themselves, and a certain
+native grace, a charm of womanhood, followed her wildest caprices. She
+often gave great offence by her brusqueries; yet those who best knew
+her were commonly her ardent friends.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Primrose looked upon her with her most profound and unqualified
+disapprobation. Her daughter copied her sentiments; while Stubb
+thought her an outside barbarian of the most alarming character. Fanny
+Euston's perceptions were very acute. She saw the effect she had
+produced, and seemed to take peculiar delight in aggravating it, and
+shocking the prejudices of her critics still more.</p>
+
+<p>One afternoon, Miss Primrose, Mr. Stubb, Fanny Euston, Morton, and
+several others, set out on a horseback excursion, matronized by Mrs.
+Primrose. At a few miles from New Baden, Morton found himself riding
+at his cousin's side, a little behind the rest.</p>
+
+<p>"Do you know, I came this morning, to ask you to join us on our walk
+to Elk Ridge."</p>
+
+<p>"Ah, I am sorry I was not there."</p>
+
+<p>"You were there; but you seemed so deep in Ivanhoe, or some other of
+your favorites, that I had no heart to interrupt you."</p>
+
+<p>"But that was quite absurd. I should like to have gone."</p>
+
+<p>"I am curious to know what book you were so busy with. Something of
+Scott's&mdash;was it not?"</p>
+
+<p>"Not precisely."</p>
+
+<p>"Nor one of the new novels," pursued Morton&mdash;"those are not after your
+taste."</p>
+
+<p>"Not at all; they are all full of some grand reform or philanthropic
+scheme, or the sorrows of some destitute, uninteresting little wretch,
+with whom you are required to sympathize."</p>
+
+<p>"You are not moulded after the philanthropic model. But may I ask,
+what book was entertaining you so much?"</p>
+
+<p>"Napier's Life of Montrose."</p>
+
+<p>"And do you like it?"</p>
+
+<p>"Indeed I do."</p>
+
+<p>"And you like Montrose?"</p>
+
+<p>"Certainly I like him."</p>
+
+<p>"I could have sworn it. Do you remember his verses to the lady of his
+heart?"</p>
+
+<p>"That I do," said Fanny Euston,&mdash;</p>
+<table align="center" summary="quote11">
+	<tr><td><small>"'Like Alexander I will reign,<br>
+	&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;And I will reign alone;<br>
+	&nbsp;&nbsp;My heart shall evermore disdain<br>
+	&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;A rival on my throne.<br>
+	&nbsp;&nbsp;He either fears his fate too much,<br>
+	&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Or his deserts are small,<br>
+	&nbsp;&nbsp;Who puts it not unto the touch,<br>
+	&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;To win or lose it all.<br><br>
+	"'But if thou wilt be constant then,<br>
+	&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;And faithful of thy word,<br>
+	&nbsp;&nbsp;I'll make thee famous by my pen,<br>
+	&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;And glorious by my sword;<br>
+	&nbsp;&nbsp;I'll serve thee in such noble ways<br>
+	&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Was never heard before;<br>
+	&nbsp;&nbsp;I'll dress and crown thee all with bays,<br>
+	&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;And love thee evermore.'"</small></td></tr>
+</table>
+
+<p>"Admirable! I thought I had a good memory, but you beat me hollow. You
+repeat the lines as if you liked them."</p>
+
+<p>"Who would not like them?"</p>
+
+<p>"And yet his fashion of wooing would be a little peremptory for the
+nineteenth century."</p>
+
+<p>"There are no Montroses in the nineteenth century."</p>
+
+<p>"They are out of date, like many a good thing besides. Not long ago, I
+saw some verses in a magazine&mdash;a kind of ballad on Montrose's
+execution."</p>
+
+<p>"Can you repeat it?"</p>
+
+<p>"I cannot compete with you; but I think I can give you a stanza or
+two:&mdash;</p>
+<table align="center" summary="quote12">
+	<tr><td><small>"'The morning dawned full darkly,<br>
+	&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;The rain came flashing down,<br>
+	&nbsp;&nbsp;And the jagged streak of the levin bolt<br>
+	&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Lit up the gloomy town:<br>
+	&nbsp;&nbsp;The thunder crashed across the heaven,<br>
+	&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;The fatal hour was come;<br>
+	&nbsp;&nbsp;And ay broke in, with muffled beat,<br>
+	&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;The 'larum of the drum.<br>
+	&nbsp;&nbsp;There was madness on the earth below,<br>
+	&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;And anger in the sky,<br>
+	&nbsp;&nbsp;And young and old, and rich and poor,<br>
+	&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Came forth to see him die.<br><br>
+	"'But when he came, though pale and wan,<br>
+	&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;He looked so great and high,<br>
+	&nbsp;&nbsp;So noble was his manly front,<br>
+	&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;So calm his steadfast eye,&mdash;<br>
+	&nbsp;&nbsp;The rabble rout forbore to shout,<br>
+	&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;And each man held his breath,<br>
+	&nbsp;&nbsp;For well they knew the hero's soul<br>
+	&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Was face to face with death.'"</small></td></tr>
+</table>
+
+<p>Fanny Euston's eye kindled, as if at a strain of warlike music.</p>
+
+<p>"Go on."</p>
+
+<p>"I have forgotten the rest."</p>
+
+<p>"Then pray find the verses and send them to me. Why is it that, as you
+say, such men are out of date?"</p>
+
+<p>"What place, or what career, could they find in a commercial country?"</p>
+
+<p>"Then why were we born in a commercial country?"</p>
+
+<p>"You seem to make an ideal hero of Montrose."</p>
+
+<p>"Not I. I am not the school girl you take me for. I have no ideal
+hero. I do not believe in ideal heroes. Montrose was a man, with the
+faults of a man; full of faults, and yet not a bad man either."</p>
+
+<p>"Very far from it."</p>
+
+<p>"He had great faults, but grand qualities to match them,&mdash;worth a
+thousand of the small, tame, correct virtues that one sees
+hereabouts."</p>
+
+<p>"Dangerous ideas, those, Mrs. Primrose would tell you."</p>
+
+<p>"Deliver me from Mrs. Primrose!" ejaculated Fanny.</p>
+
+<p>They rode in silence for a few minutes, Morton's companion murmuring
+to herself fragments of the lines which he had just repeated.</p>
+
+<p>"Look!" she cried, suddenly. "How slowly our horses have been walking!
+The rest are almost out of sight. We had better join them. Will you
+race with me?"</p>
+
+<p>"Any thing you please."</p>
+
+<p>"Come on, then."</p>
+
+<p>She touched her horse with the whip, and they set forward at full
+speed. Fanny, who was by far the better mounted, soon gained the day.</p>
+
+<p>"Rein up," cried Morton, as they came near the party, "or your horse
+will startle the others."</p>
+
+<p>Fanny drew the curb, but not quite successfully; and her rapid arrival
+produced some commotion. Stubb's horse, in particular, began to prance
+and curvet in a manner which greatly disturbed his rider's equanimity.</p>
+
+<p>"Whoa! Whoa, boy!" said Stubb. "Steady, now! steady, sir! Whoa!"</p>
+
+<p>Fanny's eyes twinkled with malicious delight. She had a great contempt
+for Stubb, who, on his part, was mortally afraid of her.</p>
+
+<p>"That's a good horse of yours," pushing close to his side.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, a very fine horse, indeed. Steady, boy! Steady, now!"</p>
+
+<p>"A capital horse; but he needs a spirited hand like yours to manage
+him."</p>
+
+<p>"Whoa! Quiet, now!&mdash;poor fellow!"</p>
+
+<p>This last endearing address was checked by a sudden jolt, produced by
+a spasmodic movement of the horse, which shook the cavalier to his
+very centre.</p>
+
+<p>"Punish him well with your spurs, Mr. Stubb, and let him run; that's
+the way to cure him of his tricks. Suppose we try a race together."</p>
+
+<p>"Thank you, Miss Euston, but the fact is&mdash; Whoa, boy! whoa!&mdash; I mean,
+the stableman told me that he is rather short of breath."</p>
+
+<p>"O, never mind the stableman. Come, let's go."</p>
+
+<p>"Thank you, Miss Euston, I believe not to-day."</p>
+
+<p>"You astonish me. I will lay any bet you like&mdash;you shall name the
+wager&mdash;any thing you please."</p>
+
+<p>"Really, this is a little too bad!" soliloquized the horrified Mrs.
+Primrose. "Miss Euston, I entreat of you&mdash;I beg&mdash;that we may have no
+more racing. It is very dangerous, besides being&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"What is it besides being dangerous, Mrs. Primrose?"</p>
+
+<p>"<i>Very</i> indecorous."</p>
+
+<p>"I am very sorry, for I have set my heart on a race with Mr. Stubb."</p>
+
+<p>"Mr. Morton," said the distressed lady, aside to that young gentleman,
+"you are a prudent and sober-minded person; pray use your influence."</p>
+
+<p>She was interrupted by a most uncanonical ejaculation from the author
+of her embarrassments, which, though couched in a foreign language,
+petrified her into silence. A sharp gust of wind had blown away
+Fanny's veil, and she was on the point of dashing off in pursuit of
+it.</p>
+
+<p>"Stop!" cried Morton, "you'll break your neck. Let me get it for you."</p>
+
+<p>The veil sailed away before the wind, and Morton spurred in pursuit,
+delighted to display his horsemanship before ladies, though it had no
+other merit than a tenacious seat and a kind of recklessness, the
+result of an excitable temperament. The ground was rough and broken,
+and studded with rocks and savin bushes, and as he galloped at a
+breakneck speed down the side of the hill, in a vain attempt to catch
+the veil flying, even Fanny held her breath. He secured his prize, as
+it caught against a bush, and returned to the road.</p>
+
+<p>"Now, Miss Euston," said Mrs. Primrose, looking folios at the
+offender, "I trust we shall be allowed to go on in peace."</p>
+
+<p>There was an interval of repose. Stubb regained his peace of mind.
+Miss Primrose, with whom he fancied himself in love, smiled upon him,
+and his self-conceit, before shaken in its stronghold, was returning
+in full force, when Fanny, who nourished a peculiar spite against this
+harmless blockhead, and whom that afternoon a very Satan of mischief
+seemed to possess, again rode to his side, and renewed her
+solicitations for a race.</p>
+
+<p>"Miss Euston," said Mrs. Primrose, "I am certain you would do nothing
+so unladylike as to force Mr. Stubb to race against his will. Consider
+the example you would set to Georgiana Gosling, who always imitates
+what she sees you do."</p>
+
+<p>The words were mild and motherly; but the countenance of the outraged
+matron had an uncompromising look of reprehension, which exasperated
+Fanny's wayward humor beyond measure. She began, it is true, a lively
+conversation on general topics with the intelligent Stubb, but,
+meantime, by alternately checking and exciting her horse, and urging
+him to play a variety of antics, she contrived to infect her
+companion's steed with the like contagion. He pranced, plunged, and
+chafed, till his rider was brought to the verge of despair.</p>
+
+<p>The road had become quite narrow, running through a thick forest,
+frequented chiefly by woodcutters in the winter, and hunters of the
+picturesque in summer. Fanny's imitator, the adventurous Miss Gosling,
+a little girl of fourteen, had ridden a few rods in advance of the
+rest, when suddenly they saw her returning, astonished and
+disconsolate.</p>
+
+<p>"We can't go any farther; there's a great tree fallen across the
+road."</p>
+
+<p>A severe thundergust of the night before had overthrown a hemlock, the
+trunk of which, partly sustained by the roots and branches, formed a
+barrier about four feet from the ground. It was impossible to pass
+through the woods on either side, as they were very dense, and choked
+with a tangled growth of laurel bushes.</p>
+
+<p>"How very annoying!" said Miss Primrose.</p>
+
+<p>"What shall we do?" inquired Miss Gosling.</p>
+
+<p>"Why, jump over it, to be sure," said Fanny. "Mr. Stubb and I will
+show you the way."</p>
+
+<p>"You are surely not in earnest!" cried Mrs. Primrose.</p>
+
+<p>"Of course I am. I have taken higher leaps at the riding school,
+twenty times."</p>
+
+<p>"You had better not," said Morton, who had alighted by the roadside to
+draw his saddle girth.</p>
+
+<p>"It is too dangerous to be thought of for a single moment," added Mrs.
+Primrose.</p>
+
+<p>"Our horses," pursued the indiscreet Stubb, "are not used to leaping,
+and some of the ladies would certainly be hurt."</p>
+
+<p>"The fool!" thought Morton. "He has done it now."</p>
+
+<p>Fanny threw a laughing, caustic glance at her victim.</p>
+
+<p>"<i>Mine</i> will leap, I know; and you are not a lady. Come, Mr. Stubb."</p>
+
+<p>"Miss Euston," interposed the excited Mrs. Primrose, "this must not
+be. I am here in your mother's place, and she will hold me responsible
+for your safety. I forbid you to go, Miss Euston."</p>
+
+<p>Fanny looked for a moment in her face. Morton caught the expression.
+It was one of unqualified, though not ill-natured, defiance.</p>
+
+<p>"Come," cried Fanny again, and ran her horse towards the tree. She
+leaped gallantly, and cleared the barrier; but it was evident that she
+had lost control of the spirited animal, who galloped at a furious
+rate down the road.</p>
+
+<p>Morton was still on foot, busied with his saddle girth.</p>
+
+<p>"The crazy child!" exclaimed Mrs. Primrose; "her horse is running
+away. Go after her&mdash;pray!&mdash;Mr. Stubb&mdash;somebody."</p>
+
+<p>"O, quick! quick!&mdash;do," cried little Miss Gosling, who idolized Fanny,
+and was in an agony of fright for her.</p>
+
+<p>Thus exhorted, the desperate Stubb cried, "Get up," and galloped for
+the tree; but his horse balked, and, leaping aside, tumbled him into
+the mud. The ladies screamed. Morton would have laughed, if he had not
+been too anxious for Fanny.</p>
+
+<p>"Get out of the way, Stubb," he cried, mounting with all despatch.</p>
+
+<p>Miss Primrose's admirer gathered himself up, regained his hat, which
+had taken refuge in a puddle, and looked with horror at a ghastly
+white rent across his knee. Morton spurred his hack against the
+barrier, which the beast cleared with difficulty, striking his hind
+hoofs as he went over. After riding a short distance, he discovered
+Fanny, and saw, to his great relief, that she was regaining control
+over her horse. Half a mile farther on, the road divided. The larger
+branch led to the right, Morton did not know whither; the smaller
+turned to the left, and after circling through the woods for two or
+three miles, issued upon the high road. Fanny, who was ignorant of the
+way, took the right hand branch. In a few minutes after, she had
+brought her horse to a trot, and Morton rode up to her side.</p>
+
+<p>"You are wiser than I am, if you know where we are going."</p>
+
+<p>"I thought you knew the way. You were to have been our guide."</p>
+
+<p>"We are on the wrong road. You should have turned to the left."</p>
+
+<p>"But have you no idea where this will lead us?"</p>
+
+<p>"Into a cedar swamp, for what I know. Had we not better turn back?"</p>
+
+<p>"O, don't speak of turning back. I am in no mood for turning back. Let
+us keep on. I am sure this will bring us out somewhere."</p>
+
+<p>"As you please," said Morton, knowing himself to be in the position of
+an angler, whose only chance of managing his salmon is to give it
+line.</p>
+
+<p>"Where are all the rest?"</p>
+
+<p>"Holding a convention behind the tree, I suppose. At least, I left
+them there."</p>
+
+<p>"And did not Mr. Stubb dare the fatal leap?"</p>
+
+<p>"He tried, and was thrown into a mud puddle."</p>
+
+<p>"No bodily harm, I hope."</p>
+
+<p>"No; beaver and broadcloth were the principal sufferers. But his
+conceit is shaken out of him for twenty-four hours, at least."</p>
+
+<p>"Then I have wrought a miracle, and can claim to be canonized on the
+strength of it."</p>
+
+<p>"I hope you may be; but I never expected to see your name in the
+calendar of saints."</p>
+
+<p>"As you will not allow me to be a saint, I suppose you consider me as
+mad. Sanctity and madness, they say, are of kin."</p>
+
+<p>"A hair's breadth, or so, on this side madness."</p>
+
+<p>"Then I am entitled to great credit for keeping my wits at all. What
+reasonable girl would not be driven mad with Mrs. Primrose to watch
+her, and disapprove of her, and correct her? Strange&mdash;is it not?&mdash;that
+some people&mdash;if Mrs. Primrose will allow me to use so inelegant an
+expression&mdash;are always rubbing one against the grain."</p>
+
+<p>"To give you your due, I think you have paid off handsomely any grudge
+you may owe in that quarter."</p>
+
+<p>"There is consolation in that. Tell me&mdash;you are of the out-spoken
+sort&mdash;are you not of my opinion? Let me know your mind. Mr. Stubb
+is&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"A puppy."</p>
+
+<p>"And the Primroses are&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Uninteresting."</p>
+
+<p>"For uninteresting, say insufferable. If Lucifer wishes to gain me
+over to his side, let Mrs. Primrose be made my guardian angel, and his
+work is done."</p>
+
+<p>"Your horse has cast a shoe," said Morton, abruptly,&mdash;"yes; and he is
+lame besides."</p>
+
+<p>"It is this broken, stony road. I wish we were at the end of it."</p>
+
+<p>"So do I. If the clouds would break for a moment, and show us the sun,
+I could form some idea of the direction we are following."</p>
+
+<p>"Why," said Fanny, in alarm, looking at her watch, "the sun must be
+very near setting."</p>
+
+<p>Morton began to be very anxious, for his companion's sake, when, a
+moment after, they came upon a broader track, which intersected the
+other, and seemed a main thoroughfare of the woodcutters.</p>
+
+<p>"This looks more promising," said Morton; and turning to the left,
+they pushed their horses to their best pace. Twilight came on, and it
+was quite dark when they emerged at length upon the broad and dusty
+highway. In a few minutes they saw a countryman, with his hands in his
+pockets, and a long nine between his lips, lounging by the roadside.</p>
+
+<p>"How far is it to New Baden?"</p>
+
+<p>"Wal," replied the man, after studying his querist in silence for
+about half a minute, "it's fifteen mile strong."</p>
+
+<p>Morton looked at Fanny, whose horse was very lame, and who, in spite
+of her spirit, began to show unmistakable signs of fatigue.</p>
+
+<p>"Is there a public house any where near?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yas; it ain't far ahead to Mashum's."</p>
+
+<p>"How far?"</p>
+
+<p>"Rather better nor a mile."</p>
+
+<p>On coming to the inn, Morton commended Fanny to the care of the
+landlady, an honest New Hampshire woman, remounted without delay, and
+urged his tired horse to such speed that he reached the hotel before
+half past nine. His arrival relieved the anxieties, or silenced the
+tattle of the inmates; and in the morning Fanny's uncle drove to the
+inn, and brought back the adventurous damsel to New Baden.</p>
+<br>
+<br><a name="chap13"></a>
+<br>
+<br>
+<h3>CHAPTER XIII.</h3>
+<table align="center" summary="quote13">
+	<tr><td><small>Men will woo the tempest,<br>
+	&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;And wed it, to their cost.&mdash;<i>Passion Flowers</i>.<br><br>
+	Then fly betimes, for only they<br>
+	&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Conquer love that run away.&mdash;<i>Carew</i>.</small></td></tr>
+</table>
+<br>
+<br>
+<p>Morton had been for some time of opinion that he had better leave New
+Baden; yet still the philosophic youth staid on,&mdash;a week longer,&mdash;a
+fortnight longer,&mdash;and still he lingered. It would be too much to say
+that he was in love with his handsome, dare-devil cousin; but his mind
+was greatly troubled in regard to her&mdash;shaken and tossed with a
+variety of conflicting emotions. The multiplied and constantly
+changing phases of her character, its strong but utterly ungoverned
+resources, its frankness, enthusiasm, detestation of all deceit or
+pretension, and, in spite of her wildness, a deep vein of womanly
+tenderness which now and then betrayed itself, all conspired to keep
+his interest somewhat painfully excited.</p>
+
+<p>One evening he left the crowded piazza of the hotel, and, intending to
+flirt with solitude and a cigar, walked towards a rustic arbor,
+overgrown with a wild grape vine, and standing among a cluster of
+young elms at the foot of the garden. As he drew near, he saw the
+gleam of ladies' dresses, and found the seats already occupied by Miss
+Fanny Euston and two companions. Morton knew them well, and joined the
+party. As neither the affected graces of the one companion nor the
+voluble emptiness of the other had much interest in his eyes, he
+directed his conversation chiefly to Fanny. In a few minutes the two
+girls exchanged glances, rose, and alleging some pretended engagement,
+returned to the hotel, bent on making this casual interview assume the
+air of a flirtation.</p>
+
+<p>Morton and his companion sat for a moment in silence.</p>
+
+<p>"We are cousins&mdash;are we not?" said the former, at length.</p>
+
+<p>"At least they would call us so in the Highlands."</p>
+
+<p>"Then give me a cousin's privilege, and allow me to be personal. Are
+you not out of spirits to-night?"</p>
+
+<p>"Why do you think me so?"</p>
+
+<p>"From your look and manner."</p>
+
+<p>"Are you not tired to death of New Baden?"</p>
+
+<p>"Not yet."</p>
+
+<p>"I am. What is it all worth?&mdash;weary, and vapid, and flat, and stale,
+and unprofitable! I have had enough of it."</p>
+
+<p>"Then why not change it?"</p>
+
+<p>"To find the same thing in a new shape!"</p>
+
+<p>"Pardon me if I call that a freak of the moment. You are the gayest of
+the gay."</p>
+
+<p>"No, I am not."</p>
+
+<p>"You are a belle here; a centre light. The moths flutter about you,
+though you do, now and then, singe their wings. You frighten them, and
+they repay you with fine speeches."</p>
+
+<p>"I am weary of them. For Heaven's sake, abuse me a little. I know you
+have it often in your heart."</p>
+
+<p>"Abuse is sometimes nothing but flattery in disguise."</p>
+
+<p>"Why do you smile? That smile was at my expense."</p>
+
+<p>"Why should you imagine so?"</p>
+
+<p>"I insist on your telling me its meaning."</p>
+
+<p>"I was only thinking that when tribute in an old shape has become
+wearisome, one may like to have it paid in a new one."</p>
+
+<p>"That certainly is not flattery. Do you know I am beginning to be
+afraid of you?"</p>
+
+<p>"I could not have thought you afraid of any one."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, I am afraid of you."</p>
+
+<p>"Why?"</p>
+
+<p>"Because you are always observing me. Because you penetrate my
+thoughts and understand me thoroughly."</p>
+
+<p>"I am less deep than you suppose."</p>
+
+<p>"At least you know all my faults. You are always, in a quiet way,
+making gibes and sarcasms at my expense, and touching upon my weakest
+points."</p>
+
+<p>"Does it make you angry?"</p>
+
+<p>"No; I rather like it; but I wish to repay you. I wish to find your
+weaknesses, but cannot. Have you any?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, an abundance."</p>
+
+<p>"And will you tell me what they are?"</p>
+
+<p>"What, that you may use them against me! The moment you know them, you
+will attack me without mercy; and if you see me wince, it is all over
+with me."</p>
+
+<p>"What do you mean?"</p>
+
+<p>"I mean that you cease to like one as soon as you find that you can
+gain the least advantage over him. If I could really make you a little
+afraid of me, you would like me all the better for it. No, I will show
+you none of my weaknesses; and perhaps, if I did, you would not find
+them of a kind that you could use against me. I can strike at you, but
+you cannot hurt me. I am armed in proof. I defy you."</p>
+
+<p>In saying this, at least, Morton showed some knowledge of his
+companion's character. To defy her successfully was a great step
+towards gaining her good graces; for with all her wildness she was
+very sensitive to the good or ill opinion of those who could compel
+her to respect them. She became very anxious to know what Morton
+thought of her.</p>
+
+<p>"You say that you do not understand me thoroughly. What is there in me
+that you do not understand?"</p>
+
+<p>"You may say that I do not understand you at all."</p>
+
+<p>"That is mere evasion."</p>
+
+<p>"Who can understand the language of Babel?"</p>
+
+<p>"Do you mean that I speak the language of Babel?"</p>
+
+<p>"Who can understand chaos?"</p>
+
+<p>"And am I chaos? You are beginning your peculiar style of compliment
+again."</p>
+
+<p>"Do not be displeased at it. All the power and beauty of the universe
+rose out of chaos."</p>
+
+<p>"Now you are flattering in earnest."</p>
+
+<p>"You are difficult to satisfy. What may I call you? A wild Arab racer
+without a rider?"</p>
+
+<p>"That will answer better."</p>
+
+<p>"Or a rocket without a stick?"</p>
+
+<p>"I have seen rockets; but I do not know what the stick is. What is it?
+What is it for?"</p>
+
+<p>"To give balance and aim to the rocket&mdash;make it, as the
+transcendentalists say, mount skyward, and end in stars and 'golden
+rain.'"</p>
+
+<p>"Very fine! And how if it has no stick?"</p>
+
+<p>"Then it sparkles, and blazes, and hisses on the ground; flies up and
+down, this way and that, plays the deuse with every thing and every
+body, and at last blows itself up to no purpose."</p>
+
+<p>"Ah, I see that the stick is very necessary. I will try to get one."</p>
+
+<p>"You speak in a bantering tone," said Morton, "but you are in
+earnest."</p>
+
+<p>"I am in earnest!" exclaimed Fanny Euston, with a sudden change of
+voice and manner. "Every word that you have spoken is true. I am
+driven hither and thither by feelings and impulses,&mdash;some bad, some
+good,&mdash;chasing every new fancy like so many butterflies or
+will-o'-the-wisps,&mdash;without thinking of
+results&mdash;restless&mdash;dissatisfied&mdash;finding no life but in the excitement
+of the moment. Sometimes I have hints of better things. Glimpses of
+light break in upon me; but they come, and they go again. I have no
+rule of life, no guiding star."</p>
+
+<p>Morton looked at his companion not without a certain sense of victory.
+He saw that he had gained, for the moment at least, an influence over
+her, and roused her to the expression of feelings to which, perhaps,
+she had never given utterance before. Yet his own mind was any thing
+but tranquil. Something more than admiration was stirring within him.
+He felt impelled to explore farther the proud spirit which had already
+yielded up to him some of its secrets. But he felt that, with her eyes
+upon him, he could not speak without committing himself farther than
+he was prepared to do. In this dilemma he determined to retreat&mdash;a
+resolution for which he was entitled to no little credit, if its merit
+is to be measured by the effort it cost him. He rose from his seat.</p>
+
+<p>"Find your star, Fanny, and you may challenge the world. But I see
+people coming down the garden towards us. We shall be invaded if we
+stay here. Let us walk back towards the house."</p>
+
+<p>When he found himself alone again, he paced his room in no very
+enviable frame of mind.</p>
+
+<p>"What devil impelled me to speak as I did? It was no part of mine to
+be telling her of her faults. Am I turning philanthropist and
+busybody? If I wished to gain her heart, I suspect I have been taking
+the right course. What with any other lady would have been intolerable
+presumption and arrogance, is the most effectual way to win her
+esteem. And why should I not wish to gain her heart? There is good
+there in abundance, if one could but depend on it. No; I am not
+blinded yet. This last outburst was a momentary impulse, like all the
+rest; and to-morrow she will be reckless as ever. She delights in
+lawlessness, and rejoices in the zest of breaking established bounds.
+Her wayward will is like a cataract, and may carry her, God knows
+whither. No; I will not walk in this path; I will not try to marry
+her. Her heart is untouched&mdash;that is clear as the day. I wish she
+could say as much of mine. I will leave this place to-morrow, cost
+what it will."</p>
+
+<p>A letter from Boston gave him a pretext; and bidding farewell to his
+cousin and her mother, he took the early train homewards. The newsboy
+brought him a paper, and his eyes rested on the columns; but his
+thoughts centred on Fanny Euston and his last evening's conversation
+with her at the foot of the garden.</p>
+<br>
+<br><a name="chap14"></a>
+<br>
+<br>
+<h3>CHAPTER XIV.</h3>
+<table align="center" summary="quote14">
+	<tr><td><small>* * * One fire burns out another's burning,<br>
+	&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;One pain is lessened by another's anguish;<br>
+	Turn giddy, and be holp by backward turning;<br>
+	&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;One desperate grief cures with another's languish.<br>
+	Take thou some new infection to thine eye,<br>
+	And the rank poison of the old will die.&mdash;<i>Romeo and Juliet</i>.</small></td></tr>
+</table>
+<br>
+<br>
+<p>All day the train whirled along, and Morton's troubled thoughts found
+no rest.</p>
+
+<p>"Matherton!" cried the conductor, opening the door of the car, as the
+engine stopped in a large station house, at five o'clock in the
+afternoon. Several passengers got out; two or three came in; the bell
+rang, and with puffing and clanking, the train was on its way again. A
+newsboy passed down the car with a bundle of newspapers and twopenny
+novels. Morton bought one of the latter as an anodyne; but even
+"Orlando Melville, or the Victim of the Press Gang," failed to produce
+the desired soporific effect, and his thoughts soon recurred to their
+former channel. Suddenly a violent concussion, a crashing, thumping,
+and grating sound, the outcries of a hundred passengers,&mdash;the women
+screaming, and some of the men not silent,&mdash;with a furious rocking and
+tossing of the car, ejected every thought but one of his personal
+safety. All sprang to their feet, he among the rest. The first
+distinct impression which his mind received was that of the man in
+front of him making a flying leap out of the open window of the car,
+carrying the sash with him&mdash;a dexterous piece of gymnastics, only to
+be accounted for by the fact that the performer was a distinguished
+artist of the Grand National Olympic Circus. His boots twinkled at the
+window, and he was gone, alighting on his feet like a cat, but Morton
+was too much frightened to laugh. In a few moments the car came to a
+rest, without being overturned, though the front was partly broken in,
+and the whole swung off the rails to an angle of forty-five degrees.
+On looking out at the window, the first object that met Morton's eye
+was the baggage car, thrown on its side, with the door uppermost. As
+he looked, the door opened, and a head emerged&mdash;like a triton from the
+deep, or Banquo's ghost from a trap door&mdash;white with wrath and fright,
+and swearing with wonderful volubility. Then appeared another, rising
+by the side of the first, equally pallid, but much less profane. The
+heads belonged to two men, who had been seated in the compartment of
+the baggage car allotted to the mails, and when it was flung off the
+track, had been rattled together like dice in a box, suffering various
+bruises, but no serious harm. The breaking of the defective cast iron
+axle of the tender had caused the whole disaster, which would
+doubtless have produced fatal consequences had not the train been
+moving at a very slow rate. As it happened, a few contusions were its
+worst results, and one of the morning papers,</p>
+
+	<center><small>"for profound<br>
+	And solid lying much renowned,"</small></center>
+
+<p>solemnly averred that none but Providence was responsible for it.</p>
+
+<p>There was abundant noise and vociferation. The passengers left the
+train, some lending their bungling aid to repair the mischief, while
+others withdrew to an inn which chanced to be in the neighborhood.
+After looking for a time at the downfallen tender and the uprooted
+rails, Morton, from some idle impulse, entered the car which he had
+lately left. It was empty; and, passing through it, he looked into
+that immediately behind, which had remained safely upon the rails.
+This also was empty, with the exception of a single person, a young
+female figure, seated at one of the windows. She was closely veiled,
+yet there was in her air that indefinable something which told Morton
+at a glance that she was a lady. He stepped to the ground,
+conjecturing whether or no she had a companion.</p>
+
+<p>Five minutes after, glancing at the window, he saw the solitary
+traveller seated in the same position as before, and became convinced
+that she was unattended. The women in the train had left it at the
+outset. The busy and clamorous throng of men alone remained; and
+Morton easily conceived that her situation must be an embarrassing
+one. He therefore reëntered the car and approached her.</p>
+
+<p>"I am afraid we shall be detained here for two or three hours, and
+perhaps till late at night. There is a public house a little way off,
+to which the ladies in the train have gone. If you will allow me, I
+will show you the way."</p>
+
+<p>So he spoke; or, rather, so he would have spoken; but he had scarcely
+begun when the veiled head was joyfully raised, and the veil was
+thrown aside, disclosing to his astonished eyes the features of Edith
+Leslie. She explained that she was on her way from her father's
+country seat at Matherton; and that he was to meet her at the station
+on the arrival of the train. When the accident took place, she had
+been led to suppose, from the conversation of two men near her, that
+the train would not be very long detained, and had preferred remaining
+in the car to mingling with the tumultuous throng outside.</p>
+
+<p>"It is too fine an afternoon," said Morton, as they left the spot, "to
+be mured in that tavern. This lane has an inviting look. Have you a
+mind to explore it?"</p>
+
+<p>They walked accordingly in the direction he proposed; and, as they did
+so, Morton cast many a stolen glance at the face of his companion. The
+mind of the young philosopher was that day in a peculiarly susceptible
+state. It seemed as if Fanny Euston had kindled within him a flame
+which could not fix itself upon her, yet must needs find fuel
+somewhere; and as his eye met that of Edith Leslie, he began to feel
+that she held a deeper place in his thoughts than he had ever before
+suspected.</p>
+
+<p>By the side of the lane stood an ancient abode, whose rotten shingles
+supported a rich crop of green mosses; and in the yard an old man, who
+looked like a relic of Bunker Hill fight, was diligently chopping
+firewood.</p>
+
+<p>"What does this lane lead to?" asked Morton, looking over the fence.</p>
+
+<p>The woodchopper leaned on his axe, wiped his brows with the tatters of
+a red handkerchief, and seemed revolving the expediency of
+communicating the desired information.</p>
+
+<p>"Well," he returned, after mature reflection, "if you go fur enough,
+it'll take you down to the Diamond Pool."</p>
+
+<p>"The Diamond Pool," said Miss Leslie; "that has a promising sound."</p>
+
+<p>The lane soon began to lead them down the side of a rugged hill,
+between barberry bushes and stunted savins, with neglected stone
+walls, where the striped ground squirrels chirruped as they dodged
+into the crevices. In a few moments they had a glimpse of the water,
+shining between the branches of the trees below.</p>
+
+<p>"Upon my word," said Morton, as they stood on the margin, "the Diamond
+Pool is not to be despised. We have chosen our walk well, and found a
+tempting place of rest at the end of it."</p>
+
+<p>"A grassy bank,&mdash;a clear spring, with cardinal flowers along the
+edge&mdash;a cluster of maple trees&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"And a flat rock at the foot of one of them, for you to rest upon. We
+are well provided for."</p>
+
+<p>"Except that a seat for you seems to have been forgotten."</p>
+
+<p>"No, if I wish to rest, this mound of grass will serve my turn. I am
+used to bivouacs."</p>
+
+<p>The sun had just vanished behind the rocky hill on the farther side of
+the water; a sea of liquid fire, clouds blazoned in gold and crimson,
+betokened his recent presence. The lake lay like a great mirror framed
+in green. Another sunset glowed in its depths; rocks, hills, and trees
+grew downward; and the kingfisher, as he flitted over it, made a dash
+at the surface, as if to peck at the adversary bird, which seemed
+shooting upward to meet him.</p>
+
+<p>"One might imagine," said Miss Leslie, "that we were a hundred miles
+away from railroads, factories, and all abominations of the kind."</p>
+
+<p>"They will follow soon," said Morton; "they are not far off. There is
+no sanctuary from American enterprise."</p>
+
+<p>"I know it is omnipotent at spoiling a landscape; but I hope that this
+one may escape,&mdash;at least if there is no mill privilege in the
+neighborhood."</p>
+
+<p>"There is&mdash;an excellent one&mdash;at the outlet of the pond, beyond the
+three elms yonder. I prophesy that in five years there will be a brick
+factory on that meadow, with a row of one story houses for the
+operatives."</p>
+
+<p>"It will be a scandal and a profanation. It is too beautiful for such
+base uses. But at least that old cedar tree, rooted in a cleft of the
+precipice, has found a safe sanctuary. There it was growing in King
+Philip's time; in its younger days it saw Indian wigwams standing on
+this bank; and there its offspring will grow after it, safe from
+Yankee axes."</p>
+
+<p>"One cannot be sure of that. A time will come yet, when those rocks
+will be blasted to build a town hall, or open another railroad track."</p>
+
+<p>"But they cannot build railroads and factories in the clouds. Our New
+England sunsets will still remain to remind one that there is an ideal
+side of life&mdash;something in it besides locomotives and cotton gins."</p>
+
+<p>"There it is that you are wiser than we are. You are mistresses of a
+domain of which men, for the most part, know little or nothing."</p>
+
+<p>"Pray what domain may that be?"</p>
+
+<p>"One that is all mystery to me&mdash;a world of thoughts and sentiments
+which to most men is a cloudland, an undiscovered country, of which
+they may possibly recognize the existence, but of whose geography they
+know nothing."</p>
+
+<p>"Why should they be more ignorant of it than women?"</p>
+
+<p>"Because they are commonly given over to practicalities, mixed
+hopelessly with rivalries and ambitions. Even in their highest
+pursuits, they propose to themselves some definite point to be gained,
+some object to be achieved; but women are left to the world of their
+own minds&mdash;there they can expatiate at will."</p>
+
+<p>"That is a dangerous privilege."</p>
+
+<p>"They have leisure to muse on the joys and troubles of life, and
+explore depths which we bridge over."</p>
+
+<p>"Either your mind has very much changed, or I have very much mistaken
+it. Pardon me, but I fancied that you were like Iago, 'nothing if not
+critical;' or at least that you sympathized with his slanderous
+opinions of womankind."</p>
+
+<p>"Heaven forbid! What treasonable thought did you suppose me to harbor
+against the better part of humanity?"</p>
+
+<p>"At all events, I never supposed you to believe that the better part
+of humanity passed their leisure time in metaphysical reveries and
+abstruse meditations."</p>
+
+<p>"You were speaking, just now, of ideals. May not I have mine?"</p>
+
+<p>"So your ideal woman is a transcendental philosopher, seated in the
+midst of your undiscovered cloudland."</p>
+
+<p>"Deliver me from such a one! My ideal is full of thought and of
+feeling; but no one yet ever dreamed of branding her as a philosopher.
+But why did you think me so very critical? I am hardly old enough yet
+to make an Iago or a Rochefoucault."</p>
+
+<p>"And yet you used always to have some saying of Rochefoucault at your
+tongue's end."</p>
+
+<p>"I detest him, nevertheless, for a French Mephistopheles,&mdash;and all his
+tribe with him."</p>
+
+<p>"When I said as much, you always told me that his sayings had a great
+deal of truth in them."</p>
+
+<p>"And have they not a great deal of truth?"</p>
+
+<p>"I cannot pretend to know mankind well enough to answer; but I
+sincerely hope, not much. Life would be worse than a blank if men and
+women were what he represents them to be."</p>
+
+<p>"I think not; for if one cannot learn to be enthusiastic in regard to
+the actualities of human nature, he can console himself by a boundless
+faith in its possibilities. And now and then, thank
+God,&mdash;Rochefoucault to the contrary notwithstanding,&mdash;one finds the
+possibility realized."</p>
+
+<p>His companion made no reply; and Morton stood for a moment with his
+eyes bent upon her face, which, to his enamoured fancy, seemed to
+reflect the calm beauty of the landscape on which she was gazing. He
+thought of Fanny Euston; he recalled his last evening's conversation
+with her, and felt blindly impelled to give some form of expression to
+the feeling which began to master him.</p>
+
+<p>"Miss Leslie, were you ever in a storm at sea?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, in a slight one; but the ship was strong; there was very little
+danger."</p>
+
+<p>"Then you were never flung about, as I have been, in an indifferent
+egg shell of a craft, out of sight of land, at the mercy of winds and
+waves."</p>
+
+<p>"I did not know that you had been at sea. Ah, yes, you were at school
+in France, when you were a boy&mdash;were you not?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes; but this happened since I have become a man, and not long ago. I
+think I shall never forget it. The sun was bright at one moment, and
+all was black as a hurricane the next. The wind came from every point
+of the compass&mdash;always shifting, never resting. I had not an instant's
+peace. It was all watching&mdash;all anxiety&mdash;and yet there was a kind of
+pleasure in it. If I had had wings, I doubt if I should have found
+heart to use them. It was a strange gale. It blew hot and cold by
+fits; I thought I should lose my reckoning altogether, and be blown
+away, body and soul."</p>
+
+<p>"Really, I cannot imagine where your tempest is going to carry you."</p>
+
+<p>"Nor could I; when, of a sudden, I found myself safe on shore. My good
+star led me to a place beautiful as the May sunshine could make it; a
+scene where art and nature were blended so harmoniously, that they
+seemed to have grown together from the same birth; full of repose, and
+tranquil, graceful power; such a scene, in short, as made me wish that
+Nature would embody herself in a visible form, that I might swear
+homage to her forever."</p>
+
+<p>Had an interpreter been needed, Morton's look and voice must have
+betrayed, at least, some part of his meaning. The color deepened
+slightly on his companion's cheek, but she replied, without any
+further sign of consciousness,&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"I never knew that you were quite so ardent a votary of nature. You
+had better put your emotions into verse, and sell them to the
+magazines, after the true poetic custom. In a little time, I don't
+doubt, Dr. Griswold would find a place for you in his constellation of
+poets."</p>
+
+<p>"Ah," said Morton, "it is cruel of you to fling cold water on my
+rhapsodies. But my flight is over. And now I will try my best to gain
+the esteem in your eyes of a man of sense and a sound mind."</p>
+
+<p>"And now those night-hawks over head are beginning to tell us that we
+had better go back to the railroad. I suppose you will place it among
+the other frailties of women; but I cannot help being a little afraid
+that if we stay longer, that crippled train will run away and leave us
+behind."</p>
+
+<p>"Then good night to the Diamond Pool," said Morton, as they left the
+place. "I shall not forget it; I owe it double thanks. It has shown me
+a pretty landscape, and made me a wiser man."</p>
+
+<p>"I can hardly see how that may be."</p>
+
+<p>"It has taught me not to speak too earnestly with my friend, lest she
+should banter me; and by no means to be drawn into any absurdity, lest
+she should laugh at me outright."</p>
+
+<p>"Do you mean that you thought that I laughed at you?"</p>
+
+<p>"Did you not?"</p>
+
+<p>"If I gave you cause to think that I did, I can only say, frankly and
+heartily, that I am very sorry for it."</p>
+
+<p>"Now I am emboldened to be absurd again, and speak more parables. I
+have found a locked-up treasure&mdash;a sealed fountain. I long to open it,
+but cannot."</p>
+
+<p>"Your figures are too deep for me. I can make nothing of them."</p>
+
+<p>"Then I will sink to plain prose. I have a friend whose heart is full
+of warm feeling and earnest thought; but, out of reserve, or Heaven
+knows what, she will express it to nobody but one or two intimate
+companions. She tantalizes the rest with a bantering word; and
+sometimes, when she is most in earnest, she seems to be most in jest.
+But why do you smile?"</p>
+
+<p>"Ask your friend Mr. Sharpe. He is your friend&mdash;is he not?"</p>
+
+<p>"I suppose so, though he is old enough to be my father. But why should
+I ask him?"</p>
+
+<p>"Because he once described to me a person very much like the one you
+have just described."</p>
+
+<p>"Who was the person?"</p>
+
+<p>"Mr. Sharpe said that, though he was in general quite frank and
+undisguised, yet, if he were particularly in earnest on any subject,
+he was apt to speak lightly of it, or perhaps ridicule it, to hide his
+real feeling."</p>
+
+<p>"Pray, who was this person? What was his name?"</p>
+
+<p>"Mr. Vassall Morton."</p>
+
+<p>"Did Sharpe say that of me? It is not a month since I was walking with
+him,&mdash;his evening constitutional,&mdash;and he said the very same thing of
+you. Now, as I hope to live an honest man, I was never half so much
+flattered in my life, as by being slandered in such company."</p>
+
+<p>Here he was interrupted abruptly, for, turning a corner, they came
+full upon the inn, or hotel, as its sign proclaimed it to be.
+Discontented male passengers were lounging about the bar room;
+disconsolate female passengers sat, in bonnets and shawls, in the
+parlor; and an unspeakable air of uneasiness and discomfort pervaded
+the whole place.</p>
+
+<p>"Our walk is over," sighed Morton; "I wish it had a more propitious
+ending. And now let me be your courier, or do your commands in any
+other capacity in which I can serve you."</p>
+
+<p>At eleven o'clock that night the train rolled into the station house
+at Boston, some four hours behind its time.</p>
+
+<p>"My father will certainly be here," said Miss Leslie; but her father
+was nowhere to be seen. Morton conducted her to a carriage. Her trunks
+and his own had already been placed upon it, when, by the lantern of
+one of the porters, Morton descried the agitated colonel threading the
+crowd in anxious search of his daughter. He had been waiting nervously
+since seven o'clock, and, when the train came in, had looked for her
+in every place but the right one. Morton hastened to relieve his
+fears.</p>
+
+<p>"What do you mean to do with yourself to-night?" Leslie asked, as the
+carriage drove towards his house.</p>
+
+<p>"Drive to my house in the country."</p>
+
+<p>"Your people will not expect you, and will be in bed before you can
+get there. You had much better come home with me."</p>
+
+<p>Morton was but too glad to accept the invitation.</p>
+
+<p>Having bade good night to his host and his host's daughter, he passed
+some hours in dreamy cogitation; then tried to sleep; but sleep long
+kept aloof, the consciousness of being under the same roof with Edith
+Leslie brought with it so strange a sensation. But as delicate health,
+that grand auxiliary of sentiment, was quite unknown to him, nature
+prevailed in the end, and at seven the next morning, a servant's knock
+wakened him from a deep sleep, a vision of Mount Katahdin, and an
+imaginary moose hunt.</p>
+<br>
+<br><a name="chap15"></a>
+<br>
+<br>
+<h3>CHAPTER XV.</h3>
+<table align="center" summary="quote15">
+	<tr><td><small>Yet even these joys dire jealousy molests,<br>
+	And blackens each fair image in our breasts.&mdash;<i>Lyttleton</i>.</small></td></tr>
+</table>
+<br>
+<br>
+<p>Descending to the breakfast room, he found Leslie, as usual, quiet,
+cordial, and gentlemanly, beguiling the moments of expectancy with a
+newspaper, while his daughter presided at the coffee urn. Leslie
+happened to be in a garrulous mood, and talked incessantly about his
+former military frontier life, of which, though he had detested it in
+the experience, he was very fond in the retrospect. Morton, who had
+some acquaintance with such matters, was a tempting auditor, though he
+would gladly have exchanged the profuse anecdotes of white-wolf
+running and deer shooting for a few moments' conversation with Miss
+Edith Leslie. This her father's busy tongue put out of the question;
+but Morton consoled himself with the thought that to bask in her
+presence was, in itself, no mean privilege.</p>
+
+<p>His cup of nectar, such as it was, was in a few minutes dashed with
+gall; for the street door opened without a summons from the bell, a
+man's step sounded in the hall, and Horace Vinal came in, with a
+bundle of papers in his hand.</p>
+
+<p>Vinal had become of late all-important to his former guardian. He was
+his chief business agent, and Leslie was never tired of expatiating on
+his talents, energy, application, and elevated character. In short, he
+was fast becoming dependent on him, and felt towards him the affection
+which a weak and kindly man may feel towards one of far greater force
+and capacity, whom he believes sincerely attached to him and devoted
+to his interests.</p>
+
+<p>Vinal, as he entered, had the air of a man versed in affairs, and
+acquainted both with that vast and various theatre which men call the
+world, and with those conventional circles which ladies call the
+world. He had been absent for a few days on a mission of business,
+from which he had returned the evening before. Leslie received him
+with a most warm greeting, and his daughter with a smile of easy
+friendship, which was wormwood to the troubled spirit of Morton. The
+two rivals&mdash;for such, by a common instinct, each felt the other to
+be&mdash;regarded each other with faces of courtesy and hearts of wrath.</p>
+
+<p>"How came this fellow here?" thought Vinal, as he smilingly grasped
+his classmate's hand.</p>
+
+<p>"The devil take him!" thought Morton, as he returned the greeting, but
+with a much worse grace.</p>
+
+<p>They seated themselves on opposite sides of the table, while the Helen
+who had kindled this covert warfare in their breasts dispensed a cup
+of coffee to each in turn.</p>
+
+<p>There was a singular contrast between the adversaries. On the one
+side, the self-dependent Vinal, with little health and no other wealth
+than his busy and able brain; with thin features, wan cheek, and pale,
+firm lip; with piercing observation and rapid judgment;
+self-contained, self-controlled, self-confiding. But for his measuring
+five feet ten, he might have stood for Dryden's Achitophel:&mdash;</p>
+
+<table align="center" summary="quote16">
+	<tr><td><small>"A fiery soul, which, working out its way,<br>
+	&nbsp;Fretted the pygmy body to decay,<br>
+	&nbsp;And o'er informed the tenement of clay."</small></td></tr>
+</table>
+
+<p>On the other side sat the pet of fortune, fondled, if he could have
+endured such blandishment, in the very lap of affluence; with a cheek
+brown with wind and weather, and an eye which, as he often boasted,
+could look the sun in the face. His nature was so happily tempered,
+that to the degree of nervous stimulus which engenders, or is
+engendered by, an energetic character, he joined an indefinite
+capacity both of endurance and enjoyment; and yet the possessor of all
+these gifts was just now in a mood of extreme dissatisfaction and
+discomfort.</p>
+
+<p>Leslie began to speak with Vinal upon business. Morton snatched the
+opportunity to converse with the person most interesting to him. Vinal
+glanced at him askance. Each began to hate the other, after his own
+fashion. Morton would gladly have come to open rupture, and flung
+defiance at his rival; but Vinal was far remote from any wish of the
+kind.</p>
+
+<p>Morton remained at the house as long as he in decency could, and then
+bade them good morning, execrating Vinal as he went down the steps.</p>
+
+<p>That very afternoon, as he was walking near his cottage in the
+country, ruminating on Edith Leslie and Horace Vinal, he raised his
+head and saw a lady and gentleman, on horseback, emerging into view
+from a wooded bend of the road. A thrill ran through him from head to
+foot. They were the two persons of whom he was thinking. He bowed to
+Miss Leslie. She replied with a frank bow and smile; and Vinal, as he
+passed, made an easy nonchalant gesture of recognition. The jealous
+pedestrian turned and looked after them. They had ridden a few rods
+when Vinal also turned his head, but, catching Morton's eye, instantly
+averted it again. Morton fairly ground his teeth with anger and
+vexation. To be jealous was bad enough; but that Vinal should be
+conscious of his jealousy, and perhaps triumph in it, goaded him
+beyond endurance. He went home, saddled and bridled a horse with his
+own hands, mounted, and ranged the country for an hour or two, to get
+rid of the vulture that was preying on him. At length he grew more
+rational, and was able to reflect that Vinal's riding with Miss Leslie
+did not necessarily imply that he stood, in any special sense, within
+her favor, since he was the near relative of her mother-in-law, and
+had formerly been for years an inmate of her father's house.</p>
+
+<p>On the next day, at a time when he thought that Vinal must be safe in
+his office, Morton took heart of grace, and called on Miss Leslie. An
+old woman, an ancient dependant of the family, raised, as she would
+have phrased it, in the backwoods of Matherton, opened the door.</p>
+
+<p>"Is Miss Leslie at home?"</p>
+
+<p>"No; she was took sick yesterday, very sudden."</p>
+
+<p>"Miss Leslie!" ejaculated the visitor.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes; the doctor says she's goin' to die, sartin; right away, may be."</p>
+
+<p>"What?" gasped Morton.</p>
+
+<p>"It wasn't only this morning we heered on it," said the old Yankee
+housekeeper, "and Miss Edith's gone up to Matherton, to tend on her."</p>
+
+<p>"O, you mean Mrs. Leslie."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes; Miss Leslie, Miss Edith's mother-in-law; she never was a well
+woman, ever since I've knowed her."</p>
+
+<p>And the old woman closed the door; while Morton walked away, without
+knowing in what direction he was moving.</p>
+<br>
+<br><a name="chap16"></a>
+<br>
+<br>
+<h3>CHAPTER XVI.</h3>
+<blockquote><small><i>Sganarelle</i>. O, la grande fatigue quo d'avoir une femme, et
+qu'Aristote a bien raison quand il dit qu'une femme est pire qu'un
+démon!&mdash;<i>Le Médecin Malgré Lui</i>.</small></blockquote>
+<table align="center" summary="quote17">
+	<tr><td><small>Thus day by day and month by month we past;<br>
+	It pleased the Lord to take my spouse at last&mdash;<i>Pope</i>.</small></td></tr>
+</table>
+<br>
+<br>
+<p>It was nine years since, in an evil hour, Leslie had first seen Miss
+Cynthia Everille, playing on a harp, and accompanying herself in a
+thin, sweet voice, with words of her own composing. His weak heart
+succumbed: he fell in love off hand; and within a year after the death
+of his first wife, Edith's mother, her picture was taken from the
+wall, and a second Mrs. Leslie reigned in her stead.</p>
+
+<p>"Sweet,"&mdash;"charming,"&mdash;"fascinating,"&mdash;were the least of the
+adjectives lavished on the interesting bride. Some of his lady
+acquaintance felicitated him that he had espoused an angel, an
+embodied beatitude not more than half pertaining to this world. In
+fact, there was a certain aerial grace in her movements, a certain
+translucency in her small alabaster features, which might countenance
+such a notion. The winning smile, too, with which she met her visitors
+on her reception Thursdays, savored wholly of the angelic. She
+breathed courtesies around her as the beneficent royalty of Naples
+scatters sugar plums among his loving subjects at the carnival, and,
+on the next day, sends them to prison by the cart load.</p>
+
+<p>The tyranny of the strong is bad enough; but the tyranny of the weak
+is intolerable; and this latter visitation came upon Leslie in its
+most rueful form&mdash;that, namely, whose weapons are sobs, sighs, vapors,
+and the dire coercion of hysteric fits. He was a soft-hearted fool,
+and a fair subject for such oppression. Not that his newly-installed
+mistress&mdash;his mistress, since she made him her slave&mdash;was naturally of
+an ill temper. On the contrary, she was somewhat amiable, or, at
+least, much given to tears and tenderness; but in process of time,
+this profuse sensibility had all centred on herself. In short, she was
+profoundly selfish, though nothing could have astonished her more than
+to tell her so; for, in her own eyes, she seemed a miracle of
+sensibility, as indeed she was, though her sensibility had learned to
+give little response to any woes but her own. What these woes might be
+would be hard to say: she had a wonderful talent for finding and
+inventing grievances. She was submerged and drowned in a sentimental
+melancholy, which wore in turn ten thousand different aspects, each
+worse than the other. She was a sea-anemone, covered with a myriad of
+filaments, all more shrinking and sensitive than a snail's horns.</p>
+
+<p>One reads of famished wretches who have tried to nourish life from the
+current of their own veins. So, in a figurative sense, did she. She
+was always anatomizing her own ridiculous heart; groping among the
+depths of her own sickly fancies, and making them her daily food. She
+was a busy gatherer of tokens, souvenirs, and mementoes, and was beset
+with blighted hopes, vain longings, sad remembrances, and all the
+spectral ills engendered between a frail mind and a depraved stomach.
+She was a great reader, and floated rudderless through a sea of books,
+fishing out of it all that was tender, morbid, and despairing, and
+stowing it up in albums.</p>
+
+<p>It may be thought that some disconsolate memory, some affection nipped
+in the bud, or the like catastrophe, had brought her to this pass. Far
+from it. She mourned that her fate had been too flat and sterile; that
+the rapturous emotions of her heart had never been awakened; that no
+sentimental passion, in short, had ever stirred her soul from its
+depths. This was the grievance which rankled most in her reveries. To
+give her her due, she never told it to her husband; but she brooded
+upon it in secret; and the result was, a multitude of affecting
+verses, which she treasured in her album as anonymous.</p>
+
+<p>Leslie, though none of the wisest of men, was one of the most amiable;
+and, under his wife's discipline, he learned to be one of the most
+discreet. It behooved him to be watchful and circumspect. His married
+life was a voyage through shoals and shallows, and needed sagacious
+pilotage; for no common eye could see where the danger lay. There was
+an endless variety of subjects tabooed to him; matters to all
+appearance quite indifferent, but to which he must never allude,
+because, Heaven knows how, they touched some trembling susceptibility,
+or wakened some grievous memory from its blessed sleep. The penalty,
+if the case were mild, would be a deep-drawn sigh; if more aggravated,
+a flood of tears; if extreme, an hysteric fit. And if, in his efforts
+to console her, he ventured to add any thing in the form of
+remonstrance, or let fall any word which might intimate that her
+conduct was not quite reasonable, the outraged sufferer would cease
+weeping, cast up her eyes reproachfully, and murmuring, "O William, is
+it come to this?" relapse again instantly into the depths of sobbing
+affliction. It was only by the most abject submission, coupled with
+all the resources of conjugal eloquence, that Leslie could succeed at
+length in purchasing a look of resignation and a faint smile of
+forgiveness.</p>
+
+<p>Use, it is said, will blunt the sharpest of troubles. In time, he
+became acclimated to his fate; yet, on one or two occasions, his
+equanimity was quite overset. He thought that his wife was losing her
+wits; for, as he came into her room, she fixed on him a melting gaze,
+sank on his shoulder, and flooded him with such a freshet of tears,
+that he might have complained with De Bracy, that a water fiend
+possessed her. The truth was, she had just been musing on her own
+dissolution, and imagining, in a luxury of woe, her own funeral, with
+all the circumstance of that sad event. As she looked around and
+bethought her how desolate that chamber would be when she was gone,
+and how each trifle that had once been hers would be treasured by
+those she left behind, her sensitive heart had dissolved in
+tenderness, and produced the hydraulic demonstration just mentioned.</p>
+
+<p>This libel on womankind became the mother of a pair of twins&mdash;the same
+infant prodigies whom Morton had seen at the White Mountains. Both
+perished at the age of seven, their precocious brains having by that
+time usurped all the vitality of their miserable little bodies. She
+was inconsolable at their death, though, while they lived, her
+delicate nerves could seldom abide their presence for five minutes at
+a time.</p>
+
+<p>There was once an idiot, who, being of a conciliating temper, thought
+to appease a fire and persuade it to go out by feeding it with fuel
+till it should be satisfied, and crave no more. On the same principle
+Leslie tried to satisfy the exacting spirit of his wife by a most
+watchful and anxious devotion to all her whims; but the greater his
+devotion, the more exacting she grew. She felt her power, and used it
+without mercy. She was, withal, intolerably jealous, not so much of
+any living rival, as of the memory of a dead one, Leslie's former
+wife. Here, indeed, she had some show of reason; for the poles are not
+wider asunder than were the characters of herself and her predecessor.</p>
+
+<p>Those who had known the latter in her maidenhood&mdash;she married young,
+or perhaps she would never have married Leslie&mdash;knew her as the
+dominant belle of the season, conspicuous for her beauty, her
+position, and for a degree of culture rare in America at that time;
+devoted and ardent towards a few close friends, haughty and distant
+towards the many; greatly loved by her few intimates, and either
+greatly admired or greatly disliked by most others around her. Those
+who knew her in the last years of her life knew her as one who had
+passed through a fiery ordeal. Of her many children, only one was
+left. They had fallen around her in a sudden and sharp succession,
+till it seemed to her that a destroying doom had gone forth against
+her race, and that the world of her affections was turned to a field
+of carnage. Leslie felt the shock acutely, not to say intensely, for a
+while; but the storm passed, and left on him very little trace. It
+sank into the deeper nature of his wife with such a penetrating sense
+of the vanity of life and the rottenness of mortal hope, as, in the
+olden time, drew saints and anchorites to renounce the world and give
+themselves to penance and seclusion. It made no anchorite of her. She
+rose from her baptism of fire saddened, but not broken nor unstrung;
+with a rooted faith and an absolute resignation; a nice perception of
+all human suffering; sympathies broad and embracing as the air; a
+benevolence pervading as the sunshine; and a spirit so calm in its
+elevation that no wind of calamity had power to ruffle it.</p>
+
+<p>Edith Leslie was a child when her mother died, yet old enough to feel
+the loss profoundly, and to be greatly shocked and cast down at the
+alacrity with which her father contrived to forget it. Having reduced
+Leslie to obedience, his bride essayed the same experiment on his
+daughter, but failed notably. There was something in the nature of the
+latter which revolted so impatiently against the selfish caprices and
+morbid fooleries which were played off hourly before her,&mdash;she was so
+indignant, moreover, at seeing her father sunk inch by inch in the
+slough of matrimonial thraldom,&mdash;that the issue might easily have been
+a protracted household feud. None but herself could know with how
+costly an effort she schooled herself to patience. With a caustic wit,
+and a fervent fancy which haunted her with images of an ideal life
+brighter than the work-day world around her, a nature with impulses
+which, less curbed and tempered, might have carried her through all
+the mazes of morbid rebellion, she still bent herself to accept her
+lot as she found it, in the full faith that flowers may be taught to
+grow on the flintiest soil. And now that the imagined maladies of a
+lifetime were turned at last into a mortal reality, and her
+step-mother lay on her death bed, Edith Leslie watched by her side
+with as much care as if this wretched piece of perverted sensibility
+had deserved her affection and esteem.</p>
+<br>
+<br><a name="chap17"></a>
+<br>
+<br>
+<h3>CHAPTER XVII.</h3>
+<table align="center" summary="quote18">
+	<tr><td><small>Beshrew me, but I love her heartily,<br>
+	For she is wise, if I can judge of her;<br>
+	And fair she is, if that mine eyes be true;<br>
+	And true she is, as she hath proved herself;<br>
+	And therefore, like herself, wise, fair, and true,<br>
+	Shall she be placed in my constant soul.&mdash;<i>Merchant of Venice</i>.</small></td></tr>
+</table>
+<br>
+<br>
+<p>A week after he had heard the tidings from the old housekeeper, Morton
+saw Dr. Steele coming out of a patient's door and getting into his
+chaise.</p>
+
+<p>"Good morning, Dr. Steele."</p>
+
+<p>"Sir, your servant," said the old-fashioned doctor.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm sorry to hear that Mrs. Leslie is so ill."</p>
+
+<p>"It's very sad," said the doctor. "Now, what the deuse is this young
+fellow stopping me for?"&mdash;this was his internal comment.</p>
+
+<p>"I hope you don't despair of her."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, sir, she will hold out to-morrow, and the next day, too."</p>
+
+<p>"I beg your pardon. Your check rein is loose. Let me make it right."</p>
+
+<p>"Thank you, Mr. Morton," said the doctor, somewhat mollified.</p>
+
+<p>"Ahem!&mdash;Colonel Leslie is well, I hope."</p>
+
+<p>"Apparently so, sir."</p>
+
+<p>"And&mdash;ahem!&mdash;his family, too."</p>
+
+<p>"I wasn't aware he had a family."</p>
+
+<p>"I mean&mdash;that is to say&mdash;his daughter&mdash;Miss Leslie."</p>
+
+<p>The shrewd doctor turned his gray eyes sideways on the querist.</p>
+
+<p>"Ah, his daughter. What did you wish to know of her, sir?"</p>
+
+<p>"Merely to inquire&mdash;&mdash;" said Morton, stammering and blushing visibly.
+"I mean only to ask if she is well."</p>
+
+<p>"I know nothing to the contrary. She seemed very well when I brought
+her down from Matherton last evening. I dare say, though, she can tell
+you herself a great deal better than I can. Good morning, Mr. Morton."</p>
+
+<p>And with a slight twinkle in his eye, Dr. Steele drove off.</p>
+
+<p>Morton looked after the chaise, as it lumbered down the street.</p>
+
+<p>"May I be hanged and quartered if I ever question you again; you are
+too sharp, by half."</p>
+
+<p>The doctor's information was very welcome, however; and, armed with an
+anxious inquiry after her mother's health, Morton proceeded to call
+upon Miss Leslie. She had come to the city, as he had already judged,
+on some mission connected with the wants of the invalid, and was to go
+back to Matherton, with Dr. Steele, in the afternoon.</p>
+
+<p>Thenceforward, for a week or upwards, he saw her no more; but, during
+the interval, he contrived, by various expedients, to keep himself
+advised of the condition and movements of the family at Matherton.
+Among other incidents, he became aware of two visits made them by
+Vinal, and was tormented, in consequence, with an unutterable
+jealousy. One morning he met the purblind old housekeeper, mousing
+along in spectacles through the crowded street, and, stopping her, to
+her great alarm and perplexity, he made his usual inquiry concerning
+Mrs. Leslie's health. This investigation led to the discovery that
+Miss Edith was coming from Matherton that very afternoon.</p>
+
+<p>Morton, upon this, grew so restless, that he could not refrain from
+going to the railroad station, a little before the train was to come
+in. And here his worst fear was realized; for he beheld, slowly pacing
+along the platform, the hated form of Horace Vinal. Morton retreated
+unseen, went into a neighboring hotel, and seated himself, a little
+withdrawn from a window, where he could see all that passed. The train
+arrived; and soon after Vinal appeared, conducting Miss Leslie to a
+carriage, with an air, as Morton thought, of the most anxious
+devotion. He grasped his walking stick, and burned with a feverish
+longing to break it across his rival's back.</p>
+
+<p>He saw Miss Leslie on the next day, and thus added fuel to a flame
+which already burned high enough. In short, he found himself in that
+most profoundly serious and profoundly ridiculous of all conditions,
+the condition of being over head and ears in love,&mdash;and his zeal for
+science was merged utterly in a more engrossing devotion. By one means
+or another, he contrived to keep pace with the course of things at
+Matherton, and learned from day to day that Mrs. Leslie was
+worse,&mdash;that she seemed to revive a little,&mdash;that she was on the point
+of death,&mdash;that she was dead. By the time this sad climax was reached,
+he had been starving a fortnight from the sight of his mistress,
+having the consolation to know that meantime his rival had made at
+least four visits to Matherton.</p>
+
+<p>One morning Morton was pacing the street in an abstracted mood, his
+looks bent on the bricks, when, chancing to look up, he saw those very
+eyes which his fancy had been that moment picturing, employed in
+guiding their owner's steps over a crossing towards him. As Edith
+Leslie stepped upon the sidewalk, she saw him for the first time. He
+bowed, joined her, spoke a few bungling words of condolence, and
+walked on at her side. After the fashion of those who are peculiarly
+anxious to appear at their best advantage, he appeared at his worst.
+And when his companion bade him good morning on the steps of her
+father's house, she left him in a most unenviable mood, muttering
+maledictions against himself and his fate, and brought, indeed, to the
+borders of despair. This depression, however, was not long in
+producing its reaction, under the influence of which, adopting his
+usual panacea against mental ailments, he mounted his horse, and
+spurred into the country.</p>
+
+<p>Here, about sunset, he beheld a horseman, slowly pacing along the road
+in front. On this, he drew rein, and began to look about him for the
+means of escape; for in the person of the rider he recognized his
+classmate Wren, to whose society he was far from partial. Neither lane
+nor by-road was to be seen.</p>
+
+<p>"At the worst," he thought, "it is but a mile or two;" and, setting
+forward at a trot again, he was in a moment at his classmate's side.</p>
+
+<p>"How are you, Wren?"</p>
+
+<p>"Ah, Morton, good evening," exclaimed Wren, with a graceful wave of
+his hand. "I'm delighted to see you. A charming evening&mdash;isn't it?"</p>
+
+<p>"Charming."</p>
+
+<p>"That's a fine horse you have."</p>
+
+<p>"Tolerably good."</p>
+
+<p>"Did you ever observe this fellow that I'm riding? Do you see how long
+and straight he is in the back? Well, that's the Arab blood that's in
+him. His grandfather was a superb Arab, that the Pacha of Egypt gave
+my uncle when he was travelling there;" and he proceeded to dilate at
+large on the merits and pedigree of his horse, the truth being that he
+and his ancestry before him had been born and bred in the State of
+Vermont. Morton listened with civil incredulity, and wished his
+companion at the antipodes.</p>
+
+<p>"Ah, there's my cousin's house," exclaimed Wren, pointing to a very
+pretty cottage and grounds which they were approaching&mdash;"Mary Holyoke,
+you know&mdash;Mary Everard that was some three months ago. What a
+delightful retreat for the honeymoon!"</p>
+
+<p>"Very," said Morton.</p>
+
+<p>"Stop there with me, will you? I'm going in for a few minutes, to wish
+them a pleasant journey. They are going to Niagara to-morrow."</p>
+
+<p>"Thank you, I believe I won't stop."</p>
+
+<p>"As you please, my dear fellow. I think they are quite right to travel
+now; it's a better season than the spring; and a honeymoon journey,
+after all, isn't <i>all</i> romance, you know. Besides, they are going to
+have a charming companion&mdash;Miss Leslie."</p>
+
+<p>"I thought that she had just lost her mother-in-law."</p>
+
+<p>"That's the very thing. She's almost ill with watching night after
+night; so Mary,&mdash;they used to be friends at school,&mdash;has been very
+anxious that she should make the journey with them, for a change of
+scene, you know,&mdash;and Colonel Leslie has persuaded her to go."</p>
+
+<p>"When will they leave town?"</p>
+
+<p>"To-morrow. They mean to spend a few days at Trenton, and then go to
+the Falls. But here we are; won't you change your mind, and come in?"</p>
+
+<p>"No, thank you. Good night."</p>
+
+<p>"Good evening, then;" and waving his hand again, Wren trotted up the
+avenue.</p>
+
+<p>"Virtue never goes unrewarded," thought Morton; "if I hadn't joined
+the fellow, I might not have known about this journey."</p>
+
+<p>On the next day he discovered that they had actually gone, and that,
+as Wren had said, Niagara was to be the ultimatum of their tour. On
+the following morning, he himself took the western train, and made all
+speed for the Falls.</p>
+<br>
+<br><a name="chap18"></a>
+<br>
+<br>
+<h3>CHAPTER XVIII.</h3>
+<center><small>If folly grows romantic, I must paint
+it.&mdash;<i>Pope</i>.</small></center>
+<br>
+<br>
+<p>On the American side of the Niagara, a few miles below the Falls, is a
+deep chasm, bearing the inauspicious christening of the Devil's Hole.
+Near it there is&mdash;or perhaps was, for things have changed
+thereabouts&mdash;a path winding far down among rocks and forests, till it
+leads to the brink of the river. Here, darkened by the beetling cliffs
+and sombre forests, the Niagara surges on its way, like a compressed
+ocean, raging to break free. At the verge of this watery convulsion
+stood Holyoke and his wife, Miss Leslie, and Morton, whom they had
+chanced to meet that morning.</p>
+
+<p>"It is very fine, no doubt," said the good-natured, though very
+shallow Mrs. Holyoke, "but I have no mind to take cold in these dark
+woods. If we stay much longer, I believe I shall go mad, looking at
+that rushing, foaming water, and throw myself in. Come, Harry, let us
+go back to daylight again."</p>
+
+<p>"Just as you please," said the model husband, offering his arm.</p>
+
+<p>"Come, Edith;&mdash;why, she really seems to like it;&mdash;Edith!&mdash;she don't
+hear me; no wonder, in all this noise;&mdash;Edith, we are going back to
+the upper world. You can stay here, if you please, with Mr. Morton."</p>
+
+<p>But Miss Leslie chose to follow her friend; while Morton aided her up
+the rough path.</p>
+
+<p>"I have observed," he said, as they came to smoother ground, "in our
+excursions yesterday and to-day, that Mrs. Holyoke has not much of
+your liking for rocks, trees, and water. I mean, that she has no great
+taste for nature."</p>
+
+<p>"At all events, she has an eye for what is picturesque in it. She is
+an artist, you know, and paints in water colors extremely well."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, and whenever she sees a landscape, she thinks only how it would
+look on paper or canvas, and judges it accordingly. That is not a
+genuine love of nature. One does not value a friend for good looks, or
+dress, or air; and so, in the same way, is not a true fondness for
+nature independent, to some extent at least, of effects of form, or
+color, or grouping?"</p>
+
+<p>"It does not imply, I think, any artistic talent, or even a good eye
+for artistic effect. And yet I cannot conceive of a great landscape
+artist being without it, any more than a great poet."</p>
+
+<p>"If he were, he would be no better than a refined scene painter. We
+are in a commercial country; so pardon me if I use commercial
+language. This liking for nature is a capital investment. She is
+always a kind mistress, a good friend, always ready with a
+tranquillizing word, never inconstant, never out of humor, never sad."</p>
+
+<p>"And yet sometimes she can speak sadly, too."</p>
+
+<p>Edith Leslie said no more; but there came before her the remembrance
+of her long watchings in the room of the dying Mrs. Leslie, when,
+seated by the window, open in the hot summer nights, she had listened,
+hour after hour, mournfully, drearily, almost with superstitious awe,
+to the chirping of the crickets, the plaintive cry of the
+whippoorwill, and now and then the hooting of a distant owl.</p>
+
+<p>"Here in America," continued Morton, "we ought to make the most of
+this feeling for nature; for we have very little else."</p>
+
+<p>"And yet there is less of it here than in some other countries; in
+England, for instance."</p>
+
+<p>"We are too busy for such vanities. Besides, we are just now in an
+unlucky position. A wilderness is one thing; savageness and solitude
+have a character of their own; and so has a polished landscape with
+associations of art, poetry, legend, and history."</p>
+
+<p>"And we have destroyed the one, and have not yet found the other."</p>
+
+<p>"And so, between two stools we fall to the ground."</p>
+
+<p>"If you have a liking for a wilderness and primitive scenery, I don't
+think that you have much reason to complain; for you, at least, have
+contrived to see something of them."</p>
+
+<p>"And you of the other sort; art and history wedded to nature; at
+Tivoli, for example,&mdash;at the Lake of Albano; where else shall I say?"</p>
+
+<p>"Say, at Giardini, in Sicily."</p>
+
+<p>"Why at Giardini? I never heard of it before."</p>
+
+<p>"Not that the view there is finer than in some other places, though
+towards evening it is very beautiful. You see the ocean on one side,
+and the mountains on the other, covered to the top with orange, lemon,
+and olive trees, and Mount Etna rising above them all, with a spire of
+white smoke curling out of its crater, tinted with red, yellow, and
+purple, where the sunset strikes it. On the mountain above you there
+is an ancient theatre, where a Greek audience once sat on the stone
+benches, and after them, in their turn, a Roman. On the peak of the
+mountain over it is a Saracen castle, and, not far off, a Norman
+tower."</p>
+
+<p>"So that the whole is an embodiment of poetry and history from the
+days of the Odyssey downwards."</p>
+
+<p>"Nobody, I think, who has seen that eastern shore of Sicily can have
+escaped without some strong impression from it. The Fourrierites, you
+know, pretend to believe that the earth is a living being, with a
+soul, only a larger one, like ours that creep on the outside of it.
+One is sometimes tempted to adopt their idea, and fancy that the
+changing face of nature is the expression of the earth's thoughts, and
+its way of communicating with us."</p>
+
+<p>"A landscape will sometimes have a life and a language,&mdash;that is, when
+one happens to be in the mood to hear it,&mdash;and yet, after all,
+association is commonly the main source of its power. The Hudson, I
+imagine, can match the Rhine in point of mere beauty; but a few ruined
+castles, with the memories about them, turn the tables dead against
+us."</p>
+
+<p>"You have always&mdash;have you not?&mdash;had a penchant for the barbarism of
+the middle ages."</p>
+
+<p>"Not for their barbarism, but for the germs of civilization that lay
+in the midst of it. Religion towards God, devotion towards
+women&mdash;these were the vital ideas of the middle ages."</p>
+
+<p>"But how were those ideas acted on? Their religion was not much better
+than a mass of superstitions."</p>
+
+<p>"Not more gross and vulgar than the spirit rapping superstition, the
+last freak into which this age of reason has stumbled. And, for the
+other idea, the fundamental idea of chivalry, we are beginning to
+replace it with woman's rights, Heaven deliver us!"</p>
+
+<p>"Pardon me if I doubt whether ladies in the middle ages were better
+treated than they are now. The theory was admirable, no doubt, but the
+practice, if there were any, seems at this distance a little
+ridiculous."</p>
+
+<p>"Chivalry was like Don Quixote, who stands for it&mdash;fantastic and
+absurd enough on the outside, but noble at the core."</p>
+
+<p>"But you would not imply seriously that you would prefer the age of
+chivalry to this nineteenth century."</p>
+
+<p>"No, the reign of shopkeepers is better than the reign of cutthroats.
+But the nineteenth century has no right to abuse the middle ages. The
+best feature of its civilization is handed down from them. That
+feeling which found a place in the rough hearts of our northern
+ancestry, half savages as they were, and gave to their favorite
+goddess attributes more high and delicate than any with which the
+Greeks and Romans, at the summit of their refinement, ever invested
+their Venus; the feeling which afterwards grew into the sentiment of
+chivalry, and, hand in hand with Christianity, has made our modern
+civilization what it is,&mdash;that is the heritage we owe to the middle
+ages, and for which we are bound to be grateful to them. It was a
+flower all the fairer for springing in the midst of darkness and
+barbarism; and now that we have it in a kinder soil, we can only hope
+that it is not fast losing its fragrance and brightness."</p>
+
+<p>"Of that, I imagine, a woman is a very poor judge; but if it has lost
+its antique freshness, at all events we can enjoy it in peace and
+tranquillity, and be spared the risk of life and limb in gathering it.
+Those sweetbrier blossoms that grow yonder, down the side of the
+precipice, are very pretty, but it would require nothing less than a
+paladin, or a knight errant, made crazy with the hope of a smile, to
+get them and bring them up."</p>
+
+<p>"Now it is you that asperse the present, and I that will defend it."
+And the words were hardly spoken before the young fool was over the
+edge of the cliff, scarcely hearing his companion's startled cry of
+remonstrance.</p>
+
+<p>The rock sloped steeply to a few feet below the spot where the brier
+grew, and then sank in a sheer precipice of a hundred feet or more, so
+that if hand or foot had failed him, his career would have ended
+somewhat abruptly. To the spectatress above the danger seemed
+appalling; but, with the climber's practised eye and well-strung
+sinews, it was in fact very slight. Once, indeed, a fragment of stone
+loosened under his foot, and fell with a splintering crash upon the
+rocks below, followed by a shower of pebbles and gravel, rattling
+among the trees. But he soon reached his prize, secured it in his
+hatband, and grasping the friendly root of a spruce tree, drew himself
+up to the level top of the cliff.</p>
+
+<p>Here he saw the fruit of his Quixotism. Edith Leslie, pale as death,
+seemed on the very verge of fainting. He sprang in great consternation
+to her aid, supported her to a rock near at hand, on which she could
+rest; and as her momentary dizziness passed away, she began to
+distinguish his eager words of apology and self-reproach.</p>
+
+<p>"You will think that I have grown backward into a child again. Think
+what you will; I deserve your worst thought; only do not believe that
+I could fancy such paltry exploits and paltry risks could be a tribute
+worthy of you; or that you are to be served with such boy's service as
+that. Here are the flowers: throw them away, or keep them as a memento
+of my absurdity; but let them remind you, at the same time, that
+wherever your wish points, there I would go, if it were into the jaws
+of fate."</p>
+
+<p>Here, looking up, he saw the expediency of curtailing his eloquence;
+for not far off appeared their two companions, returning to look for
+them. Both Miss Leslie and he had much ado to explain, the one why her
+face was so pale, the other why his dress was so dusty and disordered.
+The carriage was waiting for them on the road near by; and their
+morning's excursion being finished, they proceeded towards it, Morton
+leading the way in silence.</p>
+
+<p>His first feeling had been one of compunction and indignation at
+himself; but close upon it followed another, very different&mdash;a sense
+of mixed suspense and delight. What augury might he not draw from the
+pale cheek and fainting form of his companion?</p>
+<br>
+<br><a name="chap19"></a>
+<br>
+<br>
+<h3>CHAPTER XIX.</h3>
+<table align="center" summary="quote19">
+	<tr><td><small>For, in the days of yore, the birds of parts<br>
+	Were bred to speak, and sing, and learn the liberal arts.<br>
+	&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
+	&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
+	&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
+	&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
+	&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
+	&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
+	<i>The Cock and the Fox</i>.<br><br>
+	Thine is the adventure, thine the victory;<br>
+	Well has thy fortune turned the dice for thee.<br>
+	&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
+	&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
+	&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
+	&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
+	&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
+	&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
+	<i>Palamon and Arcite</i>.</small></td></tr>
+</table>
+<br>
+<br>
+<p>During the rest of the journey, Morton, on Mrs. Holyoke's invitation,
+was one of the party. Again and again he was impelled to learn his
+fate; but recoiled from casting the die, dreading that his hour was
+not come. Still, though every day more helplessly spell-bound, his
+mood was not despondent.</p>
+
+<p>They came to the town of &mdash;&mdash;, a half day from home.</p>
+
+<p>"My household gods are not far off," said Morton. "My father was born
+at Steuben, a few miles below, where my grandfather used to preach
+against King George, and stir up his parish to rebellion. I have
+relations there still, and have a mind to spend to-morrow with them."</p>
+
+<p>This announcement proceeded much less from family affection than from
+another motive. Mrs. Holyoke saw it in an instant.</p>
+
+<p>"Excellent! Then Miss Leslie can accept her friend's invitation to
+make a day's visit at this place; and you will meet her and escort her
+to Boston."</p>
+
+<p>And Morton, much rejoiced at this successful issue of his diplomacy,
+repaired to his relatives at Steuben; Holyoke and his wife proceeded
+homeward; while Miss Leslie remained to accomplish the visit with her
+country friend.</p>
+
+<p>Morton spent a quiet day in the primitive New England village, a place
+of which boyish association made him fond. On the next morning, Miss
+Leslie was to come to Steuben, with her hostess; but as there was an
+abundance of time before the train would appear, he strolled along a
+quiet road leading back into the country. He soon came to an old inn,
+over whose tottering porch King George's head might once have swung.
+Nothing human was astir. The ancient lilacs flaunted before the door;
+the tall sunflowers peered over the garden fence; the primeval
+well-sweep slanted aloft, far above the mossy shingles of the roof.
+The rural quiet of the place tempted him. He sat under the porch, and
+watched the swallows sailing in and out of the great barn whose doors
+stood wide open, on the opposite side of the road.</p>
+
+<p>A voice broke the silence&mdash;a voice from the barn yard. It was the
+voice of a hen mother, the announcement that an egg was born into the
+world. Not the proud, exulting cackle which ordinarily proclaims that
+auspicious event, but a repining, discontented cry, now rising in
+vehement remonstrance with destiny, now sinking into a low cluck of
+disgust. Morton, skilled in the language of birds, construed these
+melancholy cacklings as follows:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"Whither does all this tend? Why is my happiness blighted, my
+aspirations repressed? Why am I forever penned up within these narrow
+precincts, amid low domestic cares, and sordid, uncongenial,
+unsympathizing associates? And thou, my white and spotless offspring,
+what shall be thy fate? To be steeped in hot water, and eaten with a
+spoon? Or art thou to be the germ of an existence wretched as my own,
+doomed to a ceaseless round of daily parturition? O, weariness! O,
+misery! O, despair!"</p>
+
+<p>And throwing her ruffled feelings into one indignant cackle, the hen
+was silent.</p>
+
+<p>The advent of a human biped here enlivened the scene. This was a young
+gentleman on horseback, a collegian to all appearance, admirably
+mounted, but bestriding his horse with the look of one who has just
+passed his first course under the riding master, and rides by the
+book, as Touchstone quarrelled. This important personage, with an air
+oddly compounded of assumption and timidity, proceeded to call the
+hostler, and order oats for his horse, after which he strutted into
+the house, switching his leg with his whip.</p>
+
+<p>As ample time remained, Morton continued his walk along the road, his
+mood in harmony with the brightness of the morning. He was in a humor
+to please himself with trifles. A ground squirrel chirruped at him
+from a crevice of the wall. He stood watching the small, shy visage,
+as it looked out at him. Then a red squirrel, a much livelier
+companion, uttered its trilling cry from a clump of hazel bushes.
+Morton seated himself on a stone very near it. The squirrel resented
+the intrusion, ran out on a fence rail towards the offender,
+chattered, scolded, swelled himself like a miniature muff, made his
+tail and his whole body vibrate with his wrath; then suddenly dodged
+down behind the rail and peered over it at the trespasser, his nose
+and one eye alone being visible; then bolted into full sight again,
+and scolded as before, jerking himself from side to side in the
+extremity of his petulance; till at last, without the smallest
+apparent cause, he suddenly wheeled about and fled, bounding like the
+wind along the top of the stone wall.</p>
+
+<p>This interview over, Morton looked at his watch, saw that it was time
+to go back towards the village, and began to retrace his steps
+accordingly. He had gone but a few paces, when he saw a countryman, a
+simple-looking fellow, running at top speed, and in great excitement,
+up a byway, which led to the railroad, the latter crossing it by a
+high bridge, at some distance from the station.</p>
+
+<p>"What's the matter?" demanded Morton.</p>
+
+<p>"The railroad cars!" gasped the countryman.</p>
+
+<p>"What of them?"</p>
+
+<p>"They'll all go to smash, and no mistake."</p>
+
+<p>"What!" cried Morton, aghast.</p>
+
+<p>"Fact, mister. Some born devil has been and sawed the bridge timbers
+most through in the middle."</p>
+
+<p>"What!" cried Morton again.</p>
+
+<p>"Sure as I stand here! I seen the heaps of sawdust on the road. That's
+the way I come to take notice. The minute the locomotive gets on the
+bridge, down she'll go, and no two ways about it."</p>
+
+<p>Morton had no doubt that the man was right. The newspapers, within the
+last few weeks, had contained various accounts of impediments, great
+and small, maliciously placed on railroads. It was a species of
+villany which was just then having its run, as incendiarism will
+sometimes have; and a like case of a bridge partly sawed through had
+lately occurred in a neighboring state.</p>
+
+<p>"You fool!" exclaimed Morton, in anguish and despair; "why didn't you
+get on the track, and stop the train?"</p>
+
+<p>"I'd like to see you stop the train!" retorted the man.</p>
+
+<p>Morton turned to run for the road, bent on stopping the engine, or
+letting it pass over him. But as he turned, a new arrival caught his
+eye. This was the cavalier who had baited his horse at the inn, and
+who, seeing the excited looks of the two men, had checked his pace,
+and was looking at them with much curiosity.</p>
+
+<p>Crazed with agitation, and hardly knowing what he did, Morton leaped
+towards him, seized his horse, a powerful and high-mettled animal, by
+the head, and, with a few broken words of explanation, called on him
+to dismount. The astonished collegian did not comply. Morton bore back
+fiercely on the bit; the horse plunged and snorted; the rider clutched
+the pommel; Morton took him by the arm, drew him to the ground,
+mounted at a bound after him, and, as he touched the saddle, struck
+his whalebone walking stick with all his force over the horse's flank.
+The horse leaped forward frantically, and rushed headlong down the
+road. His discarded rider saw his hoofs twinkling for an instant out
+of the cloud of dust, and thought he had had a Heaven-directed escape
+from a madman.</p>
+
+<p>The small village above Steuben, at which Miss Leslie and her friend
+were to take the train, was three miles off. The road ran almost
+directly towards it for more than three fourths of the way, when it
+made a bend to the right. Morton, with his furious riding, very soon
+reached this point. He could see the station house before him, on the
+left, and not more than a third of a mile distant. The space between,
+though uneven, had no visible impediments but a few low fences and
+scattered clumps of bushes. Morton pushed through the barberry growth
+that fringed the road, galloped over the hard pasture, leaped one
+fence, passed a gap in another, and half way to his goal, found
+himself and his horse in a quagmire. At this moment, straining his
+eyes towards the cluster of houses, he saw, with agony at his heart, a
+white puff of vapor rising above the trees beyond. Then the dark
+outline of the train came into view, checking its way, and stopping,
+half hidden behind the buildings.</p>
+
+<p>Morton knew that it would stop only for a moment, and plied his horse
+with merciless blows. The horse plunged through the mire,&mdash;the mud and
+water spouting high above his rider's head,&mdash;gained the firm ground,
+and bounded forward wild with fright and fury. It was too late. The
+bell rang, and with quicker and quicker pants, the engine began to
+move. Morton shouted,&mdash;gesticulated,&mdash;still it did not stop, though
+the passengers seemed to take alarm, for a head was thrust from every
+window, while the occupants of an open carriage drawn up on the road
+were bending eagerly towards him.</p>
+
+<p>Morton wheeled to the left, and urged his horse up the embankment in
+front of the train. With a violent effort, he reached the top. The
+engineer was running against time, and cared for nothing but winning
+his match. He blew the steam whistle; and as Morton dragged on the
+curb with desperate strength, the horse reared upright, pawing the
+air. But, as he rose, Morton disengaged his feet, slid over the
+crupper to the ground, and let go the rein. The horse leaped down the
+bank, and scoured over the meadow, mad with terror. Morton took his
+stand in the middle of the track, and facing the advancing train,
+stood immovable as a post. The engineer reversed the engine, brought
+it to a stand within a few yards of him, and, with a profusion of
+oaths, demanded what he wanted.</p>
+
+<p>Before the breathless Morton could well explain himself, the
+passengers began to leap out of the cars, and running forward,
+gathered about him. He soon found words to make the case known. But
+one object alone engrossed him. He pushed on among the throng of
+questioning, eager men, mounted the foremost car, and made his way
+through it, the crowd pushing behind and around him, and plying him
+with questions, to which, in the confusion and abstraction of his
+faculties, he gave wild and random answers. He looked at every face.
+Edith Leslie was not there. He crossed the platform into the next car,
+passed through it, and still could not find her. It was the last in
+the train. And now a strange feeling came over him, a bitterness, a
+sense of disappointment, as if his efforts and his pangs had been
+uncalled for and profitless; for so intensely had his thoughts been
+concentred on one object, that he forgot for the moment the hundred
+men and women whom he had saved from deadly jeopardy.</p>
+
+<p>The train rolled back to the station, the distance being only a few
+rods. Morton got out and leaned against the wall of the house. Men
+thronged about him with questions, exclamations, thanks, praises. The
+reaction of his violent emotion produced in him a frame of mind almost
+childish. He was restless to free himself from the crowd.</p>
+
+<p>"It's nothing; it's nothing," he answered, as fresh praises were
+showered on him. "I saw the train going to the devil, and did what I
+could to save it. Any of you, I dare say, would have done as much. Be
+good enough to let me have a little air."</p>
+
+<p>The crowd gave way, and he walked forward past the corner of the
+building. Here, standing on the road, close at hand, he suddenly saw
+an open carriage, and in it, pale as death, sat Miss Leslie, with her
+friend, and a boy of twelve, her friend's brother. He sprang towards
+it with an irrepressible impulse.</p>
+
+<p>"My God! Miss Leslie, I thought you were in the train."</p>
+
+<p>"And so we should have been," said the boy, "but the cars came in
+three minutes before their time."</p>
+
+<p>Edith Leslie did not utter a word.</p>
+
+<p>Some of the passengers were soon about him again. He repeated to them
+what he knew of the danger, and told them how he had learned it. In a
+few minutes, several men were seen at a distance on the railroad,
+running forward with a handkerchief tied to a stick to warn off the
+train. A few minutes later, a Connecticut pedler, one of the
+passengers, came up to Morton.</p>
+
+<p>"Mister, they're going to do the handsome thing by you. They're
+getting up a subscription to give you a piece of silver plate."</p>
+
+<p>"The deuse they are!" was Morton's ungrateful response.</p>
+
+<p>Going into the room where the passengers were met, he found that the
+pedler had told the truth; on which, for the first and last time in
+his life, he addressed an assemblage of his fellow-citizens. He told
+them that he thanked them for their kind intention; but that if he had
+done them a service, he wished for no other recompense than the
+knowledge of it, and urged them, if they did any thing in the matter,
+to devote their efforts to gaining the arrest and punishment of the
+scoundrel who had attempted the mischief. His oratory was much
+applauded; many, who had thought themselves in for the subscription,
+joyfully buttoned their pockets, and, instead of the plate, he
+received a series of complimentary resolutions, to be published in the
+newspapers.</p>
+
+<p>Meanwhile, having made his speech, he had lost no time in making his
+escape also. Going back to the carriage, Miss Leslie's friend asked
+him to accompany them home, whence they could return to take the
+afternoon train, when the bridge would, no doubt, be repaired. Morton,
+however, declined the invitation, and, having sent two men to catch
+the horse, with instructions to refer the distressed owner to him, he
+drove in a farmer's wagon to Steuben. In a few hours, he rejoined Miss
+Leslie and her friend; and having escorted both safely to town, took
+leave of the former, that evening, at the door of her father's house.</p>
+
+<p>Several of the newspapers next morning contained the resolutions
+passed by the passengers, trumpeting Morton's humanity, presence of
+mind, &amp;c. He himself very well knew that the praise was undeserved,
+since he had neither thought nor cared for the objects of his supposed
+humanity, and, far from acting with presence of mind, had scarcely
+known what he was about.</p>
+
+<p>The bridge had been cut by an Irish mechanic in the employ of the
+road, who, for some misdemeanor, had been reprimanded and turned out,
+and who had passed half the night in preparing his demoniac revenge.
+It afterwards appeared that he had been a state's prison convict in a
+neighboring state, and that he would have been still in confinement,
+had not the officious zeal of certain benevolent persons availed to
+set him loose before his time.</p>
+<br>
+<br><a name="chap20"></a>
+<br>
+<br>
+<h3>CHAPTER XX.</h3>
+<table align="center" summary="quote20">
+	<tr><td><small>For true it is, as <i>in principio,</i><br>
+	<i>Mulier est hominis confusio;</i><br>
+	Madam, the meaning of this Latin is,<br>
+	That woman is to man his sovereign bliss.<br><br>
+	*&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;*
+	&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;*
+	&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;*
+	&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;*<br><br>
+	A woman's counsel brought us first to woe,<br>
+	And made her man his paradise forego.&mdash;<br>
+	These are the words of Chanticleer, not mine;<br>
+	I honor dames, and think their sex divine.&mdash;<i>Dryden</i>.</small></td></tr>
+</table>
+<br>
+<br>
+<p>On the day after their return, Morton visited Miss Leslie to learn if
+she had suffered from the fatigues and alarms of yesterday; and, in
+truth, she had the pale face of one whose rest has been short and
+broken.</p>
+
+<p>"It has been my fate to terrify you," said the anxious Morton.</p>
+
+<p>During his visit, the door bell was most obtrusively busy. Messages,
+parcels, notes, cards, visitors came in, and expelled all hope of a
+<i>tête à tête</i>.</p>
+
+<p>Soon after he left the room, Leslie entered.</p>
+
+<p>"Who gave you those flowers, Edith?"</p>
+
+<p>"Mr. Morton, sir."</p>
+
+<p>"Humph!" ejaculated Leslie, with a look by no means of gratification.</p>
+
+<p>Meanwhile, Morton, walking the street in an abstracted mood, overtook
+unawares his bachelor friend Mr. Benedick Sharpe, jurist, philosopher,
+and man of letters&mdash;a personage whose ordinary discourse was a
+singular imbroglio of irony and earnest.</p>
+
+<p>"Why, Morton, what problem of ethnology are you at now? the unity of
+the human race, and the descent from Adam&mdash;science versus
+orthodoxy&mdash;is that it?"</p>
+
+<p>"Nothing so deep."</p>
+
+<p>"What, nothing ethnological?"</p>
+
+<p>"Nothing at all."</p>
+
+<p>"Ah, then I begin to tremble for you. There's but one thing else could
+lose you in such a maze. The flame of a candle is very pretty; but the
+moth that flies into it scorches his wings, poor devil."</p>
+
+<p>"I am too dull to see through your metaphors."</p>
+
+<p>"There's another blind divinity besides Justice. Beware the shoal of
+matrimony! Many a good fellow has been wrecked there."</p>
+
+<p>"Harping on your old string! You are a professed woman hater."</p>
+
+<p>"Who, I? Now that is a scandalous libel. I admire them,&mdash;of course."</p>
+
+<p>"And yet there's not a lady of your acquaintance whom I have not heard
+you analyze, criticise, cavil at, and disparage."</p>
+
+<p>"My dear fellow!"</p>
+
+<p>"You have no conscience to deny it."</p>
+
+<p>"I protest I have the greatest&mdash;ahem!&mdash;admiration for the ladies of
+our acquaintance. We have an excellent assortment,&mdash;we have witty
+women; brilliant women; women of taste and genius; exact and
+fastidious women,&mdash;a full supply,&mdash;accomplished women; finished and
+elegant women,&mdash;not too many, but still we have them; learned women;
+gentle, amiable, tender women; sharp and caustic women; sensible and
+practical women; domestic women,&mdash;all unimpeachable,&mdash;all good in
+their kind."</p>
+
+<p>"Then why is matrimony so dangerous?"</p>
+
+<p>"No, no, not dangerous, exactly,&mdash;thanks to discreet nurture and
+northern winters; not dangerous hereabouts as it was in the days of
+the old satirists. A wise man may be safe enough here from any climax
+of matrimonial evil; but there are minor mischiefs, daily
+<i>désagrémens</i>."</p>
+
+<p>"What, in spite of that catalogue of feminine virtues which you
+delivered just now?"</p>
+
+<p>"Vanity of vanities! Admirable in the abstract; excellent at a safe
+distance; but to be tied to for life, bed and board, day light and
+candle light,&mdash;that's another thing."</p>
+
+<p>"Even the tender and amiable,&mdash;is there risk even there?"</p>
+
+<p>"One cloys on perpetual sweetmeats."</p>
+
+<p>"And the domestic women?"</p>
+
+<p>"Who incarcerate themselves in their nurseries, and have no brains but
+for their babies; who are frantic if the infant coughs, and are buried
+and lost among cradles, porringers, go-carts, pills, and
+prescriptions."</p>
+
+<p>"The brilliant woman, then?"</p>
+
+<p>"Brilliant at dinner tables and <i>soirées;</i> but, on the next day, your
+Corinne is disconsolate with a headache. Her wit is for the
+world,&mdash;her moods and mopings, caprices and lamentations,&mdash;those she
+keeps for her husband."</p>
+
+<p>"You are a cynic. The woman of taste and genius; where do you place
+her?"</p>
+
+<p>"What are the rude heart and brain of a man to such exalted
+susceptibilities? What homage is too much for him to render? Be a bond
+slave to the sweet enthusiast. Bow yourself before the delicate
+shrine. Do your devoirs; she will not bate you a jot."</p>
+
+<p>"But there are in the world women governed by reason."</p>
+
+<p>"My dear Morton, are you demented? A woman always rational, always
+sensible, always consistent; a logical woman; one who can distinguish
+the relations of cause and effect, one who marches straight to her
+purpose like a man,&mdash;who ever found such a woman; or, finding her, who
+could endure such a one?"</p>
+
+<p>"You fly into extremes; but women may be rational, as well as men."</p>
+
+<p>"I like to see the organ of faith well developed,&mdash;yours is a miracle.
+Granted, a rational woman; and with a liberal rendering of the word,
+such, I admit, are now and then seen,&mdash;women always even, always
+cheerful, never morbid, always industrious, always practical; busy
+with good works,&mdash;charity, for example, or making puddings,&mdash;pious
+daughters, model wives, pattern mothers&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"At last you have found a creditable character."</p>
+
+<p>"Very creditable; but far from interesting. The truth is, Morton, the
+very uncertainty, the flitting gleams and shadows, the opalescent
+light, the chameleon coloring of a woman's mind are what make her
+fascination,&mdash;the fascination and the danger,&mdash;there lies the dilemma.
+Shun the danger, and you lose the charm as well. A woman's human
+nature is not our human nature; the tissue is more cunningly woven;
+the string more responsive; the essence lighter and subtler,&mdash;forgive
+the poetic style,&mdash;appropriate to the theme, you know. In their
+virtues and their faults they shoot away into paths where we do not
+track them. They can sink in a more abject abasement; and sometimes,
+again, while we tread the earth, they are aeronauts of the pure ether.
+Stable, stubborn, impassive man holds the steadfast tenor of his walk,
+little moved by influences which, on the one hand, bury his helpmate
+in ruin, or, on the other, wing her on a flight to the zenith. They
+out-sin us, and they out-saint us; weak as a reed, and strong as an
+oak; measureless in folly, profound in wisdom; for the deepest of all
+wisdom springs, not out of a questioning brain, but out of a confiding
+heart; and all human knowledge must find its root at last in a blind
+belief. There, I have given you a sublime touch of eloquence; and, for
+the moral to it,&mdash;shun matrimony. It is Satan's slyest mantrap. No,
+not so, at all; it is a blessed institution for perfecting mankind in
+patience, charity, and meekness, and booking their names in the
+catalogue of saints. So be wise, in time. Good by. Look before you
+leap!"</p>
+
+<p>And, with an ironical twinkle in his eye, Sharpe vanished.</p>
+<br>
+<br><a name="chap21"></a>
+<br>
+<br>
+<h3>CHAPTER XXI.</h3>
+<blockquote><small>Quelle diable de fantaisie t'es tu allé mettre dans la cervelle? Tu le
+veux, amour; il faut être fou comme beaucoup d'autres.&mdash;<i>Le Malade
+Imaginaire</i>.</small></blockquote>
+<br>
+<p>Matherton, renowned through both hemispheres for the manufacture of
+glass ware, stands, unless this history errs, on the line of the
+Northern Central Railroad, the distance from its post office to the
+post office at Boston being just thirty-three miles. Four miles from
+the village is the tract of land which Leslie's forefather, far back
+in New England antiquity, bought of the Indians. The original purchase
+covered several square miles, since dwindled to some two hundred
+acres. Here, in a sequestered and very beautiful spot, stands the
+mansion which Leslie's grandfather built some eighty-five years ago.
+In its day it was reputed of matchless elegance, and, with Leslie's
+repairs and improvements, it might still pass as a very handsome old
+country residence. Sagamore Pond, or Lake Sagamore, as the last Mrs.
+Leslie, who had lived in England, insisted on calling it, washes the
+foot of the garden; and along the northern verge of the estate, Battle
+Brook steals down to the pond, under the thick shade of the hemlock
+trees. Here King Philip's warriors once lay in ambush, through a hot
+summer's day; here many pious Puritans were butchered, and many
+carried off into doleful captivity.</p>
+
+<p>At the house at Battle Brook, Leslie, during spring, summer, and
+autumn, had always spent every leisure moment that he could snatch
+from his affairs. Since his connection with Vinal, these intervals had
+become both long and frequent. And, since grief has a privilege, and
+since, moreover, a somewhat alarming cough had lately begun to trouble
+him, he now committed all to Vinal's hands, and, on the day after his
+daughter's return, repaired with her to his favorite homestead, there
+to remain till the autumn frosts should warn them back to town.
+Forthwith Matherton became the focus to which all the thoughts of
+Morton concentred.</p>
+
+<p>Thither, pretext or no pretext, he resolved to go. He went,
+accordingly, and made his quarters at the grand hotel of Matherton.
+Fortunately, Battle Brook was then the best trout stream in
+Massachusetts; and this would give, he flattered himself, some faint
+color to his proceeding. He arrived in the afternoon, and, mounting a
+horse, rode to the inn at the edge of Sagamore Pond, a mile or more
+from Leslie's house.</p>
+
+<p>He had scarcely reached it, when a brief sharp thunder shower came up,
+and passed away as quickly. As the sun was setting, he rowed out in a
+small boat upon the pond. Here, skirting the brink of a sequestered
+cove, which the beech and tupelo trees overhung, and where every thing
+was still but the evening singing of a robin, and the mysterious
+whisper of the rain-drops, falling from innumerable leaves, with
+countless tiny circles on the breathless water,&mdash;here, where his boat
+glided as if buoyed on a liquid air, while, over the pebbly bottom,
+the perch and dace fled away from under the shadowing prow,&mdash;he
+lingered dreamily for a while, and then, bending to his oars, bore out
+into the middle of the pond. The west was gorgeous with the sunset,
+while, far in front, glimmering among the trees, he could see the
+shrine of his idolatry, the roof that sheltered Edith Leslie.</p>
+
+<p>A light breeze crisped the water, the ripples murmured with a lulling
+sound under his boat, and, lying at ease, he gave himself up to his
+reveries.</p>
+
+<p>His passion-kindled fancies ranged earth, sea, and sky; wandered into
+the past, lost themselves in the future; evoked the shadows of dead
+history; mixed in one phantom conclave the hairy war gods of the
+north, the bright shapes of Grecian fable, the enormities of Egyptian
+mythology; and, looking into the burning depths above him, he mused of
+human hopes, human aspirations, human destiny. That oddly compounded
+malady which had fastened on him had brought with it the intense yet
+tranquil awakening of every faculty with which it will sometimes visit
+those of the ruder sex whom it attacks with virulence.</p>
+
+<p>The magic of earth and sky; the black pines rearing their shaggy tops
+against the blazing west; the shores mingling in many-tinted shadow;
+the fiery sky, where three little clouds hovered like flaming spirits;
+the fiery water, where he and his boat floated as in a crimson sea;
+the whole glowing scene, glowing deeper yet in the fervid light of
+passion,&mdash;penetrated him like an enchantment. He scarcely knew
+himself; and in his supreme of intoxication, the familiar world around
+him was sublimed into a vision of Eden.</p>
+<br>
+<br><a name="chap22"></a>
+<br>
+<br>
+<h3>CHAPTER XXII.</h3>
+<table align="center" summary="quote21">
+	<tr><td><small>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
+	&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
+	&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;If it were now to die,<br>
+	'Twere now to be most happy; for I fear,<br>
+	My soul hath her content so absolute,<br>
+	That not another comfort like to this<br>
+	Succeeds in unknown fate.&mdash;<i>Othello</i>.</small></td></tr>
+</table>
+<br>
+<br>
+<p>It was a day of cloudless sunshine when Morton set forth for the house
+at Battle Brook; but his mind was far from sharing the brightness of
+the world without. The hope that flowed so full and calmly the night
+before had ebbed and left him dry. He was shaken with doubts,
+misgivings, perturbations. He walked his horse up the avenue, till he
+came within view of the house, a large, square mansion, with a veranda
+on three sides, a quiet-looking place enough, but in Morton's eyes
+priceless as Aladdin's palace, and sacred as Our Lady's house at
+Loretto. A monthly honeysuckle twined about one of the columns of the
+porch; the hall door stood open, and the air played freely through
+from front to rear.</p>
+
+<p>He gave his horse to the charge of an old Scotchman who was mowing the
+lawn, rang at the door, asked for Miss Leslie, and was shown into the
+vacant parlor. With its straw carpeting and light summer furniture, it
+was bright and cheerful as every thing else about it. Engravings from
+Turner and Landseer, framed in black walnut, hung against the walls;
+and on a small table in a corner stood a bird cage, with the door left
+purposely open. The inmate was hopping about the room, without
+attempting to escape, though the windows also were open.</p>
+
+<p>"No wonder it will not leave her," thought the visitor.</p>
+
+<p>He seated himself by the window, and looked out on the fields and the
+groves beyond. Far down in the meadow, the yellow-tufted rye was
+undulating in the warm summer wind, wave chasing wave in graceful
+succession. The birds would not sing,&mdash;the afternoon was too hot,&mdash;but
+the buzz, and hum, and chirrup of a myriad of insects rose from their
+lurking-places in the grass, while now and then the cicala raised its
+piercing voice from a neighboring apple tree.</p>
+
+<p>Suddenly Morton's heart began to beat; a light step on the staircase
+reached his ear, and the rustling of a dress. Miss Leslie came in with
+her usual natural and quiet ease of manner, while he rose to receive
+her with his heart in his throat. And now, when he needed them most,
+his wits seemed to fail him. He tried to converse, and produced
+nothing but barren commonplace. Again and again the conversation
+flagged; and the hum and chirrup of the insect world without filled
+the pauses between.</p>
+
+<p>He glanced at his companion.</p>
+
+<p>"Be a man, you idiot," he apostrophized himself.</p>
+
+<p>He looked at her again, as she bent over the embroidery with which her
+fingers were employed.</p>
+
+<p>"I must speak out, or die," he thought.</p>
+
+<p>He rested his arm on the table. He leaned towards her. Heaven knows
+what nonsense was on his lips, when the sound of a man's footstep in
+the hall made him subside into his chair, and do his best to look
+nonchalant. Leslie entered, cast an uneasy glance at the visitor, and
+greeted him with somewhat cool courtesy.</p>
+
+<p>"I have just met Miss Weston and her sister," said Leslie to his
+daughter; "I think they will be here in a few minutes."</p>
+
+<p>Morton looked at a Landseer on the wall, and gnawed his lip with
+vexation.</p>
+
+<p>Leslie took a turn or two about the room, looked out at the window,
+remarked that it was a hot afternoon, said that the hay crop had been
+the heaviest ever known, in consequence, he opined, of the joint
+effects of heat, moisture, and guano; and was descanting on the
+ravages committed by the borers on a certain peach tree, when Miss
+Weston and her sister appeared.</p>
+
+<p>"It's all up with me. She does not care for me a straw," thought
+Morton, as he saw the easy cordiality with which Miss Leslie received
+her guests. He was introduced. Miss Weston complimented him on the
+affair of the railroad. His reply was cold and constrained. Leslie
+soon left the room. Morton felt himself <i>de trop</i>, yet could not
+muster strength of mind to go. Conversation flagged. Every body became
+constrained. Miss Weston suspected the truth, and glanced at her
+sister that they should take their leave, when, at this juncture, a
+servant came to announce tea.</p>
+
+<p>The ebbs and flows of the human mind are beyond the reach of
+astronomy. As they went into the next room, Morton became conscious of
+a faint and indefinite something in the face of his mistress, which,
+he could not tell why, cast a gleam of light into his darkness, and
+lifted him out of the slough of despond in which he had been
+floundering for the last half hour. A flush of hope dawned on him. His
+constraint passed away, and Miss Weston's opinion of him was
+wonderfully revolutionized. At length, much to his delight, one of the
+visitors remarked to the other, that they had better go home before it
+grew too dark. But here a new alarm seized him. Might he not be
+expected to offer them his escort? Terrified at this idea, and
+oblivious of all gallantry, he made his escape into the garden,
+impelled&mdash;so he left them to infer&mdash;by a delicate wish to free them
+from the restraint of his presence. Here he walked to and fro behind
+the hedge, in no small agitation, but with all his faculties on the
+alert.</p>
+
+<p>In a quarter of an hour, he heard voices at the hall door; and
+approaching behind a cluster of high laurels, saw Edith Leslie
+accompanying her two friends down the avenue. After walking with them
+a few rods, she bade them good evening, and turned back towards the
+house. Morton went forward to meet her.</p>
+
+<p>"There is a beautiful sunset over the water, beyond the garden. Will
+you walk that way?"</p>
+
+<p>They turned down one of the garden paths.</p>
+
+<p>"What did you think of me this afternoon?" asked Morton&mdash;"did you
+think me ill, or bewitched, or turned idiot?"</p>
+
+<p>"Neither. I thought you a little taciturn, at first."</p>
+
+<p>"I am fortunate if that was your worst opinion. I believe I was under
+a spell. Did you never dream&mdash;all people, I believe, have something in
+common in their dreams&mdash;of being in some great peril, without power to
+move hand or foot to escape?&mdash;of being under some desperate necessity
+of speaking, without power to open your lips?&mdash;or of seeing before you
+some splendid prize, without power to make even an effort to grasp it?
+Something like that was my case." Here he came to an abrupt stop,
+walked on a pace or two, then turned to his companion with a vehemence
+which startled her&mdash;"Miss Leslie, you heard your friend praise me for
+humanity&mdash;courage&mdash;what not? It was all a mistake&mdash;all a delusion. I
+thought you were in the train. I was wild with agony; and when the
+people were crowding after me, I thought that all had been for
+nothing, because I had not saved you. I can hardly tell what I did; it
+was mere blind instinct. I could have ridden into the fire, and
+perhaps not have felt the burning. There <i>is</i> a spell upon me. I am
+changed&mdash;life is changed&mdash;every thing is changed. I scarcely know
+myself. It mans me, and it makes me a child again. The world puts on a
+new face; just as this sunset lights the earth with purple and
+vermilion, and turns it to a fairy land. Forgive me; I don't know what
+I am saying. I am in fear that all this brightness will change of a
+sudden into winter and night, and cold, rocky commonplace. You know
+what I would say. I have no words fit to say it. You are my judge, to
+lift me up, or cast me down."</p>
+
+<p>Here he stopped again abruptly, and looked at his companion in much
+greater agitation than he would have felt if he had just thrown the
+dice for life or death. She stood for a moment with her eyes fixed on
+the earth, as if waiting for him to go on, then slowly raised them to
+his face.</p>
+
+<p>"You risked your life to save mine. You need not believe that I could
+ever forget it."</p>
+
+<p>Morton's heart sprang to his lips. Nature had not been liberal to him
+in the gift of tongues, but the energy of his emotion supplied the
+defect. Nor were his words thrown away; for with all its outward calm,
+the nature that responded to them was earnest and ardent as his own.</p>
+
+<p>It was an hour or more since the whippoorwills had begun their evening
+cries, when they returned to the house. Candles were lighted, and
+Leslie was sitting with two persons from the neighborhood, an agent of
+the Matherton factories and a lawyer, conversing upon railroad stocks.
+He looked very uneasily at his daughter and Morton, but said nothing.
+The latter was engrossed with one idea; but he forced himself to join
+in the conversation, and favored the company with his views&mdash;not very
+lucid on this occasion&mdash;upon the topic under discussion. He soon,
+however, contrived to whisper to Miss Leslie, "I shall go in five
+minutes&mdash;will you meet me in the hall?" She left the room in a few
+moments; and Morton, after a short interval, took his leave, in much
+alarm lest his intended father-in-law should strain courtesy so far as
+to follow him. Leslie, however, remained quiet; and he found his
+mistress waiting for him at the hall door. Their interview was short,
+but Morton never forgot it. After bidding her good night some eight or
+ten times, he compelled himself to leave the house, mounted his horse,
+waved his hand to Edith Leslie, whom he saw watching him from a side
+window, wheeled, rode down the avenue, turned as he reached the
+entrance of the trees, and waved his hand again towards the window.
+His heart was full to overflowing, and tears, not of sorrow, ran down
+his cheeks. "Good Heaven!" laughed Morton, as he brushed them away,
+"this has not happened to me before these twelve years." He waved a
+farewell once more, and spurring his horse, rode down the avenue into
+the high road.</p>
+
+<p>It was a soft, warm, starlight evening, and, as he passed along, he
+heard the voices of the whippoorwills from far and near, while the
+meadows, the orchards, and the borders of the woods sparkled with
+fireflies. With loosened rein, he suffered his horse to canter lightly
+forward, and gave himself up to the enchantment of his dreams. A
+thousand times in his after life did he recall the visions of that
+evening's ride.</p>
+
+<p>About a mile before reaching the town, the road passed, for a few
+rods, through a belt of thick woods. While riding through the darkest
+of the shadow, a strange cry startled him&mdash;a shriek so wild and awful
+that the blood curdled in his veins, and his horse leaped aside with
+fright. There was a rustling among the branches over his head, a
+flapping and fanning of broad pinions, and the dusky form of some
+great bird sailed away into the innermost darkness of the woods.
+Morton knew the sound. It was the voice of the great horned owl,
+rarely found in that part of the country, though he had once or twice
+before heard its midnight yells in the lonely forests of Maine.</p>
+
+<p>The cry long rang in his ears. It seemed fraught with startling
+portent, clouded his spirits, and umbered the rose-tint of his
+reveries. He turned his face to the stars, and breathed a prayer for
+the welfare of his mistress.</p>
+<br>
+<br><a name="chap23"></a>
+<br>
+<br>
+<h3>CHAPTER XXIII.</h3>
+<table align="center" summary="quote22">
+	<tr><td><small>L'ambition, l'amour, l'avarice, la haine,<br>
+	Tiennent comme un forçat son esprit à la chaîne.&mdash;<i>Boileau</i>.</small></td></tr>
+</table>
+<br>
+<br>
+<p>Nobody knew Vinal but Vinal himself. <i>Know thyself</i> was his favorite
+maxim. He practised upon it, as he flattered himself, with a rigorous
+and unsparing logic, applying the dissecting knife and microscope to
+the secrets of his mind, probing, testing, studying, pitilessly
+ripping up all that would fain hide itself. The aim of all this
+scrutiny was, thoroughly to comprehend the machine, in order to direct
+and perfect it to its highest efficiency.</p>
+
+<p>Vinal, as men go, knew himself very well; and yet there were points of
+his character which escaped him, or which, rather, he misnamed. He
+knew perfectly that he was ambitious, selfish, unscrupulous: this he
+confessed in his own ear, pluming himself much on his philosophic
+candor. But he never would see that he was envious. In his mental map
+of himself, envy was laid down as pride and emulation. The wrestlings
+of human nature are not all of the sort figured in the Pilgrim's
+Progress and set forth in the Catechism. Vinal had an ideal; he had
+cherished it from boyhood, and battled ever since to realize it. He
+would fain make himself the finished man of the world, the
+unflinching, all-knowing, all-potential man of affairs, like a blade
+of steel, smooth and polished, but keen, searching, resistless. This
+was his aim; but nature was always balking him. He was the victim of a
+constitutional timidity, his scourge from childhood. He had been known
+to swoon outright, on being run away with in a chaise, and he never
+could muster nerve enough to fire a gun. Against this defect his pride
+rose in revolt. It thwarted him at every turn, and conflicted with all
+his aspirations. In short, he could not endure its presence, and
+fought against it with an iron energy of will. Thus his life was a
+secret, unremitting struggle, whose mark was written on his pale,
+nervous, resolute features. It's an ill wind that blows no good. This
+painful warfare achieved a singular vigor and concentration of
+character, and would have led to still better issues, had the
+assailing force been marshalled under a better banner. A lofty purpose
+may turn timidity to heroism; but a purpose like Vinal's is by no
+means so efficacious, and the man remains, if not quite a coward, yet
+something very like one.</p>
+
+<p>It would have been well for Vinal if, like Morton, he had been born to
+a fortune. In that case&mdash;for he had no aptitude for pleasure
+hunting&mdash;his restless energies would probably have spurred him into
+some creditable field of effort, natural science, mathematics, or
+philology, to all of which he inclined. But Fate had not been so
+propitious; and to achieve the task which she had forgotten was the
+zenith of his aspirations.</p>
+
+<p>There was one person who had always been an eyesore to him, and a
+stumbling block in his way. This was Vassall Morton. Morton, at
+twenty-three, was, in feeling, still a boy; Vinal, at twenty-three,
+was a well-ripened man. But the man hated the boy; and the boy
+retorted with a dislike which was largely dashed with scorn. Vinal
+felt the scorn, and it cut him to the quick, the more so, that he
+could not hide from himself that he stood in awe of Morton. He hated
+him, too, because he had that which he, Vinal, lacked&mdash;fortune, good
+health, steady nerve. He hated him, because he thought that Morton
+understood him; because the frankness of the latter's nature rebuked
+the secrecy of his own; and, above all, because he saw in him his most
+formidable rival in the affections of Edith Leslie.</p>
+
+<p>Vinal's nature, self-drilled as it was, could not be called a cold
+one. It had in it spots and veins of sensitiveness. When a child, this
+sensitiveness had often been morbidly awake, and had caused him much
+suffering; but as he grew towards manhood, it had been overlaid and
+hidden by very different qualities, not often found in connection with
+it. Of late, however, he had been in love,&mdash;with Edith Leslie, as well
+as with her money,&mdash;and the dormant susceptibilities of his childhood
+had been in some sort reawakened.</p>
+
+<p>His mind, inharmonious and unhappy as nature and himself had jointly
+made it, had never yet felt a pang so sharp as when, arriving at
+Matherton, he learned privately from Colonel Leslie the engagement
+which had passed between Morton and his daughter. Miss Leslie's twice
+rejected suitor compressed his thin lips in silence; it was his usual
+sign of strong emotion. Leslie pressed his favorite's hand,&mdash;he would
+fain have called him son-in-law,&mdash;and, turning away abruptly, Vinal
+left the house.</p>
+
+<p>The man whom he envied and hated had triumphed; robbed him of fortune,
+and robbed him of happiness; happiness of which Morton had had already
+his full share, and a fortune which would but swell the ample bulk of
+his possessions. Vinal was frenzied with grief, rage, and jealousy.</p>
+<br>
+<br><a name="chap24"></a>
+<br>
+<br>
+<h3>CHAPTER XXIV.</h3>
+<table align="center" summary="quote23">
+	<tr><td><small><i>Clo</i>. That she should love this fellow and refuse me!<br>
+	&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
+	If it be sin to make a true election, she is damned.&mdash;<i>Cymbeline</i>.</small></td></tr>
+</table>
+<br>
+<br>
+<p>Morton sat in the reading room of the National, the grand hotel of
+Matherton. It was by no means an elegant apartment. In the middle was
+a table covered with newspapers; at the sides were desks, likewise
+covered with newspapers, padlocked together in files. The walls and
+the ceiling glared a drear monotony of white, broken, however, by
+sundry ornaments, worthy the attention of the curious. Here, framed in
+birdseye maple, was the engraved likeness of "Old Hickory," with hat
+and cane in hand, a cloak to hide the gauntness of his figure, and
+hair bristling in electrified disorder. Here, too, was a colored print
+of the favorite steamboat "Queen of the Lake;" Niagara Falls, by a
+license of art, forming a blue curtain in the background. At its side
+was a lithograph of the Empire Hotel, New York, the sidewalk in front
+being embellished with groups of pedestrians, dressed with matchless
+elegance, after the fashion plates; and, over against this, an
+advertisement of Jessup's steel, encircled with a lithographed halo,
+composed of chisels, axes, hammers, saws, and ploughshares.</p>
+
+<p>The apartment, thus furnished and thus adorned, had, besides Morton,
+but two occupants; the one a factory agent, who stood at a desk,
+absorbed in the New Orleans Picayune; the other a country tailor, who
+displayed the sign of the "Full-dressed Man" at the neighboring
+village of Mudfield, and was now seated at a window, busied in
+polishing a huge garnet ring, which he wore, with a red silk
+handkerchief.</p>
+
+<p>In a window recess, aloof from the tailor's, sat Morton, scarcely
+conscious of any presence but that of his own thoughts. He had found a
+philosopher's stone; and through the rest of his life, this
+comfortless reading room of the Matherton Hotel, this sanctuary of dry
+and weary Yankeedom, was linked in his memory with dreams of golden
+brightness.</p>
+
+<p>A firm, quick step crossed the threshold, and paced the sanded floor.
+Till this moment, Morton had remained absorbed, shut in from the outer
+world; but now an influence, which believers may call magnetism, made
+him look up and bend forward from the recess to see who the sudden
+stranger might be. The stranger turned also, and showed the pale,
+fixed face of Horace Vinal.</p>
+
+<p>Morton was disposed to be on good terms with all the world, and more
+especially with his defeated rival.</p>
+
+<p>"Good morning, Vinal," he said, holding out his hand, which Vinal
+took, his cold, thin fingers trembling in the warm grasp of Morton. He
+had had no thought of finding him there; the encounter was unlooked
+for as it was unwelcome; and, as he muttered a few passing words of
+commonplace, his features grew haggard with the violence of struggling
+emotion. He turned away, went to a desk, pretended to read a newspaper
+for a few moments, and then left the room.</p>
+
+<p>Morton looked after him. He had no doubt that Vinal had heard of his
+misfortune; and the first sense of pain which, since the evening
+before last, the successful lover had felt, now crossed his mind.</p>
+
+<p>"It's devilish hard for him, poor fellow," he thought, as, measuring
+Vinal's passion by his own, a vivid image of the latter's suffering
+rose upon him.</p>
+
+<p>Vinal strode along a corridor of the hotel. There was no one to see
+him. His forehead was knit, his nostrils distended, his jaws clinched.
+A man, whom he knew, came from a side passage. Instantly Vinal's face
+was calm again, and as the other passed he greeted him with a smile.
+He went out into the main street of the town, along which he walked
+for a few rods with his usual air of alert composure; then turned down
+a narrow and unfrequented by-way. Here his whole bearing changed. He
+trod the gravelled sidewalk with a fierce, nervous motion; and with
+hands clinched and eyes fixed on the ground, muttered through his set
+teeth,&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"Fair or foul, by G&mdash;, I'll be even with him."</p>
+<br>
+<br><a name="chap25"></a>
+<br>
+<br>
+<h3>CHAPTER XXV.</h3>
+<table align="center" summary="quote24">
+	<tr><td><small>O, quha is this has done this deed,<br>
+	&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;This ill deed done to me?<br>
+	To send me out this time o' the zeir,<br>
+	&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;To sail upon the sea.&mdash;<i>Percy Reliques</i>.</small></td></tr>
+</table>
+<blockquote><small>A slave whose gall coins slanders like a
+mint.&mdash;<i>Troilus and Cressida</i>.</small></blockquote>
+<br>
+<p>"Your proposal flatters me, Mr. Morton; and, in many points of view,
+the connection you offer would be a desirable one,&mdash;a very desirable
+one. But I must say to you plainly, that if my wishes alone were
+consulted, my daughter would bestow her hand elsewhere. Perhaps I need
+not tell you that Horace Vinal, who was my ward, and my late wife's
+relation, and who has been my partner in business for a year or more,
+is a young man whom I have looked upon as my son, and whom it was my
+very earnest hope to have seen such in reality. You who have had an
+opportunity of knowing him can hardly be surprised that, after so long
+an intimacy, I should prefer this connection to any other. I have seen
+him in all the relations of life, and the more I have seen the more I
+have learned to esteem him."</p>
+
+<p>"You speak with a good deal of emphasis of his character. May I ask if
+any part of your objection to me rests on that score."</p>
+
+<p>"In a matter like this, I am bound to be frank with you. In many
+quarters, I hear you very highly spoken of,&mdash;so highly, in fact, that
+I am disposed to take with every qualification what I have heard to
+your disadvantage."</p>
+
+<p>"Pray, what is that?"</p>
+
+<p>"I was a soldier once, and don't incline to inquire too closely into
+the way young men may see fit to amuse themselves. But on a point
+where my daughter's happiness might be involved&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Upon my word, sir, I don't understand you."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, Mr. Morton, I hear&mdash;that is, I have learned&mdash;that, like other
+young men of leisure, you have had your <i>bonnes fortunes</i>, and winged
+other game than partridges and woodcock."</p>
+
+<p>Morton looked at him in surprise. The truth was, that, some time
+before, the discreet and far-sighted Vinal had contrived to inoculate
+his patron with this calumny, which he thought the species most likely
+to take readily. And such had been his tact, that Leslie, though well
+imbued with the idea, would have been puzzled to say whence he had
+received it. A man of shallow-brained uprightness like his, if he
+yields too easy a belief to falsehood, has the advantage of yielding
+also an easy belief to truth. A few words from Morton sufficed to
+carry conviction to the frank-hearted auditor, who, feeling that, at
+least as regarded its worst features, his charge must be groundless,
+hastened to make the <i>amende</i>.</p>
+
+<p>"Your word is enough, Mr. Morton, and I owe you an apology for
+imagining that you could be false or heartless in any connection
+whatever. I think, however, that you can see how, without
+disparagement to you, I should still regret that Horace Vinal, who is
+personally so near to me, so devoted to my interests, and so strongly
+attached to my daughter, should be disappointed. I advised him,
+yesterday, to go to Europe, to recruit his health. I am told that you
+had yourself some plan of the kind."</p>
+
+<p>"A very indefinite one, sir; in fact, amounting to none at all."</p>
+
+<p>"Go this autumn; be absent a year,&mdash;that is not too long for seeing
+Europe,&mdash;and if at the end of that time you and my daughter should
+remain as earnest in this matter as you are now, why, I am not the man
+to persist in opposing her inclination."</p>
+
+<p>The sentence was hard; but there was no appeal. Leslie had told Vinal
+the day before that he would despatch Morton on his travels,
+intimating a hope that a long separation might bring about a change in
+his daughter's feelings. Morton saw nothing for it but acquiescence;
+to which, indeed, Miss Leslie urged him, confiding in the strength of
+his attachment, and happy to reconcile adverse duties and inclinations
+at any price.</p>
+
+<p>Meanwhile, he had not the smallest suspicion of the subtle trick which
+his rival had played him. "This is a charitable world!" he thought;
+"one must keep the beaten track, look demure, and talk virtue, or, in
+one shape or another, it will be the worse for him."</p>
+<br>
+<br><a name="chap26"></a>
+<br>
+<br>
+<h3>CHAPTER XXVI.</h3>
+
+<center><small>Then loathed he in his native land to
+dwell.&mdash;<i>Childe Harold</i>.</small></center>
+
+<blockquote><small><i>Slend</i>. A gentleman born, Master Parson, who writes himself
+<i>Armigero;</i> in any bill, warrant, quittance, or obligation,
+<i>Armigero!</i><br>
+<br>
+<i>Shal</i>. Ay, that I do; and have done any time these three hundred
+years.&mdash;<i>Merry Wives of Windsor</i>.</small></blockquote>
+<br>
+<p>The engagement of Miss Leslie and Morton was to be kept secret till
+the latter's return. None knew it but Leslie and Vinal. Vinal, within
+a few weeks, sailed for Europe, meaning, however, to be absent only
+three or four months. Other motives apart, he felt, and Leslie saw,
+that his health, always shivering in the wind, demanded the change.</p>
+
+<p>Meanwhile, Morton made the best of a six weeks' reprieve; and hampered
+as he was by the injunction of secrecy, and the precautions which it
+demanded, he crowded the short interval with half a lifetime of mixed
+pleasure and pain, expectation and anxiety.</p>
+
+<p>It was past but too quickly; in three days more he must set sail.
+Walking the street in a rueful mood, he met his classmate, Chester,
+who, having made the tour of Europe, had lost his obsolete ways, and
+grown backward into a man of the present world.</p>
+
+<p>"Good morning, Morton. Making calls?&mdash;I see it by your face."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes; it's a thing that must be done sometimes."</p>
+
+<p>"<i>Pour prendre congé</i>, I suppose. I hear you are off very soon."</p>
+
+<p>"The day after to-morrow."</p>
+
+<p>"You couldn't do a wiser thing. When a man finds himself in a scrape,
+he had better get out of it as soon as possible; therefore, if he
+finds himself born in America, he had better forswear his country."</p>
+
+<p>"Patriotic sentiments those."</p>
+
+<p>"I can't answer for the patriotism; but they are the sentiments of a
+true son of the Pilgrim Fathers, who renounced their country because
+they couldn't stand it, and came over here. I mean to follow their
+example, and go back again. They fled&mdash;so the story goes&mdash;from
+persecution. I mean to fly from persecution too,&mdash;the persecution of a
+social atmosphere that I find hostile to my constitution, and a
+climate not fit for a reasonable being to live in."</p>
+
+<p>"I don't know why you should be so fierce against the climate. By your
+look, you seem to thrive in it."</p>
+
+<p>"The bodily man thrives passably well. It's the immortal part that
+suffers. Fierce! why, the climate makes me fierce. Who can be a
+philosopher in such a climate?&mdash;or a poet?&mdash;or an artist?&mdash;any thing
+but a steam engine? It is a perpetual spur, an unremitting goad.
+Nobody is happy in it except the men who ride on locomotives and
+conduct express trains,&mdash;always on the move. O, so you go in here, do
+you?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, to see Mrs. Primrose. Will you come too?"</p>
+
+<p>"No, thank you," replied Chester, walking away, with a comical look.</p>
+
+<p>Morton rang the door bell, and found Mrs. Primrose at home.</p>
+
+<p>There was a book on the table. He took it up. It was a novel, lately
+published.</p>
+
+<p>Morton praised it.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Primrose dissented, with great emphasis.</p>
+
+<p>"You are severe upon the book."</p>
+
+<p>"Not more so than it deserves," replied Mrs. Primrose; "it is too
+coarse to be permitted for a moment."</p>
+
+<p>"And yet the moral tone seems good enough."</p>
+
+<p>"I do not blame the morality so much as the bad taste. It is full of
+slang dialogue, and was certainly written by a very unrefined person."</p>
+
+<p>"It makes its characters speak as such people speak in real life."</p>
+
+<p>"It is not merely that," said Mrs. Primrose, slightly pursing her
+mouth; "it contains, besides, expressions absolutely reprehensible."</p>
+
+<p>"One does not admire its good taste; but a little blunt Saxon never
+did much harm."</p>
+
+<p>"No daughter of mine shall read it," said Mrs. Primrose, with gravity.</p>
+
+<p>"I imagine that if literature is to reflect human life truly, it can
+hardly be limited to the language of the drawing room."</p>
+
+<p>"Then it should be banished from the drawing room," said Mrs.
+Primrose, with severity.</p>
+
+<p>Here several visitors appeared, and Morton presently took leave.</p>
+
+<p>He was but a few rods from the door, when a quick step came behind
+him.</p>
+
+<p>"Hallo, colonel, where are you going at such a rate?"</p>
+
+<p>Morton turned, and saw his classmate, Rosny.</p>
+
+<p>"Why, Dick, I'm glad to see you."</p>
+
+<p>"They tell me you're bound for Europe."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, it's a good move. If a man has money, he had better enjoy it."</p>
+
+<p>"I shall be driving out of town in an hour. Come and dine with me."</p>
+
+<p>"Sorry, colonel, but it can't be done. I'm out on the stump in the
+cause of democracy. Shall be off westward in two hours, and shake the
+dust from my shoes against this nest of whiggery and old fogyism."</p>
+
+<p>"Democracy is under the weather just now, Dick."</p>
+
+<p>"Just now, I grant you. What with log cabins and hard cider, and
+coons, the enlightened people are pretty well gammoned. But there's a
+good time coming. Before you know it, democracy will be upon you again
+like a load of bricks. Why, what can you expect of a party that will
+take a coon for its emblem? I saw one chained up this morning in the
+yard of Taft's tavern, a dirty, mean-looking beast, about half way
+between a jackal and an owl. He looked uncommonly well in health, and
+could puff out his fur as round as a muff. But, when you looked close,
+there was nothing of him but skin and bone; exactly like the whig
+party. He put up his nose, and smiled at me. I suppose&mdash;damn his
+impudence&mdash;he took me for a whig. That coon is going into a decline.
+It won't be long before he is taken by the tail and tossed over
+Charles River bridge; and there he'll lie on the mud at low tide, for
+a genuine emblem of the defunct whig party, and a solemn warning to
+all coon worshippers."</p>
+
+<p>"Let the whigs alone, Dick; and if you won't dine with me, come in
+here and drink a glass of claret."</p>
+
+<p>"That I'll do." And they went into the hotel accordingly.</p>
+
+<p>As Rosny took up his glass, Morton observed a large old seal ring on
+his finger.</p>
+
+<p>"Do you call yourself a democrat, and yet always wear that ring of
+yours?"</p>
+
+<p>"Why, what's the matter with the ring?"</p>
+
+<p>"Nothing, except that it is a badge of feudalism, aristocracy, and
+every thing else abominable to your party."</p>
+
+<p>"Pshaw, man. Look here: do you see that crest, cut in the stone? That
+crest followed King Francis to Pavia, and when Henri Quatre charged at
+Ivry, it wasn't far behind him. It is mine by right. It comes down to
+me, straight as a bee line, through twenty generations. And do you
+think I'm going to renounce my birthright? No, be gad!"</p>
+
+<p>"I wouldn't. But what becomes of your democracy?"</p>
+
+<p>"Democracy is tall enough to take care of itself. I wear that ring;
+but it don't follow that I stand on my ancestry. You needn't laugh:
+the case is just this. If the blood in my veins makes me stand to my
+colors where another man would flinch, or hold my head up where
+another would be sprawling on his back; if it gives me a better pluck,
+grit, go-ahead; why, <i>that's</i> what I stand on,&mdash;<i>that's</i> my patent of
+nobility. What the deuse are you laughing at?&mdash;the personal
+quality,&mdash;don't you see?&mdash;and not the ancestry."</p>
+
+<p>"If you stand on personal merit, you'll be sure to go under before
+long. The democracy are growing as jealous of that as of ancestry, or
+of wealth either."</p>
+
+<p>"Why, what do you know about politics? You never had any thing to do
+with them. You are no more fit for a politician than for a fiddler."</p>
+
+<p>"I'm glad you think so. If I must serve the country in any public
+capacity, I pray Heaven it may be as a scavenger sooner than as a
+politician. Who can touch pitch and be clean? I'll pay back your
+compliment, Dick. You are a great deal too downright to succeed in
+public life."</p>
+
+<p>"I'll find a way or make one. But I tell you, colonel,"&mdash;and a shade
+of something like disappointment passed over his face,&mdash;"if a man
+wants the people's votes, it's fifty to one that he's got to sink
+himself lower than the gutter before he gets them."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, and when the people have turned out of office every man of
+virtue, honor, manliness, independence, and ability, then they will
+fling up their caps and brag that their day is come, and their triumph
+finished over the damned aristocracy."</p>
+
+<p>"You are an unbeliever. You haven't half faith enough in the people.
+Now I put it to your common sense. Isn't there a thousand times more
+patriotism in the laboring classes in this country&mdash;yes, and about as
+much intelligence&mdash;as in the rabble of sham fashionables at Saratoga,
+or any other muster of our moneyed snobs and flunkeys?"</p>
+
+<p>"Exceptions excepted, yes."</p>
+
+<p>"War to the knife with the codfish aristocracy! They are a kind of
+mongrel beast, expressly devised and concocted for me to kick. I don't
+mean the gentlemen with money; nor the good fellows with money. I know
+what a gentleman is; yes, and a lady, too, though I do make stump
+speeches, and shake hands all round with the sovereign people. That
+sort are welcome to their money. No, sir, it's the moneyed snobs, the
+gilded toadstools, that it's my mission to pitch into."</p>
+
+<p>"Excuse me a moment, Dick," said Morton, suddenly leaping from his
+seat, as a lady passed the window.</p>
+
+<p>"A lady, eh! Then I'll be off."</p>
+
+<p>"No, no, stay where you are. I'll be back again in three minutes."</p>
+
+<p>He ran out of the hotel, and walked at his best pace in pursuit of
+Fanny Euston, who, on her part, was walking with an earnest air, like
+one whose thoughts were engaged with some engrossing subject. He
+reached her side, and made a movement to accost her; but she seemed
+unconscious of his presence.</p>
+
+<p>"Miss Fanny Euston, will you pardon me for breaking in upon your
+reveries?"</p>
+
+<p>She turned and recognized him, but her smile of recognition was a very
+mournful one.</p>
+
+<p>"I have stopped you to take my leave,&mdash;a good deal more in short hand
+than I meant it should have been. I shall sail for Europe the day
+after to-morrow."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes? Is not that a little sudden?"</p>
+
+<p>"More sudden than I wish it were. I am not at all in a travelling
+humor. I have been too much pressed for time to ride out, as I meant
+to do, to your father's house."</p>
+
+<p>"We are all in town now. My father came from New Orleans yesterday,
+very ill."</p>
+
+<p>"I did not hear of it. I trust not dangerously ill."</p>
+
+<p>"He is dying. He cannot live a week."</p>
+
+<p>Morton well knew the strength and depth of her attachment to her
+father. He pressed her hand in silent sympathy.</p>
+
+<p>"It grieves me, Fanny," he said, after a moment, "to part from you
+under such a cloud."</p>
+
+<p>"Good by," she replied, returning the friendly pressure. "I wish you
+with all my heart a pleasant and prosperous journey."</p>
+
+<p>Morton turned back, wondering at the sudden dignity of manner which
+grief had given to the wild and lawless Fanny Euston.</p>
+<br>
+<br><a name="chap27"></a>
+<br>
+<br>
+<h3>CHAPTER XXVII.</h3>
+
+<blockquote><small><i>Ham</i>. Thou wouldst not think how ill's all here about my heart, but
+it is no matter.<br>
+<br>
+<i>Hor</i>. Nay, good my lord&mdash;&mdash;<br>
+<br>
+<i>Ham</i>. It is but foolery; but it is such a kind of gain-giving as
+would perhaps trouble a woman.<br>
+<br>
+<i>Hor</i>. If your mind dislike any thing, obey it.<br>
+<br>
+<i>Ham</i>. Not a whit. We defy augury.</small></blockquote>
+<br>
+<p>Morton's day of departure came. It was a comfortless, savage, gusty
+morning, an east wind blowing in from the bay. The hour to set sail
+was near; he should have been on board; but still he lingered with
+Edith Leslie. The secrecy on which her father insisted made it
+impossible for her to go with him to the ship.</p>
+
+<p>Morton forced himself away; his hand was on the door, but his heart
+failed him, and he turned back again. On the mind of each there was
+something more than the pain of a year's separation. A dark
+foreboding, a cloud of dull and sullen portent, hung over them both.
+The smooth and bright crusting with which habit and training had iced
+over the warm nature of Edith Leslie was broken and swept away; and as
+Morton seized her hands, she disengaged herself, and, throwing herself
+on his neck, sobbed convulsively. Morton pressed her to his heart, and
+buried his face in her clustering tresses; then, breaking from her,
+ran blindly from the house. He repaired to the house of Meredith, who
+met him at the door.</p>
+
+<p>"You've no time to lose. Here's the carriage. Your trunks are all
+right. Come on."</p>
+
+<p>They drove towards the wharf.</p>
+
+<p>"I'd give my head to change places with you," said Meredith.</p>
+
+<p>"I wish you could."</p>
+
+<p>There was so much pain and dejection in his look, that his friend
+could not fail to observe it.</p>
+
+<p>"You don't want to go, then? I have noticed all along that you seemed
+devilish cool about it."</p>
+
+<p>"Ned," said Morton, "I never used to think myself superstitious; but I
+begin now to change my mind. Heaven knows why, but I have strange
+notions running in my brain. My dog howled all last night; and not
+long ago, an owl yelled over my head, and that, too, at a time&mdash;&mdash; But
+you'll think I have lost my wits."</p>
+
+<p>Meredith, in truth, was greatly amazed at this betrayal of a weakness
+of which, long and closely as he had known his companion, he had never
+suspected him.</p>
+
+<p>"Why, colonel, I have seen you set out on a journey as long and fifty
+times as hazardous as this, as carelessly as if you were going to a
+dinner party."</p>
+
+<p>"I know it; but times are changed with me. I am not quite the child,
+though, that you may suppose."</p>
+
+<p>"If you have such a feeling about going, I would give it up. It's not
+too late."</p>
+
+<p>"No, I haven't sunk yet to that pass." And, as he spoke, the carriage
+stopped at the pier.</p>
+<br>
+<br><a name="chap28"></a>
+<br>
+<br>
+<h3>CHAPTER XXVIII.</h3>
+<table align="center" summary="quote25">
+	<tr><td><small>I can't but say it is an awkward sight<br>
+	To see one's native land receding through<br>
+	The growing waters.&mdash;<i>Byron</i>.</small></td></tr>
+</table>
+<br>
+<br>
+<p>The day brightened as the steamer bore out to sea, and the sun
+streamed along the fast-receding shore. Morton stood at the ship's
+stern, gazing back longingly towards his native rocks. Though far from
+inclining to echo those set terms of praise which the progeny of the
+Puritans are fond of lavishing on themselves, he felt himself bound
+with enduring cords to the woods and hills of New England, the scene
+of his boyish aspirations, of his pure ambition, and his devoted love;
+and while the crags of Gloucester faded from his sight, his eyes were
+dimmed as he turned them towards those rugged shores.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, young man, seems to me you look a leetle kind o' streak-ed at
+the idee of quitting home," said a husky voice at his elbow.</p>
+
+<p>Morton turned, and saw a small man, with a meagre, hatchet face, and a
+huge pair of black whiskers hedging round a countenance so dead and
+pallid that one could see at a glance that he was in a consumption. He
+had an eye hard as a flint, one that might have faced a Gorgon without
+risk. Morton regarded him with an expression which told him, as
+plainly as words, to go about his business; but he might as well have
+tried to look an image of brass out of countenance.</p>
+
+<p>"Now <i>I</i>," pursued the small man, "have some reason to feel bad. It's
+an even bet if ever I see Boston lighthouse again&mdash;about six of one
+and half a dozen of the other. I consider myself a gone sucker. I've
+ben going, going, for about two years, and pretty soon I expect I
+shall be going, going, gone."</p>
+
+<p>These words, uttered in a sort of bravado, were interrupted by a
+violent fit of coughing.</p>
+
+<p>"Ever crossed the pond before?" asked the small man, as soon as he
+could gain breath.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes."</p>
+
+<p>"Business?"</p>
+
+<p>"No."</p>
+
+<p>"I thought not. You don't look like a business man. I know a business
+man, a mile off, by the cut of his jib. I'm a business man myself, and
+a hard used one at that."</p>
+
+<p>Here a fresh fit of coughing began.</p>
+
+<p>"Bad health; bad health, and damned hard luck, that's what has
+finished up this child. If it worn't for them, I should be worth my
+hundred thousand dollars this very minute."</p>
+
+<p>Another fit of coughing.</p>
+
+<p>"So you've ben across before. Well, so've I. That was three years ago,
+by the doctors' advice. It's great advice they give a man. It's good
+for their pockets, and there's deused little else it's good for. I
+spent that year over three thousand dollars; and if I'd staid to home,
+and stuck to my business, <i>I</i> should have ben jest about as well, and
+cleared,&mdash;well, yes, I should have cleared double the money, at the
+smallest figger."</p>
+
+<p>More coughing.</p>
+
+<p>"I expect you travel for pleasure."</p>
+
+<p>Morton replied by an inarticulate sound, which the other might
+interpret as he pleased. He chose to interpret it in the affirmative.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, that's all very well for a young man like you. You are young
+enough to like to look at the curiosities, and take an interest in
+what's going on; but I'm too old a bird for that. One night I was down
+to Palermo, there was an eruption of Mount Etna going on. We were on
+the piazzy at the back of Marston the consul's house, and there it was
+blazing away to kill, way off on the further side of the island. Well,
+the ladies was all O-ing and Ah-ing like fits. 'Nonsense!' says I; 'it
+ain't a circumstance to the fire that burnt down my splendid new
+freestone-front store on Broadway. Now that was something worth saying
+O at.'"</p>
+
+<p>More coughing.</p>
+
+<p>"There was a young man there from Boston, and we went round to look at
+the churches. He was all for staring at the pictures, and the marble
+images, and the Lord knows what all, while I went and paced off the
+length of the church from the door up to the altar, and then again
+crosswise. There wasn't a church in Palermo worth shaking a stick at
+that I didn't know the size of, and have it all set down on paper."</p>
+
+<p>"And what good did that do you?"</p>
+
+<p>"What good did that do me? Why, I had something to show for my pains,
+something that would keep. They wanted me to ride up on the back of a
+jackass to the top of a mountain to see a cavern where some she saint
+or other used to live,&mdash;St. Rosa Lee, or some such nigger-minstrel
+name."</p>
+
+<p>"St. Rosalie, I suppose you mean."</p>
+
+<p>"St. Rosaly or St. Rosa Lee, it comes to pretty much the same. She was
+fool enough to leave a comfortable home&mdash;inside of a palace, too, be
+gad&mdash;and go and live all alone by herself in that cavern. Well, they
+wanted me to ride up on the jackass and see it. 'No,' says I, 'you
+don't ketch me,' says I; 'if I did, I might as well change places with
+the jackass right away,' says I."</p>
+
+<p>A fresh fit of coughing.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, sir, bad health and hard luck, that's ben the finishing of me,
+or else this minute I could show you my solid hundred thousand. The
+fire was what begun it all. A splendid freestone-front store, that
+hadn't its beat in all New York, chock full of goods, that worn't more
+than half covered by the insurance, burnt clean down to the sidewalk!
+Then come the great failure you've heard of&mdash;Bragg, Dash, and Bustup.
+I tell you, I was sucked in there to a handsome figger. Top of all
+that, my health caved in,&mdash;uh,&mdash;uh,&mdash;uh." Here the coughing grew
+violent. "Well, I'm a gone sucker, and it's no use crying over spilt
+milk. But if it worn't for bad health and damned hard luck, I should
+have been worth a hun&mdash;uh&mdash;uh&mdash;uh&mdash;a hundred thousand
+dol&mdash;uh&mdash;uh&mdash;dollars,&mdash;uh&mdash;uh&mdash;uh&mdash;uh&mdash;uh."</p>
+
+<p>"This wind is too sharp for you," observed Morton.</p>
+
+<p>"Fact," said the invalid; "I can't stand it no how."</p>
+
+<p>He went down to the cabin, Morton's eye following him in pity and
+disgust.</p>
+<br>
+<br><a name="chap29"></a>
+<br>
+<br>
+<h3>CHAPTER XXIX.</h3>
+<table align="center" summary="quote26">
+	<tr><td><small>The useful science of the world to know,<br>
+	Which books can never teach, nor pedants show.&mdash;<i>Lyttleton</i>.</small></td></tr>
+</table>
+<br>
+<br>
+<p>The steamer, in due time, reached Liverpool; but Morton remained only
+a few days in England, crossing to Boulogne, and thence to Paris. Here
+he arrived late one afternoon; and taking his seat at the <i>table
+d'hôte</i> of Meurice's Hotel, he presently discovered among the guests
+the familiar profile of Vinal, who was just returned from a flying
+tour through the provinces. Vinal seemed not to see him; but at the
+close of the dinner, Morton came behind his chair and spoke to him. At
+his side sat a young man, whose face Morton remembered to have seen
+before. Vinal introduced him as Mr. Richards. When a boy, he had been
+a schoolmate of them both, and now called himself a medical student,
+living on the other side of the Seine. Having been in Paris for two
+years or more, he had, as he prided himself, a thorough knowledge of
+it; that is to say, he knew its sights of all kinds, and places of
+amusement of high and low degree. The sagacious Vinal thought himself
+happy in so able and zealous a guide.</p>
+
+<p>"Mr. Vinal and I are going on an excursion about town to-night," said
+Richards; "won't you go with us?"</p>
+
+<p>"Thank you," replied Morton, "I have letters to write, and do not mean
+to go out this evening."</p>
+
+<p>Vinal and Richards accordingly set forth without him, the latter
+acquitting himself wholly to his companion's satisfaction and his own.
+Vinal, who inclined very little to youthful amusements, contemplated
+all he saw with the eye of a philosopher rather than of a sybarite,
+looking upon it as a curious study of human nature, in the knowledge
+of which he was always eager to perfect himself. In the course of
+their excursion, they entered a large and handsome building on the
+Boulevard des Italiens. Here they passed through a succession of rooms
+filled with men engaged in various games of hazard, more or less deep,
+and came at length to two small apartments, which seemed to form the
+penetralia of the temple.</p>
+
+<p>In the farther of these was a table, about which sat some eight or ten
+well-dressed men, and at the head, a sedate, collected,
+vigilant-looking person, with a little wooden rake in his hand.</p>
+
+<p>"<i>Messieurs, tout est fait. Rien ne va plus</i>," he said, drawing
+towards him a plentiful heap of gold coin, almost at the instant that
+Vinal and Richards came in. The game was that moment finished.</p>
+
+<p>As he spoke, a strong, thick-set man rose abruptly from the table,
+muttering a savage oath through his black moustache, and brushing
+fiercely past the two visitors, went out at the door. Richards pressed
+Vinal's arm, as a hint that he should observe him. As the game was not
+immediately resumed, they soon left the room; and after staking and
+losing a few small pieces at another table, returned to the street.</p>
+
+<p>"Did you observe that man who passed us?" asked Richards.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes. He seemed out of humor with his luck."</p>
+
+<p>"He was clean emptied out; I would swear to it. I was afraid he would
+see me as he went by, but he didn't."</p>
+
+<p>"Why, do you know him?"</p>
+
+<p>"O, yes; and you ought to know him too, if you want to understand how
+things are managed hereabouts. He's a
+patriot,&mdash;agitator,&mdash;democrat,&mdash;red republican,&mdash;conspirator,&mdash;you can
+call him whichever you like, according to taste. He's mixed up with
+all the secret clubs, secret committees, and what not, from one end of
+the continent to the other. He's a sort of political sapper and
+miner,&mdash;not exactly like our patriots of '76, but all's fair that aims
+a kick at the House of Hapsburg."</p>
+
+<p>"Has he any special spite in that quarter?"</p>
+
+<p>"He has been intriguing so long in Austria and Lombardy, that now he
+could not show his face there a moment without being arrested. So he
+is living here, where he keeps very quiet at present, for fear of
+consequences."</p>
+
+<p>"What is his name?"</p>
+
+<p>"Speyer,&mdash;Henry Speyer."</p>
+
+<p>"A German?"</p>
+
+<p>"No; he's of no nation at all. He belongs to a sort of mongrel breed,
+from the Rock of Gibraltar,&mdash;a cross of half the nations in Europe.
+They go by the name of Rock Scorpions. Speyer is a compound of German,
+Spanish, English, French, Genoese, and Moorish, and the result is the
+greatest rascal that ever went unhung. Still you ought to know him; he
+is a curiosity,&mdash;one of the men of the times. If you want to know the
+secret springs of the revolution that all the newspapers will be full
+of not many years from this, why, Speyer is one of them."</p>
+
+<p>"But is there not some risk in being in communication with such a
+man?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, if one isn't cautious. But, as I'll manage it, it will be
+perfectly safe."</p>
+
+<p>Vinal, though morbidly timorous as respected peril to life or limb,
+was not wholly deficient in the courage of the intriguer&mdash;a quality
+quite distinct from the courage of the soldier. Any thing which
+promised to show him human nature under a new aspect, or disclose to
+him a hidden spring of human action, had a resistless attraction in
+his eyes. He therefore assented to Richards's proposal, and promised
+that, at some more auspicious time, he would go with him to the
+patriot's lodging.</p>
+<br>
+<br><a name="chap30"></a>
+<br>
+<br>
+<h3>CHAPTER XXX.</h3>
+<table align="center" summary="quote27">
+	<tr><td><small>Those travelled youths whom tender mothers wean<br>
+	And send abroad to see and to be seen,<br>
+	Have made all Europe's vices so well known,<br>
+	They seem almost as natural as our own.&mdash;<i>Churchill</i>.</small></td></tr>
+</table>
+<br>
+<br>
+<p>On the next morning, Vinal, Morton, and two other young Americans were
+seated together in the coffee room at Meurice's. They were discussing
+plans of travel.</p>
+
+<p>"Then you don't intend to stay long in Paris," said one of the
+strangers to Morton.</p>
+
+<p>"Not at present. I shall set out in a few days for Vienna, and then go
+down the Danube."</p>
+
+<p>"That's an original idea. What will you find there worth seeing?"</p>
+
+<p>"It's a fancy of mine. There is no place in Europe where one can see
+such a conglomerate of nations and races as in the provinces along the
+Danube. I like to see the human animal in all his varieties,&mdash;that's
+my specialty."</p>
+
+<p>"But what facilities will you find there for travelling?"</p>
+
+<p>"O, I shall be content with any that offer; the vehicles of the
+country, whatever they are. I don't believe in travelling <i>en grand
+seigneur</i>. By mixing with the people, and doing at Rome as the Romans
+do, one learns in a month more than he could learn in ten years by the
+other way."</p>
+
+<p>"You'll take your servant with you, I suppose."</p>
+
+<p>"No. I shall discharge him when I leave Paris."</p>
+
+<p>After conversing for some time longer, Morton and the two young men
+left the room, while Vinal still remained faithful to the attractions
+of his omelet. He was interrupted by the advent of the small man who
+had accosted Morton in the steamer, and had since favored him with his
+company from Liverpool to Paris.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, here's a pretty business, damned if there isn't," said the new
+arrival, seating himself indignantly.</p>
+
+<p>"What's the matter?" asked Vinal.</p>
+
+<p>"What's the matter! Why, there's a good deal the matter. There was a
+young man in Philadelphy named Wilkins,&mdash;John Wilkins,&mdash;I've known him
+ever sence he was knee high to a toad, and a likelier young feller
+there isn't in the States. He was goin' on to make a right smart,
+active, business man, too. Well, he was clerk in one of the biggest
+drug concerns south of New York city,&mdash;Gooch and Scammony,&mdash;I tell
+you, they do a tall business out west, and no mistake. No, <i>sir</i>,
+Gooch and Scammony ain't hardly got their beat in the drug business
+nowhere."</p>
+
+<p>"But what about the clerk?"</p>
+
+<p>"What about him? Why, that's just what I was going on to tell you.
+Well, John, he had a little money laid up; so he thought he'd just
+come out and see a bit of the world. Well, there was a German there at
+Philadelphy who had to cut stick from the old country on account of
+some political muss or other. John and he worn't on good terms;&mdash;it
+was about a gal, John says. However, jest about the time John talked
+of coming out to Europe, the German comes and makes it up, and
+pretends to be friends again. 'John,' says he, 'I've got relations out
+to Vienny, where I come from; first-rate, genteel folks; now,' says
+he, 'perhaps you might like me to make you acquainted with 'em. They'd
+do the handsome thing by you, and no mistake.' 'Well,' says John, 'I
+don't mind if you do.' So the German gives him some letters; and, sure
+enough, they treated him very civil; but the very next morning, before
+he was out of bed, up comes the police, and carries him off to jail;
+and that, I guess, would have been about the last we'd ever have seen
+of John Wilkins, if, by the slimmest ghost of a chance, he hadn't got
+word to our minister, and the minister blowed out so hard about it,
+that they just let John go, and said they was very sorry, and it was
+all a mistake, but he'd better make tracks out of Austria in double
+quick time, because if he didn't, they didn't know as there was any
+body there would undertake to be responsible for what might happen."</p>
+
+<p>Here the orator's breath quite failed, and he coughed till his hatchet
+face turned blue. Vinal reflected in silence.</p>
+
+<p>"Wasn't he an Amerikin?" pursued the small man, "and didn't he have an
+Amerikin passport in his pocket? I expect to go where I please, and
+keep what company I please,&mdash;uh,&mdash;uh,&mdash;uh. I'm an Amerikin,&mdash;uh,&mdash;and
+that's enough; and a considerable wide margin to
+spare,&mdash;uh,&mdash;uh,&mdash;uh."</p>
+
+<p>"But what evidence is there that the German had any thing to do with
+the affair?"</p>
+
+<p>"That's the deused part of the business. There ain't no evidence to
+fix it on him."</p>
+
+<p>"Were the letters he gave your friend sealed?"</p>
+
+<p>"Not a bit of it. They was open, and read jest as fair as need be."</p>
+
+<p>"Probably he was imprudent, and said something which compromised him.
+Stone walls, you know, have ears in Austria."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, I don't know."</p>
+
+<p>"It is very easy for an American to get into trouble with the Austrian
+government. There is a natural antipathy between them."</p>
+
+<p>"Damn such a government."</p>
+
+<p>"Exactly; you're quite right there."</p>
+
+<p>"Why, if you or me was to go down to Austria, and happen to rip out
+what we thought of 'em, where's the guarantee that they wouldn't stick
+us down in some of their prisons, and nobody be any wiser for it?"</p>
+
+<p>"There is no guarantee at all."</p>
+
+<p>"I've heerd said that such things has happened."</p>
+
+<p>"No doubt of it. About this German,&mdash;I should advise your friend to be
+cautious how he accuses him of any intention of having him arrested.
+If the letters had been sealed, there might have been some ground for
+suspicion; but as the case stands, I do not see how there can be any.
+And it is a little hard upon a man, when he meant to do a kindness, to
+charge him with playing such a trick as that."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, it may be as you think. It looks like enough, any way."</p>
+
+<p>The small man addressed himself to his breakfast. Vinal sat playing
+with his spoon, his brain filled with busy and feverish thoughts.</p>
+
+<p>In a few minutes, a messenger from an American banking house came in,
+looking about the room as if in search of some person. Observing
+Vinal, whom he had seen before, he asked if he knew where Mr. Morton
+was.</p>
+
+<p>"Letters there for me?" demanded Vinal, taking several which the
+messenger held in his hand, and glancing over the directions.</p>
+
+<p>"No, sir, they are all Mr. Morton's."</p>
+
+<p>At that instant Vinal discovered the well-remembered handwriting of
+Edith Leslie. His pale face grew a shade paler.</p>
+
+<p>"O, Mr. Morton's! I don't know where you will find him," and he gave
+back the letters to the messenger, who presently left the room.</p>
+
+<p>Vinal sat for a few minutes more, brooding in silence; then slowly
+rose, and walked away. In going towards the room of the hotel which he
+occupied, he passed along a corridor, opposite the end of which opened
+a parlor occupied by Morton. The door was open, and Vinal, as he
+advanced, could plainly see his rival within. Morton had been on the
+point of going out. His hat and gloves lay on the table at his side;
+near them were three or four sealed letters; another&mdash;Vinal well knew
+from whom&mdash;was open in his hands; and as he stood bending over it,
+there was a sunlight in the eye of the successful lover which shot
+deadly envy into the breast of Vinal. Hate and jealousy gnawed and
+rankled at his heart.</p>
+<br>
+<br><a name="chap31"></a>
+<br>
+<br>
+<h3>CHAPTER XXXI.</h3>
+<table align="center" summary="quote28">
+	<tr><td><small>Though I do hate him as I do hell pains,<br>
+	I must throw out a flag and sign of love.&mdash;<i>Othello</i>.</small></td></tr>
+</table>
+<br>
+<br>
+<p>That day Vinal drove to the Quartier Latin, called upon his friend
+Richards, and asked him to dine at the Trois Frères Provençaux. Mr.
+Richards was never known to decline such an invitation.</p>
+
+<p>To the Trois Frères accordingly they repaired. Richards, whose social
+position at home was much inferior to that of his entertainer, thought
+the latter a capital fellow; especially when Vinal flattered him by
+deferring to his better taste and experience in the ordering of the
+dinner. But when, after nightfall, they issued forth again upon the
+open area of the Palais Royal, the delicate Vinal shivered with the
+cold. A chill wind and a dreary rain had set in, and Vinal, always
+cautious in such matters, said that before proceeding on their
+evening's amusements, he would go to Meurice's and get an overcoat.</p>
+
+<p>The overcoat being found, Vinal, buttoned to the chin, came down the
+stairway, and rejoined Richards.</p>
+
+<p>Morton had just before sent a servant for a carriage, to drive to the
+opera, and was waiting wrapped in his cloak, on the steps outside the
+door.</p>
+
+<p>"What shall our first move be?" asked Richards of Vinal, as they
+passed out.</p>
+
+<p>"Whatever you like."</p>
+
+<p>"You had better give the word."</p>
+
+<p>"Then suppose we go and see your friend, the professor."</p>
+
+<p>"Who the deuse is Richards's friend, the professor?" thought Morton,
+as the others passed without observing him.</p>
+
+<p>"The professor" was a cant term for Mr. Henry Speyer.</p>
+
+<p>Speyer lived in an obscure part of the Latin quarter; and Richards,
+who was vain of his intimacy with this scoundrel, as indicating how
+deeply he was versed in Paris life, approached his lodging with much
+circumspection, by dim and devious routes.</p>
+
+<p>"My name is Wilton, and I hail from New Orleans," said Vinal, as they
+reached the patriot's threshold.</p>
+
+<p>As Mr. Wilton, of New Orleans, then, Vinal became known to Mr. Henry
+Speyer. The latter's quarters were any thing but commodious or
+attractive; and Richards invited him to a <i>petit souper</i> at his own
+lodgings, which were not very remote. Leaving Speyer to make his own
+way thither, he proceeded to summon two additional guests, in the
+persons of two friends of his own, his favorite partners at the
+Chaumière. With the aid of wine and cigars, the party became, in time,
+very animated. Vinal, who had a quick and pungent wit, drew upon
+himself much applause, and Speyer regarded him with especial
+commendation. But while he played his part thus successfully, he was
+studying his companions, as a scholar studies a book; studiously
+keeping himself cool; sipping a few drops of his wine, and slyly
+spilling the rest under the table, while he did his best to stimulate
+the others, and especially Speyer, to drink. Speyer drank, indeed, but
+the wine seemed to produce no more effect on him than water. He
+remained as cool as Vinal himself. The latter, young as he was, was a
+close and penetrating judge of men; and when, at two o'clock in the
+morning, he returned to his hotel, he carried with him the conviction
+that, in his present beggared condition, a few hundred francs would
+bribe the patriot to commit any moderately safe villany.</p>
+
+<p>The evening, however, had had one result which Vinal regretted. Mr.
+Richards, being obfuscated with champagne, had repeatedly called him
+by his true name; so that Speyer was fully aware that his new
+acquaintance was not Mr. Wilton, of New Orleans, but Mr. Horace Vinal,
+of Boston.</p>
+<br>
+<br><a name="chap32"></a>
+<br>
+<br>
+<h3>CHAPTER XXXII.</h3>
+
+<center><small>And, far the blackest there, the traitor friend.&mdash;<i>Dryden</i>.</small></center>
+<br>
+<br>
+<p>Several days had passed, during which Vinal contrived to have more
+than one private interview with his new acquaintance, Speyer. He had
+sounded him with much astuteness; found that he could serve him; and
+was confirmed in his assurance that he would.</p>
+
+<p>Morton, he knew, was to leave Paris on the next morning. The time to
+act was now, or never.</p>
+
+<p>At about three in the afternoon, he discovered his rival sauntering
+along an avenue in the garden of the Tuileries; and walking up behind,
+he joined him.</p>
+
+<p>"There are some of us," said Vinal, after a few moments' conversation,
+"going to Versailles to-morrow. Will you go?"</p>
+
+<p>"I mean to leave Paris to-morrow."</p>
+
+<p>"To-morrow! That's very sudden."</p>
+
+<p>"I shall come back again in a few months."</p>
+
+<p>"Your first move is to Italy, I think you said."</p>
+
+<p>"No, to Austria and the Danube."</p>
+
+<p>"O, I remember; it is West who is going to Italy. I think he has
+chosen the better route of the two."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, as far as history and works of art are concerned. But the
+Austrian provinces are the best field for me. I am mounted on a hobby,
+you know, and my time is so short that I must make the most of what I
+have."</p>
+
+<p>"You wish to see the people&mdash;the different races&mdash;is that it?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes."</p>
+
+<p>"You ought to be well booked up before you go, or you'll lose time. By
+the way, I made an acquaintance a little while ago in the diligence
+from Strasburg&mdash;a very agreeable man, a professor at Berlin&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"O, the professor whom you and Richards were going to see, the other
+night."</p>
+
+<p>A thrill shot through Vinal's nerves; but the unsuspecting Morton
+almost instantly relieved his terror.</p>
+
+<p>"I was standing on the steps as you went out, and heard you say that
+you were going to visit him. From the way in which you spoke, I
+imagined him to be some professor of the noble art of self-defence."</p>
+
+<p>"Ha, ha!" laughed Vinal, not quite recovered from his surprise; "no,
+not precisely that; Speyer is a philologist&mdash;that's his department."</p>
+
+<p>"And Richards knows him, too?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, through my introduction."</p>
+
+<p>"From your calling him 'his friend, the professor,' I imagined that
+the acquaintance began the other way."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, his friend, with a vengeance. Confound the fellow, as I was
+walking with him the other day, we met Speyer, and I, thinking no
+harm, introduced them; but it wasn't twenty-four hours before Richards
+was at him to borrow money, which Speyer let him have. I dare say
+Richards has bled you as well."</p>
+
+<p>"No."</p>
+
+<p>"No? Then you are luckier than I am. I advise you to keep out of his
+way, or he'll pin you before you know it."</p>
+
+<p>"I should judge as much."</p>
+
+<p>"I spoke of Professor Speyer because he was born in some outlandish
+corner of the Austrian empire,&mdash;Croatia, I think he told me,&mdash;and had
+his head full of political soap bubbles founded on the distribution of
+races in that part of the world. He put me to sleep half a dozen times
+with talking about Pansclavism and the manifest destinies of the
+Sclavic peoples. He is the very man for you; and I am sorry I didn't
+think of it before."</p>
+
+<p>"Well," said Morton, "I must blunder through as I can."</p>
+
+<p>"Are you at leisure? I'll go with you this afternoon, if you like, and
+call on him."</p>
+
+<p>"I dare say my visit would bore him."</p>
+
+<p>"Get him upon the races in the Austrian empire, and he will be more
+apt to bore you. Are you free at four o'clock?" pursued Vinal, looking
+at his watch.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, quite so."</p>
+
+<p>"Very well. I'm going now to my tailor's. Every genuine American, you
+know, must have a new fit-out in Paris. I'll meet you at Meurice's at
+four, and we'll go from there to Speyer's."</p>
+
+<p>Vinal had three quarters of an hour to spare. He spent a part of them
+in forging the next link of his chain. At four he rejoined Morton, and
+they walked out together.</p>
+
+<p>"I think you'll like Professor Speyer," said Vinal. "I have become
+quite intimate with him, on the strength of a fortnight's
+acquaintance. He urges me to go to Hungary and Transylvania, and
+offered me introductions to his friends there. It would not be a bad
+plan for you to ask him for letters. They would not make you
+acquainted with the Austrian <i>haut ton</i>, but they would bring you into
+contact with men of his own stamp,&mdash;people of knowledge and
+intelligence, who could be of great service to you, and with whom you
+needn't be on terms of much ceremony.&mdash;Here's the place;&mdash;he lives
+here."</p>
+
+<p>It was a lodging house on the Rue Rivoli. Vinal rang the bell. The
+porter appeared.</p>
+
+<p>"Is Professor Speyer at home?"</p>
+
+<p>"<i>Non, monsieur; il est sorti.</i>"</p>
+
+<p>Vinal had just bribed the man to give this answer.</p>
+
+<p>"That's unlucky," he said. "Well, if you like, we can come again this
+evening."</p>
+
+<p>"I am engaged to dine this evening at Madame &mdash;&mdash;'s."</p>
+
+<p>Vinal had known of this engagement.</p>
+
+<p>"I don't see, then, but that you will lose your chance with Speyer.
+Well, <i>fortune de guerre</i>. I should like to have had you see him,
+though."</p>
+
+<p>And they walked towards the Boulevards, conversing on indifferent
+matters.</p>
+<br>
+<br><a name="chap33"></a>
+<br>
+<br>
+<h3>CHAPTER XXXIII.</h3>
+<table align="center" summary="quote29">
+	<tr><td><small>Whose nature is so far from doing evil<br>
+	That he suspects none; on whose foolish honesty<br>
+	My practices ride easy.&mdash;<i>King Lear</i>.</small></td></tr>
+</table>
+<br>
+<br>
+<p>Early the next morning, Morton was writing in his room, when Vinal
+came in.</p>
+
+<p>"Are you still bent on going off to-day?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, within an hour."</p>
+
+<p>"I was passing last evening by Professor Speyer's lodgings, and,
+seeing a light at his window, went in. I told him that I had come to
+find him in the afternoon with an old acquaintance of mine, who was
+going to the Austrian provinces, and that I had advised you to ask
+introductions from him to his friends there. He was a good deal
+interested, as I knew he would be, in what I told him about the
+objects of your journey. 'I'm very sorry,' he said, 'that I did not
+see your friend, for I could have given him letters which I don't
+doubt would have been of great use to him. But wait a few minutes,'
+said he, 'and I'll write a few lines now.' Here they are," continued
+Vinal, giving to Morton four or five notes of introduction. "You can
+put them in your pocket, and use them or not, as you may find
+convenient."</p>
+
+<p>"I'm very much obliged to you," said Morton. "Tell Professor Speyer
+that I am greatly indebted to his kindness, and shall be happy to
+avail myself of it. You are looking very pale; are you ill?"</p>
+
+<p>"No, not at all," stammered Vinal, "but, what is nearly as bad, I have
+been kept awake all night with a raging toothache."</p>
+
+<p>He had been awake all night, but not with toothache.</p>
+
+<p>"There is one consolation for that trouble; cold steel will cure it."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, but the remedy is none of the pleasantest. I won't interrupt you
+any longer. Good by. I wish you a pleasant journey."</p>
+
+<p>He shook hands with Morton, and, pressing his haggard cheek, as if to
+stifle the pain, left the room.</p>
+
+<p>With a new letter from Edith Leslie before him, Morton saw the world
+in rose tint. Happiness blinded him, and he was in no mood to doubt of
+human nature. He blamed himself for his harsh opinions of Vinal.</p>
+
+<p>"It's very generous of him to interest himself at this time, in my
+affairs. ''Tis my nature's plague to spy into abuses.' I have
+misjudged him. He is a better fellow than I ever took him for."</p>
+
+<p>The notes were written in a peculiarly neat, small hand, and bore the
+signature of Henry Speyer. They all spoke of Morton as interested in a
+common object with the person addressed; but, with this exception,
+there was nothing in them which drew his attention, especially as they
+were in German, a language with which he was not very familiar. As for
+the circumstance of their having been given at all to a person whom
+the writer had never seen, Morton accounted for it on the score of the
+good natured professor's desire to oblige his valued friend Vinal.</p>
+<br>
+<br><a name="chap34"></a>
+<br>
+<br>
+<h3>CHAPTER XXXIV.</h3>
+
+<center><small>Things bad begun make strong themselves by
+ill.&mdash;<i>Macbeth</i>.</small></center>
+<br>
+<br>
+<p>The requisites of a successful villain are manifold. The toughened
+conscience, the ready wit, the sage experience, the mind tutored, like
+Iago, in all qualities of human dealing,&mdash;all these, in some
+reasonable measure, Vinal had; but he miserably lacked the vulgar, but
+no less needful requisite of a sound bodily fibre to support the
+workings of his brain. His mind was a good lever with a feeble
+fulcrum; a gun mounted on a tottering rampart. When every breath of
+emotion that touches the fine-strung organism quivers along the
+electric chord to the brain, kindling there strange perturbations,
+then philosophy must lower her tone, and stoicism itself must soon
+confess that its only resource is to avoid the enemy with whom it
+cannot cope. Vinal was but ill fitted to act the part he had
+undertaken. The excitements of villany were too much for him. Peace of
+mind was as needful to him as food and drink. He had been battling all
+his life against what he imagined to be a defect of his mental forces,
+but which had, in the main, no deeper root than in the sensitiveness
+of his bodily constitution. In prudence and common sense, he was bound
+to seek asylum in that blissful serenity, that benignant calm, said to
+be the unfailing attendant on piety and good works. Never did Nature
+give a sharper hint than she gave to Vinal to eschew evil courses, and
+leaving rascality to tougher nerves, to tread the placid paths of
+virtue and discretion. Vinal saw fit to disregard the hint, and the
+consequences became somewhat grievous.</p>
+
+<p>While his intrigue was in progress, his nerves had given him no great
+trouble. Hate and jealousy absorbed him. He was steadfast in his
+purpose to get rid of his rival. But now that the mine was laid, and
+the match lighted, a change began to come upon him. It was his maiden
+felony; his first <i>début</i> in the distinct character of a scoundrel;
+and, though his conscience was none of the liveliest, it sufficed to
+visit him with some qualms. Anxieties, doubts, fears, began to prey
+upon him; sleep failed him; his nerves were set more and more on edge;
+in short, body and mind, mutually acting on each other, were fast
+bringing him to a state quite adverse to the maxims of his philosophy.</p>
+
+<p>When a sophomore in college, his favorite reading had been Foster's
+Essay on Decision of Character, and he had aspired to realize in his
+own person the type of character therein set forth; the man of steel,
+who, in his firm march towards his ends, knows neither doubts, nor
+waverings, nor relentings. Of this ideal he was now falling lamentably
+short; and as, at two o'clock in the morning, he rose from his
+restless bed, and paced his chamber to and fro, vainly upbraiding his
+weakness, and struggling to reason down the rebellious vibration of
+his nerves, he was any thing but the inexorable hero of his boyish
+fancy.</p>
+
+<p>"The thing is done,"&mdash;so he communed with himself,&mdash;"it was
+deliberately done, and well done. That hound is chained and muzzled,
+or will be so soon. For a time, at least, he is out of my path. But is
+he? What if he should escape the trap? What if those men to whom I
+have sent him are less an abomination in the eyes of the government
+than there is reason to think them? No doubt he will be compromised;
+no doubt he will get into difficulty; but if he should get out again!
+if, within a year from this he should come home to charge me with
+trapanning him! Pshaw! he could prove nothing. He would be thought
+malicious if he accused me. But he may suspect!" and this idea
+sufficed to fill his excited mind with fresh agitation. For three
+nights he had been without sleep; and now his irritable system was
+wrought almost to the point of fever.</p>
+
+<p>"Half measures are nothing! The nail must be driven home and clinched!
+I must make sure of him." And early in the morning he went to find
+Speyer.</p>
+
+<p>Speyer was not to be found. In his eagerness, he went again and again
+to seek him, though he knew that there was risk in doing so. At length
+he succeeded; and in spite of his resolute and long-practised
+self-control, his confederate saw at a glance, in his shining eye,
+flushed cheek, and the nervous compression of his lips, that he was
+under a great, though a painfully repressed excitement.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, monsieur, do you hear any thing from your friend?"</p>
+
+<p>"No, it is not time to hear."</p>
+
+<p>"You will have to wait a long while before the time comes."</p>
+
+<p>"Your letters were very well so far as they go; but the thing should
+be done thoroughly. What I wish you to do is this. Write to him a
+letter, implicating him in your revolutionary plot. He will be under
+suspicion. Every letter sent to him will be stopped and opened by the
+police."</p>
+
+<p>"If that is done, I will warrant you quit of him; at least for some
+years to come."</p>
+
+<p>"They will imprison him," said Vinal, nervously, "but that will be the
+whole,&mdash;his life will be in no danger."</p>
+
+<p>"His life!" returned Speyer, glancing sidelong at his visitor; "don't
+be troubled on that score. They won't kill him."</p>
+
+<p>"Then write the letter," said Vinal, laying a rouleau of gold on the
+table, "and write it in such a way that it shall spring the trap on
+him, and keep him caged till doomsday."</p>
+
+<p>The letter was written. Vinal read it, re-read it, sealed it, and with
+a quivering hand thrust it into the post office.</p>
+<br>
+<br><a name="chap35"></a>
+<br>
+<br>
+<h3>CHAPTER XXXV.</h3>
+<table align="center" summary="quote30">
+	<tr><td><small>Thy hope is young, thy heart is strong, but yet a day may be,<br>
+	When thou shalt weep in dungeon deep, and none thy weeping see.<br>
+	&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
+	&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
+	&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
+	&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
+	&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
+	&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
+	&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
+	&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
+	<i>The Count of Saldana</i>.</small></td></tr>
+</table>
+<br>
+<br>
+<p>Morton had left Vienna, and was journeying in the diligence on the
+confines of Styria. The cumbrous machine had been lumbering on all
+night. Awaking at daybreak from his comfortless sleep, and looking
+through the breath-bedimmed panes before him, he saw the postilion's
+shoulders wearily jolting up and down with the motion of the lazy
+horses. He had one fellow-traveller in the compartment which he
+occupied, a man of thirty-five or thereabouts, who had taken the
+diligence late the evening before, and who now, his shoulders
+supported by the leather straps which hung for the purpose from the
+roof, and his head tumbling forward on his chest, was dozing with a
+ludicrously grim expression of countenance. At length a sudden jolt
+awakened him; he started, shook himself, looked about him, inclined
+his head by way of salutation to his fellow-traveller, and opened a
+conversation with a remark on the chillness of the morning. After
+conversing for a time in French, the stranger said in excellent
+English, "I see there is no need of our speaking French, for by your
+accent I judge that you are English. I myself have a little of the
+English about me; that is to say, I was four years at Oxford, though I
+am German by birth."</p>
+
+<p>"I am not English, though my ancestors were."</p>
+
+<p>"You are American, then?" said the stranger, looking at him with some
+curiosity; and from this beginning, their acquaintance ripened fast.
+The German, regarding his companion as a young man of more
+intelligence than experience, conversed with an ease and frankness
+which fast gained upon Morton's confidence. He proved, indeed, a
+storehouse of information, discoursing of the people, the country, and
+even the government, with little reserve, and an admirable copiousness
+and minuteness of knowledge. At length he asked Morton if he had any
+acquaintance in Austria.</p>
+
+<p>"None, excepting one or two persons at Vienna, to whom I had letters."</p>
+
+<p>"Then you have probably made agreeable acquaintances. The society of
+Vienna is a very pleasant one."</p>
+
+<p>"My letters were, or purported to be, to <i>savans</i> and literary men."</p>
+
+<p>"There, too, you should have found persons well worth the meeting."</p>
+
+<p>"I have no doubt of it."</p>
+
+<p>"You do not speak," said the investigating stranger, with a smile,
+"like one who has been much pleased with his experience."</p>
+
+<p>"I have had no opportunity to judge fairly of the Viennese <i>savans</i>."</p>
+
+<p>"Your letters gave you no opportunity?"</p>
+
+<p>"They were given me at Paris, in a rather singular way; and, to say
+the truth, the persons to whom they introduced me were so little to my
+taste, that after delivering one or two of them, I determined not to
+use the rest."</p>
+
+<p>"You appear to have been very unfortunate. Will you allow me to ask to
+whom your letters were addressed?"</p>
+
+<p>"They were written by a person whom I never saw, and were given to me
+by a friend,&mdash;an acquaintance,&mdash;of mine, as a means of gaining
+information about the country; such information as that for which I am
+indebted to you. I have been a good deal perplexed as to the character
+of the persons to whom they were written."</p>
+
+<p>"Very probably I could aid you."</p>
+
+<p>Morton mentioned the names of the men he had seen.</p>
+
+<p>The German at first looked puzzled, then amazed, then distrustful.</p>
+
+<p>"Your letters were got for you by a friend of yours?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes."</p>
+
+<p>"And were written by&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"A professor from Berlin, named Speyer,&mdash;Henry Speyer."</p>
+
+<p>"Henry Speyer!" repeated the German, in astonishment.</p>
+
+<p>"You were saying that you had lived for some years at Berlin. Perhaps
+you can tell me who and what he is."</p>
+
+<p>"I know of no Professor Henry Speyer at Berlin."</p>
+
+<p>"This man, I am told, is well known as a philologist."</p>
+
+<p>"There is a Henry Speyer who is a philologist, so far as speaking
+every language in Europe can make him one; but he was never a
+professor in Berlin or any where else."</p>
+
+<p>Morton looked perplexed. The German studied his face for a moment, and
+then said,&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"You say that a friend of yours gave you letters from Henry Speyer to
+the men you just named?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes."</p>
+
+<p>"I beg your pardon! Have you ever quarrelled with your friend? Are you
+on terms with your friend's mistress? or do you stand between your
+friend and a fortune?"</p>
+
+<p>A cold thrill passed through Morton's frame. There was an approach to
+truth in both the two last suppositions.</p>
+
+<p>"Either you are very much deeper than I know how to comprehend you, or
+else you are the victim of a plot."</p>
+
+<p>"What kind of plot?" demanded the startled Morton; "who is Speyer, and
+who are the other men?"</p>
+
+<p>"I will tell you. Speyer is an intriguer, a revolutionist, a man in
+every way infamous. As for his being a professor, he is no more a
+professor than he is a prime minister, and you may ascribe what
+motives you please to your friend for giving him the name. He dares
+not set foot in Austria. If he did, it would go very hard with him.
+The other men are of the same kidney&mdash;his aiders, abetters, fellow
+conspirators; known or suspected to be plotting for the overthrow of
+the government."</p>
+
+<p>"Then why are they at liberty?"</p>
+
+<p>"Do you call it liberty to be day and night under the eye of the
+police&mdash;to be dogged and watched every hour of their lives? They serve
+as a sort of decoy. All who hold communication with them are noted
+down as dangerous; and my only wonder is, that you have not before
+this heard from the police."</p>
+
+<p>"And what would you advise me to do?"</p>
+
+<p>"Get out of Austria as soon and as quietly as you can. When you have
+passed the frontier you will be safe, and not before."</p>
+<br>
+<br><a name="chap36"></a>
+<br>
+<br>
+<h3>CHAPTER XXXVI.</h3>
+<table align="center" summary="quote31">
+	<tr><td><small>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
+	&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
+	Monsieur, j'ai deux mots à vous dire;<br>
+	Messieurs les maréchaux, dont j'ai commandement,<br>
+	Vous mandent de venir les trouver promptement,<br>
+	Monsieur.&mdash;<i>Le Misanthrope</i>.</small></td></tr>
+</table>
+<br>
+<br>
+<p>That evening Morton arrived at the post house at &mdash;&mdash;. He was alone,
+his companion of the morning, whose route lay in another direction,
+having left him long before. At the head of the ancient staircase, the
+host welcomed him with a "good night," and ushered him into a large,
+low, wooden room, where some thirty men and women were smoking,
+eating, and lounging among the tables and benches. Old Germans talked
+over their beer pots, and puffed at their pipes; young ones laughed
+and bantered with the servant girls. A Frenchman, <i>en route</i> for
+Laibach, gulped down his bowlful of soup, sprang to the window when he
+heard the postilion's horn, bounded back to finish his tumbler of
+wine, then seized his cane, and dashed out in hot haste. A small, prim
+student strutted to the window to watch him, pipe in hand, and an
+amused grin on his face; then turned to roar for more beer, and joke
+with the girl who brought it.</p>
+
+<p>Morton sat alone, incensed, disturbed, anxious. He had resolved to go
+no farther without taking measures to secure his own safety; and a day
+or two, he hoped, would place him out of the reach of danger.
+Meanwhile, what with his horror at the villany which had duped him,
+his anger with himself at being duped, and the consciousness that the
+hundred-handed despotism of Austria might at any moment close its
+gripe upon him, the condition of his mind was far from enviable.</p>
+
+<p>As he surveyed the noisy groups around him, three men appeared at the
+door. Morton sipped his wine, and watched them uneasily out of the
+corner of his eye. One of them was a military officer; another was a
+tall man in a civil dress; the third was the conductor of the
+diligence in which Morton had travelled all day. The conductor looked
+towards him significantly; the tall man inclined his head, as a token
+that he understood the sign. Then approaching, hat in hand, he said
+very courteously, in French,&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"Pardon, monsieur; I regret that I must give you some little trouble.
+I have a carriage below; will you have the goodness to accept a seat
+in it?"</p>
+
+<p>"To go whither?" demanded Morton, in alarm.</p>
+
+<p>"To the office of police, monsieur."</p>
+
+<p>The Austrian Briareus had clutched him at last.</p>
+<br>
+<br><a name="chap37"></a>
+<br>
+<br>
+<h3>CHAPTER XXXVII.</h3>
+<table align="center" summary="quote32">
+	<tr><td><small>Are you called forth, from out a world of men,<br>
+	To slay the innocent? What is my offence?<br>
+	Where is the evidence that doth accuse me?<br>
+	What lawful quest have given their verdict up<br>
+	Unto the frowning judge?&mdash;<i>Richard III</i>.</small></td></tr>
+</table>
+<br>
+<br>
+<p>"You have trifled long enough," said the commissioner; "declare what
+you know, or you shall be dealt with summarily."</p>
+
+<p>A long journey, manacled like a felon, and guarded by dragoons with
+loaded carbines; a rigorous imprisonment, already five months
+protracted; repeated examinations before a military tribunal;
+cross-questionings, threats, and insults, to extort his supposed
+secrets;&mdash;all these had formed a sharp transition from the halcyon
+days of Vassall Morton's prosperity.</p>
+
+<p>"Declare what you know, or you shall be dealt with summarily."</p>
+
+<p>"I know nothing, and therefore can declare nothing."</p>
+
+<p>"You have held that tone long enough. Do you imagine that we are to be
+deceived by your inventions? Tell what you know, or in twenty minutes
+you will be led to the rampart and shot."</p>
+
+<p>"I am in your power, and you can do what you will."</p>
+
+<p>The commissioner spoke in German to the corporal of the guard, who
+took Morton into custody, and was leading him from the room.</p>
+
+<p>"Stop," cried the official, from his seat.</p>
+
+<p>Morton turned.</p>
+
+<p>"You are destroying yourself, young man."</p>
+
+<p>"It is false. You are murdering me."</p>
+
+<p>"Do not answer me. I tell you, you are murdering yourself. Are you the
+fool to fling away your life in a fit of obstinacy?"</p>
+
+<p>"Are you the villain to shoot innocent men in cold blood?"</p>
+
+<p>The commissioner swore a savage oath, and with an angry gesture sent
+the corporal from the room.</p>
+
+<p>The corporal led his prisoner along the corridor, which had grown
+ruefully familiar to Morton's eye; but instead of following the way
+which led to the latter's cell, he turned into a much wider and more
+commodious passage. Here, at his open door, stood Padre Luca,
+confessing priest of the castle.</p>
+
+<p>Padre Luca had mistaken his calling, when he took it upon him to
+discharge such a function. He was too tender of heart, too soft of
+nature; ill seasoned, moreover, to his work, for he had been but a
+week in the fortress, and this was the first victim whom it behooved
+him to prepare for death. And when he saw the young prisoner, and
+learned the instant doom under which he stood, his nerves grew
+tremulous, and he found no words to usher in his ghostly counsels.</p>
+
+<p>Corporal Max Kubitski, with a face unperturbed as a block, unfettered
+Morton's wrists, left him with the confessor, and withdrew, placing a
+soldier on guard at the door without. Morton sat silent and calm. The
+hand of Padre Luca quivered with agitation.</p>
+
+<p>"My son," he began; and here his voice faltered.</p>
+
+<p>"I trust," he said, finding his tongue again, "that you are a faithful
+child of our holy mother, the church, and that the heresies and
+infidelities of these times&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Father," said Morton, willingly adopting the filial address to the
+kind-hearted priest, "I am a Protestant. I was born and bred among
+Protestants. I respect your ancient church for the good she has done
+in ages past, and for the good men who have held her faith; but I do
+not believe her doctrine, nor approve her practice."</p>
+
+<p>The priest's face betrayed his discomposure.</p>
+
+<p>"My son, my dear son, it is not too late; it is never too late. Listen
+to the truth; renounce your fatal errors. I will baptize you; and when
+you are gone, I will pray our great saint of Milan to intercede for
+you, and I will say masses for your soul."</p>
+
+<p>Morton smiled faintly, and shook his head.</p>
+
+<p>"I thank you; but it is too late for conversion. I must die in my
+heresy, as I have lived."</p>
+
+<p>"So young!" exclaimed Padre Luca; "and so calm on the brink of
+eternity! Ah, it is hard to die, when so much is left to enjoy; but it
+is worse to plunge from present suffering into everlasting despair."
+And he proceeded to give a most graphic picture of post-mortal
+torments, drawn from the Spiritual Exercises of Saint Ignatius, a work
+very familiar to his meditations. This dire imagery failed to convince
+the dying heretic.</p>
+
+<p>"My mind is made up. I cannot believe your doctrine, but I can feel
+your kindness. You have spoken the first friendly words that I have
+heard for months."</p>
+
+<p>"It is hard that you should die so unprepared, and so young. You have
+relatives? You have friends?"</p>
+
+<p>"More than friends! More than friends!" groaned Morton. And as a flood
+of recollection swept over him, his heart for a moment was sick with
+anguish.</p>
+
+<p>"Come with me," whispered Padre Luca. He led the way into the chapel
+of the castle, which adjoined his room. Here he bowed and crossed
+himself before an altar, over which was displayed a painting of the
+Virgin.</p>
+
+<p>"Our Blessed Mother is full of love, full of mercy. See,&mdash;hang this
+round your neck"&mdash;placing in his hand a small medal on which her image
+was stamped. "Go and kneel before that altar, and repeat these words,"
+pointing to the Ave Maria in a little book of devotion. "Call on her
+with a true heart, and she will have pity. She cannot see you perish,
+body and soul. She will appear, and teach you the truth."</p>
+
+<p>There was so much of earnestness and sincerity in his words, that
+Morton felt nothing but gratitude as he answered,&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"It would be no better than a mockery, if I should do as you wish. I
+cannot&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>Here a clear, deep voice from the adjacent room interrupted him.</p>
+
+<p>"Mother of heaven!" cried Padre Luca, greatly agitated.</p>
+
+<p>"I am ready," answered Morton, in a voice firm as that which summoned
+him.</p>
+
+<p>He returned to the priest's apartment, and in the doorway stood the
+athletic corporal, like the statue of a modern Mars.</p>
+
+<p>"<i>Mio figlio! Mio caro figlio!</i>" faltered Padre Luca, laying a
+tremulous hand on the young man's shoulder. The kindly accents of the
+melodious Italian fell on his ear like a strain of music.</p>
+
+<p>"You must not die now; you are not prepared. I will go to the
+commissioner. He will grant time."</p>
+
+<p>He was pushing past the corporal, when Morton gently checked him.</p>
+
+<p>"I thank you, father, a thousand times; but if I must die, there is no
+mercy in a half hour's delay. Let me go. This sentence may be, after
+all, a kindness."</p>
+
+<p>The corporal took him into custody; and, with three soldiers before
+and three behind, he moved towards his place of execution. He seemed
+to himself like one not fully awake; the stern reality would not come
+home to his thoughts, until, as he was mounting a flight of steps
+leading to the rampart, a vivid remembrance glowed upon him of that
+summer evening when, in her father's garden, Edith Leslie had accepted
+his love. It was with a desperate effort of pride and resolution that
+he quelled the emotion which rose choking to his throat, and murmuring
+a petition for her safety, walked forward with an unchanged face.</p>
+
+<p>A light shone in upon the passage, and they stood in a moment upon the
+rampart, whence a panorama of sunny mountains opened on the view. It
+was a space of some extent, paved with flag-stones, and compassed with
+battlements and walls. On one side stood, leaning on their muskets, a
+file of Bohemian soldiers, in their close frogged uniforms and long
+mustaches. These, with their officer, Corporal Kubitski, with his six
+men, a sub-official acting for the commissioner, and Padre Luca, were
+the only persons present, besides the prisoner. The latter was placed
+before the Bohemians, at the distance of twelve or fourteen paces. The
+corporal and his men drew aside.</p>
+
+<p>"Now," demanded the deputy, "will you confess what you know, or will
+you die?"</p>
+
+<p>"I have told you, once and again, that I have nothing to confess."</p>
+
+<p>"Then take the consequence of your obstinacy."</p>
+
+<p>He motioned to the officer. A word of command was given. Each soldier
+loaded with ball, and the ramrods rattled as they sent home the
+charge. Another command, and the cocked muskets rose to the level,
+concentrating their aim against the prisoner's breast.</p>
+
+<p>"If you will speak, speak now. You have a quarter of a minute to save
+yourself." And the deputy took out his watch.</p>
+
+<p>Morton turned his head slowly, and looked at him for an instant in
+silence.</p>
+
+<p>"Speak, speak," cried Padre Luca, pressing towards him; "tell him what
+you know."</p>
+
+<p>The sharp voice of the officer warned him back.</p>
+
+<p>Morton stood with compressed lips, and every nerve at its tension, in
+instant expectation of the volley; already, in fancy, he felt the
+bullets plunging through his breast; but not a muscle flinched, and he
+fronted the deadly muzzles with an unblenching eye. The deputy
+scrutinized his face, and turned away, muttering. At that moment a
+man, who through the whole scene had stood hidden in the entrance of a
+passage, ran out with a pretence of great haste and earnestness, and
+called to stop the execution, since the commissioner had granted a
+reprieve. In fact, the whole affair was a sham, played off upon the
+prisoner to terrify him into confession.</p>
+
+<p>The Bohemians recovered their muskets, and the bewildered Morton was
+once more in custody of the corporal, who led him, guarded as before,
+back towards his cell. Padre Luca, who thought that an interposition
+of the Virgin had softened the commissioner's heart, hastened to his
+oratory to pray for the heretic's conversion. Faint and heartsick,
+Morton scarcely knew what was passing, till he was thrust in at his
+narrow door. The jailer was there, but the corporal entered also, to
+aid in taking the handcuffs from his wrists.</p>
+
+<p>One might have looked in vain among ten thousand to find a nobler
+model of masculine proportion than this soldier. He stood more than
+six feet high, and Morton, who loved to look upon a man, had often,
+even in his distress, admired his martial bearing and the powerful
+symmetry of his frame. His face, too, was singularly fine in its way,
+and though the discipline of long habit usually banished from it any
+distinct expression, yet the cast of the features, and the manly curve
+of the lip, which the thick brown mustache could not wholly hide,
+seemed to augur a brave, generous, and loyal nature.</p>
+
+<p>More stupefied than cheered at being snatched, as he supposed, from
+the jaws of death, Morton stood passive while his hands were released.
+The jailer left him for a moment, and crossed over to the opposite
+corner of the cell. His back was turned as he did so. The corporal's
+six soldiers were all in the passage without. At that instant, Morton
+felt a warm breath at his ear, and heard whispered in a barbarous
+accent,&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"<i>Courage, mon ami! Vive la liberté! Vive l'Amerique!</i>"</p>
+
+<p>He turned; but the martial visage of the corporal was unmoved as
+bronze; and, in a moment more, the iron door clanged behind him as he
+disappeared.</p>
+<br>
+<br><a name="chap38"></a>
+<br>
+<br>
+<h3>CHAPTER XXXVIII.</h3>
+<table align="center" summary="quote33a">
+	<tr><td><small>O Death, why now so slow art thou? why fearest thou to smite?<br>
+	&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
+	&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
+	&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
+	&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
+	&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
+	&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
+	<i>Lamentation of Don Roderick</i>.</small></td></tr>
+</table>
+<br>
+<table align="center" summary="quote33b">
+	<tr><td><small>When all the blandishments of life are gone,<br>
+	The coward sneaks to death, the brave live on.&mdash;<i>Sewell</i>.</small></td></tr>
+</table>
+<br>
+<br>
+<p>The whispered words of the corporal kindled a spark of hope in
+Morton's breast; but it was destined to fade and die. Once he was sure
+that he heard the tones of his voice in the passage without his cell;
+but weeks passed, months passed, and he did not see him again.</p>
+
+<p>And now let the curtain drop for a space of three years.</p>
+
+<p>Morton was still a prisoner. Despair was at hand. He longed to die.
+His longing at length seemed near its accomplishment. A raging fever
+seized him, and for days he lay delirious, balanced on the brink of
+death. But his constitution endured the shock; and late one night he
+lay on his pallet, exhausted, worn to a skeleton, yet fully conscious
+of his situation.</p>
+
+<p>The locks clashed, the hinges jarred, and a physician of the prison, a
+bulky German, stood at his side.</p>
+
+<p>He felt his patient's pulse.</p>
+
+<p>"Shall I die, or not?" demanded the sick man.</p>
+
+<p>"Die!" echoed the German, a laugh gurgling within him, like the first
+symptom of an earthquake; "all men die, but this sickness will never
+kill you. It would have killed ninety-nine out of a hundred; but you
+are as tough as a rhinoceros."</p>
+
+<p>Morton turned to the wall, and cursed the hour when he was born.</p>
+
+<p>The German gave a prescription to his attendant; the locks clashed
+again behind him, and Morton was left alone with his misery.</p>
+
+<p>The lamp in the passage without shone through the grated opening above
+the door, and shed a square of yellow light on the black, damp stones
+of the dungeon. They sweated and trickled with a clammy moisture; and
+the brick pavement was wet, as if the clouds had rained upon it.
+Morton lay motionless as a dead man. The crisis of his disorder was
+past; but its effects were heavy upon him, and his mind shared the
+deep exhaustion of his body. Perilous thoughts rose upon him, spectral
+and hollow-eyed.</p>
+
+<p>"By what right am I doomed to this protracted misery? By what justice,
+when a refuge is at hand, am I forbidden to fly to it? I have only to
+drag myself from this bed, and rest for a few moments on those wet,
+cold bricks, and all the medicines in Austria could not keep me many
+days a prisoner. And who could blame me? Who could say that I
+destroyed myself? It is not suicide. It is but aiding kindly nature to
+do a deed of mercy."</p>
+
+<p>He repelled the thought; but it returned. He repelled it again, but
+still it returned. The insidious demon was again and again at his ear,
+stealing back with a noiseless gliding, smoothly commending her poison
+to his lips, soothing his worn spirit as the vampire fans its
+slumbering victim with its wings. But his better nature, not without a
+higher appeal, fortified itself against her, and struggled to hold its
+ground.</p>
+
+<p>When the French besieged Saragossa; when her walls crumbled before
+their batteries; when, day by day, through secret mine or open
+assault, foot by foot, they won their way inward towards her heart;
+when treason within aided force without, and famine and pestilence
+leagued against her,&mdash;still her undespairing children refused to
+yield. Sick men dragged themselves to the barricades, women and boys
+pointed the cannon, and her heroic banner still floated above the
+wreck.</p>
+
+<p>Thus, spent with disease, gnawed with pertinacious miseries, assailed
+by black memories of the past, and blacker forebodings of the future,
+did Morton maintain his weary battle with despair.</p>
+<br>
+<br><a name="chap39"></a>
+<br>
+<br>
+<h3>CHAPTER XXXIX.</h3>
+<table align="center" summary="quote34">
+	<tr><td><small>
+	&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
+	&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
+	Who would lose,<br>
+	Though full of pain, this intellectual being,<br>
+	These thoughts that wander through eternity?<br><br>
+	To be weak is miserable,<br>
+	Doing or suffering.&mdash;<i>Paradise Lost</i>.</small></td></tr>
+</table>
+<br>
+<br>
+<p>Morton recovered slowly. The influences about him were any thing but
+favorable to a quick convalescence, and it was months before he was
+himself again. Even then, though his health seemed confirmed, a deeper
+cloud remained upon his spirits: his dungeon seemed more dark and
+gloomy, his prospects more desperate.</p>
+
+<p>One day he paced his cell in a mood of more than usual depression.</p>
+
+<p>"Fools and knaves are at large; robbery and murder have full scope;
+vanity and profligacy run their free career; then why is honest effort
+paralyzed, and buried here alive? There are those in these
+vaults,&mdash;men innocent of crime as I,&mdash;men who would have been an honor
+to their race,&mdash;who have passed a score of years in this living death.
+And canting fools would console them with saying that 'all is for the
+best.' I will sooner believe that the world is governed by devils, and
+that the prince of them all is bodied in Metternich. Why is there not
+in crushed hope, and stifled wrath, and swelling anguish, and frenzy,
+and despair, a force to burst these hellish sepulchres, and blow them
+to the moon!</p>
+
+<p>"It is but a weak punishment to which Milton dooms his ruined angel.
+Action,&mdash;enterprise,&mdash;achievement,&mdash;a hell like that is heaven to the
+cells of Ehrenberg. He should have chained him to a rock, and left him
+alone to the torture of his own thoughts; the unutterable agonies of a
+mind preying on itself for want of other sustenance. Action!&mdash;mured in
+this dungeon, the starved soul gasps for it as the lungs for air.
+'Action, action, action!&mdash;all in all! What is life without it? A
+marsh, a quagmire, a rotten, stagnant pool. It is its own reward. The
+chase is all; the prize nothing. The huntsmen chase the fox all day,
+and, when they have caught her, fling her to their hounds for a
+worthless vermin. Alexander wept that he had no more worlds to
+conquer. What did it profit him that a conquered world lay already at
+his feet? The errant knights who roamed the world with their
+mistress's glove on their helmet, achieving impossibilities in her
+name,&mdash;which of them could have endured to live in peace with her for
+a six-month? The crusader master of Jerusalem, Cortes with Mexico
+subdued, any hero when his work is done, falls back to the ranks of
+common men. His lamp is out, his fire quenched; and what avails the
+stale, lack-lustre remnant of his days?</p>
+
+<p>"Action! the panacea of human ills; the sure resource of misery; the
+refuge of bad consciences; a maelstroom, in whose giddy vortex saints
+and villains may whirl alike. How like a madman some great criminal,
+some Macbeth, will plunge on through his slough of blood and
+treachery, frantic to dam out justice at every chink, and bulwark
+himself against fate; clinching crime with crime; giving conscience no
+time to stab; finding no rest; but still plunging on, desperate and
+blind! How like a madman some pious anchorite, fervent to win heaven,
+will pile torture on torture, fast, and vigil, and scourge, made
+wretched daily with some fresh scruple, delving to find some new depth
+of self-abasement, and still struggling on unsatisfied, insatiable of
+penance, till the grave devours him! Human activity!&mdash;to pursue a
+security which is never reached, a contentment which eludes the grasp,
+some golden consummation which proves but hollow mockery; to seize the
+prize, to taste it, to fling it away, and reach after another! This
+cell, where I thought myself buried and sealed up from knowledge, is,
+after all, a school of philosophy. It teaches a dreary wisdom of its
+own. Through these stone walls I can see the follies of the world more
+clearly than when I was in the midst of them. A dreary wisdom; and yet
+not wholly dreary. There is a power and a consolation in it. Misery is
+the mind-maker; the revealer of truth; the spring of nobleness; the
+test, the purger, the strengthener of the spirit. Our natures are like
+grapes in the wine press: they must be pressed to the uttermost before
+they will give forth all their virtue.</p>
+
+<p>"Why do I delude myself? What good can be wrung out of a misery like
+mine? It is folly to cheat myself with hope. This hell-begotten
+Austria has me fast, and will not loosen her gripe. Abroad in the free
+world, fortitude will count for much. There, one can hold firm the
+clefts and cracks of his tottering fortunes with the cement of an
+unyielding mind; but here, it is but bare and blank endurance. Yet it
+is something that I can still find heart to face my doom; that there
+are still moments when I dare to meet this death-in-life, this
+slow-consuming horror, face to face, and look into all its hideousness
+without shrinking. To creep on to my end through years of slow decay,
+mind and soul famishing in solitude, sapped and worn, eaten and
+fretted away, by the droppings of lonely thought, till I find my rest
+at last under these cursed stones! God! could I but die the death of a
+man! De Foix,&mdash;Dundee,&mdash;Wolfe. I grudge them their bloody end. When
+the fierce blood boiled highest, when the keen life was tingling
+through their veins, and the shout of victory ringing in their ears,
+then to be launched at a breath forth into the wilderness of space, to
+sail through eternity, to explore the seas and continents of the vast
+unknown! But I,&mdash;I must lie here and rot. You fool! you are tied to
+the stake, and must bide the baiting as you can. Will you play the
+coward? What can you gain by that? You cannot run away. What wretch,
+when misery falls upon him, will not cry out, 'Take any shape but
+that?' In the familiar crowd, in the daily resort, how many an
+unregarded face masks a wretchedness worse than this! some shrunken,
+cankered soul, palsied and world-weary, more hopelessly dungeoned than
+you. Crush down your anguish, choke down your groan, and say,
+'Heaven's will be done.'</p>
+
+<p>"Muster what courage you may. Not those spasms of valor that make the
+hero of an emergency, and when the heart is on fire and the soul in
+arms, bear him on to great achievement. Mine must be an inward flame,
+that warms though it cannot shine; a fire, like the sacred Chaldean
+fire, that must never go out; a perpetual spring, flowing up without
+ceasing, to meet the unceasing need.</p>
+
+<p>"And you, source of my deepest joy and my deepest sorrow,&mdash;do not fail
+me now. Come to me in this darkness; let your spirit haunt this tomb
+where I lie buried. In your presence, the evil of my heart shrank
+back, rebuked; its good sprang up and grew in life and freshness. You
+rose upon me like the sun, warming every noble germ into leaf and
+flower. You streamed into my soul, banishing its mists, and gladdening
+it to its depths with summer light. These are no girl's tears. Towards
+myself and my own woes, I have hardened my heart like the barren
+flint. I should be less than man if I did not weep when I think of
+you. You must pass the appointed lot; you must fade with time and
+sorrow; but to me you will be radiant still with youth and beauty. So
+will I bide my hour, anchored on that pure and lofty memory, waiting
+that last release when the winged spirit shall laugh at bolts and
+dungeon bars."</p>
+<br>
+<br><a name="chap40"></a>
+<br>
+<br>
+<h3>CHAPTER XL.</h3>
+<table align="center" summary="quote35">
+	<tr><td><small>Lost liberty and love at once he bore;<br>
+	His prison pained him much, his passion more.&mdash;<i>Palemon and Arcite</i>.</small></td></tr>
+</table>
+<br>
+<br>
+<p>Since his illness, Morton had had some of an invalid's privilege. He
+had been allowed to walk on the rampart for half an hour daily. In the
+distance, a great mountain range bounded the view, and, nearer, the
+Croatian forest stretched its dark and wild frontier. The scene
+recalled kindred scenes at home; and when he was led back to his cell,
+when the heavy door clashed and the bolts grated upon him, he leaned
+his forehead on his hand, and stood in fancy again among the mountains
+of New England, with all their associations of health, freedom, and
+golden hopes. The White Mountains seemed to rise around him like a
+living presence, rugged with their rocks and pines, scarred with
+avalanches, cinctured with morning mists; and, standing again on the
+bank of the Saco, he seemed to feel their breezes and hear the
+brawling of their waters. Then his roused fancy took a wider range;
+carried him across the Alleghanies and along the Ohio, up the
+Mississippi to its source, and downward to the sea, picturing the
+whole like the shifting scene of a panorama.</p>
+
+<p>"Ah," he thought, "if my story could be blown abroad over those
+western waters! How long then should I lie here dying by inches? The
+farmers of Ohio, the planters of Tennessee, the backwoodsmen of
+Missouri, how would they endure such outrage to the meanest member of
+their haughty sovereignty! A hopeless dream! I have looked my last on
+America. My wrongs will find no voice. They and I are smothering
+together, safely walled up in sound and solid mason-work. Strange, the
+power of fancy! Heaven knows how or why, but at this moment I could
+believe myself seated on the edge of the lake at Matherton, under the
+beech trees, on a hot July noon. The leaves will not rustle; the birds
+will not sing; nothing seems awake but the small yellow butterflies,
+flickering over the clover tops, and the heat-loving cicala, raising
+his shrill voice from the dead pear tree. The breathless pines on the
+farther bank grow downward in the glassy mirror. The water lies at my
+feet, pellucid as the air; the dace, the bream, and the perch glide
+through it like spirits, their shadows following them over the quartz
+pebbles; and, in the cove hard by, the pirate pickerel lies asleep
+under the water lilies.</p>
+
+<p>"On such a day, I came down the garden walk, and found Edith reading
+under the shade of the maple grove. On the evening of such a day, I
+heard from her lips the words which seemed to launch me upon a life of
+more than human happiness. Could I have looked into the future! Could
+I have lifted the glowing curtain which my fancy drew before it, the
+gay and gilded illusion which covered the hideous truth! Where is she
+now? Does she still walk in the garden, and read under the grove of
+maples? She thinks me dead: almost four years! She has good cause to
+think so; and perhaps at this moment some glib-tongued suitor, as
+earnest and eager as I was, is whispering persuasion into her ear,
+winning her to his hearth stone and his arms. Powers of hell, if you
+would rack man's soul with torments like your own, show him first a
+gleam of heaven; bathe him in celestial light; then thrust him down to
+a damnation like this."</p>
+
+<p>And he groaned between his set teeth, in the extremity of mental
+torture.</p>
+<br>
+<br><a name="chap41"></a>
+<br>
+<br>
+<h3>CHAPTER XLI.</h3>
+<table align="center" summary="quote36">
+	<tr><td><small>The manly heart must sometimes cease to languish,<br>
+	Ruled by the manly brain.&mdash;<i>Bayard Taylor</i>.</small></td></tr>
+</table>
+<br>
+<br>
+<p>One day the jailer came in at his stated hour. He was, by birth, a
+German peasant, stupid and brutish enough; but, his calling
+considered, he might have been worse, and, in the lack of better
+company, Morton had diligently cultivated his acquaintance. On this
+occasion he was more than commonly dogged and impenetrable; and, on
+being taken to task for some neglect or malperformance of his
+functions, he made no manner of reply, by word, look, or gesture.
+Being again upbraided, he turned for a moment towards the prisoner a
+face as expressive as a block of pudding stone, and then sullenly
+continued his work as before. Morton laughed, partly in vexation, and
+resumed his walk, of just three paces, to and fro, the length of his
+cell. He followed the jailer with his eye, as the latter closed the
+door.</p>
+
+<p>"'God made him, and therefore let him pass for a man.' Measure the
+distance from Shakspeare down to that fellow, and then from him again
+down to a baboon, and which measurement would be the longer? It would
+be a knotty problem to settle the question of kindred; and yet, after
+all, a soul to be saved, such as it is, and an indefinite power of
+expansion and refining, give Jacob strong odds against the baboon. He
+has human possibilities, like the rest of us; his unit goes to make up
+the sum of man; man, the riddle and marvel of the universe, the centre
+of interest, the centre of wonder. When I was a boy, I pleased myself
+with planning that I would study out the springs of human action, and
+trace human emotion up to its sources. It was a boy's idea,&mdash;to fathom
+the unfathomable, to line and map out the shifting clouds and the
+ever-moving winds. De Staël speaks the truth&mdash;'Man may learn to rule
+man, but only God can comprehend him.' View him under one aspect only.
+Seek to analyze that pervading passion, that mighty mystic influence
+which, consciously or unconsciously, directly or indirectly, prevails
+in human action, and holds the sovereignty of the world. It is a vain
+attempt; the reason loses and confounds itself. What human faculty can
+follow the workings of a principle which at once exalts man to the
+stars, and fetters him to the earth; which can fire him with
+triumphant energies, or lull him into effeminate repose; kindle
+strange aspirations and eager longings after knowledge; spur the
+intellect to range time and space, or cramp it within narrow confines,
+among mean fancies and base associations? In its mysterious
+contradictions, its boundless possibilities of good and ill, it is a
+type of human nature itself. The soldier saint, Loyola, was right when
+he figured the conflicts of man's spirit by the collision of two
+armies, ranked under adverse banners; for what is the spirit of man
+but a field of war, with its marches and retreats, its ambuscades,
+stratagems, surprises, skirmishings, and weary life-long sieges; its
+shock of onset, and death-grapple, throat to throat? And whoever would
+be wise, or safe, must sentinel his thoughts, and rule his mind by
+martial law, like a city beleaguered.</p>
+
+<p>"How to escape such strife! There is no escape. It has followed
+hermits to their deserts; and it follows me to my prison. It will find
+no end but in that decay and torpor, that callousness of faculty,
+which long imprisonment is said to bring, but which, as yet, I do not
+feel. Perhaps I may never feel it; for strive as I will to prepare for
+the worst, by inuring my mind to contemplate it, that spark of hope
+which never, it is said, dies wholly in a human heart, is still alive
+in mine. And sometimes, of late, it has kindled and glowed, as now,
+with a strange brightness. Is it a delusion, or the presage of some
+succor not far distant? Let that be as it may, I will still cling to
+the possibility of a better time. Whatever new disaster meets me, I
+will confront it with some new audacity of hope. I will nail my flag
+to the mast, and there it shall fly till all go down, or till flag,
+mast, and hulk rot together."</p>
+<br>
+<br><a name="chap42"></a>
+<br>
+<br>
+<h3>CHAPTER XLII.</h3>
+<table align="center" summary="quote37">
+	<tr><td><small>But droop not; fortune at your time of life,<br>
+	&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Although a female moderately fickle,<br>
+	Will hardly leave you, as she's not your wife,<br>
+	&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;For any length of days in such a pickle.&mdash;<i>Don Juan</i>.</small></td></tr>
+</table>
+<br>
+<br>
+<p>Here his reflections were interrupted by the opening of the outer door
+of his cell, and a voice somewhat sternly pronouncing his name.</p>
+
+<p>It was a regulation of the prison, that twice a day an official should
+visit each cell, to prevent the possibility of the tenant's attempting
+to escape, or hold communication with neighboring prisoners. This duty
+was commonly discharged by non-commissioned officers of certain corps
+in the garrison. Each cell had two doors. The outer one was of massive
+wood, guarded by iron plates and rivets. The inner door, though much
+less ponderous, was secured with equal care; but in the middle of it
+was an oblong aperture, much like that of a post office letter box,
+though shorter and wider. The visiting official opened the outer door,
+and without opening the inner, could see the prisoner by applying his
+eye to this aperture.</p>
+
+<p>"What are you doing there?" demanded the voice, in the usual form of
+the visitor's challenge.</p>
+
+<p>The voice was different from that to which Morton had been accustomed;
+and, as he gave the usual answer, he looked towards the opening. Here
+he saw a full, clear, blue eye, with a brown eyebrow, very well
+formed; altogether a different eye from that which had formerly
+presented itself,&mdash;a contracted, blackish, or mud-colored organ,
+furrowed round about with the wrinkles called "crow's
+feet;"&mdash;altogether a mean and vulgar-looking eye, belonging, indeed,
+to a rugged old soldier, whose skull might safely have been warranted
+sabre-proof.</p>
+
+<p>Morton looked at the eye, and the eye looked at him, with great
+intentness, seemingly, for some twenty seconds. Then it disappeared,
+but returned, and resumed its scrutiny for some moments longer.</p>
+
+<p>"A new broom sweeps clean," thought Morton; "that fellow means to do
+his duty."</p>
+
+<p>The eye vanished at length, the door closed, and the step of the
+retiring visitor sounded along the flag-stones.</p>
+
+<p>Morton thought little more of the matter, but busied himself with his
+usual masculine employment of stocking knitting, till seven in the
+evening, when the visitor came on his second round, and the same voice
+challenged him through the opening. He looked up, and saw the eye
+again; when to his astonishment, the low, hissing
+sound&mdash;"s&mdash;s&mdash;t"&mdash;used by Italians and some other Europeans when they
+wish to attract attention, sounded from the soldier's lips. At the
+next instant, however, something seemed to have alarmed him; for the
+eye disappeared, and the door closed abruptly.</p>
+
+<p>Morton perplexed himself greatly with conjectures about this incident,
+and had half persuaded himself that the whole was a cheat of the
+fancy; when, on the next morning, as he was led back, under a guard,
+from his walk on the rampart, he saw, on entering a long gallery of
+the prison, a tall man approaching from the farther end. He recognized
+him at once. It was Max Kubitski, the corporal, who long before had
+guarded him to his sham execution, and whose friendly whisper in his
+cell had wakened in him a short gleam of hope. As the corporal passed,
+his eye met Morton's for an instant, with, as the latter thought, a
+glance of recognition.</p>
+
+<p>In vain he tried to reason down the new hope that, in spite of
+himself, this meeting kindled. Of one thing he was sure; the
+corporal's eye was the eye that looked in upon him through the hole in
+the door; and he felt assured, moreover, that, from whatever cause,
+the corporal inclined to befriend him.</p>
+
+<p>He waited, in great expectancy and some agitation, for the next visit;
+and at the stated hour, the outer door was opened, and the eye
+appeared.</p>
+
+<p>Morton, as he replied to the challenge, made a gesture of friendly
+recognition.</p>
+
+<p>"You remember me, eh?" whispered a voice, in broken French; "be always
+close to the door when I come. I shall have something to tell you."</p>
+
+<p>The moustached lips whence the whisper issued were withdrawn from the
+opening, and Morton was left to his reflections.</p>
+
+<p>To have a friend near him, however humble, was much, and the hope,
+slender as it seemed, that this friend might aid him, filled him with
+a feverish excitement. Why the corporal should interest himself in his
+behalf, he could not imagine; and he waited restlessly for his next
+coming.</p>
+
+<p>In due time, the eye appeared.</p>
+
+<p>"Look here," whispered Max, and thrust a paper through the opening,
+waiting only long enough to see Morton pick it up.</p>
+
+<p>The chirography was worse, if possible, than the spelling; but Morton
+at last deciphered words to the following purport.</p>
+
+<p>"You are brave. Don't despair. I shall help you, if I can. Long live
+America! Down with the emperor! Only be patient. Be sure to chew this
+paper, and swallow it."</p>
+
+<p>The last injunction had its objections, and the prisoner compromised
+the matter by tearing the paper into small pieces, and stuffing them
+into the crevices of the floor.</p>
+
+<p>At the next appearance of the eye, Morton, in a few rapid words,
+expressed his gratitude; adding that if the corporal would help him to
+escape, and go with him to America, he would make him rich for life.</p>
+
+<p>The intimation probably had its effect; and yet in the case of Max it
+was not needed. Though his tastes and habits savored of the barrack,
+the corporal was one of the most simple-hearted and generous of men,
+with, besides, much of that kind of enthusiasm of character which is
+apt to be rather ornamental than useful to its owner. His birth and
+connections were not quite so low as might have been argued from his
+mean station in the service, in which his life had been spent from
+boyhood. He was a native of Gallicia. Several of his brothers, and
+others of his relatives, had been deeply compromised in the Polish
+rising of 1831, and had suffered heavy and humiliating penalties in
+consequence. His eldest brother, however, had escaped in time, and
+gone to America, where, being very different in character from Max, he
+had thriven wonderfully. After a long absence, he had reappeared,
+travelling with a United States passport, as an American, inveighing
+against European despotisms, and dilating on the glories of his
+adopted country. Max, the only auditor of these declamations, was
+greatly excited by them. He had long been tired of his thankless
+position in the Austrian service; and listening to his brother's
+persuasions, he agreed to desert, and go with him to America, the
+seat, as he began to imagine, of more than earthly beatitude. But
+before he could find opportunity, his cautious brother took alarm; and
+seeing some indications that his identity was suspected by the police,
+decamped with the promptness and alacrity which had always
+distinguished him in times of danger. Max, therefore, was left alone;
+his adviser, for fear of compromising him, not daring to attempt any
+communication.</p>
+
+<p>It was soon after this, that, being on guard in the commissioner's
+inquest room at Ehrenberg, Max first saw Morton, brought in for
+examination, and learned from the questions and replies, that the
+prisoner was an American. His interest was greatly stirred; for he had
+never seen one of the favored race before; and, like the commissioner,
+he had no doubt that Morton had come on a revolutionary mission. His
+interest was inflamed to enthusiasm, when, being ordered to guard
+Morton to his execution, he saw the calmness with which the latter
+faced his expected fate. Indeed, his soldier heart was moved so
+deeply, that in the flush of the moment he conceived the idea of
+helping Morton to escape, and going with him to the land of promise.
+It was an idea more easily conceived than executed; and before he
+could find an opportunity, his corps was removed from the castle, and
+sent on duty elsewhere.</p>
+
+<p>Max had always detested the life of a garrison, and especially of a
+prison garrison, and the change proved very agreeable to him. Though
+brave as the bravest, he had not much energy or forecast, and commonly
+let his affairs take care of themselves. He lived on from day to day,
+neither abandoning his plan of desertion, nor acting upon it; until,
+after more than two years, he was remanded to Ehrenberg, where his old
+disgust returned in greater force than ever. In this state of his
+mind, the duty of visitor was assigned to him, thus bringing him in
+contact with Morton, reviving his half-forgotten feeling, and, at the
+same time, promising him an opportunity to carry his former scheme
+into effect.</p>
+
+<p>To this time, Morton had borne his troubles with as much philosophy as
+could reasonably have been expected; but now that something like a
+tangible hope began to open on him, the excitement became intense. He
+waited the daily visits of the soldier with a painful eagerness and
+suspense. At the stated hours, Max always came; and, at each return,
+some whispered word of friendship greeted the prisoner's ear.</p>
+
+<p>Two days after the first paper, he thrust in another; and Morton read
+as follows:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"We must wait; but our time will come; perhaps in ten days; perhaps in
+a week. I shall watch for a chance. Only be patient."</p>
+
+<p>Five long and anxious days succeeded; when, on the forenoon of the
+sixth, Max thrust in a third paper; and Morton, with a beating heart,
+read,&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"When the jailer comes this afternoon, make him talk with you, and
+keep him with his back to the door. <i>I shall come.</i> Be cool and
+steady. I shall tell you what to do."</p>
+
+<p>Illness and long confinement had wrought upon Morton's system in a
+manner which made it doubly difficult to preserve the coolness which
+the emergency demanded; but he summoned his utmost resolution to meet
+this crisis of his fate.</p>
+
+<p>The jailer was nowise addicted to conversation; and how to engage him
+in it, was a problem of some difficulty. There was only one topic on
+which Morton had ever seen him at all animated. This was the battle of
+Wagram, in which, in his youth, he had taken part, and where he had
+received a sabre cut, which had left a ghastly blue scar across his
+cheek. In dilating on this momentous passage of his life, the old
+German would sometimes be roused into a great excitement; and Morton
+had often amused himself with trying to comprehend the jargon which he
+poured out, in thick gobbling tones, about cannonading and charging,
+sabres and bombshells, pointing continually at his scar, and laboring
+to impress his hearer with the conviction, immovably fixed in his own
+mind, that he, Jacob, was one of the chief heroes of the day.</p>
+
+<p>At his usual hour, about the middle of the afternoon, Jacob appeared.
+As he came in, he closed the outer door, which secured itself by a
+latch. This latch could be moved back from within or without, by a
+species of key in the jailer's keeping, Max also, as visitor, having a
+duplicate. The jailer alone had the key of the inner door; but this,
+during his stay in the cell, he never thought it necessary to close.</p>
+
+<p>Jacob went through his ordinary routine, breathing deeply, meanwhile,
+and talking unconsciously to himself, after his usual manner.</p>
+
+<p>"Do you know, Jacob," said Morton, seating himself on a stool in the
+farther corner, "I was dreaming the other night of you and the battle
+of Wagram."</p>
+
+<p>"Eh!" grunted the jailer.</p>
+
+<p>"What you have been telling me about it is a lie. You were never in
+that battle at all."</p>
+
+<p>"Eh!"</p>
+
+<p>"You were frightened, and ran off before the fighting began."</p>
+
+<p>"Run! I run off!" growled Jacob, the idea slowly penetrating his
+brain.</p>
+
+<p>Morton nodded assent.</p>
+
+<p>The jailer turned and stared at him for a moment with open eyes and
+mouth. Then, as his wrath slowly mounted, he began to pour forth a
+flood of denial, mixed with invective against his assailant, appealing
+to his scar as proof positive of his valor.</p>
+
+<p>"A sabre never made that scar," said Morton, as the other paused in
+his eloquence.</p>
+
+<p>Jacob stared at him, speechless.</p>
+
+<p>"You got it in a drunken row."</p>
+
+<p>At this Jacob's rage seemed to choke his utterance; and Morton thought
+he would attack him bodily, as he stood before him, shaking his fists,
+and stamping on the pavement.</p>
+
+<p>This pantomime was brought to a sudden close by a pair of strong hands
+clinched around Jacob's neck from behind, with the gripe of a vice.</p>
+
+<p>"Shut the door," whispered Max.</p>
+
+<p>On entering, he had left it ajar. Morton hastened to close it. The
+corporal meanwhile laid Jacob flat on the floor of the cell.</p>
+
+<p>"Take my bayonet, and run it through him if he makes a sound."</p>
+
+<p>Morton drew the bayonet from its sheath at the belt of Max, and
+kneeling on the jailer's breast, pressed the point of the weapon
+against his throat. Max then loosed his grasp, and gagged him
+effectually with a piece of wood and a cord which he had brought for
+the purpose. Jacob lay, during the whole, quite motionless, glaring
+upward with glassy, bloodshot eyes, stupefied with fright and
+astonishment.</p>
+
+<p>"You must put on his clothes," said Max.</p>
+
+<p>They accordingly took off the jailer's outer garments, which Morton
+substituted for his own, drawing the deep-visored cap over his eyes.
+Max, at the same time, bound the jailer, hand and foot, with strings
+of leather, which he took from his pocket.</p>
+
+<p>"Look out into the gallery," he said, unclosing the door, "and see if
+there's any body in the way."</p>
+
+<p>Morton, in his jailer's dress, went out, and, looking back, reported
+that the coast was clear. Max followed, and closed the door. The
+helpless Jacob remained a prisoner, till some other functionary of the
+castle should come to his relief.</p>
+
+<p>They passed along the gallery, down one flight of steps, and up
+another, meeting no one but a soldier, to whom Max gave a careless nod
+of recognition. There were several private outlets to the castle, but
+each was guarded by a sentinel; and it was chiefly his preparation
+against this difficulty that had caused Max's delay.</p>
+
+<p>Among his acquaintance was an old soldier, called Peter,&mdash;a Prussian
+by birth. He had learned to read and write, and being inordinately
+vain of his superior acquirements, looked upon himself as the most
+learned of men. When off duty, he was commonly to be found in a corner
+of the barrack, poring over a greasy little book, which he always
+carried in his pocket. As his temper was exceedingly sour and
+disagreeable, he was no favorite; indeed, he was the general butt of
+his brother soldiers, who delighted to exasperate his crusty mood.
+Max, however, with a view to the furtherance of his scheme, had of
+late courted his good graces, flattering him on his learning, often
+asking him to drink, and otherwise cajoling him. Finding that, on this
+day, Peter's turn had come to stand guard at a certain postern of the
+prison, he had contrived to drug him with a strong dose of opium,
+mixed with a dram of bitters. Max, who was a singular compound of
+simplicity and finesse, the former the result of nature, the latter of
+circumstance, plumed himself greatly on this exploit.</p>
+
+<p>As they approached the narrow door in question, Max stooped and took
+off his shoes, motioning Morton to do the same. At a few paces farther
+on, they saw the sentinel, walking to and fro on his post, with no
+very military gait.</p>
+
+<p>Max, who was wonderfully cool and composed, pressed Morton's arm.</p>
+
+<p>"<i>Voilà, monsieur</i>,"&mdash;he was now and hereafter very respectful in his
+manner towards the man he was saving,&mdash;"<i>voilà;</i> look at the old
+booby; how he reels and staggers about&mdash;ah! do you see?"</p>
+
+<p>Peter had stopped in his walk, and was leaning against the wall,
+nodding his head with a look indescribably sleepy and silly. Meanwhile
+his musket was slowly slipping down between his arm and his side, in
+spite of one or two efforts to clutch it. At last the butt struck on
+the pavement. The sound roused the sentinel from his torpor. He shook
+himself, and began his walk again; but in a few moments stopped,
+leaned his shoulder against the wall, on the farther side of the door,
+let his musket this time rest fairly on the floor, and began nodding
+and butting his head, in a most ludicrous manner, into an angle of the
+wall.</p>
+
+<p>Max again pressed Morton's arm, and gliding on tiptoe past the drugged
+sentinel, they went out at the door without alarming him. They were
+now in an obscure and narrow precinct of the castle, flanked on one
+side by a high wall of ancient masonry, and on the other by the rear
+of various outbuildings. The place did no great credit to the neatness
+of the garrison, being littered with a variety of refuse; but no
+living thing was visible; none, that is, but a gray cat sneaking along
+under the wall of a shed, with a newly-killed rat dangling from her
+mouth.</p>
+
+<p>They next passed into a wider area, overlooked on the left by the rear
+of the principal range of barracks.</p>
+
+<p>"Hallo, Max, where are you going?" cried a voice.</p>
+
+<p>Max looked up, and saw a brother corporal leaning out at one of the
+barrack windows, with a fatigue cap on one side of his head, and a
+German pipe between his moustached lips.</p>
+
+<p>"To the village."</p>
+
+<p>"Who gave you leave?"</p>
+
+<p>"The lieutenant."</p>
+
+<p>"It's good company you are in. What are you going to do below?"</p>
+
+<p>"Get me a pipe. Mine is broke. What is a man fit for without his
+pipe?"</p>
+
+<p>The other at the window replied by a joke, not very refined, levelled
+at Max and his companion. Max retorted only by a ludicrous gesture of
+derision, which drew a horse laugh from a soldier at another window,
+under cover of which they passed out of the area, and reached a
+pathway leading down the height.</p>
+
+<p>A natural gully, or shallow ravine, twisted and zigzagged down the
+side of the rock. In wet weather, it became a little watercourse,
+conducting all the rain that fell on the western roofs of the castle
+down to the filthy and picturesque hamlet of Ehrenberg, with its dirty
+population of five hundred Wallack and Croat peasants, and a horde of
+dirtier gypsies, nested in the outskirts. In dry weather, the gully
+served as a pathway, which the soldiers often used in their descents
+to the village.</p>
+
+<p>Max began to descend, and Morton followed at his heels. The fresh
+wind, the open view, the unwonted sense of treading mother earth,
+wrought on him strangely; not, as on the wrestler of old, to nerve him
+with renewed force. He grew faint, dizzy, and half blind; and as he
+staggered after his guide, he felt for the first time how the prison
+had sapped away his strength.</p>
+
+<p>In ten minutes, they were at the bottom, and picking their way past
+the rear of the squalid cottages, among rickety outhouses, broken
+fences, heaps of litter, pigs, children, and other impediments. Most
+of the men were absent; a few women only stared at them as they
+passed. With one very pretty Wallack girl, Max, for the sake of
+appearances, exchanged a few words of bantering gallantry. She stood
+looking after him admiringly. Behind the next cottage, a yellow
+Hungarian shepherd dog, large as a wolf, jumped suddenly from a heap
+of rotten straw, on which he had been dozing, and made a fierce dash
+at Max's leg; but the latter gave him a kick in the teeth, which sent
+him off yelping, followed by a brickbat, and a curse from the Wallack
+damsel.</p>
+
+<p>Beyond the village, the ground was without trees or shrubs for a full
+half mile; yet it was uneven,&mdash;not to say broken; and Max, who had
+made a careful reconnaissance, knew that if they could but reach
+unnoticed a hollow some twenty rods from the skirts of the hamlet, no
+eye from the ramparts could see them. Towards this, therefore, he
+walked, with an air of great nonchalance, Morton following, his heart
+in his throat. Their movements were either unseen, or failed to excite
+suspicion; and taking a beaten track into the hollow, they came upon a
+spring at the foot of a rock, where three women were pounding clothes
+on a stone with clubs, by way of washing them; while a lazy boor, in a
+broad felt hat, lay on the ground listlessly watching the process.</p>
+
+<p>In five minutes more, the hollow ceased to conceal them; and, to
+Morton's great dismay, they stood again within eyeshot of the castle.
+Max, however, with the skill of an old deer stalker, soon managed to
+place, first, a large rock, then the rugged shoulder of a hill,
+between themselves and the detested battlements. Next they gained the
+partial shelter of the scattered scrub oaks and pines which formed a
+ragged outskirt to the deeper forest behind, and, in a few moments
+more, reached the dark asylum of its matted boughs and underwood.</p>
+
+<p>Thus far they had walked at the leisurely pace of a pair of idle
+strollers; but no sooner were they well out of sight, than Max cried,
+"Come on!" and set out at a run. When he turned, however, and saw the
+pale face of Morton, already tired with unwonted effort, he took a
+flask of brandy from his pocket. The fiery draught strung Morton's
+sinews afresh. They pushed on, over hills and hollows, by cattle paths
+and brooks, across open glades, and through wooded tracts, dense and
+breathless as an American forest.</p>
+
+<p>"Look!" said Max, stopping on a rising ground, and pointing back over
+the woods. Three miles off, the rock of Ehrenberg rose in view,
+bearing aloft its heavy load of battlements and towers. Morton gave it
+one look, prayed it might be the last, and motioned his companion
+forward again.</p>
+
+<p>They came to a lazy brook, stealing out of a marsh. In the mud by its
+side was the slough where a wild boar had wallowed. The solitude and
+savageness of the place shot a fresh life through Morton's failing
+veins. The sense came upon him that his fate was now in his own hands;
+the resolve that he would never be taken alive. He called Max to stop.</p>
+
+<p>"Have you any weapon besides your bayonet?"</p>
+
+<p>Max produced a pair of pistols, which he had contrived to appropriate;
+and, keeping one of them, handed the other to Morton.</p>
+
+<p>It was dusk before they stopped, in the depth of the woods, on a
+grassy spot, shut in by a tall cliff, and a growth of old beeches,
+oaks, and evergreens. Morton threw himself on the ground. Max made a
+fire, by plugging up the touch-hole of his flint-lock pistol, and
+placing in the pan, by way of tinder, a piece of cotton rag, rubbed
+with a little wet gunpowder. Morton roused himself, and breaking off
+small branches of the firs and spruces, piled them for beds. The loaf
+which the jailer had brought for his next day's meal, with some more
+solid viands which Max produced, served them for supper; and, for
+drink, they scooped water in their hands from the neighboring brook.</p>
+
+<p>It grew dark, and as they sat together by the fire, the red light
+flared against the jagged rock, the shaggy fir boughs, and knotty
+limbs of the oaks. It seemed to Morton as if time and space were done
+away; as if the prison were a dream; and as if, once more on some
+college ramble, he were seated by a camp fire in the familiar forests
+of America. But instead of a vagabond Indian, or the hardy face of a
+Penobscot lumberman, the flame fell on the frogged uniform and long,
+waxed moustache of Corporal Max, as he sat cross-legged, like a Turk,
+on the pile of evergreens.</p>
+
+<p>As Morton looked on his manly face, and thought of the boundless debt
+he owed him, his heart warmed towards him, and he poured forth his
+gratitude as well as he could, in the patchwork of languages which Max
+himself had used as his medium of communication.</p>
+
+<p>The latter soon fell asleep, and lay snoring lustily. With his
+companion sleep was impossible. He lay watching the stars, and the
+dull folds of smoke that half hid them, listening to the wind, and the
+mysterious sounds of the forest, and, as the night drew on, shivering
+with the damp and cold. His mind was a maze of confused emotions,
+suspense, and delight, hope, and fear, mingling in a dreamy chaos;
+till at last fatigue prevailed, and he, too, fell asleep; a sleep
+haunted by hideous images, yet with its intervals of deep peace and
+repose.</p>
+
+<p>He woke, shivering; and rising in the twilight, stirred the half-dead
+embers, and crouched over them for warmth. But, as the fresh odors of
+the morning reached his senses, they brought so vividly upon him the
+memory of his youthful health, and hope, and liberty, that his spirits
+rose almost to defiance of the peril around him. He woke Max, whose
+slumbers were noisy as ever, and they pushed forward again on a
+well-beaten cattle path, leading westward.</p>
+
+<p>About sunrise they found a cow, one of the gray, long-horned breed of
+the country, grazing very peacefully. Max looked about him, and began
+to move with caution. The cow was wild, and would not let them pass
+her, but walked before them along the path. In a few minutes, a great
+number of cattle appeared, grazing on an open glade, with two men
+watching them. They were of the half-savage herdsmen of this district,
+little better than banditti. One of them sat on a rock, the other
+lounged on the grass. Both were dressed in coarse linen shirts and
+trousers, short, heavy woollen cloaks thrown over their shoulders, a
+kind of rude sandals, and broad felt hats. For weapons, one carried a
+club, the other a hatchet, the long handle of which served him for a
+walking stick.</p>
+
+<p>Max whispered to Morton; and stealing unperceived through the bushes,
+they suddenly appeared before the two men, much, as it seemed, to
+their amazement. Max, in a language quite new to his companion,
+desired them to change clothes with Morton and himself. The voice and
+air of the applicant, and the butt of a pistol protruding from the
+breast pocket of each of the strangers, gave warning that the wish
+could not wisely be slighted. The boors complied, the more willingly
+as they would be great gainers by the bargain. Max threw off his
+uniform, and put on the dress of the taller herdsman. Morton satisfied
+himself with the woollen cloak of the other, in exchange for the
+jailer's coat.</p>
+
+<p>The exchange made, he signed to the man to give him the hatchet which
+he carried; but the boor hesitated, scowling very sullenly. Max
+hastened to interpose, and offered a silver coin in return for the
+hatchet, which its owner at once surrendered. It was by no means any
+love of abstract justice which dictated this procedure; but a desire,
+on Max's part, to leave the men in good humor, lest, being offended,
+they might set the soldiers on the track of the fugitives.</p>
+
+<p>They parted on the best terms, and Max and Morton betook themselves
+again to the woods.</p>
+<br>
+<br><a name="chap43"></a>
+<br>
+<br>
+<h3>CHAPTER XLIII.</h3>
+<table align="center" summary="quote38">
+	<tr><td><small>Like bloodhounds now they search me out;&mdash;<br>
+	Hark to the whistle and the shout!&mdash;<br>
+	The chase is up,&mdash;but they shall know,<br>
+	The stag at bay's a dangerous foe.&mdash;<i>Lady of the Lake</i>.</small></td></tr>
+</table>
+<br>
+<br>
+<p>Three or four weeks passed. They were deep within the bounds of Tyrol.
+By avoiding towns and highways, travelling often in the night, making
+prize of every stray sheep, pig, or fowl, and a diligent robbing of
+henroosts, they had thus far contrived to elude arrest, and support
+life.</p>
+
+<p>Morton was greatly changed. Body and mind, he was formed for hardship,
+and toils which would have broken a weaker frame had nerved and
+strengthened his. But of late their suffering had increased. They
+found but poor forage among the poverty-pinched mountaineers, and for
+two days, had had no better sustenance than the soft inner bark of the
+pine trees. This, with previous abstinence, had sunk them to the last
+extremity, and brought Max to the verge of despair.</p>
+
+<p>It was a rainy afternoon; rain drizzling in the valleys, clouds
+hanging on the mountains, dark vapors steaming up from the chasms, and
+clinging sullenly to the edge of the pine forests. Max and Morton sat
+under a dripping rock, on a mountain which overhangs a nameless little
+valley, not far to the north of the Val di Sole.</p>
+
+<p>"Keep a good heart, Max," said Morton, "it shall go hard but you and I
+will get out of this scrape yet."</p>
+
+<p>Max shook his head despondingly. His bold spirit was starved out of
+him. Morton's courage, unlike that of his companion, was the result
+more of his mental habits than of a native constitutional intrepidity,
+and was therefore much less subject to the changes of his bodily
+condition. He had proved Max, and knew him to be brave as he was warm
+and true-hearted; but the corporal's valor, like that of Homer's
+heroes, was best displayed on a full stomach.</p>
+
+<p>"There's nothing else for it," said Morton; "we must take the bull by
+the horns. One of those houses below is an inn, or something that
+pretends to be one. I can see the bush fastened to the door post. We
+must go and buy food; or else lie here and die."</p>
+
+<p>"It is better to be shot than starve," said Max.</p>
+
+<p>"Come on, then. You must be spokesman. I am go for nothing in that
+way; but if there's any trouble, I'll stand by you as well as I can."</p>
+
+<p>Max had had a little money in copper and silver, the greater part of
+which he had consigned to the keeping of Morton, as the more careful
+treasurer. With this for their passport, they issued from the cover of
+the woods, and began to cross the mountain slopes and rough pasture
+that lay between them and the hamlet.</p>
+
+<p>The latter, as they drew near, seemed by no means so insignificant as
+at first, a rising ground having hidden a part of it. They came to the
+inn, a low stone building of a most respectable antiquity, and pushing
+open the door, were met by a short man who seemed to be the owner. Max
+produced a handful of kreutzers, and asked for bread and meat. The
+host looked at the strangers, then at their money; seemed satisfied
+with both, and showed them up a flight of broken steps to a large room
+above the half-sunken kitchen. Here, at his call, a girl brought the
+food and placed it on a table. He next asked if they would not have
+beer; and Max assenting, went out to bring it.</p>
+
+<p>The fugitives now addressed themselves to their meal with the keenness
+of starving men; but the prudent Morton took care, at the same time,
+to secure the more portable of the viands for future need. Having
+dulled the edge of his appetite, he began to grow uneasy at the
+landlord's long absence.</p>
+
+<p>"What is that man doing? He might have brewed the beer by this time."</p>
+
+<p>"He <i>does</i> take his time," responded Max, also growing anxious.</p>
+
+<p>"This is no place for us. Take the rest of that biscuit, and let's be
+off."</p>
+
+<p>Max was following this counsel, when&mdash;&mdash; "Hark!" cried Morton; "what
+noise is that?"</p>
+
+<p>"Go to the window and look."</p>
+
+<p>Morton did so.</p>
+
+<p>"My God!" he exclaimed, recoiling, his face ghastly with dismay.</p>
+
+<p>Max sprang to the window. Below, at the door, four or five men were
+standing, and among them two gendarmes, while others were in the act
+of entering.</p>
+
+<p>The outlandish dress of the two strangers had at once roused the
+landlord's suspicion. Of Max's character he had not a moment's doubt;
+for in him no disguise could hide the look and port of the trained
+soldier. By ill luck, a party of gendarmes were in the village,
+weather-bound on their way from Latsch. Having secured his guests'
+money, the landlord thought to make a farther profit from them; and,
+sure of his reward, reported to the officer in command, that there
+were in his house two men, the taller of whom was certainly a
+deserter, while the other could not be a peasant, though he wore the
+dress of one. The officer mustered his followers, and hastened to beat
+up the game.</p>
+
+<p>He entered as Max turned from the window, and came up to him, sword in
+hand.</p>
+
+<p>"I arrest you. Give yourselves up, you and the other."</p>
+
+<p>But before the words were well out of his mouth, the fist of Max fell
+between his eyes like a battering ram, and dashed him back against the
+soldier next behind him.</p>
+
+<p>"Come on," cried Max to Morton, and leaped through the open window at
+the farther end of the room. Morton followed in time to escape two or
+three bayonet thrusts which were made after him. They both vaulted
+over a fence, and ran through the narrow passage between an old shed
+and a huge square stack of the last year's hay. A musket or two were
+let off at them, but to no effect; and splashing across a shallow
+brook, they made at headlong speed for the shelter of the mountains.</p>
+
+<p>As they reached the base, Max looked back. Seven or eight gendarmes
+were after them, and behind, later joining the chase, ran two or three
+men in a different dress.</p>
+
+<p>"Riflemen!" muttered Max, with an oath.</p>
+
+<p>Breasting the rough heights, clinging to stumps, roots, and bushes,
+they made their way up with all the speed which desperate need could
+give them. They were soon among thick trees, hidden from the pursuers,
+and almost from each other. But the shouts of the soldiers came up
+from below: they all gave tongue like so many hounds.</p>
+
+<p>"Curse your yelping throats!" gasped Morton. Breathless and half
+spent, he was clinging to a sapling on the edge of a steep pitch of
+the hill. One of the soldiers saw him. A musket shot rang from below,
+the hollow hum of the ball passing high above his head.</p>
+
+<p>Max laughed in fierce derision. They ran forward again across a wide
+plateau, nearly void of trees; and before they had fairly gained its
+farther side, the foremost pursuers were at the border of woods they
+had just left. Their late famine made fatal odds against them. The
+gendarmes, indeed, gained little in the race; but the more active
+riflemen were nearer every moment.</p>
+
+<p>Climbing, running, and scrambling among rocks, trees, and bushes, they
+won their way up till they came to another plateau, which broke the
+ascent of the mountain a furlong above the former. Across this they
+dashed at full speed. They were within a rod or two of the woods
+beyond, Max running on Morton's left, a little in advance of him, when
+a musket was fired at them from behind. The aim was so bad, that they
+did not even hear the humming of the bullet. At the next instant, came
+a dull, plunging report, unlike the former. Max leaped four feet into
+the air, and fell forward on his face with a force that seemed to
+shake the earth. Morton kneeled by his side; turned him on his back;
+lifted him by main strength into a sitting posture. Both his hands
+were clutched full of grass and earth.</p>
+
+<p>"Max! Max!" cried Morton, in the extremity of anguish; "speak, Max,
+for God's sake."</p>
+
+<p>But Max said nothing. His hat had fallen off; his eyes rolled wildly
+under his tangled hair; he gasped; blood flowed from his lips; and a
+spot of blood was soaking wider and wider upon the breast of his
+shirt. Then a deathly change came over his dilated eyeballs. Morton
+had seen the throes of the wounded bison, when the fierce eyes,
+glaring with angry life, are clouded of a sudden into a dull, cold
+jelly, fixed unmeaning lumps. It was a change like this that he saw in
+the eyes of Max. His friend was dead. The fatal rifle of Tyrol had
+done its work. The ball had pierced him from back to breast, and torn
+through his heart on its way.</p>
+
+<p>The whole passed in a few moments; but when Morton looked up, nearly
+all the pursuers were in sight on the open ground, and one of them,
+the man who had fired the death shot, was almost upon him. He snatched
+Max's pistol, which had fallen on the grass, and, blind with grief and
+fury, ran forward, levelled, and pulled the trigger. The pistol, wet
+with the rain, missed fire. The man was not four paces off. Morton
+hurled the pistol at his face. The iron barrel clashed against his
+teeth, and sent him reeling backward, bleeding and half stunned.
+Griping his hatchet, his best remaining friend, Morton turned for the
+woods, gained them at three bounds, and tore through the cover like a
+hunted wolf.</p>
+
+<p>Over rocks, among trees, through thickets and brambles, he struggled
+and clambered on, seeking safety, like the Rocky Mountain goat, in the
+rudest and wildest refuge. But in a few minutes, his flight was
+stopped. Rocks rose before him, and rocks on each side. He was caught
+in a complete <i>cul de sac</i>. He might have climbed the precipices, but,
+in the act, the shots from below would soon have tumbled him to the
+earth again. There was no escape; and, grinding his teeth in rage and
+desperation, he turned savagely at bay.</p>
+
+<p>Three or four of the men were very near him; and almost as he turned,
+one of them came in sight, pushing through the bushes. As he saw the
+game, he gave a shout, a sort of view halloo. Then appeared another,
+and another, all advancing upon him. In a moment, he would have been
+in their hands, alive or dead; but, without waiting the attack, he
+sprang on the foremost like a tiger, and plunged his hatchet deep in
+the soldier's eyes and brain. Then pushing past another, who, with a
+hesitating movement, was making towards him, he dashed down a sloping
+mass of rocks, dived into a labyrinth of thickets, and thence into a
+dark and hollow gorge of the mountain. Along this he ran like one with
+death's shadow behind him, losing himself deeper and deeper among the
+chaotic rocks and ragged trees. He stopped, at last, and listened. Far
+behind, he could hear his pursuers shouting to each other. The pack
+were at fault, and ranging in vain search after him.</p>
+
+<p>Spent as he was, he pressed on again, following upward for an hour or
+more the course of a brook, which issued from a narrow glen, reaching
+far back into the solitude of the mountains. His mind was dim and
+confused, a cloudland of mixed emotions; deep grief for his murdered
+friend, deep rage that he had been hunted like a wild beast, a longing
+for further vengeance, a sense, almost to despair, of his own
+loneliness and peril. He felt himself outcast from mankind, driven
+back to find a sanctuary among the dens and fastnesses of Nature. She
+alone, amid the general frown, seemed propitious; for of a sudden the
+clouds sundered in the west; a gush of warm light poured across the
+dripping mountains, and flushed the distant glaciers with their
+evening rose-tint. In the depths where he stood, all was shadow; but
+the crags above were basking in the sunshine, and the savage old
+pines, jewelled with rain drops, seemed stretching their shaggy arms
+to welcome the kindly radiance. Morton threw himself on the ground,
+and commended his desperate fortunes to the God of the waste and the
+mountain.</p>
+<br>
+<br><a name="chap44"></a>
+<br>
+<br>
+<h3>CHAPTER XLIV.</h3>
+<table align="center" summary="quote39">
+	<tr><td><small>In dread, in danger, and alone,<br>
+	Famished and chilled, through ways unknown,<br>
+	Tangled and steep, he journeyed on.&mdash;<i>Lady of the Lake</i>.</small></td></tr>
+</table>
+<br>
+<br>
+<p>Whoever, journeying southward from Coire, passes through the Via Mala,
+thence through the village of Andeer, and thence turns to the left,
+following a mountain path up the torrent of the Aversa, will soon lose
+himself in the solitudes of the savage valley of Ferrera. Thither
+Morton made his way; but not by so smooth an access. Ignorant of the
+country, and guided chiefly by the sun, he had pushed blindly forward
+by paths best known to the chamois and those who chase them.</p>
+
+<p>His best hope had been to meet some of his travelling countrymen, from
+whom he could gain help. To this end he had once and again approached
+the highways, and as often some real or seeming danger had driven him
+back to the mountains. For a day or more, the food he had taken from
+the inn served to support him. He had flung away Max's pistol, but
+still had his own. It served him to kindle a fire; and by loading it
+with gravel, in place of shot, he contrived to kill thrushes and other
+small birds. Their nests, too, full at this time of eggs and young,
+supplied a meagre resource; and once, being hard pressed, he made a
+Gallic banquet on a party of serenaders who were croaking and trilling
+their evening concert about the edge of a shallow pool. Frogs have
+found warm eulogists; but never did the art of Paris or Bologna
+transmute those delectable reptiles into so savory a repast as did the
+famine-sharpened appetite of Morton.</p>
+
+<p>Upon fare like this, he wandered on, till he stumbled upon the valley
+of Ferrera.</p>
+
+<p>He had found at last an asylum wild enough to content the most pious
+of eremites, or the most desperate of bandits. Below he saw the raging
+water foaming along the depths of its black ravine; above&mdash;the
+stupendous ramparts that walled the valley in&mdash;cliffs, along whose
+giddy verge the firs were dwindled to feathers. Cascades spouted from
+their tops, scattering to mist and nothingness long before their
+measureless leap was done. The tribute drawn from the clouds the
+lavish mountain flung back to the clouds again. Rocks were piled on
+rocks, ruin on ruin, and, high over all, the glaciers of the Splugen
+shone like cliffs of silver.</p>
+
+<p>Take a savage from his woods or his prairies, and, school him as you
+will, the ingrained savage will still declare itself. Take the most
+polished of mankind, turn him into the wilderness, and forthwith the
+dormant savage begins to appear. Hunt him with enemies, gnaw him with
+hunger, beat him with wind and rain, and observe the result; how the
+delicate tissues of civilization are blown away, how rude passions
+start into life, how his bodily cravings grow clamorous and
+importunate, how he grows reckless of his own blood and the blood of
+others. "Men are as the times." Young Lovelace of the hussars singing
+a duet at Lady Belgrave's <i>soirée</i>, would hardly know himself, hewing
+down Russian artillerymen at Balaklava.</p>
+
+<p>Had Meredith met his old comrade as he was making his slow way among
+the rocks and ravines, in dress no better than the meanest peasant,
+his face moustached and bearded, and thin and dark with hardship, he
+would have needed the eyes of a lynx to detect Morton the millionaire.
+The mind of the latter shared, in some sort, the changes of his outer
+man. Proscribed and hunted, starved into fierceness, his best friend
+murdered at his side, his mood was, to say the least, none of the most
+benign. But, as he toiled on his way, he turned aside to rest in a
+sunny nook, deep sheltered among rocks. Here, where the fresh grass
+tempted him, and where, from a jutting crag, the water, trickling from
+some hidden spring, fell in rapid drops, tinkling into a pool below,
+and, as they fell, flashing in the sun like a string of
+diamonds,&mdash;here, in this quiet nook, he sat down; and, as he did so,
+he saw by his side, close nestled in the young grass, a little family
+of white and purple blossoms. They were blossoms of the crocus, a
+native of these valleys.</p>
+
+<p>Morton bent over them, and put aside the grass from the delicate
+petals. A flower will now and then find a voice, and that not a weak
+one. As he looked, there came in upon him such a surge of
+recollection, such a memory of New England gardens, such a vision of
+loved faces, and, chief before them all, the face he best loved, such
+an awakening of every tender thought that had once possessed him, and
+all in such overpowering contrast with his present misery, that the
+famished outlaw burst into a flood of tears.</p>
+<br>
+<br><a name="chap45"></a>
+<br>
+<br>
+<h3>CHAPTER XLV.</h3>
+<table align="center" summary="quote40">
+	<tr><td><small>The lamentable change is from the best;<br>
+	The worst returns to laughter. Welcome, then,<br>
+	Thou unsubstantial air that I embrace.&mdash;<i>Lear</i>.</small></td></tr>
+</table>
+<br>
+<br>
+<p>The Honorable Charles Augustus Murray, recreating himself with a
+hunting tour among the Pawnees, killed a buffalo; and being, as he
+assures us, ravenously hungry, proceeded to regale himself on his
+game, without asking the aid of the cook. Morton, in his wandering,
+had the good luck to kill a straggling sheep; and being twice as
+hungry as the Honorable Charles Augustus Murray, it may be set down
+largely to his credit, if he did not follow that gentleman's example.
+At all events, the sheep was a windfall of the first magnitude. Morton
+had woodcraft enough to turn the fleece into a receptacle for carrying
+such parts of the flesh as best answered his purposes; and thus he was
+well provisioned for several days.</p>
+
+<p>After various roamings, by night and by day, he came upon a broad
+road, clearly one of the great alpine passes. Which of them he could
+not tell. He would have given the world to learn; for he knew nothing
+of his whereabouts, and thought himself still in Tyrol, or, at the
+best, in Bormio. His attempts to gain information from the peasants
+had always failed, and, in one or two instances, had seemed to
+threaten serious consequences. Though brave enough in the front of an
+open danger, the secret toils which had been about him so long had
+taught him to shrink from the face of man. Moreover, he could not
+speak the prevalent language of the district, and his Italian, which
+might sometimes have served him, was none of the best. A little local
+knowledge could have saved him a world of suffering; but, in the lack
+of it, he pushed blindly on, resolved to die on the mountains rather
+than risk another prison.</p>
+
+<p>The sky for some days had been overclouded. He had lost the points of
+the compass; and when he saw the great highway stretching before him,
+dim and lonely in the gray of the morning, he thought, or hoped, that
+it would lead him into the heart of Switzerland. It was the pass of
+the Splugen, where it leaves the Rheinwald. Turning his back on
+safety, he began to plod on towards the lion's jaws.</p>
+
+<p>Seeing a small cottage, in a recess of the forest, he reconnoitred it,
+with the laudable view of robbing a henroost. While thus employed, he
+saw two men leave the house, and betake themselves to their work in
+some remote part of the mountain. After a long reconnaissance, he
+could see no one about the place but a young woman, about six feet
+high, who, fork in hand, was busying herself in a field with labors
+much less elegant than useful. Morton watched her for a time, then,
+taking heart of grace, walked towards her from his lurking-place,
+holding between his fingers, as a talisman, a piece of silver, part of
+the scanty trust which Max had left him.</p>
+
+<p>When he beheld her lusty proportions, her white teeth, grinning
+between perplexity at his appearance and pleasure at sight of the
+coin, and her broad cheeks, ruddy with health, good-nature, and
+stupidity, his apprehensions vanished. She seemed not at all afraid of
+him. In truth, she and her pitchfork might between them have put two
+common men to flight. He spoke to her in bad Italian, and asked for
+food, proffering the money in exchange. She answered in a <i>patois</i>
+which was Greek to him, mixed with a few words of Italian, worse than
+his own. She seemed, however, to catch his meaning very clearly; for,
+running to the house, she presently emerged with a loaf of barley
+bread and a formidable piece of bacon. These she gave him, and, taking
+the silver, tied it up with much care in a corner of her apron.</p>
+
+<p>Thus far successful, Morton next tried to learn something touching the
+country and the routes; but here his failure was signal. Where food
+and drink were the topics in hand, and especially when her wits were
+quickened by the sight of silver, she had contrived to understand him;
+but with matters more abstruse her faculties had never been trained to
+grapple. She showed, however, no lack of good-will, nodding, laughing,
+and answering, "<i>Si, si!</i>" to all his questions indiscriminately. With
+this he had to content himself. He bade her "<i>addio</i>," received a
+friendly nod and grin in return, and went on his way, much less bitter
+against mankind than he had been ten minutes before.</p>
+<br>
+<br><a name="chap46"></a>
+<br>
+<br>
+<h3>CHAPTER XLVI.</h3>
+
+<blockquote><small><i>Auf.</i> Your hand! Most welcome.<br>
+<br>
+<i>1 Serv.</i> Here's a strange alteration!<br>
+<br>
+<i>2 Serv.</i> By my hand, I had thought to have strucken him with a
+cudgel; and yet my mind gave me his clothes made a false report of
+him.&mdash;<i>Coriolanus</i>.</small></blockquote>
+<br>
+<p>In passing the Splugen, Morton journeyed chiefly in the night, making
+a wide detour over the crusted snow to avoid the station at the
+summit. By day, he found some safe retreat where he could rest and
+sleep in tolerable ease and warmth. His night progress was, for the
+most part, on a broad, clear road, very different from that rugged
+path by the Cardinel, where, some forty-seven years before, the
+avalanches cut through Macdonald's columns, and swept men and horses
+to bottomless ruin.</p>
+
+<p>The sky was still clouded; but there was a full moon behind the
+clouds, and the mountains reflected its light, from their vast
+surfaces of snow. He could hear any approaching foot from a great
+distance, for there was nothing to break the stillness but the hollow
+fall of torrents, and the whisper and moan of winds through ravines
+and gorges.</p>
+
+<p>On the third night, he was descending the defiles that lead from Campo
+Dolcino to Chiavenna. He passed Chiavenna, and soon a new scene opened
+upon him. The Alps were behind him, cliff and chasm, torrent and
+ravine, and the icy sheen of glaciers. Italy received him, robed in
+her "fatal gift of beauty;" in the midst of her shame, radiant as in
+her day of honor; breathing still of history, and art, and poetry.</p>
+
+<p>Standing on the heights behind Colico, he saw the Lake of Como
+stretching southward, its banks studded with villas, its hills green
+with the chestnut and the laurel, the fig, pomegranate, and vine. But,
+to the north, the sheer cliffs rose like a battlement, and, higher
+yet, towered cold white peaks, aloof in stern and lofty desolation.</p>
+
+<p>Reality will now and then make fancy blush for herself. The Easter
+illumination of St. Peter's may match the wildest dream of the Arabian
+Nights; and this scene on the Lake of Como, with the sunset upon it,
+may outvie the highest wrought counterfeit of Claude or Salvator, or
+both combined. The world, much abused as she is, does her part. She is
+profuse of beauties; but, in the midst of them, one still drags with
+him his own work-day identity. Go where he will, his old Adam still
+hangs about him; and the spell-breaking sense that he is himself and
+no other scatters every charm that Art and Nature would cast over him.</p>
+
+<p>Morton, poor devil, had other matters to think of than scenery. Hunger
+and danger are a cure for the most rabid love of landscape. His bread
+and bacon had given out, and the phantom of an Austrian <i>sbirro</i> rode
+him like a nightmare. Mustering his best recollections of geography,
+he came to the belief that he was either on the Lake of Como, or, as
+seemed to him much more likely, on the lake farther eastward, that of
+Garda. One thing was certain: he was on a great route of travel. His
+best course, as he thought, was to watch for the chance of a meeting
+with some American or English tourist, to whom he could make his case
+known; and meanwhile, though a worse actor never appeared on any
+stage, to pass himself off, if he could, as a beggar.</p>
+
+<p>He passed a night on the hills above Colico, and happily for him,
+above the malaria; woke half famished from his miserably broken sleep,
+and wearily walked on his way, wondering if, in support of his
+character, he could ever find grace to say, "<i>Datemi qualche cosa</i>."
+There was something in the idea of thus sneaking through a country
+that grated on him with peculiar discomfort; and to have headed the
+forlorn hope of a storming party would have been less trying to his
+nerve.</p>
+
+<p>The thought how to content the cravings of his hunger soon absorbed
+all other thoughts. Looking about him, he saw a small white house,
+standing alone on the road by the shore of the lake; and over the door
+he could read from afar the sign, "<i>Spaccio di Vino</i>." Famine got the
+better of caution. He approached warily, ensconced himself behind an
+old wall, and, quite unseen, began his observations. The house was but
+a few rods off, on the other side of the road. An old wayfarer sat in
+the porch, busy in breakfasting on curds, pressed hard like a cheese,
+a slice of very black and solid-looking bread serving him for a plate.
+In a few moments, the landlord, a freckled-faced Italian, came to the
+door, and began to chat with his customer. Morton took a coin from his
+pocket, walked forth from his hiding-place, and was approaching, still
+unnoticed, when he was startled by the sound of a horse's tread, on
+the road beyond the house. A single glance at the rider told him that
+there was no danger, and made his heart beat with sudden hope.</p>
+
+<p>"<i>Il signor Inglese</i>," remarked the host to his
+friend.&mdash;"<i>Buon' giorno, eccellenza, buon'
+giorno</i>,"&mdash;lifting his white night
+cap, and bowing with a great flourish.</p>
+
+<p>The young man touched his hat with a careless smile, and half-turning
+his horse, asked,&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"Padrone, has my man passed this way?"</p>
+
+<p>He had, to Morton's eye, rather the easy manner of a well-bred
+American, than the more distant bearing common with an English
+gentleman.</p>
+
+<p>"<i>Eccellenza, si,</i>" replied the padrone,&mdash;"he passed a quarter of an
+hour ago, with the birds your excellency has shot."</p>
+
+<p>The young man rode on, passing Morton, as he stood by the roadside.</p>
+
+<p>"I have seen that face before," said the latter to himself&mdash;"in a
+dream, for what I know, but I have seen it."</p>
+
+<p>It was a frank and open face, manly, yet full of kindliness, not
+without a tinge of melancholy.</p>
+
+<p>"Come of it what will," thought the fugitive, "I will speak to him."</p>
+
+<p>He walked after the retiring horseman, and when an angle of the road
+concealed him from the inn, quickened his pace almost to a run. But at
+that moment the Englishman struck into a sharp trot, and disappeared
+over the ridge of a hill. Morton soon gained sight of him again, and
+kept him in view for about a mile, when he saw him enter the gateway
+belonging to a small villa, between the road and the water. It was a
+very pretty spot; the grounds terraced to the edge of the lake; with
+laurels, cypresses, box hedges, a fountain or two, an artificial
+grotto, and a superb diorama of water and mountains.</p>
+
+<p>Morton stood waiting at the gate. At length he saw a female domestic,
+evidently Italian, passing through the shrubbery before the house, and
+disappearing behind it. In a few minutes more, a solemn personage
+appeared at the door, whom he would have known at a mile's distance
+for an old English servant. He stood looking with great gravity out
+upon the grounds. Morton approached, and accosting him in Italian,
+asked to see his master.</p>
+
+<p>John was not a proficient in the tongue of Ariosto and Dante. Indeed,
+in his intercourse with the natives, he had seen occasion for one
+phrase alone, and that a somewhat pithy and repellant one,&mdash;<i>Andate al
+diavolo</i>.</p>
+
+<p>He glared with supreme and savage scorn on the tatterdemalion
+stranger, and uttered his talismanic words,&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"<i>Andarty al devillio!</i>"</p>
+
+<p>Morton changed his tactics; and, looking fixedly at the human mastiff,
+said in English,&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"Go to your master, sir, and tell him that I wish to speak with him."</p>
+
+<p>The Saxon words and the tone of authority coming from one whom he had
+taken for a vagrant beggar, astonished the old man beyond utterance.
+He stared for a moment,&mdash;turned to obey,&mdash;then turned back again,&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"Mr. Wentworth is at breakfast, sir."</p>
+
+<p>The last monosyllable was spoken in a doubtful tone, the speaker being
+perplexed between respect for the tone and language of the stranger,
+and contempt for his vagabond attire.</p>
+
+<p>"Then bring me pen, ink, and paper&mdash;I will write to him."</p>
+
+<p>And pushing past the servant, he seated himself on a chair in the
+hall.</p>
+
+<p>John went for the articles required, first glancing around to see what
+items of plunder might be within the intruder's reach. Morton in his
+absence opened several books which lay upon a table; and in one of
+them he saw, pencilled on the fly leaf, the name of the owner, Robert
+Wentworth.</p>
+
+<p>The pen, ink, and paper arriving, he wrote as follows, John meanwhile
+keeping a vigilant guard over him:&mdash;</p>
+
+<blockquote>Sir: I am a native of the United States, who, for the past four years,
+have been a prisoner in the Castle of Ehrenberg, confined for no
+offence, political or otherwise, but on a groundless suspicion. I
+escaped by the assistance of a soldier in the garrison, and have made
+my way thus far in the dress of a peasant. I am anxious to reach
+Genoa, or some other port beyond the power of Austria, but am
+embarrassed and endangered by my ignorance of the routes and the state
+of the country. Information on these points, and the means of
+communicating with an American consul, are the only aid of which I am
+in necessity; and I take the liberty of applying to you in the hope of
+obtaining it. By giving it, you will oblige me in a matter of life and
+death. The people of the country cannot be trusted; but I may rely
+securely on the generosity of an English gentleman.<br>
+<br>
+<div align="right">Your obedient servant,&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<br>
+V<small>ASSALL</small> M<small>ORTON</small>.&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;</div></blockquote>
+
+<p>He sealed the note, and gave it to the old servant. The latter mounted
+the stairs, and reappearing in a few moments, said, in his former
+doubtful tone, "Please to walk up."</p>
+
+<p>Morton followed him to the door of a small room looking upon the lake.
+Near the window stood the young man whom he had seen at the inn, with
+the note open in his hand. Morton entered, inclining his head
+slightly. The other returned his salutation, looked at him for an
+instant without speaking, and then, coming forward, gave him his hand,
+and bade him welcome with the utmost frankness.</p>
+
+<p>Astonished, and half overcome, Morton could only stammer his
+acknowledgments for such a reception of one who came with no passport
+but his own word.</p>
+
+<p>"O," said Wentworth, smiling, "when I meet an honest man, I know him
+by instinct, as Falstaff knew the true prince. Sit down; I am glad to
+see you; and shall be still more glad if I can help you."</p>
+
+<p>The old servant received some whispered directions, and left the room.
+Morton gave a short outline of his story, to which his host listened
+with unequivocal signs of interest.</p>
+
+<p>"I wish," said Wentworth, "that you were the only innocent victim of
+Austrian despotism. It is a monstrous infamy, built on fraud and
+force, but too refined, too artificial, too complicated to endure."</p>
+
+<p>"Bullets and cold steel are the medicines for it," said Morton.</p>
+
+<p>Here the servant reappeared.</p>
+
+<p>"Here, at all events, you are safe. Stay with me to-day, and I think I
+can promise you that in a few days more you may stand on the deck of
+an American frigate. If you will go with John, he will help you to get
+rid of that villanous disguise."</p>
+
+<p>Morton followed the old man into an adjoining room, where he found a
+bath, a suit of clothes, and the various appliances of the toilet
+prepared for him. And here he was left alone to indulge his
+reflections and revolutionize his outward man.</p>
+
+<p>Meanwhile Wentworth sat musing by the window: "His face haunts me; and
+yet, for my life, I cannot remember where I have seen him before. I
+would stake all on his truth and honor. That firm lip and undespairing
+eye are a history in themselves. Strange&mdash;the difference between man
+and man. How should I have borne such suffering? Why, gone mad, I
+suppose, or destroyed myself. One sorrow&mdash;no, nor a hundred&mdash;would
+never unman <i>him</i>, and make him dream away his life, watching the sun
+rise and set, here by the Lake of Como. I scarcely know why, but my
+heart warms towards him like an old friend. Cost what it may, I will
+not leave him till he is out of danger."</p>
+
+<p>He was still musing in this strain, when Morton returned, a changed
+man in person and in mind. It seemed as if, in casting off his squalid
+livery of misery and peril, a burden of care had fallen with it; as if
+the sullen cloud that had brooded over him so long had been pierced at
+length by a gladdening beam of sunlight, and the sombre landscape were
+smiling again with pristine light and promise. His buoyant and defiant
+spirit resumed its native tone; and a strange confidence sprang up
+within him, as if a desperate crisis of his destiny had been safely
+passed.</p>
+
+<p>Wentworth saw the change at a glance.</p>
+
+<p>"Why, man, I see freedom in your eye already. But sit down; 'it's ill
+talking between a full man and a fasting,' and you must be half
+starved."</p>
+
+<p>Morton was so, in truth. He seated himself at the table, and addressed
+himself to the repast provided for him with the keenness of a mountain
+trapper, while his entertainer played with his knife and fork to keep
+him in countenance.</p>
+
+<p>"Do you know," said Wentworth, at length&mdash;"I am sure I have seen you
+before."</p>
+
+<p>"And I have seen you&mdash;I could swear to it; and yet I do not know
+where."</p>
+
+<p>"Were you ever in England?"</p>
+
+<p>"Only for a few days."</p>
+
+<p>"I was once in America."</p>
+
+<p>"When?"</p>
+
+<p>"In 1839. I was at Boston in March of that year."</p>
+
+<p>Morton shook his head. "I remember that time perfectly. I was in New
+Orleans in March, and afterwards in Texas."</p>
+
+<p>"From Boston I went westward&mdash;up the Missouri and out upon the
+prairies."</p>
+
+<p>Morton paused a moment in doubt; then sprang to his feet with a joyful
+exclamation,&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"The prairies! Have you forgotten the Big Horn Branch of the Yellow
+Stone, and the camp under the old cottonwood trees!"</p>
+
+<p>Wentworth leaped up, and grasped both his guest's hands.</p>
+
+<p>"Forgotten! No; I shall never forget the morning when you came over to
+us with that tall, half-breed fellow, in a Canadian capote."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes,&mdash;Antoine Le Rouge."</p>
+
+<p>"We should have starved if you had not found us, and perhaps lost our
+scalps into the bargain."</p>
+
+<p>"The Rickarees had made a clean sweep of your horses."</p>
+
+<p>"Not a hoof was left to us. Our four Canadians were scared to death; I
+was ill; not one of us was fit for service but Ireton; and we had not
+three days' provision. If you had not given us your spare mules and
+horses, and seen us safe to Fort Cass, the wolves would have made a
+supper of some of us."</p>
+
+<p>"And do you remember," said Morton, "after we broke up camp that
+morning, how the Rickaree devils came galloping at us down the hill,
+and thought they could ride over us, and how we fought them all the
+forenoon, lying on our faces behind the pack saddles and baggage?"</p>
+
+<p>"I remember it as if it were yesterday. I can hear the crack of the
+rifles now, and the yelling of those bloodthirsty vagabonds."</p>
+
+<p>"It is strange," pursued Wentworth, "that I did not recognize you at
+once. I have thought of you a thousand times; but it is eight years
+since we met, and you are very much changed. Besides we were together
+only two days. And yet I can hardly forgive myself."</p>
+
+<p>"Any wandering trapper would have done as much for you as I did; or,
+if he had not, he would have deserved a cudgelling. What has become of
+the young man, or boy, rather, who was with you?"</p>
+
+<p>"You mean Ireton. Dead, poor fellow&mdash;dead."</p>
+
+<p>"I am very sorry. He was the coolest of us all in the fight. He had a
+singular face, but a very handsome one. I can recall it distinctly at
+this moment."</p>
+
+<p>Wentworth took a miniature from a desk, opened it, and placed it
+before Morton.</p>
+
+<p>"These are his features," said the latter, "but this is the portrait
+of a lady."</p>
+
+<p>"His sister&mdash;his twin sister. Dead too!"</p>
+
+<p>There was a change, as he spoke, in his voice and manner, so marked
+that Morton forbore to pursue the subject farther. He studied the
+picture in silence. It was a young and beautiful face, delicate, yet
+full of fire; and by some subtilty of his craft, the artist had given
+to the eyes an expression which reminded him of the restless glances
+which he had seen a caged falcon at the Garden of Plants cast upwards
+at the sky, into which he was debarred from soaring.</p>
+
+<p>In a few moments, Wentworth spoke in his accustomed tone.</p>
+
+<p>"The point first to be thought of, is to get you out of this
+predicament. I have a man who took to his bed this morning, and is at
+present shaking in an ague fit. He is of about your age, height, and
+complexion; and by wearing his dress, you could travel under his
+passport. I am not at all a suspected person, and if my friend will
+pass for a few days as my servant, I do not doubt that we shall reach
+Genoa without interruption."</p>
+
+<p>Morton warmly expressed his gratitude, but protested against
+Wentworth's undertaking the journey on his account.</p>
+
+<p>"O, I am going to Genoa for my pleasure, and shall be glad of your
+company. The steamer for Como touches here this afternoon. 'Dull not
+device by coldness and delay;' we will go on board, and be in Milan
+to-morrow."</p>
+
+<p>They conversed for an hour, when Morton withdrew to adjust his new
+disguise. Wentworth followed him with his eye as he disappeared; then
+sank into the musing mood which had grown habitual to him.</p>
+
+<p>"When I saw him last,"&mdash;so his thoughts shaped themselves,&mdash;"my drama
+was opening; and now it is played out&mdash;light and darkness, smiles and
+tears&mdash;and the curtain is dropped forever. When I saw him last, I was
+gathering the prairie flowers and dedicating them to her,&mdash;though she
+did not suspect it,&mdash;and dreaming of her by camp fires and in night
+watches."</p>
+
+<p>The miniature still lay on the table. He drew it towards him and gazed
+on it fixedly:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"Mine for a space, and now&mdash;gone&mdash;vanished like a dream. You were a
+meteor between earth and sky, with a light that flickered and blazed
+and darkened, but a warmth constant and unchanged. Of all who admired
+the brightness of that erratic star, how few could know what gladness
+it shed around it, what desolation it has left behind!"</p>
+
+<p>He gazed on the picture till his eyes grew dim; then sat for a few
+moments, listless and abstracted; then rose, with an effort, and bent
+his mind to the task before him.</p>
+<br>
+<br><a name="chap47"></a>
+<br>
+<br>
+<h3>CHAPTER XLVII.</h3>
+<table align="center" summary="quote41">
+	<tr><td><small>O that a man might know<br>
+	The end of this day's business ere it come.&mdash;<i>Julius Cæsar</i>.</small></td></tr>
+</table>
+<br>
+<br>
+<p>The diligence rolled into Genoa. Wentworth was in the <i>coupé</i>, and on
+the top sat Morton, as his servant. They had made the journey without
+interruption.</p>
+
+<p>Morton reported himself to the American consul, and told his story.
+The wrath and astonishment of that official were great; but they were
+as nothing to the patriotic fury of three New York dry goods
+importers, who, mingling pleasure with business, were just arrived
+from Paris. Nothing was talked of but an immediate bombardment of
+Trieste, and a probable assault of Vienna.</p>
+
+<p>Escaping as soon as he could from this demonstration, Morton bade his
+fervid countrymen good morning, and went out with Wentworth, who
+introduced him to his banker. He learned from the consul that a
+merchant brig was in port, nearly ready to sail for home, and gladly
+took passage in her.</p>
+
+<p>And now at last he was safe; and safety should have brought with it a
+lightening of the spirits, a sense of relief. In fact, however, it
+brought little or nothing of the kind. The human mind, happily, cannot
+well hold more than one crowning evil at a time. One black thought,
+firmly lodged, will commonly keep the rest at bay. The fear of famine
+and a prison had left him no leisure to plague himself with less
+imminent mischiefs; but now, this fear being ousted, a new devil
+leaped into its empty seat. At the first moment when he could find
+himself alone, he wrote to Edith Leslie, telling her how he had been
+imprisoned, how, for almost five wretched years, her image had been
+his constant friend, how he had escaped, and how he was hastening
+homeward to claim the fulfilment of her word. He hinted nothing of his
+conviction that Vinal had been instrumental to his detention. He began
+divided between hope and fear, but as he wrote, a foreboding grew upon
+him that she was no longer living, or, at least, no longer living for
+him. The letter, despatched post haste, would reach home a full
+fortnight before his own arrival.</p>
+
+<p>Having seen his friend in safety, Wentworth set out on his return;
+and, as they shook hands at parting, their eyes met with a look that
+showed how clearly the two men understood each other.</p>
+
+<p>Wentworth smiled as Morton tried to express his gratitude.</p>
+
+<p>"You have cleared that score. I do not mean now the old affair on the
+Big Horn. I have been dreaming, lately, and you have waked me."</p>
+
+<p>"I should never have imagined that you were dozing."</p>
+
+<p>"Call it what you will. The truth is," added Wentworth, with some
+hesitation, "an old memory has been hanging about me, and I believe
+has made a girl of me. But that is past and done. I shall leave the
+Lake of Como. There is a career for me at home, and a good one, if I
+will but take it. Come to England, and you will find me there."</p>
+
+<p>Morton went with him past the gates, and, with a heavy heart, watched
+him on his way northward.</p>
+<br>
+<br><a name="chap48"></a>
+<br>
+<br>
+<h3>CHAPTER XLVIII.</h3>
+<table align="center" summary="quote42">
+	<tr><td><small>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
+	&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
+	&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
+	His restless eye<br>
+	Glanced forward frequently, as if some ill<br>
+	He dared not meet were there.&mdash;<i>Willis</i>.</small></td></tr>
+</table>
+<br>
+<br>
+<p>After some days' delay, the brig put to sea, Morton on board. The
+cliffs behind Gibraltar came in sight at last, and a fresh levanter
+blew her out like an arrow upon the Atlantic. They were becalmed off
+the Azores. The sea was like glass; the turtles came up to sleep at
+the top; the tar melted out of the seams; and as the vessel moved on
+the long, lazy swells, the masts kept up their weary creaking from
+morning till night, and from night till morning. Morton walked the
+deck in a fever of impatience.</p>
+
+<p>At length an east wind sprang up, and with studding sails spread like
+wings, the brig ran before it, reeling like a drunken sea-gull.</p>
+
+<p>On the forty-first day, the Neversink heights rose on the horizon.
+Vessels innumerable passed&mdash;steamers, merchantmen, war ships. The
+highlands of Staten Island, with its villages and villas, lay close on
+their left, and the Bay of New York opened before them, sparkling in
+the morning sun, and alive with moving sails. On the right lay a
+forest of masts; in front, the Castle lifted its ugly familiar front;
+and farther on, the spire of Trinity towered over the wilderness of
+brick.</p>
+
+<p>Morton called a boat alongside, embarked his luggage, and went on
+shore. And, in spite of that depression which follows long and deep
+excitement, in spite of the anxieties that engrossed him, he felt a
+thrill of delight as his foot pressed American soil.</p>
+
+<p>This pleasure, however, was short. The thought of Edith Leslie had
+been so long the solace of his confinement, that it seemed to have
+grown into a part of himself; at all events, now that his doubts were
+on the verge of decision, for good or evil, it drove every other
+thought from his mind. Reaching his hotel, he found that he could not
+set out for Boston till the afternoon; and to get rid of the interval,
+he turned over the Boston newspapers in the reading room, searching
+for the mention of any familiar names. Here he was more successful
+than he cared to be; for he presently discovered the name of Horace
+Vinal, figuring in the list of directors of a joint stock company.</p>
+
+<p>"The hound!" muttered Morton; "so he is alive yet!"</p>
+
+<p>And leaving the hotel, he walked up the crowded sidewalk of Broadway,
+in a mood any thing but tranquil.</p>
+<br>
+<br><a name="chap49"></a>
+<br>
+<br>
+<h3>CHAPTER XLIX.</h3>
+<table align="center" summary="quote43">
+	<tr><td><small>Affliction is enamoured of thy parts,<br>
+	And thou art wedded to calamity.&mdash;<i>Romeo and Juliet</i>.</small></td></tr>
+</table>
+<br>
+<br>
+<p>He had not gone far, when he became aware of a footstep closely
+following him. He was about to look back, when a little man passed
+before him, glancing furtively in his face with a ludicrous expression
+of doubt, amazement, and curiosity. Morton at once recognized the
+features of an odd, simple-minded classmate, named Shingles.
+"Charley," he exclaimed, "how do you do?"</p>
+
+<p>"It <i>is</i> you," cried Shingles, with an ejaculation of profound
+astonishment; "solid flesh and blood!"&mdash;grasping Morton's extended
+hand&mdash;"and not your ghost. Why, we all thought you were dead!"</p>
+
+<p>"Not quite," said Morton.</p>
+
+<p>"Dead and buried," repeated Shingles, "off in Transylvania, or some
+such place."</p>
+
+<p>"I <i>was</i> buried, but they buried me alive."</p>
+
+<p>Shingles, who had a taste for the horrible, took the assertion
+literally, and dilated his eyes like an owl on the lookout for a
+mouse.</p>
+
+<p>"But how did you manage to get out?"</p>
+
+<p>"I contrived to break loose, after a few years."</p>
+
+<p>Shingles stared in horror and perplexity.</p>
+
+<p>"Don't be frightened, Charley. I'm all right,&mdash;neither ghost nor
+vampire. But we shall be pushed off the sidewalk, if we stand here."</p>
+
+<p>"Come down into Florence's, then, and let me hear about it. Hang me if
+I ever expected to see you again. I shouldn't like to have met you
+alone, at night, any where near a graveyard. At our last class
+meeting, we were all talking about you, and saying you were a deused
+good fellow, and what a pity it was. And here you are alive; it was
+all for nothing!"</p>
+
+<p>"That's very unlucky," said Morton, as they descended into the
+restaurant.</p>
+
+<p>"By Jove," exclaimed Shingles, whose amazement was still strong upon
+him, "I was never so much astonished in my life as when I saw you just
+now. I was coming out of a shop, as you passed along the sidewalk. I
+felt as if I had seen a spirit. I followed behind you, and wasn't
+quite sure it was you, till I saw your trick of rapping your cane
+against the bricks as you walked along. Then I said to myself, it's
+he, or else old Beelzebub, in his likeness. But come, tell us how it
+was. How did you get off alive?"</p>
+
+<p>Morton briefly recounted his imprisonment and escape, interrupted by
+the wondering ejaculations of his auditor.</p>
+
+<p>"Who would have thought," exclaimed Shingles, "when you and I used to
+go up to Elk Pond, on Saturdays, to catch perch and pickerel, that you
+would ever have been shut up in the dungeon of an Austrian castle? You
+remember those old times&mdash;don't you?"</p>
+
+<p>"That I do," said Morton.</p>
+
+<p>"Do you remember the old tavern, where we used to lunch, and the
+pretty girl that waited on the table?"</p>
+
+<p>"The girl that you raved about all the way home? Yes, I remember."</p>
+
+<p>"By Jove, to think you've been shut up in a dungeon! Well, I haven't
+any very brilliant account to give of <i>my</i>self. I began to practise
+law, but I was never meant for a lawyer; so I gave it up, and have
+been ever since at my father's old place, just pottering about, you
+know. I was born in the country, and brought up there, and I mean to
+live there, only now and then I come down to New York, on a
+bend,&mdash;just for a change."</p>
+
+<p>"I suppose you can tell me the news. How are all the fellows? How is
+Meredith?"</p>
+
+<p>"Very well, I believe. He is living in Boston."</p>
+
+<p>"Married, or single?"</p>
+
+<p>"Single. We are not much of a marrying class. Wren was the first. Was
+that before you went away, or after? We voted to send him a cradle;
+but he did not know how to take it. He thought we were fooling him,
+and got quite angry. No, we are not at all a marrying class, nor a
+dying class either, for that matter. There are not more than five or
+six dead, and twelve or fourteen married; we reckoned them up last
+class meeting."</p>
+
+<p>"Vinal&mdash;what of him?"</p>
+
+<p>"O, he's alive, and married, too."</p>
+
+<p>Morton turned pale. "Married!&mdash;to whom?"</p>
+
+<p>"Well, they say he's made a first-rate match. I don't know her myself.
+I'm not a party-going man; I never was, you know. I haven't been
+thrown in much with that kind of people. But they tell me he couldn't
+have done better."</p>
+
+<p>"What's her name?" demanded Morton.</p>
+
+<p>"Miss Leslie&mdash;Colonel Leslie's daughter. But what's the matter? Are
+you ill?"</p>
+
+<p>"It's nothing," gasped Morton; "I had a fever in prison, and have
+never been quite well since. I grow dizzy, sometimes."</p>
+
+<p>"You <i>will</i> grow dizzy, with a vengeance, if you drink wine in that
+way."</p>
+
+<p>"It's nothing," repeated Morton; "it will be over in a minute. What
+were you saying?"</p>
+
+<p>"About the fellows that have married,&mdash;O, Vinal,&mdash;I was saying that he
+had just got married."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, what about it?"</p>
+
+<p>"Why, nothing particular."</p>
+
+<p>"When was it?"</p>
+
+<p>"Last month."</p>
+
+<p>"Within a month! Are you sure?"</p>
+
+<p>"O, yes. I was in Boston myself at the time, and heard all about it.
+Her father was ill; so the marriage was private. Vinal is a sort of
+fellow that somehow I never cottoned to much. I don't think he's very
+disinterested. I like a fellow that will swear when he is angry, and
+not keep close shut up, like an oyster."</p>
+
+<p>The tattle of his rustic companion was become intolerable to Morton.
+He had received his stab, and wished to hear no more. In a few
+minutes, he rose from the table. "Charley, I am sorry to leave you so
+suddenly, but I am not well. The fresh air and a hard walk are all
+that will set me up. I shall see you again."</p>
+
+<p>"But where are you staying?"</p>
+
+<p>"At Blancard's. Good morning, old fellow."</p>
+<br>
+<br><a name="chap50"></a>
+<br>
+<br>
+<h3>CHAPTER L.</h3>
+
+<blockquote><small><i>Fab.</i> . . . Elle est&mdash;&mdash;.<br>
+<br>
+<i>Sev.</i>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Quoi?<br>
+<br>
+<i>Fab.</i>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Mariée!<br>
+<br>
+<i>Sev.</i> . . . . . Ce coup de foudre est grand!&mdash;<i>Polyeucte</i>.</small></blockquote>
+
+<center><small>The world's my oyster, which I with sword will open.&mdash;<i>Henry IV</i>.<br>
+<br>
+Put money in thy purse; follow these wars.&mdash;<i>Othello</i>.</small></center>
+<br>
+<br>
+<p>Morton walked down Broadway at a rapid pace, entered his hotel,
+mounted to his room, seated himself, rested his forehead on his hand,
+and, with fixed eyes and compressed lips, remained in this position
+for some minutes, motionless as if carved out of oak. Then, rising, he
+paced the room, buried his face in his hands, and groaned with
+irrepressible anguish. Suddenly the door was burst open, and an Irish
+servant, apparently in a great hurry, bolted in, and tossed a card on
+the table, saying at the same time,&mdash;"Gen'lman down stairs wants to
+see you."</p>
+
+<p>Morton broke into a rage, to hide the traces of a different passion.</p>
+
+<p>"Why do you come in without knocking? Learn better manners, or I shall
+teach them to you."</p>
+
+<p>"I beg pardon, sir," said the servant, reduced at once to the depth of
+obsequiousness, "there's a gentleman, sir&mdash;an officer, sir,&mdash;would
+like to see you, sir."</p>
+
+<p>"An officer!&mdash;I don't know any officers. There's some mistake."</p>
+
+<p>"He <i>said</i> Mr. Morton, sir. This is his card, sir."</p>
+
+<p>Morton looked at the card, and read the name of his classmate Rosny.</p>
+
+<p>"Very well. Ask the gentleman to come up.&mdash;No,&mdash;here,"&mdash;as the servant
+was retreating along the passage,&mdash;"where is he?"</p>
+
+<p>"In the reading room, sir."</p>
+
+<p>"Tell him I will come down in a moment."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, sir, I will, sir."</p>
+
+<p>Morton adjusted his dress, strove to banish from his features all
+traces of the emotion which had just overwhelmed him, went down
+stairs, and met Rosny with an air of as much cordiality as if there
+were nothing in his mind but the pleasure of seeing an old friend.
+Rosny, his first welcome over, surveyed him from head to foot.</p>
+
+<p>"A good deal changed! Thinner,&mdash;darker complexioned, decidedly older.
+And yet you've weathered it well. It's a thing that I could never
+stand,&mdash;to be boxed up in four stone walls. I would throttle the
+jailer first, and then knock my brains out against the stones."</p>
+
+<p>"Did Shingles tell you of my being here?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, I met him just now, with his eyes bigger than ever. When I saw
+him making a dive at me across the street, among the omnibuses and
+carriages, I knew that something extraordinary was to pay."</p>
+
+<p>"<i>You</i> have changed your outward man, too, since I saw you last," said
+Morton, looking at his companion's costume, which consisted of a gray
+volunteer uniform.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, I'm in Uncle Sam's pay now.&mdash;Off for Mexico in a day or
+two;&mdash;revel in the Halls of the Montezumas, you know."</p>
+
+<p>"What rank do you hold in the service, Dick?"</p>
+
+<p>"You'll please to address me as Major Rosny; that is, till good luck
+and the Mexican bullets make a colonel of me.&mdash;I have just dropped in
+to shake hands with you. I have an appointment to keep in five
+minutes. You have nothing particular to do to-day&mdash;have you?"</p>
+
+<p>"Nothing very particular," said Morton, hesitating.</p>
+
+<p>"Then come and dine with me at Delmonico's at four o'clock. What!&mdash;you
+don't mean to say no, do you?&mdash;Is that the way you treat your friends?
+Come, I shall be here at four, precisely. <i>Au revoir.</i>"</p>
+
+<p>And, with his usual celerity of motion, Rosny left the hotel.</p>
+
+<p>Morton slowly remounted to his room, locked the door this time, to
+keep out intruders, seated himself, and gave himself up to his dark
+and morbid reveries.</p>
+
+<p>"God! of what is this world made! Villany thrives, and innocent men
+are racked with the pangs of hell. Poverty starving its
+victims,&mdash;luxury poisoning them;&mdash;the passions of tigers and the mean
+vices of reptiles;&mdash;treacherous hatred, faithless love;&mdash;deceitful
+hope, vain struggles, endless suffering,&mdash;a hell of misery and
+darkness. A fair sunrise, to cheat the eye;&mdash;then clouds and storms,
+blackness and desolation! To look back over the last five years! Then
+I was basking in sunshine; and out of that brightness what a doom is
+fallen on me! My life&mdash;my guiding star quenched in a vile morass&mdash;lost
+forever in the arms of this accursed villain!"</p>
+
+<p>Morton rose abruptly, went to the window, and stood looking out with a
+fixed gaze, wholly unconscious of what was before him. In a moment he
+turned again, and there was a wild and deadly light in his eyes. A
+thought had struck him, shooting an electric life through all his
+veins, and kindling him into a kind of fierce ecstasy. He would go to
+Vinal, charge him with his perfidy, challenge him, and put him to
+death. He paced the room in great disorder. A resistless power seemed
+to have seized upon him, sweeping him forward with the force of a
+torrent. He clinched his teeth and breathed deeply. The thought of
+action and of vengeance lighted up his perturbed and gloomy mind as
+the baleful glare of a conflagration lights up a stormy midnight.
+Suddenly he stopped, seated himself again, and remained for some
+minutes in violent mental conflict. "I thank God," he murmured at
+length, apostrophizing his enemy, "that you were not just now within
+my reach. You have ruined me for this life; you shall not ruin me for
+the next. Live, and work out your own destruction."</p>
+
+<p>He walked the room again, calmly enough, but in great dejection. "It
+may be," he thought, "that I am not his only victim. Perhaps the same
+art that snared me, has, by some infernal machination, entrapped her
+also. I believe it;&mdash;at least, I will try to believe it."</p>
+
+<p>He looked from the window upon the keen and busy crowds passing below
+in unbroken streams, to and from their places of business; and his
+mind tinged them with its own moody coloring.</p>
+
+<p>"You flight of human vultures! How many of you can show lives governed
+by any generous purpose or noble thought? Behind how many of those
+sharp and sallow features, furrowed with early wrinkles, lies the soul
+of a man? Desperate chasers after wealth, which, when you have won it,
+you have never been taught to use;&mdash;reckless pleasure hunters,
+beguiling others that your victims may beguile in turn, and both sink
+to perdition together. What you win with trickery, you throw away in
+vanity or debauch. The counting room or the broker's board by
+day;&mdash;brandy, billiards, and the rendezvous by night;&mdash;so you go,&mdash;a
+short, quick road;&mdash;driving to your doom with a high-pressure power of
+rapacity, vain glory, and lust. Man!&mdash;the thistledown of fortune, the
+shuttlecock of passion;&mdash;whirled on to destruction by the wildfire in
+his veins, unless by struggling and by prayer he can keep the narrow
+adamantine track laid down for his career!"</p>
+
+<p>In such distempered reflections he passed some time. Even in the
+darkest passages of his imprisonment, his mind had scarcely been
+shaken so far from its habitual poise. Growing weary at length of
+solitude, he went out of the house; and, avoiding the great
+thoroughfares, where he might perhaps meet an acquaintance, he
+threaded at a rapid pace those meaner streets and lanes, where even
+the best balanced mind may find abundant food for gloomy meditation.
+From time to time, as the image of his enemy rose before him, the
+desire for vengeance came upon him afresh, like a fever fit. He burned
+to seize Vinal by the throat, and, at least, force him to unmask his
+iniquity to the world.</p>
+
+<p>As he was passing down Water Street, he recollected, with some
+vexation, that Rosny had promised to call for him at four o'clock, and
+retraced his steps to the hotel, where, true to the minute, that
+punctual adventurer presently appeared.</p>
+
+<p>"Come," said Rosny; "if you are ready, we will walk down street."</p>
+
+<p>They repaired to Delmonico's, where, in a private room, a sumptuous
+repast had been made ready. Morton, over his companion's claret, was
+obliged to recount the circumstances of his imprisonment. Rosny, on
+his part, gave an outline of his own fortunes since they had last met.
+He had been once or twice on the point of very considerable success,
+but his vaulting ambition had always overleaped itself, and by too
+great eagerness and grasping at too much, he had repeatedly failed of
+his prize, only, however, to rally after every reverse with
+undiminished confidence and spirit. Such, at least, were the
+conclusions which Morton drew from his companion's somewhat inflated
+account of himself.</p>
+
+<p>After the cloth had been removed, Rosny bit off the end of a cigar,
+lighted it, puffed at it two or three times, and then, holding it
+between his fingers, went on with an harangue which the operations of
+the waiter had interrupted.</p>
+
+<p>"I tell you, these are great times that we live in. The world has seen
+nothing like them since the days of Columbus and Cortes. These are the
+times and this is the country for a man of merit to thrive in. Let him
+identify himself with the progressive movements of the age,&mdash;yes,
+faith, let him be a leader of them,&mdash;and there's nothing too large for
+him to hope for. Why, sir, the day is not far off, when the stars and
+stripes will be seen from Hudson's Bay to Panama. Cuba will come next;
+Brazil next. Lord knows where we shall stop. There's a field for a man
+of ability and pluck!"</p>
+
+<p>Morton smiled. Rosny relighted his cigar, which, in the fervor of his
+declamation, he had allowed to go out, gave a vigorous whiff or two,
+and proceeded.</p>
+
+<p>"We have just lost a splendid chance. I <i>did</i> flatter myself that
+there was going to be a row with England, on the Oregon question; but
+it was a flash in the pan; it all ended in smoke."</p>
+
+<p>"Why do you want to fight with John Bull?" asked Morton.</p>
+
+<p>"For two good reasons. In the first place, I hate him. I hate him in
+right of my French ancestors, and I hate him as a true American
+democrat. Then, over and above all that, a war with the English would
+be the making of me. I should rise then. I would be their Hannibal.
+But now we have nothing better to do than giving fits to these yellow
+Mexican vagabonds."</p>
+
+<p>"A shabby employment," said Morton, "and yet I think I should like
+it."</p>
+
+<p>"You would, ey?&mdash;then go with me to Mexico."</p>
+
+<p>"It's a temptation," said Morton, his eyes lighted with a sudden
+gleam,&mdash;"I am in a mood for any thing, I do not care what."</p>
+
+<p>"I knew there was something ailing you," said Rosny; "why, you have
+had no appetite. You've lost all your spirits. Has any thing happened?
+Are you ill?"</p>
+
+<p>"Nothing to speak of. I am well enough in health."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, come with me to Mexico. When a man is under a cloud, he always
+makes the better soldier for it. If you have had bad luck, why, you
+can fight like a Trojan."</p>
+
+<p>"I could storm Hell Gates to-day," exclaimed Morton, giving a
+momentary vent to his long pent up emotion.</p>
+
+<p>"Good! I always knew that there was stuff in you, though you <i>are</i>
+worth half a million. It isn't that, though&mdash;is it? You haven't lost
+property&mdash;have you?"</p>
+
+<p>"Not that I know. Never mind, Dick; every man has his little
+vexations, sometimes, and is entitled to the privilege of swearing at
+them."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, I am not the man to pry into your private affairs. Come with me
+to Mexico. I can promise you a captain's commission,&mdash;perhaps I can
+get you a major's. I am not a cipher in the democratic party, I'd have
+you know, though I am not yet what I shall be soon. I helped Polk to
+his election, and my word will go for something. But, pshaw!&mdash;what am
+I talking about? With your money, and a little management, you can get
+any thing you want."</p>
+
+<p>"I have more than half a mind," said Morton, hesitating; "but, no,&mdash;I
+won't go."</p>
+
+<p>"Pshaw, man! You don't know what you are saying. You don't know what
+chances you are throwing away. Look at it. It isn't the military
+fame,&mdash;the glorification in the newspapers,&mdash;seeing pictures of
+yourself in the shop windows, charging full tilt among the Mexicans,
+and all that. You can take that for what it's worth. Tastes differ in
+such matters. But, I tell you, the men who distinguish themselves in
+Mexico are going to carry all before them in the political world. The
+people will go for them, neck or nothing. I know what our enlightened
+democracy is made of."&mdash;Here a slight grin flickered for an instant
+about the corners of his mouth; but he grew serious again at
+once.&mdash;"Yes, sir, a new world is going to begin. The old
+incumbents&mdash;Webster, Clay, Calhoun, and the rest&mdash;will pass off the
+stage, before long, and make room for younger men&mdash;men who will keep
+up with the times. Then will be our chance! Put brass in your
+forehead,&mdash;you have money enough in your purse already,&mdash;get a halo of
+Mexican glory round your head,&mdash;and you will shoot up like a rocket.
+First go to the war, then dive into politics, and you and I will be
+the biggest frogs in the puddle."</p>
+
+<p>"There's a fallacy in your conclusions," said Morton; "the officers of
+rank, the generals and colonels, will carry off the glory; and we
+shall have nothing but the blows."</p>
+
+<p>"The Mexican bullets will make that all right. I tell you, they are
+going to fly like hail. They will dock off the heads above us, and
+make a clear path for us to mount by."</p>
+
+<p>"Suppose that they should hit the wrong man," suggested Morton.</p>
+
+<p>"Pshaw!" exclaimed Rosny, "we won't look at the matter in that light."</p>
+
+<p>There was a momentary pause.</p>
+
+<p>"Now's your time," urged Rosny. "Come, say the word."</p>
+
+<p>Morton paced the room with knit brows and lips pressed together.</p>
+
+<p>"Glory,"&mdash;exclaimed his military friend, summing up the advantages of
+a Mexican campaign,&mdash;"glory,&mdash;preferment,&mdash;life, of the fastest
+kind,&mdash;what more would you have?"</p>
+
+<p>Morton had a strong native thirst for adventure, and a <i>penchant</i> for
+military exploit. In his present frame of mind, he felt violently
+impelled to cut loose from all his old ideas and scruples, and launch
+at once upon a new life, fresh, unshackled, and reckless,&mdash;to plunge
+headlong into the tumult of the active world; fight its battles, run
+its races, give and take its blows, strain after its prizes,&mdash;forget
+the past and all its associations in the fever of the present. Mexico
+rose before his thoughts&mdash;snowy volcanoes, and tropical forests; the
+cocoa, the palm, and the cactus; bastioned cities and intrenched
+heights; the rush and din of battle; war with its fierce excitements
+and unbounded license. To his disordered mood, the scene had
+fascinations almost resistless, and he burned to play his part in the
+fiery drama.</p>
+
+<p>"And why not?"&mdash;so his thoughts ran,&mdash;"why not obey what fate and
+nature dictate? Calm, and peace, and happiness,&mdash;farewell to them!
+That stake is played and lost. I am no more fit now for domestic life
+than a prairie wolf. I should answer better for an Ishmaelite or a
+Pawnee. <i>Deus vult.</i> Why should I fly in the face of Providence?"</p>
+
+<p>Rosny, his uniform coat half unbuttoned for the sake of ease, sat
+lolling back in his chair, puffing wreaths of cigar smoke from his
+lips, eying Morton as he paced the room, and throwing out, from time
+to time, a word of encouragement to stimulate his resolution. He was
+about to lose all patience at his companion's pertinacious silence,
+when the latter stopped, and turned towards him with the air of one
+whose mind is made up.</p>
+
+<p>"Dick," said Morton, "when I was in college, I laid down my plan of
+life, and adopted one maxim&mdash;to which I mean to hold fast."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, what was that?" demanded the impatient Rosny.</p>
+
+<p>"Never to abandon an enterprise once begun; to push on till the point
+is gained, in spite of pain, delay, danger, disappointment,&mdash;any
+thing."</p>
+
+<p>"Good, so far. What next?"</p>
+
+<p>"Some years ago, I entered upon certain plans, which have not yet been
+accomplished. I have been interrupted, balked, kicked and cuffed by
+fortune, till I am more than half disgusted with the world. But I mean
+still to take up the broken thread where I left it, and carry it
+forward as before."</p>
+
+<p>"The moral of that is, I suppose, that you won't go to Mexico."</p>
+
+<p>"Precisely."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, I shan't try to debate the matter with you. I know you of old.
+When your foot is once down, it's useless for me to try to make you
+lift it up again. But remember what I say,&mdash;you will repent not taking
+my advice."</p>
+
+<p>Rosny finished his cigar, and they left the restaurant together. On
+their way up the street, they stopped at a recruiting office. "Captain
+Rumbold, my friend Mr. Morton," said Rosny, who soon after, however,
+entered into an earnest conversation with the officer upon some affair
+of business, leaving Morton at leisure to observe six or eight
+volunteers, who were about to be sent to Governor's Island, in charge
+of a sergeant.</p>
+
+<p>"What do you think of our boys?" asked Rosny, casting a comical look
+at Morton, as they went down stairs.</p>
+
+<p>"I never saw such a gang of tobacco-chewing, soap-locked rascals."</p>
+
+<p>"Food for powder," said Rosny, "they'll fill a ditch as well as
+better. The country needs a little blood-letting. These fellows are
+not like Falstaff's, though. They will fight. Not a man of them but
+will whip his weight in wildcats."</p>
+<br>
+<br><a name="chap51"></a>
+<br>
+<br>
+<h3>CHAPTER LI.</h3>
+
+<center><small>A raconter ses maux, souvent on les
+soulage.&mdash;<i>Polyeucte</i>.</small></center>
+<br><br>
+<p>"Do you remember Buckland?" asked Rosny, as they walked up Broadway.</p>
+
+<p>"The Virginian? Yes, perfectly."</p>
+
+<p>"There he is."</p>
+
+<p>Morton, following the direction of his companion's eye, saw, a little
+in advance, a tall man, slenderly but gracefully formed, walking
+slowly, with a listless air, as if but half conscious of what was
+going on around him. They checked their pace, to avoid overtaking him.</p>
+
+<p>"Poor fellow!" said Rosny; "he's in a bad way."</p>
+
+<p>"I am sorry to hear it. He was a lively, pleasant fellow when I knew
+him,&mdash;very fond of the society of ladies."</p>
+
+<p>"That's all over now. He has been very dissipated for the last two or
+three years, and is broken down completely, body and mind. It's a
+great pity. I am very sorry for him," said Rosny, in whom,
+notwithstanding his restless ambition, there was a vein of warm and
+kindly feeling.</p>
+
+<p>"Is he living in New York?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, he has been here ever since leaving college. He began to
+practise as a lawyer. It's much he ever did or ever will do at the
+law! There was never any go-ahead in him&mdash;no energy, no decision&mdash;and
+he does nothing now, but read a little, and lounge about, in a moody,
+abstracted way, with his wits in the clouds. Get him into good
+company, and wind him up with a glass of brandy, and he is himself
+again for a while,&mdash;tells a story and sings a song as he used to
+do,&mdash;but it is soon over. Do you want to speak to him?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes."</p>
+
+<p>"Come on, then. How are you, Buckland? Here's an old friend,
+redivivus."</p>
+
+<p>Hearing himself thus accosted, Buckland turned towards the speaker a
+face which, though pale and sallow, was still handsome. His dress,
+contrary to his former habit, was careless and negligent; and, though
+he could not have been more than thirty, a few gray hairs had begun to
+mingle with his long, black moustache. Changed as he was, he had that
+air of quiet and graceful courtesy which can only be acquired by
+habitual intercourse with polished society in early life; and Morton
+saw in him the melancholy wreck of a highly-bred gentleman.</p>
+
+<p>When the first surprise of the meeting was over, Rosny related the
+story of Morton's imprisonment to the wondering ear of Buckland.
+Having urgent business on his hands, he soon after took leave of his
+two companions. Morton and Buckland, after strolling for a time up and
+down Broadway, entered the restaurant attached to Blancard's hotel,
+and took a table in a remote corner of the room, which was nearly
+empty.</p>
+
+<p>Buckland was, as Rosny had described him, moody and abstracted, often
+seeming at a loss to collect his thoughts. He sipped his chocolate in
+silence, and, even when spoken to, sometimes returned no answer.
+Morton, in little better spirits than his companion, sat leaning his
+forehead dejectedly on his hand.</p>
+
+<p>"I am sorry," said Buckland, after one of his silent fits, "to be so
+wretched a companion; but I am not the man I used to be."</p>
+
+<p>"We are but a melancholy pair," replied Morton.</p>
+
+<p>"I saw from the first that you were very much out of spirits,&mdash;not at
+all what one would expect a man to be who had just escaped from
+sufferings like yours. There is some trouble on your mind."</p>
+
+<p>Morton was fatigued and sick at heart. He had practised self-control
+till he was tired of it; and he allowed a shade of emotion to pass
+across his face.</p>
+
+<p>"There is a woman in it," said Buckland, regarding him with a
+scrutinizing eye.</p>
+
+<p>"Why do you say that?" demanded Morton, startled and dismayed at this
+home thrust.</p>
+
+<p>"Are not women the source of nine tenths of our sufferings?" replied
+Buckland. "The world is a huge, clashing, jangling, disjointed piece
+of mechanism, and they are the authors of its worst disorder."</p>
+
+<p>"Sometimes," said Morton, "men will blame women for sufferings which
+they might, with better justice, lay at their own doors."</p>
+
+<p>Buckland raised his head quickly, and looked in his companion's face.
+"It may be so," he said, after a moment's pause. "Perhaps you are
+right,&mdash;perhaps you are right. But, let that be as it will, there are
+no miseries in life to match those which spring out of the relation of
+the sexes."</p>
+
+<p>Morton, for reasons of his own, did not care to pursue the subject,
+and his companion relapsed into his former silence. After a time, they
+went into the smoking room, where Buckland lighted a cigar. Morton
+observed that, as he did so, his fingers trembled in a manner which
+showed that his whole nervous system was shattered and unstrung.</p>
+
+<p>"I would not advise you to smoke much," said Morton; "you have not the
+constitution to bear it."</p>
+
+<p>Buckland smiled bitterly. He had grown reckless whether he injured
+himself or not.</p>
+
+<p>They seated themselves near the window; but Buckland soon grew uneasy,
+alternately looking at his watch and gazing into the street. At length
+he rose, and asked Morton to walk out with him. The latter, on the
+principle that misery loves company, readily complied; and they went
+down Broadway nearly to the Bowling Green. Here Buckland turned, and
+they retraced their steps to within a few squares of the Astor House.
+This they repeated several times, Morton's companion constantly
+resisting every movement on his part to vary in the least the course
+of their promenade. While their walk was up the street, Buckland,
+though evidently restless and uneasy, had the same abstracted air as
+before; but when they moved in the opposite direction, his whole
+manner changed, and he seemed anxiously on the watch, as if for some
+person whom he expected every moment to meet. It was about eight in
+the evening. The street was brilliant with gas; crowds of people, men
+and women, were moving along the sidewalk; and upon each group, as it
+approached, Buckland bent a gaze of eager scrutiny.</p>
+
+<p>They were passing a large bookstore, when Morton felt his companion
+suddenly press the arm on which he was leaning. Hastily stepping
+aside, and dragging Morton with him, he ensconced himself behind the
+board on which the bookseller pasted his advertising placards, which
+partially concealed him, and, together with the projection over the
+shop door, screened him from the light of the neighboring gas lamp.
+Here he stood motionless, his eyes riveted on some approaching object.
+Following the direction of his gaze, Morton saw a tall man in the
+uniform of an army officer of rank, and, leaning on his arm, a light
+and delicate female figure, elegantly, but not showily dressed. They
+were close at hand when he discovered them, and in a moment they had
+passed on under the glare of the lamp, and mingled with the throng
+beyond; but Morton retained a vivid impression of features beautifully
+moulded, and a pair of restless dark eyes, roving from side to side
+with piercing, yet furtive glances.</p>
+
+<p>Buckland, stepping from his retreat, made a hesitating, forward
+movement, as if undecided whether to follow them or not. He stopped
+with a kind of suppressed groan, and taking Morton's arm again, moved
+slowly with him down the street. Two or three times, Morton spoke to
+him, but he seemed not to hear, or, at best, answered in
+monosyllables, with an absent air. When they reached the hotel, then
+recently established on the European plan, near the Bowling Green,
+Buckland entered, called for brandy, and, his companion declining to
+join him, hastily drank the liquor with the same trembling hand which
+Morton had before remarked. On leaving the house, they continued their
+walk downward till they reached the Battery. And as they entered the
+shaded walks of that promenade, the moon was shining on the trees, and
+on the quiet waters of the adjacent bay.</p>
+
+<p>"You must think very strangely of me," said Buckland, at length
+breaking his long silence; "in fact, I scarcely know myself. I am a
+changed man,&mdash;a lost and broken man, body and soul,&mdash;a sea-weed
+drifting helplessly on the water."</p>
+
+<p>"You take too dark a view," said Morton, greatly moved; "there is good
+hope for you yet, if you will not fling it away."</p>
+
+<p>Buckland shook his head. "I wish I had been born such a man as Rosny.
+He is a practical man of the world, always in pursuit of something,
+with nothing to excite or trouble him but the success or failure of
+his schemes. He cannot understand my feelings. Yes, I wish to Heaven I
+had been born a practical, hard-headed man,&mdash;such, for instance, as
+your cool, common sense Yankees. What do they know or care for the
+troubles that are wearing me away by inches?"</p>
+
+<p>"Buckland," said Morton, "your nerves are very much weakened and
+disordered, and particular troubles weigh upon and engross you, as
+they could not if you were well. What you most need is a good
+physician."</p>
+
+<p>"'Could he minister to a mind diseased?' Come, sit down here&mdash;on this
+bench. Perhaps you have never felt&mdash;I hope you have never had occasion
+to feel&mdash;impelled to relieve some torment pressing on your mind, by
+telling it to a friend. Genuine friends are rare. When one meets them,
+he knows them by instinct. I need not fear you; you will not laugh at
+me to yourself, and tell me, as some others do, that a man of force
+and energy would fling off an affair like mine, and not suffer it to
+weigh upon him like a nightmare."</p>
+
+<p>"When you have recovered your health, perhaps I may tell you so; but
+not till then."</p>
+
+<p>"I am like the Ancient Mariner," continued Buckland, with a faint
+smile; "when I find the man who must hear my story, I know him the
+moment I see his face. Your good sense will tell you that I have been
+a knave and a fool; but your good heart will prevent your showing me
+that you think so."</p>
+
+<p>Morton looked with deep compassion on his old comrade, and wondered
+what follies or misfortunes could have sunk his former gallant spirit
+so far. In his weakened and depressed condition, Buckland seemed to
+lean for support on his friend's firmer and better governed nature,
+and to draw strength from the contact.</p>
+
+<p>"After all," he said in a livelier tone, "what right have I to bore
+you with this story of mine?"</p>
+
+<p>"Any thing that you are willing to tell," answered Morton, "I shall be
+glad to hear."</p>
+<br>
+<br><a name="chap52"></a>
+<br>
+<br>
+<h3>CHAPTER LII.</h3>
+<table align="center" summary="quote44">
+	<tr><td><small>On me laisse tout croire; on fait gloire de tout;<br>
+	Et cependant mon coeur est encore assez lâche<br>
+	Pour ne pouvoir briser la chaîne qui l'attache.&mdash;<i>Le Misanthrope</i>.</small></td></tr>
+</table>
+<br>
+<br>
+<p>"I had an old friend," Buckland began, with some glimmering of his
+former vivacity,&mdash;"De Ruyter,&mdash;I don't think you ever knew him. He was
+the representative of a family great in its day and generation, but
+broken in fortune, and without means to support its pretensions. This
+did not at all tend to diminish their pride,&mdash;precisely of that kind
+which goeth before destruction. De Ruyter was a good fellow, however,
+and, if he had had twenty thousand a year, he would have spent it all.
+One summer, four years ago, he went with his child&mdash;his wife had died
+the year before&mdash;and his two sisters to spend a few weeks at a quiet
+little watering-place on the Jersey shore, frequented by people of
+good standing, but not fashionably inclined. De Ruyter praised the
+sporting in the neighborhood, and persuaded me to go with him.</p>
+
+<p>"His sisters were very agreeable women,&mdash;cultivated and lively, but
+proud as Lucifer, and desperately exclusive. A <i>nouveau riche</i> was, in
+their eyes, equivalent to every thing that is odious and detestable;
+and to call a man a <i>parvenu</i> was to steep him in infamy forever. The
+men at the house were, for the most part, of no great account&mdash;chiefly
+old bachelors, or sober family men run to seed, with a number of
+awkward young boobies not yet in bloom. The two ladies liked the
+company of a lazy fellow like me, a butterfly of society, with the
+poets, at least the sentimental ones, on my tongue's end, and the
+latest advices from the fashionable world. I staid there a week, and
+when that was over they persuaded me to stay another.</p>
+
+<p>"On the day after, there was a fresh arrival,&mdash;a gentleman from
+Philadelphia, with his sister and his daughter. He only remained for
+the night, and went away in the morning, leaving the ladies behind.
+The sister was a starched old person,&mdash;a sort of purblind duenna, with
+grizzled hair, gold spectacles, and cap. The daughter I need not
+describe, for you saw her half an hour ago.</p>
+
+<p>"Her family was good enough; her father a lawyer in Philadelphia. She
+was well educated&mdash;played admirably, and spoke excellent French and
+Italian. How much or how little she had frequented cultivated society,
+I do not know,&mdash;her own assertions went for nothing; but she had the
+utmost ease and grace of manner, and an invincible self-possession.
+Her ruling passion was a compound of vanity and pride, an insatiable
+craving for admiration and power. Whatever associates she happened to
+be among, nothing satisfied her but to be the cynosure of all eyes,
+the centre of all influence. I have known women enough,&mdash;women of all
+kinds, good, bad, and indifferent; but such a one as she I never met
+but once. I shall not soon forget the evening when I first saw her,
+seated opposite me at the tea table. She was a small, light
+figure,&mdash;as you saw her just now,&mdash;the features, perhaps, a trifle too
+large. I never recall her, as she appeared at that time, without
+thinking of Byron's description of one of his mischief-making
+heroines:&mdash;</p>
+
+<table align="center" summary="quote45">
+	<tr><td><small>"'Her form had all the softness of her sex,<br>
+	&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Her features all the sweetness of the devil,<br>
+	When he put on the cherub to perplex<br>
+	&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Eve, and paved&mdash;God knows how&mdash;the road to evil.'</small></td></tr>
+</table>
+
+<p>"She was utterly unscrupulous. The depth of her artifice was
+unfathomable. She soon became the moving spirit of that little cockney
+watering-place&mdash;some admiring her, some hating her, some desperately
+smitten with her. I can see through her manoeuvres now, but then I was
+blind as a mole. She understood every body about her, and held out to
+each the kind of bait which was most likely to attract him. There was
+a sort of <i>dilettante</i> there whose heart she won by talking to him of
+the Italian poets, which, by the way, she really loved, for there was
+a dash of genius in her. She aimed to impress each one with the idea
+that in her heart she liked him better than any one else; and it was
+her game to appear on all occasions perfectly impulsive and
+spontaneous, while, in fact, every look, word, or act of hers had an
+object in it. In short, she was an accomplished actress; and, had her
+figure been more commanding, she might have rivalled Rachel on the
+stage. No two people were exactly agreed in opinion concerning her;
+but all&mdash;I mean all the men&mdash;thought her excessively interesting; and
+I remember that two young collegians had nearly fought a duel about
+her, each thinking that she was in love with him. Nothing delighted
+her more than to become the occasion of the jealousy of married women
+towards their husbands,&mdash;nothing, that is, except the still greater
+delight of fascinating a certain young New Yorker who had come to the
+house on a visit to his betrothed.</p>
+
+<p>"For some time every one supposed her to be unmarried. She did her
+best, indeed, to encourage the idea, since she thus gained to herself
+more notice and more marked attentions. At length, to the astonishment
+of every body, it came out that she had been, for more than a year,
+married to a cousin of her own, a weak and imbecile youngster, as I
+afterwards learned, who was then absent on an East India voyage, and
+who, happily for himself, has since died.</p>
+
+<p>"I said that all the men in the house were interested in her; but you
+should have seen the commotion she raised among the women! There were
+three or four simple girls about her who admired her, and were her
+devoted instruments; but with the rest she was at sword's point. There
+were a thousand ways in which they and she could come into collision;
+and, of course, they soon found her out, while the men remained in the
+dark. If they were handsome and attractive, she hated them; and if
+they would not conform to her will, she could never forgive it. The
+disputes, the jars, the jealousies, the backbitings, the tricks and
+stratagems of female warfare that I have seen in that house, and all
+of her raising! She was a dangerous enemy. Her tongue could sting like
+a wasp; and all the while she would smile on her victim as if she were
+reporting some agreeable compliment. She had a satanic dexterity in
+dealing out her stabs, always choosing the time, place, and company,
+where they would tell with the sharpest effect.</p>
+
+<p>"With all her insincerity, there was still a tincture of reality in
+her. Her passions and emotions were strong; and she was so addicted to
+falsehood, that I am confident she did not always know whether the
+feeling she expressed were real or pretended.</p>
+
+<p>"The grace and apparent <i>abandon</i> of her manner, her beauty, her wit,
+her singular power of influencing the will of others, and the dash of
+poetry, which, strange as you may think it, still pervaded her, made
+her altogether a very perilous acquaintance. I, certainly, have cause
+to say so. I lingered a week, a fortnight, a month, and still could
+not find resolution to go. I had an air, a name in society, and the
+reputation of being dangerous. She thought me worth angling for, put
+forth all her arts, and caught me.</p>
+
+<p>"I have read an Indian legend of a fisherman who catches a fish and
+drags him to the surface, but in the midst of his triumph, the fish
+swallows him, canoe and all. The angler, however, kills him by
+striking at his heart with his flinty war club, and then makes his
+escape by tearing a way through his vitals. The case of the fish is
+precisely analogous to mine. She caught me, as I said before; but I
+caught her in turn. She fell in love with me, wildly and desperately.
+Her passions were as fierce and as transient as a tropical hurricane.
+She had no scruples; and I had not as many as I should have had. One
+evening we were gone, and two days after we were out of sight of land
+on board one of the Cunard steamers.</p>
+
+<p>"For the next two months, I was in paradise. Then came a purgatory, or
+something worse. Her passion for me subsided as quickly as it had
+arisen. She was herself again. Her vanity and artifice, her insatiable
+love of intrigue and adventure, returned with double force. I wore
+myself out with watching, vexation, and anxiety. She tried every means
+to attract attention and draw admirers, and every where she succeeded.
+I remember that one night at Naples she insisted on going with me to
+the theatre of San Carlo, in the dress of a young man, and wearing a
+moustache. The disguise was detected, as she meant it should be, and
+eyes centred upon her from all the boxes. I tried to travel with her
+through remote and unfrequented countries, such as the interior of
+Sicily; but it was all in vain. There was no resisting her fiery will,
+and I was compelled to go wherever she wished.</p>
+
+<p>"One afternoon, at Messina, at the <i>table d'hôte</i>, we met a lively
+young Spanish nobleman. She caught his eye; I saw them exchange
+glances. In spite of all my precautions, messages, billets, and
+momentary interviews passed between them. I challenged the Spaniard,
+gave him a severe flesh wound, and thought I had taught him a lesson.
+Not at all. On the next day, coming to my lodgings, I found her gone,
+no one could tell whither. I was desperate, and could have done any
+thing; but there was nothing to be done. I could not find her, and if
+I had it would have availed me nothing.</p>
+
+<p>"I returned to America, wrought up to the verge of a nervous fever;
+and, by mingling in amusements of every kind, tried to forget her. In
+six or eight months I had partially succeeded. My health was not good,
+and I had made a journey of a few weeks to the west; when, on
+returning,&mdash;it was a sultry July afternoon,&mdash;I remember it as if it
+were yesterday,&mdash;sitting in the reading room window of the New York
+Hotel, I saw her passing down Broadway in an open carriage; and, with
+the sight, my passion awoke again at fever heat. She had left the
+Spaniard, and come to America with a New York gentleman, who had lived
+for some time in Paris. I had an interview with her, and she promised
+to join me again; but she broke her word. She saw at once what a power
+she still held over me; and she has used it most mercilessly ever
+since. She practises all her arts on me, as if I were a new lover,
+whom she wished to insnare. Sometimes she flatters me; sometimes she
+repels me; now and then she allows me stolen interviews, or long walks
+or rides with her. She plays me as an angler plays a salmon that he
+has hooked, till he brings him gasping to his death. I have plunged
+into dissipations of all kinds, to drown the memory of her. It is all
+useless. She knows the torments I am suffering, and she rejoices in
+them. Perhaps she remembers that it was I who made her what she is,
+and takes this for her revenge. But, pshaw!&mdash;if I had not eloped with
+her, some one else would have done so soon; and that she perfectly
+well knows. It is her vanity&mdash;nothing but her vanity: she delights to
+hold me in bondage; she knows that I am her slave, and she glories in
+it."</p>
+
+<p>"But why, in Heaven's name," demanded Morton, "do you not break away
+from this miserable fascination?"</p>
+
+<p>"There it is!" Buckland answered; "I only wish that I had the power. I
+have resolved twenty times to leave New York, and my resolution has
+failed me as often."</p>
+
+<p>"Who takes charge of her now?"</p>
+
+<p>"Colonel &mdash;&mdash;. He seems as crazy after her as I was."</p>
+
+<p>"I can hardly comprehend," pursued Morton, "how, understanding her
+character as you do, you can still remain so infatuated with her."</p>
+
+<p>"Neither can I comprehend it. I can only feel it. Strange&mdash;is it
+not?&mdash;that I, who used to be regarded as a mere flirt; who, as a lady
+acquaintance once told me, had a great deal too much sentiment, but no
+heart at all; I, who, in my time, have written love verses to twenty
+different ladies,&mdash;should be so enchained at last by this black-eyed
+witch!"</p>
+
+<p>"Very strange."</p>
+
+<p>"And now what would you recommend? what advice do you give me? You see
+in what a predicament I stand. What ought I to do?"</p>
+
+<p>"With your broken health and weakened nerves," said Morton, "it is
+useless for you to attempt contending against this fancy that has
+taken possession of you. You must run away from it. Take a long
+voyage; the longer the better. I will go with you to engage your
+passage to-morrow."</p>
+
+<p>Buckland hesitated at first, slowly shaking his head; but in a moment
+he said, with some animation, "Yes, I will go, on one condition; you
+must promise to go with me."</p>
+
+<p>The will, the motive power,&mdash;never very strong in him,&mdash;was now
+completely relaxed. He was unfitted for action of any kind, and was,
+as he himself said, no better than a sea weed drifting on the water.
+Morton walked the streets with him for some hours. He seemed to cling
+to his companion, like an ivy to the supporting trunk, and was
+evidently reluctant to resign his company. At length, Morton, who was
+exhausted with the excitements of the day, pleaded fatigue, and bade
+him good night. He turned again, however, and, by the blaze of the gas
+lamps, followed with his eye Buckland's slowly receding figure.</p>
+
+<p>"A few hours ago," he said to himself, "I thought myself unhappy; but
+what is my suffering compared to his? I am not, thank God, the builder
+of my own misfortunes, nor pursued with the reflection that they are a
+just retribution for my own misdeeds. With health, liberty,
+self-respect, and a good conscience, what man has a right to call
+himself miserable?"</p>
+<br>
+<br><a name="chap53"></a>
+<br>
+<br>
+<h3>CHAPTER LIII.</h3>
+
+<center><small>The paths of glory lead but to the
+grave.&mdash;<i>Gray's Elegy</i>.</small></center>
+<br>
+<br>
+<p>Mr. Shingles had an acquaintance among the gentlemen of the press;
+and, chancing to meet his quill-driving friend, he told him Morton's
+story. It appeared, accordingly, beautifully embellished, in one of
+the evening papers, and was copied, the next morning, into several
+others. Consequently, Morton had scarcely risen from breakfast, when
+he was visited by half a dozen persons, editors and others, eager to
+hear his adventures, for the gratification of their own curiosity, or
+that of the public. As he detested such visitations, and as several of
+his callers, from their countenances alone, inspired him with an
+earnest longing to kick them down stairs, he hastened to avoid the
+nuisance by escaping into the street. Since the tidings he had heard
+from Shingles, his native town had lost all attraction for him; in
+fact he shrank from going thither, and willingly lingered another day
+in New York.</p>
+
+<p>Going to Buckland's lodgings, he renewed his persuasions of the
+evening before, and strongly urged him to leave New York. Buckland
+assented to every thing he said; and, hearing of a ship about to sail
+for the East Indies, Morton went with his friend to the merchant to
+whom she belonged, and induced him to engage a passage in her.</p>
+
+<p>Returning to his hotel at about two o'clock, a waiter brought him a
+card, telling him that a boy had just left it for him. It was Rosny's;
+and on it were scrawled with a pencil the following concise and
+characteristic words:&mdash;</p>
+
+<blockquote>Dear M.: Uncle Sam in a deuse of a hurry. Ordered to the island this
+afternoon. Off for Mexico to-morrow. Sorry not to see you, but haven't
+a minute to spare. Good luck.&mdash;<i>Au revoir.</i><br><br>
+
+<div align="right">Yours till doomsday,&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<br>
+R<small>OSNY</small>.&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;</div></blockquote>
+
+<p>Morton went to the recruiting office where he had been with Rosny on
+the day before, learned the time and place of the embarkation, was on
+the spot at the hour named, and in a few minutes saw Rosny striding
+down the wharf in most unmilitary haste, his hair fluttering in the
+wind. He was so engrossed in making certain arrangements, and issuing
+his mandates to the soldiers who were to row him and some other
+officers to Governor's Island, that he did not observe Morton, who
+stood quietly leaning against a post.</p>
+
+<p>"Hallo, Dick," said the latter at length. "Haven't you eyes to see
+your friends?"</p>
+
+<p>Rosny turned, in great surprise, and greeted him most emphatically.</p>
+
+<p>"Come, Morton," he said, as he was stepping into the boat, "you'll
+change your mind after all,&mdash;won't you?&mdash;and meet me at Vera Cruz."</p>
+
+<p>"I'll sit at home, and read your exploits in the papers," replied
+Morton.</p>
+
+<p>"Well; a wilful man must have his way. Adieu."</p>
+
+<p>"Good by. May you live to be a general, or any thing else you like,
+short of the presidency."</p>
+
+<p>"Why, shouldn't I make a good president?"</p>
+
+<p>"No."</p>
+
+<p>"What? too progressive,&mdash;too wide awake,&mdash;too enlightened, ey?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, and too pugnacious."</p>
+
+<p>"There you are again, Boston all over. I'll be president yet, if only
+to spite the Bostonites. You shall write my life, and I'll give you an
+office for it. Farewell."</p>
+
+<p>Morton watched the receding boat till it was almost out of sight,
+waved his hat to Rosny, who waved his own in return, and walked back
+to the hotel, wondering what would be the issue of his old classmate's
+ambitious schemes.</p>
+
+<p>How, among a throng of brave men, Rosny gained a name for determined
+daring;&mdash;how, on every occasion that offered, he displayed the fire of
+the Frenchman, and the stubborn mettle of the Saxon, whose blood
+mingled in his veins;&mdash;how, though sick and wounded, he dragged
+himself from the hospital at Puebla, and, mounting his horse, pushed
+forward with the advancing columns;&mdash;how gallantly, under the
+murdering storm of musketry and grape, he led his intrepid blackguards
+up the rocks of Chapultepec;&mdash;how, while shouting among the foremost,
+he climbed the hostile rampart, a bullet plunged into his brain, and
+dashed him, quivering and dead, to the foot of the scaling
+ladders;&mdash;all this, and more likewise, is it not written in the New
+York Herald?</p>
+
+<p>About a year after Rosny's departure, Morton chanced to be again in
+New York, when, in going out one morning, he beheld all the symptoms
+of some impending solemnity. Flags, festooned with crape, were strung
+across Broadway from building to building. The shops were half closed,
+and the streets were fast filling with people. Patriot citizens,
+exchanging the yardstick for the sword, strode the sidewalk in
+gorgeous panoply; and now and then a mounted warrior cantered along
+the pavement, struggling to keep his balance on his fiery coach horse.
+In an hour or two more, the pageant was in full operation. Looking
+from his hotel window Morton beheld a radiant river of shining
+bayonets, many colored plumes, and martial millinery, solemnly flowing
+down the middle of Broadway, to strange and lugubrious music, between
+melancholy shores of black broadcloth and beaver hats. At length a
+train of hearses appeared slowly advancing to the wailing music of the
+bands, encircled by the harmless sabres of the civic warriors, playing
+soldier, around the remains of those who had borne the part in tragic
+earnest. Over every hearse the national flag was drooping, and upon
+each was inscribed the name of its unconscious tenant. They were
+officers slain in battle during the last Mexican campaign. Four of the
+hearses passed. Morton read the names. They were all unknown to him;
+but as the fifth approached, he looked, started, and looked again; for
+wrought in white upon the sable drapery he saw, distinct and clear,
+the name of Rosny. Descending to the street, he joined the procession;
+he even underwent the funeral oration at the City Hall; and when it
+was over, shouldering through the crowd, he stood by the side of all
+that remained of his old classmate. Rosny's cap, and the sword he had
+used so well, lay on the lid of the coffin; and Morton turned away,
+with eyes not quite dry, as he recalled his many genial traits and his
+undaunted spirit.</p>
+
+<p>To resume. On returning to his hotel after taking leave of Rosny,
+Morton found a note awaiting him, directed in a female hand. He opened
+it, and read the signature,&mdash;Ellen Ashland,&mdash;the name of a lady whom
+he had well known in Boston, and who, just before he had sailed for
+Europe, had been married to an eminent lawyer of his acquaintance. She
+wrote that she had seen an account of his escape from prison, and
+arrival in New York, in the morning paper,&mdash;expressed an earnest wish
+to see him, and invited him to visit her at the New York Hotel, where
+she was spending a few days with her husband.</p>
+
+<p>As the time named was almost come, Morton called a coach, and drove up
+town. His friend received him with a peculiar warmth and earnestness
+of manner. Morton had known her as a person of marked character and
+strong but strictly governed emotions, not always permitting the
+expression of a feeling to keep pace with the feeling itself. He
+greatly liked and esteemed her, and her presence disarmed him, in a
+great degree, of his usual reserve.</p>
+
+<p>Her husband had been absent all day in Brooklyn, and would not return
+till late in the evening.</p>
+
+<p>"It is five years since I have spoken to a lady," said Morton, as he
+seated himself at the tea table.</p>
+
+<p>As he was not scrupulous to wear a mask before her, she quickly
+discovered the depressed condition of his mind; and on her charging
+him with being very much out of spirits, he admitted that he was so.</p>
+
+<p>"One would think," she observed, "that after the sufferings that you
+have passed, you would have come home in a different mood of mind."</p>
+
+<p>"And so I did," said Morton.</p>
+
+<p>"You seem in no great haste to see your friends and relations in
+Boston."</p>
+
+<p>"I have no near relations there."</p>
+
+<p>"But you have friends."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes; I have heard from them. I met an acquaintance yesterday."</p>
+
+<p>"You have heard, then&mdash;&mdash;" And she bent her eyes upon his face, with a
+look searching but full of kindness, as if studying his thoughts.</p>
+
+<p>"Five years," she continued, "is a long time. Great changes may have
+taken place."</p>
+
+<p>"Changes <i>have</i> taken place," said Morton.</p>
+
+<p>"You have lost none of your intimate friends, as far as I know them;
+but some have left Boston, and some are married."</p>
+
+<p>Morton did not look up; but an undefined expression passed across his
+face, like the shadow of a black cloud. When, a moment after, he
+raised his eyes, he saw those of Mrs. Ashland fixed upon him with the
+same earnest gaze as before. Such scrutiny from another would have
+been intolerable to him; but in her it gave him no uneasiness.</p>
+
+<p>A servant entering changed for a time the character of their
+conversation. A quarter of an hour afterwards they were again alone,
+and Morton was seated near the window, when his friend approached him,
+her features kindling with a look of ill-suppressed feeling, laid her
+hand on his shoulder, and said, "Vassall,"&mdash;she had always before
+addressed him as Mr. Morton,&mdash;"my heart bleeds for you&mdash;for you and
+for Edith Leslie."</p>
+
+<p>Morton looked up till he met her eyes. The surprise, the sudden
+consciousness that she was privy to his grief, the warm and heartfelt
+woman's sympathy that he read in every line of her face, were too much
+for his manhood, and he burst into tears.</p>
+<br>
+<br><a name="chap54"></a>
+<br>
+<br>
+<h3>CHAPTER LIV.</h3>
+<table align="center" summary="quote46">
+	<tr><td><small>Elle n'est point parjure, elle n'est point légère;<br>
+	Son devoir m'a trahi, mon malheur, et son père.&mdash;<i>Polyeucte</i>.</small></td></tr>
+</table>
+<br>
+<br>
+<p>Morton's evening with Mrs. Ashland, and the story which she told him,
+removed at least one pain from his breast. He learned that Edith
+Leslie was not in fault; and that, great as his misfortune might be,
+his idol was not turned to clay.</p>
+
+<p>His friend's narrative, however, was very defective. She could give
+results merely, not knowing, or suspecting, the hidden springs which
+produced them; and Morton was left to form his own conclusions. The
+following is a more explicit statement.</p>
+
+<p>Morton embarked for Europe, and the return steamer brought, in due
+course, a letter to Edith Leslie. With the next steamer came another;
+with the next, a third; all as absurd epistles as the most exacting
+mistress could desire. The succeeding mail was silent. She wondered
+and hoped; but when the next arrived, and brought no tidings, her
+heart began to fail. The winter wore away, and still no letter came.
+She was living, at that time, with her father, at his country seat.
+Leslie's health was declining, and when Vinal returned from his short
+European tour, he consigned to his hands the care of his affairs, and
+spent the greater part of his time at Matherton; for he had a strong
+love for the home of his boyhood.</p>
+
+<p>Spring returned, and blossomed into summer; but nothing was heard of
+Morton. The season ripened; the fringed gentian sprang in the meadow,
+and the aster by the roadside; but no word came. In the forests, the
+October frosts began their gorgeous work. The ash put on its purple;
+the oak its varied coloring; the sumach its blood-red glare; and at
+evening, the sun went down in cold, stern splendors behind the painted
+mountains. Dry leaves whirled upon the ground; chill clouds mustered
+in the sky; and flakes of snow, the harbingers of storm, were blown
+along the frozen road. Then winter sank upon the landscape, and deeper
+winter on the heart of the unhappy girl.</p>
+
+<p>Time passed on, and the hope of Morton's return grew fainter. Leslie,
+seeing his daughter's deep distress, made a journey to Europe; but his
+search was fruitless. Meredith, who spent a year on the continent,
+pursued the same inquiries, but could trace his friend no farther than
+the town of Neuburg, in Bavaria. Morton, before his departure, had
+made his will, and in the ardor of his attachment, had left the bulk
+of his property to his betrothed, distributing a comparatively small
+residue among a number of poor relations, none of whom had either the
+means or the worldly knowledge to take measures for ascertaining his
+fate.</p>
+
+<p>Meanwhile, Leslie had fallen into a decline; and there was no hope
+that his life could be protracted beyond a year or two. He became more
+than ever dependent upon Vinal, who now assumed nearly the whole
+charge of his affairs, acquitting himself with great ability, and, in
+this instance, with entire faithfulness. A rickety manufacturing
+concern, which for years had been a drain upon Leslie's purse, began,
+under Vinal's control, to yield a good profit; and the former saw all
+his resources quickened and replenished, as if by an infusion of new
+life.</p>
+
+<p>Vinal was mounting very high in the general esteem. His polished
+address,&mdash;a little too precise, however,&mdash;his acknowledged
+scholarship, his character for honor and integrity, and his energy and
+capacity for business, commended him to all classes. He passed current
+alike in ball rooms and on change. Men of the world never doubted him;
+and, after all, this confidence was not quite groundless, for Vinal,
+who had a sage eye to his own interest, had embraced the maxim that,
+in matters of business, a course of absolute integrity is, under all
+ordinary circumstances, the only wise policy.</p>
+
+<p>As, in process of time, the conviction of Morton's death was
+confirmed, Leslie's old wish for a union between his daughter and
+Vinal began again to grow strong within him. Some two years after her
+lover's disappearance, he ventured to speak to her of this favorite
+plan; but it was long before he dared allude to it again. Meanwhile,
+Vinal's attentions had been assiduous and constant, yet so tempered as
+to convey the idea that he despaired of any other reward than the
+continuance of her friendship. At length, however, certain of her
+father's countenance, and assuming Morton's death as now beyond a
+doubt, he began, with all possible delicacy and caution, to renew his
+former addresses. He was not long in discovering that his cause was
+quite hopeless, unless he could produce some positive proof that
+Morton was no longer alive.</p>
+
+<p>During the third summer of the latter's absence, Vinal went, for two
+or three months, to Europe, the state of his health being the alleged
+motive. While in Paris, he tried to find his former confederate,
+Speyer, but could only learn that he was no longer in that city. On
+returning to America, he told Leslie that he had inquired after
+Morton, on all sides, without the least success, but had taken
+measures which, he thought it not impossible, might in time lead to
+some discovery. In various parts of Germany, there was, as he
+affirmed, a class of travelling merchants and commercial agents, who,
+from the nature of their avocations, had every facility for making
+inquiries within the districts which they frequented. He had taken
+pains, he said, to become acquainted with a large number of these men,
+to whom he had stated the case of Morton's disappearance, and promised
+a reward for any information concerning him.</p>
+
+<p>Some time after this, he told Leslie that he had had word from one of
+these correspondents. The latter, he affirmed, had heard that a young
+man, said to be an Englishman, had died very suddenly three or four
+years before, in an unfrequented part of Bohemia. The German declared
+himself ready, if desired, to go to the district in question, and
+inquire into the matter. Leslie was anxious that the inquiry should be
+made; upon which Vinal, though seeming not at all sanguine as to any
+result, gave him the name of his imaginary correspondent, and advised
+that he should write to him. Leslie, however, as Vinal had foreseen,
+desired that the latter should carry on the correspondence. He
+accordingly wrote a letter, directed to Jacob Hatz. This he showed to
+Leslie, and mailed it in his presence, consigning it to a long repose
+in some continental dead letter office. At the same time, he secretly
+despatched another letter, directed to Henry Speyer; for he had
+meanwhile discovered the address of this serviceable person. This
+letter was as follows:&mdash;</p>
+
+<blockquote>Dear Sir: You cannot have forgotten some interviews and correspondence
+which formerly passed between us concerning a person who soon after
+was unfortunate enough to fall under the notice of the Austrian
+police. Nothing has since been heard of him, and it is commonly
+believed here that he is dead. It is my desire to have this opinion
+confirmed; and having found you honorable and efficient on another
+occasion, I cannot doubt that I shall find you so in this. May I beg
+your services in the following particulars?</blockquote>
+
+<blockquote>1st. To take an imaginary journey into Bohemia, Moravia, or parts
+adjacent.</blockquote>
+
+<blockquote>2d. To discover that, three years or more ago, a young man, an
+American, named &mdash;&mdash; &mdash;&mdash;, travelling alone on horseback in an
+unfrequented part of the country, (this was his habit,) was attacked
+by cholera, or any other violent disease prevalent thereabouts, which
+carried him off in less than three days.</blockquote>
+
+<blockquote>3d. That he died at a small village inn; that a Lutheran clergyman
+took charge of his effects, and wrote to his friends; but that the
+letter may have miscarried, or the clergyman may have played false,
+and kept the windfall that had come to him.</blockquote>
+
+<blockquote>4th. That two years ago, the clergyman removed into Hungary, but that
+the innkeeper, a stupid, beetle-headed fellow, showed you a headstone
+in the Protestant burial ground, with &mdash;&mdash;'s name upon it. The
+innkeeper may describe him as a young man of twenty-four, or less, but
+must not remember too much, as this might attract further inquiry.</blockquote>
+
+<blockquote>This is the outline, and will serve to indicate the kind of thing
+required. Vary it, in respect to details, as your judgment and your
+knowledge of the customs of the country may suggest. Names are
+omitted. Please observe the ciphers which stand in their places. You
+will soon receive, through another channel, means to supply the
+deficiency, if, indeed, your memory will not do so unaided.</blockquote>
+
+<blockquote>Sign your letter <i>Jacob Hatz</i>. There is another point, which I beg you
+to observe particularly. Mention that on the gravestone, besides the
+name, was carved a figure, like an urn or cup, with a large ball above
+it. Date of death, also;&mdash;December 7, 1841.</blockquote>
+
+<blockquote>I herewith enclose five hundred francs. On receiving your reply, <i>with
+this letter enclosed</i>, I shall immediately send you five hundred more.
+If I were not a poor man, and expecting always to be so, I could
+remunerate your services better.</blockquote>
+
+<blockquote>With the fullest reliance on your honor and discretion, I remain,</blockquote>
+
+<blockquote><div align="right">Yours, truly, &mdash;&mdash;
+&mdash;&mdash;.&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;</div></blockquote>
+
+<blockquote>P. S. For your better direction, I subjoin a formula to be followed in
+the beginning of your letter. You can word the rest in your own way.
+Write in French.</blockquote>
+
+<p>Vinal, if he had dared, would gladly have forged such a letter as he
+required, instead of trusting to another person; but art or nature had
+not gifted him with the needful skill; and he was anxious, moreover,
+to have the foreign postmarks stamped upon it in form.</p>
+
+<p>In due time, Speyer's answer came. He had neglected to return Vinal's
+letter, as desired; but in other respects, his performance gave his
+employer ample satisfaction. The latter showed it to Leslie, who
+seemed convinced by it; while his daughter, on reading it, abandoned
+at once the hope to which she had hitherto clung, that Morton might
+still be living.</p>
+
+<p>"I remember this Hatz very well," said Vinal; "he seemed to be a
+plain, honest sort of man,&mdash;an agent, I believe, of a merchant in
+Strasburg. And yet the reward I promised might have been too great a
+temptation."</p>
+
+<p>"Then," said Leslie, "you would not receive this as a proof of Mr.
+Morton's death?"</p>
+
+<p>"No, I would not: that is, I should not but for one thing;&mdash;it is so
+very much like Vassall Morton to be travelling alone, on horseback, in
+an out-of-the-way part of the country."</p>
+
+<p>"Did you observe," pursued Leslie, "what he says of figures of an urn
+and ball cut on the gravestone?"</p>
+
+<p>"I saw it, but did not observe it particularly."</p>
+
+<p>Leslie gave him the letter, and Vinal read the part referred to.</p>
+
+<p>"What can it mean?" asked Leslie.</p>
+
+<p>"I can't conceive," replied Vinal.</p>
+
+<p>"It is the vase and sun," said Edith Leslie; "the device of his
+mother's family, the Vassalls."</p>
+
+<p>"Ah," exclaimed Vinal, looking up with a face of mournful interest,
+"you must be right; the same figures are carved on the tomb of the
+Vassalls, in the old churchyard at Cambridge."</p>
+
+<p>"They were cut," pursued Miss Leslie, "on a garnet ring, which he
+always used as a seal."</p>
+
+<p>"I remember his showing me that ring," said her father, "and telling
+me that it was older than the voyage of the Mayflower. It was a kind
+of heirloom, which his mother had left him."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," suggested the sympathizing Vinal, who had long known that
+Morton used no other seal than this ring; "and the device on it was
+supposed to be his armorial bearing, and so cut on the gravestone, as
+it is on the Vassall tomb at Cambridge."</p>
+
+<p>All doubt of Morton's death was now dispelled. His betrothed stored
+his image in her thoughts, as that of one lost for this world; and
+Vinal saw the field clear before him. Leslie was failing fast; and, as
+his life ebbed, his wish for his daughter's marriage with Vinal grew
+and strengthened. He urged her, daily, to listen to his suit;
+extolling his favorite's talents, energy, acquirements, and
+unimpeachable character&mdash;praises which she believed to be wholly just.
+Vinal, on his part, seconded these parental efforts with most earnest,
+beseeching, not to say abject importunities. The compassion which he
+contrived to excite, an idea of duty, and an urgent wish to gratify
+her dying father, at length prevailed with her; and laying before
+Vinal the true state of her feelings, she consented, on such terms, to
+accept his suit.</p>
+
+<p>Vinal had gained his point; but he had scarcely done so, when his
+spirits were dashed by an untoward incident, the nature of which may
+be guessed hereafter. And, as it never rains but it pours, this
+reverse of luck was soon followed by a second, of another kind.</p>
+
+<p>One afternoon, returning from his customary constitutional ride, he
+was in the act of turning the upper corner of a street which slopes
+downward somewhat steeply till it meets a main thoroughfare of the
+town. A small ragamuffin boy was standing on the curbstone, with a
+blade of grass between his thumbs, through which he blew with might
+and main, evidently to startle Vinal's horse, whose head was within a
+yard of him. He succeeded to his complete satisfaction. Vinal switched
+at the youngster with his whip; but this only made matters worse. The
+horse galloped down the street at a rate which his rider's weak arm
+could not check; and, at the corner of the main street, wheeling
+suddenly to the left, he slipped on the wet pavement, and fell with a
+crash on his side. Horse and man lay motionless, till a city teamster,
+running up, raised the former by the bridle. Two or three passers by
+came to Vinal's aid; but as they lifted him, he set his teeth with
+pain. The horse had fallen on his left leg, breaking it above the
+knee.</p>
+
+<p>Vinal was timid to excess in time of danger; but he could bear pain
+with the firmness of a stoic. While he felt himself run away with, and
+at the moment of his fall, he had been greatly confused. He no sooner
+saw that the worst was over, than he rallied his faculties, and
+asserted his usual self-mastery. His face was fast growing pale with
+violence of pain; but he was quite himself again.</p>
+
+<p>A crowd gathered about him, as he lay leaning on the steps of the
+neighboring church.</p>
+
+<p>"Shall we carry you to the &mdash;&mdash; Hotel?" asked a gentleman.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, if you please. But first be kind enough to bring a shutter. They
+will give you one at the school round the corner. When a man is
+killed, drunk, or maimed, there is nothing like a shutter. How do you
+do, Edwards?"&mdash;to a man whom he recognized in the crowd.</p>
+
+<p>"I hope you are not badly hurt."</p>
+
+<p>"My leg is broken."</p>
+
+<p>"Are you in great pain?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes; a bad business, I think. Will you oblige me by seeing that my
+horse is led to the stable in &mdash;&mdash; Street?"</p>
+
+<p>The shutter was soon brought.</p>
+
+<p>"Thank you. Lift me very gently."</p>
+
+<p>As they moved him he clinched his teeth again in silent torture.</p>
+
+<p>"All right. Now one take the shutter at the head, and one at the feet.
+You'll find me a light weight."</p>
+
+<p>And thus, between two men, escorted by a procession of schoolboys just
+let loose, Vinal was carried to the hotel.</p>
+
+<p>The event justified his presage. He was forced to lie motionless for
+weeks, suffering greatly from bodily pain, and no less from certain
+anxieties which of late had harassed him. Leslie, on his part, was in
+great distress at the disaster. He felt, or fancied himself, near his
+end; and the wish next his heart was to see the marriage accomplished
+before he died. It was therefore determined that, notwithstanding the
+inauspicious plight of the bridegroom, it should take place at the
+time before fixed upon, four months after the beginning of the
+engagement.</p>
+
+<p>The ceremony was very private. None were present but two or three
+friends of Miss Leslie, the dying father, borne thither in a chair,
+the disabled bridegroom, and the pale and agitated bride; for that
+morning, standing before Morton's picture, a strange misgiving and a
+dark foreboding had fallen upon her, and the sun never shone on a
+bride more wretched. Her nearest friend, Mrs. Ashland, was at her
+side. She was the only person, besides her father and Vinal, who knew
+of her engagement to Morton, and, indeed, had been her confidante from
+first to last. Soon after Morton's disappearance, an accident had
+brought them together, reviving an old school intimacy; and Edith
+Leslie, in her suspense and misery, was but too glad to find a friend
+in whom she could trust without reserve.</p>
+
+<p>The rite was ended, and Edith Leslie was Edith Vinal. Days and weeks
+passed; Leslie slowly declined, and Vinal slowly recovered. She
+divided her time between them, passing the greater part of the day
+with the latter, and returning at evening to watch by her father's bed
+or rest within sound of his voice. At length, three weeks after her
+marriage, on a morning the horror of which remained scarred always in
+her memory, Morton's letter from Genoa was put into her hands; and the
+long-disciplined patience with which she had armed herself, the
+religion which she had called to her aid, all the guards and defences
+of her mind, were borne down, for a time, by the resistless flood of
+passion, which, like a river bursting its barriers, swept all before
+it.</p>
+<br>
+<br><a name="chap55"></a>
+<br>
+<br>
+<h3>CHAPTER LV.</h3>
+<table align="center" summary="quote47">
+	<tr><td><small>We twain have met like ships upon the sea,<br>
+	Who hold an hour's converse,&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;*&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;*&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;*<br>
+	One little hour! and then away they speed<br>
+	On lonely paths, through mist, and cloud, and foam,<br>
+	To meet no more.&mdash;<i>Alexander Smith</i>.</small></td></tr>
+</table>
+<br>
+<br>
+<p>"Good morning, Ned," said Morton to his friend Meredith. He had come
+to Boston the day before, and had already seen Meredith more than
+once.</p>
+
+<p>"Going already? Sit down, man. Why are you in such a hurry?"</p>
+
+<p>"I shall look in again before night."</p>
+
+<p>"You are not well. I never thought you could look so worn and
+haggard."</p>
+
+<p>"Try the prison of Ehrenberg for four or five years, and see how you
+will look when you get out. It's nothing, though. A little rest will
+make all right again."</p>
+
+<p>"You are not very likely to get it. You are a lion now, and people
+will not leave you alone."</p>
+
+<p>"They shall. I am not in the humor for balls and dinner parties."</p>
+
+<p>He went to the house of Mrs. Ashland, whom he had accompanied homeward
+from New York.</p>
+
+<p>"Have you the letter for me?"</p>
+
+<p>The letter was that which had come from Europe with the story of his
+death. On hearing Mrs. Ashland's account, he had at once conjectured
+that this was but another stroke of Vinal's diplomacy; but he had been
+careful not to intimate to his friend the least suspicion against the
+latter.</p>
+
+<p>The commission of obtaining from Edith the letter in question was far
+from an agreeable one; but Mrs. Ashland had accomplished it, and now
+placed the paper in Morton's hands.</p>
+
+<p>The signature was not that of Speyer; but at the first glance, Morton
+was sure that the small, neat handwriting was the same with that of
+the treacherous notes of introduction given him by Vinal at Paris. As
+he studied the letter, reading and re-reading it, his companion, who
+remembered him chiefly as a frank, good-humored young man, was
+startled at the stern and almost fierce expression which once or twice
+came over his features, and seemed to be banished by an effort. A
+vague suspicion of some mystery rose in her mind, but Morton hastened
+to divert her.</p>
+
+<p>"I hope that Edith will not refuse a visit from me."</p>
+
+<p>Here, again, Mrs. Ashland promised to mediate for him, and in the
+afternoon he received a note from her, saying that Vinal's wife would
+see him on the next morning.</p>
+
+<p>At the hour named, he rang at the door, forced his lips to inquire for
+"Mrs. Vinal," gave his name to the servant, and was shown into the
+drawing room.</p>
+
+<p>It was nearly five years since he had last seen that well-remembered
+room. Nothing was changed. It remained precisely as he had known it
+when he stood prosperously on the farther verge of that dreary chasm
+of time; and as each familiar object met his eye, such a flood of
+bitter recollection came upon him, that for a moment he bent his head
+upon his breast.</p>
+
+<p>He raised it, and started as he did so. Reflected in the mirror at the
+end of the room, as if the art of some new Cornelius had evoked it,
+stood, pale as marble, the form that had so long attended his sleeping
+and waking dreams. Morton turned quickly, and saw Edith standing
+motionless in the doorway.</p>
+
+<p>He advanced towards her, and took her hand in both his own. She raised
+her eyes to his face in silence. He tried to speak, but tried in vain.
+At length he found utterance.</p>
+
+<p>"I know it all. Ellen Ashland has told me every thing. I do not blame
+you;&mdash;no one can blame you."</p>
+
+<p>"Thank God that you think so."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, thank God; for when I thought that you had forgotten me&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Then you <i>did</i> think so?"</p>
+
+<p>"For a time; and it seemed to me as if no more constancy were left on
+earth; as if it had been sapped and undermined in its very citadel."</p>
+
+<p>"Do not believe that I forgot you for a single hour; or that I can
+ever forget you. You and I have been joined at least in an equal
+sorrow and suspense. We have walked through depths together, and drank
+the same gall and bitterness."</p>
+
+<p>"That one month&mdash;four miserable weeks&mdash;should have worked all this!
+One month sooner, and this black picture of our lives would have been
+bright again as the sunshine. I could believe that some infernal power
+had taken the reins of our fate."</p>
+
+<p>"Do not say so, nor think so. You have fronted death; you have braved
+despair; and now bear this blow victoriously as you have borne the
+rest."</p>
+
+<p>"The crowning blow is the heaviest of all."</p>
+
+<p>"Look into my heart,&mdash;if you could look into it,&mdash;and see on which of
+us it has fallen with the more sickening and withering force."</p>
+
+<p>Morton looked into her face. It was like a deep lake becalmed, into
+which strong springs are boiling up from rocks at the bottom. The
+surface is still; but looking more closely, one may discern faint
+gliding undulations and trembling lines, which betray the turmoil
+below. Morton saw them, and felt their purport.</p>
+
+<p>"I would to God," he said, "I could bear your burden for you."</p>
+
+<p>Edith buried her face, and burst into a flood of weeping.</p>
+
+<p>Grief, mixed with more ardent emotion, wrought with such violence in
+Morton's breast, that he scarcely restrained his impulse to throw
+himself at her feet. In a few moments, she raised her head.</p>
+
+<p>"Do not think from this, that I am not resigned to what has fallen on
+us. It is best. Incomprehensible as it is, it is best for us both."</p>
+
+<p>A passionate denial rose to Morton's lips; but he did not utter it.</p>
+
+<p>"I overrated my strength. I am weaker than I hoped to have found
+myself. You wish to bear my burden! You have had enough to bear of
+your own, Vassall; but with you, endurance is not the whole. You still
+have youth, health, vigor. To one of your instincts, the world has
+noble tasks enough. With a heart steeled by dangers, refined by
+sufferings, tempered in fires of anguish, what path need you fear to
+tread? Forget the past;&mdash;no, do not forget it; only forget all in it
+that may damp your courage or weaken your hand. When I knew you first,
+you were full of zeal in a worthy and generous enterprise. Cling to it
+still. Let me see the tree which I knew in its blossoming bear a full
+fruit at maturity. Let me see the ardent and earnest spirit which I
+knew in the beginning, not quelled or flagging by the way, but holding
+on its course to the end. The pure chivalry of your heart which
+constrained me to love you, the instinct which turned towards honor
+and nobleness as a tree turns its branches to the sun,&mdash;do not part
+from it; keep it unstained for my sake, and let it brighten and
+strengthen all your life."</p>
+
+<p>"If preachers could speak with your tongue," exclaimed Morton, "the
+world would forget itself and grow virtuous. The love that I have lost
+on earth I will set among the stars. It shall be my beacon till the
+day I die."</p>
+
+<p>"We are too delicate and timorous to bear a part in the active
+struggles of life; but it is a woman's office to raise and purify the
+thoughts of those who do. You, whose strong natures are formed for
+warfare, cannot be so sensitive as we are to every spot that dims the
+brightness of your armor. It is easy for me, before one whom I have
+loved as I have loved you, to hold this tone, and be borne up for a
+time above the thought of grief and renouncement. But it is a
+different task to still, through all a lifetime, the longings of a
+woman's heart, and the impatient surgings of a woman's temperament.
+This is the task assigned me, and I accept it. Life&mdash;action&mdash;are
+before you. Patience is my medicine; the slow talisman which must open
+in the end my door of promise."</p>
+
+<p>Morton pressed her hand to his lips.</p>
+
+<p>"'There is some soul of goodness in things evil.' A sorrow under
+which, feebly borne, the mind would wither to the earth, borne well
+will lift it above the clouds. Do not believe that I have deceived any
+one. He knows on what terms he takes me. I feel respect, esteem,
+confidence, warm friendship for him."</p>
+
+<p>"May you never be undeceived," thought Morton to himself.</p>
+
+<p>"But for any more ardent love,&mdash;that, I told him, was buried in the
+grave with you."</p>
+
+<p>She was silent for a moment, and then went on.</p>
+
+<p>"It will not be wise, or right, for us to see each other often. In
+time, you will meet some one with whom you can forget the pain of this
+separation."</p>
+
+<p>Morton shook his head.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes&mdash;at least I trust you will. But we can never forget what we have
+been to each other. Our reality is melted into a dream, but we must
+not allow it to remain a dream. Let it be to us a fountain of high
+thoughts, whose streams may water all our lives."</p>
+
+<p>"You are an alchemist, Edith," said Morton; "you have found the secret
+to change lead and iron into pure gold. And yet you make me feel, more
+than ever, if that can be, what a crown I have lost."</p>
+
+<p>When Morton left the house, after a half hour's interview, the
+agitation with which he had entered it had sunk into quiet; for an
+influence had fallen upon him as soothing and elevating as if he had
+been listening to the paschal music in the chapel of the choir at St.
+Peter's. And as an aeronaut, tossed among tempestuous clouds, is borne
+of a sudden above the turmoil, and floats serene in a calmer sky, so
+the troubled mind of Morton felt itself buoyed up for a space above
+the tumult of passionate and bitter thought.</p>
+<br>
+<br><a name="chap56"></a>
+<br>
+<br>
+<h3>CHAPTER LVI.</h3>
+<table align="center" summary="quote48">
+	<tr><td><small>For close designs and crooked counsels fit,<br>
+	Sagacious, bold, and turbulent of wit.&mdash;<i>Dryden</i>.</small></td></tr>
+</table>
+<br>
+<br>
+<p>On the next morning he was walking near the Court House, when a man
+accosted him, touching his hat with one hand, and holding out the
+other in the way of friendly salutation. Morton, however, was at a
+loss to recognize him. He had an air which may most conveniently be
+described as <i>raffish</i>, a hat set on one side of his head, and a
+good-natured, easy, devil-may-care face.</p>
+
+<p>"Richards is my name," said the stranger. "I met you at Paris, just
+before you went into Austria."</p>
+
+<p>This was quite enough. Morton, who had repeatedly revolved all the
+circumstances connected with his arrest, at once recalled the accident
+by which he had discovered Richards and Vinal, on their way together
+to visit Speyer. Morton determined to cultivate this new acquaintance;
+which, however, seemed likely to grow without much tillage.</p>
+
+<p>"I went on two or three excursions about the city with you, Mr. Vinal,
+and the rest. Perhaps you have not forgotten it."</p>
+
+<p>"Not in the least; but you are changed since then."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," said Richards, touching the place where his moustaches had once
+grown, "I cut them off when I went into practice here in Boston. I
+found they were ruining my character as a professional man."</p>
+
+<p>"How long were you in Paris after I saw you?"</p>
+
+<p>"Two years, off and on. I wish I were there now." And taking Morton's
+arm, he proceeded to catechize him touching his imprisonment and
+escape, of which he said he had first read in the New York Herald.
+Morton satisfied his curiosity, taking care to give him no suspicion
+of Speyer's connection with the affair, and allowing him to infer that
+the arrest was caused by an accidental concurrence of suspicious
+circumstances. Richards, at the end, broke out into a savage, red
+republican tirade against Metternich and the Austrian government.</p>
+
+<p>"By the way," said Morton, when his companion's heat had subsided, "do
+you happen to remember a man called Speyer, or something like it,&mdash;a
+republican propagandist, at Paris? I believe you knew him."</p>
+
+<p>"I never knew any body else," replied Richards, adopting a
+cis-Atlantic figure of speech for which rhetoricians have as yet found
+no name.</p>
+
+<p>"Do you know where he is now?"</p>
+
+<p>"What, have you lent money to Speyer, too?"</p>
+
+<p>"He is heavily in my debt," said Morton, evasively.</p>
+
+<p>"That's odd. He seems to have been borrowing money all round. I
+remember, about a year or more ago, I met Mr. Vinal, and he began to
+talk about Paris. 'By the way,' said he to me, 'do you happen to
+remember a man named Spires, or Speyers, or some such thing? I lent
+him five hundred francs.' 'I wish you may get it,' said I. 'Well,'
+said Vinal, 'I have a friend going to Paris, who will try what can be
+done for me.' So I set him on the track. I don't know whether he got
+his money or not, but I saw him talking with Speyer in the street, one
+evening last spring, and Vinal looked as sour as if he had swallowed a
+bottle of vitriol."</p>
+
+<p>"Talking with Speyer last spring!" repeated Morton; "has he been to
+Paris?"</p>
+
+<p>"Speyer has come out to America. There is not a country in Europe but
+has grown too hot for him. He was under surveillance in Paris, all the
+time I knew him."</p>
+
+<p>"When did he come?"</p>
+
+<p>"Six or eight months ago."</p>
+
+<p>"Where is he to be found?"</p>
+
+<p>"In New York, chiefly. If you could have caught him when he was here
+in Boston, in the spring, you might have got something out of him; for
+he seemed flush of money."</p>
+
+<p>"What, after you saw him with Vinal?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes."</p>
+
+<p>"Have you seen him more than once in Boston?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, two or three times."</p>
+
+<p>"Is he in New York now?"</p>
+
+<p>"I suppose so; but I would not advise your trying to do any thing with
+him. You had better pocket your loss, and let him go. However, if you
+want to try, I can refer you to a man who can probably help you to
+find his whereabouts."</p>
+
+<p>"Thank you; there's no harm in making the attempt. I don't know Speyer
+well. What kind of man is he?"</p>
+
+<p>"Well, I will draw his portrait for you. He is sly as a fox; always
+contriving, plotting, and working under ground. Intrigue is his native
+element. He takes to it like a chameleon to air, or a salamander to
+fire."</p>
+
+<p>"An artful, managing fellow, not bold enough to make a direct attack?"</p>
+
+<p>"Bold! There is nothing on the earth, or under it, that he fears. He
+will not make a direct attack, if he can help it, because it is
+against his instinct; but press upon him&mdash;crowd him a little&mdash;and he
+will show his teeth like a Bengal tiger. He is always in hot water;
+for he never could be happy out of it. He has his weaknesses, though.
+A woman whom he takes a fancy to can turn him round her finger. I
+never knew a man so desperate in that way, or such a devil incarnate
+when a fit of jealousy seizes him."</p>
+
+<p>"You draw a flattering likeness of your friend," said Morton."</p>
+
+<p>"O," said Richards, laughing, "I cut half my foreign acquaintance, now
+that I am at home."</p>
+
+<p>Before leaving his new companion, Morton obtained from him the name
+and direction of the person of whom he had spoken as likely to know
+where Speyer was to be found. Left alone at length, he pondered on
+what he had heard:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"So Vinal applied to Richards, to learn Speyer's address, when he
+wrote to him to report me dead. Speyer in America!&mdash;having interviews
+with Vinal!&mdash;and flush of money! Can it be possible that this agent of
+his villany has become the instrument of his punishment?&mdash;that the
+Furies are already on his track? If Speyer kept Vinal's letter, as,
+under the circumstances, such a calculating knave would be apt to do,
+he has that in his hands which would make my friend open his purse
+strings; yes, make him coin his life blood, to satisfy him. It is past
+doubting; Vinal has it now; this cormorant is preying upon him."</p>
+
+<p>That afternoon Morton took the night train to New York, in search of
+Speyer.</p>
+<br>
+<br><a name="chap57"></a>
+<br>
+<br>
+<h3>CHAPTER LVII.</h3>
+<table align="center" summary="quote49">
+	<tr><td><small>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
+	&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
+	Though those that are betrayed<br>
+	Do feel the treason sharply, yet the traitor<br>
+	Stands in worse case of woe.&mdash;<i>Cymbeline</i>.</small></td></tr>
+</table>
+<br>
+<br>
+<p>Vinal sat alone, propped and cushioned in an arm chair, when a clerk
+from his office came to bring him his morning letters. He looked over
+the superscriptions till he saw one in a foreign hand. Vinal
+compressed his pale lips. When the clerk had left the room, he glanced
+about him nervously, tore open the letter, and read it in haste.</p>
+
+<p>"The bloodsucker! Money; more money! He soaks it up like a sponge; or,
+rather, I am the sponge, and he means to wring me dry. In jail! Well,
+he has found his place, for once. Six hundred dollars! That, I
+suppose, is to pay his fine; to uncage the wild beast, and set him
+loose. I wish he were sentenced for ten years; then he might lie
+there, and rot. I must send him something&mdash;enough to keep him in play.
+No, I will send him nothing. He is in trouble; and I may turn it to
+account. I will write to him that, if he will return me my letters, I
+will give him a thousand dollars now, and an annuity of five hundred
+for six years to come. I shall do well if I can draw the viper's teeth
+at that price. Then I can breathe again; unless Morton should have
+suspected the trick I played him, or&mdash;what if he should meet with
+Speyer! But that is not likely, for he never knew him, nor saw him,
+and Speyer will shun him as he would the plague. I wish they had shot
+him in the prison, as I am told they meant to do. There would have
+been one stumbling block away; one lion out of my path. But now the
+sword hangs over me by a hair; I am racked and torn like a toad under
+a harrow; no rest, no peace! What if Speyer should do as he threatens,
+print my letters, and placard them about the streets! I will buy them
+out of his hands if it cost all I have. And even then I shall not be
+safe, as long as this ruffian is above ground. With him and Morton to
+haunt me, my life is a slow death, a purgatory, a hell."</p>
+
+<p>He tore Speyer's letter into small fragments, rolled and crushed them
+together, and scattered them under the grate.</p>
+<br>
+<br><a name="chap58"></a>
+<br>
+<br>
+<h3>CHAPTER LVIII.</h3>
+<blockquote><small>When rich villains have need of poor ones, poor ones may make what
+price they will.&mdash;<i>Much Ado about Nothing</i>.</small></blockquote>
+<br>
+<p>Morton reached New York, and found the person to whom he had been
+referred by Richards. He proved to be a German, of respectable
+appearance enough; but Morton could learn nothing from him. He
+admitted that he had once known Speyer; but stubbornly denied all
+present knowledge concerning him; and after various inquiry elsewhere,
+which brought him into contact with much vile company, without helping
+him towards his end, Morton gave over the search, and returned to
+Boston.</p>
+
+<p>A day or two after, he met Richards in the street.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, Mr. Richards, I was in New York the other day, and saw your
+man; but he knew nothing about Speyer."</p>
+
+<p>Richards laughed.</p>
+
+<p>"I dare say not; just let me write to him; he will tell me a different
+story. I used to be hand and glove with all these refugees; and I will
+lay you any bet I find Speyer's whereabouts within a week."</p>
+
+<p>Accordingly, three or four days after, Richards called at Morton's
+lodgings, with an air of great self-satisfaction.</p>
+
+<p>"I have spotted your game for you, sir, and he won't run away in a
+hurry, either. He'll be sure to wait till you come. He's in jail."</p>
+
+<p>"What, for debt?"</p>
+
+<p>"No, for an assault on a Frenchman. It was about a woman, a friend of
+Speyer's. You know I told you what a jealous fellow he is." And he
+proceeded to recount what further information he had gained.</p>
+
+<p>"Odd," pondered Richards, after parting from Morton, "that a
+millionnaire like him, and not at all a mean man either, should
+trouble himself so much about any picayune debt that Speyer can owe
+him. There is something in this business more than I can make out."</p>
+
+<p>While Richards occupied himself with these reflections, Morton
+repaired to his lodgings and made his preparations. On the next
+morning, he was in New York again.</p>
+
+<p>He went to the jail where Speyer was confined, and readily gained
+leave to see him. A somewhat loquacious officer, who was to conduct
+him to the prisoner's room, confirmed what Richards had told him, and
+gave him some new particulars. Speyer, he said, had never before, to
+his knowledge, come under the notice of the police. He had been living
+in good lodgings, and in a somewhat showy style. The person who had
+occasioned the quarrel was an Italian girl. "She comes every day to
+see him," said the policeman&mdash;"she's a wild one, I tell you; and he
+frets himself to death because he is shut up here, and can't be round
+to look after her."</p>
+
+<p>"So much the better," thought Morton, who hoped that this impatience
+would aid him in his intended negotiation.</p>
+
+<p>"For how long a time is he sentenced?" he asked.</p>
+
+<p>"For three weeks; unless he can find somebody to pay his fine for
+him."</p>
+
+<p>On entering the prisoner's room, Morton saw a man of about forty, well
+dressed, though in a jail, but whose sallow features, deep-set eyes,
+and square, massive lower jaw, well covered with a black beard,
+indicated a character likely to be any thing but tractable. If he had
+been either a gentleman on the one hand, or a common ruffian on the
+other, his visitor might have better known how to deal with him; but
+he had the look of one to whom, whatever he might be at heart, a
+various contact with mankind had armed with an invincible
+self-possession, and guarded at all points against surprise.</p>
+
+<p>Morton was a wretched diplomatist, and had sense enough to know it. He
+knew that if he tried to manoeuvre with his antagonist, the latter
+would outflank him in a moment, and he had therefore resolved on a
+sudden and direct attack. But when he saw Speyer, he could not repress
+a lingering doubt whether he were in fact the person of whom he was in
+search. His chief object was to gain from him, if possible, any
+letters of Vinal which might be in his hands. There was no direct
+evidence that he had any such letters; yet Morton thought that the
+only hope of success lay in assuming his having them as a certainty,
+and pretending a positive knowledge, where, in truth, he had no other
+ground of action than conjecture. So he smothered his doubts, and as
+soon as the policeman was gone, made a crashing onset on the enemy.</p>
+
+<p>"My name is Vassall Morton. I escaped four months ago from the Castle
+of Ehrenberg. I have known something of you through Mr. Vinal."</p>
+
+<p>If Morton were in doubt before, all his doubts were now scattered, for
+a look of irrepressible surprise passed across Speyer's features,
+mingled with as much dismay as his nature was capable of feeling. At
+the next instant, every trace of it had disappeared; and slowly
+shaking his head, to indicate unconsciousness, he looked at Morton
+inquiringly, with an eye perfectly self-possessed and impenetrable.
+His visitor, however, was not to be so deceived.</p>
+
+<p>"I have no enmity against you, nor any wish to injure you. On the
+contrary, I will pay your fine, and set you free, if you will have it
+so. You have letters concerning me, written to you by Vinal. Give them
+to me, and I will do as I say. No harm shall come to you, and I will
+give you money to carry you to any part of the world you wish."</p>
+
+<p>"What letters?" asked Speyer.</p>
+
+<p>"We will have no bush-beating. You wish to get out of jail, and have
+good reason for wishing to get out at once. If you will give me those
+letters, you shall be free in three hours, and safe. If you will not,
+I may give you some trouble."</p>
+
+<p>Speyer was silent for a moment.</p>
+
+<p>"I know the letters are of use to you. You can play a profitable game
+with them; but I can stop your game at any moment I please."</p>
+
+<p>"I can get four thousand dollars for them to-morrow," said Speyer.</p>
+
+<p>"Then why are you here in jail?"</p>
+
+<p>"Vinal offers it; here it is." And taking a note from his pocket,
+Speyer read Vinal's proposal to buy the letters.</p>
+
+<p>"Let me see it," said Morton, taking the note from Speyer's hand.
+"This, of itself, is evidence against him. With your leave, I will
+keep it. Now hear my offer. Give me the letters, and I will pay your
+fine. Then go with me to Boston, and I will make Vinal pay you on the
+spot every dollar that he has offered, on condition that you promise
+to leave the United States, and never return."</p>
+
+<p>Speyer reflected. He came to the conclusion that Morton did not mean
+to expose Vinal; but only, like himself, to extort money from him; and
+wished that he, Speyer, should leave the country in order to get rid
+of a competitor. Morton's object was quite different. He could not
+foresee to what extremities Speyer's extortion might drive its victim;
+and he aimed to check it, by no means out of any tenderness for Vinal,
+but lest his wife might suffer from its consequences.</p>
+
+<p>Speyer, on his part, fevered with jealousy, was chafing to be at large
+again.</p>
+
+<p>"When will you pay my fine?"</p>
+
+<p>"Now."</p>
+
+<p>"Then I accept your proposal."</p>
+
+<p>"Can I rely on your promise to leave the country, and make no further
+drafts on Vinal?"</p>
+
+<p>Speyer cast a glance at him, as if he had read his mind.</p>
+
+<p>"I will promise."</p>
+
+<p>"Will you swear?"</p>
+
+<p>Speyer readily took the oath, insisting that Morton should swear in
+turn to keep his part of the condition.</p>
+
+<p>"Now let me see the letters."</p>
+
+<p>"I must send to my lodgings for them. If you will come back in two
+hours, you shall have them."</p>
+
+<p>"I should have thought you would keep them by you."</p>
+
+<p>"No; but they are safe. Come back at twelve with the money for my
+fine, and they shall be here for you."</p>
+
+<p>Morton had no sooner left the room, than Speyer despatched an
+underling of the jail to buy for him a few sheets of the thin,
+half-transparent paper in common use for European correspondence. This
+being brought, he opened his trunk, and delving to the bottom, drew up
+a leather case, from which he took the letters in question. Laying the
+thin paper over them, he proceeded to trace with a pen an exact
+facsimile. He was well practised at such work, and after one or two
+failures, succeeded perfectly. Folding his counterfeits after the
+manner of the originals, he placed them in the envelopes belonging to
+the latter; and within a half hour after his task was finished, Morton
+reappeared.</p>
+
+<p>Speyer gave him one of the facsimiles. He read it attentively, without
+seeing the imposture. The handwriting, though disguised, was evidently
+Vinal's; but it had neither the signature of the writer, nor Morton's
+name. The place of each was supplied by a cipher.</p>
+
+<p>"Reference is made here to another letter. Where is it?"</p>
+
+<p>Speyer gave him the second counterfeit. The envelope bore a postmark
+of a few days later than the first. The note contained merely the
+names of Morton and Vinal, with ciphers affixed, referring to those in
+the first letter.</p>
+
+<p>"Have you no more of Vinal's papers?"</p>
+
+<p>Speyer shook his head. Indeed, the letters, if genuine, would have
+been amply sufficient to place their writer in Morton's power. The
+latter at once took the necessary measures to gain the prisoner's
+release. Speyer no sooner found himself at liberty than he hastened to
+search out the fair object of his anxieties, promising to meet Morton
+on the steamboat for Boston in the afternoon. His doubts were strong
+whether the other would keep faith with him; but he amply consoled
+himself with the thought that, at the worst, he still had means to
+bring Vinal to terms.</p>
+<br>
+<br><a name="chap59"></a>
+<br>
+<br>
+<h3>CHAPTER LIX.</h3>
+<table align="center" summary="quote50">
+	<tr><td><small>What spectre can the charnel send<br>
+	So dreadful as an injured friend?&mdash;<i>Rokeby</i>.</small></td></tr>
+</table>
+<br>
+<br>
+<p>"Strange," thought Vinal, "that I hear nothing from him."</p>
+
+<p>It was three days since he had written to Speyer; and his chief
+anxiety was, lest his note should have miscarried. Pain and long
+confinement had wrought heavily upon him. Every emotion, every care,
+thrilled with a morbid keenness upon his brain and nerves; but
+hitherto he had ruled his sensitive organism with an iron
+self-control, and calmed its perturbations with a fortitude which in a
+better man would have been heroic.</p>
+
+<p>His wife was in the room, and, as his eye rested on her, it kindled
+with a kind of troubled delight, for he loved her strongly, after his
+fashion. He had remarked of late a singular assiduity and tenderness
+in her devotion to him. Her position, in fact, was not unlike that of
+one who, broken and overborne by some irreparable sorrow, had
+renounced the world and its happiness, to embrace a new life, and
+build up for herself a new hope in the calm sanctuary of a convent. In
+the same spirit, Edith Leslie, bidding farewell to her girlish dream
+of life, its morning rose tint, and cloud draperies of gold and
+purple, gave herself to the practical duties before her, and sought,
+in their devoted fulfilment, to strengthen herself against the flood
+which for a time had overwhelmed her.</p>
+
+<p>Vinal, who, acute as he was, could not understand the state of mind
+from which her peculiar kindness of manner towards him rose, pleased
+himself with the idea that his rival's return was not so great a shock
+to her as he had at first feared, and that, after all, she was more
+fond of him than of Morton. This notion consoled his disturbed
+thoughts not a little. Still he was abundantly anxious and harassed.</p>
+
+<p>"If Morton should suspect! He has not come to see me; but that is
+natural enough, under the circumstances. And if he does suspect, he
+can have no proof. No one here suspects me. They say it was strange
+that my European correspondent should have made such a mistake; but
+that is all. No one dreams that I had a hand in it; and why should
+they? No one knew of Edith's engagement to him, except herself, her
+father, and her confidantes. I suppose she has confidantes&mdash;all girls
+have them. I wish their epitaphs were written, whoever they are. Well,</p>
+
+<table align="center" summary="quote51">
+	<tr><td><small>'Come what come may,<br>
+	&nbsp;Time and the hour run through the roughest day.'</small></td></tr>
+</table>
+
+<p>But this is a dangerous business&mdash;a cursed business. Why does not
+Speyer write?"</p>
+
+<p>As his thoughts ran in this strain, he looked up, and his eye caught
+that of his wife. She was struck with his troubled expression.</p>
+
+<p>"You look anxious and care-worn. Are you ill?"</p>
+
+<p>"Come to me, Edith," said Vinal, with a faint smile.</p>
+
+<p>She came to the side of his chair, and he took her hand.</p>
+
+<p>"Edith, I am not well to-day. My head swims. This long confinement is
+eating away my life by inches."</p>
+
+<p>"In a week more, I trust, you will be able to move again. The country
+air will give you new life. But why do you look so troubled?"</p>
+
+<p>"Dreams, Edith,&mdash;bad dreams, like Hamlet's, I suppose. It is very
+strange,&mdash;I cannot imagine why it is,&mdash;but to-day I have felt
+oppressed, weighed down, shadowed as if a cloud hung over me. I am not
+myself. A man is a mere slave to his nervous system, and when that is
+overthrown, his whole soul is shaken with it. The country is my hope,
+Edith. We will go there together, soon, and begin life anew."</p>
+
+<p>A knock at the door interrupted him.</p>
+
+<p>"Come in," cried Vinal, in his usual quick, decisive tone.</p>
+
+<p>A servant entered.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, what is it?"</p>
+
+<p>"A gentleman wishes to see you, sir."</p>
+
+<p>"Did he give his name?"</p>
+
+<p>"Mr. Edwards, sir."</p>
+
+<p>"Ask him to come up."</p>
+
+<p>"A man whom I expected this morning on business," he said, in
+explanation to his wife, as the servant closed the door. "I wish he
+were any where but here. And so you are going away."&mdash;She was dressed
+to go out.&mdash;"He will be here only a moment; do not be gone long."</p>
+
+<p>"No, I will be with you again in an hour."</p>
+
+<p>"Do not forget," said Vinal, pressing her hand, "for when you leave
+the room, Edith, it is as if a sunbeam were shut out."</p>
+
+<p>As Vinal, sick in body and mind, thus leaned in his distress on the
+victim of his villany, he cast into her face a look that was almost
+piteous. She, seeing nothing but his love for her, warmed towards him
+with compassion; the more so since, till that moment, she had known
+him as a calm, firm man, a model, to her eyes, of masculine
+self-government. A mind tortured with suspense, acting upon a weak and
+morbidly sensitive body, had betrayed him into this unwonted
+imbecility.</p>
+
+<p>The step of the visitor sounded in the passage; and returning the
+pressure of his hand, his wife went out at the door of a small
+adjoining room, opening upon the side passage by which she commonly
+entered and left the hotel.</p>
+
+<p>After a few minutes' interview, Edwards took his leave, and Vinal,
+left alone, fell into his former train of thought. In a moment, he was
+again interrupted by a knock at the door, quite unlike the hasty rap
+of the hotel servant.</p>
+
+<p>"Come in," cried Vinal.</p>
+
+<p>The door opened, and Vassall Morton entered. He had learned from the
+retiring visitor that Vinal was alone.</p>
+
+<p>"My dear fellow!" exclaimed Vinal, his face beaming with a transport
+of welcome. "My dear fellow!"</p>
+
+<p>But Morton stood without taking his proffered hand. The smile remained
+frozen on Vinal's face, and cold drops of doubt and fear began to
+gather on his forehead.</p>
+
+<p>"There is another friend of yours in the passage," said Morton.&mdash;"Come
+in, Speyer."</p>
+
+<p>Speyer entered, bowing with his usual composure. Vinal sank back in
+his chair, collapsing like a man withered with a palsy stroke.</p>
+
+<p>"Vinal," said Morton, after a silence of some moments, "you have a
+cool way of receiving your acquaintances."</p>
+
+<p>He made no answer, but still sat, or rather crouched, in the depths of
+his easy chair, where the thick bounding of his heart almost choked
+him. Morton stood for some time longer, looking at him. He had not
+reached such a point of Christian forgiveness as not to find pleasure
+in his enemy's tortures, and he saw that his silence tortured him more
+than words.</p>
+
+<p>"Vinal," he said at length, "I used to know you in college for a liar
+and a coward; and since then you have grown well in both ways. You
+have hatched into a full-fledged villain; and now that I have found
+you out, you crouch like a whipped cur."</p>
+
+<p>No answer was returned, and Morton's anger began to yield to a
+different feeling. If he could have seen the condition of Vinal's mind
+and body, he might, between pity and contempt, have spared him.</p>
+
+<p>"I came to upbraid you with your knaveries; but I find you hardly
+worth the trouble. Do you see this letter? It is the same that you
+wrote to this man at Marseilles, instructing him to forge a story that
+I was dead, and that he had seen my gravestone, with my mother's
+family device upon it. Will you dare deny that you wrote it? You will
+not! I thought as much. I have unravelled you from first to last. Five
+years ago, you bribed Speyer, here, to compromise me with the Austrian
+police. Pretending to be my friend, you gave me letters which betrayed
+me into a prison, where you hoped that I would end my days; and, next,
+you contrived this trickery to prove me dead. Is there any name in the
+English tongue too vile to mark you?"</p>
+
+<p>Vinal sat as if stricken dumb.</p>
+
+<p>"I know your reputation," pursued Morton. "You are in high feather
+here. You pass for a man of virtue, integrity, and honor. You make
+speeches at public meetings; Fourth of July orations; Phi Beta
+orations; charity harangues&mdash;any thing that smacks of philanthropy and
+goodness; any thing that will varnish you in the public eye. Why am I
+not bound to lay bare this whitewashed lie? What withholds me from
+grinding you like a scorpion under my boot-heel, or flinging you on
+the pavement to be stared at like a scotched viper? A word from me,
+and you are ruined. You need not fear it. Stay, and enjoy your honors
+as you can; but my foot shall be on your neck. This letter of yours is
+the spell by which I will rule you, body and soul."</p>
+
+<p>Here he paused again; but Vinal's tongue was powerless.</p>
+
+<p>"I tell you again, for I would not have you desperate, that I do not
+mean to ruin you. Bear yourself wisely, and you are safe, at least
+from me. Have you lost your speech? Are you turned dumb?"</p>
+
+<p>Vinal muttered inarticulately.</p>
+
+<p>"There is another danger which I have done my best to ward off from
+you. This man, who had you at his mercy, has sworn to leave the
+country, and never to return; on which score you will please to pay
+him the money you offered him for the purchase of your letters."</p>
+
+<p>Vinal seemed confused and stupefied, and Morton was forced to be more
+explicit in his demands. At length, the former signed a note for the
+amount, though not without stammering objections to his name appearing
+on it in connection with Speyer's. Morton, however, turned a deaf ear
+to these remonstrances.</p>
+
+<p>"Here is your pay," he said to Speyer. "Any bank will discount this
+for you. Now, to what place do you mean to go?"</p>
+
+<p>"To Venezuela. I have a friend there in the army. He will get a
+commission for me."</p>
+
+<p>"Very well. See that you stay there; or, at all events, do not come
+back to the United States. If you do, you will perjure yourself. Now,
+go; I have done with you. Vinal, I will leave you to your reflections;
+and when you can sleep in peace, free from Speyer's persecutions,
+remember to whom you owe it."</p>
+
+<p>Vinal sat like a withered plant, his head sinking between his
+shoulders, while his hand, still unconsciously holding the pen, rested
+on the arm of his chair. There was something in his appearance at once
+so abject and so piteous, that a changed feeling came over Morton as
+he looked on him. By a sudden impulse, akin to pity, he stepped
+towards him, and took his wrist. The pen dropped from his pale
+fingers, which quivered like an aspen bough; and as Morton stood
+gazing on him, Vinal's upturned eyes met his, as if riveted there by a
+helpless fascination.</p>
+
+<p>"You unhappy wretch! You are burning already with the pains of the
+damned. Flint and iron could not see you without softening. I have
+saved you,&mdash;not out of mercy, nor forgiveness,&mdash;not for <i>your</i>
+sake;&mdash;but I have saved you. I have pushed away the sword that hung
+over you by a hair. You are free now to be happy."</p>
+
+<p>But as he spoke this last word, so fierce a pang shot into his heart,
+remembering what he had lost, and what Vinal had won, that his pity
+was scattered like mist before a thunder squall. He flung back the
+passive hand against the breast of its terrified owner, turned
+abruptly, and left the room.</p>
+
+<p>No sooner had the door closed behind him, than the door of the
+anteroom opposite was flung open, and Edith Leslie, rushing in, stood
+before Vinal with the wild look of one who gasps for breath. She
+attempted to speak, but broken words and inarticulate sounds were all
+her lips would utter. Strength failed her in the effort, and pressing
+her hands to her forehead, she sank fainting to the floor.</p>
+<br>
+<br><a name="chap60"></a>
+<br>
+<br>
+<h3>CHAPTER LX.</h3>
+<table align="center" summary="quote52">
+	<tr><td><small>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
+	&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
+	I will not go with thee;<br>
+	I will instruct my sorrows to be proud.&mdash;<i>King John</i>.</small></td></tr>
+</table>
+<br>
+<br>
+<p>On the next morning, Vinal learned that his wife was ill, and confined
+to her room in her father's house. On the day following, he was told
+that she was no better; but on the third morning, a letter, in her
+handwriting, was given him. He opened it, and read as follows:&mdash;</p>
+
+<blockquote>I heard all. I have learned, at last, to know you. These were your bad
+dreams! This was the cloud that overshadowed you! No wonder that your
+eye was anxious, your forehead wrinkled, and your cheek pale. To have
+led that brave and loyal heart through months and years of
+anguish!&mdash;to have buried him from the light of day!&mdash;to have buried
+him in darkness and despair, if despair could ever touch a soul like
+his! And there he would have been lost forever, if you had had your
+will,&mdash;if a higher hand had not been outstretched to save him. One
+whom you dared not meet face to face; one as far above your sphere as
+the eagle is above the serpent to which he likened you! You have
+taught me how sin can cringe and cower under the anger of a true and
+deeply outraged man. That I should have lived to hear my husband
+called a villain!&mdash;and still live to tell him that the word was just!
+My husband! You are <i>not</i> my husband. It was not a criminal, a
+traitorous wretch, whom I pledged myself to love and honor. You have
+insnared me; you have me, for a time, safely entangled in your meshes.
+The same cause which led me to this yoke must withhold me from casting
+it off. I cannot imbitter my father's dying moments. I cannot bring
+distress and horror to his tranquil death bed. For his sake, I will
+play the hypocrite, and stoop to pass in the world's eye as your wife.
+For the few weeks he has to live, I will lodge, if I must, under your
+roof; I will sit, if I must, at your table; but when my father is
+gone, let the world impute to me what blame it will, I will leave you
+forever. You need not fear that I shall expose your crimes. If <i>he</i>
+could spare you, it does not become me to speak. Live on, and make
+what atonement you may; but meanwhile there is a gulf between us wider
+than death.<br>
+<br>
+<div align="right">E<small>DITH</small>
+L<small>ESLIE</small>.&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;</div></blockquote>
+
+<p>An accident, arising out of her very devotion to Vinal, had made known
+his secret to her. In the anteroom which led from the side passage of
+the hotel to his apartment, and through which, on the morning of his
+interview with Morton, she had intended to pass on her way out, was a
+table, covered with books and engravings, with which the invalid had
+been amusing his leisure. The sight of them reminded her that she had
+promised to get for him a series of German etchings, which he had
+expressed a wish to see. She seated herself, to write a request to the
+friend who had them, that he would send them to the hotel. Her hand
+was on the bell, to call the servant, when the peculiarly emphatic and
+earnest manner with which Vinal greeted some new visitor caught her
+attention. The door had sprung ajar on the lock; the speakers were
+very near it, and Morton's tone was none of the softest. She remained
+as if charmed to her seat; and every word fell on her ear as clearly
+as if she had stood in the same room.</p>
+<br>
+<br><a name="chap61"></a>
+<br>
+<br>
+<h3>CHAPTER LXI.</h3>
+<table align="center" summary="quote53">
+	<tr><td><small>I hold the world but as the world, Gratiano,<br>
+	A stage where every man must play a part,<br>
+	And mine a sad one.&mdash;<i>Merchant of Venice</i>.<br><br>
+	The past is past. I see the future stretch<br>
+	All dark and barren as a rainy sea.&mdash;<i>Alexander Smith</i>.</small></td></tr>
+</table>
+<br>
+<br>
+<p>Morton took possession again of his house in the country, which still
+remained in the keeping of one of his humble relatives, into whose
+charge he had given it. He turned the key of his long-deserted
+library. A loving influence had presided here in his absence, and,
+even when he was given up for lost, every thing had been scrupulously
+kept as he had left it.</p>
+
+<p>Here he immured himself; avoided all society but that of a few
+personal friends; and by plunging into the studies which had formerly
+engrossed him, tried to escape the persecution of his own thoughts. It
+was a forced and painful task. The marks in his books, the pencil
+notes on their margins, his voluminous piles of memoranda, were all so
+many sharp memorials of the past, to remind him that he was resuming
+in darkness and despondency the work that he had left in sunshine.</p>
+
+<p>In process of time, however, his ancient interest in his favorite
+pursuit began to rekindle. He began to feel that the years of his
+imprisonment had not been the dead and barren blank which he had
+inclined to think them. His mind had ripened in its solitude, and the
+studies which he had before followed with the zeal of a boy, more
+eager than able to deal with the broad questions which they involved,
+he could now grasp with the matured intellect of a man.</p>
+
+<p>But while Morton was thus laboring on, Edith Leslie was passing
+through an ordeal incomparably more severe. Month after month dragged
+on, and her father still lingered, sinking again and again to the very
+edge of the grave, and then rallying, as if with a fresh life. Vinal,
+meanwhile, was in a good measure recovered from the effects of his
+accident. His home and hers, if it could be called a home, was now a
+house in town, which her father had fitted up for her in view of her
+marriage. She had a painful and delicate part to act&mdash;at her father's
+bedside, to appear as the happy and contented wife; at home, to endure
+the presence of the man whose treachery filled her with horror, and
+whose love for her, though she had never spoken a word of reproof, had
+changed into fear and hatred. Of his actual presence, however, she had
+to endure little; for he shunned her studiously; and her house was to
+her a solitude, where she passed hours of a suffering more intense
+than Morton had ever known in the dungeons of Ehrenberg.</p>
+
+<p>Meanwhile, the servants, those domestic spies, did not fail to rumor
+abroad the singular mode of life of the bride and bridegroom; that
+Vinal avoided the house; that they seldom met, even at meals; and that
+no word or look of sympathy or confidence seemed ever to pass between
+them. Such rumors found their currency among the busier gossips of the
+town; but Morton, secluded among his books, remained wholly ignorant
+of them.</p>
+<br>
+<br><a name="chap62"></a>
+<br>
+<br>
+<h3>CHAPTER LXII.</h3>
+
+<center><small>Old friends, like old swords, still are trusted
+best.&mdash;<i>Webster</i>.</small></center>
+<br>
+<br>
+<p>It was nearly a year since he had landed at New York, and Morton still
+remained a literary hermit. Society was stale and distasteful to him.
+He passed three fourths of his day in his library, and the rest on
+horseback. At length, however, it happened that a cousin of his
+mother, one of his few relatives in the city, was to give a ball on
+occasion of her daughter's <i>début;</i> and lest his refusal should be
+thought unkind, Morton promised to come. He drove to town in the
+afternoon; and walking through a somewhat obscure street, suddenly, on
+turning a corner, saw, some four or five rods before him, a
+well-remembered face. It was the face of Henry Speyer. The discovery
+was mutual. Speyer instantly turned down a by-lane. Morton quickened
+his pace, and reached the head of the lane in time to see the broad
+shoulders of the patriot in full retreat. He soon lost sight of him
+among a wilderness of back yards and squalid houses. The incident
+greatly disturbed and exasperated him. "A broken oath is nothing to
+him," he thought to himself; "he is at Vinal again, dragging at his
+veins like a vampire."</p>
+
+<p>The evening drew on, and he entered the ball room in a gloomy and
+dejected frame of mind. After a few words to his relatives, he took
+his stand among a group who were watching the dancers; and had
+scarcely done so, when he saw a young lady, simply, but very richly
+dressed, whose fine figure and powerfully expressive beauty arrested
+his eye at once. The indifference and listlessness with which he had
+entered vanished. He soon observed that she was not an object of
+attention to him alone; for near him stood a certain old beau, well
+known about town, and a young collegian, both following her with their
+eyes. The music ceased, and her partner led her to a seat at the
+farther side of the room. Glancing at his two neighbors, Morton saw
+that they were in the act of moving towards her; but he, being nearer,
+had the advantage. Gliding through the dissolving fragments of the
+dance, he stood by her side.</p>
+
+<p>"Miss Fanny Euston, I see two persons coming to ask you to dance. May
+I hope that you will reject them for an old friend's sake, and let me
+be your partner?"</p>
+
+<p>She raised her eyes with a perplexed look, which instantly changed to
+a bright gleam of recognition, and cordially took his proffered hand.</p>
+
+<p>"So," said Morton, "you have not forgotten me. And yet, as I see you,
+I hardly dare to take up again the broken thread of our old intimacy.
+I used to call you Fanny."</p>
+
+<p>"Call me Fanny still," she said, "if only for the memory of auld lang
+syne."</p>
+
+<p>"I hoped to have seen you before, but you have been away."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, with my relations, and yours, at Baltimore. I have heard a great
+deal about you. Your story is the talk of the town. You might be the
+lion of the season; but I have not seen you at parties."</p>
+
+<p>"No, I have outlived my liking for such matters."</p>
+
+<p>"I cannot wonder at it. What horrors you have suffered! what dangers
+you have passed!"</p>
+
+<p>"I have weathered them, though."</p>
+
+<p>"You were more than four years in a dungeon."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, but I gave them the slip."</p>
+
+<p>"You were led out to be shot by the soldiers."</p>
+
+<p>"They thought better of it, and saved their ammunition."</p>
+
+<p>"And yet I see," said Miss Euston, smiling, "that you still remain
+your former self. I remember telling you that, if you were sentenced
+to the rack, you would go to it with a gibe on your tongue, and speak
+of it afterwards as a pleasant diversion. But," she added, with a
+changed look, "you have not come off unscathed. Your face is darker
+and thinner than it used to be, and there are lines in it that were
+not there before."</p>
+
+<p>"Fortune fondled me till she grew tired of me; then turned at me,
+tooth and nail."</p>
+
+<p>"You banter with your lips, but your look belies your words. You have
+suffered greatly; you have suffered intensely."</p>
+
+<p>Morton looked grave in spite of himself.</p>
+
+<p>"Perhaps you are right. I have very little heart left for jesting."</p>
+
+<p>The eyes of his companion, as they met his, assumed a peculiar
+softness.</p>
+
+<p>"You must have suffered beyond all power of words to speak it. The
+world to you was fresh and full of interest. You were ambitious; full
+of ardor and energy; loving hardship for its own sake, and obstacles
+for the sake of conquering them. You were formed for action. It was
+your element&mdash;your breath; and without it you did not care to live.
+You were high in confidence, and believed that whatever you had once
+resolved on must, sooner or later, come to pass."</p>
+
+<p>"Why are you saying this?" demanded Morton, in great surprise.</p>
+
+<p>"Out of this life you were suddenly snatched and buried in a dungeon;
+shut off from all intercourse with men; your energies stifled; your
+restless mind left to prey upon itself, or sustain a weary siege
+against despair. Pain or danger you could have faced like a man; but
+this passive misery must to you have been a daily death."</p>
+
+<p>"Who," interrupted Morton, "taught you, a woman, to penetrate the
+nature of a man, and describe sufferings that you never felt?"</p>
+
+<p>"Your mind was like a spring of steel, springing up the more strongly
+the harder it was pressed down. The suffering must have been deep
+indeed from which you could not rebound. To have escaped, to have
+reached home, and to have found any thing but relief and delight&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Home!" ejaculated Morton, bitterly, as a sharp memory of the anguish
+which had met him on the threshold came over him. "A prison may be
+borne with patience. Those are fortunate who have felt no keener
+stabs."</p>
+
+<p>The words, equivocal as they were, were scarcely spoken, when he had
+repented them. Fanny Euston was silent for a moment. "Can it be
+possible," she thought, "that the stories whispered about, that before
+he went away he was engaged to Edith Leslie, are something more than
+an idle rumor?"</p>
+
+<p>"Why do you look at me so searchingly?" thought Morton, on his part,
+as, raising his eyes, he saw those of his friend fixed on him in a
+gaze in which a woman's curiosity was mingled with a fully equal share
+of a woman's kindliness and sympathy. He hastened to escape from the
+critical ground which he had approached.</p>
+
+<p>"I can retort upon you," he said. "You have had your ordeal, too."</p>
+
+<p>"What, do you see its traces? Do you find me scorched and withered?"</p>
+
+<p>"I see," said Morton, "such traces as on gold that has passed through
+the furnace."</p>
+
+<p>"Truly, I have cause to rejoice, then; for I remember that, among
+other compliments, you once intimated your opinion that I was
+possessed with a devil."</p>
+
+<p>"I am afraid that I pushed to its farthest limit my privilege of
+cousinship."</p>
+
+<p>"And yet, when I look back to that time, I cannot help thinking that
+you had some reason for believing that an influence from the nether
+world had some share in me."</p>
+
+<p>"Now pardon me, if I am rude again. Looking at you, I can see the same
+devil still."</p>
+
+<p>"Indeed, and you will console me now, as you did then, by telling me
+that a dash of viciousness is necessary to make a character
+interesting."</p>
+
+<p>"I should prune and explain my speech. By a devil, I did not mean a
+malicious imp of darkness, wholly bent on evil. I meant nothing more
+than certain impulses and emotions,&mdash;passions, if I may call them
+so,&mdash;very turbulent tenants, yet of admirable use when well dealt
+with. These were the devil whom I used to see in you, and whom I see
+still."</p>
+
+<p>"I shall tremble at myself."</p>
+
+<p>"Then you are not so brave as you were when you leaped the fallen tree
+at New Baden. Your demon has ceased to have an alarming look. I think
+you have turned him to good account. Shall I illustrate from the
+legends of the saints?"</p>
+
+<p>"In any way you please; but I should never have expected you to resort
+to so pious a source."</p>
+
+<p>"St. Bernard, crossing the Alps on some holy errand, was met by Satan,
+who, being anxious to prevent his journey, broke one of his carriage
+wheels. But St. Bernard caught him, sprinkled him with holy water,
+doubled him into a wheel, and put him upon the carriage in place of
+the broken one. The legend says that he answered the purpose
+admirably, and bore the saint safely to the end of his journey."</p>
+
+<p>"Your legend is absurd enough; but I think I catch your meaning, and
+wish I could think you wholly in the right. It is singular that you
+and I have never met without our conversation becoming personal to
+ourselves. We are always studying each other&mdash;always trying to
+penetrate each other's thoughts."</p>
+
+<p>"On one side, at least, the success has been complete. As you look at
+me, I feel that you are reading me like a book, from title page to
+finis."</p>
+
+<p>"You greatly overrate my penetration. I am conscious, at this moment,
+of movements in your mind which I do not understand."</p>
+
+<p>"And would you have me confess them to you?"</p>
+
+<p>"You might repent it afterwards; and that would make a breach between
+us."</p>
+
+<p>"You are a miraculous woman, to postpone your curiosity to a scruple
+like that. No, I would not have spoken of confession, if I should ever
+repent it. Do you know, I would rather open my mind to you than to any
+one else I am now acquainted with."</p>
+
+<p>"But you have male friends; very old and intimate ones."</p>
+
+<p>"Excellent in their way; but I would as soon confess to my horse. Find
+me a woman of sense, with a brain to discern, a heart to feel, passion
+to feel vehemently, and principle to feel rightly, and I will show her
+my mind; or, if not, I will show it to no one. Now, after this
+preamble, you have a right to think that I should begin to confess
+something at once. But first, I will ask you a question."</p>
+
+<p>"What is it?"</p>
+
+<p>"Tell me what effect you think any long and severe suffering ought to
+have on a man&mdash;something, I mean, that would bring him to the brink of
+despair, and keep him there for months and years."</p>
+
+<p>"What kind of man do you mean?"</p>
+
+<p>"Suppose one given over to pleasure, ambition, or any other engrossing
+pursuit not too disinterested."</p>
+
+<p>"It would depend on how the suffering was taken."</p>
+
+<p>"Suppose him resolved to make the best of a bad bargain."</p>
+
+<p>"Why, the effect ought to be good, I suppose,&mdash;so the preachers say."</p>
+
+<p>"I do not wish to know what the preachers say. I wish your own
+opinion."</p>
+
+<p>"Are you quite in earnest?"</p>
+
+<p>"Quite."</p>
+
+<p>"Such suffering, rightly taken, would strip life of its disguises, and
+show it in its naked truth. It would teach the man to know himself and
+to know others. It would awaken his sympathies, enlarge his mind, and
+greatly expand his sphere of vision; teach him to hold present
+pleasure and present pain in small account, and to look beyond them
+into a future of boundless hopes and fears."</p>
+
+<p>"Now," said Morton, "you have betrayed yourself."</p>
+
+<p>"How have I betrayed myself?" asked his friend, in some discomposure.</p>
+
+<p>"You have shown me the secrets of your own mind. You have given me a
+glimpse of your own history, since we last met."</p>
+
+<p>"And so, under pretence of confessing to me, you have been plotting to
+make me confess to you!"</p>
+
+<p>"No, you shall hear my confession. I have it now, such as it is, at my
+tongue's end."</p>
+
+<p>"I have no faith in you."</p>
+
+<p>"Perhaps you will have still less when you have heard this great
+secret. You remember me before I went away. I was a very exemplary
+young gentleman,&mdash;quiet, orderly, well behaved,&mdash;of a studious
+turn,&mdash;soberly and virtuously given."</p>
+
+<p>"You give yourself an excellent character."</p>
+
+<p>"And what should be the results of the discipline of a dungeon on such
+a person?"</p>
+
+<p>"Discipline would be a superfluity, considering your perfections."</p>
+
+<p>"So I thought myself. Nevertheless, for four years, or so, I was shut
+up, with nothing to look at but stone walls, under circumstances most
+favorable for the culture of patience, resignation, forgiveness, and
+all the Christian virtues; and yet the devil has never been half so
+busy with me as since I came out; never whispered half so many
+villanous suggestions into my ears, nor baited me with such scandalous
+temptations."</p>
+
+<p>"That is very strange," said Fanny Euston, who was looking at him
+intently.</p>
+
+<p>"For example," pursued Morton, "a little more than a year ago, in New
+York, he said to me, 'Renounce all your old plans, and habits, and
+antiquated scruples&mdash;reclaim your natural freedom&mdash;fling yourself
+headlong into the turmoil of the world&mdash;chase whatever fate or fortune
+throws in your way&mdash;enjoy the zest of lawless pleasures&mdash;launch into
+mad adventure&mdash;embark on schemes of ambition&mdash;care nothing for the
+past or the future&mdash;think only of the present&mdash;fear neither God nor
+man, and follow your vagrant star wherever it leads you."</p>
+
+<p>Morton knew that, restrained and governed as it might be, there was
+quicksilver enough in his companion's veins to enable her to
+understand what he had said, and prevent her being startled at it. But
+he was by no means prepared for the close attack she proceeded to make
+on him.</p>
+
+<p>"Such a state of mind is foreign to your nature. You have prudence and
+forecast. You used to make plans for the future, and study the final
+results of every thing you did. There is something upon your mind. It
+is not imprisonment only that has caused that compression of your
+lips, and marked those lines on your face. You have met with some deep
+disaster, some overwhelming disappointment. Nothing else could have
+wrought such a convulsion in you."</p>
+
+<p>Morton was taken by surprise; and, as he struggled to frame an answer,
+his features betrayed an emotion which he could not hide. Fanny Euston
+hastened to relieve his embarrassment, and assuage, as far as she
+could, the tumult she had called up.</p>
+
+<p>"With whatever fate you may have had to battle, your wounds are in the
+front,&mdash;all honorable scars. Your desperation is past;&mdash;it was only
+for the hour;&mdash;and for the other extreme, it is not in you to suffer
+that."</p>
+
+<p>"What other extreme?"</p>
+
+<p>"Idle dreaming;&mdash;melancholy;&mdash;weak pining at disappointment."</p>
+
+<p>"No, thank God, it is not in me to lie and whine like a sick child."</p>
+
+<p>"You are the firmer for what you have passed. Manhood, the proudest of
+all possession to a man, is strengthened and deepened in you."</p>
+
+<p>"What do you call this manhood, which you seem to hold in such high
+account?"</p>
+
+<p>"That unflinching quality which, strong in generous thought and high
+purpose, bears onward towards its goal, knowing no fear but the fear
+of God; wise, prudent, calm, yet daring and hoping all things; not
+dismayed by reverses, nor elated by success; never bending nor
+receding; wearying out ill fortune by undespairing constancy;
+unconquered by pain or sorrow, or deferred hope; fiery in attack,
+steadfast in resistance, unshaken in the front of death; and when
+courage is vain, and hope seems folly, when crushing calamity presses
+it to the earth, and the exhausted body will no longer obey the still
+undaunted mind, then putting forth its hardest, saddest heroism, the
+unlaurelled heroism of endurance, patiently biding its time."</p>
+
+<p>"And how if its time never come?"</p>
+
+<p>"Then dying at its post, like the Roman sentinel at Pompeii."</p>
+
+<p>Her words struck a chord in Morton's nature, and roused his early
+enthusiasm, dormant for years.</p>
+
+<p>"Fanny," he said, "I thank you. You give me back my youth. An hour
+ago, the world was as dull to me as a November day; but you have
+brought June back again. You would make a coward valiant, and breathe
+life into a dead man."</p>
+
+<p>Miss Euston seemed, for a moment, in embarrassment what to reply;
+indeed, she showed some signs of discomposure, contrasting with her
+former frankness. They were still in the recess of the window. She was
+visible to those in the room; while he, standing opposite, was hidden
+by a curtain. At this moment, a gentleman, with a slight limp in his
+gait, approaching quickly, accosted Miss Euston, smiling with an air
+of the most earnest affability. She looked up to reply, but, as she
+did so, her eyes were arrested by a sudden change in the features of
+her companion, who was bending on the new comer a look so fierce and
+threatening, that she scarcely repressed an ejaculation of surprise.
+Mr. Horace Vinal followed the direction of her gaze, and saw himself
+face to face with the victim of his villany. He started as if he had
+found a grizzly bear behind the curtain. The smile vanished from his
+lips, the color from his cheeks, and he hastily drew back, and mingled
+with the crowd.</p>
+
+<p>This sudden apparition, breaking in upon the brightening mood of the
+moment, incensed Morton almost to fury; and his anger, absurdly
+enough, was a little tinged with a feeling not wholly unlike jealousy.
+He made an involuntary movement to follow his enemy, but recollecting
+himself, smoothed his brow and calmed his ruffled spirit as he best
+might.</p>
+
+<p>"You seem to know that man very well," he said to Miss Euston.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, I know him."</p>
+
+<p>"He seems to think himself on excellent terms with you."</p>
+
+<p>"He has charge of my mother's property."</p>
+
+<p>"You are good at reading faces. I hope you liked the expression on
+his, as he slunk away just now."</p>
+
+<p>"It was fear&mdash;abject fear. Why are you so angry? Why is he so
+frightened?"</p>
+
+<p>"His nerves, you may have observed, are something of the weakest. He
+is my attendant genius, my familiar. A word from me, and he will run
+my errand like a spaniel."</p>
+
+<p>"How could you gain such power over him?" she asked, in great
+astonishment.</p>
+
+<p>"Magnetism, Fanny, magnetism. The effects of the mesmeric fluid are
+wonderful. See, the polking is over; they are forming a quadrille.
+Shall we take our places in the set?"</p>
+
+<p>During the dance, Morton looked for his enemy, but could not discover
+him till it was over, and he had led his partner to a seat.</p>
+
+<p>"Look," he said, "there is our friend again; in the next room, just
+beyond the folding doors, talking with Mrs. &mdash;&mdash; and Mrs. &mdash;&mdash;. He
+seems to have got the better of the shock to his nerves; at least, he
+stands up manfully against it. Mr. Horace Vinal has a stout heart, and
+needs nothing but valor, and one other quality, to make a hero. But
+his face is flushed. I fear he suffers in his health. See, he makes
+himself very agreeable. Vinal was always famous for his wit. Pardon me
+a moment; I have a word for my friend's ear."</p>
+
+<p>Fanny Euston looked at him doubtingly.</p>
+
+<p>"Pray, don't be discomposed. There's no gunpowder impending. Vinal is
+not a fighting man; nor am I. What I have to say is altogether
+pacific, loving, and scriptural."</p>
+
+<p>And passing into the adjoining room, he approached Vinal, who no
+sooner saw the movement, than he showed a manifest uneasiness. His
+forced animation ceased, his manner became constrained, and while
+Morton stood near, waiting an opportunity to speak to him, he withdrew
+to another part of the room. Morton followed, and pronounced his name.
+Vinal, with pretended unconsciousness, mingled with the crowd. Morton
+again tried to accost him, and again Vinal moved away. Impatient and
+exasperated, Morton stepped behind him, touched his shoulder, and
+whispered in his ear,&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"You fool, do you know your danger? Speyer is looking for you. I saw
+him this afternoon. He looks as if he needed your charity. You had
+better be generous with him. He is a tiger, and will be upon you
+before you know it."</p>
+
+<p>Anger and terror, of which the latter vastly predominated, gave a
+ghastly look to Vinal's face, as he turned it towards Morton. But he
+drew back without a word, and soon left the room.</p>
+
+<p>"Where is Mr. Vinal?" asked the wondering Fanny Euston, as her
+companion returned to her side. The momentary interview had been
+invisible from where she sat.</p>
+
+<p>"Obeyed the magic word, and vanished. Never doubt again the power of
+magnetism. Now you may see that the claptrap of the charlatans about
+the mutual influence of congenial spheres is not quite such trash as
+one might think. Vinal and I, being congenial spheres, put each other,
+the one into a passion, the other into a fright. But I have a request
+to you. Whoever knows you, knows, in spite of the libellers, a woman
+who can keep counsel; and as I am modest in respect to my magnetic
+gifts, I shall beg it of you, that you will not mention these
+experiments to any one. Good evening. I have revived to-night an old
+and valued friendship. If I can help it, it shall not die again."</p>
+
+<p>He took leave of his hostess, wrapped his cloak about him, and walked
+out into the drizzling night.</p>
+<br>
+<br><a name="chap63"></a>
+<br>
+<br>
+<h3>CHAPTER LXIII.</h3>
+<table align="center" summary="quote54">
+	<tr><td><small>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
+	&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
+	Nought's had, all's spent,<br>
+	Where our desire is got without content.<br>
+	'Tis safer to be that which we destroy,<br>
+	Than by destruction dwell in doubtful joy.&mdash;<i>Macbeth</i>.</small></td></tr>
+</table>
+<br>
+<br>
+<p>Morton walked the street, on the next day, in a mood less grave than
+had lately been his wont, but in one of any thing but self-approval.</p>
+
+<p>"It is singular," he thought, "I could never meet her without
+forgetting myself,&mdash;without being betrayed into some absurdity or
+other. I thought by this time that I had grown wiser, or, at least,
+was well fenced against that kind of risk. But it is the same now as
+ever. I was a fool at New Baden, and I was a fool again last night,
+though after a different fashion. After all, when a fresh breeze
+comes, why should I not breathe it? when a ray of sun comes, why
+should I not bask in it? But what impelled me to insult that wretch,
+who I knew dared not and could not answer me?"</p>
+
+<p>He pondered for a moment, then turned and walked slowly towards
+Vinal's place of business.</p>
+
+<p>"Is Mr. Vinal here?" he asked of one of the clerks.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, sir, he is in that inner room."</p>
+
+<p>"Is any one with him?"</p>
+
+<p>"No, sir." And Morton opened the door and entered.</p>
+
+<p>Vinal sat before a table, on which letters and papers were lying; but
+he was leaning backward in his chair, with a painfully knit brow, and
+a face of ghastly paleness. It flushed of a sudden as Morton appeared,
+and his whole look and mien showed an irrepressible agitation.</p>
+
+<p>Morton closed the door. "Vinal," he said, "you need not fear that I
+have come with any hostile purpose. On the contrary, I will serve you,
+if I can. Last night I used words to you which I have since regretted.
+I beg you to accept my apology."</p>
+
+<p>Vinal made no reply.</p>
+
+<p>"I saw Speyer in the street last evening, and tried to speak with him,
+but could not stop him. He can hardly have any other purpose in
+breaking his oath and coming here again, than to get more money from
+you. Has he been to you?"</p>
+
+<p>Still Vinal was silent.</p>
+
+<p>"I think," continued Morton, "that you cannot fail to see my motive. I
+wish to keep him from you, not on your account, but on your wife's. If
+you let him, he will torment you to your death. Have you seen him
+since last evening?"</p>
+
+<p>Vinal inclined his head.</p>
+
+<p>"Where is he now?"</p>
+
+<p>"I don't know."</p>
+
+<p>"Has he left the city?"</p>
+
+<p>"I don't know. I suppose so."</p>
+
+<p>"And you gave him money?"</p>
+
+<p>Vinal was silent again. Morton took his silence for assent.</p>
+
+<p>"When he comes again, tell me of it, and let me speak to him. Possibly
+I may find means to rid you of him. Meantime remember this. He has
+given your letter up to me. He has no proofs to show against you,
+unless he has other letters of yours;&mdash;is that the case?"</p>
+
+<p>Vinal shook his head.</p>
+
+<p>"Then, if he proclaims you, his word will not be taken, unless I
+sustain it; and I shall keep silent unless you give me some new cause
+to speak. I do not see that he can harm you much without my help; so
+give him no more money, and set him at defiance."</p>
+
+<p>Morton left the room; but his words had brought no relief to the
+wretched Vinal. Speyer had shown him his letter, and told him the
+artifice by which he had kept it, and palmed off a counterfeit on
+Morton. He felt himself at the mercy of a miscreant as rapacious,
+fierce, and pitiless, as a wolverene dropping on its prey.</p>
+<br>
+<br><a name="chap64"></a>
+<br>
+<br>
+<h3>CHAPTER LXIV.</h3>
+<table align="center" summary="quote55">
+	<tr><td><small>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
+	&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
+	Ah, would my friendship with thee<br>
+	Might drown the memory of all patterns past!&mdash;<i>Suckling</i>.</small></td></tr>
+</table>
+<br>
+<br>
+<p>Some few days after, riding, as usual, in the afternoon, Morton saw on
+the road before him a lady on horseback, riding in the same direction.
+At a glance, he recognized the air and figure of Fanny Euston. This
+remnant, at least, of her former spirit remained to her,&mdash;she did not
+hesitate to ride unattended. Morton checked his horse, reflected for a
+little, then touched him with the spur, and in a moment was at her
+side. After they had conversed for a while, she said,&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"I have heard a great deal of your imprisonment from others, but
+nothing from yourself. Will you not let me hear your story from your
+own lips?"</p>
+
+<p>"It was a long and dull history to live through, and will be a short
+and dull one to tell."</p>
+
+<p>"I have never been able to hear clearly why you were arrested at all."</p>
+
+<p>"It was a simple matter. The Austrian government is like a tyrant and
+a coward, frightened at shadows. I had one or two acquaintances at
+Vienna who had been implicated, though I did not know it, in plots
+against the government. I, being an American, was imagined to be, as a
+matter of course, a democrat, and in league with them. It needed very
+little more; and they shut me up, as they have done many an innocent
+man before me."</p>
+
+<p>"Looking back at your imprisonment, it must seem to you a broad, dark
+chasm in your life."</p>
+
+<p>"Broad and black enough; but not quite so void as I once thought."</p>
+
+<p>"No; in struggling through it, I can see that you have not come out
+empty handed."</p>
+
+<p>"Not I; I should be glad to rid myself of the larger part of the load.
+One is sometimes punished with the fulfilment of his own whims. I
+remember wishing&mdash;and that not so many years back&mdash;that I might sound
+all the strings of human joys and sufferings,&mdash;try life in all its
+phases,&mdash;in peace and war, a dungeon, if I remember right, inclusive.
+I have had my fill of it, and do not care to repeat the experiment."</p>
+
+<p>"Some of the damp and darkness of your dungeon still clings about you,
+and out of the midst of it, you look back over the gulf to a shore of
+light and sunshine, where you were once standing."</p>
+
+<p>"You read me like a sibyl, as you always do. None but a child or a
+fool will seriously regret any shape of experience out of which he has
+come with mind and senses still sound, though it may have changed the
+prismatic colors of life into a neutral tint, a universal gray, a
+Scotch mist, with light enough to delve by, and nothing more."</p>
+
+<p>"One's life is a series of compromises, at best. One must capitulate
+with Fate, gain from her as much good as may be, and as little evil."</p>
+
+<p>"And then set his teeth and endure. As for myself, though, if gifts
+were portioned out among mankind in equal allotments, I should count
+myself, even now, as having more than my share."</p>
+
+<p>"That idea of equalized happiness is a great fallacy."</p>
+
+<p>"Every idea of mortal equality is a great fallacy; and all the systems
+built on it are built on a quicksand. There is no equality in nature.
+There are mountains and valleys, deserts and meadows, the fertile and
+the barren. There is no equality in human minds or human character.
+Who shall measure the distance from the noblest to the meanest of men,
+or the yet vaster distance from the noblest to the meanest of women?
+The differences among mankind are broader than any but the greatest of
+men can grasp. With pains enough, one may comprehend, in a measure,
+the minds on a level with his own or below it; but, above, he sees
+nothing clearly. To follow the movements of a great man's mind, he
+must raise himself almost to an equal greatness."</p>
+
+<p>"A hopeless attempt with most. Every one has a limit."</p>
+
+<p>"But men make more limits for themselves than Nature makes for them."</p>
+
+<p>"You seem to me a person with a singular capacity of growth. You push
+forth fibres into every soil, and draw nutriment from sources most
+foreign to you."</p>
+
+<p>"An indifferent stock needs all the aliment it can find. I am
+fortunate in my planting. Companionship is that which shapes us; and I
+have found men, and what is more to the purpose, women, who have met
+my best requirement. One's friends have all their special influence
+with which they affect him. Yours, to me, was always a rousing and
+wakening influence, an electric life. You have shot a ray of sun down
+into my shadow, and I am bound at least to thank you for it."</p>
+
+<p>"I hope, for old friendship's sake, that your shadow may soon cease to
+need such farthing-candle illumination.&mdash;Here is my mother's house.
+She will be glad to see you."</p>
+
+<p>"I thank you: I will come soon, but not to-day."</p>
+
+<p>And, taking leave of his companion, he turned his horse homeward.</p>
+
+<p>"A vain attempt! I thought a light might kindle again; but it is all
+dust and ashes, with only a sparkle or two. No more flame; the fuel is
+burnt out. Shall I go on? Shall I offer what is left of my heart? A
+poor tribute for her. She should command a better; and there is
+something in her manner, warm and cordial as she is, that tells me
+that I should offer it in vain."</p>
+<br>
+<br><a name="chap65"></a>
+<br>
+<br>
+<h3>CHAPTER LXV.</h3>
+<table align="center" summary="quote56">
+	<tr><td><small>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
+	&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
+	Art thou so blind<br>
+	To fling away the gem whose untold worth,<br>
+	Hid 'neath the roughness of its native mine,<br>
+	Tempts not the eye? Touched by the artist's wheel,<br>
+	The hardest stone flashes the diamond's light.&mdash;<i>Anon</i>.</small></td></tr>
+</table>
+<br>
+<br>
+<p>A few days later, Morton was seated with his friend Meredith.</p>
+
+<p>"Ned, this is a slow life. Do you know, I have made up my mind to
+change it."</p>
+
+<p>"You have been so busy this year past, that I thought you would be
+content to stay where you are."</p>
+
+<p>"On the contrary, my vocation takes me abroad."</p>
+
+<p>"Where will you go?"</p>
+
+<p>"To Egypt, Arabia, India, the East Indies, the South Sea Islands."</p>
+
+<p>"All in the cause of science?"</p>
+
+<p>"At any rate, the thing is necessary to my plans."</p>
+
+<p>"The old Adam sticks to you still. Are you sure that no Pequot blood
+ever got into your veins?"</p>
+
+<p>"I don't know as to that. My ancestors were Puritans to the backbone,
+witch-burners, Quaker-killers, and Indian-haters. I only know that
+when I am bored, my first instinct is to cut loose, and take to the
+woods. It comes over me like an ague-fit. There are two places where a
+man finds sea room enough; one is a great metropolis, the other is a
+wilderness. There is no freedom in a place like this. One can only be
+independent here by living out of the world as I have been doing."</p>
+
+<p>"Here in America, we have political freedom <i>ad nauseam;</i> and we pay
+for it with a loss of social freedom."</p>
+
+<p>"You remember an agreement of ours, years ago, that you and I should
+travel together. Now, will you stand to it, and go with me?"</p>
+
+<p>"Other considerations apart, I should like nothing better; but, as
+matters stand with me now, it's quite out of the question."</p>
+
+<p>Morton was silent for a moment. "Ned," he said, at length, "I heard a
+rumor yesterday. It is no part of mine to obtrude myself into your
+private affairs, and I should not speak if I had not a reason, the
+better half of which is, that I think I can serve you. I heard that
+you were paying your addresses to Miss Euston."</p>
+
+<p>"One cannot look twice at a lady without having it noted down in black
+and white, and turned into tea-table talk."</p>
+
+<p>"I met Miss Euston a few evenings ago. I used to know her before I
+went to Europe, but had not seen her since. If what I heard is true, I
+think you have shown something more than good taste."</p>
+
+<p>"You remember her," said Meredith, after a pause, "as she was the
+summer when you and I went to New Baden."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, I knew her then very well."</p>
+
+<p>"I liked her better at that time than you ever supposed. She was very
+young; just out of school, in fact. She had lived all her life in the
+suburbs, and had grown up like an unpruned rose bush,&mdash;a fine stock in
+a strong soil, but throwing out its shoots quite wildly and at
+random."</p>
+
+<p>"I know it; but all that is changed, I can't conceive how."</p>
+
+<p>"I can tell you. The one person whom she loved and stood in awe of was
+her father. He was a man, and a strong one. He died suddenly about the
+time you went away. It was the first blow she had ever felt; and his
+death was only the beginning of greater troubles. You remember her
+brother Henry."</p>
+
+<p>"I remember him when he was at school&mdash;a good-natured, high-spirited
+little fellow, whom every body liked."</p>
+
+<p>"With wild blood enough for a regiment, and as careless, thoughtless,
+and easy-tempered as a child, such as he was, in fact. His father,
+being out of the country on his affairs, sent him to New York, where
+he fell in with a bad set, and grew very dissipated. Then, to get him
+out of harm's way, they shipped him off to Canton, where he soon began
+to ruin himself, hand over hand. At last, a few months after his
+father's death, his mother and sister heard that he was on his way
+home, with his health completely broken. The next news was, that he
+was at Alexandria, dangerously ill of a slow fever. His mother, who,
+with all respect, is the weakest of mortals, broke down at once into a
+state of helplessness, and could do nothing but weep and lament. The
+whole burden fell upon his sister. She went with her mother and a man
+servant to Alexandria, and took charge of her brother, whose fever
+left him in such an exhausted state that he fell into a decline. She
+brought him as far as Naples, but he could go no farther; and here she
+attended him for five months, till he died; her mother sinking,
+meanwhile, into a kind of moping imbecility. By that time, her uncle
+had found grace to come and join them. Then her turn came; her
+strength failed her, and she fell violently ill. For a week, her life
+was despaired of; but she rallied, against all hope. I was in Naples
+soon after, and used to meet her every morning, as she drove in an
+open carriage to Baiæ. I never saw such a transformation. She was pale
+as death, but very beautiful; and her whole expression was changed.
+She had always been very fond of her brother. There were some points
+of likeness between them. He had her wildness, and her kindliness of
+disposition, but none of her vigorous good sense, and was altogether
+inferior to her in intellect. Now you can have some idea why you find
+her so different from what you once knew her to be."</p>
+
+<p>"I knew," said Morton, "that she had passed through the fire in some
+way; but how I could not tell. I think, now, still better of your
+judgment, Ned."</p>
+
+<p>"Then you see why I will not go with you. I must bring this matter to
+an issue. For good or evil, I must know how it goes with me. It is not
+a new thing. It is of longer date than you imagined, or she either.
+What the end of it may be, Heaven only knows; but one thing is
+certain,&mdash;you will not see me in the South Seas before this point is
+cleared."</p>
+
+<p>"Then I shall never see you there."</p>
+
+<p>"Why do you say that?"</p>
+
+<p>"Your travelling days are over. At least I think so."</p>
+
+<p>"Do you mean&mdash;&mdash;?"</p>
+
+<p>"That you are playing at a game where I think you will win."</p>
+
+<p>"What reason have you to think so?" demanded Meredith, nervously.</p>
+
+<p>"Take the opinion, and let the reason go. On such an argument a good
+reason will sometimes dwindle into nothing when one tries to explain
+it."</p>
+
+<p>His hand was on the door as he spoke, and bidding his friend good
+morning, he left him to his meditations.</p>
+<br>
+<br><a name="chap66"></a>
+<br>
+<br>
+<h3>CHAPTER LXVI.</h3>
+<table align="center" summary="quote57">
+	<tr><td><small>Why waste thy joyous hours in needless pain,<br>
+	Seeking for danger and adventure vain?&mdash;<i>Fairy Queen</i>.</small></td></tr>
+</table>
+<br>
+<br>
+<p>Morton mounted his horse, and rode to the house of Mrs. Euston. He
+found her daughter alone.</p>
+
+<p>"I have come to take leave of you. I am on my travels again."</p>
+
+<p>"Again! You are always on the wing. I supposed that you must have
+learned, by this time, to value home, or, at least, be reconciled to
+staying there in peace."</p>
+
+<p>"My home is a little lonely, and none of the liveliest. Movement is my
+best repose."</p>
+
+<p>"You are wholly made up of restlessness."</p>
+
+<p>"That is Nature's failing, not mine; or if Nature declines to bear the
+burden of my shortcomings, I will put them upon Destiny, and with much
+better cause. But this is not restlessness; or, if it is, it has
+method in it. This journey is a plan of eight years' standing. I
+concocted it when I was a junior, half fledged, at college, and never
+lost sight of it but once, and then for a cause that does not exist
+now."</p>
+
+<p>"Where are you going?"</p>
+
+<p>Morton gave the outline of his journey.</p>
+
+<p>"But is not that very difficult and dangerous?"</p>
+
+<p>"Not very."</p>
+
+<p>"You will not be alone, surely."</p>
+
+<p>"I provided for a companion years ago. My friend Meredith and I struck
+an agreement, that when I went on this journey he should go with me."</p>
+
+<p>An instant shadow passed across the face of Fanny Euston.</p>
+
+<p>"So you will have a companion," she replied, with a nonchalance too
+distinct to be genuine.</p>
+
+<p>"Not at all. He breaks his word. He won't hear of going."</p>
+
+<p>The cloud vanished.</p>
+
+<p>"I take it ill of him; for I had relied on having him with me. He and
+I are old fellow-travellers. I have tried him in sunshine and rain,
+and know his metal." And he launched into an emphatic eulogy of his
+friend, to which Fanny Euston listened with a pleasure which she could
+not wholly hide.</p>
+
+<p>"He best knows why he fails me. It is some cogent and prevailing
+reason; no light cause, or sudden fancy. Some powerful motive, mining
+deep and moving strongly, has shaken him from his purpose; so I
+forgive him for his falling off."</p>
+
+<p>As Morton spoke, he was studying his companion's features, and she,
+conscious of his scrutiny, visibly changed color.</p>
+
+<p>"Dear cousin," he said, with a changed tone, "if I must lose my
+friend, let me find, when I return, that my loss has been overbalanced
+by his gain. I will reconcile myself to it, if it may help to win for
+him the bounty that he aspires to."</p>
+
+<p>The blush deepened to crimson on Fanny Euston's cheek; and without
+waiting for more words, Morton bade her farewell.</p>
+<br>
+<br><a name="chap67"></a>
+<br>
+<br>
+<h3>CHAPTER LXVII.</h3>
+<table align="center" summary="quote58">
+	<tr><td><small>Mais ai-je sur son ame encor quelque pouvoir,<br>
+	Quelque reste d'amour s'y fait il encor voir.&mdash;<i>Polyeucte</i>.</small></td></tr>
+</table>
+<br>
+<br>
+<p>With a slow step and a sinking heart, Morton entered Mrs. Ashland's
+drawing room. He told her of his proposed journey; told her that he
+should leave the country within a few days, to be absent for a year or
+two at least, and asked her mediation to gain for him a parting
+interview with Edith Leslie.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Ashland, and she only, knew the whole misery of her friend's
+position, and feared lest, exhausted as she was by mental pain and
+long watching, and divided between her unextinguished love for Morton,
+and her abhorrence of the criminal who by name and the letter of the
+law was her husband, the meeting might put her self-mastery to too
+painful a proof. She therefore, though with a very evident reluctance,
+dissuaded Morton from it.</p>
+
+<p>"Edith has been taxed already to the farthest limit of her strength.
+She is not ill, but quite worn and spent. She is almost constantly
+with her father, who, now, can hardly be said to live, and needs
+constant care. To see you at this time would agitate her too much."</p>
+
+<p>"Can the sight of me still have so much power to move her?"</p>
+
+<p>"You know what she is. A feeling once rooted in her mind does not
+loosen its hold. There are very few who comprehend her. Her character
+is so balanced and so harmonious, so quiet and noiseless in its
+movement, that no one suspects the force, and faith, and energy that
+are in it. It is not in words or in looks that she shows herself. It
+is in action, in emergencies, that she declares her power over herself
+and over others."</p>
+
+<p>Morton's passion glowed upon him with all its early fervor.</p>
+
+<p>"I will tell her what you wish. But her cup is full already, and you
+can hardly be willing to shake it to overflowing. It is impossible
+that her father should linger many days more; and when that is over,
+it will bring her a relief, though she may not think it so, in more
+ways than one."</p>
+
+<p>Morton assented to his friend's reasons, and leaving his farewell for
+Edith Leslie, mournfully took his leave.</p>
+<br>
+<br><a name="chap68"></a>
+<br>
+<br>
+<h3>CHAPTER LXVIII.</h3>
+<table align="center" summary="quote59">
+	<tr><td><small>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
+	&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Grief and patience, rooted in her both,<br>
+	Mingle their spurs together.&mdash;<i>Cymbeline</i>.</small></td></tr>
+</table>
+<br>
+<br>
+<p>Leslie was dead; beyond the reach of wounds and sorrow; and the only
+tie which held his daughter to Vinal was at last broken. She left him,
+as she had promised, and made her abode with Mrs. Ashland, in her
+cottage by the sea shore.</p>
+
+<p>She sat alone at an open window, looking out upon the sea, an
+illimitable dreariness, waveless and dull as tarnished lead; clouded
+with sullen mists, but still rocking in long, dead swells with the
+motion of a past storm.</p>
+
+<p>Her thoughts followed on the track of the absent Morton.</p>
+
+<p>"It is best for you to have gone; to have made for yourself a relief
+in your man's element of action and struggle. Such a change is
+happiness, after the misery you have known. It was a bitter schooling;
+a long siege, and a dreary one; but you have triumphed, and you wear
+its trophy,&mdash;the heroic calm, the mind tranquil with consciousness of
+power. You have wrung a proud tribute out of sorrow; but has it
+yielded you all its treasure? Could you but have rested less loftily
+on your own firm resolve and unbending pride of manhood! Could you but
+have learned that gentler, deeper, higher philosophy which builds for
+itself a temple out of ruin, and makes weakness invincible with
+binding its tendrils to the rock!</p>
+
+<p>"Your fate and mine have not been a bed of roses; but the fierceness
+of yours is past, and I must still wait the issues of mine. I have
+renounced this fraud and mockery of empty words which was to have
+bound me to a life-long horror. The world will think very strangely of
+me. That must be borne, too; and such a load is light, to the burden I
+have borne already."</p>
+
+<p>A few days later, tidings came that Vinal was ill. Edith Leslie
+rejoined him; but, finding that her presence was any thing but
+soothing to him, she left him in the care of others, and returned to
+her friend's house. It was but a sudden and short attack, from which
+he recovered in a week or two.</p>
+<br>
+<br><a name="chap69"></a>
+<br>
+<br>
+<h3>CHAPTER LXIX.</h3>
+
+<blockquote><small><i>Fal.</i>&mdash;Reason, you rogue, reason; thinkest thou I'll endanger my soul
+gratis?&mdash;<i>Merry Wives of Windsor</i>.</small></blockquote>
+<center><small><i>Pistol.</i>&mdash;Base is the slave that
+pays.&mdash;<i>Henry V</i>.</small></center>
+<br>
+<br>
+<p>Time had been when, his youth considered, Vinal was a beaming star in
+the commercial heaven. On 'change,</p>
+
+<center><small>"His name was great,<br>
+In mouths of wisest censure."</small></center>
+
+<p>The astutest broker pronounced him good; the sagest money lender took
+his paper without a question. But of late, his signature had lost a
+little of its efficacy. It was whispered that he was not as sound as
+his repute gave out; that his operations were no longer marked by his
+former clear-headed forecast; that he was deep in doubtful and
+dangerous speculation. In short, his credit stood by no means where it
+had stood a twelvemonth earlier.</p>
+
+<p>Possibly these rumors took their first impulse, not on 'change, but at
+tea tables, and in drawing rooms. His wife's separation from him had
+given ample food to speculation; and gossip had for once been just,
+asserting, with few dissenting voices, that there must needs be some
+fault, and a grave one, on the part of Vinal. The event had ceased to
+be a very recent one; but surmise was still rife concerning its
+mysterious cause.</p>
+
+<p>Meanwhile, Vinal was being goaded into recklessness, frightened out of
+his propriety, haunted, devil-driven, maddened into desperate courses.
+Late one night, he was pacing his library, with a quick, disordered
+step. His servants were in their beds, excepting a man, nodding his
+drowsy vigil over the kitchen fire. Vinal's affairs were fast drawing
+to a crisis. A few weeks must determine the success or failure of a
+broad scheme of fraud, on which he had staked his fortunes and
+himself, and whose issues would sink him to disgrace and ruin, or lift
+him for a time to the pinnacle of a knave's prosperity. But,
+meanwhile, how to keep his head above water! Claims thickened upon
+him; he was meshed in a network of perplexities; and, with him,
+bankruptcy would involve far more than a loss of fortune.</p>
+
+<p>There was a ring at the door bell. Vinal stopped short in his feverish
+walk, raised his head with a startled motion, and listened like a fox
+who hears the hounds. His instinct foreboded the worst. His cheek
+flushed, and his eye brightened, not with spirit, but with
+desperation.</p>
+
+<p>The bell rang again. This time, the sleepy servant roused himself.
+Vinal heard his step along the hall; heard the opening of the street
+door, and a man's voice pronouncing his name. The moment after, his
+evil spirit stood before him, in the shape of Henry Speyer.</p>
+
+<p>Vinal gave him no time to speak, but shutting the door in the
+servant's face, turned upon his visitor with such courage as a cat
+will show when a bulldog has driven her into a corner.</p>
+
+<p>"Again! Are you here again? It is hardly a month since you were here
+last. What have you done with what I gave you then? Do you think I am
+made of gold? Do you take me for a bank that you can draw on at will?"</p>
+
+<p>"I am sorry to trouble you so soon, but I am very hard pressed."</p>
+
+<p>"Hard pressed! So am I hard pressed. Here for a year and more I have
+been supporting you in your extravagance&mdash;you and your mistresses; you
+have been living on me like princes,&mdash;dress, drinking, feasting,
+horses, gambling!&mdash;among you, you make my money spin away like water.
+Every well has a bottom to it, and you have got to the bottom of
+mine."</p>
+
+<p>Speyer laughed with savage incredulity.</p>
+
+<p>"Any thing in reason I am ready to do for you; but it's of no use.
+More! more! is always the word. You think you have found a gold mine.
+You mistake. Here I have a note due to-morrow; and another on
+Monday&mdash;that was for money I borrowed to give you. Heaven knows how I
+shall pay them. Go back, and come again a month from this."</p>
+
+<p>"It won't do. I must have it now."</p>
+
+<p>"I tell you, I have none to give you."</p>
+
+<p>"Do you see this?" said Speyer, producing a roll of printed papers,
+and giving one to Vinal.</p>
+
+<p>It was Vinal's letter, in the form of a placard, with a statement of
+the whole affair prefixed. Speyer had had it printed secretly in New
+York, the names of Morton and Vinal being left blank, and ingeniously
+filled in by himself with a pen.</p>
+
+<p>"Give me the money, or show me how to get it, or I will have you
+posted up at every street corner in town. I have your letter here. I
+shall send it to your friend, the editor of the Sink."</p>
+
+<p>The Sink was a scurrilous newspaper, which the virtuous Vinal, always
+anxious for the morals of the city, had once caused to be prosecuted
+as a nuisance, for which the editor bore him a special grudge.</p>
+
+<p>But Vinal at last was brought to bay. Threats, which Speyer thought
+irresistible, had lost their power. He threw back the paper, and said
+desperately, "Do what you will."</p>
+
+<p>Speyer made a step forward, and faced his prey.</p>
+
+<p>"Will you give me the money?"</p>
+
+<p>"By G&mdash;, no!"</p>
+
+<p>"By G&mdash;, you shall!"</p>
+
+<p>And Speyer seized him by the breast of his waistcoat.</p>
+
+<p>Vinal had been trained in the habits of a gentleman. He had never
+known personal outrage before. He grew purple with rage. The veins of
+his forehead swelled like whipcord, and his eyes glittered like a
+rattlesnake's.</p>
+
+<p>"Take off your hand!"</p>
+
+<p>The words were less articulated than hissed between his teeth.</p>
+
+<p>"Take off your hand."</p>
+
+<p>Speyer clutched him with a harder gripe, and shook him to and fro.
+Quick as lightning, Vinal struck him in the face. Speyer glared and
+grinned on his victim like an enraged tiger. For a moment, he shook
+him as a terrier shakes a rat; then flung him backward against the
+farther side of the room. Here, striking the wall, he fell helpless,
+among the window curtains and overturned chairs. Speyer would probably
+have followed up his attack; but at the instant, the servant, who, by
+a happy accident, was at the side door, in the near neighborhood of
+the keyhole, ran in in time to save Vinal from more serious
+discomfiture.</p>
+
+<p>Speyer hesitated; turned from one to the other with murder in his
+look; then, slowly moving backwards, left the room, whence the
+servant's valor did not mount to the point of following him.</p>
+<br>
+<br><a name="chap70"></a>
+<br>
+<br>
+<h3>CHAPTER LXX.</h3>
+<table align="center" summary="quote60">
+	<tr><td><small>He is composed and framed of treachery,<br>
+	And fled he is upon this villany.&mdash;<i>Much Ado about Nothing</i>.</small></td></tr>
+</table>
+<br>
+<br>
+<p>Edward Meredith, the affianced bridegroom of Miss Fanny Euston,
+sailing on a smooth sea, under full canvas, towards the pleasing but
+perilous bounds of matrimony, was walking in the morning towards the
+post office, in the frame of mind proper to his condition. He passed
+that place of unrest where the Law hangs her blazons from every
+window, and approached the heart and brain of the city, the precinct
+sacred to commerce and finance. Here, gathered about a corner, he saw
+a crowd, elbowing each other with unusual vehemence. Meredith, with
+all despatch, crossed over to the opposite side. But here, again, his
+attention was caught by a singular clamor among the rabble of
+newsboys, as noisy and intrusive as a flight of dorr-bugs on a June
+evening. And, not far off, another crowd was gathered at the office of
+the Weekly Sink. Curiosity became too strong for his native antipathy.
+He saw an acquaintance, with a crushed hat, and a face of bewildered
+amazement, just struggling out of the press.</p>
+
+<p>"What's the row?" demanded Meredith.</p>
+
+<p>"Go and read that paper," returned the other, with an astonished
+ejaculation, of more emphasis than unction.</p>
+
+<p>Meredith shouldered into the crowd, looked over the hats of some,
+between the hats of others, and saw, pasted to the stone door post, a
+placard large as the handbill of a theatre. Over it was displayed a
+sheet of paper, on which was daubed, in ink, the words, <i>Astounding
+Disclosures!!! Crime in High Life!!!!</i> And on the placard he beheld
+the names of his classmate Horace Vinal, and his friend Vassall
+Morton.</p>
+
+<p>Meredith pushed and shouldered with the boldest, gained a favorable
+position, braced himself there, and ran his eye through the whole.
+Then, with a convulsive effort, he regained his liberty, beckoned a
+newsboy, and purchased the extra sheet of the Weekly Sink. Here,
+however, he learned very little. The editor, taught wisdom by
+experience, had tempered malice with caution. He spoke of the duty he
+owed to the public, his position as guardian and censor of the public
+morals, and affirmed that, in this capacity, he had that morning
+received through the post office the original of the letter of which a
+copy was printed on the placards posted in various parts of the city.
+With the letter had come also an anonymous note, highly complimentary
+to himself in his official capacity, a copy of which he subjoined. As
+for the letter, he did not think himself called upon to give it
+immediate publicity in his columns; but he would submit it for
+inspection to any persons anxious to see it, after which he should
+place it in the hands of the police.</p>
+
+<p>Though the editor of the Sink was thus discreet, the letter, in the
+course of the day, found its way into several of the penny papers, to
+which copies of the placard containing it had been mailed. From the
+dram shop to the drawing room, the commotion was unspeakable. The mass
+of readers floundered in a sea of crude conjecture; but those who knew
+the parties, recalling a faint and exploded rumor of Morton's
+engagement to Miss Leslie, and connecting it with her separation from
+Vinal, gained a glimpse of something like the truth.</p>
+
+<p>The only new light thrown upon the matter came from the servant, who
+told all that he knew, and much more, of the nocturnal scene between
+Speyer and Vinal, affirming, with much complacency, that he had saved
+his master's life. Miss Leslie and Mrs. Ashland studiously kept
+silent. Morton was at the antipodes; while the unknown divulger of the
+mystery eluded all attempts to trace him. Speyer, in fact, having
+sprung his mine, had fled from his danger and his debts, and taking
+passage for New Orleans, sailed thence to Vera Cruz.</p>
+
+<p>Meredith, perplexed and astounded, wrote a letter to Morton, directing
+it to Calcutta, whither the latter was to repair, after voyaging among
+the East India Islands.</p>
+
+<p>Meanwhile, great search was made for Vinal; but Vinal was nowhere to
+be found.</p>
+<br>
+<br><a name="chap71"></a>
+<br>
+<br>
+<h3>CHAPTER LXXI.</h3>
+
+<blockquote><small>Now would I give a thousand furlongs of sea for an acre of barren
+ground.&mdash;<i>Tempest</i>.</small></blockquote>
+
+<table align="center" summary="quote61">
+	<tr><td><small>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
+	&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
+	&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Let the great gods,<br>
+	That keep this dreadful pother o'er our heads,<br>
+  	Find out their enemies now. Tremble, thou wretch,<br>
+  	That hast within thee undivulged crimes<br>
+  	Unwhipped of justice! Hide, thou bloody hand;<br>
+  	Thou perjured and thou simular man of virtue,<br>
+  	That art incestuous! Caitiff, to pieces shake,<br>
+  	That under covert and convenient seeming,<br>
+	Hast practised on man's life!&mdash;<i>Lear</i>.</small></td></tr>
+</table>
+<br>
+<br>
+<p>At one o'clock at night, in the midst of the Atlantic, a hundred
+leagues west of the Azores, the bark Swallow, freighted with salt cod
+for the Levant, was scudding furiously, under a close-reefed foresail,
+before a fierce gale. On board were her captain, two mates, seven men,
+a black steward, a cabin boy, and Mr. John White, a passenger.</p>
+
+<p>The captain and his mates were all on deck. John White, otherwise
+Horace Vinal, occupied a kind of store room, opening out of the cabin.
+Here a temporary berth had been nailed up for him, while on the
+opposite side were stowed a trunk belonging to him, and three barrels
+of onions belonging to the vessel's owners, all well lashed in their
+places.</p>
+
+<p>The dead lights were in, but the seas, striking like mallets against
+the stern, pierced in fine mist through invisible crevices,
+bedrizzling every thing with salt dew. The lantern, hanging from the
+cabin roof, swung angrily with the reckless plungings of the vessel.</p>
+
+<p>Vinal was a good sailor; that is to say, he was not very liable to
+that ocean scourge, seasickness, and the few qualms he had suffered
+were by this time effectually frightened out of him. As darkness
+closed, he had lain down in his clothes; and flung from side to side
+till his bones ached with the incessant rolling of the bark, he
+listened sleeplessly to the hideous booming of the storm. Suddenly
+there came a roar so appalling, that he leaped out of his berth with
+terror. It seemed to him as if a Niagara had broken above the vessel,
+and was crushing her down to the nethermost abyss. The rush of waters
+died away. Then came the bellow of the speaking trumpet, the trampling
+of feet, the shouts of men, the hoarse fluttering of canvas. In a few
+moments he felt a change in the vessel's motion. She no longer rocked
+with a constant reel from side to side, but seemed flung about at
+random, hither and thither, at the mercy of the storm.</p>
+
+<p>She had been, in fact, within a hair's breadth of foundering. A huge
+wave, chasing on her wake, swelling huger and huger, towering higher
+and higher, had curled, at last, its black crest above her stern, and,
+breaking, fallen on her in a deluge. The captain, a Barnstable man of
+the go-ahead stamp, was brought at last to furl his foresail and lie
+to.</p>
+
+<p>Vinal, restless with his fear, climbed the narrow stairway which led
+up to the deck, and pushed open the door at the top; but a blast of
+wind and salt spray clapped it in his face, and would have knocked him
+to the foot of the steps, if he had not clung to the handrail. He
+groped his way as he could back to his berth. Here he lay for a
+quarter of an hour, when the captain came down, enveloped in
+oilcloths, and dripping like a Newfoundland dog just out of the water.
+Vinal emerged from his den, and presenting himself with his haggard
+face, and hair bristling in disorder, questioned the bedrenched
+commander touching the state of things on deck. But the latter was in
+a crusty and savage mood.</p>
+
+<p>"Hey! what is it?"&mdash;surveying the apparition by the light of the
+swinging lantern,&mdash;"well, you <i>be</i> a beauty, I'll be damned if you
+ain't."</p>
+
+<p>"I did not ask you how I looked; I asked you about the weather."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, it ain't the sweetest night I ever see; but I guess you won't
+drown this time."</p>
+
+<p>"My friend," said Vinal, "learn to mend your way of speaking, and use
+a civil tongue."</p>
+
+<p>The captain stared at him, muttered an oath or two, and then turned
+away.</p>
+
+<p>Day broke, and Vinal went on deck. It was a wild dawning. The storm
+was at its height. One rag of a topsail was set to steady the vessel;
+all the rest was bare poles and black dripping cordage, through which
+the gale yelled like a forest in a tornado. The sky was dull gray; the
+ocean was dull gray. There was no horizon. The vessel struggled among
+tossing mountains, while tons of water washed her decks, and the men,
+half drowned, clung to the rigging. Vast misshapen ridges of water
+bore down from the windward, breaking into foam along their crests,
+struck the vessel with a sullen shock, burst over her bulwarks,
+deluged her from stem to stern, heaved her aloft as they rolled on,
+and then left her to sink again into the deep trough of the sea.</p>
+
+<p>Vinal was in great fear; but nothing in his look betrayed it. He soon
+went below to escape the drenching seas; but towards noon, Hansen, the
+second mate, a good-natured old sea dog, came down with the welcome
+news that the gale had suddenly abated. Vinal went on deck again, and
+saw a singular spectacle. The wind had strangely lulled; but the waves
+were huge and furious as ever; and the bark rose and pitched, and was
+flung to and fro with great violence, but in a silence almost perfect.
+Water, in great quantities, still washed the deck, but found ready
+escape through a large port in the after part of the vessel, the lid
+of which, hanging vertically, had been left unfastened.</p>
+
+<p>The lull was of short space. A hoarse, low sound began to growl in the
+distance like muffled thunder. It grew louder,&mdash;nearer,&mdash;and the gale
+was on them again. This time it blew from the north-west, and less
+fiercely than before. The venturous captain made sail. The yards were
+braced round; and leaning from the wind till her lee gunwale scooped
+the water, the vessel plunged on her way like a racehorse. The clouds
+were rent; blue sky appeared. Strong winds tore them apart, and the
+sun blazed out over the watery convulsion, changing its blackness to a
+rich blue, almost as dark, where the whirling streaks of foam seemed
+like snow wreaths on the mountains. Jets of foam, too, spouted from
+under the vessel's bows, as she dashed them against the opposing seas;
+and the prickling spray flew as high as the main top. The ocean was
+like a viking in his robust carousals,&mdash;terror and mirth, laughter and
+fierceness, all in one.</p>
+
+<p>But the mind of Vinal was blackness and unmixed gall. His game was
+played and lost. The worst that he feared had befallen him. Suspense
+was over, and he was freed from the incubus that had ridden him so
+long. A something like relief mixed itself with his bitter and
+vindictive musings. He had not fled empty handed. He and Morton's
+friend Sharpe had been joint trustees of a large estate, a part of
+which, in a form that made it readily available, happened to be in
+Vinal's hands at the time of his crisis. Dread of his quick-sighted
+and vigilant colleague had hitherto prevented him from applying it to
+his own uses. But this fear had now lost its force. He took it with
+him on his flight, and converted it into money in New York, where he
+had embarked.</p>
+
+<p>At night the descent of Hansen to supper was a welcome diversion to
+his lonely thoughts. The old sailor seated himself at the table:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"I've lost all my appetite, and got a horse's. Here, steward, you
+nigger, where be yer? Fetch along that beefsteak. What do you call
+this here? Well, never mind what you call it, here goes into it, any
+how."</p>
+
+<p>A silent and destructive onslaught upon the dish before him followed.
+Then, laying down his knife and fork for a moment,&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"I've knowed the time when I could have ate up the doctor
+there,"&mdash;pointing to the steward,&mdash;"bones and all, and couldn't get a
+mouthful, no way you could fix it." Then, resuming his labors, "Tell
+you what, squire, this here agrees with me. Come out of that berth
+now, and sit down here alongside o' me. Just walk into that beefsteak,
+like I do. That 'ere beats physicking all holler."</p>
+
+<p>Thus discoursing, partly to himself and partly to Vinal, and, by
+turns, berating the grinning steward in a jocular strain, Mr. Hansen
+continued his repast. When, at last, he left the cabin, Vinal found
+the solitude too dreary for endurance; and, to break its monotony, he
+also went on deck.</p>
+
+<p>The vessel still scoured wildly along; and as she plunged through the
+angry seas, so the moon was sailing among stormy clouds, now eclipsed
+and lost, now shining brightly out, silvering the seething foam, and
+casting the shadows of spars and rigging on the glistening deck. Vinal
+bent over the bulwark and looked down on the bubbles, as they fled
+past, flashing in the moon.</p>
+
+<p>His thoughts flew backward with them, and dwelt on the hated home from
+which he was escaping.</p>
+
+<p>"What an outcry! what gapes of wonder, and eyes turned up to heaven!
+Gulled, befooled, hoodwinked! and now, at last, you have found it out,
+and make earth and heaven ring with your virtuous spite. I knew you
+all, and played you as I would play the pieces on a chess board. The
+game was a good one in the main, but with some blunders, and for those
+I pay the price. If I had had that villain's brute strength, and the
+brute nerve that goes with it, there would have been a different story
+to tell. Before this, I would have found a way to grind him to the
+earth, and set my foot on his neck. They think him virtuous. He thinks
+himself so. The shallow-witted idiots! Their eyes can only see
+skin-deep. They love to be cheated. They swallow fallacies as a child
+swallows sweetmeats. The tinsel dazzles them, and they take it for
+gold. Virtue! a delusion of self-interest&mdash;self-interest, the spring,
+lever, and fulcrum of the world. It is for my interest, for every
+body's interest, that his neighbors should be honest, candid, open,
+forgiving, charitable, continent, sober, and what not. Therefore, by
+the general consent of mankind,&mdash;the inevitable instinct of
+self-interest,&mdash;such qualities are exalted into sanctity; christened
+with the name of virtues; draped in white, and crowned with halos;
+rewarded with praises here and paradise hereafter. Drape the skeleton
+as you will, the bare skeleton is still there. Paint as thick as you
+will, the bare skull grins under it,&mdash;to all who have the eyes to see,
+and the hardihood to use them. How many among mankind have courage to
+face the naked truth? Not one in a thousand. Cannot the fools draw
+reason out of the analogy of things? Can they not see that, as their
+bodies will be melted and merged into the bodily substance of the
+world, so their minds will be merged in the great universal mind,&mdash;the
+<i>animus mundi</i>,&mdash;out of which they sprang, like bubbles on the water,
+and into which they will sink again, like bubbles when they burst?
+Immortality! They may please themselves with the name; but of what
+worth is an immortality where individuality is lost, and each
+conscious atom drowned in the vast immensity? What a howling and
+screeching the wind makes in the rigging! If I were given to
+superstition, I could fancy that a legion from the nether world were
+bestriding the ropes, yelping in grand jubilation at the sight of&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>Here his thoughts were abruptly cut short. A combing wave struck the
+vessel. She lurched with violence, and a shower of foam flew over her
+side. Vinal lost his balance. His feet slipped from under him. He
+fell, and slid quickly across the wet and tossing deck. Instinctively
+he braced his feet to stop himself against the bulwark on the lee
+side. But at the point where they touched it was the large port before
+mentioned. Though closed to all appearance, the bolt was still
+unfastened. It flew open at his touch. Vinal clutched to save himself.
+His fingers slipped on the wet timbers, and with a cry of horror, he
+was shot into the bubbling surges. There was a blinding in his eyes, a
+ringing in his ears; then, for an instant, he saw the light, and the
+black hulk of the vessel fled past like a shadow. Then a wave swept
+over him: all was darkness and convulsion, and a maddened sense of
+being flung high aloft, as the wave rolled him towards its crest like
+a drift sea weed. Here again light broke upon him; and flying above
+the merciless chaos, he saw something like the white wing of a huge
+bird. It was the reefed main-topsail of the receding vessel. He
+shrieked wildly. A torrent of brine dashed back the cry, and foaming
+over his head, plunged him down into darkness again. Again he rose,
+gasping and half senseless; and again the ravenous breakers beat him
+down. A moment of struggle and of agony; then a long nightmare of
+dreamy horror, while, slowly settling downward, he sank below the
+turmoil of the storm; slowly and more slowly still, till the denser
+water sustained his weight. Then with limbs outstretched, he hovered
+in mid ocean, lonely, void, and vast, like a hawk poised in mid-air,
+while his felon spirit, bubbling to the surface, winged its dreary
+flight through the whistling storm.</p>
+<br>
+<br><a name="chap72"></a>
+<br>
+<br>
+<h3>CHAPTER LXXII.</h3>
+<table align="center" summary="quote62">
+	<tr><td><small>Adventure and endurance and emprise<br>
+  	Exalted his mind's faculties, and strung<br>
+	His body's sinews.&mdash;<i>Bryant</i>.</small></td></tr>
+</table>
+<br>
+<br>
+<p>On a rock, at the end of the promontory which forms the harbor of
+Beyrout, stood Vassall Morton; and at his side his friend Buckland,
+whom he had met in New York just after his return from Austria. They
+had encountered again in the East Indies, and had made together a long
+and varied journey, not without hardship and danger, among the tribes
+of Upper India and Central Asia. Buckland was greatly changed. His
+look and bearing betokened recovered health and spirit; while his
+companion, in the fulness of masculine vigor, was swarthy as an Arab
+with the long burning of the Eastern sun.</p>
+
+<p>"Our travels are over, Buckland. We have nothing to do, now, but to
+get on board ship, and lie still for a few weeks, and we shall be at
+home again. I hardly know why it is that I wish so much to shorten the
+space, unless from a cat-like propensity to haunt old places."</p>
+
+<p>"And to see your friends again."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, that is something&mdash;a good deal. I have friends enough, unless
+they have died since I last heard from them. But for household gods, I
+have none; or, rather, my ancestral Lares have no better abode than an
+old clapboarded parsonage in an up-country Yankee village. You are
+much more fortunate in that respect. You go home again, besides, a new
+man, rejuvenated in mind and body."</p>
+
+<p>"Thanks to you for that. I was a wreck till you set me afloat and
+refitted me."</p>
+
+<p>"I gave you a shove off shore; but the refitting came afterwards, and
+was no doing of mine. I should hardly know you for the same man."</p>
+
+<p>"That infatuation seems to me like a dream, as I remember you
+prophesied on the evening when we sat together on the Battery."</p>
+
+<p>"Half of a woman's weakness springs from the sensitiveness of her
+bodily organization; and three fourths of your infatuation may be laid
+to the same account. One may say that, without any tendency to
+flounder into materialism. You are a man again now; and even if you
+had not heard of your sorceress's death, you might go back, I think,
+without the least fear of her spells."</p>
+
+<p>"I hope so; but I wish that, like you, I had some engrossing object to
+return to."</p>
+
+<p>"I wish that, like you, I had a family, and a fixed home to return to.
+My travels are finished, though. I have roamed the world enough. My
+objects are accomplished, as well as I could ever accomplish them. I
+have not wandered for nothing; and now I shall bend myself to make my
+journeyings bear what fruit I can. By the sun, and by my watch, it is
+time for the consul to have returned. Did not his servant say that he
+would come ashore from the frigate at about six?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes."</p>
+
+<p>"If he does not, I will get a boat and go to find him. He must have
+letters for one or the other of us."</p>
+
+<p>"I will ride to the town, and see if he has come."</p>
+
+<p>"Very well; I will wait for you here."</p>
+
+<p>Their horses were near at hand, in the keeping of an Arab servant.
+Buckland mounted his own, and rode off.</p>
+
+<p>Morton seated himself on a jutting edge of the rock overhanging the
+bay, and gave himself up to his thoughts.</p>
+
+<p>"Two years of wandering! Two years more, and I should grow like the
+man in Anastasius, never happy at rest, never content in motion. I
+have had my fill of adventure. I must learn repose before it is too
+late. Why is it that I look so longingly towards America? Except half
+a dozen near friends, I have no ties there that are worth the name.
+America is the paradise of the laboring class, the purgatory of those
+of educated tastes. What career is open to me there, that I could not
+better follow elsewhere? I have chosen my path. I have an object which
+fills and engrosses me, and would fill the lifetime of twenty men
+abler than I. America is not my best field of labor; but where else
+should I plant myself? I could not live in England. I am of English
+race, but of an altered type; too like, and too unlike, to find
+harmony there. The continent is more cosmopolitan; but it would be a
+dreary life. I should grow homesick, thinking of the old woods and
+rocks. I will go home, buckle to my work, and end my days where I
+began them.</p>
+
+<p>"My life has been, in its small way, a varied one; very hard, at
+times, but perhaps none too much so. Blows are good for most men, and
+suffering, to the farthest limit of their endurance, what they most
+need. It is a child's part to complain under any fate; and what color
+of complaint have I, or any man sound in mind and body, and with the
+world free before him? And yet I turn girl-hearted when I think of
+that summer evening by the lake at Matherton. What is my fate to Edith
+Leslie's? How will a few years of suffering, with one deadening memory
+in their wake, compare with her life-long endurance? A woman's nature,
+it is said, will mould itself into conformity with her husband's. I
+will rather believe that Vinal's presence, instead of drawing her to
+itself, has repelled her upward into a higher atmosphere, and made her
+life as lofty as it must be sad. I wish to go back, and yet I shrink
+from this voyage. I have some cause, remembering my last welcome home.
+Heaven knows what I may learn of her this time. It was her marriage
+then; perhaps it will be her death now. And which of the two will have
+been the worse either for me to hear or for her to undergo? Perhaps
+these letters may bring some word of her; though that is not likely,
+for none of my friends, but one, know that I should have any special
+interest in hearing it. If they write of her, it will be some news of
+disaster."</p>
+
+<p>These dismal forebodings weighed upon him, and his desire to have them
+resolved soon grew so importunate, that mounting his horse, he
+followed Buckland's track towards the town. Threading the busy
+streets, he stopped before a door adorned with the effigy of a spread
+eagle wearing a striped shield about his neck, and clutching
+thunderbolts and olive boughs in his claws. He threw the rein to his
+servant, mounted the consular stair, and at the head met Buckland
+emerging.</p>
+
+<p>"Is the consul come?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes; and letters for you. I am sorry for you, if you mean to answer
+them all."</p>
+
+<p>And he gave Morton a formidable packet. Morton cut the string.</p>
+
+<p>"These are all six or eight months old. They are postmarked from
+Calcutta."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, they came after we had gone up the country, and were sent back
+to this place to meet you. Wait a moment; here are more. These two
+have just come from England."</p>
+
+<p>Morton took them; recognized on one the handwriting of Meredith; on
+the other, that of his friend Mrs. Ashland. His heart leaped to his
+throat; he tore open the seal, and glanced down the page.</p>
+
+<p>Buckland saw his agitation.</p>
+
+<p>"No bad news, I trust."</p>
+
+<p>"I had an enemy, and he is dead. You shall know more of it to-morrow."</p>
+
+<p>And hastening from the house, he mounted again, and through the midst
+of mules, donkeys, dromedaries, men, children, and old women, rode at
+an unlawful speed towards his lodging.</p>
+
+<p>Here, with a beating heart, he explored his profuse correspondence
+from beginning to end. By the Calcutta packet, he learned how his
+native town had been thrown into commotion by the exposure and flight
+of Vinal, and how his friends were eager and impatient to hear his
+explanation of the affair. The more recent letters bore tidings still
+more startling. The bark Swallow had touched at Gibraltar, and a
+letter from her captain to her owners, forwarded by the Oriental
+steamer on her return voyage, told how his passenger, John White, had
+been lost overboard during a gale, two of the crew having seen the
+accident; how, arriving at Gibraltar, his trunks had been opened in
+the consul's presence, to learn his address; and how, along with a
+large amount of money in gold, letters and papers had been found,
+showing that he was not John White, but Horace Vinal, of Boston.</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;*
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;*
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;*
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;*
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;*</p>
+
+<p>On the next morning, Morton despatched a letter to Meredith. In it, he
+told his friend the whole course of his story; and these were the
+closing words:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"One thing you may well believe&mdash;that, before you will have had this
+letter many days, I shall follow it. There will be no rest for me till
+I touch American soil. An old passion, only half stifled under a load
+of hopelessness, springs into fresh life again, and burns, less
+brightly, perhaps, but I can almost believe, more deeply and fervently
+than ever. I was consoling myself yesterday with trying to think that
+blows were my mind's best medicine; but I feel now, that after being
+broken with the plough and harrow, it will yield the better for the
+summer sunshine. Yet I am afraid to flatter myself with too bright a
+prospect. Miss Leslie loved me, and the planets in their course are
+not more constant and unswerving; but I cannot tell what may have been
+the effect of so much suffering, or what determination, fatal to my
+hope, it may not have impelled her to embrace. She will soon know my
+mind. I have written to her, and begged her to send her reply to New
+York, where, if my reckoning does not fail, I shall arrive about the
+middle of June. By it I shall be able to judge to what fortune I am to
+look forward.</p>
+
+<p>"You have so lately passed your own anxieties, that you will easily
+appreciate mine. I can wish for them nothing more than that they may
+find as happy an issue; and I will take it as an earnest of the
+intentions of destiny towards me that it has just brought together my
+two best friends."</p>
+<br>
+<br><a name="chap73"></a>
+<br>
+<br>
+<h3>CHAPTER LXXIII.</h3>
+<table align="center" summary="quote63">
+	<tr><td><small>Joy never feasts so high<br>
+	As when his first course is of misery.&mdash;<i>Suckling</i>.</small></td></tr>
+</table>
+<br>
+<br>
+<p>Again the Jersey heights rose on the eye of Morton, and the woods and
+villas of Staten Island. Again the broad breast of New York harbor
+opened before him, sparkling in the June sun; the rugged front of the
+Castle, and the tapering spire of Trinity. He bethought him of his
+last return, and its unforgotten blackness threw its shadow across his
+mind. He turned, doubting and tremulous, towards the future; but here
+his horizon brightened as with the sunrise, shooting to the zenith its
+shafts of tranquil light.</p>
+
+<p>Meanwhile, the telegraph had darted to Boston a notice that the
+approaching steamer had been signalled off the coast. Meredith took
+the night train to meet his friend; but, arriving, he learned that
+Morton was already on shore. Driving from one hotel to another, he
+found, at length, the latter's resting-place.</p>
+
+<p>"Shall I take up your name, sir?"</p>
+
+<p>"No, show me his room; I will go myself."</p>
+
+<p>He knocked at the door. There was no answer. He knocked again, and a
+voice replied suddenly, like that of a man roused from a revery.</p>
+
+<p>He entered; and at the next moment, Morton grasped his hand.</p>
+
+<p>"You have found yourself again," said Meredith; "you have grown back
+again to your old look."</p>
+
+<p>Morton's eye glistened.</p>
+
+<p>"I think I know the handwriting of that letter. Miss Leslie's,&mdash;I will
+call her so still&mdash;it is hers, is it not?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes."</p>
+
+<p>"She writes, I trust, what you hoped to hear."</p>
+
+<p>"All that I hoped, and much more."</p>
+
+<p>"I am glad of it from my heart. Fortune has been hard enough upon you.
+She was bound to pay you her score."</p>
+
+<p>"She has done so with usury."</p>
+
+<p>"Are you going to Boston this afternoon?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes."</p>
+
+<p>"Then you have just two hours to spare. If you have any leisure for
+such sublunary matters, we had better get dinner at once. Romeo
+himself, at his worst case, asks his friend when they shall dine."</p>
+
+<p>Three hours later, the eastward-bound steamer was ploughing the Sound,
+and Morton and Meredith paced her deck.</p>
+
+<p>"I have told you now the whole history, from first to last. I need not
+ask you to forgive my having kept it secret from you so long."</p>
+
+<p>"Why should you ask me? Every man has a right to his own secrets, and
+I like him the better for keeping them. Vinal, at all events, had good
+cause to thank you."</p>
+
+<p>"He is dead; and his memory, if it will, had better die with him."</p>
+
+<p>"You said in your letter that his agent was called Henry Speyer. I
+thought, at the time, that I had seen the name before; and a day or
+two since, I found it accidentally again. The newspapers, two months
+or more ago, mention a foreigner called Henry Speyer as an officer in
+this last piratical forray into Cuba. His party lost their way, fell
+into an ambuscade of government soldiers, and Speyer was shot through
+the head."</p>
+
+<p>"He found a better end than his principal."</p>
+
+<p>"And deserved a better one. A professed rascal is better than a
+pharisee."</p>
+<br>
+<br><a name="chap74"></a>
+<br>
+<br>
+<h3>CHAPTER LXXIV.</h3>
+<table align="center" summary="quote64">
+	<tr><td><small>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
+	The rainbow to the storms of life;<br>
+	The evening beam that smiles the clouds away.&mdash;<i>Bride of Abydos</i>.</small></td></tr>
+</table>
+<br>
+<br>
+<p>Morton rode along the edge of the lake at Matherton. He passed under
+the shadowy verdure of the pines, and approached the old family
+mansion of the Leslies. It was years since he had seen it. His
+imprisonment, his escape, his dreary greeting home, all lay between.
+He was the same man, yet different;&mdash;with a mind calmed by experience,
+and strong by action and endurance; an ardor which had lost all of its
+intoxication, but none of its force; and which, as the past and the
+present rose upon his thoughts, was tempered with a melancholy which
+had in it nothing of pain.</p>
+
+<p>The hall door stood open, as if to welcome him. The roses and the
+laurels were in bloom; the grass, ripe for the scythe, was waving in
+the meadow; and, by glimpses between the elm and maple boughs, the
+lake, crisped in the June wind, was sparkling with the sunlight.</p>
+
+<p>Morton dismounted; his foot was on the porch; but he had no time for
+thought; for a step sounded in the hall, and Edith met him on the
+threshold.</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;*
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;*
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;*
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;*
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;*</p>
+
+<p>That evening, at sunset, Miss Leslie and Morton stood on the brink of
+the lake, at the foot of the garden. It was the spot which had been
+most sweet and most bitter in the latter's recollections.</p>
+
+<p>"Do you remember, Edith, when we last stood here?"</p>
+
+<p>"How could I ever forget?"</p>
+
+<p>"The years that have passed since are like a nightmare. I could
+believe them so, but that I feel their marks."</p>
+
+<p>"And I, as well; we were boy and girl then."</p>
+
+<p>"At least, I was a boy; and, do you know, I find you different from
+what I had pictured you."</p>
+
+<p>"Should I be sorry for it, or glad?"</p>
+
+<p>"I had pictured you as I saw you last, very calm, very resolute, very
+sad; but you are like the breaking of a long, dull storm. The sun
+shines again, and the world glows the brighter for past rain and
+darkness."</p>
+
+<p>"Could I have welcomed you home with a sad face? Could I be calm and
+cold, now that I have found what I thought was lost forever?&mdash;when the
+ashes of my life have kindled into flame again? Because I, and others,
+have known sorrow, should I turn my face into a homily, and be your
+lifelong <i>memento mori?</i>"</p>
+
+<p>"It is a brave heart that can hide a deep thought under a smile."</p>
+
+<p>"And a weak one that is always crouching among the shadows."</p>
+
+<p>"There is an abounding spirit of faith in you; the essence which makes
+heroes, from Joan of Arc to Jeanie Deans."</p>
+
+<p>"I know no one with faith like yours, which could hold to you through
+all your years of living burial."</p>
+
+<p>"Mine! it was wrenched to its uttermost roots. I thought the world was
+given over to the devil."</p>
+
+<p>"But that was only for the moment."</p>
+
+<p>"I consoled myself with imagining that I had come to the worst, and
+that any change must needs be for the better; but now I am lifted of a
+sudden to such a pitch of fortune, that I tremble at it. Many a man,
+my equal or superior, no weaker in heart or meaner in aim than I, has
+been fettered through his days by cramping poverty, while I stand
+mailed and weaponed at all points. Many a man of noble instincts and
+high requirements has found in life nothing but a mockery of his
+imaginings,&mdash;a bright dream, matched with a base reality. Who can
+blame him if he turn cynic? I have dreamed a dream, too; wakened, and
+found it a living truth."</p>
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+<pre>
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Vassall Morton, by Francis Parkman
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+++ b/39768.txt
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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Vassall Morton, by Francis Parkman
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Vassall Morton
+       A Novel
+
+Author: Francis Parkman
+
+Release Date: May 23, 2012 [EBook #39768]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK VASSALL MORTON ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Ron Swanson (This file was produced from images
+generously made available by The Internet Archive/American
+Libraries)
+
+
+
+
+
+
+VASSALL MORTON.
+
+A Novel.
+
+
+
+
+BY
+
+FRANCIS PARKMAN,
+
+AUTHOR OF "HISTORY OF THE CONSPIRACY OF PONTIAC," AND "PRAIRIE AND
+ROCKY MOUNTAIN LIFE."
+
+
+
+
+  Ecrive qui voudra! Chacun a ce metier,
+  Peut perdre impunement de l'encre et du papier.
+                                             BOILEAU.
+
+
+
+
+BOSTON: PHILLIPS, SAMPSON AND COMPANY.
+
+1856.
+
+
+
+
+Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the Year 1856, by
+
+PHILLIPS, SAMPSON AND COMPANY,
+
+In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the District of
+Massachusetts.
+
+
+
+
+STEREOTYPED AT THE BOSTON STEREOTYPE FOUNDRY.
+
+
+
+
+Vassall Morton.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+  Remote from towns he ran his godly race.--_Goldsmith_.
+
+
+"Macknight on the Epistles,--that's the name of the book?"
+
+"Yes, sir, if you please. I am desirous of consulting it with a
+view--"
+
+"Well, this way, Mr. Jacobs. Here's the librarian. Mr. Stillingfleet,
+let me introduce my friend, the Reverend Mr. Jacobs, of West
+Weathersfield."
+
+"I am proud to make your acquaintance, sir," said Mr. Jacobs, taking
+the librarian's hand with an air of diffident veneration.
+
+"Mr. Jacobs wishes to consult Mackwright on the Epistles."
+
+"Macknight, if you please, Dr. Steele."
+
+"O, Macknight. Will you be so kind as to let him have the use of it in
+my name?"
+
+"If you will go with Mr. Rubens, sir," said the librarian, "he will
+show you the book."
+
+"Thank you, sir," replied Mr. Jacobs, to whom the words were
+addressed; and he followed the assistant among the alcoves in a timid,
+tiptoe progress, for, to him, the very air he breathed seemed redolent
+of learning, and the dust beneath his feet consecrated to science.
+
+Dr. Steele remained behind, conversing with the librarian.
+
+"My friend has something of the ancient apostolic simplicity hanging
+about him still. He looks with as much awe at Harvard College library
+as I did myself forty-five years ago, when I came down from Steuben to
+join the freshman class."
+
+"So you came from Steuben! Did not old John Morton come from the same
+place?"
+
+"To be sure he did. He was the glory of the town. He pulled down the
+old clapboard meeting house that his father used to preach in, and
+built a new one for him: besides giving a start in business to half
+the young men of the village."
+
+"Do you see that undergraduate at the end of the hall, standing by the
+last alcove, reading?"
+
+"Yes; what about him? He seems a hardy, good-looking young fellow
+enough."
+
+"He is John Morton's son."
+
+"Is it possible? I remember him when he was a child, but have not seen
+him for these ten years. After his father's death, his mother took him
+to Europe, to be educated; but she never came back; she died in
+Paris."
+
+"He is Mr. Morton's only child--is he not?"
+
+"Yes; his first wife had no children; and after he had buried
+her,--which, by the way, I believe was the happiest hour of his
+life,--he married a very different sort of person, Margaret Vassall,
+this boy's mother."
+
+"What, one of the old Vassall race?"
+
+"Exactly; and, I suppose, the last survivor. I used to know her. She
+was a handsome woman, and, bating her family pride, altogether a very
+fine character. She managed her husband admirably."
+
+"Why, what need had John Morton of being managed?"
+
+"O, Morton was a noble old gentleman, a merchant of the old school,
+and generous as the day; but he had his faults. He made nothing of his
+three bottles of Madeira at dinner, and besides-- Ah, Mr. Jacobs, so
+you have found Macknight."
+
+"Yes, sir," said Mr. Jacobs, coming up, "I have the volumes."
+
+"See that young man, yonder. That's the son of your old friend, Mr.
+Morton."
+
+"Really! upon my word! Ah! Mr. Morton _was_ a friend to me, sir--a
+very kind friend."
+
+And, in the simplicity of his heart, Mr. Jacobs glided up to the
+student, and blandly accosted him.
+
+"How do you do, young gentleman? I knew your worthy father. I knew him
+well. I have often sat at his hospitable board on anniversary week."
+
+Thus addressed, Vassall Morton looked up from his book,--it was
+Froissart's Chronicle,--inclined his head in acknowledgment, and
+waited to hear more.
+
+"Ahem!" coughed Mr. Jacobs, a little embarrassed: "your father was a
+most worthy and estimable gentleman: a true friend of the feeble and
+destitute. Ahem!--what class are you in, Mr. Morton?"
+
+"The junior class," said the young man, a suppressed smile flickering
+at the corner of his mouth.
+
+"Ahem! I hope, sir, that, like your father, you will long live to be
+an honor to your native town."
+
+"Thank you, sir."
+
+"I wish you good morning."
+
+"Good morning, sir," said Morton, divided between an inclination to
+smile at the odd, humble little figure before him, and an
+unwillingness to wound the other's feelings.
+
+"Are you ready to go, Mr. Jacobs?" said Dr. Steele.
+
+"If you please, sir, we will now take our departure;"--gathering the
+four volumes of Macknight on the Epistles under his arm;--"Good
+morning, Mr. Stillingfleet; good morning, Mr. Rubens. I am indebted to
+your kindness, gentlemen--ahem!"
+
+"This is the way out, Mr. Jacobs," said Steele to his diffident friend
+from West Weathersfield, who, in his embarrassment, was going out at
+the wrong door.
+
+"I beg your pardon, sir--ahem!" replied Mr. Jacobs, with a bashful
+smile. And Dr. Steele, pointing to the true exit, ushered his rustic
+and reverend protege from the sacred precinct of learning.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+  Richt hardie baith in ernist and play.--_Sir David Lyndsay_.
+
+
+"Morton, what was the little old fogy in the white cravat saying to
+you just now in the library?"
+
+"Telling me that my father was a worthy man, and that he hoped I
+should make just such another."
+
+"Ah, that was kind of him."
+
+"What a pile of books you are lugging! Here, let me take half a dozen
+of them for you. You look as if you were training to be a hotel
+porter."
+
+"I am laying in for vacation."
+
+"What sense is there in that? Let alone your Latin, Greek, and
+mathematics; what the deuse is vacation made for? Take to the woods,
+as I do, breathe the fresh air, and see the world at large."
+
+"Do you call it seeing the world at large, to go off into some
+barbarous, uninhabitable place, among mosquitoes, snakes, wolves,
+bears, and catamounts? What sense is there in that? What can you do
+when you get there?"
+
+"Shoot muskrats, and fish for mudpouts. Will you go with me?"
+
+"Thank you, no. There's no one in the class featherwitted enough to go
+with you, except Meredith, and he ought to know better."
+
+"Stay at home, then, and improve your mind. I shall be off to-morrow."
+
+"Alone?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+Mr. Horace Vinal shrugged his shoulders, a movement which caused
+Sophocles and Seneca to escape from under his arm. Morton gathered
+them out of the mud, and thrusting them back again into their place,
+left his burdened fellow-student to make the best of his way towards
+his den in Stoughton Hall.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+  O, love, in such a wilderness as this!--_Gertrude of Wyoming_.
+
+
+Morton, _en route_ for the barbarous districts of which Vinal had
+expressed his disapproval, stopped by the way at a spot which, though
+wild enough at that time, had ceased to be a wilderness. This was the
+Notch of the White Mountains, perverted, since, into a resort of
+_quasi_ fashion. Here, arriving late at the lonely hostelry of one Tom
+Crawford, he learned from that worthy person, to whom his face was
+well known, that other guests, from Boston, like himself, were seated
+at the tea table. Accordingly, descending thither, he saw four
+persons. The first was a quiet-looking man, with the air of a
+gentleman, and something in his appearance which seemed to indicate
+military habits and training. Morton remembered to have seen him
+before. At his side, and under his tutelary care, sat two personages,
+who, from their dimensions, must have been boys of some seven years
+old, but from the solemnity of their countenances, might have passed
+for a brace of ancient philosophers. They looked so much alike that
+Morton thought he saw double. Each was seated on a volume of Clark's
+Commentaries, to raise his chin to the needful height above the table
+cloth. Both were encased in tunics, strapped about them with shining
+morocco belts. Their small persons were terminated at one end by
+morocco shoes of somewhat infantile pattern, and at the other by
+enormous heads, with chalky complexions, pale, dilated eyes, wrinkled
+foreheads, and mouths pursed up with an expression of anxious care,
+abstruse meditation, and the most experienced wisdom.
+
+In amazement at these phenomena, Morton turned next towards the fourth
+member of the party; and here he encountered a new emotion, of a kind
+quite different. Hitherto, in his college seclusion, he had not very
+often met, except in imagination, with that union of beauty, breeding,
+and refinement which belongs to the best life of cities, and which he
+now saw in the person of a young lady, a year or two his junior. He
+longed for a pretext to address her, but found none; when her
+father--for such he seemed--broke silence, and accosted him.
+
+"I beg your pardon; is it possible that you are the son of John
+Morton?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"He was my father's old friend. I thought I could scarcely mistake
+your likeness to your mother."
+
+"I believe I have the pleasure of speaking to Colonel Leslie."
+
+Leslie inclined his head.
+
+"My title clings to me, I find, though I have no right to it now."
+
+He had left the army long before, exchanging the rough frontier
+service for pursuits more to his taste.
+
+"Upon my word," pursued Leslie, after conversing for some time with
+the new comer on the scenery and game of the mountains, "you seem to
+be _au fait_ at this sort of thing."
+
+"At least I ought to be; I have spent half my college vacations here."
+
+"It is unlucky for us that we must set out for home in the morning.
+You might have given us good advice in our sightseeing."
+
+"Crawford will tell you that I am tolerably well qualified to be a
+guide."
+
+"You do not look like a collegian. They are generally thin and pale
+with studying."
+
+"Oftener with laziness and cigar smoke."
+
+"Very likely. You seem too hardy and active for a student."
+
+Morton's weak point was touched.
+
+"I can do well enough, I believe, in that way. Crawford was boasting,
+last year, that he could outwrestle any man in New England. I
+challenged him, and threw him on his back."
+
+"You! Crawford is twice as heavy and strong as you are."
+
+"I am stronger than I seem," replied Morton, with great complacency.
+
+And Leslie, observing him with an eye not unused to measure the thews
+and sinews of men, saw that, though his frame was light, and his
+shoulders not broad, yet his compact proportions, deep chest, and
+muscular limbs, showed the highest degree of bodily vigor.
+
+"You are quite right. I would enlist you without asking the surgeon's
+advice."
+
+Here the nurse, attendant on the two philosophers, appeared at the
+door; and they, obedient to the mute summons, scrambled gravely from
+their seats, and, with solemn steps, withdrew. Miss Leslie presently
+followed, and Morton and her father were left alone.
+
+"You are from Harvard--are you not?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Do you know Horace Vinal?"
+
+"Very well; he is my classmate."
+
+"Is he not thought a very promising young man?"
+
+"He is our first scholar."
+
+"I hear him spoken of as a young man of fine abilities."
+
+"And he knows how to make the best of them."
+
+"Not at all dissipated."
+
+"Not at all."
+
+"And a great student."
+
+"Digs day and night."
+
+"A little ambitious, I suppose."
+
+"A little."
+
+"But very prudent."
+
+"Uncommonly so."
+
+"An excellent young man," exclaimed Leslie; "I think very highly of
+Horace Vinal."
+
+Morton cast a sidelong glance at him, and there was a covert smile in
+his eye. He began to see a weak spot in his companion.
+
+"He will certainly make his way in the world," pursued Leslie.
+
+"No doubt of it."
+
+"He is not so fond of out-door exercises as you seem to be."
+
+"He is good at one kind of exercise."
+
+"What's that?"
+
+"He can draw the long bow."
+
+Leslie did not see Morton's meaning, and took the words literally, as
+the latter intended he should.
+
+"What, have you an archery club at college?"
+
+"No; but there are one or two among us who use the long bow, now and
+then, and Vinal beats them by all odds. But he is very modest on the
+subject, and never alludes to it. In fact, there are very few who know
+his skill in that way."
+
+"It is all the better for his health to have some amusement of the
+kind."
+
+"Yes, it would be a pity if his health should suffer."
+
+"I have often thought that his mind was too active for his
+constitution."
+
+Morton cast another sidelong look at Leslie. Though he admired the
+daughter, he refrained with difficulty from quizzing the father.
+
+"You seem to know Vinal very well."
+
+"Yes, thoroughly; I have known him from childhood; he is the son of my
+wife's sister, and I am his guardian. I watch his progress with great
+interest."
+
+"You will see him, I dare say, reach the top of the ladder. At least,
+it will be no fault of his if he does not."
+
+"I am very glad to hear my good opinion of him confirmed by one who
+has seen so much of him."
+
+And, rising, he left the room.
+
+"A very good young man, this seems to be," he thought to himself, as
+he did so.
+
+"Amiable, good natured, and all that; but very soft, for a man who has
+seen hard service," thought Morton, on his part.
+
+The party reassembled in the inn parlor. Masters William and
+Marlborough, having gained a reprieve from their banishment, busied
+themselves at the table, the one in poring over Brewster on Natural
+Magic, the other in solving a problem of Euclid. Leslie viewed these
+infant diversions by no means with an eye of favor, and soon banished
+the students to a retirement more suited to their tender years. The
+sentence overcame all their philosophy, and they were carried off
+howling.
+
+Morton, meanwhile, was breathing a charmed air; and though diffident
+in the presence of ladies, and not liberally endowed by nature with
+the gift of tongues, his zeal to commend himself to the good opinion
+of Miss Edith Leslie availed somewhat to supply the defect. He had
+never mixed with the world, conventionally so called, and knew as much
+of ladies as of mermaids. But having an ardent temperament and a
+Quixotic imagination; being addicted, moreover, to Froissart and
+kindred writers; and, indeed, visited with a glimmering of that
+antique light which modern folly despises, he would have been ready,
+with the eye of a handsome woman upon him, for any rash and ridiculous
+exploit. This extravagance did him no manner of harm. On the contrary,
+it went far to keep him out of mischief; for in the breast of this
+youngster a chivalresque instinct battled against the urgency of
+vigorous blood, and taught his nervous energies to seek escape rather
+in ceaseless bodily exercises, rowing, riding, and the like, than in
+any less commendable recreations.
+
+The close of the evening found him with an imagination much excited.
+In short, decisive symptoms declared themselves of that wide-spread
+malady, of which he had read much and pondered not a little, but which
+had not, as yet, numbered him among its victims. Among the various
+emotions, novel, strange, and pleasurable, which began to possess him,
+came, however, the dismal consciousness that, with the morning sun,
+the enchantress of his fancy was to vanish like a dream of the night.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+  What pleasure, sir, find we in life, to lock it
+  From action and adventure?--_Cymbeline_.
+
+
+Morning came, and the Leslies departed. Morton watched the lumbering
+carriage till it disappeared down the rugged gorge of the Notch, then
+drew a deep breath, and ruefully betook himself to his day's sport. He
+explored, rod in hand, the black pools and plunging cascades of the
+Saco; but for once that he thought of the trout, he thought ten times
+of Edith Leslie.
+
+Towards night, however, he returned with a basket reasonably well
+filled; and, as he drew near the inn, he saw a young man, of his own
+age, or thereabouts, sitting under the porch. He had a cast of
+features which, in a feudal country, would have been taken as the sign
+of noble birth; and though he wore a slouched felt hat and a rough
+tweed frock, though his attitude was careless, though he held between
+his teeth a common clay pipe, at which he puffed with much relish, and
+though he was conversing on easy terms with two attenuated old Vermont
+farmers, with faces like a pair of baked apples,--yet none but the
+most unpractised eye would have taken him for other than a gentleman.
+
+As soon as Morton saw him, he shouted a joyful greeting, to which Mr.
+Edward Meredith, rising and going to meet his friend, replied with no
+less emphasis.
+
+"I thought," said Morton, "that you meant to do the dutiful this time,
+and stay with your father and family at the sea shore."
+
+"Couldn't stand the sea shore," said Meredith, seating himself again;
+"so I came up to the mountains to see what you were doing."
+
+"You couldn't have done better; but come this way, out of earshot."
+
+"Colonel," said Meredith, in a tone of melancholy remonstrance, "this
+seat is a good seat, an easy seat, a pleasant seat. Why do you want to
+root me up?"
+
+"Come on, man," replied Morton.
+
+"Show the way, then, Jack-a-lantern. But where do you want to lead me?
+I won't sit on the rail fence, and I won't sit on the grass."
+
+"There's a bench here for you."
+
+"Has it a back?"
+
+"Yes, it has a back. There it is."
+
+Meredith carefully removed a few twigs and shavings which lay upon the
+bench, seated himself, rested his arm along the back, and began
+puffing at his pipe again. But scarcely had he thus composed himself
+when the tea bell rang from the house.
+
+"Do you hear that, now? Another move to make! Didn't I tell you so?"
+
+"Not that I remember."
+
+"Please to explain, colonel, what you expect to gain by always bobbing
+about as you do, like a drop of quicksilver."
+
+"To hear you, one would take you for the laziest fellow in the
+universe."
+
+"There's reason in all things. I keep my vital energies against the
+time of need, instead of wasting them in unnecessary gyrations. Ladies
+at the table! New Yorkers in full feather, or I'll be shot! Now, what
+the deuse have lace and ribbons to do in a place like this?"
+
+During the meal, the presence of the strangers was a check upon their
+conversation.
+
+"Crawford," said Meredith, when it was over, "have you had that sofa
+taken into my room?"
+
+"Yes, sir."
+
+"And the arm chair?"
+
+"Yes, sir."
+
+"And the candles?"
+
+"Yes, sir."
+
+"All right. Now, then, colonel, _allons_."
+
+The name of _colonel_ was Morton's college sobriquet. Meredith led the
+way into a room which adjoined his bed chamber, and which, under his
+direction, had assumed an air of great comfort. Morton took possession
+of the sofa; his friend of the arm chair.
+
+"What's the word with you?" began the latter; "are you bound for the
+Adirondacks, the Margalloway, or the Penobscot?"
+
+"To the Margalloway, I think. You mean to go with me, I hope."
+
+"To the Margalloway, or the antipodes, or any place this side of the
+North Pole."
+
+"Then, if you say so, we'll set off to-morrow."
+
+"Gently, colonel. One day's fishing here. We have six weeks before us.
+What sort of thing is that that you are smoking?"
+
+"Try, and judge for yourself," said Morton, handing his cigar case.
+Meredith took a sample of its contents between his fingers, and
+examined it with attention.
+
+"I always thought you were a kind of heathen, and now I know it. Where
+did you pick up that cigar?"
+
+"Do you find it so very bad?"
+
+"It would not poison a man, and perhaps might pass for a little better
+than none at all. But nobody except a pagan would touch it when any
+thing better could be had."
+
+"I forgot to bring any from town, and had to supply myself on the
+way."
+
+"That goes to redeem your character. Fling those away, or give them to
+the landlord; I have plenty of better ones. But a pipe is the best
+thing at a place like this, and especially at camp, in the woods."
+
+"So I have often heard you say."
+
+"Mine, though, made a sensation, not long ago."
+
+"How was that?"
+
+"The whole brood of the Stubbs, bag and baggage, passed here this
+afternoon."
+
+"Thank Heaven they did not stop."
+
+"They came in their private carriage. I nodded to Ben, and touched my
+hat to Mrs. S. You should have seen their faces. They thought there
+must be something out of joint in the mechanism of the universe, when
+a person of their acquaintance could be seen smoking a pipe at a
+tavern door, like a bog-trotting Irishman."
+
+"You should have asked Ben to go with us."
+
+"It would be the worst martyrdom the poor devil ever had to pass
+through. Ben seemed displeased with the scenery. He says that the
+White Mountains are nothing to any one who, like himself, has seen the
+Alps."
+
+"Pray when did Stubb see the Alps?"
+
+"O, the whole family have seen the Alps,--the Alps, Italy, the Rhine,
+the nobility and gentry, and every thing else that Europe affords.
+They all swear by Europe, and hold the soil of America dirt cheap. You
+can see with half an eye what they are--an uncommonly bad imitation of
+an indifferent model."
+
+"Let them pass for what they are worth. Have you come armed and
+equipped--rifle, blanket, hatchet, and so forth?"
+
+"Yes, and I have brought an oil cloth tent."
+
+"So much the better; it is more convenient than a birch bark shanty."
+
+"I give you notice that I mean to take my ease in that tent."
+
+"I hope you will."
+
+"One can be comfortable in the woods, as well as elsewhere. Remember,
+colonel, that we are out for amusement, and not after scalps. Last
+summer, you drove ahead, rain or shine, through thickets, and swamps,
+and ponds, as if you were on some errand of life and death. For this
+once, have mercy on frail humanity, and moderate your ardor."
+
+Morton gave the pledge required. They passed the evening in arranging
+the details of their journey, set forth and spent three or four weeks
+in the forest between the settled districts of Canada and Maine,
+poling their canoe up lonely streams, meeting no human face, but
+smoking their pipes in great contentment by their evening camp fire.
+They chased a bear, and lost him in a _windfall_; killed two moose,
+six deer, and trout without number; and underwent, with exemplary
+patience, a martyrdom of midges, black flies, and mosquitoes. And
+when, at last, they turned their faces homeward, they wiled the way
+with plans of longer journeyings,--more bear, more moose, more deer,
+more trout, more midges, black flies, and mosquitoes.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+  Youth on the prow, and Pleasure at the helm;
+  Regardless of the sweeping whirlwind's sway,
+  That, hushed in grim repose, expects his evening prey.--_Gray_.
+
+
+It was a week before "class day,"--that eventful day which was
+virtually to close the college career of Morton and his
+contemporaries. The little janitor, commonly called Paddy O'Flinn, was
+ringing the evening prayer bell from the cupola of Harvard Hall,--its
+tone was dull and muffled, some graceless sophomore having lately
+painted it white, inside and out,--and the students were mustering at
+the summons. The sedate and the gay, the tender freshman and the
+venerable senior, the prosperous city beau and the awkward country
+bumpkin, one and all were filing from their respective quarters
+towards the chapel in University Hall. The bell ceased; the loiterers
+quickened their steps; the last belated freshman, with the dread of
+the proctor before his eyes, bounded frantically up the steps; and for
+a brief space all was silence and solitude. Then there was a
+murmuring, rushing sound, as of a coming tempest, and University Hall
+disgorged its contents, casting forth the freshmen and juniors at one
+door, and the sophomores and seniors at the other.
+
+Of these last was Morton, who, with three or four of his class, walked
+across the college yard, towards the great gateway. By his side was a
+young man named Rosny, carelessly dressed, but with a lively,
+dare-devil face, and the look of a good-natured game cock.
+
+"I shall be sorry to leave this place," said Morton; "I like it. I
+like the elms, and the gravel walks, and the scurvy old brick and
+mortar buildings."
+
+"Then I am not of your mind," said Rosny; "gravel or mud, brickbats or
+paving stones, they are the same to me, the world over. Halloo, Wren,"
+to a mustachioed youth who just then joined them; "we are bound to
+your room."
+
+"That's as it should be. But where are the rest?"
+
+"Coming--all in good time; here's one of them."
+
+A dapper little person approached, with a shining beaver, yellow kid
+gloves, a switch cane, and a very stiff but somewhat dashing cravat,
+surmounted by a round and rubicund face.
+
+"Ah, Chester!" exclaimed Wren; "the very man we were looking for. Come
+and take a glass of punch at my room."
+
+"Punch, indeed!" replied Chester, whose face had changed from a prim
+expression to one of great hilarity the moment he saw his
+friends--"no, no, gentlemen, I renounce punch and all its works. The
+pure unmixed, the pure juice of the grape for me."
+
+"But, Chester," urged Wren, "won't the pure mountain dew be a
+sufficient inducement?"
+
+"The good company will be a sufficient inducement," said Chester,
+waving his hand,--"the good company, gentlemen,--and the good liquor.
+But what have we here? Meredith and Vinal walking side by side. Good
+Heavens, what a conjunction!"
+
+The objects of Chester's astonishment, on a flattering invitation from
+Wren, joined the party, which, however, was weakened by the temporary
+secession of Rosny, who, pleading an errand in the village, left them
+with a promise to rejoin them soon. His place was in a few moments
+more than supplied by a new party of recruits, among whom was Stubb.
+Arrived at Wren's room, the desk and other appliances of study were
+banished from the table; bottles and glasses usurped their place, and
+the company composed themselves for conversation, most of them
+permitting their chairs to stand quietly on all fours, though one or
+two, like heathen Yankees from the backwoods, forced them to rear
+rampant on the hind legs, the occupant's feet resting on the ledge
+over the fireplace.
+
+A few minutes passed, when a quick, firm step came up the stairs, and
+Rosny entered.
+
+"How are you again, Dick?" said Meredith.
+
+"Good evening, Mr. Rosny," echoed Stubb, who sat alone on the window
+seat.
+
+"Eh? what's that?" demanded Rosny, turning sharp round upon the last
+speaker, with a face divided between indignation and laughter.
+
+"I said, 'Good evening,'" replied Stubb, much disconcerted.
+
+"And why didn't you say, 'Good morning,' yesterday, eh?--when I met
+you in Boston, eh? He gave me the cut direct," turning to the company.
+"Mr. Benjamin Stubb, here, gave me the cut direct! It was the
+pepper-and-salt coat and the thunder-and-lightning breeches that Stubb
+couldn't think of bowing to when he was walking in ---- Street, with a
+lady. Look here, Stubb,"--again facing the victim,--"what do you take
+me for? and what the devil do you take yourself for? I know your dirty
+family history. Your grandfather was a bricklayer, and the Lord knows
+who your great grandfather was. The best Huguenot blood of France runs
+in _my_ veins! My ancestors were fighting at Ivry and Jarnac, while
+yours were peddling coal and potatoes about London streets, or digging
+mud in a ditch, for any thing you or I know to the contrary." Stubb
+gasped. "Your father has a crest painted on his carriage; but where
+did he get it? Why, Cribb, the engraver, stole it for him out of the
+British peerage."
+
+Stubb, who was weak and timorous, here rose in great confusion,
+muttered something about conduct unbecoming to a gentleman, and
+meaning to require an explanation, and abruptly left the room.
+
+"That job is finished," said Rosny, composedly seating himself. "_His_
+bill is settled for him."
+
+"But, Dick," said Morton, who had been laughing in his sleeve during
+the scene, "do you want to be considered as a Frenchman or an
+American?"
+
+"I'm an American," answered Rosny--"an American and a democrat, every
+inch."
+
+Rosny had adopted democratic principles and habits partly out of spite
+against the class to which Stubb belonged, and which he was pleased to
+designate as the "codfish aristocracy," and partly because he thought
+that he could thus most effectually gain the ends of his impatient,
+hankering ambition. His ancestor, the head of an eminent Huguenot
+race, had been driven to America by the persecutions which followed
+the revocation of the edict of Nantes. The family had lived ever since
+in poverty and obscurity; yet this fiery young democrat nourished an
+inordinate pride of birth, and never forgot that he was descended from
+a line of warlike nobles.
+
+"No, no," said Rosny, as Morton pushed a glass towards him, "drinking
+is against my rule-- Well, as it's about the last time,"--filling the
+glass,--"here's to you all."
+
+"The last time!" said Morton; "that's a dismal word. If my next four
+years are as pleasant as these last have been, I will never complain
+of them."
+
+"I tell you, boys," said Meredith, who was tranquilly puffing at his
+cigar, "the cream of our lives is skimmed already. Rough and tumble,
+hurry and worry--that will be the story with most of us, more or less,
+to the end of our days."
+
+"Rough and tumble!" exclaimed Rosny; "so much the better. 'Scots play
+best at the roughest game'--that's just my case. Who wants to be
+always paddling about on smooth water? Close reefed topsails, a gale
+astern, and breakers all round--that's the game."
+
+"Every one to his taste," said Chester, shrugging his shoulders. "I
+suppose a salamander loves the fire, but I don't. 'The race of
+ambition'--'the unconquerable will'--pshaw! _Cui bono?_ One chases
+after his object, and when he has got it, he turns from it, and chases
+another. I profess the philosophy of Horace--enjoy the hour as it
+flies. Ah! he was a model man, a man after my own heart, a gentleman
+and a man of the world. He could drink his Falernian, and thank the
+gods for their gifts."
+
+Rosny whispered in Morton's ear, "Chester ought to have been born a
+century ago, among the John Bulls, up in the cockloft of Brazen Nose
+College, or some such antediluvian hole."
+
+In spite of these derogatory remarks, Chester, besides being one of
+the best scholars in the class, was noted for a social, jovial
+disposition, which, though, like Fluellen's valor, a little out of
+fashion, made him a general favorite.
+
+"Speaking of the next four years," said Wren, "I wonder what plans
+each of us has made for that time. For my part, I have no plan at all,
+and should be glad to profit by the suggestions of the rest. Come,
+Chester, what do you mean to do?"
+
+"Expatiate," said Chester, expanding his hands, and thereby revealing
+an odd little antique ring which he wore; "take mine ease, roaming,
+like the bee, from blossom to blossom. I will leave the earnest
+men--bah!--the men with a mission--to grub on in their vocation. I
+will renounce this land of cotton mills and universal suffrage. First
+for Paris, to walk the Boulevards, and go to the masked balls and the
+opera;--_vive la bagatelle!_--then for Rome, to saunter through the
+Vatican and the picture galleries,--but not to moralize with a long
+face over fallen grandeur, and the mutability of human affairs. No,
+no, gentlemen, I belong to another school of philosophy. I will sit
+among the ruins of the Forum, and laugh, like Democritus, at the image
+of Death. Then I will recreate myself at Capri, like the Caesars before
+me; then enjoy the _dolce far niente_ at Florence, and read the Tuscan
+poets in the shades of Vallombrosa."
+
+"But, Chester," interposed Wren, "don't you ever mean to marry and
+settle down?"
+
+"I object to that phrase, 'settle down.' It calls up disagreeable
+images. It reminds one of the backwoods, log cabins, men in shirt
+sleeves, and piles of pine boards and lumber. Yes, certainly, I mean
+to marry. What man of taste would leave matrimony out of his scheme of
+life? One likes to gather his treasures round him, his pictures, his
+vases, and statues; and how can he adorn his rooms with an ornament
+more exquisite--where can he find a piece of furniture more charmingly
+moulded--than a beautiful woman?"
+
+This flourish, between jest and earnest, he pronounced with a graceful
+wave of his hand.
+
+"If, when you have married your beautiful woman," said Morton, "you
+find you have caught a Tartar, it will serve you right."
+
+"Hear him," said Chester; "hear the barbarian. He will always be
+conjuring up some image of disquiet. 'Rest, rest, perturbed spirit.'"
+
+"He could not rest, if he tried," said Horace Vinal.
+
+"No, he is one of those unfortunates who lie under a sentence of
+endless activity. It is a disease, with which men are afflicted for
+the sins of their ancestors; and for the sins of mine I was born among
+a whole nation of such. Perpetual motion, bustle and whirl,--I grow
+dizzy to think of it. They cannot rest themselves, and will not let
+any one else rest. Always pursuing, always doing, never enjoying. A
+true American cannot enjoy. He would build a steam saw mill in
+Arcadia, and dam up the four rivers of Paradise for cotton factories."
+
+"But, Chester," said Wren, "that is not at all like Morton; you know
+he hates utilitarianism."
+
+"Yes, but still he cannot rest. He would not build saw mills and dams;
+but he would be sure to fire his rifle at some of Adam's live stock,
+and set all Eden by the ears. Come, Morton, I have told the company my
+plans. Let us hear what yours are."
+
+"My guardian wishes me to enter the law school."
+
+"You are twenty-one now," said Vinal, "and can do as you please."
+
+Vinal was a very tall and slender young man, with a strongly marked
+face, though thin and pale; a grave, thoughtful eye, and compressed
+lips, expressing a kind of nervous self-control. His dress was very
+elaborate and scrupulous, though without the smallest trace of
+foppery. He was less popular in the class than Morton, but had the
+reputation of greater talents. This he owed, perhaps, to his habitual
+reserve; for every one thought that he understood Morton thoroughly,
+while few pretended to fathom the silent and self-contained Vinal.
+
+"I should like well enough to study law," was Morton's non-committal
+answer.
+
+"I thought, Morton, that you were more of a philosopher. Here you are,
+a young fellow, full of blood, and worth half a million, and yet you
+speak of buckling down to the law. That is all well enough for poor
+dogs like me, who go into the mill from necessity. We drudge on for
+twenty years or more, till we have scraped together a competency, or
+something better, perhaps, and then we find that we have forgotten how
+to enjoy it. We have grown so used to harness that we are good for
+nothing out of it, and sacrifice body and soul to our profession. You
+have reached already the point that we are straining for. The world is
+all before you, man; launch out and enjoy yourself."
+
+"Didn't you just say," asked Rosny, "that Morton couldn't rest, if he
+tried?"
+
+"I said he could not rest, but I did not say he could not enjoy
+himself. Look at him: his cheek is ruddier and browner than any of us.
+Nobody would believe that a fellow like that was not made to enjoy
+life. I know Morton. He could roam from blossom to blossom, as Chester
+says, with as good a will as any body. He has an eye for the fair sex,
+correct as he is at present. He knows a pretty face from a plain one.
+The devil will catch him yet with a black eye and a rosy cheek."
+
+"Then," said Morton, "he will show his good opinion of my taste."
+
+Rosny, who had his own reasons for disliking Vinal, here broke in
+without ceremony,--
+
+"Be gad, Vinal, he will bait his hook differently when he fishes for
+you."
+
+"How will that be, Dick?" said Meredith.
+
+"With a five dollar bank note, and a lying puff in a newspaper; and
+Vinal will jump at it like a mackerel at a red rag."
+
+Vinal laughed, but with a bad grace.
+
+"Riches and fame!" said Chester, anxious to smooth away all traces of
+irritation--"riches and fame! I call those legitimate objects of
+pursuit; and the black eye is positively praiseworthy. Come, Morton,
+let us hear your plan. You have not told it yet."
+
+"I defer to Rosny--he is my senior. Dick, some ten or twelve years
+from this, I suppose I shall vote against you for the presidency."
+
+"Thank you. By that time you will have no whig party left to vote
+with. The democrats will have it all their own way."
+
+"I have often wondered what could have induced a driving man of the
+world like you to come to college at all. You have been here more than
+a year; and in the same time, with your previous knowledge, you might
+have learned as much any where else at half the cost. You are not the
+fellow to regard a degree of A. M. with superstitious veneration."
+
+"You are right there, colonel. I am of no kith nor kin to some of your
+New England old fogies, who would give their souls for a D. D. or an
+LL. D.--and get it, too, though they know no more Greek or Hebrew than
+I know of Choctaw, and can barely manage to stumble along through the
+Latin Testament. What's a piece of sheep's skin to me? Humbug is the
+current coin all the world over, and just as much in this free and
+enlightened country as any where else. I have schemes on foot,--not
+political,--no matter what they are,--out in the western country; and
+I happen to know that a degree from Harvard University is the medicine
+that suits my case; with that for my credentials, I shall carry it
+over all competitors. Yes, boys, gammon is the word; and the man who
+would rise in the world must use the stepping stones."
+
+"You're a victim of the national disease, Rosny," said Chester.
+"Rising in the world!--that's the idea that ruins us. It's that that
+makes us lean, starveling, nervous, restless, dyspeptic,
+hypochondriac,--the most prosperous and most uncomfortable people on
+earth. Sit down, man, and take your ease. What garden will thrive if
+every plant in it must be dug up every day, and set out in a better
+place?"
+
+"Ah, that's good doctrine for you. You have got nothing to gain, and a
+good deal to lose. Stand up for the _status quo_, old boy; I would, in
+your place. Look at me, though. I was cut adrift at fourteen,--parents
+dead,--not a cent in my pocket,--and since then I have tumbled along
+through the world as I could. You can't kill me. I have more lives
+than a cat. I have been thrown on my back a dozen times; but the
+harder I was flung down, the higher I bounced up again. Why, I have
+known the time when I was glad to earn a shilling by shovelling snow
+off a sidewalk. I have tried my hand at every thing,--printer's work,
+lecturing, politics, editing, keeping school,--and do you suppose I
+shall be content to rest in the mud all my days? Not a bit of it. I
+know my cue better. The time will come when you'll see me shooting up
+like a rocket."
+
+Here a broad glare against the window interrupted him, and, looking
+out, his auditors saw a bonfire blazing with peculiar splendor under
+the windows of the chamber where the Faculty were at that moment in
+solemn session. Three proctors and a tutor were hastening towards the
+scene of outrage, when a stentorian voice from the adjacent darkness
+roared forth a warning that there was a canister of gunpowder in the
+fire expected every moment to explode. The prudent officers therefore
+kept their distance, busying themselves with noting down the names of
+several innocent spectators, while the bonfire subsided to a natural
+death, the gunpowder hoax having perfectly succeeded.
+
+Mr. Wren's guests resumed their seats, mingling with graver matters
+the usual badinage of a college gathering; and when at length they
+separated, only a lonely light or two glimmered from among the many
+windows of the academic barracks which overlook the college green.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+
+  As if with Heaven a bargain they had made
+  To practise goodness--and to be well paid,
+  They, too, devoutly as their fathers did,
+  Sin, sack, and sugar, equally forbid;
+  Holding each hour unpardonably spent
+  That on the leger leaves no monument.--_Parsons_.
+
+
+Mr. Erastus Flintlock sat at his counting room, in his old
+leather-bottomed arm chair. Vassall Morton, his newly emancipated
+ward, just twenty-one, stood before him, the undisputed master of his
+father's ample wealth.
+
+"What, no profession, Mr. Morton? None whatever, sir?"
+
+"No, sir, none whatever."
+
+The old man's leathery countenance expressed mingled wrath and
+concern.
+
+Flintlock was a stanch old New Englander, boasting himself a true
+descendant of the Puritans, whose religious tenets he inherited, along
+with most of their faults, and not a few of their virtues. He was
+narrow as a vinegar cruet, and just in all his dealings. There were
+three subjects on which he could converse with more or less
+intelligence--politics, theology, and business. Beyond these, he knew
+nothing; and except American history and practical science, he had an
+indistinct idea that any thing more came of evil. He distrusted a
+foreigner, and abhorred a Roman Catholic. All poetry, but Milton and
+the hymn book, was an abomination in his eyes; and he looked upon
+fiction as an emanation of the devil. To the list of the cardinal
+virtues he added another, namely, attention to business. In his early
+days, he had come from his native Connecticut with letters to Morton's
+father, who, seeing his value, took him as a clerk, placed unbounded
+trust in him, and at last made him his partner. He was a youth of slow
+parts, solid judgment, solemn countenance, steady habits, and a most
+unpliable conscience. He had no follies, allowed himself no
+indulgences, and could enjoy no other pleasures than business and
+church-going. He attended service morning, afternoon, and evening, and
+never smiled on Sundays. His old age was as upright and stiff-necked
+as might have been augured from such a youth. He thought the rising
+generation were in a very bad way, and once gave his son a scorching
+lecture on vanity and arrogance, because the latter, who had been two
+years at college, very modestly begged to be excused from carrying a
+roll of sample cotton, a yard and a half long, from his father's store
+at one end of the town, to the shop of a retail dealer at the other.
+
+"What, no profession, Mr. Morton?"
+
+"None whatever, sir."
+
+Morton was prepared for the consequence of these fatal words, and
+sought to arm himself with the needful patience. It would be folly, he
+knew, to debate the point with his guardian, who was tough and
+unmanageable as a hickory stump; who would never see any side of a
+question but his own, and on whose impervious brain reasons fell like
+rain drops on a tarpauline. Flintlock, therefore, opened fire
+unanswered, and discoursed for a full hour on duty, propriety, and a
+due respect for what he called the general sense of the community,
+which, as he assured his auditor, demands that every one should have
+some fixed and stated calling, by which he may be recognized as a
+worthy and useful member of society. Sometimes he grew angry, and
+scolded his ward with great vehemence; then subsided into a pathetic
+strain, and exhorted him, for the sake of his excellent father, not to
+grow old in idleness and frivolity. Morton, respectful, but obdurate,
+heard him to an end, assured him that, though renouncing commerce and
+the professions, his life would by no means be an idle one, thanked
+him for his care of his property, and took his leave; while the old
+merchant sank back into his chair, and groaned dismally, because the
+son of his respected patron was on the road to perdition.
+
+A moment's retrogression will explain the young man's recusancy.
+
+On a May evening, some two months before the close of his college
+career, Morton sat in lonely meditation on a wooden bench, by the
+classic border of Fresh Pond. By every canon of polite fiction, his
+meditation ought to have been engrossed by some object of romantic
+devotion; but in truth they were of a nature wholly mundane and
+sublunary.
+
+He had been much exercised of late upon the choice of a career for his
+future life. He liked none of the professions for itself, and had no
+need to embrace it for support. He loved action, and loved study; was
+ambitious and fond of applause. He had, moreover, enough of the
+American in his composition never to be happy except when in pursuit
+of something; together with a disposition not very rare among young
+men in New England, though seldom there, or elsewhere, joined to his
+abounding health and youthful spirits--a tendency to live for the
+future, and look at acts and things with an eye to their final issues.
+
+Thierry's Norman Conquest had fallen into his hands soon after he
+entered college. The whole delighted him; but he read and re-read the
+opening chapters, which exhibit the movements of the various races in
+their occupancy of the west of Europe. This first gave him an impulse
+towards ethnological inquiries. He soon began to find an absorbing
+interest in tracing the distinctions, moral, intellectual, and
+physical, of different races, as shown in their history, their
+mythologies, their languages, their legends, their primitive art,
+literature, and way of life. The idea grew upon him of devoting his
+life to such studies.
+
+Seated on the wooden bench at the edge of Fresh Pond, he revolved, for
+the hundredth time, his proposed scheme, and summed up what he
+regarded as its manifold advantages. It would enable him to indulge
+his passion for travel, lead him over rocks, deserts, and mountains,
+conduct him to Tartar tents and Cossack hovels, make him intimate with
+the most savage and disgusting of barbarians; in short, give full
+swing to his favorite propensities, and call into life all his
+energies of body and mind. In view of this prospect, he clinched his
+long-cherished purpose, devoting himself to ethnology for the rest of
+his days.
+
+He had a youthful way of thinking that any resolution deliberately
+adopted by him must needs be final and conclusive, and was fully
+convinced that his present determination was a species of destiny,
+involving one of three results--that he should meet an early death,
+which he thought very likely; that he should be wholly disabled by
+illness, which he thought scarcely possible; or that, in the fulness
+of time, say twenty or twenty-five years, his labors would have issue
+in some prodigious work, redounding to his own honor and the
+unspeakable profit of science.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII.
+
+  'Tis a dull thing to travel like a mill horse,
+  Still in the place he was born in, round and blinded.
+                                          _Beaumont and Fletcher_.
+
+
+A novel-maker may claim a privilege which his betters must forego. So,
+in the teeth of dramatic unities, let the story leap a chasm of some
+two years.
+
+Not that the void was a void to Morton. His nature spurred him into
+perpetual action; but his wanderings were over at length; and he and
+Meredith sat under the porch of Morton's house, a few miles from town.
+The features of the latter were swarthy from exposures, while those of
+his friend were somewhat pale, and had the expression of one
+insufferably bored.
+
+"Colonel, you are the luckiest fellow I know. Here you have been
+following the backbone of the continent from Darien to the head of the
+Missouri, mixing yourself up with Spaniards and Aztecs, poking sticks
+into the crater of Popocatapetl, and living hand and glove with
+Blackfeet and Assinnaboins, while I have been doing penance among
+bonds and mortgages, and title deeds and leases. My father has thrown
+up responsibility and gone to Europe--and so has every body else--and
+left all on my shoulders."
+
+"Your time will come."
+
+"I hope so."
+
+"But what news is there?"
+
+"Nothing."
+
+"What, nothing since I went away?"
+
+"The old story. You know it as well as I. Now and then, a new
+engagement came out. Mrs. A. approved it, and Mrs. B. didn't; and then
+characters were discussed on both sides. Something has been said of
+the balls, the opera, and what not; with the usual talk about the
+wickedness of the democrats and the fanaticism of the abolitionists."
+
+"You appear to have led a gay life."
+
+"Very!--we need a war, an invasion,--something of the sort. It would
+put life into us, and rid us of a great deal of nonsense. You were
+born with a stimulus in yourself, and can stand this stagnant sort of
+existence; but I need something more lively."
+
+"Then go with me on my next journey."
+
+"Are you thinking of another already? Rest in peace, and thank Heaven
+that you have come home in a whole skin."
+
+"I have done the North American continent; but there are four more
+left, not to mention the islands."
+
+"And you mean to see them all?"
+
+"Certainly."
+
+"Your science is a convenient hobby. It carries you wherever you fancy
+to go."
+
+"You could not do better than go with me."
+
+"I know it; but, if wishes were horses---- I am training Dick to take
+my place. I am a model elder brother to that youngster in the way of
+cultivating his mind and morals; and when I have him up to the mark, I
+shall gain a year's furlough for my pains. But when is your next
+journey to begin--next week?"
+
+"No, I mean to pin myself down here, and dig like a mole, for the next
+ten months, at least."
+
+"If I had not had ocular proof of what a determined dig you can be, I
+should set down your studies as mere humbug."
+
+"But I wish to hear the news."
+
+"I would tell it willingly, if I knew any."
+
+"Have the Primroses come home from Europe yet?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"And the Everills?"
+
+"I believe not."
+
+"Nor the Leslies, I suppose."
+
+"For a reasonably sensible and straightforward fellow, you have a
+queer way of making inquiries. You question like a lady's letter, with
+the pith in the postscript. You ask after the Primroses and the
+Everills, a stupid, priggish set, for whom you care nothing, as
+earnestly as if you were in love with them, and then grow indifferent
+when you come to the Leslies, whom you like."
+
+"Did I?" said Morton, in some discomposure; "I ask their pardon. Have
+they come home?"
+
+"Not yet, but I believe they mean to come as soon as they have staid
+their year out."
+
+"And that will be very soon--early in the spring, or sooner."
+
+"Now I think of it, I made the acquaintance, a few evenings ago, of a
+person who, I believe, is a relation or connection of yours--Miss
+Fanny Euston."
+
+"O, yes, she is my third, fourth, or fifth cousin, or something of
+that sort; but I have not seen her since she was ten years old. She
+was a great romp, then, and very plain."
+
+"That last failing is cured. She has grown very handsome."
+
+"The first failing ought to be cured, too, by this time."
+
+"I am not so clear on that point. She is a girl with an abundance of
+education, and a good deal of a certain kind of accomplishment--music,
+and so on--but no breeding at all. If she had had the training of good
+society, she would have been one of a thousand. As it is she cares for
+nobody, and does and says whatever comes into her mind, without the
+least regard to consequences or appearances."
+
+"Does she affect naturalness, independence, and all that?"
+
+"No, she affects nothing. The material is admirable. It only needs to
+be refined, polished, and toned down. It's unlucky, colonel, but in
+this world every thing worth having is broken in pieces and mixed with
+something that one doesn't want. It's an even balance, good and bad;
+there's no use in going off into raptures about any thing. One thing
+is certain, though; this cousin of yours has character enough to
+supply material for a dozen Miss Primroses, without any visible
+diminution."
+
+"I should like to see her. I'll go to-morrow."
+
+"You'd better. But now tell me something more about your journey."
+
+And, in reply to his friend's questions, Morton proceeded to relate
+such incidents as had befallen him.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII.
+
+                    Beauty is a witch
+  Against whose charms faith melteth into blood.
+  _D. Pedro_.--If thou wilt hold longer argument,
+  Do it in notes.
+  _Benedick_.--Now, _divine air_, now is his soul ravished.
+                                           _Much Ado about Nothing_.
+
+
+Morton visited his cousin, Miss Fanny Euston, a guest, for a few days,
+at a friend's house in town. By good fortune, as he thought it, he
+found her alone; and, as he conversed with her, he employed
+himself--after a practice usual with him--in studying her character,
+and making internal comments upon it. These insidious reflections,
+condensed into a paragraph, would have been somewhat as follows:--
+
+"A fine figure, and a very handsome face; but there is a lurking devil
+in her eye, and about the corners of her mouth." Here some ten minutes
+of animated dialogue ensued before his observations had shaped
+themselves into further results. "She is exceedingly clever; she knows
+how to think and act for herself. I should not like to cross her will.
+There is fire enough in her to make a hundred women interesting. She
+is none of our frosty New England beauties. She could love a man to
+the death, and hate him as well. She could be a heroine or a tigress.
+Every thing about her is wild and chaotic, the unformed elements of a
+superb woman."
+
+Here, the conversation having lasted a half hour or more, his
+imagination began to disturb the deductions of his philosophy, and he
+was no longer in a mood of just psychological analysis, when, to his
+vexation, his cousin's hostess, Miss Jones, entering, brought his
+_tete-a-tete_ to a close. She displayed a marvellous fluency of
+discourse, and was eloquent upon books, parties, paintings, and the
+opera.
+
+"I need not ask you, Mr. Morton, if you have seen Tennyson's new
+poem."
+
+"Yes--at the bookseller's."
+
+"But surely you have read it."
+
+"No, I am behind the age."
+
+"Then thank Heaven for it," exclaimed his unceremonious cousin; "for
+of all insipidity, and affectation, and fine-spun, wire-drawn trash,
+Tennyson carries away the palm. Every body reads him because he is the
+fashion, and every body admires him because he is the fashion. But he
+is a bubble, a film, a gossamer; there's nothing in him."
+
+This explosion called forth a protest from the poet's admirer.
+
+"May I ask," said Morton to his cousin, "who are your literary
+favorites?"
+
+"Not the latter-day poets--the Tennysonian school; their puling
+mannerism is an insult to the Saxon tongue."
+
+"But," urged Miss Jones, "you are not quite reasonable."
+
+"Of course I am not. It's not a woman's province to be reasonable."
+
+"Do you subscribe to these poetical heresies, Mr. Morton?"
+
+"On the contrary, I think that Tennyson has often great beauties."
+
+"If he sometimes wrote like an angel," pursued Fanny Euston, "I should
+find no patience to see it in a man who could put upon paper such
+parrot rhymes as these:--
+
+  'Not a whit of thy tuwhoo,
+   Thee to woo to thy tuwhit,
+   Thee to woo to thy tuwhit,
+   With a lengthened loud halloo,
+   Tuwhoo, tuwhit, tuwhit, tuwhoo-o-o!'
+
+Bah! it puts one in a passion to hear such twaddle."
+
+"I see," said her friend, "that nothing less than your own music will
+calm your indignation. Pray let us hear the ballad which you set to
+music this morning."
+
+"I will sing, if you wish it; but not that ballad."
+
+And she seated herself before the open piano.
+
+"What do you choose, Mr. Morton?"
+
+"The Marseillaise. That, I think, is in your vein."
+
+"Ah! you can choose well!"
+
+And, running her fingers over the keys, she launched at once into the
+warlike strains of the hymn of revolution. Her voice and execution
+were admirable; and though by no means unconscious that she was
+producing an effect, she sang with a fire, energy, and seeming
+recklessness that thrilled like lightning through her auditor's veins.
+He rose involuntarily from his seat. For that evening his study of
+character was ended, and philosophy dislodged from her last
+stronghold.
+
+Half an hour later he was riding homeward in a mood quite novel to his
+experience. He pushed his horse to a keen trot, as if by fierceness of
+motion to keep pace with the fiery influence that was kindling all his
+nerves.
+
+"I have had my fancies before this," he thought,--"in fact I have
+almost been in love; but that feeling was no more like this than a
+draught from a clear spring is like a draught of spiced wine."
+
+That night he fully expected to be haunted by a vision of Fanny
+Euston; but his slumbers were unromantically dreamless.
+
+Three days later, he ventured another visit; but his cousin had
+returned to her home in the country. By this time he was conscious of
+a great abatement of ardor; and his equanimity was little moved by the
+disappointment. In a week he had learned to look back on his transient
+emotion as an effervescence of the moment, and to regard his relative
+with no slight interest, indeed, yet by no means in a light which
+could blind him to her glaring faults. He summoned up all that he
+could recall of herself and her family, and chiefly of her father,
+whom he remembered in his boyhood as a rough, athletic man, whose
+black and bushy eyebrows were usually contracted into something which
+seemed like a frown. These boyish recollections were far from doing
+Euston justice. He was a man of masculine and determined character.
+His will was strong, his passions violent; he was full of prejudices,
+and when thwarted or contradicted, his rage was formidable. His honor
+was unquestioned; he was most bluntly and unmanageably honest. Yet
+through the rock and iron of his character, there ran, known to but
+few, a delicate vein of poetic feeling. The music of his daughter, or
+the verses of his favorite Burns, could often bring tears to his stern
+gray eyes. For his wife, whom he had married in a fit of pique and
+disappointment, when little more than a boy, he cared nothing; but his
+fondness for his daughter was unbounded. He alone could control her;
+for she loved him ardently, and he was the only living thing of which
+she stood in awe.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX.
+
+  Elle ne manque jamais de saisir promptement
+  L'apparente lueur du moindre attachement,
+  D'en semer la nouvelle avec beaucoup de joie,--_Le Tartufe_.
+
+
+Among Morton's acquaintance was a certain Miss Blanche Blondel. They
+had been schoolmates when children; and as, at a later date, Miss
+Blanche had been fond of making long visits to a friend in Cambridge,
+during term time, Morton, in common with many others, had a college
+acquaintance with her, so that they were now on a footing of easy
+intercourse. Not that he liked her. On the contrary, she had inspired
+him with a very emphatic aversion; but being rather a skirmisher on
+the outposts of society, than enrolled in the main battalion, she was
+anxious to make the most of the acquaintance she had. She had the eyes
+of an Argus, and was as sly, smooth, watchful, and _rusee_ as a
+tortoise shell cat; wonderfully dexterous at finding or making gossip,
+and unwearied in sowing it, broadcast, to the right and left.
+
+One evening Morton was at a ball, crowded to the verge of suffocation.
+At length he found himself in a corner from which there was no
+retreat, while the stately proportions of Mrs. Frederic Goldenberg
+barred his onward progress. But when that distinguished lady chanced
+to move aside, she revealed the countenance of Miss Blondel, beaming
+on him like the moon after an eclipse. She nodded and smiled. There
+was no escape. Morton smiled hypocritically, and said, "Good evening."
+Blanche, as usual, was eager for conversation, and, after a few
+commonplaces, she said, turning up her eyes at him with an arch
+expression,--
+
+"I have a piece of news to tell you, Mr. Morton."
+
+"Ah!" replied Morton, expecting something disagreeable.
+
+"A piece of news that you will be charmed to hear."
+
+"Indeed."
+
+"Why, how cold you are! And I know that, in your heart, you are
+burning to hear it."
+
+"If you think so, you are determined to give my patience a hard
+schooling."
+
+"Well, I will not tantalize you any more. Miss Edith Leslie sailed
+from Liverpool for home last Wednesday."
+
+"Ah!"
+
+"How cold you are again! Are you not glad to hear it?"
+
+"Certainly--all her friends will be glad to hear it."
+
+"Upon my word, Mr. Morton, you are worse and worse. When a gentleman
+dances twice with a young lady on class day, and twice at Mrs.
+Fanfaron's ball, and joins her in the street besides, has she not a
+right to feel hurt when he hears with such profound indifference of
+her coming home after a year's absence?"
+
+Morton could hardly restrain the extremity of his distaste and
+impatience.
+
+"Miss Leslie, I imagine, would spend very little thought upon the
+matter." And he hastened, first to change the conversation, and then
+to close it altogether.
+
+Having escaped from his fair informant, he remained divided between
+pleasure at the tidings, and annoyance at the manner in which they had
+been told.
+
+In a few days Miss Leslie arrived. Her beauty had matured during her
+absence. She was conspicuously and brilliantly handsome, and was
+admired accordingly,--a fact which, though she could not but be
+conscious of it, seemed to affect her very little. Morton found her
+but slightly changed, with the same polished and quiet frankness, the
+same lively conversation, not without a tinge of sarcasm, and the same
+enthusiasm of character, betraying itself by an earnestness of manner,
+and never by any extravagance of expression. He had many opportunities
+of seeing her, Miss Blanche Blondel being but rarely present, and, in
+his growing admiration of her, the charms of his unbridled cousin
+faded more and more from his memory.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X.
+
+  For three whole days you thus may rest
+  From office business, news, and strife.--_Pope_.
+
+
+When the summer heats set in, Meredith, one evening, drove to Morton's
+house, and, arrayed in linen and grass-cloth, smoked his cigar under
+his friend's veranda with as much contentment as the thermometer at
+ninety would permit. The window at his side was that of the room which
+Morton used as his study, and the table was covered with books.
+
+"Colonel," said Meredith, "what a painstaking fellow you are! Ever
+since you left college--except when you were off on that journey,
+which was one of the most rational things you ever did in your
+life--you have been digging here among your books, as if you were some
+half-starved law student, with a prospect of matrimony."
+
+"I've done digging for the present. It's against my principles to work
+much in July and August."
+
+"What do you mean to do?"
+
+"Set out on a journey."
+
+"I suppose so. You are a lucky fellow."
+
+"Give yourself a vacation, and come with me."
+
+"No, I'm in for it for the next two months; but I will have my revenge
+before long."
+
+"Three days from your office will never ruin you or your family. Come
+with me to New Baden, if you can't do better."
+
+"I think I can manage that,--and I will."
+
+Accordingly, on Monday morning, they took the train thitherward.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI.
+
+  The company is 'mixed,' (the phrase I quote is
+  As much as saying, they're below your notice.)--_Byron_.
+
+
+On reaching New Baden, towards night, they learned that there was to
+be a dance that evening, in the hall.
+
+"The deuse!" ejaculated Meredith, as they entered; "have we come all
+this distance to find old faces again at New Baden? Look at that
+corner."
+
+Morton looked, and beheld a solemn group taking no part in the
+amusements, but scrutinizing the scene with the air of superior
+beings. He recognized the familiar countenance of Mrs. Primrose, with
+her daughter, Miss Constance Primrose, and her daughter's friend, Miss
+Wallflower. There, too, was Mr. Benjamin Stubb, Morton's classmate,
+and Miss Primrose's reputed admirer, with several other kindred
+spirits. Stubb was a tall and very slender young man, with a grave and
+pallid visage, and an uncompromising rigidity of cravat. Though his
+brain was unfurnished, his morals were reasonably good, and he went
+regularly to church, believing that there was, he could not tell how,
+an inseparable connection between good society and the ritual of the
+English church. He prided himself on his gentlemanly deportment, and
+regarded a lady as a being who is under no circumstances to be
+approached, except through the medium of certain prescribed forms and
+ceremonies. He seldom noticed those whom he thought his inferiors, and
+was very formal and exact towards the select few whom he acknowledged
+as his equals. As to superiors, he confessed none, except in the
+highest ranks of the English aristocracy, upon whom he looked with
+great reverence. He thought that there was no really good society in
+America, except the society of Boston, of which he regarded himself
+and his connections as the _creme, de la creme_. He cherished a just
+hereditary scorn of upstarts and parvenus; for already nearly half a
+century had expired since the Stubbs began to rise on golden wings
+from their native mud. Nor was this their only claim to ancestral
+eminence; since a judicious investment of a little surplus income at
+the College of Heralds had revealed the gratifying truth that the
+Stubbs of Boston were lineal descendants of King Arthur.
+
+Mrs. Primrose was a very benevolent and estimable person, who knew
+nothing of the world beyond her own circle, and looked with dire
+reprehension on any deviation from the standard of morals and manners
+which she had been accustomed to regard as the correct and proper one.
+Miss Constance Primrose realized Stubb's most exalted ideal of a young
+lady. She was very pretty, but with a face cold and unchanging as
+marble. She carried an unquestionable air of good, not to say of high
+breeding; having in this point an advantage over her mother, whose
+style savored a little of the simplicity of her early surroundings.
+The material, indeed, was very slender; but it had received a
+creditable polish; and though she had nothing to say, she said it with
+an undeniable grace.
+
+Morton and Meredith paid their compliments to the group, the former
+hastening to mingle with the crowd again, while Meredith remained to
+exchange a few words with the pretty, modest, and too-much-neglected
+Miss Wallflower.
+
+"Upon my word, Mr. Meredith," said Mrs. Primrose, "Mr. Morton has
+found a singular pair of acquaintances."
+
+"O, yes," said Meredith; "those are particular friends of his."
+
+"Very singular!" murmured Mrs. Primrose.
+
+Morton was walking slowly up the hall, conversing with an odd-looking
+couple--a heavy, thick set man, in the fantastic finery of a Broadway
+swell, and a woman of five feet ten, thin and gaunt, with a yellow
+complexion, and a pair of fierce, glittering eyes, like an Indian
+squaw in ill humor. She was gorgeous in silk, brocade, and diamonds,
+and her huge, gloveless, bony fingers sparkled with jewelry. Her
+husband, on his part, displayed a mighty breastpin, in the shape of a
+war horse rampant, in diamond frostwork.
+
+"Mr. Meredith," murmured the horrified Mrs. Primrose, "pray who are
+those persons?"
+
+"Aborigines from Red River. Mr. and Mrs. Major Orson, of Natchitoches.
+He is a speculator, I believe, of more wealth than reputation."
+
+"And _are_ they friends of Mr. Morton?"
+
+"O, Morton is a student of humanity. He met them at the tea table, and
+thinks them remarkable specimens of natural history."
+
+Mrs. Primrose did not hear this explanation. The trio had now
+approached within a few yards; and her whole attention was absorbed in
+listening to the high, penetrating voice of the female ogre.
+
+"There's one great and glorious thing about Natchitoches," remarked
+Mrs. Orson.
+
+"What's that?" asked Morton.
+
+"You can get every thing there to eat that heart can wish."
+
+"That's a fact," said the major; "there ain't no discount on that."
+
+"Game, and fish, and fruit, and vegetables," pursued the lady; "any
+thing and every thing. The north can't compete with it, I tell _you_.
+There's the pompano! O, my! Did you ever eat a pompano?"
+
+"Never."
+
+"Then you _have_ got something to look forward to. That's a fish that
+_is_ a fish. Why, sir, you can begin at the tail, and eat him clean
+away to the head, and the bones is just like marrow! It makes my mouth
+water to think of it!"
+
+"O, hush!" cried the major, with sympathetic emotion.
+
+"And then the fruit! Think of the peaches! They beat your nasty little
+northern peaches all holler!"
+
+"Yes," added the major, and to have your own boys to shin up the tree
+and throw 'em down to you; and to sit under the shade all the
+afternoon eating 'em;--that's the way to live!"
+
+"It's all the little niggers is good for, just to pick fruit."
+
+"Troublesome animals, I should think," observed Morton.
+
+"Well, they be; and the growed-up niggers ain't much better. To think
+of that girl, Cynthy, major. My! wasn't she one of 'em! The major is,
+out of all account, too tender to his niggers, and if it warn't for
+me, they wouldn't get a speck of justice done. Why, what are all those
+folks moving for? My! supper's ready. I'll go in with this gentleman,
+major, and you may foller with any pretty gal that you can get to come
+with you. I ain't a jealous woman"--turning to Morton--"I let the
+major do pretty much what he pleases."
+
+Mrs. Primrose drew a deep breath. "There must be"--thus she communed
+with herself--"something essentially vulgar in the mind of that young
+man, if he can neglect a cultivated and refined young lady like
+Constance, and at the same time find pleasure in the conversation of a
+person like that." And she considered within herself whether it would
+not be best to warn Constance not to encourage any advances which he
+might in future make. On second thoughts, reflecting that his position
+was unquestionable, his wealth great, and that she had never heard any
+thing against his morals, she determined to suspend all action for the
+present, keeping a close watch, meanwhile, on his behavior.
+
+While Morton was thus brought to the bar in the matronly breast of
+Mrs. Primrose, while the jury were bringing in a verdict of guilty,
+joined to a recommendation to mercy, the unconscious young man was
+leading his companion to the supper room; where, furnishing her with a
+huge plate of oysters, he left her in perfect contentment.
+
+Not long after, he encountered Meredith.
+
+"How do you like your friend in the diamonds?"
+
+"She's a superb specimen; about as civilized, with all her jewelry, as
+a Pawnee squaw. She has a vein of womanhood, though. I saw her, in the
+tea room, fondle a kitten whose foot had been trodden upon, as
+tenderly as if it had been a child."
+
+"If you had not been so busy with her, you would have met a person
+much better worth your time."
+
+"Who's that?"
+
+"Miss Fanny Euston."
+
+"Do you mean that she is here?"
+
+"She _was_ here,--in that room adjoining. But she has gone; you'll see
+nothing of her to-night."
+
+"Will not her being here induce you to stay?"
+
+The question, as he spoke it, had a sound of frankness; but the
+shameful truth must be confessed, that, in spite of his friendship for
+Meredith, and his admiration of Miss Leslie, he was a little jealous
+of his friend.
+
+"No," replied Meredith, "it's out of the question. I must be off the
+day after to-morrow. By the way, you never told me how you liked Miss
+Euston."
+
+"A rough diamond, needing nothing but to be cut, polished, and set!"
+
+"It's too late, I think, for that. The polishing should have begun
+before eighteen. She is quite unformed, and quite unconscious of being
+so. I'll leave you here to fall in love with her, if you like; but if
+you do, colonel, you'll be a good deal younger than I take you for."
+
+There was something in his friend's tone which led Morton half to
+suspect the truth. Meredith had himself a _penchant_ for Miss Fanny
+Euston, held in abeyance by a very lively perception of her faults.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII.
+
+  Will you woo this wildcat?--_Katharine and Petruchio_.
+
+
+Meredith went away, as he had proposed, leaving Morton at New Baden.
+The latter soon came to the opinion that he had never yet found so
+interesting a subject of psychological observation as that afforded
+him in the person of his relative, Miss Euston. She seemed to him the
+most wayward of mortals; yet in the midst of this lawlessness,
+generous instincts were constantly betraying themselves, and a certain
+native grace, a charm of womanhood, followed her wildest caprices. She
+often gave great offence by her brusqueries; yet those who best knew
+her were commonly her ardent friends.
+
+Mrs. Primrose looked upon her with her most profound and unqualified
+disapprobation. Her daughter copied her sentiments; while Stubb
+thought her an outside barbarian of the most alarming character. Fanny
+Euston's perceptions were very acute. She saw the effect she had
+produced, and seemed to take peculiar delight in aggravating it, and
+shocking the prejudices of her critics still more.
+
+One afternoon, Miss Primrose, Mr. Stubb, Fanny Euston, Morton, and
+several others, set out on a horseback excursion, matronized by Mrs.
+Primrose. At a few miles from New Baden, Morton found himself riding
+at his cousin's side, a little behind the rest.
+
+"Do you know, I came this morning, to ask you to join us on our walk
+to Elk Ridge."
+
+"Ah, I am sorry I was not there."
+
+"You were there; but you seemed so deep in Ivanhoe, or some other of
+your favorites, that I had no heart to interrupt you."
+
+"But that was quite absurd. I should like to have gone."
+
+"I am curious to know what book you were so busy with. Something of
+Scott's--was it not?"
+
+"Not precisely."
+
+"Nor one of the new novels," pursued Morton--"those are not after your
+taste."
+
+"Not at all; they are all full of some grand reform or philanthropic
+scheme, or the sorrows of some destitute, uninteresting little wretch,
+with whom you are required to sympathize."
+
+"You are not moulded after the philanthropic model. But may I ask,
+what book was entertaining you so much?"
+
+"Napier's Life of Montrose."
+
+"And do you like it?"
+
+"Indeed I do."
+
+"And you like Montrose?"
+
+"Certainly I like him."
+
+"I could have sworn it. Do you remember his verses to the lady of his
+heart?"
+
+"That I do," said Fanny Euston,--
+
+  "'Like Alexander I will reign,
+      And I will reign alone;
+    My heart shall evermore disdain
+      A rival on my throne.
+    He either fears his fate too much,
+      Or his deserts are small,
+    Who puts it not unto the touch,
+      To win or lose it all.
+
+  "'But if thou wilt be constant then,
+      And faithful of thy word,
+    I'll make thee famous by my pen,
+      And glorious by my sword;
+    I'll serve thee in such noble ways
+      Was never heard before;
+    I'll dress and crown thee all with bays,
+      And love thee evermore.'"
+
+"Admirable! I thought I had a good memory, but you beat me hollow. You
+repeat the lines as if you liked them."
+
+"Who would not like them?"
+
+"And yet his fashion of wooing would be a little peremptory for the
+nineteenth century."
+
+"There are no Montroses in the nineteenth century."
+
+"They are out of date, like many a good thing besides. Not long ago, I
+saw some verses in a magazine--a kind of ballad on Montrose's
+execution."
+
+"Can you repeat it?"
+
+"I cannot compete with you; but I think I can give you a stanza or
+two:--
+
+  "'The morning dawned full darkly,
+      The rain came flashing down,
+    And the jagged streak of the levin bolt
+      Lit up the gloomy town:
+    The thunder crashed across the heaven,
+      The fatal hour was come;
+    And ay broke in, with muffled beat,
+      The 'larum of the drum.
+    There was madness on the earth below,
+      And anger in the sky,
+    And young and old, and rich and poor,
+      Came forth to see him die.
+
+  "'But when he came, though pale and wan,
+      He looked so great and high,
+    So noble was his manly front,
+      So calm his steadfast eye,--
+    The rabble rout forbore to shout,
+      And each man held his breath,
+    For well they knew the hero's soul
+      Was face to face with death.'"
+
+Fanny Euston's eye kindled, as if at a strain of warlike music.
+
+"Go on."
+
+"I have forgotten the rest."
+
+"Then pray find the verses and send them to me. Why is it that, as you
+say, such men are out of date?"
+
+"What place, or what career, could they find in a commercial country?"
+
+"Then why were we born in a commercial country?"
+
+"You seem to make an ideal hero of Montrose."
+
+"Not I. I am not the school girl you take me for. I have no ideal
+hero. I do not believe in ideal heroes. Montrose was a man, with the
+faults of a man; full of faults, and yet not a bad man either."
+
+"Very far from it."
+
+"He had great faults, but grand qualities to match them,--worth a
+thousand of the small, tame, correct virtues that one sees
+hereabouts."
+
+"Dangerous ideas, those, Mrs. Primrose would tell you."
+
+"Deliver me from Mrs. Primrose!" ejaculated Fanny.
+
+They rode in silence for a few minutes, Morton's companion murmuring
+to herself fragments of the lines which he had just repeated.
+
+"Look!" she cried, suddenly. "How slowly our horses have been walking!
+The rest are almost out of sight. We had better join them. Will you
+race with me?"
+
+"Any thing you please."
+
+"Come on, then."
+
+She touched her horse with the whip, and they set forward at full
+speed. Fanny, who was by far the better mounted, soon gained the day.
+
+"Rein up," cried Morton, as they came near the party, "or your horse
+will startle the others."
+
+Fanny drew the curb, but not quite successfully; and her rapid arrival
+produced some commotion. Stubb's horse, in particular, began to prance
+and curvet in a manner which greatly disturbed his rider's equanimity.
+
+"Whoa! Whoa, boy!" said Stubb. "Steady, now! steady, sir! Whoa!"
+
+Fanny's eyes twinkled with malicious delight. She had a great contempt
+for Stubb, who, on his part, was mortally afraid of her.
+
+"That's a good horse of yours," pushing close to his side.
+
+"Yes, a very fine horse, indeed. Steady, boy! Steady, now!"
+
+"A capital horse; but he needs a spirited hand like yours to manage
+him."
+
+"Whoa! Quiet, now!--poor fellow!"
+
+This last endearing address was checked by a sudden jolt, produced by
+a spasmodic movement of the horse, which shook the cavalier to his
+very centre.
+
+"Punish him well with your spurs, Mr. Stubb, and let him run; that's
+the way to cure him of his tricks. Suppose we try a race together."
+
+"Thank you, Miss Euston, but the fact is-- Whoa, boy! whoa!-- I mean,
+the stableman told me that he is rather short of breath."
+
+"O, never mind the stableman. Come, let's go."
+
+"Thank you, Miss Euston, I believe not to-day."
+
+"You astonish me. I will lay any bet you like--you shall name the
+wager--any thing you please."
+
+"Really, this is a little too bad!" soliloquized the horrified Mrs.
+Primrose. "Miss Euston, I entreat of you--I beg--that we may have no
+more racing. It is very dangerous, besides being----"
+
+"What is it besides being dangerous, Mrs. Primrose?"
+
+"_Very_ indecorous."
+
+"I am very sorry, for I have set my heart on a race with Mr. Stubb."
+
+"Mr. Morton," said the distressed lady, aside to that young gentleman,
+"you are a prudent and sober-minded person; pray use your influence."
+
+She was interrupted by a most uncanonical ejaculation from the author
+of her embarrassments, which, though couched in a foreign language,
+petrified her into silence. A sharp gust of wind had blown away
+Fanny's veil, and she was on the point of dashing off in pursuit of
+it.
+
+"Stop!" cried Morton, "you'll break your neck. Let me get it for you."
+
+The veil sailed away before the wind, and Morton spurred in pursuit,
+delighted to display his horsemanship before ladies, though it had no
+other merit than a tenacious seat and a kind of recklessness, the
+result of an excitable temperament. The ground was rough and broken,
+and studded with rocks and savin bushes, and as he galloped at a
+breakneck speed down the side of the hill, in a vain attempt to catch
+the veil flying, even Fanny held her breath. He secured his prize, as
+it caught against a bush, and returned to the road.
+
+"Now, Miss Euston," said Mrs. Primrose, looking folios at the
+offender, "I trust we shall be allowed to go on in peace."
+
+There was an interval of repose. Stubb regained his peace of mind.
+Miss Primrose, with whom he fancied himself in love, smiled upon him,
+and his self-conceit, before shaken in its stronghold, was returning
+in full force, when Fanny, who nourished a peculiar spite against this
+harmless blockhead, and whom that afternoon a very Satan of mischief
+seemed to possess, again rode to his side, and renewed her
+solicitations for a race.
+
+"Miss Euston," said Mrs. Primrose, "I am certain you would do nothing
+so unladylike as to force Mr. Stubb to race against his will. Consider
+the example you would set to Georgiana Gosling, who always imitates
+what she sees you do."
+
+The words were mild and motherly; but the countenance of the outraged
+matron had an uncompromising look of reprehension, which exasperated
+Fanny's wayward humor beyond measure. She began, it is true, a lively
+conversation on general topics with the intelligent Stubb, but,
+meantime, by alternately checking and exciting her horse, and urging
+him to play a variety of antics, she contrived to infect her
+companion's steed with the like contagion. He pranced, plunged, and
+chafed, till his rider was brought to the verge of despair.
+
+The road had become quite narrow, running through a thick forest,
+frequented chiefly by woodcutters in the winter, and hunters of the
+picturesque in summer. Fanny's imitator, the adventurous Miss Gosling,
+a little girl of fourteen, had ridden a few rods in advance of the
+rest, when suddenly they saw her returning, astonished and
+disconsolate.
+
+"We can't go any farther; there's a great tree fallen across the
+road."
+
+A severe thundergust of the night before had overthrown a hemlock, the
+trunk of which, partly sustained by the roots and branches, formed a
+barrier about four feet from the ground. It was impossible to pass
+through the woods on either side, as they were very dense, and choked
+with a tangled growth of laurel bushes.
+
+"How very annoying!" said Miss Primrose.
+
+"What shall we do?" inquired Miss Gosling.
+
+"Why, jump over it, to be sure," said Fanny. "Mr. Stubb and I will
+show you the way."
+
+"You are surely not in earnest!" cried Mrs. Primrose.
+
+"Of course I am. I have taken higher leaps at the riding school,
+twenty times."
+
+"You had better not," said Morton, who had alighted by the roadside to
+draw his saddle girth.
+
+"It is too dangerous to be thought of for a single moment," added Mrs.
+Primrose.
+
+"Our horses," pursued the indiscreet Stubb, "are not used to leaping,
+and some of the ladies would certainly be hurt."
+
+"The fool!" thought Morton. "He has done it now."
+
+Fanny threw a laughing, caustic glance at her victim.
+
+"_Mine_ will leap, I know; and you are not a lady. Come, Mr. Stubb."
+
+"Miss Euston," interposed the excited Mrs. Primrose, "this must not
+be. I am here in your mother's place, and she will hold me responsible
+for your safety. I forbid you to go, Miss Euston."
+
+Fanny looked for a moment in her face. Morton caught the expression.
+It was one of unqualified, though not ill-natured, defiance.
+
+"Come," cried Fanny again, and ran her horse towards the tree. She
+leaped gallantly, and cleared the barrier; but it was evident that she
+had lost control of the spirited animal, who galloped at a furious
+rate down the road.
+
+Morton was still on foot, busied with his saddle girth.
+
+"The crazy child!" exclaimed Mrs. Primrose; "her horse is running
+away. Go after her--pray!--Mr. Stubb--somebody."
+
+"O, quick! quick!--do," cried little Miss Gosling, who idolized Fanny,
+and was in an agony of fright for her.
+
+Thus exhorted, the desperate Stubb cried, "Get up," and galloped for
+the tree; but his horse balked, and, leaping aside, tumbled him into
+the mud. The ladies screamed. Morton would have laughed, if he had not
+been too anxious for Fanny.
+
+"Get out of the way, Stubb," he cried, mounting with all despatch.
+
+Miss Primrose's admirer gathered himself up, regained his hat, which
+had taken refuge in a puddle, and looked with horror at a ghastly
+white rent across his knee. Morton spurred his hack against the
+barrier, which the beast cleared with difficulty, striking his hind
+hoofs as he went over. After riding a short distance, he discovered
+Fanny, and saw, to his great relief, that she was regaining control
+over her horse. Half a mile farther on, the road divided. The larger
+branch led to the right, Morton did not know whither; the smaller
+turned to the left, and after circling through the woods for two or
+three miles, issued upon the high road. Fanny, who was ignorant of the
+way, took the right hand branch. In a few minutes after, she had
+brought her horse to a trot, and Morton rode up to her side.
+
+"You are wiser than I am, if you know where we are going."
+
+"I thought you knew the way. You were to have been our guide."
+
+"We are on the wrong road. You should have turned to the left."
+
+"But have you no idea where this will lead us?"
+
+"Into a cedar swamp, for what I know. Had we not better turn back?"
+
+"O, don't speak of turning back. I am in no mood for turning back. Let
+us keep on. I am sure this will bring us out somewhere."
+
+"As you please," said Morton, knowing himself to be in the position of
+an angler, whose only chance of managing his salmon is to give it
+line.
+
+"Where are all the rest?"
+
+"Holding a convention behind the tree, I suppose. At least, I left
+them there."
+
+"And did not Mr. Stubb dare the fatal leap?"
+
+"He tried, and was thrown into a mud puddle."
+
+"No bodily harm, I hope."
+
+"No; beaver and broadcloth were the principal sufferers. But his
+conceit is shaken out of him for twenty-four hours, at least."
+
+"Then I have wrought a miracle, and can claim to be canonized on the
+strength of it."
+
+"I hope you may be; but I never expected to see your name in the
+calendar of saints."
+
+"As you will not allow me to be a saint, I suppose you consider me as
+mad. Sanctity and madness, they say, are of kin."
+
+"A hair's breadth, or so, on this side madness."
+
+"Then I am entitled to great credit for keeping my wits at all. What
+reasonable girl would not be driven mad with Mrs. Primrose to watch
+her, and disapprove of her, and correct her? Strange--is it not?--that
+some people--if Mrs. Primrose will allow me to use so inelegant an
+expression--are always rubbing one against the grain."
+
+"To give you your due, I think you have paid off handsomely any grudge
+you may owe in that quarter."
+
+"There is consolation in that. Tell me--you are of the out-spoken
+sort--are you not of my opinion? Let me know your mind. Mr. Stubb
+is----"
+
+"A puppy."
+
+"And the Primroses are----"
+
+"Uninteresting."
+
+"For uninteresting, say insufferable. If Lucifer wishes to gain me
+over to his side, let Mrs. Primrose be made my guardian angel, and his
+work is done."
+
+"Your horse has cast a shoe," said Morton, abruptly,--"yes; and he is
+lame besides."
+
+"It is this broken, stony road. I wish we were at the end of it."
+
+"So do I. If the clouds would break for a moment, and show us the sun,
+I could form some idea of the direction we are following."
+
+"Why," said Fanny, in alarm, looking at her watch, "the sun must be
+very near setting."
+
+Morton began to be very anxious, for his companion's sake, when, a
+moment after, they came upon a broader track, which intersected the
+other, and seemed a main thoroughfare of the woodcutters.
+
+"This looks more promising," said Morton; and turning to the left,
+they pushed their horses to their best pace. Twilight came on, and it
+was quite dark when they emerged at length upon the broad and dusty
+highway. In a few minutes they saw a countryman, with his hands in his
+pockets, and a long nine between his lips, lounging by the roadside.
+
+"How far is it to New Baden?"
+
+"Wal," replied the man, after studying his querist in silence for
+about half a minute, "it's fifteen mile strong."
+
+Morton looked at Fanny, whose horse was very lame, and who, in spite
+of her spirit, began to show unmistakable signs of fatigue.
+
+"Is there a public house any where near?"
+
+"Yas; it ain't far ahead to Mashum's."
+
+"How far?"
+
+"Rather better nor a mile."
+
+On coming to the inn, Morton commended Fanny to the care of the
+landlady, an honest New Hampshire woman, remounted without delay, and
+urged his tired horse to such speed that he reached the hotel before
+half past nine. His arrival relieved the anxieties, or silenced the
+tattle of the inmates; and in the morning Fanny's uncle drove to the
+inn, and brought back the adventurous damsel to New Baden.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII.
+
+  Men will woo the tempest,
+    And wed it, to their cost.--_Passion Flowers_.
+
+  Then fly betimes, for only they
+    Conquer love that run away.--_Carew_.
+
+
+Morton had been for some time of opinion that he had better leave New
+Baden; yet still the philosophic youth staid on,--a week longer,--a
+fortnight longer,--and still he lingered. It would be too much to say
+that he was in love with his handsome, dare-devil cousin; but his mind
+was greatly troubled in regard to her--shaken and tossed with a
+variety of conflicting emotions. The multiplied and constantly
+changing phases of her character, its strong but utterly ungoverned
+resources, its frankness, enthusiasm, detestation of all deceit or
+pretension, and, in spite of her wildness, a deep vein of womanly
+tenderness which now and then betrayed itself, all conspired to keep
+his interest somewhat painfully excited.
+
+One evening he left the crowded piazza of the hotel, and, intending to
+flirt with solitude and a cigar, walked towards a rustic arbor,
+overgrown with a wild grape vine, and standing among a cluster of
+young elms at the foot of the garden. As he drew near, he saw the
+gleam of ladies' dresses, and found the seats already occupied by Miss
+Fanny Euston and two companions. Morton knew them well, and joined the
+party. As neither the affected graces of the one companion nor the
+voluble emptiness of the other had much interest in his eyes, he
+directed his conversation chiefly to Fanny. In a few minutes the two
+girls exchanged glances, rose, and alleging some pretended engagement,
+returned to the hotel, bent on making this casual interview assume the
+air of a flirtation.
+
+Morton and his companion sat for a moment in silence.
+
+"We are cousins--are we not?" said the former, at length.
+
+"At least they would call us so in the Highlands."
+
+"Then give me a cousin's privilege, and allow me to be personal. Are
+you not out of spirits to-night?"
+
+"Why do you think me so?"
+
+"From your look and manner."
+
+"Are you not tired to death of New Baden?"
+
+"Not yet."
+
+"I am. What is it all worth?--weary, and vapid, and flat, and stale,
+and unprofitable! I have had enough of it."
+
+"Then why not change it?"
+
+"To find the same thing in a new shape!"
+
+"Pardon me if I call that a freak of the moment. You are the gayest of
+the gay."
+
+"No, I am not."
+
+"You are a belle here; a centre light. The moths flutter about you,
+though you do, now and then, singe their wings. You frighten them, and
+they repay you with fine speeches."
+
+"I am weary of them. For Heaven's sake, abuse me a little. I know you
+have it often in your heart."
+
+"Abuse is sometimes nothing but flattery in disguise."
+
+"Why do you smile? That smile was at my expense."
+
+"Why should you imagine so?"
+
+"I insist on your telling me its meaning."
+
+"I was only thinking that when tribute in an old shape has become
+wearisome, one may like to have it paid in a new one."
+
+"That certainly is not flattery. Do you know I am beginning to be
+afraid of you?"
+
+"I could not have thought you afraid of any one."
+
+"Yes, I am afraid of you."
+
+"Why?"
+
+"Because you are always observing me. Because you penetrate my
+thoughts and understand me thoroughly."
+
+"I am less deep than you suppose."
+
+"At least you know all my faults. You are always, in a quiet way,
+making gibes and sarcasms at my expense, and touching upon my weakest
+points."
+
+"Does it make you angry?"
+
+"No; I rather like it; but I wish to repay you. I wish to find your
+weaknesses, but cannot. Have you any?"
+
+"Yes, an abundance."
+
+"And will you tell me what they are?"
+
+"What, that you may use them against me! The moment you know them, you
+will attack me without mercy; and if you see me wince, it is all over
+with me."
+
+"What do you mean?"
+
+"I mean that you cease to like one as soon as you find that you can
+gain the least advantage over him. If I could really make you a little
+afraid of me, you would like me all the better for it. No, I will show
+you none of my weaknesses; and perhaps, if I did, you would not find
+them of a kind that you could use against me. I can strike at you, but
+you cannot hurt me. I am armed in proof. I defy you."
+
+In saying this, at least, Morton showed some knowledge of his
+companion's character. To defy her successfully was a great step
+towards gaining her good graces; for with all her wildness she was
+very sensitive to the good or ill opinion of those who could compel
+her to respect them. She became very anxious to know what Morton
+thought of her.
+
+"You say that you do not understand me thoroughly. What is there in me
+that you do not understand?"
+
+"You may say that I do not understand you at all."
+
+"That is mere evasion."
+
+"Who can understand the language of Babel?"
+
+"Do you mean that I speak the language of Babel?"
+
+"Who can understand chaos?"
+
+"And am I chaos? You are beginning your peculiar style of compliment
+again."
+
+"Do not be displeased at it. All the power and beauty of the universe
+rose out of chaos."
+
+"Now you are flattering in earnest."
+
+"You are difficult to satisfy. What may I call you? A wild Arab racer
+without a rider?"
+
+"That will answer better."
+
+"Or a rocket without a stick?"
+
+"I have seen rockets; but I do not know what the stick is. What is it?
+What is it for?"
+
+"To give balance and aim to the rocket--make it, as the
+transcendentalists say, mount skyward, and end in stars and 'golden
+rain.'"
+
+"Very fine! And how if it has no stick?"
+
+"Then it sparkles, and blazes, and hisses on the ground; flies up and
+down, this way and that, plays the deuse with every thing and every
+body, and at last blows itself up to no purpose."
+
+"Ah, I see that the stick is very necessary. I will try to get one."
+
+"You speak in a bantering tone," said Morton, "but you are in
+earnest."
+
+"I am in earnest!" exclaimed Fanny Euston, with a sudden change of
+voice and manner. "Every word that you have spoken is true. I am
+driven hither and thither by feelings and impulses,--some bad, some
+good,--chasing every new fancy like so many butterflies or
+will-o'-the-wisps,--without thinking of
+results--restless--dissatisfied--finding no life but in the excitement
+of the moment. Sometimes I have hints of better things. Glimpses of
+light break in upon me; but they come, and they go again. I have no
+rule of life, no guiding star."
+
+Morton looked at his companion not without a certain sense of victory.
+He saw that he had gained, for the moment at least, an influence over
+her, and roused her to the expression of feelings to which, perhaps,
+she had never given utterance before. Yet his own mind was any thing
+but tranquil. Something more than admiration was stirring within him.
+He felt impelled to explore farther the proud spirit which had already
+yielded up to him some of its secrets. But he felt that, with her eyes
+upon him, he could not speak without committing himself farther than
+he was prepared to do. In this dilemma he determined to retreat--a
+resolution for which he was entitled to no little credit, if its merit
+is to be measured by the effort it cost him. He rose from his seat.
+
+"Find your star, Fanny, and you may challenge the world. But I see
+people coming down the garden towards us. We shall be invaded if we
+stay here. Let us walk back towards the house."
+
+When he found himself alone again, he paced his room in no very
+enviable frame of mind.
+
+"What devil impelled me to speak as I did? It was no part of mine to
+be telling her of her faults. Am I turning philanthropist and
+busybody? If I wished to gain her heart, I suspect I have been taking
+the right course. What with any other lady would have been intolerable
+presumption and arrogance, is the most effectual way to win her
+esteem. And why should I not wish to gain her heart? There is good
+there in abundance, if one could but depend on it. No; I am not
+blinded yet. This last outburst was a momentary impulse, like all the
+rest; and to-morrow she will be reckless as ever. She delights in
+lawlessness, and rejoices in the zest of breaking established bounds.
+Her wayward will is like a cataract, and may carry her, God knows
+whither. No; I will not walk in this path; I will not try to marry
+her. Her heart is untouched--that is clear as the day. I wish she
+could say as much of mine. I will leave this place to-morrow, cost
+what it will."
+
+A letter from Boston gave him a pretext; and bidding farewell to his
+cousin and her mother, he took the early train homewards. The newsboy
+brought him a paper, and his eyes rested on the columns; but his
+thoughts centred on Fanny Euston and his last evening's conversation
+with her at the foot of the garden.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV.
+
+  * * * One fire burns out another's burning,
+    One pain is lessened by another's anguish;
+  Turn giddy, and be holp by backward turning;
+    One desperate grief cures with another's languish.
+  Take thou some new infection to thine eye,
+  And the rank poison of the old will die.--_Romeo and Juliet_.
+
+
+All day the train whirled along, and Morton's troubled thoughts found
+no rest.
+
+"Matherton!" cried the conductor, opening the door of the car, as the
+engine stopped in a large station house, at five o'clock in the
+afternoon. Several passengers got out; two or three came in; the bell
+rang, and with puffing and clanking, the train was on its way again. A
+newsboy passed down the car with a bundle of newspapers and twopenny
+novels. Morton bought one of the latter as an anodyne; but even
+"Orlando Melville, or the Victim of the Press Gang," failed to produce
+the desired soporific effect, and his thoughts soon recurred to their
+former channel. Suddenly a violent concussion, a crashing, thumping,
+and grating sound, the outcries of a hundred passengers,--the women
+screaming, and some of the men not silent,--with a furious rocking and
+tossing of the car, ejected every thought but one of his personal
+safety. All sprang to their feet, he among the rest. The first
+distinct impression which his mind received was that of the man in
+front of him making a flying leap out of the open window of the car,
+carrying the sash with him--a dexterous piece of gymnastics, only to
+be accounted for by the fact that the performer was a distinguished
+artist of the Grand National Olympic Circus. His boots twinkled at the
+window, and he was gone, alighting on his feet like a cat, but Morton
+was too much frightened to laugh. In a few moments the car came to a
+rest, without being overturned, though the front was partly broken in,
+and the whole swung off the rails to an angle of forty-five degrees.
+On looking out at the window, the first object that met Morton's eye
+was the baggage car, thrown on its side, with the door uppermost. As
+he looked, the door opened, and a head emerged--like a triton from the
+deep, or Banquo's ghost from a trap door--white with wrath and fright,
+and swearing with wonderful volubility. Then appeared another, rising
+by the side of the first, equally pallid, but much less profane. The
+heads belonged to two men, who had been seated in the compartment of
+the baggage car allotted to the mails, and when it was flung off the
+track, had been rattled together like dice in a box, suffering various
+bruises, but no serious harm. The breaking of the defective cast iron
+axle of the tender had caused the whole disaster, which would
+doubtless have produced fatal consequences had not the train been
+moving at a very slow rate. As it happened, a few contusions were its
+worst results, and one of the morning papers,
+
+                "for profound
+  And solid lying much renowned,"
+
+solemnly averred that none but Providence was responsible for it.
+
+There was abundant noise and vociferation. The passengers left the
+train, some lending their bungling aid to repair the mischief, while
+others withdrew to an inn which chanced to be in the neighborhood.
+After looking for a time at the downfallen tender and the uprooted
+rails, Morton, from some idle impulse, entered the car which he had
+lately left. It was empty; and, passing through it, he looked into
+that immediately behind, which had remained safely upon the rails.
+This also was empty, with the exception of a single person, a young
+female figure, seated at one of the windows. She was closely veiled,
+yet there was in her air that indefinable something which told Morton
+at a glance that she was a lady. He stepped to the ground,
+conjecturing whether or no she had a companion.
+
+Five minutes after, glancing at the window, he saw the solitary
+traveller seated in the same position as before, and became convinced
+that she was unattended. The women in the train had left it at the
+outset. The busy and clamorous throng of men alone remained; and
+Morton easily conceived that her situation must be an embarrassing
+one. He therefore reentered the car and approached her.
+
+"I am afraid we shall be detained here for two or three hours, and
+perhaps till late at night. There is a public house a little way off,
+to which the ladies in the train have gone. If you will allow me, I
+will show you the way."
+
+So he spoke; or, rather, so he would have spoken; but he had scarcely
+begun when the veiled head was joyfully raised, and the veil was
+thrown aside, disclosing to his astonished eyes the features of Edith
+Leslie. She explained that she was on her way from her father's
+country seat at Matherton; and that he was to meet her at the station
+on the arrival of the train. When the accident took place, she had
+been led to suppose, from the conversation of two men near her, that
+the train would not be very long detained, and had preferred remaining
+in the car to mingling with the tumultuous throng outside.
+
+"It is too fine an afternoon," said Morton, as they left the spot, "to
+be mured in that tavern. This lane has an inviting look. Have you a
+mind to explore it?"
+
+They walked accordingly in the direction he proposed; and, as they did
+so, Morton cast many a stolen glance at the face of his companion. The
+mind of the young philosopher was that day in a peculiarly susceptible
+state. It seemed as if Fanny Euston had kindled within him a flame
+which could not fix itself upon her, yet must needs find fuel
+somewhere; and as his eye met that of Edith Leslie, he began to feel
+that she held a deeper place in his thoughts than he had ever before
+suspected.
+
+By the side of the lane stood an ancient abode, whose rotten shingles
+supported a rich crop of green mosses; and in the yard an old man, who
+looked like a relic of Bunker Hill fight, was diligently chopping
+firewood.
+
+"What does this lane lead to?" asked Morton, looking over the fence.
+
+The woodchopper leaned on his axe, wiped his brows with the tatters of
+a red handkerchief, and seemed revolving the expediency of
+communicating the desired information.
+
+"Well," he returned, after mature reflection, "if you go fur enough,
+it'll take you down to the Diamond Pool."
+
+"The Diamond Pool," said Miss Leslie; "that has a promising sound."
+
+The lane soon began to lead them down the side of a rugged hill,
+between barberry bushes and stunted savins, with neglected stone
+walls, where the striped ground squirrels chirruped as they dodged
+into the crevices. In a few moments they had a glimpse of the water,
+shining between the branches of the trees below.
+
+"Upon my word," said Morton, as they stood on the margin, "the Diamond
+Pool is not to be despised. We have chosen our walk well, and found a
+tempting place of rest at the end of it."
+
+"A grassy bank,--a clear spring, with cardinal flowers along the
+edge--a cluster of maple trees----"
+
+"And a flat rock at the foot of one of them, for you to rest upon. We
+are well provided for."
+
+"Except that a seat for you seems to have been forgotten."
+
+"No, if I wish to rest, this mound of grass will serve my turn. I am
+used to bivouacs."
+
+The sun had just vanished behind the rocky hill on the farther side of
+the water; a sea of liquid fire, clouds blazoned in gold and crimson,
+betokened his recent presence. The lake lay like a great mirror framed
+in green. Another sunset glowed in its depths; rocks, hills, and trees
+grew downward; and the kingfisher, as he flitted over it, made a dash
+at the surface, as if to peck at the adversary bird, which seemed
+shooting upward to meet him.
+
+"One might imagine," said Miss Leslie, "that we were a hundred miles
+away from railroads, factories, and all abominations of the kind."
+
+"They will follow soon," said Morton; "they are not far off. There is
+no sanctuary from American enterprise."
+
+"I know it is omnipotent at spoiling a landscape; but I hope that this
+one may escape,--at least if there is no mill privilege in the
+neighborhood."
+
+"There is--an excellent one--at the outlet of the pond, beyond the
+three elms yonder. I prophesy that in five years there will be a brick
+factory on that meadow, with a row of one story houses for the
+operatives."
+
+"It will be a scandal and a profanation. It is too beautiful for such
+base uses. But at least that old cedar tree, rooted in a cleft of the
+precipice, has found a safe sanctuary. There it was growing in King
+Philip's time; in its younger days it saw Indian wigwams standing on
+this bank; and there its offspring will grow after it, safe from
+Yankee axes."
+
+"One cannot be sure of that. A time will come yet, when those rocks
+will be blasted to build a town hall, or open another railroad track."
+
+"But they cannot build railroads and factories in the clouds. Our New
+England sunsets will still remain to remind one that there is an ideal
+side of life--something in it besides locomotives and cotton gins."
+
+"There it is that you are wiser than we are. You are mistresses of a
+domain of which men, for the most part, know little or nothing."
+
+"Pray what domain may that be?"
+
+"One that is all mystery to me--a world of thoughts and sentiments
+which to most men is a cloudland, an undiscovered country, of which
+they may possibly recognize the existence, but of whose geography they
+know nothing."
+
+"Why should they be more ignorant of it than women?"
+
+"Because they are commonly given over to practicalities, mixed
+hopelessly with rivalries and ambitions. Even in their highest
+pursuits, they propose to themselves some definite point to be gained,
+some object to be achieved; but women are left to the world of their
+own minds--there they can expatiate at will."
+
+"That is a dangerous privilege."
+
+"They have leisure to muse on the joys and troubles of life, and
+explore depths which we bridge over."
+
+"Either your mind has very much changed, or I have very much mistaken
+it. Pardon me, but I fancied that you were like Iago, 'nothing if not
+critical;' or at least that you sympathized with his slanderous
+opinions of womankind."
+
+"Heaven forbid! What treasonable thought did you suppose me to harbor
+against the better part of humanity?"
+
+"At all events, I never supposed you to believe that the better part
+of humanity passed their leisure time in metaphysical reveries and
+abstruse meditations."
+
+"You were speaking, just now, of ideals. May not I have mine?"
+
+"So your ideal woman is a transcendental philosopher, seated in the
+midst of your undiscovered cloudland."
+
+"Deliver me from such a one! My ideal is full of thought and of
+feeling; but no one yet ever dreamed of branding her as a philosopher.
+But why did you think me so very critical? I am hardly old enough yet
+to make an Iago or a Rochefoucault."
+
+"And yet you used always to have some saying of Rochefoucault at your
+tongue's end."
+
+"I detest him, nevertheless, for a French Mephistopheles,--and all his
+tribe with him."
+
+"When I said as much, you always told me that his sayings had a great
+deal of truth in them."
+
+"And have they not a great deal of truth?"
+
+"I cannot pretend to know mankind well enough to answer; but I
+sincerely hope, not much. Life would be worse than a blank if men and
+women were what he represents them to be."
+
+"I think not; for if one cannot learn to be enthusiastic in regard to
+the actualities of human nature, he can console himself by a boundless
+faith in its possibilities. And now and then, thank
+God,--Rochefoucault to the contrary notwithstanding,--one finds the
+possibility realized."
+
+His companion made no reply; and Morton stood for a moment with his
+eyes bent upon her face, which, to his enamoured fancy, seemed to
+reflect the calm beauty of the landscape on which she was gazing. He
+thought of Fanny Euston; he recalled his last evening's conversation
+with her, and felt blindly impelled to give some form of expression to
+the feeling which began to master him.
+
+"Miss Leslie, were you ever in a storm at sea?"
+
+"Yes, in a slight one; but the ship was strong; there was very little
+danger."
+
+"Then you were never flung about, as I have been, in an indifferent
+egg shell of a craft, out of sight of land, at the mercy of winds and
+waves."
+
+"I did not know that you had been at sea. Ah, yes, you were at school
+in France, when you were a boy--were you not?"
+
+"Yes; but this happened since I have become a man, and not long ago. I
+think I shall never forget it. The sun was bright at one moment, and
+all was black as a hurricane the next. The wind came from every point
+of the compass--always shifting, never resting. I had not an instant's
+peace. It was all watching--all anxiety--and yet there was a kind of
+pleasure in it. If I had had wings, I doubt if I should have found
+heart to use them. It was a strange gale. It blew hot and cold by
+fits; I thought I should lose my reckoning altogether, and be blown
+away, body and soul."
+
+"Really, I cannot imagine where your tempest is going to carry you."
+
+"Nor could I; when, of a sudden, I found myself safe on shore. My good
+star led me to a place beautiful as the May sunshine could make it; a
+scene where art and nature were blended so harmoniously, that they
+seemed to have grown together from the same birth; full of repose, and
+tranquil, graceful power; such a scene, in short, as made me wish that
+Nature would embody herself in a visible form, that I might swear
+homage to her forever."
+
+Had an interpreter been needed, Morton's look and voice must have
+betrayed, at least, some part of his meaning. The color deepened
+slightly on his companion's cheek, but she replied, without any
+further sign of consciousness,--
+
+"I never knew that you were quite so ardent a votary of nature. You
+had better put your emotions into verse, and sell them to the
+magazines, after the true poetic custom. In a little time, I don't
+doubt, Dr. Griswold would find a place for you in his constellation of
+poets."
+
+"Ah," said Morton, "it is cruel of you to fling cold water on my
+rhapsodies. But my flight is over. And now I will try my best to gain
+the esteem in your eyes of a man of sense and a sound mind."
+
+"And now those night-hawks over head are beginning to tell us that we
+had better go back to the railroad. I suppose you will place it among
+the other frailties of women; but I cannot help being a little afraid
+that if we stay longer, that crippled train will run away and leave us
+behind."
+
+"Then good night to the Diamond Pool," said Morton, as they left the
+place. "I shall not forget it; I owe it double thanks. It has shown me
+a pretty landscape, and made me a wiser man."
+
+"I can hardly see how that may be."
+
+"It has taught me not to speak too earnestly with my friend, lest she
+should banter me; and by no means to be drawn into any absurdity, lest
+she should laugh at me outright."
+
+"Do you mean that you thought that I laughed at you?"
+
+"Did you not?"
+
+"If I gave you cause to think that I did, I can only say, frankly and
+heartily, that I am very sorry for it."
+
+"Now I am emboldened to be absurd again, and speak more parables. I
+have found a locked-up treasure--a sealed fountain. I long to open it,
+but cannot."
+
+"Your figures are too deep for me. I can make nothing of them."
+
+"Then I will sink to plain prose. I have a friend whose heart is full
+of warm feeling and earnest thought; but, out of reserve, or Heaven
+knows what, she will express it to nobody but one or two intimate
+companions. She tantalizes the rest with a bantering word; and
+sometimes, when she is most in earnest, she seems to be most in jest.
+But why do you smile?"
+
+"Ask your friend Mr. Sharpe. He is your friend--is he not?"
+
+"I suppose so, though he is old enough to be my father. But why should
+I ask him?"
+
+"Because he once described to me a person very much like the one you
+have just described."
+
+"Who was the person?"
+
+"Mr. Sharpe said that, though he was in general quite frank and
+undisguised, yet, if he were particularly in earnest on any subject,
+he was apt to speak lightly of it, or perhaps ridicule it, to hide his
+real feeling."
+
+"Pray, who was this person? What was his name?"
+
+"Mr. Vassall Morton."
+
+"Did Sharpe say that of me? It is not a month since I was walking with
+him,--his evening constitutional,--and he said the very same thing of
+you. Now, as I hope to live an honest man, I was never half so much
+flattered in my life, as by being slandered in such company."
+
+Here he was interrupted abruptly, for, turning a corner, they came
+full upon the inn, or hotel, as its sign proclaimed it to be.
+Discontented male passengers were lounging about the bar room;
+disconsolate female passengers sat, in bonnets and shawls, in the
+parlor; and an unspeakable air of uneasiness and discomfort pervaded
+the whole place.
+
+"Our walk is over," sighed Morton; "I wish it had a more propitious
+ending. And now let me be your courier, or do your commands in any
+other capacity in which I can serve you."
+
+At eleven o'clock that night the train rolled into the station house
+at Boston, some four hours behind its time.
+
+"My father will certainly be here," said Miss Leslie; but her father
+was nowhere to be seen. Morton conducted her to a carriage. Her trunks
+and his own had already been placed upon it, when, by the lantern of
+one of the porters, Morton descried the agitated colonel threading the
+crowd in anxious search of his daughter. He had been waiting nervously
+since seven o'clock, and, when the train came in, had looked for her
+in every place but the right one. Morton hastened to relieve his
+fears.
+
+"What do you mean to do with yourself to-night?" Leslie asked, as the
+carriage drove towards his house.
+
+"Drive to my house in the country."
+
+"Your people will not expect you, and will be in bed before you can
+get there. You had much better come home with me."
+
+Morton was but too glad to accept the invitation.
+
+Having bade good night to his host and his host's daughter, he passed
+some hours in dreamy cogitation; then tried to sleep; but sleep long
+kept aloof, the consciousness of being under the same roof with Edith
+Leslie brought with it so strange a sensation. But as delicate health,
+that grand auxiliary of sentiment, was quite unknown to him, nature
+prevailed in the end, and at seven the next morning, a servant's knock
+wakened him from a deep sleep, a vision of Mount Katahdin, and an
+imaginary moose hunt.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV.
+
+  Yet even these joys dire jealousy molests,
+  And blackens each fair image in our breasts.--_Lyttleton_.
+
+
+Descending to the breakfast room, he found Leslie, as usual, quiet,
+cordial, and gentlemanly, beguiling the moments of expectancy with a
+newspaper, while his daughter presided at the coffee urn. Leslie
+happened to be in a garrulous mood, and talked incessantly about his
+former military frontier life, of which, though he had detested it in
+the experience, he was very fond in the retrospect. Morton, who had
+some acquaintance with such matters, was a tempting auditor, though he
+would gladly have exchanged the profuse anecdotes of white-wolf
+running and deer shooting for a few moments' conversation with Miss
+Edith Leslie. This her father's busy tongue put out of the question;
+but Morton consoled himself with the thought that to bask in her
+presence was, in itself, no mean privilege.
+
+His cup of nectar, such as it was, was in a few minutes dashed with
+gall; for the street door opened without a summons from the bell, a
+man's step sounded in the hall, and Horace Vinal came in, with a
+bundle of papers in his hand.
+
+Vinal had become of late all-important to his former guardian. He was
+his chief business agent, and Leslie was never tired of expatiating on
+his talents, energy, application, and elevated character. In short, he
+was fast becoming dependent on him, and felt towards him the affection
+which a weak and kindly man may feel towards one of far greater force
+and capacity, whom he believes sincerely attached to him and devoted
+to his interests.
+
+Vinal, as he entered, had the air of a man versed in affairs, and
+acquainted both with that vast and various theatre which men call the
+world, and with those conventional circles which ladies call the
+world. He had been absent for a few days on a mission of business,
+from which he had returned the evening before. Leslie received him
+with a most warm greeting, and his daughter with a smile of easy
+friendship, which was wormwood to the troubled spirit of Morton. The
+two rivals--for such, by a common instinct, each felt the other to
+be--regarded each other with faces of courtesy and hearts of wrath.
+
+"How came this fellow here?" thought Vinal, as he smilingly grasped
+his classmate's hand.
+
+"The devil take him!" thought Morton, as he returned the greeting, but
+with a much worse grace.
+
+They seated themselves on opposite sides of the table, while the Helen
+who had kindled this covert warfare in their breasts dispensed a cup
+of coffee to each in turn.
+
+There was a singular contrast between the adversaries. On the one
+side, the self-dependent Vinal, with little health and no other wealth
+than his busy and able brain; with thin features, wan cheek, and pale,
+firm lip; with piercing observation and rapid judgment;
+self-contained, self-controlled, self-confiding. But for his measuring
+five feet ten, he might have stood for Dryden's Achitophel:--
+
+  "A fiery soul, which, working out its way,
+   Fretted the pygmy body to decay,
+   And o'er informed the tenement of clay."
+
+On the other side sat the pet of fortune, fondled, if he could have
+endured such blandishment, in the very lap of affluence; with a cheek
+brown with wind and weather, and an eye which, as he often boasted,
+could look the sun in the face. His nature was so happily tempered,
+that to the degree of nervous stimulus which engenders, or is
+engendered by, an energetic character, he joined an indefinite
+capacity both of endurance and enjoyment; and yet the possessor of all
+these gifts was just now in a mood of extreme dissatisfaction and
+discomfort.
+
+Leslie began to speak with Vinal upon business. Morton snatched the
+opportunity to converse with the person most interesting to him. Vinal
+glanced at him askance. Each began to hate the other, after his own
+fashion. Morton would gladly have come to open rupture, and flung
+defiance at his rival; but Vinal was far remote from any wish of the
+kind.
+
+Morton remained at the house as long as he in decency could, and then
+bade them good morning, execrating Vinal as he went down the steps.
+
+That very afternoon, as he was walking near his cottage in the
+country, ruminating on Edith Leslie and Horace Vinal, he raised his
+head and saw a lady and gentleman, on horseback, emerging into view
+from a wooded bend of the road. A thrill ran through him from head to
+foot. They were the two persons of whom he was thinking. He bowed to
+Miss Leslie. She replied with a frank bow and smile; and Vinal, as he
+passed, made an easy nonchalant gesture of recognition. The jealous
+pedestrian turned and looked after them. They had ridden a few rods
+when Vinal also turned his head, but, catching Morton's eye, instantly
+averted it again. Morton fairly ground his teeth with anger and
+vexation. To be jealous was bad enough; but that Vinal should be
+conscious of his jealousy, and perhaps triumph in it, goaded him
+beyond endurance. He went home, saddled and bridled a horse with his
+own hands, mounted, and ranged the country for an hour or two, to get
+rid of the vulture that was preying on him. At length he grew more
+rational, and was able to reflect that Vinal's riding with Miss Leslie
+did not necessarily imply that he stood, in any special sense, within
+her favor, since he was the near relative of her mother-in-law, and
+had formerly been for years an inmate of her father's house.
+
+On the next day, at a time when he thought that Vinal must be safe in
+his office, Morton took heart of grace, and called on Miss Leslie. An
+old woman, an ancient dependant of the family, raised, as she would
+have phrased it, in the backwoods of Matherton, opened the door.
+
+"Is Miss Leslie at home?"
+
+"No; she was took sick yesterday, very sudden."
+
+"Miss Leslie!" ejaculated the visitor.
+
+"Yes; the doctor says she's goin' to die, sartin; right away, may be."
+
+"What?" gasped Morton.
+
+"It wasn't only this morning we heered on it," said the old Yankee
+housekeeper, "and Miss Edith's gone up to Matherton, to tend on her."
+
+"O, you mean Mrs. Leslie."
+
+"Yes; Miss Leslie, Miss Edith's mother-in-law; she never was a well
+woman, ever since I've knowed her."
+
+And the old woman closed the door; while Morton walked away, without
+knowing in what direction he was moving.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI.
+
+_Sganarelle_. O, la grande fatigue quo d'avoir une femme, et
+qu'Aristote a bien raison quand il dit qu'une femme est pire qu'un
+demon!--_Le Medecin Malgre Lui_.
+
+  Thus day by day and month by month we past;
+  It pleased the Lord to take my spouse at last--_Pope_.
+
+
+It was nine years since, in an evil hour, Leslie had first seen Miss
+Cynthia Everille, playing on a harp, and accompanying herself in a
+thin, sweet voice, with words of her own composing. His weak heart
+succumbed: he fell in love off hand; and within a year after the death
+of his first wife, Edith's mother, her picture was taken from the
+wall, and a second Mrs. Leslie reigned in her stead.
+
+"Sweet,"--"charming,"--"fascinating,"--were the least of the
+adjectives lavished on the interesting bride. Some of his lady
+acquaintance felicitated him that he had espoused an angel, an
+embodied beatitude not more than half pertaining to this world. In
+fact, there was a certain aerial grace in her movements, a certain
+translucency in her small alabaster features, which might countenance
+such a notion. The winning smile, too, with which she met her visitors
+on her reception Thursdays, savored wholly of the angelic. She
+breathed courtesies around her as the beneficent royalty of Naples
+scatters sugar plums among his loving subjects at the carnival, and,
+on the next day, sends them to prison by the cart load.
+
+The tyranny of the strong is bad enough; but the tyranny of the weak
+is intolerable; and this latter visitation came upon Leslie in its
+most rueful form--that, namely, whose weapons are sobs, sighs, vapors,
+and the dire coercion of hysteric fits. He was a soft-hearted fool,
+and a fair subject for such oppression. Not that his newly-installed
+mistress--his mistress, since she made him her slave--was naturally of
+an ill temper. On the contrary, she was somewhat amiable, or, at
+least, much given to tears and tenderness; but in process of time,
+this profuse sensibility had all centred on herself. In short, she was
+profoundly selfish, though nothing could have astonished her more than
+to tell her so; for, in her own eyes, she seemed a miracle of
+sensibility, as indeed she was, though her sensibility had learned to
+give little response to any woes but her own. What these woes might be
+would be hard to say: she had a wonderful talent for finding and
+inventing grievances. She was submerged and drowned in a sentimental
+melancholy, which wore in turn ten thousand different aspects, each
+worse than the other. She was a sea-anemone, covered with a myriad of
+filaments, all more shrinking and sensitive than a snail's horns.
+
+One reads of famished wretches who have tried to nourish life from the
+current of their own veins. So, in a figurative sense, did she. She
+was always anatomizing her own ridiculous heart; groping among the
+depths of her own sickly fancies, and making them her daily food. She
+was a busy gatherer of tokens, souvenirs, and mementoes, and was beset
+with blighted hopes, vain longings, sad remembrances, and all the
+spectral ills engendered between a frail mind and a depraved stomach.
+She was a great reader, and floated rudderless through a sea of books,
+fishing out of it all that was tender, morbid, and despairing, and
+stowing it up in albums.
+
+It may be thought that some disconsolate memory, some affection nipped
+in the bud, or the like catastrophe, had brought her to this pass. Far
+from it. She mourned that her fate had been too flat and sterile; that
+the rapturous emotions of her heart had never been awakened; that no
+sentimental passion, in short, had ever stirred her soul from its
+depths. This was the grievance which rankled most in her reveries. To
+give her her due, she never told it to her husband; but she brooded
+upon it in secret; and the result was, a multitude of affecting
+verses, which she treasured in her album as anonymous.
+
+Leslie, though none of the wisest of men, was one of the most amiable;
+and, under his wife's discipline, he learned to be one of the most
+discreet. It behooved him to be watchful and circumspect. His married
+life was a voyage through shoals and shallows, and needed sagacious
+pilotage; for no common eye could see where the danger lay. There was
+an endless variety of subjects tabooed to him; matters to all
+appearance quite indifferent, but to which he must never allude,
+because, Heaven knows how, they touched some trembling susceptibility,
+or wakened some grievous memory from its blessed sleep. The penalty,
+if the case were mild, would be a deep-drawn sigh; if more aggravated,
+a flood of tears; if extreme, an hysteric fit. And if, in his efforts
+to console her, he ventured to add any thing in the form of
+remonstrance, or let fall any word which might intimate that her
+conduct was not quite reasonable, the outraged sufferer would cease
+weeping, cast up her eyes reproachfully, and murmuring, "O William, is
+it come to this?" relapse again instantly into the depths of sobbing
+affliction. It was only by the most abject submission, coupled with
+all the resources of conjugal eloquence, that Leslie could succeed at
+length in purchasing a look of resignation and a faint smile of
+forgiveness.
+
+Use, it is said, will blunt the sharpest of troubles. In time, he
+became acclimated to his fate; yet, on one or two occasions, his
+equanimity was quite overset. He thought that his wife was losing her
+wits; for, as he came into her room, she fixed on him a melting gaze,
+sank on his shoulder, and flooded him with such a freshet of tears,
+that he might have complained with De Bracy, that a water fiend
+possessed her. The truth was, she had just been musing on her own
+dissolution, and imagining, in a luxury of woe, her own funeral, with
+all the circumstance of that sad event. As she looked around and
+bethought her how desolate that chamber would be when she was gone,
+and how each trifle that had once been hers would be treasured by
+those she left behind, her sensitive heart had dissolved in
+tenderness, and produced the hydraulic demonstration just mentioned.
+
+This libel on womankind became the mother of a pair of twins--the same
+infant prodigies whom Morton had seen at the White Mountains. Both
+perished at the age of seven, their precocious brains having by that
+time usurped all the vitality of their miserable little bodies. She
+was inconsolable at their death, though, while they lived, her
+delicate nerves could seldom abide their presence for five minutes at
+a time.
+
+There was once an idiot, who, being of a conciliating temper, thought
+to appease a fire and persuade it to go out by feeding it with fuel
+till it should be satisfied, and crave no more. On the same principle
+Leslie tried to satisfy the exacting spirit of his wife by a most
+watchful and anxious devotion to all her whims; but the greater his
+devotion, the more exacting she grew. She felt her power, and used it
+without mercy. She was, withal, intolerably jealous, not so much of
+any living rival, as of the memory of a dead one, Leslie's former
+wife. Here, indeed, she had some show of reason; for the poles are not
+wider asunder than were the characters of herself and her predecessor.
+
+Those who had known the latter in her maidenhood--she married young,
+or perhaps she would never have married Leslie--knew her as the
+dominant belle of the season, conspicuous for her beauty, her
+position, and for a degree of culture rare in America at that time;
+devoted and ardent towards a few close friends, haughty and distant
+towards the many; greatly loved by her few intimates, and either
+greatly admired or greatly disliked by most others around her. Those
+who knew her in the last years of her life knew her as one who had
+passed through a fiery ordeal. Of her many children, only one was
+left. They had fallen around her in a sudden and sharp succession,
+till it seemed to her that a destroying doom had gone forth against
+her race, and that the world of her affections was turned to a field
+of carnage. Leslie felt the shock acutely, not to say intensely, for a
+while; but the storm passed, and left on him very little trace. It
+sank into the deeper nature of his wife with such a penetrating sense
+of the vanity of life and the rottenness of mortal hope, as, in the
+olden time, drew saints and anchorites to renounce the world and give
+themselves to penance and seclusion. It made no anchorite of her. She
+rose from her baptism of fire saddened, but not broken nor unstrung;
+with a rooted faith and an absolute resignation; a nice perception of
+all human suffering; sympathies broad and embracing as the air; a
+benevolence pervading as the sunshine; and a spirit so calm in its
+elevation that no wind of calamity had power to ruffle it.
+
+Edith Leslie was a child when her mother died, yet old enough to feel
+the loss profoundly, and to be greatly shocked and cast down at the
+alacrity with which her father contrived to forget it. Having reduced
+Leslie to obedience, his bride essayed the same experiment on his
+daughter, but failed notably. There was something in the nature of the
+latter which revolted so impatiently against the selfish caprices and
+morbid fooleries which were played off hourly before her,--she was so
+indignant, moreover, at seeing her father sunk inch by inch in the
+slough of matrimonial thraldom,--that the issue might easily have been
+a protracted household feud. None but herself could know with how
+costly an effort she schooled herself to patience. With a caustic wit,
+and a fervent fancy which haunted her with images of an ideal life
+brighter than the work-day world around her, a nature with impulses
+which, less curbed and tempered, might have carried her through all
+the mazes of morbid rebellion, she still bent herself to accept her
+lot as she found it, in the full faith that flowers may be taught to
+grow on the flintiest soil. And now that the imagined maladies of a
+lifetime were turned at last into a mortal reality, and her
+step-mother lay on her death bed, Edith Leslie watched by her side
+with as much care as if this wretched piece of perverted sensibility
+had deserved her affection and esteem.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII.
+
+  Beshrew me, but I love her heartily,
+  For she is wise, if I can judge of her;
+  And fair she is, if that mine eyes be true;
+  And true she is, as she hath proved herself;
+  And therefore, like herself, wise, fair, and true,
+  Shall she be placed in my constant soul.--_Merchant of Venice_.
+
+
+A week after he had heard the tidings from the old housekeeper, Morton
+saw Dr. Steele coming out of a patient's door and getting into his
+chaise.
+
+"Good morning, Dr. Steele."
+
+"Sir, your servant," said the old-fashioned doctor.
+
+"I'm sorry to hear that Mrs. Leslie is so ill."
+
+"It's very sad," said the doctor. "Now, what the deuse is this young
+fellow stopping me for?"--this was his internal comment.
+
+"I hope you don't despair of her."
+
+"Well, sir, she will hold out to-morrow, and the next day, too."
+
+"I beg your pardon. Your check rein is loose. Let me make it right."
+
+"Thank you, Mr. Morton," said the doctor, somewhat mollified.
+
+"Ahem!--Colonel Leslie is well, I hope."
+
+"Apparently so, sir."
+
+"And--ahem!--his family, too."
+
+"I wasn't aware he had a family."
+
+"I mean--that is to say--his daughter--Miss Leslie."
+
+The shrewd doctor turned his gray eyes sideways on the querist.
+
+"Ah, his daughter. What did you wish to know of her, sir?"
+
+"Merely to inquire----" said Morton, stammering and blushing visibly.
+"I mean only to ask if she is well."
+
+"I know nothing to the contrary. She seemed very well when I brought
+her down from Matherton last evening. I dare say, though, she can tell
+you herself a great deal better than I can. Good morning, Mr. Morton."
+
+And with a slight twinkle in his eye, Dr. Steele drove off.
+
+Morton looked after the chaise, as it lumbered down the street.
+
+"May I be hanged and quartered if I ever question you again; you are
+too sharp, by half."
+
+The doctor's information was very welcome, however; and, armed with an
+anxious inquiry after her mother's health, Morton proceeded to call
+upon Miss Leslie. She had come to the city, as he had already judged,
+on some mission connected with the wants of the invalid, and was to go
+back to Matherton, with Dr. Steele, in the afternoon.
+
+Thenceforward, for a week or upwards, he saw her no more; but, during
+the interval, he contrived, by various expedients, to keep himself
+advised of the condition and movements of the family at Matherton.
+Among other incidents, he became aware of two visits made them by
+Vinal, and was tormented, in consequence, with an unutterable
+jealousy. One morning he met the purblind old housekeeper, mousing
+along in spectacles through the crowded street, and, stopping her, to
+her great alarm and perplexity, he made his usual inquiry concerning
+Mrs. Leslie's health. This investigation led to the discovery that
+Miss Edith was coming from Matherton that very afternoon.
+
+Morton, upon this, grew so restless, that he could not refrain from
+going to the railroad station, a little before the train was to come
+in. And here his worst fear was realized; for he beheld, slowly pacing
+along the platform, the hated form of Horace Vinal. Morton retreated
+unseen, went into a neighboring hotel, and seated himself, a little
+withdrawn from a window, where he could see all that passed. The train
+arrived; and soon after Vinal appeared, conducting Miss Leslie to a
+carriage, with an air, as Morton thought, of the most anxious
+devotion. He grasped his walking stick, and burned with a feverish
+longing to break it across his rival's back.
+
+He saw Miss Leslie on the next day, and thus added fuel to a flame
+which already burned high enough. In short, he found himself in that
+most profoundly serious and profoundly ridiculous of all conditions,
+the condition of being over head and ears in love,--and his zeal for
+science was merged utterly in a more engrossing devotion. By one means
+or another, he contrived to keep pace with the course of things at
+Matherton, and learned from day to day that Mrs. Leslie was
+worse,--that she seemed to revive a little,--that she was on the point
+of death,--that she was dead. By the time this sad climax was reached,
+he had been starving a fortnight from the sight of his mistress,
+having the consolation to know that meantime his rival had made at
+least four visits to Matherton.
+
+One morning Morton was pacing the street in an abstracted mood, his
+looks bent on the bricks, when, chancing to look up, he saw those very
+eyes which his fancy had been that moment picturing, employed in
+guiding their owner's steps over a crossing towards him. As Edith
+Leslie stepped upon the sidewalk, she saw him for the first time. He
+bowed, joined her, spoke a few bungling words of condolence, and
+walked on at her side. After the fashion of those who are peculiarly
+anxious to appear at their best advantage, he appeared at his worst.
+And when his companion bade him good morning on the steps of her
+father's house, she left him in a most unenviable mood, muttering
+maledictions against himself and his fate, and brought, indeed, to the
+borders of despair. This depression, however, was not long in
+producing its reaction, under the influence of which, adopting his
+usual panacea against mental ailments, he mounted his horse, and
+spurred into the country.
+
+Here, about sunset, he beheld a horseman, slowly pacing along the road
+in front. On this, he drew rein, and began to look about him for the
+means of escape; for in the person of the rider he recognized his
+classmate Wren, to whose society he was far from partial. Neither lane
+nor by-road was to be seen.
+
+"At the worst," he thought, "it is but a mile or two;" and, setting
+forward at a trot again, he was in a moment at his classmate's side.
+
+"How are you, Wren?"
+
+"Ah, Morton, good evening," exclaimed Wren, with a graceful wave of
+his hand. "I'm delighted to see you. A charming evening--isn't it?"
+
+"Charming."
+
+"That's a fine horse you have."
+
+"Tolerably good."
+
+"Did you ever observe this fellow that I'm riding? Do you see how long
+and straight he is in the back? Well, that's the Arab blood that's in
+him. His grandfather was a superb Arab, that the Pacha of Egypt gave
+my uncle when he was travelling there;" and he proceeded to dilate at
+large on the merits and pedigree of his horse, the truth being that he
+and his ancestry before him had been born and bred in the State of
+Vermont. Morton listened with civil incredulity, and wished his
+companion at the antipodes.
+
+"Ah, there's my cousin's house," exclaimed Wren, pointing to a very
+pretty cottage and grounds which they were approaching--"Mary Holyoke,
+you know--Mary Everard that was some three months ago. What a
+delightful retreat for the honeymoon!"
+
+"Very," said Morton.
+
+"Stop there with me, will you? I'm going in for a few minutes, to wish
+them a pleasant journey. They are going to Niagara to-morrow."
+
+"Thank you, I believe I won't stop."
+
+"As you please, my dear fellow. I think they are quite right to travel
+now; it's a better season than the spring; and a honeymoon journey,
+after all, isn't _all_ romance, you know. Besides, they are going to
+have a charming companion--Miss Leslie."
+
+"I thought that she had just lost her mother-in-law."
+
+"That's the very thing. She's almost ill with watching night after
+night; so Mary,--they used to be friends at school,--has been very
+anxious that she should make the journey with them, for a change of
+scene, you know,--and Colonel Leslie has persuaded her to go."
+
+"When will they leave town?"
+
+"To-morrow. They mean to spend a few days at Trenton, and then go to
+the Falls. But here we are; won't you change your mind, and come in?"
+
+"No, thank you. Good night."
+
+"Good evening, then;" and waving his hand again, Wren trotted up the
+avenue.
+
+"Virtue never goes unrewarded," thought Morton; "if I hadn't joined
+the fellow, I might not have known about this journey."
+
+On the next day he discovered that they had actually gone, and that,
+as Wren had said, Niagara was to be the ultimatum of their tour. On
+the following morning, he himself took the western train, and made all
+speed for the Falls.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII.
+
+  If folly grows romantic, I must paint it.--_Pope_.
+
+
+On the American side of the Niagara, a few miles below the Falls, is a
+deep chasm, bearing the inauspicious christening of the Devil's Hole.
+Near it there is--or perhaps was, for things have changed
+thereabouts--a path winding far down among rocks and forests, till it
+leads to the brink of the river. Here, darkened by the beetling cliffs
+and sombre forests, the Niagara surges on its way, like a compressed
+ocean, raging to break free. At the verge of this watery convulsion
+stood Holyoke and his wife, Miss Leslie, and Morton, whom they had
+chanced to meet that morning.
+
+"It is very fine, no doubt," said the good-natured, though very
+shallow Mrs. Holyoke, "but I have no mind to take cold in these dark
+woods. If we stay much longer, I believe I shall go mad, looking at
+that rushing, foaming water, and throw myself in. Come, Harry, let us
+go back to daylight again."
+
+"Just as you please," said the model husband, offering his arm.
+
+"Come, Edith;--why, she really seems to like it;--Edith!--she don't
+hear me; no wonder, in all this noise;--Edith, we are going back to
+the upper world. You can stay here, if you please, with Mr. Morton."
+
+But Miss Leslie chose to follow her friend; while Morton aided her up
+the rough path.
+
+"I have observed," he said, as they came to smoother ground, "in our
+excursions yesterday and to-day, that Mrs. Holyoke has not much of
+your liking for rocks, trees, and water. I mean, that she has no great
+taste for nature."
+
+"At all events, she has an eye for what is picturesque in it. She is
+an artist, you know, and paints in water colors extremely well."
+
+"Yes, and whenever she sees a landscape, she thinks only how it would
+look on paper or canvas, and judges it accordingly. That is not a
+genuine love of nature. One does not value a friend for good looks, or
+dress, or air; and so, in the same way, is not a true fondness for
+nature independent, to some extent at least, of effects of form, or
+color, or grouping?"
+
+"It does not imply, I think, any artistic talent, or even a good eye
+for artistic effect. And yet I cannot conceive of a great landscape
+artist being without it, any more than a great poet."
+
+"If he were, he would be no better than a refined scene painter. We
+are in a commercial country; so pardon me if I use commercial
+language. This liking for nature is a capital investment. She is
+always a kind mistress, a good friend, always ready with a
+tranquillizing word, never inconstant, never out of humor, never sad."
+
+"And yet sometimes she can speak sadly, too."
+
+Edith Leslie said no more; but there came before her the remembrance
+of her long watchings in the room of the dying Mrs. Leslie, when,
+seated by the window, open in the hot summer nights, she had listened,
+hour after hour, mournfully, drearily, almost with superstitious awe,
+to the chirping of the crickets, the plaintive cry of the
+whippoorwill, and now and then the hooting of a distant owl.
+
+"Here in America," continued Morton, "we ought to make the most of
+this feeling for nature; for we have very little else."
+
+"And yet there is less of it here than in some other countries; in
+England, for instance."
+
+"We are too busy for such vanities. Besides, we are just now in an
+unlucky position. A wilderness is one thing; savageness and solitude
+have a character of their own; and so has a polished landscape with
+associations of art, poetry, legend, and history."
+
+"And we have destroyed the one, and have not yet found the other."
+
+"And so, between two stools we fall to the ground."
+
+"If you have a liking for a wilderness and primitive scenery, I don't
+think that you have much reason to complain; for you, at least, have
+contrived to see something of them."
+
+"And you of the other sort; art and history wedded to nature; at
+Tivoli, for example,--at the Lake of Albano; where else shall I say?"
+
+"Say, at Giardini, in Sicily."
+
+"Why at Giardini? I never heard of it before."
+
+"Not that the view there is finer than in some other places, though
+towards evening it is very beautiful. You see the ocean on one side,
+and the mountains on the other, covered to the top with orange, lemon,
+and olive trees, and Mount Etna rising above them all, with a spire of
+white smoke curling out of its crater, tinted with red, yellow, and
+purple, where the sunset strikes it. On the mountain above you there
+is an ancient theatre, where a Greek audience once sat on the stone
+benches, and after them, in their turn, a Roman. On the peak of the
+mountain over it is a Saracen castle, and, not far off, a Norman
+tower."
+
+"So that the whole is an embodiment of poetry and history from the
+days of the Odyssey downwards."
+
+"Nobody, I think, who has seen that eastern shore of Sicily can have
+escaped without some strong impression from it. The Fourrierites, you
+know, pretend to believe that the earth is a living being, with a
+soul, only a larger one, like ours that creep on the outside of it.
+One is sometimes tempted to adopt their idea, and fancy that the
+changing face of nature is the expression of the earth's thoughts, and
+its way of communicating with us."
+
+"A landscape will sometimes have a life and a language,--that is, when
+one happens to be in the mood to hear it,--and yet, after all,
+association is commonly the main source of its power. The Hudson, I
+imagine, can match the Rhine in point of mere beauty; but a few ruined
+castles, with the memories about them, turn the tables dead against
+us."
+
+"You have always--have you not?--had a penchant for the barbarism of
+the middle ages."
+
+"Not for their barbarism, but for the germs of civilization that lay
+in the midst of it. Religion towards God, devotion towards
+women--these were the vital ideas of the middle ages."
+
+"But how were those ideas acted on? Their religion was not much better
+than a mass of superstitions."
+
+"Not more gross and vulgar than the spirit rapping superstition, the
+last freak into which this age of reason has stumbled. And, for the
+other idea, the fundamental idea of chivalry, we are beginning to
+replace it with woman's rights, Heaven deliver us!"
+
+"Pardon me if I doubt whether ladies in the middle ages were better
+treated than they are now. The theory was admirable, no doubt, but the
+practice, if there were any, seems at this distance a little
+ridiculous."
+
+"Chivalry was like Don Quixote, who stands for it--fantastic and
+absurd enough on the outside, but noble at the core."
+
+"But you would not imply seriously that you would prefer the age of
+chivalry to this nineteenth century."
+
+"No, the reign of shopkeepers is better than the reign of cutthroats.
+But the nineteenth century has no right to abuse the middle ages. The
+best feature of its civilization is handed down from them. That
+feeling which found a place in the rough hearts of our northern
+ancestry, half savages as they were, and gave to their favorite
+goddess attributes more high and delicate than any with which the
+Greeks and Romans, at the summit of their refinement, ever invested
+their Venus; the feeling which afterwards grew into the sentiment of
+chivalry, and, hand in hand with Christianity, has made our modern
+civilization what it is,--that is the heritage we owe to the middle
+ages, and for which we are bound to be grateful to them. It was a
+flower all the fairer for springing in the midst of darkness and
+barbarism; and now that we have it in a kinder soil, we can only hope
+that it is not fast losing its fragrance and brightness."
+
+"Of that, I imagine, a woman is a very poor judge; but if it has lost
+its antique freshness, at all events we can enjoy it in peace and
+tranquillity, and be spared the risk of life and limb in gathering it.
+Those sweetbrier blossoms that grow yonder, down the side of the
+precipice, are very pretty, but it would require nothing less than a
+paladin, or a knight errant, made crazy with the hope of a smile, to
+get them and bring them up."
+
+"Now it is you that asperse the present, and I that will defend it."
+And the words were hardly spoken before the young fool was over the
+edge of the cliff, scarcely hearing his companion's startled cry of
+remonstrance.
+
+The rock sloped steeply to a few feet below the spot where the brier
+grew, and then sank in a sheer precipice of a hundred feet or more, so
+that if hand or foot had failed him, his career would have ended
+somewhat abruptly. To the spectatress above the danger seemed
+appalling; but, with the climber's practised eye and well-strung
+sinews, it was in fact very slight. Once, indeed, a fragment of stone
+loosened under his foot, and fell with a splintering crash upon the
+rocks below, followed by a shower of pebbles and gravel, rattling
+among the trees. But he soon reached his prize, secured it in his
+hatband, and grasping the friendly root of a spruce tree, drew himself
+up to the level top of the cliff.
+
+Here he saw the fruit of his Quixotism. Edith Leslie, pale as death,
+seemed on the very verge of fainting. He sprang in great consternation
+to her aid, supported her to a rock near at hand, on which she could
+rest; and as her momentary dizziness passed away, she began to
+distinguish his eager words of apology and self-reproach.
+
+"You will think that I have grown backward into a child again. Think
+what you will; I deserve your worst thought; only do not believe that
+I could fancy such paltry exploits and paltry risks could be a tribute
+worthy of you; or that you are to be served with such boy's service as
+that. Here are the flowers: throw them away, or keep them as a memento
+of my absurdity; but let them remind you, at the same time, that
+wherever your wish points, there I would go, if it were into the jaws
+of fate."
+
+Here, looking up, he saw the expediency of curtailing his eloquence;
+for not far off appeared their two companions, returning to look for
+them. Both Miss Leslie and he had much ado to explain, the one why her
+face was so pale, the other why his dress was so dusty and disordered.
+The carriage was waiting for them on the road near by; and their
+morning's excursion being finished, they proceeded towards it, Morton
+leading the way in silence.
+
+His first feeling had been one of compunction and indignation at
+himself; but close upon it followed another, very different--a sense
+of mixed suspense and delight. What augury might he not draw from the
+pale cheek and fainting form of his companion?
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX.
+
+  For, in the days of yore, the birds of parts
+  Were bred to speak, and sing, and learn the liberal arts.
+                                        _The Cock and the Fox_.
+
+  Thine is the adventure, thine the victory;
+  Well has thy fortune turned the dice for thee.
+                                        _Palamon and Arcite_.
+
+
+During the rest of the journey, Morton, on Mrs. Holyoke's invitation,
+was one of the party. Again and again he was impelled to learn his
+fate; but recoiled from casting the die, dreading that his hour was
+not come. Still, though every day more helplessly spell-bound, his
+mood was not despondent.
+
+They came to the town of ----, a half day from home.
+
+"My household gods are not far off," said Morton. "My father was born
+at Steuben, a few miles below, where my grandfather used to preach
+against King George, and stir up his parish to rebellion. I have
+relations there still, and have a mind to spend to-morrow with them."
+
+This announcement proceeded much less from family affection than from
+another motive. Mrs. Holyoke saw it in an instant.
+
+"Excellent! Then Miss Leslie can accept her friend's invitation to
+make a day's visit at this place; and you will meet her and escort her
+to Boston."
+
+And Morton, much rejoiced at this successful issue of his diplomacy,
+repaired to his relatives at Steuben; Holyoke and his wife proceeded
+homeward; while Miss Leslie remained to accomplish the visit with her
+country friend.
+
+Morton spent a quiet day in the primitive New England village, a place
+of which boyish association made him fond. On the next morning, Miss
+Leslie was to come to Steuben, with her hostess; but as there was an
+abundance of time before the train would appear, he strolled along a
+quiet road leading back into the country. He soon came to an old inn,
+over whose tottering porch King George's head might once have swung.
+Nothing human was astir. The ancient lilacs flaunted before the door;
+the tall sunflowers peered over the garden fence; the primeval
+well-sweep slanted aloft, far above the mossy shingles of the roof.
+The rural quiet of the place tempted him. He sat under the porch, and
+watched the swallows sailing in and out of the great barn whose doors
+stood wide open, on the opposite side of the road.
+
+A voice broke the silence--a voice from the barn yard. It was the
+voice of a hen mother, the announcement that an egg was born into the
+world. Not the proud, exulting cackle which ordinarily proclaims that
+auspicious event, but a repining, discontented cry, now rising in
+vehement remonstrance with destiny, now sinking into a low cluck of
+disgust. Morton, skilled in the language of birds, construed these
+melancholy cacklings as follows:--
+
+"Whither does all this tend? Why is my happiness blighted, my
+aspirations repressed? Why am I forever penned up within these narrow
+precincts, amid low domestic cares, and sordid, uncongenial,
+unsympathizing associates? And thou, my white and spotless offspring,
+what shall be thy fate? To be steeped in hot water, and eaten with a
+spoon? Or art thou to be the germ of an existence wretched as my own,
+doomed to a ceaseless round of daily parturition? O, weariness! O,
+misery! O, despair!"
+
+And throwing her ruffled feelings into one indignant cackle, the hen
+was silent.
+
+The advent of a human biped here enlivened the scene. This was a young
+gentleman on horseback, a collegian to all appearance, admirably
+mounted, but bestriding his horse with the look of one who has just
+passed his first course under the riding master, and rides by the
+book, as Touchstone quarrelled. This important personage, with an air
+oddly compounded of assumption and timidity, proceeded to call the
+hostler, and order oats for his horse, after which he strutted into
+the house, switching his leg with his whip.
+
+As ample time remained, Morton continued his walk along the road, his
+mood in harmony with the brightness of the morning. He was in a humor
+to please himself with trifles. A ground squirrel chirruped at him
+from a crevice of the wall. He stood watching the small, shy visage,
+as it looked out at him. Then a red squirrel, a much livelier
+companion, uttered its trilling cry from a clump of hazel bushes.
+Morton seated himself on a stone very near it. The squirrel resented
+the intrusion, ran out on a fence rail towards the offender,
+chattered, scolded, swelled himself like a miniature muff, made his
+tail and his whole body vibrate with his wrath; then suddenly dodged
+down behind the rail and peered over it at the trespasser, his nose
+and one eye alone being visible; then bolted into full sight again,
+and scolded as before, jerking himself from side to side in the
+extremity of his petulance; till at last, without the smallest
+apparent cause, he suddenly wheeled about and fled, bounding like the
+wind along the top of the stone wall.
+
+This interview over, Morton looked at his watch, saw that it was time
+to go back towards the village, and began to retrace his steps
+accordingly. He had gone but a few paces, when he saw a countryman, a
+simple-looking fellow, running at top speed, and in great excitement,
+up a byway, which led to the railroad, the latter crossing it by a
+high bridge, at some distance from the station.
+
+"What's the matter?" demanded Morton.
+
+"The railroad cars!" gasped the countryman.
+
+"What of them?"
+
+"They'll all go to smash, and no mistake."
+
+"What!" cried Morton, aghast.
+
+"Fact, mister. Some born devil has been and sawed the bridge timbers
+most through in the middle."
+
+"What!" cried Morton again.
+
+"Sure as I stand here! I seen the heaps of sawdust on the road. That's
+the way I come to take notice. The minute the locomotive gets on the
+bridge, down she'll go, and no two ways about it."
+
+Morton had no doubt that the man was right. The newspapers, within the
+last few weeks, had contained various accounts of impediments, great
+and small, maliciously placed on railroads. It was a species of
+villany which was just then having its run, as incendiarism will
+sometimes have; and a like case of a bridge partly sawed through had
+lately occurred in a neighboring state.
+
+"You fool!" exclaimed Morton, in anguish and despair; "why didn't you
+get on the track, and stop the train?"
+
+"I'd like to see you stop the train!" retorted the man.
+
+Morton turned to run for the road, bent on stopping the engine, or
+letting it pass over him. But as he turned, a new arrival caught his
+eye. This was the cavalier who had baited his horse at the inn, and
+who, seeing the excited looks of the two men, had checked his pace,
+and was looking at them with much curiosity.
+
+Crazed with agitation, and hardly knowing what he did, Morton leaped
+towards him, seized his horse, a powerful and high-mettled animal, by
+the head, and, with a few broken words of explanation, called on him
+to dismount. The astonished collegian did not comply. Morton bore back
+fiercely on the bit; the horse plunged and snorted; the rider clutched
+the pommel; Morton took him by the arm, drew him to the ground,
+mounted at a bound after him, and, as he touched the saddle, struck
+his whalebone walking stick with all his force over the horse's flank.
+The horse leaped forward frantically, and rushed headlong down the
+road. His discarded rider saw his hoofs twinkling for an instant out
+of the cloud of dust, and thought he had had a Heaven-directed escape
+from a madman.
+
+The small village above Steuben, at which Miss Leslie and her friend
+were to take the train, was three miles off. The road ran almost
+directly towards it for more than three fourths of the way, when it
+made a bend to the right. Morton, with his furious riding, very soon
+reached this point. He could see the station house before him, on the
+left, and not more than a third of a mile distant. The space between,
+though uneven, had no visible impediments but a few low fences and
+scattered clumps of bushes. Morton pushed through the barberry growth
+that fringed the road, galloped over the hard pasture, leaped one
+fence, passed a gap in another, and half way to his goal, found
+himself and his horse in a quagmire. At this moment, straining his
+eyes towards the cluster of houses, he saw, with agony at his heart, a
+white puff of vapor rising above the trees beyond. Then the dark
+outline of the train came into view, checking its way, and stopping,
+half hidden behind the buildings.
+
+Morton knew that it would stop only for a moment, and plied his horse
+with merciless blows. The horse plunged through the mire,--the mud and
+water spouting high above his rider's head,--gained the firm ground,
+and bounded forward wild with fright and fury. It was too late. The
+bell rang, and with quicker and quicker pants, the engine began to
+move. Morton shouted,--gesticulated,--still it did not stop, though
+the passengers seemed to take alarm, for a head was thrust from every
+window, while the occupants of an open carriage drawn up on the road
+were bending eagerly towards him.
+
+Morton wheeled to the left, and urged his horse up the embankment in
+front of the train. With a violent effort, he reached the top. The
+engineer was running against time, and cared for nothing but winning
+his match. He blew the steam whistle; and as Morton dragged on the
+curb with desperate strength, the horse reared upright, pawing the
+air. But, as he rose, Morton disengaged his feet, slid over the
+crupper to the ground, and let go the rein. The horse leaped down the
+bank, and scoured over the meadow, mad with terror. Morton took his
+stand in the middle of the track, and facing the advancing train,
+stood immovable as a post. The engineer reversed the engine, brought
+it to a stand within a few yards of him, and, with a profusion of
+oaths, demanded what he wanted.
+
+Before the breathless Morton could well explain himself, the
+passengers began to leap out of the cars, and running forward,
+gathered about him. He soon found words to make the case known. But
+one object alone engrossed him. He pushed on among the throng of
+questioning, eager men, mounted the foremost car, and made his way
+through it, the crowd pushing behind and around him, and plying him
+with questions, to which, in the confusion and abstraction of his
+faculties, he gave wild and random answers. He looked at every face.
+Edith Leslie was not there. He crossed the platform into the next car,
+passed through it, and still could not find her. It was the last in
+the train. And now a strange feeling came over him, a bitterness, a
+sense of disappointment, as if his efforts and his pangs had been
+uncalled for and profitless; for so intensely had his thoughts been
+concentred on one object, that he forgot for the moment the hundred
+men and women whom he had saved from deadly jeopardy.
+
+The train rolled back to the station, the distance being only a few
+rods. Morton got out and leaned against the wall of the house. Men
+thronged about him with questions, exclamations, thanks, praises. The
+reaction of his violent emotion produced in him a frame of mind almost
+childish. He was restless to free himself from the crowd.
+
+"It's nothing; it's nothing," he answered, as fresh praises were
+showered on him. "I saw the train going to the devil, and did what I
+could to save it. Any of you, I dare say, would have done as much. Be
+good enough to let me have a little air."
+
+The crowd gave way, and he walked forward past the corner of the
+building. Here, standing on the road, close at hand, he suddenly saw
+an open carriage, and in it, pale as death, sat Miss Leslie, with her
+friend, and a boy of twelve, her friend's brother. He sprang towards
+it with an irrepressible impulse.
+
+"My God! Miss Leslie, I thought you were in the train."
+
+"And so we should have been," said the boy, "but the cars came in
+three minutes before their time."
+
+Edith Leslie did not utter a word.
+
+Some of the passengers were soon about him again. He repeated to them
+what he knew of the danger, and told them how he had learned it. In a
+few minutes, several men were seen at a distance on the railroad,
+running forward with a handkerchief tied to a stick to warn off the
+train. A few minutes later, a Connecticut pedler, one of the
+passengers, came up to Morton.
+
+"Mister, they're going to do the handsome thing by you. They're
+getting up a subscription to give you a piece of silver plate."
+
+"The deuse they are!" was Morton's ungrateful response.
+
+Going into the room where the passengers were met, he found that the
+pedler had told the truth; on which, for the first and last time in
+his life, he addressed an assemblage of his fellow-citizens. He told
+them that he thanked them for their kind intention; but that if he had
+done them a service, he wished for no other recompense than the
+knowledge of it, and urged them, if they did any thing in the matter,
+to devote their efforts to gaining the arrest and punishment of the
+scoundrel who had attempted the mischief. His oratory was much
+applauded; many, who had thought themselves in for the subscription,
+joyfully buttoned their pockets, and, instead of the plate, he
+received a series of complimentary resolutions, to be published in the
+newspapers.
+
+Meanwhile, having made his speech, he had lost no time in making his
+escape also. Going back to the carriage, Miss Leslie's friend asked
+him to accompany them home, whence they could return to take the
+afternoon train, when the bridge would, no doubt, be repaired. Morton,
+however, declined the invitation, and, having sent two men to catch
+the horse, with instructions to refer the distressed owner to him, he
+drove in a farmer's wagon to Steuben. In a few hours, he rejoined Miss
+Leslie and her friend; and having escorted both safely to town, took
+leave of the former, that evening, at the door of her father's house.
+
+Several of the newspapers next morning contained the resolutions
+passed by the passengers, trumpeting Morton's humanity, presence of
+mind, &c. He himself very well knew that the praise was undeserved,
+since he had neither thought nor cared for the objects of his supposed
+humanity, and, far from acting with presence of mind, had scarcely
+known what he was about.
+
+The bridge had been cut by an Irish mechanic in the employ of the
+road, who, for some misdemeanor, had been reprimanded and turned out,
+and who had passed half the night in preparing his demoniac revenge.
+It afterwards appeared that he had been a state's prison convict in a
+neighboring state, and that he would have been still in confinement,
+had not the officious zeal of certain benevolent persons availed to
+set him loose before his time.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XX.
+
+  For true it is, as _in principio,
+  Mulier est hominis confusio;_
+  Madam, the meaning of this Latin is,
+  That woman is to man his sovereign bliss.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+  A woman's counsel brought us first to woe,
+  And made her man his paradise forego.--
+  These are the words of Chanticleer, not mine;
+  I honor dames, and think their sex divine.--_Dryden_.
+
+
+On the day after their return, Morton visited Miss Leslie to learn if
+she had suffered from the fatigues and alarms of yesterday; and, in
+truth, she had the pale face of one whose rest has been short and
+broken.
+
+"It has been my fate to terrify you," said the anxious Morton.
+
+During his visit, the door bell was most obtrusively busy. Messages,
+parcels, notes, cards, visitors came in, and expelled all hope of a
+_tete a tete_.
+
+Soon after he left the room, Leslie entered.
+
+"Who gave you those flowers, Edith?"
+
+"Mr. Morton, sir."
+
+"Humph!" ejaculated Leslie, with a look by no means of gratification.
+
+Meanwhile, Morton, walking the street in an abstracted mood, overtook
+unawares his bachelor friend Mr. Benedick Sharpe, jurist, philosopher,
+and man of letters--a personage whose ordinary discourse was a
+singular imbroglio of irony and earnest.
+
+"Why, Morton, what problem of ethnology are you at now? the unity of
+the human race, and the descent from Adam--science versus
+orthodoxy--is that it?"
+
+"Nothing so deep."
+
+"What, nothing ethnological?"
+
+"Nothing at all."
+
+"Ah, then I begin to tremble for you. There's but one thing else could
+lose you in such a maze. The flame of a candle is very pretty; but the
+moth that flies into it scorches his wings, poor devil."
+
+"I am too dull to see through your metaphors."
+
+"There's another blind divinity besides Justice. Beware the shoal of
+matrimony! Many a good fellow has been wrecked there."
+
+"Harping on your old string! You are a professed woman hater."
+
+"Who, I? Now that is a scandalous libel. I admire them,--of course."
+
+"And yet there's not a lady of your acquaintance whom I have not heard
+you analyze, criticise, cavil at, and disparage."
+
+"My dear fellow!"
+
+"You have no conscience to deny it."
+
+"I protest I have the greatest--ahem!--admiration for the ladies of
+our acquaintance. We have an excellent assortment,--we have witty
+women; brilliant women; women of taste and genius; exact and
+fastidious women,--a full supply,--accomplished women; finished and
+elegant women,--not too many, but still we have them; learned women;
+gentle, amiable, tender women; sharp and caustic women; sensible and
+practical women; domestic women,--all unimpeachable,--all good in
+their kind."
+
+"Then why is matrimony so dangerous?"
+
+"No, no, not dangerous, exactly,--thanks to discreet nurture and
+northern winters; not dangerous hereabouts as it was in the days of
+the old satirists. A wise man may be safe enough here from any climax
+of matrimonial evil; but there are minor mischiefs, daily
+_desagremens_."
+
+"What, in spite of that catalogue of feminine virtues which you
+delivered just now?"
+
+"Vanity of vanities! Admirable in the abstract; excellent at a safe
+distance; but to be tied to for life, bed and board, day light and
+candle light,--that's another thing."
+
+"Even the tender and amiable,--is there risk even there?"
+
+"One cloys on perpetual sweetmeats."
+
+"And the domestic women?"
+
+"Who incarcerate themselves in their nurseries, and have no brains but
+for their babies; who are frantic if the infant coughs, and are buried
+and lost among cradles, porringers, go-carts, pills, and
+prescriptions."
+
+"The brilliant woman, then?"
+
+"Brilliant at dinner tables and _soirees_; but, on the next day, your
+Corinne is disconsolate with a headache. Her wit is for the
+world,--her moods and mopings, caprices and lamentations,--those she
+keeps for her husband."
+
+"You are a cynic. The woman of taste and genius; where do you place
+her?"
+
+"What are the rude heart and brain of a man to such exalted
+susceptibilities? What homage is too much for him to render? Be a bond
+slave to the sweet enthusiast. Bow yourself before the delicate
+shrine. Do your devoirs; she will not bate you a jot."
+
+"But there are in the world women governed by reason."
+
+"My dear Morton, are you demented? A woman always rational, always
+sensible, always consistent; a logical woman; one who can distinguish
+the relations of cause and effect, one who marches straight to her
+purpose like a man,--who ever found such a woman; or, finding her, who
+could endure such a one?"
+
+"You fly into extremes; but women may be rational, as well as men."
+
+"I like to see the organ of faith well developed,--yours is a miracle.
+Granted, a rational woman; and with a liberal rendering of the word,
+such, I admit, are now and then seen,--women always even, always
+cheerful, never morbid, always industrious, always practical; busy
+with good works,--charity, for example, or making puddings,--pious
+daughters, model wives, pattern mothers----"
+
+"At last you have found a creditable character."
+
+"Very creditable; but far from interesting. The truth is, Morton, the
+very uncertainty, the flitting gleams and shadows, the opalescent
+light, the chameleon coloring of a woman's mind are what make her
+fascination,--the fascination and the danger,--there lies the dilemma.
+Shun the danger, and you lose the charm as well. A woman's human
+nature is not our human nature; the tissue is more cunningly woven;
+the string more responsive; the essence lighter and subtler,--forgive
+the poetic style,--appropriate to the theme, you know. In their
+virtues and their faults they shoot away into paths where we do not
+track them. They can sink in a more abject abasement; and sometimes,
+again, while we tread the earth, they are aeronauts of the pure ether.
+Stable, stubborn, impassive man holds the steadfast tenor of his walk,
+little moved by influences which, on the one hand, bury his helpmate
+in ruin, or, on the other, wing her on a flight to the zenith. They
+out-sin us, and they out-saint us; weak as a reed, and strong as an
+oak; measureless in folly, profound in wisdom; for the deepest of all
+wisdom springs, not out of a questioning brain, but out of a confiding
+heart; and all human knowledge must find its root at last in a blind
+belief. There, I have given you a sublime touch of eloquence; and, for
+the moral to it,--shun matrimony. It is Satan's slyest mantrap. No,
+not so, at all; it is a blessed institution for perfecting mankind in
+patience, charity, and meekness, and booking their names in the
+catalogue of saints. So be wise, in time. Good by. Look before you
+leap!"
+
+And, with an ironical twinkle in his eye, Sharpe vanished.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXI.
+
+Quelle diable de fantaisie t'es tu alle mettre dans la cervelle? Tu le
+veux, amour; il faut etre fou comme beaucoup d'autres.--_Le Malade
+Imaginaire_.
+
+
+Matherton, renowned through both hemispheres for the manufacture of
+glass ware, stands, unless this history errs, on the line of the
+Northern Central Railroad, the distance from its post office to the
+post office at Boston being just thirty-three miles. Four miles from
+the village is the tract of land which Leslie's forefather, far back
+in New England antiquity, bought of the Indians. The original purchase
+covered several square miles, since dwindled to some two hundred
+acres. Here, in a sequestered and very beautiful spot, stands the
+mansion which Leslie's grandfather built some eighty-five years ago.
+In its day it was reputed of matchless elegance, and, with Leslie's
+repairs and improvements, it might still pass as a very handsome old
+country residence. Sagamore Pond, or Lake Sagamore, as the last Mrs.
+Leslie, who had lived in England, insisted on calling it, washes the
+foot of the garden; and along the northern verge of the estate, Battle
+Brook steals down to the pond, under the thick shade of the hemlock
+trees. Here King Philip's warriors once lay in ambush, through a hot
+summer's day; here many pious Puritans were butchered, and many
+carried off into doleful captivity.
+
+At the house at Battle Brook, Leslie, during spring, summer, and
+autumn, had always spent every leisure moment that he could snatch
+from his affairs. Since his connection with Vinal, these intervals had
+become both long and frequent. And, since grief has a privilege, and
+since, moreover, a somewhat alarming cough had lately begun to trouble
+him, he now committed all to Vinal's hands, and, on the day after his
+daughter's return, repaired with her to his favorite homestead, there
+to remain till the autumn frosts should warn them back to town.
+Forthwith Matherton became the focus to which all the thoughts of
+Morton concentred.
+
+Thither, pretext or no pretext, he resolved to go. He went,
+accordingly, and made his quarters at the grand hotel of Matherton.
+Fortunately, Battle Brook was then the best trout stream in
+Massachusetts; and this would give, he flattered himself, some faint
+color to his proceeding. He arrived in the afternoon, and, mounting a
+horse, rode to the inn at the edge of Sagamore Pond, a mile or more
+from Leslie's house.
+
+He had scarcely reached it, when a brief sharp thunder shower came up,
+and passed away as quickly. As the sun was setting, he rowed out in a
+small boat upon the pond. Here, skirting the brink of a sequestered
+cove, which the beech and tupelo trees overhung, and where every thing
+was still but the evening singing of a robin, and the mysterious
+whisper of the rain-drops, falling from innumerable leaves, with
+countless tiny circles on the breathless water,--here, where his boat
+glided as if buoyed on a liquid air, while, over the pebbly bottom,
+the perch and dace fled away from under the shadowing prow,--he
+lingered dreamily for a while, and then, bending to his oars, bore out
+into the middle of the pond. The west was gorgeous with the sunset,
+while, far in front, glimmering among the trees, he could see the
+shrine of his idolatry, the roof that sheltered Edith Leslie.
+
+A light breeze crisped the water, the ripples murmured with a lulling
+sound under his boat, and, lying at ease, he gave himself up to his
+reveries.
+
+His passion-kindled fancies ranged earth, sea, and sky; wandered into
+the past, lost themselves in the future; evoked the shadows of dead
+history; mixed in one phantom conclave the hairy war gods of the
+north, the bright shapes of Grecian fable, the enormities of Egyptian
+mythology; and, looking into the burning depths above him, he mused of
+human hopes, human aspirations, human destiny. That oddly compounded
+malady which had fastened on him had brought with it the intense yet
+tranquil awakening of every faculty with which it will sometimes visit
+those of the ruder sex whom it attacks with virulence.
+
+The magic of earth and sky; the black pines rearing their shaggy tops
+against the blazing west; the shores mingling in many-tinted shadow;
+the fiery sky, where three little clouds hovered like flaming spirits;
+the fiery water, where he and his boat floated as in a crimson sea;
+the whole glowing scene, glowing deeper yet in the fervid light of
+passion,--penetrated him like an enchantment. He scarcely knew
+himself; and in his supreme of intoxication, the familiar world around
+him was sublimed into a vision of Eden.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXII.
+
+               If it were now to die,
+  'Twere now to be most happy; for I fear,
+  My soul hath her content so absolute,
+  That not another comfort like to this
+  Succeeds in unknown fate.--_Othello_.
+
+
+It was a day of cloudless sunshine when Morton set forth for the house
+at Battle Brook; but his mind was far from sharing the brightness of
+the world without. The hope that flowed so full and calmly the night
+before had ebbed and left him dry. He was shaken with doubts,
+misgivings, perturbations. He walked his horse up the avenue, till he
+came within view of the house, a large, square mansion, with a veranda
+on three sides, a quiet-looking place enough, but in Morton's eyes
+priceless as Aladdin's palace, and sacred as Our Lady's house at
+Loretto. A monthly honeysuckle twined about one of the columns of the
+porch; the hall door stood open, and the air played freely through
+from front to rear.
+
+He gave his horse to the charge of an old Scotchman who was mowing the
+lawn, rang at the door, asked for Miss Leslie, and was shown into the
+vacant parlor. With its straw carpeting and light summer furniture, it
+was bright and cheerful as every thing else about it. Engravings from
+Turner and Landseer, framed in black walnut, hung against the walls;
+and on a small table in a corner stood a bird cage, with the door left
+purposely open. The inmate was hopping about the room, without
+attempting to escape, though the windows also were open.
+
+"No wonder it will not leave her," thought the visitor.
+
+He seated himself by the window, and looked out on the fields and the
+groves beyond. Far down in the meadow, the yellow-tufted rye was
+undulating in the warm summer wind, wave chasing wave in graceful
+succession. The birds would not sing,--the afternoon was too hot,--but
+the buzz, and hum, and chirrup of a myriad of insects rose from their
+lurking-places in the grass, while now and then the cicala raised its
+piercing voice from a neighboring apple tree.
+
+Suddenly Morton's heart began to beat; a light step on the staircase
+reached his ear, and the rustling of a dress. Miss Leslie came in with
+her usual natural and quiet ease of manner, while he rose to receive
+her with his heart in his throat. And now, when he needed them most,
+his wits seemed to fail him. He tried to converse, and produced
+nothing but barren commonplace. Again and again the conversation
+flagged; and the hum and chirrup of the insect world without filled
+the pauses between.
+
+He glanced at his companion.
+
+"Be a man, you idiot," he apostrophized himself.
+
+He looked at her again, as she bent over the embroidery with which her
+fingers were employed.
+
+"I must speak out, or die," he thought.
+
+He rested his arm on the table. He leaned towards her. Heaven knows
+what nonsense was on his lips, when the sound of a man's footstep in
+the hall made him subside into his chair, and do his best to look
+nonchalant. Leslie entered, cast an uneasy glance at the visitor, and
+greeted him with somewhat cool courtesy.
+
+"I have just met Miss Weston and her sister," said Leslie to his
+daughter; "I think they will be here in a few minutes."
+
+Morton looked at a Landseer on the wall, and gnawed his lip with
+vexation.
+
+Leslie took a turn or two about the room, looked out at the window,
+remarked that it was a hot afternoon, said that the hay crop had been
+the heaviest ever known, in consequence, he opined, of the joint
+effects of heat, moisture, and guano; and was descanting on the
+ravages committed by the borers on a certain peach tree, when Miss
+Weston and her sister appeared.
+
+"It's all up with me. She does not care for me a straw," thought
+Morton, as he saw the easy cordiality with which Miss Leslie received
+her guests. He was introduced. Miss Weston complimented him on the
+affair of the railroad. His reply was cold and constrained. Leslie
+soon left the room. Morton felt himself _de trop_, yet could not
+muster strength of mind to go. Conversation flagged. Every body became
+constrained. Miss Weston suspected the truth, and glanced at her
+sister that they should take their leave, when, at this juncture, a
+servant came to announce tea.
+
+The ebbs and flows of the human mind are beyond the reach of
+astronomy. As they went into the next room, Morton became conscious of
+a faint and indefinite something in the face of his mistress, which,
+he could not tell why, cast a gleam of light into his darkness, and
+lifted him out of the slough of despond in which he had been
+floundering for the last half hour. A flush of hope dawned on him. His
+constraint passed away, and Miss Weston's opinion of him was
+wonderfully revolutionized. At length, much to his delight, one of the
+visitors remarked to the other, that they had better go home before it
+grew too dark. But here a new alarm seized him. Might he not be
+expected to offer them his escort? Terrified at this idea, and
+oblivious of all gallantry, he made his escape into the garden,
+impelled--so he left them to infer--by a delicate wish to free them
+from the restraint of his presence. Here he walked to and fro behind
+the hedge, in no small agitation, but with all his faculties on the
+alert.
+
+In a quarter of an hour, he heard voices at the hall door; and
+approaching behind a cluster of high laurels, saw Edith Leslie
+accompanying her two friends down the avenue. After walking with them
+a few rods, she bade them good evening, and turned back towards the
+house. Morton went forward to meet her.
+
+"There is a beautiful sunset over the water, beyond the garden. Will
+you walk that way?"
+
+They turned down one of the garden paths.
+
+"What did you think of me this afternoon?" asked Morton--"did you
+think me ill, or bewitched, or turned idiot?"
+
+"Neither. I thought you a little taciturn, at first."
+
+"I am fortunate if that was your worst opinion. I believe I was under
+a spell. Did you never dream--all people, I believe, have something in
+common in their dreams--of being in some great peril, without power to
+move hand or foot to escape?--of being under some desperate necessity
+of speaking, without power to open your lips?--or of seeing before you
+some splendid prize, without power to make even an effort to grasp it?
+Something like that was my case." Here he came to an abrupt stop,
+walked on a pace or two, then turned to his companion with a vehemence
+which startled her--"Miss Leslie, you heard your friend praise me for
+humanity--courage--what not? It was all a mistake--all a delusion. I
+thought you were in the train. I was wild with agony; and when the
+people were crowding after me, I thought that all had been for
+nothing, because I had not saved you. I can hardly tell what I did; it
+was mere blind instinct. I could have ridden into the fire, and
+perhaps not have felt the burning. There _is_ a spell upon me. I am
+changed--life is changed--every thing is changed. I scarcely know
+myself. It mans me, and it makes me a child again. The world puts on a
+new face; just as this sunset lights the earth with purple and
+vermilion, and turns it to a fairy land. Forgive me; I don't know what
+I am saying. I am in fear that all this brightness will change of a
+sudden into winter and night, and cold, rocky commonplace. You know
+what I would say. I have no words fit to say it. You are my judge, to
+lift me up, or cast me down."
+
+Here he stopped again abruptly, and looked at his companion in much
+greater agitation than he would have felt if he had just thrown the
+dice for life or death. She stood for a moment with her eyes fixed on
+the earth, as if waiting for him to go on, then slowly raised them to
+his face.
+
+"You risked your life to save mine. You need not believe that I could
+ever forget it."
+
+Morton's heart sprang to his lips. Nature had not been liberal to him
+in the gift of tongues, but the energy of his emotion supplied the
+defect. Nor were his words thrown away; for with all its outward calm,
+the nature that responded to them was earnest and ardent as his own.
+
+It was an hour or more since the whippoorwills had begun their evening
+cries, when they returned to the house. Candles were lighted, and
+Leslie was sitting with two persons from the neighborhood, an agent of
+the Matherton factories and a lawyer, conversing upon railroad stocks.
+He looked very uneasily at his daughter and Morton, but said nothing.
+The latter was engrossed with one idea; but he forced himself to join
+in the conversation, and favored the company with his views--not very
+lucid on this occasion--upon the topic under discussion. He soon,
+however, contrived to whisper to Miss Leslie, "I shall go in five
+minutes--will you meet me in the hall?" She left the room in a few
+moments; and Morton, after a short interval, took his leave, in much
+alarm lest his intended father-in-law should strain courtesy so far as
+to follow him. Leslie, however, remained quiet; and he found his
+mistress waiting for him at the hall door. Their interview was short,
+but Morton never forgot it. After bidding her good night some eight or
+ten times, he compelled himself to leave the house, mounted his horse,
+waved his hand to Edith Leslie, whom he saw watching him from a side
+window, wheeled, rode down the avenue, turned as he reached the
+entrance of the trees, and waved his hand again towards the window.
+His heart was full to overflowing, and tears, not of sorrow, ran down
+his cheeks. "Good Heaven!" laughed Morton, as he brushed them away,
+"this has not happened to me before these twelve years." He waved a
+farewell once more, and spurring his horse, rode down the avenue into
+the high road.
+
+It was a soft, warm, starlight evening, and, as he passed along, he
+heard the voices of the whippoorwills from far and near, while the
+meadows, the orchards, and the borders of the woods sparkled with
+fireflies. With loosened rein, he suffered his horse to canter lightly
+forward, and gave himself up to the enchantment of his dreams. A
+thousand times in his after life did he recall the visions of that
+evening's ride.
+
+About a mile before reaching the town, the road passed, for a few
+rods, through a belt of thick woods. While riding through the darkest
+of the shadow, a strange cry startled him--a shriek so wild and awful
+that the blood curdled in his veins, and his horse leaped aside with
+fright. There was a rustling among the branches over his head, a
+flapping and fanning of broad pinions, and the dusky form of some
+great bird sailed away into the innermost darkness of the woods.
+Morton knew the sound. It was the voice of the great horned owl,
+rarely found in that part of the country, though he had once or twice
+before heard its midnight yells in the lonely forests of Maine.
+
+The cry long rang in his ears. It seemed fraught with startling
+portent, clouded his spirits, and umbered the rose-tint of his
+reveries. He turned his face to the stars, and breathed a prayer for
+the welfare of his mistress.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIII.
+
+  L'ambition, l'amour, l'avarice, la haine,
+  Tiennent comme un forcat son esprit a la chaine.--_Boileau_.
+
+
+Nobody knew Vinal but Vinal himself. _Know thyself_ was his favorite
+maxim. He practised upon it, as he flattered himself, with a rigorous
+and unsparing logic, applying the dissecting knife and microscope to
+the secrets of his mind, probing, testing, studying, pitilessly
+ripping up all that would fain hide itself. The aim of all this
+scrutiny was, thoroughly to comprehend the machine, in order to direct
+and perfect it to its highest efficiency.
+
+Vinal, as men go, knew himself very well; and yet there were points of
+his character which escaped him, or which, rather, he misnamed. He
+knew perfectly that he was ambitious, selfish, unscrupulous: this he
+confessed in his own ear, pluming himself much on his philosophic
+candor. But he never would see that he was envious. In his mental map
+of himself, envy was laid down as pride and emulation. The wrestlings
+of human nature are not all of the sort figured in the Pilgrim's
+Progress and set forth in the Catechism. Vinal had an ideal; he had
+cherished it from boyhood, and battled ever since to realize it. He
+would fain make himself the finished man of the world, the
+unflinching, all-knowing, all-potential man of affairs, like a blade
+of steel, smooth and polished, but keen, searching, resistless. This
+was his aim; but nature was always balking him. He was the victim of a
+constitutional timidity, his scourge from childhood. He had been known
+to swoon outright, on being run away with in a chaise, and he never
+could muster nerve enough to fire a gun. Against this defect his pride
+rose in revolt. It thwarted him at every turn, and conflicted with all
+his aspirations. In short, he could not endure its presence, and
+fought against it with an iron energy of will. Thus his life was a
+secret, unremitting struggle, whose mark was written on his pale,
+nervous, resolute features. It's an ill wind that blows no good. This
+painful warfare achieved a singular vigor and concentration of
+character, and would have led to still better issues, had the
+assailing force been marshalled under a better banner. A lofty purpose
+may turn timidity to heroism; but a purpose like Vinal's is by no
+means so efficacious, and the man remains, if not quite a coward, yet
+something very like one.
+
+It would have been well for Vinal if, like Morton, he had been born to
+a fortune. In that case--for he had no aptitude for pleasure
+hunting--his restless energies would probably have spurred him into
+some creditable field of effort, natural science, mathematics, or
+philology, to all of which he inclined. But Fate had not been so
+propitious; and to achieve the task which she had forgotten was the
+zenith of his aspirations.
+
+There was one person who had always been an eyesore to him, and a
+stumbling block in his way. This was Vassall Morton. Morton, at
+twenty-three, was, in feeling, still a boy; Vinal, at twenty-three,
+was a well-ripened man. But the man hated the boy; and the boy
+retorted with a dislike which was largely dashed with scorn. Vinal
+felt the scorn, and it cut him to the quick, the more so, that he
+could not hide from himself that he stood in awe of Morton. He hated
+him, too, because he had that which he, Vinal, lacked--fortune, good
+health, steady nerve. He hated him, because he thought that Morton
+understood him; because the frankness of the latter's nature rebuked
+the secrecy of his own; and, above all, because he saw in him his most
+formidable rival in the affections of Edith Leslie.
+
+Vinal's nature, self-drilled as it was, could not be called a cold
+one. It had in it spots and veins of sensitiveness. When a child, this
+sensitiveness had often been morbidly awake, and had caused him much
+suffering; but as he grew towards manhood, it had been overlaid and
+hidden by very different qualities, not often found in connection with
+it. Of late, however, he had been in love,--with Edith Leslie, as well
+as with her money,--and the dormant susceptibilities of his childhood
+had been in some sort reawakened.
+
+His mind, inharmonious and unhappy as nature and himself had jointly
+made it, had never yet felt a pang so sharp as when, arriving at
+Matherton, he learned privately from Colonel Leslie the engagement
+which had passed between Morton and his daughter. Miss Leslie's twice
+rejected suitor compressed his thin lips in silence; it was his usual
+sign of strong emotion. Leslie pressed his favorite's hand,--he would
+fain have called him son-in-law,--and, turning away abruptly, Vinal
+left the house.
+
+The man whom he envied and hated had triumphed; robbed him of fortune,
+and robbed him of happiness; happiness of which Morton had had already
+his full share, and a fortune which would but swell the ample bulk of
+his possessions. Vinal was frenzied with grief, rage, and jealousy.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIV.
+
+  _Clo_. That she should love this fellow and refuse me!
+         If it be sin to make a true election, she is damned.
+                                                      _Cymbeline_.
+
+
+Morton sat in the reading room of the National, the grand hotel of
+Matherton. It was by no means an elegant apartment. In the middle was
+a table covered with newspapers; at the sides were desks, likewise
+covered with newspapers, padlocked together in files. The walls and
+the ceiling glared a drear monotony of white, broken, however, by
+sundry ornaments, worthy the attention of the curious. Here, framed in
+birdseye maple, was the engraved likeness of "Old Hickory," with hat
+and cane in hand, a cloak to hide the gauntness of his figure, and
+hair bristling in electrified disorder. Here, too, was a colored print
+of the favorite steamboat "Queen of the Lake;" Niagara Falls, by a
+license of art, forming a blue curtain in the background. At its side
+was a lithograph of the Empire Hotel, New York, the sidewalk in front
+being embellished with groups of pedestrians, dressed with matchless
+elegance, after the fashion plates; and, over against this, an
+advertisement of Jessup's steel, encircled with a lithographed halo,
+composed of chisels, axes, hammers, saws, and ploughshares.
+
+The apartment, thus furnished and thus adorned, had, besides Morton,
+but two occupants; the one a factory agent, who stood at a desk,
+absorbed in the New Orleans Picayune; the other a country tailor, who
+displayed the sign of the "Full-dressed Man" at the neighboring
+village of Mudfield, and was now seated at a window, busied in
+polishing a huge garnet ring, which he wore, with a red silk
+handkerchief.
+
+In a window recess, aloof from the tailor's, sat Morton, scarcely
+conscious of any presence but that of his own thoughts. He had found a
+philosopher's stone; and through the rest of his life, this
+comfortless reading room of the Matherton Hotel, this sanctuary of dry
+and weary Yankeedom, was linked in his memory with dreams of golden
+brightness.
+
+A firm, quick step crossed the threshold, and paced the sanded floor.
+Till this moment, Morton had remained absorbed, shut in from the outer
+world; but now an influence, which believers may call magnetism, made
+him look up and bend forward from the recess to see who the sudden
+stranger might be. The stranger turned also, and showed the pale,
+fixed face of Horace Vinal.
+
+Morton was disposed to be on good terms with all the world, and more
+especially with his defeated rival.
+
+"Good morning, Vinal," he said, holding out his hand, which Vinal
+took, his cold, thin fingers trembling in the warm grasp of Morton. He
+had had no thought of finding him there; the encounter was unlooked
+for as it was unwelcome; and, as he muttered a few passing words of
+commonplace, his features grew haggard with the violence of struggling
+emotion. He turned away, went to a desk, pretended to read a newspaper
+for a few moments, and then left the room.
+
+Morton looked after him. He had no doubt that Vinal had heard of his
+misfortune; and the first sense of pain which, since the evening
+before last, the successful lover had felt, now crossed his mind.
+
+"It's devilish hard for him, poor fellow," he thought, as, measuring
+Vinal's passion by his own, a vivid image of the latter's suffering
+rose upon him.
+
+Vinal strode along a corridor of the hotel. There was no one to see
+him. His forehead was knit, his nostrils distended, his jaws clinched.
+A man, whom he knew, came from a side passage. Instantly Vinal's face
+was calm again, and as the other passed he greeted him with a smile.
+He went out into the main street of the town, along which he walked
+for a few rods with his usual air of alert composure; then turned down
+a narrow and unfrequented by-way. Here his whole bearing changed. He
+trod the gravelled sidewalk with a fierce, nervous motion; and with
+hands clinched and eyes fixed on the ground, muttered through his set
+teeth,--
+
+"Fair or foul, by G--, I'll be even with him."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXV.
+
+  O, quha is this has done this deed,
+    This ill deed done to me?
+  To send me out this time o' the zeir,
+    To sail upon the sea.--_Percy Reliques_.
+
+  A slave whose gall coins slanders like a mint.
+                                       _Troilus and Cressida_.
+
+
+"Your proposal flatters me, Mr. Morton; and, in many points of view,
+the connection you offer would be a desirable one,--a very desirable
+one. But I must say to you plainly, that if my wishes alone were
+consulted, my daughter would bestow her hand elsewhere. Perhaps I need
+not tell you that Horace Vinal, who was my ward, and my late wife's
+relation, and who has been my partner in business for a year or more,
+is a young man whom I have looked upon as my son, and whom it was my
+very earnest hope to have seen such in reality. You who have had an
+opportunity of knowing him can hardly be surprised that, after so long
+an intimacy, I should prefer this connection to any other. I have seen
+him in all the relations of life, and the more I have seen the more I
+have learned to esteem him."
+
+"You speak with a good deal of emphasis of his character. May I ask if
+any part of your objection to me rests on that score."
+
+"In a matter like this, I am bound to be frank with you. In many
+quarters, I hear you very highly spoken of,--so highly, in fact, that
+I am disposed to take with every qualification what I have heard to
+your disadvantage."
+
+"Pray, what is that?"
+
+"I was a soldier once, and don't incline to inquire too closely into
+the way young men may see fit to amuse themselves. But on a point
+where my daughter's happiness might be involved----"
+
+"Upon my word, sir, I don't understand you."
+
+"Well, Mr. Morton, I hear--that is, I have learned--that, like other
+young men of leisure, you have had your _bonnes fortunes_, and winged
+other game than partridges and woodcock."
+
+Morton looked at him in surprise. The truth was, that, some time
+before, the discreet and far-sighted Vinal had contrived to inoculate
+his patron with this calumny, which he thought the species most likely
+to take readily. And such had been his tact, that Leslie, though well
+imbued with the idea, would have been puzzled to say whence he had
+received it. A man of shallow-brained uprightness like his, if he
+yields too easy a belief to falsehood, has the advantage of yielding
+also an easy belief to truth. A few words from Morton sufficed to
+carry conviction to the frank-hearted auditor, who, feeling that, at
+least as regarded its worst features, his charge must be groundless,
+hastened to make the _amende_.
+
+"Your word is enough, Mr. Morton, and I owe you an apology for
+imagining that you could be false or heartless in any connection
+whatever. I think, however, that you can see how, without
+disparagement to you, I should still regret that Horace Vinal, who is
+personally so near to me, so devoted to my interests, and so strongly
+attached to my daughter, should be disappointed. I advised him,
+yesterday, to go to Europe, to recruit his health. I am told that you
+had yourself some plan of the kind."
+
+"A very indefinite one, sir; in fact, amounting to none at all."
+
+"Go this autumn; be absent a year,--that is not too long for seeing
+Europe,--and if at the end of that time you and my daughter should
+remain as earnest in this matter as you are now, why, I am not the man
+to persist in opposing her inclination."
+
+The sentence was hard; but there was no appeal. Leslie had told Vinal
+the day before that he would despatch Morton on his travels,
+intimating a hope that a long separation might bring about a change in
+his daughter's feelings. Morton saw nothing for it but acquiescence;
+to which, indeed, Miss Leslie urged him, confiding in the strength of
+his attachment, and happy to reconcile adverse duties and inclinations
+at any price.
+
+Meanwhile, he had not the smallest suspicion of the subtle trick which
+his rival had played him. "This is a charitable world!" he thought;
+"one must keep the beaten track, look demure, and talk virtue, or, in
+one shape or another, it will be the worse for him."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVI.
+
+  Then loathed he in his native land to dwell.--_Childe Harold_.
+
+_Slend_. A gentleman born, Master Parson, who writes himself
+_Armigero_; in any bill, warrant, quittance, or obligation,
+_Armigero_!
+
+_Shal_. Ay, that I do; and have done any time these three hundred
+years.--_Merry Wives of Windsor_.
+
+
+The engagement of Miss Leslie and Morton was to be kept secret till
+the latter's return. None knew it but Leslie and Vinal. Vinal, within
+a few weeks, sailed for Europe, meaning, however, to be absent only
+three or four months. Other motives apart, he felt, and Leslie saw,
+that his health, always shivering in the wind, demanded the change.
+
+Meanwhile, Morton made the best of a six weeks' reprieve; and hampered
+as he was by the injunction of secrecy, and the precautions which it
+demanded, he crowded the short interval with half a lifetime of mixed
+pleasure and pain, expectation and anxiety.
+
+It was past but too quickly; in three days more he must set sail.
+Walking the street in a rueful mood, he met his classmate, Chester,
+who, having made the tour of Europe, had lost his obsolete ways, and
+grown backward into a man of the present world.
+
+"Good morning, Morton. Making calls?--I see it by your face."
+
+"Yes; it's a thing that must be done sometimes."
+
+"_Pour prendre conge_, I suppose. I hear you are off very soon."
+
+"The day after to-morrow."
+
+"You couldn't do a wiser thing. When a man finds himself in a scrape,
+he had better get out of it as soon as possible; therefore, if he
+finds himself born in America, he had better forswear his country."
+
+"Patriotic sentiments those."
+
+"I can't answer for the patriotism; but they are the sentiments of a
+true son of the Pilgrim Fathers, who renounced their country because
+they couldn't stand it, and came over here. I mean to follow their
+example, and go back again. They fled--so the story goes--from
+persecution. I mean to fly from persecution too,--the persecution of a
+social atmosphere that I find hostile to my constitution, and a
+climate not fit for a reasonable being to live in."
+
+"I don't know why you should be so fierce against the climate. By your
+look, you seem to thrive in it."
+
+"The bodily man thrives passably well. It's the immortal part that
+suffers. Fierce! why, the climate makes me fierce. Who can be a
+philosopher in such a climate?--or a poet?--or an artist?--any thing
+but a steam engine? It is a perpetual spur, an unremitting goad.
+Nobody is happy in it except the men who ride on locomotives and
+conduct express trains,--always on the move. O, so you go in here, do
+you?"
+
+"Yes, to see Mrs. Primrose. Will you come too?"
+
+"No, thank you," replied Chester, walking away, with a comical look.
+
+Morton rang the door bell, and found Mrs. Primrose at home.
+
+There was a book on the table. He took it up. It was a novel, lately
+published.
+
+Morton praised it.
+
+Mrs. Primrose dissented, with great emphasis.
+
+"You are severe upon the book."
+
+"Not more so than it deserves," replied Mrs. Primrose; "it is too
+coarse to be permitted for a moment."
+
+"And yet the moral tone seems good enough."
+
+"I do not blame the morality so much as the bad taste. It is full of
+slang dialogue, and was certainly written by a very unrefined person."
+
+"It makes its characters speak as such people speak in real life."
+
+"It is not merely that," said Mrs. Primrose, slightly pursing her
+mouth; "it contains, besides, expressions absolutely reprehensible."
+
+"One does not admire its good taste; but a little blunt Saxon never
+did much harm."
+
+"No daughter of mine shall read it," said Mrs. Primrose, with gravity.
+
+"I imagine that if literature is to reflect human life truly, it can
+hardly be limited to the language of the drawing room."
+
+"Then it should be banished from the drawing room," said Mrs.
+Primrose, with severity.
+
+Here several visitors appeared, and Morton presently took leave.
+
+He was but a few rods from the door, when a quick step came behind
+him.
+
+"Hallo, colonel, where are you going at such a rate?"
+
+Morton turned, and saw his classmate, Rosny.
+
+"Why, Dick, I'm glad to see you."
+
+"They tell me you're bound for Europe."
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Well, it's a good move. If a man has money, he had better enjoy it."
+
+"I shall be driving out of town in an hour. Come and dine with me."
+
+"Sorry, colonel, but it can't be done. I'm out on the stump in the
+cause of democracy. Shall be off westward in two hours, and shake the
+dust from my shoes against this nest of whiggery and old fogyism."
+
+"Democracy is under the weather just now, Dick."
+
+"Just now, I grant you. What with log cabins and hard cider, and
+coons, the enlightened people are pretty well gammoned. But there's a
+good time coming. Before you know it, democracy will be upon you again
+like a load of bricks. Why, what can you expect of a party that will
+take a coon for its emblem? I saw one chained up this morning in the
+yard of Taft's tavern, a dirty, mean-looking beast, about half way
+between a jackal and an owl. He looked uncommonly well in health, and
+could puff out his fur as round as a muff. But, when you looked close,
+there was nothing of him but skin and bone; exactly like the whig
+party. He put up his nose, and smiled at me. I suppose--damn his
+impudence--he took me for a whig. That coon is going into a decline.
+It won't be long before he is taken by the tail and tossed over
+Charles River bridge; and there he'll lie on the mud at low tide, for
+a genuine emblem of the defunct whig party, and a solemn warning to
+all coon worshippers."
+
+"Let the whigs alone, Dick; and if you won't dine with me, come in
+here and drink a glass of claret."
+
+"That I'll do." And they went into the hotel accordingly.
+
+As Rosny took up his glass, Morton observed a large old seal ring on
+his finger.
+
+"Do you call yourself a democrat, and yet always wear that ring of
+yours?"
+
+"Why, what's the matter with the ring?"
+
+"Nothing, except that it is a badge of feudalism, aristocracy, and
+every thing else abominable to your party."
+
+"Pshaw, man. Look here: do you see that crest, cut in the stone? That
+crest followed King Francis to Pavia, and when Henri Quatre charged at
+Ivry, it wasn't far behind him. It is mine by right. It comes down to
+me, straight as a bee line, through twenty generations. And do you
+think I'm going to renounce my birthright? No, be gad!"
+
+"I wouldn't. But what becomes of your democracy?"
+
+"Democracy is tall enough to take care of itself. I wear that ring;
+but it don't follow that I stand on my ancestry. You needn't laugh:
+the case is just this. If the blood in my veins makes me stand to my
+colors where another man would flinch, or hold my head up where
+another would be sprawling on his back; if it gives me a better pluck,
+grit, go-ahead; why, _that's_ what I stand on,--_that's_ my patent of
+nobility. What the deuse are you laughing at?--the personal
+quality,--don't you see?--and not the ancestry."
+
+"If you stand on personal merit, you'll be sure to go under before
+long. The democracy are growing as jealous of that as of ancestry, or
+of wealth either."
+
+"Why, what do you know about politics? You never had any thing to do
+with them. You are no more fit for a politician than for a fiddler."
+
+"I'm glad you think so. If I must serve the country in any public
+capacity, I pray Heaven it may be as a scavenger sooner than as a
+politician. Who can touch pitch and be clean? I'll pay back your
+compliment, Dick. You are a great deal too downright to succeed in
+public life."
+
+"I'll find a way or make one. But I tell you, colonel,"--and a shade
+of something like disappointment passed over his face,--"if a man
+wants the people's votes, it's fifty to one that he's got to sink
+himself lower than the gutter before he gets them."
+
+"Yes, and when the people have turned out of office every man of
+virtue, honor, manliness, independence, and ability, then they will
+fling up their caps and brag that their day is come, and their triumph
+finished over the damned aristocracy."
+
+"You are an unbeliever. You haven't half faith enough in the people.
+Now I put it to your common sense. Isn't there a thousand times more
+patriotism in the laboring classes in this country--yes, and about as
+much intelligence--as in the rabble of sham fashionables at Saratoga,
+or any other muster of our moneyed snobs and flunkeys?"
+
+"Exceptions excepted, yes."
+
+"War to the knife with the codfish aristocracy! They are a kind of
+mongrel beast, expressly devised and concocted for me to kick. I don't
+mean the gentlemen with money; nor the good fellows with money. I know
+what a gentleman is; yes, and a lady, too, though I do make stump
+speeches, and shake hands all round with the sovereign people. That
+sort are welcome to their money. No, sir, it's the moneyed snobs, the
+gilded toadstools, that it's my mission to pitch into."
+
+"Excuse me a moment, Dick," said Morton, suddenly leaping from his
+seat, as a lady passed the window.
+
+"A lady, eh! Then I'll be off."
+
+"No, no, stay where you are. I'll be back again in three minutes."
+
+He ran out of the hotel, and walked at his best pace in pursuit of
+Fanny Euston, who, on her part, was walking with an earnest air, like
+one whose thoughts were engaged with some engrossing subject. He
+reached her side, and made a movement to accost her; but she seemed
+unconscious of his presence.
+
+"Miss Fanny Euston, will you pardon me for breaking in upon your
+reveries?"
+
+She turned and recognized him, but her smile of recognition was a very
+mournful one.
+
+"I have stopped you to take my leave,--a good deal more in short hand
+than I meant it should have been. I shall sail for Europe the day
+after to-morrow."
+
+"Yes? Is not that a little sudden?"
+
+"More sudden than I wish it were. I am not at all in a travelling
+humor. I have been too much pressed for time to ride out, as I meant
+to do, to your father's house."
+
+"We are all in town now. My father came from New Orleans yesterday,
+very ill."
+
+"I did not hear of it. I trust not dangerously ill."
+
+"He is dying. He cannot live a week."
+
+Morton well knew the strength and depth of her attachment to her
+father. He pressed her hand in silent sympathy.
+
+"It grieves me, Fanny," he said, after a moment, "to part from you
+under such a cloud."
+
+"Good by," she replied, returning the friendly pressure. "I wish you
+with all my heart a pleasant and prosperous journey."
+
+Morton turned back, wondering at the sudden dignity of manner which
+grief had given to the wild and lawless Fanny Euston.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVII.
+
+_Ham_. Thou wouldst not think how ill's all here about my heart, but
+it is no matter.
+
+_Hor_. Nay, good my lord----
+
+_Ham_. It is but foolery; but it is such a kind of gain-giving as
+would perhaps trouble a woman.
+
+_Hor_. If your mind dislike any thing, obey it.
+
+_Ham_. Not a whit. We defy augury.
+
+
+Morton's day of departure came. It was a comfortless, savage, gusty
+morning, an east wind blowing in from the bay. The hour to set sail
+was near; he should have been on board; but still he lingered with
+Edith Leslie. The secrecy on which her father insisted made it
+impossible for her to go with him to the ship.
+
+Morton forced himself away; his hand was on the door, but his heart
+failed him, and he turned back again. On the mind of each there was
+something more than the pain of a year's separation. A dark
+foreboding, a cloud of dull and sullen portent, hung over them both.
+The smooth and bright crusting with which habit and training had iced
+over the warm nature of Edith Leslie was broken and swept away; and as
+Morton seized her hands, she disengaged herself, and, throwing herself
+on his neck, sobbed convulsively. Morton pressed her to his heart, and
+buried his face in her clustering tresses; then, breaking from her,
+ran blindly from the house. He repaired to the house of Meredith, who
+met him at the door.
+
+"You've no time to lose. Here's the carriage. Your trunks are all
+right. Come on."
+
+They drove towards the wharf.
+
+"I'd give my head to change places with you," said Meredith.
+
+"I wish you could."
+
+There was so much pain and dejection in his look, that his friend
+could not fail to observe it.
+
+"You don't want to go, then? I have noticed all along that you seemed
+devilish cool about it."
+
+"Ned," said Morton, "I never used to think myself superstitious; but I
+begin now to change my mind. Heaven knows why, but I have strange
+notions running in my brain. My dog howled all last night; and not
+long ago, an owl yelled over my head, and that, too, at a time---- But
+you'll think I have lost my wits."
+
+Meredith, in truth, was greatly amazed at this betrayal of a weakness
+of which, long and closely as he had known his companion, he had never
+suspected him.
+
+"Why, colonel, I have seen you set out on a journey as long and fifty
+times as hazardous as this, as carelessly as if you were going to a
+dinner party."
+
+"I know it; but times are changed with me. I am not quite the child,
+though, that you may suppose."
+
+"If you have such a feeling about going, I would give it up. It's not
+too late."
+
+"No, I haven't sunk yet to that pass." And, as he spoke, the carriage
+stopped at the pier.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVIII.
+
+  I can't but say it is an awkward sight
+  To see one's native land receding through
+  The growing waters.--_Byron_.
+
+
+The day brightened as the steamer bore out to sea, and the sun
+streamed along the fast-receding shore. Morton stood at the ship's
+stern, gazing back longingly towards his native rocks. Though far from
+inclining to echo those set terms of praise which the progeny of the
+Puritans are fond of lavishing on themselves, he felt himself bound
+with enduring cords to the woods and hills of New England, the scene
+of his boyish aspirations, of his pure ambition, and his devoted love;
+and while the crags of Gloucester faded from his sight, his eyes were
+dimmed as he turned them towards those rugged shores.
+
+"Well, young man, seems to me you look a leetle kind o' streak-ed at
+the idee of quitting home," said a husky voice at his elbow.
+
+Morton turned, and saw a small man, with a meagre, hatchet face, and a
+huge pair of black whiskers hedging round a countenance so dead and
+pallid that one could see at a glance that he was in a consumption. He
+had an eye hard as a flint, one that might have faced a Gorgon without
+risk. Morton regarded him with an expression which told him, as
+plainly as words, to go about his business; but he might as well have
+tried to look an image of brass out of countenance.
+
+"Now _I_," pursued the small man, "have some reason to feel bad. It's
+an even bet if ever I see Boston lighthouse again--about six of one
+and half a dozen of the other. I consider myself a gone sucker. I've
+ben going, going, for about two years, and pretty soon I expect I
+shall be going, going, gone."
+
+These words, uttered in a sort of bravado, were interrupted by a
+violent fit of coughing.
+
+"Ever crossed the pond before?" asked the small man, as soon as he
+could gain breath.
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Business?"
+
+"No."
+
+"I thought not. You don't look like a business man. I know a business
+man, a mile off, by the cut of his jib. I'm a business man myself, and
+a hard used one at that."
+
+Here a fresh fit of coughing began.
+
+"Bad health; bad health, and damned hard luck, that's what has
+finished up this child. If it worn't for them, I should be worth my
+hundred thousand dollars this very minute."
+
+Another fit of coughing.
+
+"So you've ben across before. Well, so've I. That was three years ago,
+by the doctors' advice. It's great advice they give a man. It's good
+for their pockets, and there's deused little else it's good for. I
+spent that year over three thousand dollars; and if I'd staid to home,
+and stuck to my business, _I_ should have ben jest about as well, and
+cleared,--well, yes, I should have cleared double the money, at the
+smallest figger."
+
+More coughing.
+
+"I expect you travel for pleasure."
+
+Morton replied by an inarticulate sound, which the other might
+interpret as he pleased. He chose to interpret it in the affirmative.
+
+"Well, that's all very well for a young man like you. You are young
+enough to like to look at the curiosities, and take an interest in
+what's going on; but I'm too old a bird for that. One night I was down
+to Palermo, there was an eruption of Mount Etna going on. We were on
+the piazzy at the back of Marston the consul's house, and there it was
+blazing away to kill, way off on the further side of the island. Well,
+the ladies was all O-ing and Ah-ing like fits. 'Nonsense!' says I; 'it
+ain't a circumstance to the fire that burnt down my splendid new
+freestone-front store on Broadway. Now that was something worth saying
+O at.'"
+
+More coughing.
+
+"There was a young man there from Boston, and we went round to look at
+the churches. He was all for staring at the pictures, and the marble
+images, and the Lord knows what all, while I went and paced off the
+length of the church from the door up to the altar, and then again
+crosswise. There wasn't a church in Palermo worth shaking a stick at
+that I didn't know the size of, and have it all set down on paper."
+
+"And what good did that do you?"
+
+"What good did that do me? Why, I had something to show for my pains,
+something that would keep. They wanted me to ride up on the back of a
+jackass to the top of a mountain to see a cavern where some she saint
+or other used to live,--St. Rosa Lee, or some such nigger-minstrel
+name."
+
+"St. Rosalie, I suppose you mean."
+
+"St. Rosaly or St. Rosa Lee, it comes to pretty much the same. She was
+fool enough to leave a comfortable home--inside of a palace, too, be
+gad--and go and live all alone by herself in that cavern. Well, they
+wanted me to ride up on the jackass and see it. 'No,' says I, 'you
+don't ketch me,' says I; 'if I did, I might as well change places with
+the jackass right away,' says I."
+
+A fresh fit of coughing.
+
+"Yes, sir, bad health and hard luck, that's ben the finishing of me,
+or else this minute I could show you my solid hundred thousand. The
+fire was what begun it all. A splendid freestone-front store, that
+hadn't its beat in all New York, chock full of goods, that worn't more
+than half covered by the insurance, burnt clean down to the sidewalk!
+Then come the great failure you've heard of--Bragg, Dash, and Bustup.
+I tell you, I was sucked in there to a handsome figger. Top of all
+that, my health caved in,--uh,--uh,--uh." Here the coughing grew
+violent. "Well, I'm a gone sucker, and it's no use crying over spilt
+milk. But if it worn't for bad health and damned hard luck, I should
+have been worth a hun--uh--uh--uh--a hundred thousand
+dol--uh--uh--dollars,--uh--uh--uh--uh--uh."
+
+"This wind is too sharp for you," observed Morton.
+
+"Fact," said the invalid; "I can't stand it no how."
+
+He went down to the cabin, Morton's eye following him in pity and
+disgust.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIX.
+
+  The useful science of the world to know,
+  Which books can never teach, nor pedants show.--_Lyttleton_.
+
+
+The steamer, in due time, reached Liverpool; but Morton remained only
+a few days in England, crossing to Boulogne, and thence to Paris. Here
+he arrived late one afternoon; and taking his seat at the _table
+d'hote_ of Meurice's Hotel, he presently discovered among the guests
+the familiar profile of Vinal, who was just returned from a flying
+tour through the provinces. Vinal seemed not to see him; but at the
+close of the dinner, Morton came behind his chair and spoke to him. At
+his side sat a young man, whose face Morton remembered to have seen
+before. Vinal introduced him as Mr. Richards. When a boy, he had been
+a schoolmate of them both, and now called himself a medical student,
+living on the other side of the Seine. Having been in Paris for two
+years or more, he had, as he prided himself, a thorough knowledge of
+it; that is to say, he knew its sights of all kinds, and places of
+amusement of high and low degree. The sagacious Vinal thought himself
+happy in so able and zealous a guide.
+
+"Mr. Vinal and I are going on an excursion about town to-night," said
+Richards; "won't you go with us?"
+
+"Thank you," replied Morton, "I have letters to write, and do not mean
+to go out this evening."
+
+Vinal and Richards accordingly set forth without him, the latter
+acquitting himself wholly to his companion's satisfaction and his own.
+Vinal, who inclined very little to youthful amusements, contemplated
+all he saw with the eye of a philosopher rather than of a sybarite,
+looking upon it as a curious study of human nature, in the knowledge
+of which he was always eager to perfect himself. In the course of
+their excursion, they entered a large and handsome building on the
+Boulevard des Italiens. Here they passed through a succession of rooms
+filled with men engaged in various games of hazard, more or less deep,
+and came at length to two small apartments, which seemed to form the
+penetralia of the temple.
+
+In the farther of these was a table, about which sat some eight or ten
+well-dressed men, and at the head, a sedate, collected,
+vigilant-looking person, with a little wooden rake in his hand.
+
+"_Messieurs, tout est fait. Rien ne va plus_," he said, drawing
+towards him a plentiful heap of gold coin, almost at the instant that
+Vinal and Richards came in. The game was that moment finished.
+
+As he spoke, a strong, thick-set man rose abruptly from the table,
+muttering a savage oath through his black moustache, and brushing
+fiercely past the two visitors, went out at the door. Richards pressed
+Vinal's arm, as a hint that he should observe him. As the game was not
+immediately resumed, they soon left the room; and after staking and
+losing a few small pieces at another table, returned to the street.
+
+"Did you observe that man who passed us?" asked Richards.
+
+"Yes. He seemed out of humor with his luck."
+
+"He was clean emptied out; I would swear to it. I was afraid he would
+see me as he went by, but he didn't."
+
+"Why, do you know him?"
+
+"O, yes; and you ought to know him too, if you want to understand how
+things are managed hereabouts. He's a
+patriot,--agitator,--democrat,--red republican,--conspirator,--you can
+call him whichever you like, according to taste. He's mixed up with
+all the secret clubs, secret committees, and what not, from one end of
+the continent to the other. He's a sort of political sapper and
+miner,--not exactly like our patriots of '76, but all's fair that aims
+a kick at the House of Hapsburg."
+
+"Has he any special spite in that quarter?"
+
+"He has been intriguing so long in Austria and Lombardy, that now he
+could not show his face there a moment without being arrested. So he
+is living here, where he keeps very quiet at present, for fear of
+consequences."
+
+"What is his name?"
+
+"Speyer,--Henry Speyer."
+
+"A German?"
+
+"No; he's of no nation at all. He belongs to a sort of mongrel breed,
+from the Rock of Gibraltar,--a cross of half the nations in Europe.
+They go by the name of Rock Scorpions. Speyer is a compound of German,
+Spanish, English, French, Genoese, and Moorish, and the result is the
+greatest rascal that ever went unhung. Still you ought to know him; he
+is a curiosity,--one of the men of the times. If you want to know the
+secret springs of the revolution that all the newspapers will be full
+of not many years from this, why, Speyer is one of them."
+
+"But is there not some risk in being in communication with such a
+man?"
+
+"Yes, if one isn't cautious. But, as I'll manage it, it will be
+perfectly safe."
+
+Vinal, though morbidly timorous as respected peril to life or limb,
+was not wholly deficient in the courage of the intriguer--a quality
+quite distinct from the courage of the soldier. Any thing which
+promised to show him human nature under a new aspect, or disclose to
+him a hidden spring of human action, had a resistless attraction in
+his eyes. He therefore assented to Richards's proposal, and promised
+that, at some more auspicious time, he would go with him to the
+patriot's lodging.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXX.
+
+  Those travelled youths whom tender mothers wean
+  And send abroad to see and to be seen,
+  Have made all Europe's vices so well known,
+  They seem almost as natural as our own.--_Churchill_.
+
+
+On the next morning, Vinal, Morton, and two other young Americans were
+seated together in the coffee room at Meurice's. They were discussing
+plans of travel.
+
+"Then you don't intend to stay long in Paris," said one of the
+strangers to Morton.
+
+"Not at present. I shall set out in a few days for Vienna, and then go
+down the Danube."
+
+"That's an original idea. What will you find there worth seeing?"
+
+"It's a fancy of mine. There is no place in Europe where one can see
+such a conglomerate of nations and races as in the provinces along the
+Danube. I like to see the human animal in all his varieties,--that's
+my specialty."
+
+"But what facilities will you find there for travelling?"
+
+"O, I shall be content with any that offer; the vehicles of the
+country, whatever they are. I don't believe in travelling _en grand
+seigneur_. By mixing with the people, and doing at Rome as the Romans
+do, one learns in a month more than he could learn in ten years by the
+other way."
+
+"You'll take your servant with you, I suppose."
+
+"No. I shall discharge him when I leave Paris."
+
+After conversing for some time longer, Morton and the two young men
+left the room, while Vinal still remained faithful to the attractions
+of his omelet. He was interrupted by the advent of the small man who
+had accosted Morton in the steamer, and had since favored him with his
+company from Liverpool to Paris.
+
+"Well, here's a pretty business, damned if there isn't," said the new
+arrival, seating himself indignantly.
+
+"What's the matter?" asked Vinal.
+
+"What's the matter! Why, there's a good deal the matter. There was a
+young man in Philadelphy named Wilkins,--John Wilkins,--I've known him
+ever sence he was knee high to a toad, and a likelier young feller
+there isn't in the States. He was goin' on to make a right smart,
+active, business man, too. Well, he was clerk in one of the biggest
+drug concerns south of New York city,--Gooch and Scammony,--I tell
+you, they do a tall business out west, and no mistake. No, _sir_,
+Gooch and Scammony ain't hardly got their beat in the drug business
+nowhere."
+
+"But what about the clerk?"
+
+"What about him? Why, that's just what I was going on to tell you.
+Well, John, he had a little money laid up; so he thought he'd just
+come out and see a bit of the world. Well, there was a German there at
+Philadelphy who had to cut stick from the old country on account of
+some political muss or other. John and he worn't on good terms;--it
+was about a gal, John says. However, jest about the time John talked
+of coming out to Europe, the German comes and makes it up, and
+pretends to be friends again. 'John,' says he, 'I've got relations out
+to Vienny, where I come from; first-rate, genteel folks; now,' says
+he, 'perhaps you might like me to make you acquainted with 'em. They'd
+do the handsome thing by you, and no mistake.' 'Well,' says John, 'I
+don't mind if you do.' So the German gives him some letters; and, sure
+enough, they treated him very civil; but the very next morning, before
+he was out of bed, up comes the police, and carries him off to jail;
+and that, I guess, would have been about the last we'd ever have seen
+of John Wilkins, if, by the slimmest ghost of a chance, he hadn't got
+word to our minister, and the minister blowed out so hard about it,
+that they just let John go, and said they was very sorry, and it was
+all a mistake, but he'd better make tracks out of Austria in double
+quick time, because if he didn't, they didn't know as there was any
+body there would undertake to be responsible for what might happen."
+
+Here the orator's breath quite failed, and he coughed till his hatchet
+face turned blue. Vinal reflected in silence.
+
+"Wasn't he an Amerikin?" pursued the small man, "and didn't he have an
+Amerikin passport in his pocket? I expect to go where I please, and
+keep what company I please,--uh,--uh,--uh. I'm an Amerikin,--uh,--and
+that's enough; and a considerable wide margin to
+spare,--uh,--uh,--uh."
+
+"But what evidence is there that the German had any thing to do with
+the affair?"
+
+"That's the deused part of the business. There ain't no evidence to
+fix it on him."
+
+"Were the letters he gave your friend sealed?"
+
+"Not a bit of it. They was open, and read jest as fair as need be."
+
+"Probably he was imprudent, and said something which compromised him.
+Stone walls, you know, have ears in Austria."
+
+"Well, I don't know."
+
+"It is very easy for an American to get into trouble with the Austrian
+government. There is a natural antipathy between them."
+
+"Damn such a government."
+
+"Exactly; you're quite right there."
+
+"Why, if you or me was to go down to Austria, and happen to rip out
+what we thought of 'em, where's the guarantee that they wouldn't stick
+us down in some of their prisons, and nobody be any wiser for it?"
+
+"There is no guarantee at all."
+
+"I've heerd said that such things has happened."
+
+"No doubt of it. About this German,--I should advise your friend to be
+cautious how he accuses him of any intention of having him arrested.
+If the letters had been sealed, there might have been some ground for
+suspicion; but as the case stands, I do not see how there can be any.
+And it is a little hard upon a man, when he meant to do a kindness, to
+charge him with playing such a trick as that."
+
+"Well, it may be as you think. It looks like enough, any way."
+
+The small man addressed himself to his breakfast. Vinal sat playing
+with his spoon, his brain filled with busy and feverish thoughts.
+
+In a few minutes, a messenger from an American banking house came in,
+looking about the room as if in search of some person. Observing
+Vinal, whom he had seen before, he asked if he knew where Mr. Morton
+was.
+
+"Letters there for me?" demanded Vinal, taking several which the
+messenger held in his hand, and glancing over the directions.
+
+"No, sir, they are all Mr. Morton's."
+
+At that instant Vinal discovered the well-remembered handwriting of
+Edith Leslie. His pale face grew a shade paler.
+
+"O, Mr. Morton's! I don't know where you will find him," and he gave
+back the letters to the messenger, who presently left the room.
+
+Vinal sat for a few minutes more, brooding in silence; then slowly
+rose, and walked away. In going towards the room of the hotel which he
+occupied, he passed along a corridor, opposite the end of which opened
+a parlor occupied by Morton. The door was open, and Vinal, as he
+advanced, could plainly see his rival within. Morton had been on the
+point of going out. His hat and gloves lay on the table at his side;
+near them were three or four sealed letters; another--Vinal well knew
+from whom--was open in his hands; and as he stood bending over it,
+there was a sunlight in the eye of the successful lover which shot
+deadly envy into the breast of Vinal. Hate and jealousy gnawed and
+rankled at his heart.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXI.
+
+  Though I do hate him as I do hell pains,
+  I must throw out a flag and sign of love.--_Othello_.
+
+
+That day Vinal drove to the Quartier Latin, called upon his friend
+Richards, and asked him to dine at the Trois Freres Provencaux. Mr.
+Richards was never known to decline such an invitation.
+
+To the Trois Freres accordingly they repaired. Richards, whose social
+position at home was much inferior to that of his entertainer, thought
+the latter a capital fellow; especially when Vinal flattered him by
+deferring to his better taste and experience in the ordering of the
+dinner. But when, after nightfall, they issued forth again upon the
+open area of the Palais Royal, the delicate Vinal shivered with the
+cold. A chill wind and a dreary rain had set in, and Vinal, always
+cautious in such matters, said that before proceeding on their
+evening's amusements, he would go to Meurice's and get an overcoat.
+
+The overcoat being found, Vinal, buttoned to the chin, came down the
+stairway, and rejoined Richards.
+
+Morton had just before sent a servant for a carriage, to drive to the
+opera, and was waiting wrapped in his cloak, on the steps outside the
+door.
+
+"What shall our first move be?" asked Richards of Vinal, as they
+passed out.
+
+"Whatever you like."
+
+"You had better give the word."
+
+"Then suppose we go and see your friend, the professor."
+
+"Who the deuse is Richards's friend, the professor?" thought Morton,
+as the others passed without observing him.
+
+"The professor" was a cant term for Mr. Henry Speyer.
+
+Speyer lived in an obscure part of the Latin quarter; and Richards,
+who was vain of his intimacy with this scoundrel, as indicating how
+deeply he was versed in Paris life, approached his lodging with much
+circumspection, by dim and devious routes.
+
+"My name is Wilton, and I hail from New Orleans," said Vinal, as they
+reached the patriot's threshold.
+
+As Mr. Wilton, of New Orleans, then, Vinal became known to Mr. Henry
+Speyer. The latter's quarters were any thing but commodious or
+attractive; and Richards invited him to a _petit souper_ at his own
+lodgings, which were not very remote. Leaving Speyer to make his own
+way thither, he proceeded to summon two additional guests, in the
+persons of two friends of his own, his favorite partners at the
+Chaumiere. With the aid of wine and cigars, the party became, in time,
+very animated. Vinal, who had a quick and pungent wit, drew upon
+himself much applause, and Speyer regarded him with especial
+commendation. But while he played his part thus successfully, he was
+studying his companions, as a scholar studies a book; studiously
+keeping himself cool; sipping a few drops of his wine, and slyly
+spilling the rest under the table, while he did his best to stimulate
+the others, and especially Speyer, to drink. Speyer drank, indeed, but
+the wine seemed to produce no more effect on him than water. He
+remained as cool as Vinal himself. The latter, young as he was, was a
+close and penetrating judge of men; and when, at two o'clock in the
+morning, he returned to his hotel, he carried with him the conviction
+that, in his present beggared condition, a few hundred francs would
+bribe the patriot to commit any moderately safe villany.
+
+The evening, however, had had one result which Vinal regretted. Mr.
+Richards, being obfuscated with champagne, had repeatedly called him
+by his true name; so that Speyer was fully aware that his new
+acquaintance was not Mr. Wilton, of New Orleans, but Mr. Horace Vinal,
+of Boston.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXII.
+
+  And, far the blackest there, the traitor friend.--_Dryden_.
+
+
+Several days had passed, during which Vinal contrived to have more
+than one private interview with his new acquaintance, Speyer. He had
+sounded him with much astuteness; found that he could serve him; and
+was confirmed in his assurance that he would.
+
+Morton, he knew, was to leave Paris on the next morning. The time to
+act was now, or never.
+
+At about three in the afternoon, he discovered his rival sauntering
+along an avenue in the garden of the Tuileries; and walking up behind,
+he joined him.
+
+"There are some of us," said Vinal, after a few moments' conversation,
+"going to Versailles to-morrow. Will you go?"
+
+"I mean to leave Paris to-morrow."
+
+"To-morrow! That's very sudden."
+
+"I shall come back again in a few months."
+
+"Your first move is to Italy, I think you said."
+
+"No, to Austria and the Danube."
+
+"O, I remember; it is West who is going to Italy. I think he has
+chosen the better route of the two."
+
+"Yes, as far as history and works of art are concerned. But the
+Austrian provinces are the best field for me. I am mounted on a hobby,
+you know, and my time is so short that I must make the most of what I
+have."
+
+"You wish to see the people--the different races--is that it?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"You ought to be well booked up before you go, or you'll lose time. By
+the way, I made an acquaintance a little while ago in the diligence
+from Strasburg--a very agreeable man, a professor at Berlin----"
+
+"O, the professor whom you and Richards were going to see, the other
+night."
+
+A thrill shot through Vinal's nerves; but the unsuspecting Morton
+almost instantly relieved his terror.
+
+"I was standing on the steps as you went out, and heard you say that
+you were going to visit him. From the way in which you spoke, I
+imagined him to be some professor of the noble art of self-defence."
+
+"Ha, ha!" laughed Vinal, not quite recovered from his surprise; "no,
+not precisely that; Speyer is a philologist--that's his department."
+
+"And Richards knows him, too?"
+
+"Yes, through my introduction."
+
+"From your calling him 'his friend, the professor,' I imagined that
+the acquaintance began the other way."
+
+"Yes, his friend, with a vengeance. Confound the fellow, as I was
+walking with him the other day, we met Speyer, and I, thinking no
+harm, introduced them; but it wasn't twenty-four hours before Richards
+was at him to borrow money, which Speyer let him have. I dare say
+Richards has bled you as well."
+
+"No."
+
+"No? Then you are luckier than I am. I advise you to keep out of his
+way, or he'll pin you before you know it."
+
+"I should judge as much."
+
+"I spoke of Professor Speyer because he was born in some outlandish
+corner of the Austrian empire,--Croatia, I think he told me,--and had
+his head full of political soap bubbles founded on the distribution of
+races in that part of the world. He put me to sleep half a dozen times
+with talking about Pansclavism and the manifest destinies of the
+Sclavic peoples. He is the very man for you; and I am sorry I didn't
+think of it before."
+
+"Well," said Morton, "I must blunder through as I can."
+
+"Are you at leisure? I'll go with you this afternoon, if you like, and
+call on him."
+
+"I dare say my visit would bore him."
+
+"Get him upon the races in the Austrian empire, and he will be more
+apt to bore you. Are you free at four o'clock?" pursued Vinal, looking
+at his watch.
+
+"Yes, quite so."
+
+"Very well. I'm going now to my tailor's. Every genuine American, you
+know, must have a new fit-out in Paris. I'll meet you at Meurice's at
+four, and we'll go from there to Speyer's."
+
+Vinal had three quarters of an hour to spare. He spent a part of them
+in forging the next link of his chain. At four he rejoined Morton, and
+they walked out together.
+
+"I think you'll like Professor Speyer," said Vinal. "I have become
+quite intimate with him, on the strength of a fortnight's
+acquaintance. He urges me to go to Hungary and Transylvania, and
+offered me introductions to his friends there. It would not be a bad
+plan for you to ask him for letters. They would not make you
+acquainted with the Austrian _haut ton_, but they would bring you into
+contact with men of his own stamp,--people of knowledge and
+intelligence, who could be of great service to you, and with whom you
+needn't be on terms of much ceremony.--Here's the place;--he lives
+here."
+
+It was a lodging house on the Rue Rivoli. Vinal rang the bell. The
+porter appeared.
+
+"Is Professor Speyer at home?"
+
+"_Non, monsieur; il est sorti._"
+
+Vinal had just bribed the man to give this answer.
+
+"That's unlucky," he said. "Well, if you like, we can come again this
+evening."
+
+"I am engaged to dine this evening at Madame ----'s."
+
+Vinal had known of this engagement.
+
+"I don't see, then, but that you will lose your chance with Speyer.
+Well, _fortune de guerre_. I should like to have had you see him,
+though."
+
+And they walked towards the Boulevards, conversing on indifferent
+matters.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXIII.
+
+  Whose nature is so far from doing evil
+  That he suspects none; on whose foolish honesty
+  My practices ride easy.--_King Lear_.
+
+
+Early the next morning, Morton was writing in his room, when Vinal
+came in.
+
+"Are you still bent on going off to-day?"
+
+"Yes, within an hour."
+
+"I was passing last evening by Professor Speyer's lodgings, and,
+seeing a light at his window, went in. I told him that I had come to
+find him in the afternoon with an old acquaintance of mine, who was
+going to the Austrian provinces, and that I had advised you to ask
+introductions from him to his friends there. He was a good deal
+interested, as I knew he would be, in what I told him about the
+objects of your journey. 'I'm very sorry,' he said, 'that I did not
+see your friend, for I could have given him letters which I don't
+doubt would have been of great use to him. But wait a few minutes,'
+said he, 'and I'll write a few lines now.' Here they are," continued
+Vinal, giving to Morton four or five notes of introduction. "You can
+put them in your pocket, and use them or not, as you may find
+convenient."
+
+"I'm very much obliged to you," said Morton. "Tell Professor Speyer
+that I am greatly indebted to his kindness, and shall be happy to
+avail myself of it. You are looking very pale; are you ill?"
+
+"No, not at all," stammered Vinal, "but, what is nearly as bad, I have
+been kept awake all night with a raging toothache."
+
+He had been awake all night, but not with toothache.
+
+"There is one consolation for that trouble; cold steel will cure it."
+
+"Yes, but the remedy is none of the pleasantest. I won't interrupt you
+any longer. Good by. I wish you a pleasant journey."
+
+He shook hands with Morton, and, pressing his haggard cheek, as if to
+stifle the pain, left the room.
+
+With a new letter from Edith Leslie before him, Morton saw the world
+in rose tint. Happiness blinded him, and he was in no mood to doubt of
+human nature. He blamed himself for his harsh opinions of Vinal.
+
+"It's very generous of him to interest himself at this time, in my
+affairs. ''Tis my nature's plague to spy into abuses.' I have
+misjudged him. He is a better fellow than I ever took him for."
+
+The notes were written in a peculiarly neat, small hand, and bore the
+signature of Henry Speyer. They all spoke of Morton as interested in a
+common object with the person addressed; but, with this exception,
+there was nothing in them which drew his attention, especially as they
+were in German, a language with which he was not very familiar. As for
+the circumstance of their having been given at all to a person whom
+the writer had never seen, Morton accounted for it on the score of the
+good natured professor's desire to oblige his valued friend Vinal.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXIV.
+
+  Things bad begun make strong themselves by ill.--_Macbeth_.
+
+
+The requisites of a successful villain are manifold. The toughened
+conscience, the ready wit, the sage experience, the mind tutored, like
+Iago, in all qualities of human dealing,--all these, in some
+reasonable measure, Vinal had; but he miserably lacked the vulgar, but
+no less needful requisite of a sound bodily fibre to support the
+workings of his brain. His mind was a good lever with a feeble
+fulcrum; a gun mounted on a tottering rampart. When every breath of
+emotion that touches the fine-strung organism quivers along the
+electric chord to the brain, kindling there strange perturbations,
+then philosophy must lower her tone, and stoicism itself must soon
+confess that its only resource is to avoid the enemy with whom it
+cannot cope. Vinal was but ill fitted to act the part he had
+undertaken. The excitements of villany were too much for him. Peace of
+mind was as needful to him as food and drink. He had been battling all
+his life against what he imagined to be a defect of his mental forces,
+but which had, in the main, no deeper root than in the sensitiveness
+of his bodily constitution. In prudence and common sense, he was bound
+to seek asylum in that blissful serenity, that benignant calm, said to
+be the unfailing attendant on piety and good works. Never did Nature
+give a sharper hint than she gave to Vinal to eschew evil courses, and
+leaving rascality to tougher nerves, to tread the placid paths of
+virtue and discretion. Vinal saw fit to disregard the hint, and the
+consequences became somewhat grievous.
+
+While his intrigue was in progress, his nerves had given him no great
+trouble. Hate and jealousy absorbed him. He was steadfast in his
+purpose to get rid of his rival. But now that the mine was laid, and
+the match lighted, a change began to come upon him. It was his maiden
+felony; his first _debut_ in the distinct character of a scoundrel;
+and, though his conscience was none of the liveliest, it sufficed to
+visit him with some qualms. Anxieties, doubts, fears, began to prey
+upon him; sleep failed him; his nerves were set more and more on edge;
+in short, body and mind, mutually acting on each other, were fast
+bringing him to a state quite adverse to the maxims of his philosophy.
+
+When a sophomore in college, his favorite reading had been Foster's
+Essay on Decision of Character, and he had aspired to realize in his
+own person the type of character therein set forth; the man of steel,
+who, in his firm march towards his ends, knows neither doubts, nor
+waverings, nor relentings. Of this ideal he was now falling lamentably
+short; and as, at two o'clock in the morning, he rose from his
+restless bed, and paced his chamber to and fro, vainly upbraiding his
+weakness, and struggling to reason down the rebellious vibration of
+his nerves, he was any thing but the inexorable hero of his boyish
+fancy.
+
+"The thing is done,"--so he communed with himself,--"it was
+deliberately done, and well done. That hound is chained and muzzled,
+or will be so soon. For a time, at least, he is out of my path. But is
+he? What if he should escape the trap? What if those men to whom I
+have sent him are less an abomination in the eyes of the government
+than there is reason to think them? No doubt he will be compromised;
+no doubt he will get into difficulty; but if he should get out again!
+if, within a year from this he should come home to charge me with
+trapanning him! Pshaw! he could prove nothing. He would be thought
+malicious if he accused me. But he may suspect!" and this idea
+sufficed to fill his excited mind with fresh agitation. For three
+nights he had been without sleep; and now his irritable system was
+wrought almost to the point of fever.
+
+"Half measures are nothing! The nail must be driven home and clinched!
+I must make sure of him." And early in the morning he went to find
+Speyer.
+
+Speyer was not to be found. In his eagerness, he went again and again
+to seek him, though he knew that there was risk in doing so. At length
+he succeeded; and in spite of his resolute and long-practised
+self-control, his confederate saw at a glance, in his shining eye,
+flushed cheek, and the nervous compression of his lips, that he was
+under a great, though a painfully repressed excitement.
+
+"Well, monsieur, do you hear any thing from your friend?"
+
+"No, it is not time to hear."
+
+"You will have to wait a long while before the time comes."
+
+"Your letters were very well so far as they go; but the thing should
+be done thoroughly. What I wish you to do is this. Write to him a
+letter, implicating him in your revolutionary plot. He will be under
+suspicion. Every letter sent to him will be stopped and opened by the
+police."
+
+"If that is done, I will warrant you quit of him; at least for some
+years to come."
+
+"They will imprison him," said Vinal, nervously, "but that will be the
+whole,--his life will be in no danger."
+
+"His life!" returned Speyer, glancing sidelong at his visitor; "don't
+be troubled on that score. They won't kill him."
+
+"Then write the letter," said Vinal, laying a rouleau of gold on the
+table, "and write it in such a way that it shall spring the trap on
+him, and keep him caged till doomsday."
+
+The letter was written. Vinal read it, re-read it, sealed it, and with
+a quivering hand thrust it into the post office.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXV.
+
+  Thy hope is young, thy heart is strong, but yet a day may be,
+  When thou shalt weep in dungeon deep, and none thy weeping see.
+                                               _The Count of Saldana_.
+
+
+Morton had left Vienna, and was journeying in the diligence on the
+confines of Styria. The cumbrous machine had been lumbering on all
+night. Awaking at daybreak from his comfortless sleep, and looking
+through the breath-bedimmed panes before him, he saw the postilion's
+shoulders wearily jolting up and down with the motion of the lazy
+horses. He had one fellow-traveller in the compartment which he
+occupied, a man of thirty-five or thereabouts, who had taken the
+diligence late the evening before, and who now, his shoulders
+supported by the leather straps which hung for the purpose from the
+roof, and his head tumbling forward on his chest, was dozing with a
+ludicrously grim expression of countenance. At length a sudden jolt
+awakened him; he started, shook himself, looked about him, inclined
+his head by way of salutation to his fellow-traveller, and opened a
+conversation with a remark on the chillness of the morning. After
+conversing for a time in French, the stranger said in excellent
+English, "I see there is no need of our speaking French, for by your
+accent I judge that you are English. I myself have a little of the
+English about me; that is to say, I was four years at Oxford, though I
+am German by birth."
+
+"I am not English, though my ancestors were."
+
+"You are American, then?" said the stranger, looking at him with some
+curiosity; and from this beginning, their acquaintance ripened fast.
+The German, regarding his companion as a young man of more
+intelligence than experience, conversed with an ease and frankness
+which fast gained upon Morton's confidence. He proved, indeed, a
+storehouse of information, discoursing of the people, the country, and
+even the government, with little reserve, and an admirable copiousness
+and minuteness of knowledge. At length he asked Morton if he had any
+acquaintance in Austria.
+
+"None, excepting one or two persons at Vienna, to whom I had letters."
+
+"Then you have probably made agreeable acquaintances. The society of
+Vienna is a very pleasant one."
+
+"My letters were, or purported to be, to _savans_ and literary men."
+
+"There, too, you should have found persons well worth the meeting."
+
+"I have no doubt of it."
+
+"You do not speak," said the investigating stranger, with a smile,
+"like one who has been much pleased with his experience."
+
+"I have had no opportunity to judge fairly of the Viennese _savans_."
+
+"Your letters gave you no opportunity?"
+
+"They were given me at Paris, in a rather singular way; and, to say
+the truth, the persons to whom they introduced me were so little to my
+taste, that after delivering one or two of them, I determined not to
+use the rest."
+
+"You appear to have been very unfortunate. Will you allow me to ask to
+whom your letters were addressed?"
+
+"They were written by a person whom I never saw, and were given to me
+by a friend,--an acquaintance,--of mine, as a means of gaining
+information about the country; such information as that for which I am
+indebted to you. I have been a good deal perplexed as to the character
+of the persons to whom they were written."
+
+"Very probably I could aid you."
+
+Morton mentioned the names of the men he had seen.
+
+The German at first looked puzzled, then amazed, then distrustful.
+
+"Your letters were got for you by a friend of yours?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"And were written by----"
+
+"A professor from Berlin, named Speyer,--Henry Speyer."
+
+"Henry Speyer!" repeated the German, in astonishment.
+
+"You were saying that you had lived for some years at Berlin. Perhaps
+you can tell me who and what he is."
+
+"I know of no Professor Henry Speyer at Berlin."
+
+"This man, I am told, is well known as a philologist."
+
+"There is a Henry Speyer who is a philologist, so far as speaking
+every language in Europe can make him one; but he was never a
+professor in Berlin or any where else."
+
+Morton looked perplexed. The German studied his face for a moment, and
+then said,--
+
+"You say that a friend of yours gave you letters from Henry Speyer to
+the men you just named?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"I beg your pardon! Have you ever quarrelled with your friend? Are you
+on terms with your friend's mistress? or do you stand between your
+friend and a fortune?"
+
+A cold thrill passed through Morton's frame. There was an approach to
+truth in both the two last suppositions.
+
+"Either you are very much deeper than I know how to comprehend you, or
+else you are the victim of a plot."
+
+"What kind of plot?" demanded the startled Morton; "who is Speyer, and
+who are the other men?"
+
+"I will tell you. Speyer is an intriguer, a revolutionist, a man in
+every way infamous. As for his being a professor, he is no more a
+professor than he is a prime minister, and you may ascribe what
+motives you please to your friend for giving him the name. He dares
+not set foot in Austria. If he did, it would go very hard with him.
+The other men are of the same kidney--his aiders, abetters, fellow
+conspirators; known or suspected to be plotting for the overthrow of
+the government."
+
+"Then why are they at liberty?"
+
+"Do you call it liberty to be day and night under the eye of the
+police--to be dogged and watched every hour of their lives? They serve
+as a sort of decoy. All who hold communication with them are noted
+down as dangerous; and my only wonder is, that you have not before
+this heard from the police."
+
+"And what would you advise me to do?"
+
+"Get out of Austria as soon and as quietly as you can. When you have
+passed the frontier you will be safe, and not before."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXVI.
+
+            Monsieur, j'ai deux mots a vous dire;
+  Messieurs les marechaux, dont j'ai commandement,
+  Vous mandent de venir les trouver promptement,
+  Monsieur.--_Le Misanthrope_.
+
+
+That evening Morton arrived at the post house at ----. He was alone,
+his companion of the morning, whose route lay in another direction,
+having left him long before. At the head of the ancient staircase, the
+host welcomed him with a "good night," and ushered him into a large,
+low, wooden room, where some thirty men and women were smoking,
+eating, and lounging among the tables and benches. Old Germans talked
+over their beer pots, and puffed at their pipes; young ones laughed
+and bantered with the servant girls. A Frenchman, _en route_ for
+Laibach, gulped down his bowlful of soup, sprang to the window when he
+heard the postilion's horn, bounded back to finish his tumbler of
+wine, then seized his cane, and dashed out in hot haste. A small, prim
+student strutted to the window to watch him, pipe in hand, and an
+amused grin on his face; then turned to roar for more beer, and joke
+with the girl who brought it.
+
+Morton sat alone, incensed, disturbed, anxious. He had resolved to go
+no farther without taking measures to secure his own safety; and a day
+or two, he hoped, would place him out of the reach of danger.
+Meanwhile, what with his horror at the villany which had duped him,
+his anger with himself at being duped, and the consciousness that the
+hundred-handed despotism of Austria might at any moment close its
+gripe upon him, the condition of his mind was far from enviable.
+
+As he surveyed the noisy groups around him, three men appeared at the
+door. Morton sipped his wine, and watched them uneasily out of the
+corner of his eye. One of them was a military officer; another was a
+tall man in a civil dress; the third was the conductor of the
+diligence in which Morton had travelled all day. The conductor looked
+towards him significantly; the tall man inclined his head, as a token
+that he understood the sign. Then approaching, hat in hand, he said
+very courteously, in French,--
+
+"Pardon, monsieur; I regret that I must give you some little trouble.
+I have a carriage below; will you have the goodness to accept a seat
+in it?"
+
+"To go whither?" demanded Morton, in alarm.
+
+"To the office of police, monsieur."
+
+The Austrian Briareus had clutched him at last.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXVII.
+
+  Are you called forth, from out a world of men,
+  To slay the innocent? What is my offence?
+  Where is the evidence that doth accuse me?
+  What lawful quest have given their verdict up
+  Unto the frowning judge?--_Richard III_.
+
+
+"You have trifled long enough," said the commissioner; "declare what
+you know, or you shall be dealt with summarily."
+
+A long journey, manacled like a felon, and guarded by dragoons with
+loaded carbines; a rigorous imprisonment, already five months
+protracted; repeated examinations before a military tribunal;
+cross-questionings, threats, and insults, to extort his supposed
+secrets;--all these had formed a sharp transition from the halcyon
+days of Vassall Morton's prosperity.
+
+"Declare what you know, or you shall be dealt with summarily."
+
+"I know nothing, and therefore can declare nothing."
+
+"You have held that tone long enough. Do you imagine that we are to be
+deceived by your inventions? Tell what you know, or in twenty minutes
+you will be led to the rampart and shot."
+
+"I am in your power, and you can do what you will."
+
+The commissioner spoke in German to the corporal of the guard, who
+took Morton into custody, and was leading him from the room.
+
+"Stop," cried the official, from his seat.
+
+Morton turned.
+
+"You are destroying yourself, young man."
+
+"It is false. You are murdering me."
+
+"Do not answer me. I tell you, you are murdering yourself. Are you the
+fool to fling away your life in a fit of obstinacy?"
+
+"Are you the villain to shoot innocent men in cold blood?"
+
+The commissioner swore a savage oath, and with an angry gesture sent
+the corporal from the room.
+
+The corporal led his prisoner along the corridor, which had grown
+ruefully familiar to Morton's eye; but instead of following the way
+which led to the latter's cell, he turned into a much wider and more
+commodious passage. Here, at his open door, stood Padre Luca,
+confessing priest of the castle.
+
+Padre Luca had mistaken his calling, when he took it upon him to
+discharge such a function. He was too tender of heart, too soft of
+nature; ill seasoned, moreover, to his work, for he had been but a
+week in the fortress, and this was the first victim whom it behooved
+him to prepare for death. And when he saw the young prisoner, and
+learned the instant doom under which he stood, his nerves grew
+tremulous, and he found no words to usher in his ghostly counsels.
+
+Corporal Max Kubitski, with a face unperturbed as a block, unfettered
+Morton's wrists, left him with the confessor, and withdrew, placing a
+soldier on guard at the door without. Morton sat silent and calm. The
+hand of Padre Luca quivered with agitation.
+
+"My son," he began; and here his voice faltered.
+
+"I trust," he said, finding his tongue again, "that you are a faithful
+child of our holy mother, the church, and that the heresies and
+infidelities of these times----"
+
+"Father," said Morton, willingly adopting the filial address to the
+kind-hearted priest, "I am a Protestant. I was born and bred among
+Protestants. I respect your ancient church for the good she has done
+in ages past, and for the good men who have held her faith; but I do
+not believe her doctrine, nor approve her practice."
+
+The priest's face betrayed his discomposure.
+
+"My son, my dear son, it is not too late; it is never too late. Listen
+to the truth; renounce your fatal errors. I will baptize you; and when
+you are gone, I will pray our great saint of Milan to intercede for
+you, and I will say masses for your soul."
+
+Morton smiled faintly, and shook his head.
+
+"I thank you; but it is too late for conversion. I must die in my
+heresy, as I have lived."
+
+"So young!" exclaimed Padre Luca; "and so calm on the brink of
+eternity! Ah, it is hard to die, when so much is left to enjoy; but it
+is worse to plunge from present suffering into everlasting despair."
+And he proceeded to give a most graphic picture of post-mortal
+torments, drawn from the Spiritual Exercises of Saint Ignatius, a work
+very familiar to his meditations. This dire imagery failed to convince
+the dying heretic.
+
+"My mind is made up. I cannot believe your doctrine, but I can feel
+your kindness. You have spoken the first friendly words that I have
+heard for months."
+
+"It is hard that you should die so unprepared, and so young. You have
+relatives? You have friends?"
+
+"More than friends! More than friends!" groaned Morton. And as a flood
+of recollection swept over him, his heart for a moment was sick with
+anguish.
+
+"Come with me," whispered Padre Luca. He led the way into the chapel
+of the castle, which adjoined his room. Here he bowed and crossed
+himself before an altar, over which was displayed a painting of the
+Virgin.
+
+"Our Blessed Mother is full of love, full of mercy. See,--hang this
+round your neck"--placing in his hand a small medal on which her image
+was stamped. "Go and kneel before that altar, and repeat these words,"
+pointing to the Ave Maria in a little book of devotion. "Call on her
+with a true heart, and she will have pity. She cannot see you perish,
+body and soul. She will appear, and teach you the truth."
+
+There was so much of earnestness and sincerity in his words, that
+Morton felt nothing but gratitude as he answered,--
+
+"It would be no better than a mockery, if I should do as you wish. I
+cannot----"
+
+Here a clear, deep voice from the adjacent room interrupted him.
+
+"Mother of heaven!" cried Padre Luca, greatly agitated.
+
+"I am ready," answered Morton, in a voice firm as that which summoned
+him.
+
+He returned to the priest's apartment, and in the doorway stood the
+athletic corporal, like the statue of a modern Mars.
+
+"_Mio figlio! Mio caro figlio!_" faltered Padre Luca, laying a
+tremulous hand on the young man's shoulder. The kindly accents of the
+melodious Italian fell on his ear like a strain of music.
+
+"You must not die now; you are not prepared. I will go to the
+commissioner. He will grant time."
+
+He was pushing past the corporal, when Morton gently checked him.
+
+"I thank you, father, a thousand times; but if I must die, there is no
+mercy in a half hour's delay. Let me go. This sentence may be, after
+all, a kindness."
+
+The corporal took him into custody; and, with three soldiers before
+and three behind, he moved towards his place of execution. He seemed
+to himself like one not fully awake; the stern reality would not come
+home to his thoughts, until, as he was mounting a flight of steps
+leading to the rampart, a vivid remembrance glowed upon him of that
+summer evening when, in her father's garden, Edith Leslie had accepted
+his love. It was with a desperate effort of pride and resolution that
+he quelled the emotion which rose choking to his throat, and murmuring
+a petition for her safety, walked forward with an unchanged face.
+
+A light shone in upon the passage, and they stood in a moment upon the
+rampart, whence a panorama of sunny mountains opened on the view. It
+was a space of some extent, paved with flag-stones, and compassed with
+battlements and walls. On one side stood, leaning on their muskets, a
+file of Bohemian soldiers, in their close frogged uniforms and long
+mustaches. These, with their officer, Corporal Kubitski, with his six
+men, a sub-official acting for the commissioner, and Padre Luca, were
+the only persons present, besides the prisoner. The latter was placed
+before the Bohemians, at the distance of twelve or fourteen paces. The
+corporal and his men drew aside.
+
+"Now," demanded the deputy, "will you confess what you know, or will
+you die?"
+
+"I have told you, once and again, that I have nothing to confess."
+
+"Then take the consequence of your obstinacy."
+
+He motioned to the officer. A word of command was given. Each soldier
+loaded with ball, and the ramrods rattled as they sent home the
+charge. Another command, and the cocked muskets rose to the level,
+concentrating their aim against the prisoner's breast.
+
+"If you will speak, speak now. You have a quarter of a minute to save
+yourself." And the deputy took out his watch.
+
+Morton turned his head slowly, and looked at him for an instant in
+silence.
+
+"Speak, speak," cried Padre Luca, pressing towards him; "tell him what
+you know."
+
+The sharp voice of the officer warned him back.
+
+Morton stood with compressed lips, and every nerve at its tension, in
+instant expectation of the volley; already, in fancy, he felt the
+bullets plunging through his breast; but not a muscle flinched, and he
+fronted the deadly muzzles with an unblenching eye. The deputy
+scrutinized his face, and turned away, muttering. At that moment a
+man, who through the whole scene had stood hidden in the entrance of a
+passage, ran out with a pretence of great haste and earnestness, and
+called to stop the execution, since the commissioner had granted a
+reprieve. In fact, the whole affair was a sham, played off upon the
+prisoner to terrify him into confession.
+
+The Bohemians recovered their muskets, and the bewildered Morton was
+once more in custody of the corporal, who led him, guarded as before,
+back towards his cell. Padre Luca, who thought that an interposition
+of the Virgin had softened the commissioner's heart, hastened to his
+oratory to pray for the heretic's conversion. Faint and heartsick,
+Morton scarcely knew what was passing, till he was thrust in at his
+narrow door. The jailer was there, but the corporal entered also, to
+aid in taking the handcuffs from his wrists.
+
+One might have looked in vain among ten thousand to find a nobler
+model of masculine proportion than this soldier. He stood more than
+six feet high, and Morton, who loved to look upon a man, had often,
+even in his distress, admired his martial bearing and the powerful
+symmetry of his frame. His face, too, was singularly fine in its way,
+and though the discipline of long habit usually banished from it any
+distinct expression, yet the cast of the features, and the manly curve
+of the lip, which the thick brown mustache could not wholly hide,
+seemed to augur a brave, generous, and loyal nature.
+
+More stupefied than cheered at being snatched, as he supposed, from
+the jaws of death, Morton stood passive while his hands were released.
+The jailer left him for a moment, and crossed over to the opposite
+corner of the cell. His back was turned as he did so. The corporal's
+six soldiers were all in the passage without. At that instant, Morton
+felt a warm breath at his ear, and heard whispered in a barbarous
+accent,--
+
+"_Courage, mon ami! Vive la liberte! Vive l'Amerique!_"
+
+He turned; but the martial visage of the corporal was unmoved as
+bronze; and, in a moment more, the iron door clanged behind him as he
+disappeared.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXVIII.
+
+  O Death, why now so slow art thou? why fearest thou to smite?
+                                     _Lamentation of Don Roderick_.
+
+  When all the blandishments of life are gone,
+  The coward sneaks to death, the brave live on.--_Sewell_.
+
+
+The whispered words of the corporal kindled a spark of hope in
+Morton's breast; but it was destined to fade and die. Once he was sure
+that he heard the tones of his voice in the passage without his cell;
+but weeks passed, months passed, and he did not see him again.
+
+And now let the curtain drop for a space of three years.
+
+Morton was still a prisoner. Despair was at hand. He longed to die.
+His longing at length seemed near its accomplishment. A raging fever
+seized him, and for days he lay delirious, balanced on the brink of
+death. But his constitution endured the shock; and late one night he
+lay on his pallet, exhausted, worn to a skeleton, yet fully conscious
+of his situation.
+
+The locks clashed, the hinges jarred, and a physician of the prison, a
+bulky German, stood at his side.
+
+He felt his patient's pulse.
+
+"Shall I die, or not?" demanded the sick man.
+
+"Die!" echoed the German, a laugh gurgling within him, like the first
+symptom of an earthquake; "all men die, but this sickness will never
+kill you. It would have killed ninety-nine out of a hundred; but you
+are as tough as a rhinoceros."
+
+Morton turned to the wall, and cursed the hour when he was born.
+
+The German gave a prescription to his attendant; the locks clashed
+again behind him, and Morton was left alone with his misery.
+
+The lamp in the passage without shone through the grated opening above
+the door, and shed a square of yellow light on the black, damp stones
+of the dungeon. They sweated and trickled with a clammy moisture; and
+the brick pavement was wet, as if the clouds had rained upon it.
+Morton lay motionless as a dead man. The crisis of his disorder was
+past; but its effects were heavy upon him, and his mind shared the
+deep exhaustion of his body. Perilous thoughts rose upon him, spectral
+and hollow-eyed.
+
+"By what right am I doomed to this protracted misery? By what justice,
+when a refuge is at hand, am I forbidden to fly to it? I have only to
+drag myself from this bed, and rest for a few moments on those wet,
+cold bricks, and all the medicines in Austria could not keep me many
+days a prisoner. And who could blame me? Who could say that I
+destroyed myself? It is not suicide. It is but aiding kindly nature to
+do a deed of mercy."
+
+He repelled the thought; but it returned. He repelled it again, but
+still it returned. The insidious demon was again and again at his ear,
+stealing back with a noiseless gliding, smoothly commending her poison
+to his lips, soothing his worn spirit as the vampire fans its
+slumbering victim with its wings. But his better nature, not without a
+higher appeal, fortified itself against her, and struggled to hold its
+ground.
+
+When the French besieged Saragossa; when her walls crumbled before
+their batteries; when, day by day, through secret mine or open
+assault, foot by foot, they won their way inward towards her heart;
+when treason within aided force without, and famine and pestilence
+leagued against her,--still her undespairing children refused to
+yield. Sick men dragged themselves to the barricades, women and boys
+pointed the cannon, and her heroic banner still floated above the
+wreck.
+
+Thus, spent with disease, gnawed with pertinacious miseries, assailed
+by black memories of the past, and blacker forebodings of the future,
+did Morton maintain his weary battle with despair.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXIX.
+
+                   Who would lose,
+  Though full of pain, this intellectual being,
+  These thoughts that wander through eternity?
+
+  To be weak is miserable,
+  Doing or suffering.--_Paradise Lost_.
+
+
+Morton recovered slowly. The influences about him were any thing but
+favorable to a quick convalescence, and it was months before he was
+himself again. Even then, though his health seemed confirmed, a deeper
+cloud remained upon his spirits: his dungeon seemed more dark and
+gloomy, his prospects more desperate.
+
+One day he paced his cell in a mood of more than usual depression.
+
+"Fools and knaves are at large; robbery and murder have full scope;
+vanity and profligacy run their free career; then why is honest effort
+paralyzed, and buried here alive? There are those in these
+vaults,--men innocent of crime as I,--men who would have been an honor
+to their race,--who have passed a score of years in this living death.
+And canting fools would console them with saying that 'all is for the
+best.' I will sooner believe that the world is governed by devils, and
+that the prince of them all is bodied in Metternich. Why is there not
+in crushed hope, and stifled wrath, and swelling anguish, and frenzy,
+and despair, a force to burst these hellish sepulchres, and blow them
+to the moon!
+
+"It is but a weak punishment to which Milton dooms his ruined angel.
+Action,--enterprise,--achievement,--a hell like that is heaven to the
+cells of Ehrenberg. He should have chained him to a rock, and left him
+alone to the torture of his own thoughts; the unutterable agonies of a
+mind preying on itself for want of other sustenance. Action!--mured in
+this dungeon, the starved soul gasps for it as the lungs for air.
+'Action, action, action!--all in all! What is life without it? A
+marsh, a quagmire, a rotten, stagnant pool. It is its own reward. The
+chase is all; the prize nothing. The huntsmen chase the fox all day,
+and, when they have caught her, fling her to their hounds for a
+worthless vermin. Alexander wept that he had no more worlds to
+conquer. What did it profit him that a conquered world lay already at
+his feet? The errant knights who roamed the world with their
+mistress's glove on their helmet, achieving impossibilities in her
+name,--which of them could have endured to live in peace with her for
+a six-month? The crusader master of Jerusalem, Cortes with Mexico
+subdued, any hero when his work is done, falls back to the ranks of
+common men. His lamp is out, his fire quenched; and what avails the
+stale, lack-lustre remnant of his days?
+
+"Action! the panacea of human ills; the sure resource of misery; the
+refuge of bad consciences; a maelstroom, in whose giddy vortex saints
+and villains may whirl alike. How like a madman some great criminal,
+some Macbeth, will plunge on through his slough of blood and
+treachery, frantic to dam out justice at every chink, and bulwark
+himself against fate; clinching crime with crime; giving conscience no
+time to stab; finding no rest; but still plunging on, desperate and
+blind! How like a madman some pious anchorite, fervent to win heaven,
+will pile torture on torture, fast, and vigil, and scourge, made
+wretched daily with some fresh scruple, delving to find some new depth
+of self-abasement, and still struggling on unsatisfied, insatiable of
+penance, till the grave devours him! Human activity!--to pursue a
+security which is never reached, a contentment which eludes the grasp,
+some golden consummation which proves but hollow mockery; to seize the
+prize, to taste it, to fling it away, and reach after another! This
+cell, where I thought myself buried and sealed up from knowledge, is,
+after all, a school of philosophy. It teaches a dreary wisdom of its
+own. Through these stone walls I can see the follies of the world more
+clearly than when I was in the midst of them. A dreary wisdom; and yet
+not wholly dreary. There is a power and a consolation in it. Misery is
+the mind-maker; the revealer of truth; the spring of nobleness; the
+test, the purger, the strengthener of the spirit. Our natures are like
+grapes in the wine press: they must be pressed to the uttermost before
+they will give forth all their virtue.
+
+"Why do I delude myself? What good can be wrung out of a misery like
+mine? It is folly to cheat myself with hope. This hell-begotten
+Austria has me fast, and will not loosen her gripe. Abroad in the free
+world, fortitude will count for much. There, one can hold firm the
+clefts and cracks of his tottering fortunes with the cement of an
+unyielding mind; but here, it is but bare and blank endurance. Yet it
+is something that I can still find heart to face my doom; that there
+are still moments when I dare to meet this death-in-life, this
+slow-consuming horror, face to face, and look into all its hideousness
+without shrinking. To creep on to my end through years of slow decay,
+mind and soul famishing in solitude, sapped and worn, eaten and
+fretted away, by the droppings of lonely thought, till I find my rest
+at last under these cursed stones! God! could I but die the death of a
+man! De Foix,--Dundee,--Wolfe. I grudge them their bloody end. When
+the fierce blood boiled highest, when the keen life was tingling
+through their veins, and the shout of victory ringing in their ears,
+then to be launched at a breath forth into the wilderness of space, to
+sail through eternity, to explore the seas and continents of the vast
+unknown! But I,--I must lie here and rot. You fool! you are tied to
+the stake, and must bide the baiting as you can. Will you play the
+coward? What can you gain by that? You cannot run away. What wretch,
+when misery falls upon him, will not cry out, 'Take any shape but
+that?' In the familiar crowd, in the daily resort, how many an
+unregarded face masks a wretchedness worse than this! some shrunken,
+cankered soul, palsied and world-weary, more hopelessly dungeoned than
+you. Crush down your anguish, choke down your groan, and say,
+'Heaven's will be done.'
+
+"Muster what courage you may. Not those spasms of valor that make the
+hero of an emergency, and when the heart is on fire and the soul in
+arms, bear him on to great achievement. Mine must be an inward flame,
+that warms though it cannot shine; a fire, like the sacred Chaldean
+fire, that must never go out; a perpetual spring, flowing up without
+ceasing, to meet the unceasing need.
+
+"And you, source of my deepest joy and my deepest sorrow,--do not fail
+me now. Come to me in this darkness; let your spirit haunt this tomb
+where I lie buried. In your presence, the evil of my heart shrank
+back, rebuked; its good sprang up and grew in life and freshness. You
+rose upon me like the sun, warming every noble germ into leaf and
+flower. You streamed into my soul, banishing its mists, and gladdening
+it to its depths with summer light. These are no girl's tears. Towards
+myself and my own woes, I have hardened my heart like the barren
+flint. I should be less than man if I did not weep when I think of
+you. You must pass the appointed lot; you must fade with time and
+sorrow; but to me you will be radiant still with youth and beauty. So
+will I bide my hour, anchored on that pure and lofty memory, waiting
+that last release when the winged spirit shall laugh at bolts and
+dungeon bars."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XL.
+
+  Lost liberty and love at once he bore;
+  His prison pained him much, his passion more.--_Palemon and Arcite_.
+
+
+Since his illness, Morton had had some of an invalid's privilege. He
+had been allowed to walk on the rampart for half an hour daily. In the
+distance, a great mountain range bounded the view, and, nearer, the
+Croatian forest stretched its dark and wild frontier. The scene
+recalled kindred scenes at home; and when he was led back to his cell,
+when the heavy door clashed and the bolts grated upon him, he leaned
+his forehead on his hand, and stood in fancy again among the mountains
+of New England, with all their associations of health, freedom, and
+golden hopes. The White Mountains seemed to rise around him like a
+living presence, rugged with their rocks and pines, scarred with
+avalanches, cinctured with morning mists; and, standing again on the
+bank of the Saco, he seemed to feel their breezes and hear the
+brawling of their waters. Then his roused fancy took a wider range;
+carried him across the Alleghanies and along the Ohio, up the
+Mississippi to its source, and downward to the sea, picturing the
+whole like the shifting scene of a panorama.
+
+"Ah," he thought, "if my story could be blown abroad over those
+western waters! How long then should I lie here dying by inches? The
+farmers of Ohio, the planters of Tennessee, the backwoodsmen of
+Missouri, how would they endure such outrage to the meanest member of
+their haughty sovereignty! A hopeless dream! I have looked my last on
+America. My wrongs will find no voice. They and I are smothering
+together, safely walled up in sound and solid mason-work. Strange, the
+power of fancy! Heaven knows how or why, but at this moment I could
+believe myself seated on the edge of the lake at Matherton, under the
+beech trees, on a hot July noon. The leaves will not rustle; the birds
+will not sing; nothing seems awake but the small yellow butterflies,
+flickering over the clover tops, and the heat-loving cicala, raising
+his shrill voice from the dead pear tree. The breathless pines on the
+farther bank grow downward in the glassy mirror. The water lies at my
+feet, pellucid as the air; the dace, the bream, and the perch glide
+through it like spirits, their shadows following them over the quartz
+pebbles; and, in the cove hard by, the pirate pickerel lies asleep
+under the water lilies.
+
+"On such a day, I came down the garden walk, and found Edith reading
+under the shade of the maple grove. On the evening of such a day, I
+heard from her lips the words which seemed to launch me upon a life of
+more than human happiness. Could I have looked into the future! Could
+I have lifted the glowing curtain which my fancy drew before it, the
+gay and gilded illusion which covered the hideous truth! Where is she
+now? Does she still walk in the garden, and read under the grove of
+maples? She thinks me dead: almost four years! She has good cause to
+think so; and perhaps at this moment some glib-tongued suitor, as
+earnest and eager as I was, is whispering persuasion into her ear,
+winning her to his hearth stone and his arms. Powers of hell, if you
+would rack man's soul with torments like your own, show him first a
+gleam of heaven; bathe him in celestial light; then thrust him down to
+a damnation like this."
+
+And he groaned between his set teeth, in the extremity of mental
+torture.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLI.
+
+  The manly heart must sometimes cease to languish,
+  Ruled by the manly brain.--_Bayard Taylor_.
+
+
+One day the jailer came in at his stated hour. He was, by birth, a
+German peasant, stupid and brutish enough; but, his calling
+considered, he might have been worse, and, in the lack of better
+company, Morton had diligently cultivated his acquaintance. On this
+occasion he was more than commonly dogged and impenetrable; and, on
+being taken to task for some neglect or malperformance of his
+functions, he made no manner of reply, by word, look, or gesture.
+Being again upbraided, he turned for a moment towards the prisoner a
+face as expressive as a block of pudding stone, and then sullenly
+continued his work as before. Morton laughed, partly in vexation, and
+resumed his walk, of just three paces, to and fro, the length of his
+cell. He followed the jailer with his eye, as the latter closed the
+door.
+
+"'God made him, and therefore let him pass for a man.' Measure the
+distance from Shakspeare down to that fellow, and then from him again
+down to a baboon, and which measurement would be the longer? It would
+be a knotty problem to settle the question of kindred; and yet, after
+all, a soul to be saved, such as it is, and an indefinite power of
+expansion and refining, give Jacob strong odds against the baboon. He
+has human possibilities, like the rest of us; his unit goes to make up
+the sum of man; man, the riddle and marvel of the universe, the centre
+of interest, the centre of wonder. When I was a boy, I pleased myself
+with planning that I would study out the springs of human action, and
+trace human emotion up to its sources. It was a boy's idea,--to fathom
+the unfathomable, to line and map out the shifting clouds and the
+ever-moving winds. De Stael speaks the truth--'Man may learn to rule
+man, but only God can comprehend him.' View him under one aspect only.
+Seek to analyze that pervading passion, that mighty mystic influence
+which, consciously or unconsciously, directly or indirectly, prevails
+in human action, and holds the sovereignty of the world. It is a vain
+attempt; the reason loses and confounds itself. What human faculty can
+follow the workings of a principle which at once exalts man to the
+stars, and fetters him to the earth; which can fire him with
+triumphant energies, or lull him into effeminate repose; kindle
+strange aspirations and eager longings after knowledge; spur the
+intellect to range time and space, or cramp it within narrow confines,
+among mean fancies and base associations? In its mysterious
+contradictions, its boundless possibilities of good and ill, it is a
+type of human nature itself. The soldier saint, Loyola, was right when
+he figured the conflicts of man's spirit by the collision of two
+armies, ranked under adverse banners; for what is the spirit of man
+but a field of war, with its marches and retreats, its ambuscades,
+stratagems, surprises, skirmishings, and weary life-long sieges; its
+shock of onset, and death-grapple, throat to throat? And whoever would
+be wise, or safe, must sentinel his thoughts, and rule his mind by
+martial law, like a city beleaguered.
+
+"How to escape such strife! There is no escape. It has followed
+hermits to their deserts; and it follows me to my prison. It will find
+no end but in that decay and torpor, that callousness of faculty,
+which long imprisonment is said to bring, but which, as yet, I do not
+feel. Perhaps I may never feel it; for strive as I will to prepare for
+the worst, by inuring my mind to contemplate it, that spark of hope
+which never, it is said, dies wholly in a human heart, is still alive
+in mine. And sometimes, of late, it has kindled and glowed, as now,
+with a strange brightness. Is it a delusion, or the presage of some
+succor not far distant? Let that be as it may, I will still cling to
+the possibility of a better time. Whatever new disaster meets me, I
+will confront it with some new audacity of hope. I will nail my flag
+to the mast, and there it shall fly till all go down, or till flag,
+mast, and hulk rot together."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLII.
+
+  But droop not; fortune at your time of life,
+    Although a female moderately fickle,
+  Will hardly leave you, as she's not your wife,
+    For any length of days in such a pickle.--_Don Juan_.
+
+
+Here his reflections were interrupted by the opening of the outer door
+of his cell, and a voice somewhat sternly pronouncing his name.
+
+It was a regulation of the prison, that twice a day an official should
+visit each cell, to prevent the possibility of the tenant's attempting
+to escape, or hold communication with neighboring prisoners. This duty
+was commonly discharged by non-commissioned officers of certain corps
+in the garrison. Each cell had two doors. The outer one was of massive
+wood, guarded by iron plates and rivets. The inner door, though much
+less ponderous, was secured with equal care; but in the middle of it
+was an oblong aperture, much like that of a post office letter box,
+though shorter and wider. The visiting official opened the outer door,
+and without opening the inner, could see the prisoner by applying his
+eye to this aperture.
+
+"What are you doing there?" demanded the voice, in the usual form of
+the visitor's challenge.
+
+The voice was different from that to which Morton had been accustomed;
+and, as he gave the usual answer, he looked towards the opening. Here
+he saw a full, clear, blue eye, with a brown eyebrow, very well
+formed; altogether a different eye from that which had formerly
+presented itself,--a contracted, blackish, or mud-colored organ,
+furrowed round about with the wrinkles called "crow's
+feet;"--altogether a mean and vulgar-looking eye, belonging, indeed,
+to a rugged old soldier, whose skull might safely have been warranted
+sabre-proof.
+
+Morton looked at the eye, and the eye looked at him, with great
+intentness, seemingly, for some twenty seconds. Then it disappeared,
+but returned, and resumed its scrutiny for some moments longer.
+
+"A new broom sweeps clean," thought Morton; "that fellow means to do
+his duty."
+
+The eye vanished at length, the door closed, and the step of the
+retiring visitor sounded along the flag-stones.
+
+Morton thought little more of the matter, but busied himself with his
+usual masculine employment of stocking knitting, till seven in the
+evening, when the visitor came on his second round, and the same voice
+challenged him through the opening. He looked up, and saw the eye
+again; when to his astonishment, the low, hissing
+sound--"s--s--t"--used by Italians and some other Europeans when they
+wish to attract attention, sounded from the soldier's lips. At the
+next instant, however, something seemed to have alarmed him; for the
+eye disappeared, and the door closed abruptly.
+
+Morton perplexed himself greatly with conjectures about this incident,
+and had half persuaded himself that the whole was a cheat of the
+fancy; when, on the next morning, as he was led back, under a guard,
+from his walk on the rampart, he saw, on entering a long gallery of
+the prison, a tall man approaching from the farther end. He recognized
+him at once. It was Max Kubitski, the corporal, who long before had
+guarded him to his sham execution, and whose friendly whisper in his
+cell had wakened in him a short gleam of hope. As the corporal passed,
+his eye met Morton's for an instant, with, as the latter thought, a
+glance of recognition.
+
+In vain he tried to reason down the new hope that, in spite of
+himself, this meeting kindled. Of one thing he was sure; the
+corporal's eye was the eye that looked in upon him through the hole in
+the door; and he felt assured, moreover, that, from whatever cause,
+the corporal inclined to befriend him.
+
+He waited, in great expectancy and some agitation, for the next visit;
+and at the stated hour, the outer door was opened, and the eye
+appeared.
+
+Morton, as he replied to the challenge, made a gesture of friendly
+recognition.
+
+"You remember me, eh?" whispered a voice, in broken French; "be always
+close to the door when I come. I shall have something to tell you."
+
+The moustached lips whence the whisper issued were withdrawn from the
+opening, and Morton was left to his reflections.
+
+To have a friend near him, however humble, was much, and the hope,
+slender as it seemed, that this friend might aid him, filled him with
+a feverish excitement. Why the corporal should interest himself in his
+behalf, he could not imagine; and he waited restlessly for his next
+coming.
+
+In due time, the eye appeared.
+
+"Look here," whispered Max, and thrust a paper through the opening,
+waiting only long enough to see Morton pick it up.
+
+The chirography was worse, if possible, than the spelling; but Morton
+at last deciphered words to the following purport.
+
+"You are brave. Don't despair. I shall help you, if I can. Long live
+America! Down with the emperor! Only be patient. Be sure to chew this
+paper, and swallow it."
+
+The last injunction had its objections, and the prisoner compromised
+the matter by tearing the paper into small pieces, and stuffing them
+into the crevices of the floor.
+
+At the next appearance of the eye, Morton, in a few rapid words,
+expressed his gratitude; adding that if the corporal would help him to
+escape, and go with him to America, he would make him rich for life.
+
+The intimation probably had its effect; and yet in the case of Max it
+was not needed. Though his tastes and habits savored of the barrack,
+the corporal was one of the most simple-hearted and generous of men,
+with, besides, much of that kind of enthusiasm of character which is
+apt to be rather ornamental than useful to its owner. His birth and
+connections were not quite so low as might have been argued from his
+mean station in the service, in which his life had been spent from
+boyhood. He was a native of Gallicia. Several of his brothers, and
+others of his relatives, had been deeply compromised in the Polish
+rising of 1831, and had suffered heavy and humiliating penalties in
+consequence. His eldest brother, however, had escaped in time, and
+gone to America, where, being very different in character from Max, he
+had thriven wonderfully. After a long absence, he had reappeared,
+travelling with a United States passport, as an American, inveighing
+against European despotisms, and dilating on the glories of his
+adopted country. Max, the only auditor of these declamations, was
+greatly excited by them. He had long been tired of his thankless
+position in the Austrian service; and listening to his brother's
+persuasions, he agreed to desert, and go with him to America, the
+seat, as he began to imagine, of more than earthly beatitude. But
+before he could find opportunity, his cautious brother took alarm; and
+seeing some indications that his identity was suspected by the police,
+decamped with the promptness and alacrity which had always
+distinguished him in times of danger. Max, therefore, was left alone;
+his adviser, for fear of compromising him, not daring to attempt any
+communication.
+
+It was soon after this, that, being on guard in the commissioner's
+inquest room at Ehrenberg, Max first saw Morton, brought in for
+examination, and learned from the questions and replies, that the
+prisoner was an American. His interest was greatly stirred; for he had
+never seen one of the favored race before; and, like the commissioner,
+he had no doubt that Morton had come on a revolutionary mission. His
+interest was inflamed to enthusiasm, when, being ordered to guard
+Morton to his execution, he saw the calmness with which the latter
+faced his expected fate. Indeed, his soldier heart was moved so
+deeply, that in the flush of the moment he conceived the idea of
+helping Morton to escape, and going with him to the land of promise.
+It was an idea more easily conceived than executed; and before he
+could find an opportunity, his corps was removed from the castle, and
+sent on duty elsewhere.
+
+Max had always detested the life of a garrison, and especially of a
+prison garrison, and the change proved very agreeable to him. Though
+brave as the bravest, he had not much energy or forecast, and commonly
+let his affairs take care of themselves. He lived on from day to day,
+neither abandoning his plan of desertion, nor acting upon it; until,
+after more than two years, he was remanded to Ehrenberg, where his old
+disgust returned in greater force than ever. In this state of his
+mind, the duty of visitor was assigned to him, thus bringing him in
+contact with Morton, reviving his half-forgotten feeling, and, at the
+same time, promising him an opportunity to carry his former scheme
+into effect.
+
+To this time, Morton had borne his troubles with as much philosophy as
+could reasonably have been expected; but now that something like a
+tangible hope began to open on him, the excitement became intense. He
+waited the daily visits of the soldier with a painful eagerness and
+suspense. At the stated hours, Max always came; and, at each return,
+some whispered word of friendship greeted the prisoner's ear.
+
+Two days after the first paper, he thrust in another; and Morton read
+as follows:--
+
+"We must wait; but our time will come; perhaps in ten days; perhaps in
+a week. I shall watch for a chance. Only be patient."
+
+Five long and anxious days succeeded; when, on the forenoon of the
+sixth, Max thrust in a third paper; and Morton, with a beating heart,
+read,--
+
+"When the jailer comes this afternoon, make him talk with you, and
+keep him with his back to the door. _I shall come._ Be cool and
+steady. I shall tell you what to do."
+
+Illness and long confinement had wrought upon Morton's system in a
+manner which made it doubly difficult to preserve the coolness which
+the emergency demanded; but he summoned his utmost resolution to meet
+this crisis of his fate.
+
+The jailer was nowise addicted to conversation; and how to engage him
+in it, was a problem of some difficulty. There was only one topic on
+which Morton had ever seen him at all animated. This was the battle of
+Wagram, in which, in his youth, he had taken part, and where he had
+received a sabre cut, which had left a ghastly blue scar across his
+cheek. In dilating on this momentous passage of his life, the old
+German would sometimes be roused into a great excitement; and Morton
+had often amused himself with trying to comprehend the jargon which he
+poured out, in thick gobbling tones, about cannonading and charging,
+sabres and bombshells, pointing continually at his scar, and laboring
+to impress his hearer with the conviction, immovably fixed in his own
+mind, that he, Jacob, was one of the chief heroes of the day.
+
+At his usual hour, about the middle of the afternoon, Jacob appeared.
+As he came in, he closed the outer door, which secured itself by a
+latch. This latch could be moved back from within or without, by a
+species of key in the jailer's keeping, Max also, as visitor, having a
+duplicate. The jailer alone had the key of the inner door; but this,
+during his stay in the cell, he never thought it necessary to close.
+
+Jacob went through his ordinary routine, breathing deeply, meanwhile,
+and talking unconsciously to himself, after his usual manner.
+
+"Do you know, Jacob," said Morton, seating himself on a stool in the
+farther corner, "I was dreaming the other night of you and the battle
+of Wagram."
+
+"Eh!" grunted the jailer.
+
+"What you have been telling me about it is a lie. You were never in
+that battle at all."
+
+"Eh!"
+
+"You were frightened, and ran off before the fighting began."
+
+"Run! I run off!" growled Jacob, the idea slowly penetrating his
+brain.
+
+Morton nodded assent.
+
+The jailer turned and stared at him for a moment with open eyes and
+mouth. Then, as his wrath slowly mounted, he began to pour forth a
+flood of denial, mixed with invective against his assailant, appealing
+to his scar as proof positive of his valor.
+
+"A sabre never made that scar," said Morton, as the other paused in
+his eloquence.
+
+Jacob stared at him, speechless.
+
+"You got it in a drunken row."
+
+At this Jacob's rage seemed to choke his utterance; and Morton thought
+he would attack him bodily, as he stood before him, shaking his fists,
+and stamping on the pavement.
+
+This pantomime was brought to a sudden close by a pair of strong hands
+clinched around Jacob's neck from behind, with the gripe of a vice.
+
+"Shut the door," whispered Max.
+
+On entering, he had left it ajar. Morton hastened to close it. The
+corporal meanwhile laid Jacob flat on the floor of the cell.
+
+"Take my bayonet, and run it through him if he makes a sound."
+
+Morton drew the bayonet from its sheath at the belt of Max, and
+kneeling on the jailer's breast, pressed the point of the weapon
+against his throat. Max then loosed his grasp, and gagged him
+effectually with a piece of wood and a cord which he had brought for
+the purpose. Jacob lay, during the whole, quite motionless, glaring
+upward with glassy, bloodshot eyes, stupefied with fright and
+astonishment.
+
+"You must put on his clothes," said Max.
+
+They accordingly took off the jailer's outer garments, which Morton
+substituted for his own, drawing the deep-visored cap over his eyes.
+Max, at the same time, bound the jailer, hand and foot, with strings
+of leather, which he took from his pocket.
+
+"Look out into the gallery," he said, unclosing the door, "and see if
+there's any body in the way."
+
+Morton, in his jailer's dress, went out, and, looking back, reported
+that the coast was clear. Max followed, and closed the door. The
+helpless Jacob remained a prisoner, till some other functionary of the
+castle should come to his relief.
+
+They passed along the gallery, down one flight of steps, and up
+another, meeting no one but a soldier, to whom Max gave a careless nod
+of recognition. There were several private outlets to the castle, but
+each was guarded by a sentinel; and it was chiefly his preparation
+against this difficulty that had caused Max's delay.
+
+Among his acquaintance was an old soldier, called Peter,--a Prussian
+by birth. He had learned to read and write, and being inordinately
+vain of his superior acquirements, looked upon himself as the most
+learned of men. When off duty, he was commonly to be found in a corner
+of the barrack, poring over a greasy little book, which he always
+carried in his pocket. As his temper was exceedingly sour and
+disagreeable, he was no favorite; indeed, he was the general butt of
+his brother soldiers, who delighted to exasperate his crusty mood.
+Max, however, with a view to the furtherance of his scheme, had of
+late courted his good graces, flattering him on his learning, often
+asking him to drink, and otherwise cajoling him. Finding that, on this
+day, Peter's turn had come to stand guard at a certain postern of the
+prison, he had contrived to drug him with a strong dose of opium,
+mixed with a dram of bitters. Max, who was a singular compound of
+simplicity and finesse, the former the result of nature, the latter of
+circumstance, plumed himself greatly on this exploit.
+
+As they approached the narrow door in question, Max stooped and took
+off his shoes, motioning Morton to do the same. At a few paces farther
+on, they saw the sentinel, walking to and fro on his post, with no
+very military gait.
+
+Max, who was wonderfully cool and composed, pressed Morton's arm.
+
+"_Voila, monsieur_,"--he was now and hereafter very respectful in his
+manner towards the man he was saving,--"_voila_; look at the old
+booby; how he reels and staggers about--ah! do you see?"
+
+Peter had stopped in his walk, and was leaning against the wall,
+nodding his head with a look indescribably sleepy and silly. Meanwhile
+his musket was slowly slipping down between his arm and his side, in
+spite of one or two efforts to clutch it. At last the butt struck on
+the pavement. The sound roused the sentinel from his torpor. He shook
+himself, and began his walk again; but in a few moments stopped,
+leaned his shoulder against the wall, on the farther side of the door,
+let his musket this time rest fairly on the floor, and began nodding
+and butting his head, in a most ludicrous manner, into an angle of the
+wall.
+
+Max again pressed Morton's arm, and gliding on tiptoe past the drugged
+sentinel, they went out at the door without alarming him. They were
+now in an obscure and narrow precinct of the castle, flanked on one
+side by a high wall of ancient masonry, and on the other by the rear
+of various outbuildings. The place did no great credit to the neatness
+of the garrison, being littered with a variety of refuse; but no
+living thing was visible; none, that is, but a gray cat sneaking along
+under the wall of a shed, with a newly-killed rat dangling from her
+mouth.
+
+They next passed into a wider area, overlooked on the left by the rear
+of the principal range of barracks.
+
+"Hallo, Max, where are you going?" cried a voice.
+
+Max looked up, and saw a brother corporal leaning out at one of the
+barrack windows, with a fatigue cap on one side of his head, and a
+German pipe between his moustached lips.
+
+"To the village."
+
+"Who gave you leave?"
+
+"The lieutenant."
+
+"It's good company you are in. What are you going to do below?"
+
+"Get me a pipe. Mine is broke. What is a man fit for without his
+pipe?"
+
+The other at the window replied by a joke, not very refined, levelled
+at Max and his companion. Max retorted only by a ludicrous gesture of
+derision, which drew a horse laugh from a soldier at another window,
+under cover of which they passed out of the area, and reached a
+pathway leading down the height.
+
+A natural gully, or shallow ravine, twisted and zigzagged down the
+side of the rock. In wet weather, it became a little watercourse,
+conducting all the rain that fell on the western roofs of the castle
+down to the filthy and picturesque hamlet of Ehrenberg, with its dirty
+population of five hundred Wallack and Croat peasants, and a horde of
+dirtier gypsies, nested in the outskirts. In dry weather, the gully
+served as a pathway, which the soldiers often used in their descents
+to the village.
+
+Max began to descend, and Morton followed at his heels. The fresh
+wind, the open view, the unwonted sense of treading mother earth,
+wrought on him strangely; not, as on the wrestler of old, to nerve him
+with renewed force. He grew faint, dizzy, and half blind; and as he
+staggered after his guide, he felt for the first time how the prison
+had sapped away his strength.
+
+In ten minutes, they were at the bottom, and picking their way past
+the rear of the squalid cottages, among rickety outhouses, broken
+fences, heaps of litter, pigs, children, and other impediments. Most
+of the men were absent; a few women only stared at them as they
+passed. With one very pretty Wallack girl, Max, for the sake of
+appearances, exchanged a few words of bantering gallantry. She stood
+looking after him admiringly. Behind the next cottage, a yellow
+Hungarian shepherd dog, large as a wolf, jumped suddenly from a heap
+of rotten straw, on which he had been dozing, and made a fierce dash
+at Max's leg; but the latter gave him a kick in the teeth, which sent
+him off yelping, followed by a brickbat, and a curse from the Wallack
+damsel.
+
+Beyond the village, the ground was without trees or shrubs for a full
+half mile; yet it was uneven,--not to say broken; and Max, who had
+made a careful reconnaissance, knew that if they could but reach
+unnoticed a hollow some twenty rods from the skirts of the hamlet, no
+eye from the ramparts could see them. Towards this, therefore, he
+walked, with an air of great nonchalance, Morton following, his heart
+in his throat. Their movements were either unseen, or failed to excite
+suspicion; and taking a beaten track into the hollow, they came upon a
+spring at the foot of a rock, where three women were pounding clothes
+on a stone with clubs, by way of washing them; while a lazy boor, in a
+broad felt hat, lay on the ground listlessly watching the process.
+
+In five minutes more, the hollow ceased to conceal them; and, to
+Morton's great dismay, they stood again within eyeshot of the castle.
+Max, however, with the skill of an old deer stalker, soon managed to
+place, first, a large rock, then the rugged shoulder of a hill,
+between themselves and the detested battlements. Next they gained the
+partial shelter of the scattered scrub oaks and pines which formed a
+ragged outskirt to the deeper forest behind, and, in a few moments
+more, reached the dark asylum of its matted boughs and underwood.
+
+Thus far they had walked at the leisurely pace of a pair of idle
+strollers; but no sooner were they well out of sight, than Max cried,
+"Come on!" and set out at a run. When he turned, however, and saw the
+pale face of Morton, already tired with unwonted effort, he took a
+flask of brandy from his pocket. The fiery draught strung Morton's
+sinews afresh. They pushed on, over hills and hollows, by cattle paths
+and brooks, across open glades, and through wooded tracts, dense and
+breathless as an American forest.
+
+"Look!" said Max, stopping on a rising ground, and pointing back over
+the woods. Three miles off, the rock of Ehrenberg rose in view,
+bearing aloft its heavy load of battlements and towers. Morton gave it
+one look, prayed it might be the last, and motioned his companion
+forward again.
+
+They came to a lazy brook, stealing out of a marsh. In the mud by its
+side was the slough where a wild boar had wallowed. The solitude and
+savageness of the place shot a fresh life through Morton's failing
+veins. The sense came upon him that his fate was now in his own hands;
+the resolve that he would never be taken alive. He called Max to stop.
+
+"Have you any weapon besides your bayonet?"
+
+Max produced a pair of pistols, which he had contrived to appropriate;
+and, keeping one of them, handed the other to Morton.
+
+It was dusk before they stopped, in the depth of the woods, on a
+grassy spot, shut in by a tall cliff, and a growth of old beeches,
+oaks, and evergreens. Morton threw himself on the ground. Max made a
+fire, by plugging up the touch-hole of his flint-lock pistol, and
+placing in the pan, by way of tinder, a piece of cotton rag, rubbed
+with a little wet gunpowder. Morton roused himself, and breaking off
+small branches of the firs and spruces, piled them for beds. The loaf
+which the jailer had brought for his next day's meal, with some more
+solid viands which Max produced, served them for supper; and, for
+drink, they scooped water in their hands from the neighboring brook.
+
+It grew dark, and as they sat together by the fire, the red light
+flared against the jagged rock, the shaggy fir boughs, and knotty
+limbs of the oaks. It seemed to Morton as if time and space were done
+away; as if the prison were a dream; and as if, once more on some
+college ramble, he were seated by a camp fire in the familiar forests
+of America. But instead of a vagabond Indian, or the hardy face of a
+Penobscot lumberman, the flame fell on the frogged uniform and long,
+waxed moustache of Corporal Max, as he sat cross-legged, like a Turk,
+on the pile of evergreens.
+
+As Morton looked on his manly face, and thought of the boundless debt
+he owed him, his heart warmed towards him, and he poured forth his
+gratitude as well as he could, in the patchwork of languages which Max
+himself had used as his medium of communication.
+
+The latter soon fell asleep, and lay snoring lustily. With his
+companion sleep was impossible. He lay watching the stars, and the
+dull folds of smoke that half hid them, listening to the wind, and the
+mysterious sounds of the forest, and, as the night drew on, shivering
+with the damp and cold. His mind was a maze of confused emotions,
+suspense, and delight, hope, and fear, mingling in a dreamy chaos;
+till at last fatigue prevailed, and he, too, fell asleep; a sleep
+haunted by hideous images, yet with its intervals of deep peace and
+repose.
+
+He woke, shivering; and rising in the twilight, stirred the half-dead
+embers, and crouched over them for warmth. But, as the fresh odors of
+the morning reached his senses, they brought so vividly upon him the
+memory of his youthful health, and hope, and liberty, that his spirits
+rose almost to defiance of the peril around him. He woke Max, whose
+slumbers were noisy as ever, and they pushed forward again on a
+well-beaten cattle path, leading westward.
+
+About sunrise they found a cow, one of the gray, long-horned breed of
+the country, grazing very peacefully. Max looked about him, and began
+to move with caution. The cow was wild, and would not let them pass
+her, but walked before them along the path. In a few minutes, a great
+number of cattle appeared, grazing on an open glade, with two men
+watching them. They were of the half-savage herdsmen of this district,
+little better than banditti. One of them sat on a rock, the other
+lounged on the grass. Both were dressed in coarse linen shirts and
+trousers, short, heavy woollen cloaks thrown over their shoulders, a
+kind of rude sandals, and broad felt hats. For weapons, one carried a
+club, the other a hatchet, the long handle of which served him for a
+walking stick.
+
+Max whispered to Morton; and stealing unperceived through the bushes,
+they suddenly appeared before the two men, much, as it seemed, to
+their amazement. Max, in a language quite new to his companion,
+desired them to change clothes with Morton and himself. The voice and
+air of the applicant, and the butt of a pistol protruding from the
+breast pocket of each of the strangers, gave warning that the wish
+could not wisely be slighted. The boors complied, the more willingly
+as they would be great gainers by the bargain. Max threw off his
+uniform, and put on the dress of the taller herdsman. Morton satisfied
+himself with the woollen cloak of the other, in exchange for the
+jailer's coat.
+
+The exchange made, he signed to the man to give him the hatchet which
+he carried; but the boor hesitated, scowling very sullenly. Max
+hastened to interpose, and offered a silver coin in return for the
+hatchet, which its owner at once surrendered. It was by no means any
+love of abstract justice which dictated this procedure; but a desire,
+on Max's part, to leave the men in good humor, lest, being offended,
+they might set the soldiers on the track of the fugitives.
+
+They parted on the best terms, and Max and Morton betook themselves
+again to the woods.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLIII.
+
+  Like bloodhounds now they search me out;--
+  Hark to the whistle and the shout!--
+  The chase is up,--but they shall know,
+  The stag at bay's a dangerous foe.--_Lady of the Lake_.
+
+
+Three or four weeks passed. They were deep within the bounds of Tyrol.
+By avoiding towns and highways, travelling often in the night, making
+prize of every stray sheep, pig, or fowl, and a diligent robbing of
+henroosts, they had thus far contrived to elude arrest, and support
+life.
+
+Morton was greatly changed. Body and mind, he was formed for hardship,
+and toils which would have broken a weaker frame had nerved and
+strengthened his. But of late their suffering had increased. They
+found but poor forage among the poverty-pinched mountaineers, and for
+two days, had had no better sustenance than the soft inner bark of the
+pine trees. This, with previous abstinence, had sunk them to the last
+extremity, and brought Max to the verge of despair.
+
+It was a rainy afternoon; rain drizzling in the valleys, clouds
+hanging on the mountains, dark vapors steaming up from the chasms, and
+clinging sullenly to the edge of the pine forests. Max and Morton sat
+under a dripping rock, on a mountain which overhangs a nameless little
+valley, not far to the north of the Val di Sole.
+
+"Keep a good heart, Max," said Morton, "it shall go hard but you and I
+will get out of this scrape yet."
+
+Max shook his head despondingly. His bold spirit was starved out of
+him. Morton's courage, unlike that of his companion, was the result
+more of his mental habits than of a native constitutional intrepidity,
+and was therefore much less subject to the changes of his bodily
+condition. He had proved Max, and knew him to be brave as he was warm
+and true-hearted; but the corporal's valor, like that of Homer's
+heroes, was best displayed on a full stomach.
+
+"There's nothing else for it," said Morton; "we must take the bull by
+the horns. One of those houses below is an inn, or something that
+pretends to be one. I can see the bush fastened to the door post. We
+must go and buy food; or else lie here and die."
+
+"It is better to be shot than starve," said Max.
+
+"Come on, then. You must be spokesman. I am go for nothing in that
+way; but if there's any trouble, I'll stand by you as well as I can."
+
+Max had had a little money in copper and silver, the greater part of
+which he had consigned to the keeping of Morton, as the more careful
+treasurer. With this for their passport, they issued from the cover of
+the woods, and began to cross the mountain slopes and rough pasture
+that lay between them and the hamlet.
+
+The latter, as they drew near, seemed by no means so insignificant as
+at first, a rising ground having hidden a part of it. They came to the
+inn, a low stone building of a most respectable antiquity, and pushing
+open the door, were met by a short man who seemed to be the owner. Max
+produced a handful of kreutzers, and asked for bread and meat. The
+host looked at the strangers, then at their money; seemed satisfied
+with both, and showed them up a flight of broken steps to a large room
+above the half-sunken kitchen. Here, at his call, a girl brought the
+food and placed it on a table. He next asked if they would not have
+beer; and Max assenting, went out to bring it.
+
+The fugitives now addressed themselves to their meal with the keenness
+of starving men; but the prudent Morton took care, at the same time,
+to secure the more portable of the viands for future need. Having
+dulled the edge of his appetite, he began to grow uneasy at the
+landlord's long absence.
+
+"What is that man doing? He might have brewed the beer by this time."
+
+"He _does_ take his time," responded Max, also growing anxious.
+
+"This is no place for us. Take the rest of that biscuit, and let's be
+off."
+
+Max was following this counsel, when---- "Hark!" cried Morton; "what
+noise is that?"
+
+"Go to the window and look."
+
+Morton did so.
+
+"My God!" he exclaimed, recoiling, his face ghastly with dismay.
+
+Max sprang to the window. Below, at the door, four or five men were
+standing, and among them two gendarmes, while others were in the act
+of entering.
+
+The outlandish dress of the two strangers had at once roused the
+landlord's suspicion. Of Max's character he had not a moment's doubt;
+for in him no disguise could hide the look and port of the trained
+soldier. By ill luck, a party of gendarmes were in the village,
+weather-bound on their way from Latsch. Having secured his guests'
+money, the landlord thought to make a farther profit from them; and,
+sure of his reward, reported to the officer in command, that there
+were in his house two men, the taller of whom was certainly a
+deserter, while the other could not be a peasant, though he wore the
+dress of one. The officer mustered his followers, and hastened to beat
+up the game.
+
+He entered as Max turned from the window, and came up to him, sword in
+hand.
+
+"I arrest you. Give yourselves up, you and the other."
+
+But before the words were well out of his mouth, the fist of Max fell
+between his eyes like a battering ram, and dashed him back against the
+soldier next behind him.
+
+"Come on," cried Max to Morton, and leaped through the open window at
+the farther end of the room. Morton followed in time to escape two or
+three bayonet thrusts which were made after him. They both vaulted
+over a fence, and ran through the narrow passage between an old shed
+and a huge square stack of the last year's hay. A musket or two were
+let off at them, but to no effect; and splashing across a shallow
+brook, they made at headlong speed for the shelter of the mountains.
+
+As they reached the base, Max looked back. Seven or eight gendarmes
+were after them, and behind, later joining the chase, ran two or three
+men in a different dress.
+
+"Riflemen!" muttered Max, with an oath.
+
+Breasting the rough heights, clinging to stumps, roots, and bushes,
+they made their way up with all the speed which desperate need could
+give them. They were soon among thick trees, hidden from the pursuers,
+and almost from each other. But the shouts of the soldiers came up
+from below: they all gave tongue like so many hounds.
+
+"Curse your yelping throats!" gasped Morton. Breathless and half
+spent, he was clinging to a sapling on the edge of a steep pitch of
+the hill. One of the soldiers saw him. A musket shot rang from below,
+the hollow hum of the ball passing high above his head.
+
+Max laughed in fierce derision. They ran forward again across a wide
+plateau, nearly void of trees; and before they had fairly gained its
+farther side, the foremost pursuers were at the border of woods they
+had just left. Their late famine made fatal odds against them. The
+gendarmes, indeed, gained little in the race; but the more active
+riflemen were nearer every moment.
+
+Climbing, running, and scrambling among rocks, trees, and bushes, they
+won their way up till they came to another plateau, which broke the
+ascent of the mountain a furlong above the former. Across this they
+dashed at full speed. They were within a rod or two of the woods
+beyond, Max running on Morton's left, a little in advance of him, when
+a musket was fired at them from behind. The aim was so bad, that they
+did not even hear the humming of the bullet. At the next instant, came
+a dull, plunging report, unlike the former. Max leaped four feet into
+the air, and fell forward on his face with a force that seemed to
+shake the earth. Morton kneeled by his side; turned him on his back;
+lifted him by main strength into a sitting posture. Both his hands
+were clutched full of grass and earth.
+
+"Max! Max!" cried Morton, in the extremity of anguish; "speak, Max,
+for God's sake."
+
+But Max said nothing. His hat had fallen off; his eyes rolled wildly
+under his tangled hair; he gasped; blood flowed from his lips; and a
+spot of blood was soaking wider and wider upon the breast of his
+shirt. Then a deathly change came over his dilated eyeballs. Morton
+had seen the throes of the wounded bison, when the fierce eyes,
+glaring with angry life, are clouded of a sudden into a dull, cold
+jelly, fixed unmeaning lumps. It was a change like this that he saw in
+the eyes of Max. His friend was dead. The fatal rifle of Tyrol had
+done its work. The ball had pierced him from back to breast, and torn
+through his heart on its way.
+
+The whole passed in a few moments; but when Morton looked up, nearly
+all the pursuers were in sight on the open ground, and one of them,
+the man who had fired the death shot, was almost upon him. He snatched
+Max's pistol, which had fallen on the grass, and, blind with grief and
+fury, ran forward, levelled, and pulled the trigger. The pistol, wet
+with the rain, missed fire. The man was not four paces off. Morton
+hurled the pistol at his face. The iron barrel clashed against his
+teeth, and sent him reeling backward, bleeding and half stunned.
+Griping his hatchet, his best remaining friend, Morton turned for the
+woods, gained them at three bounds, and tore through the cover like a
+hunted wolf.
+
+Over rocks, among trees, through thickets and brambles, he struggled
+and clambered on, seeking safety, like the Rocky Mountain goat, in the
+rudest and wildest refuge. But in a few minutes, his flight was
+stopped. Rocks rose before him, and rocks on each side. He was caught
+in a complete _cul de sac_. He might have climbed the precipices, but,
+in the act, the shots from below would soon have tumbled him to the
+earth again. There was no escape; and, grinding his teeth in rage and
+desperation, he turned savagely at bay.
+
+Three or four of the men were very near him; and almost as he turned,
+one of them came in sight, pushing through the bushes. As he saw the
+game, he gave a shout, a sort of view halloo. Then appeared another,
+and another, all advancing upon him. In a moment, he would have been
+in their hands, alive or dead; but, without waiting the attack, he
+sprang on the foremost like a tiger, and plunged his hatchet deep in
+the soldier's eyes and brain. Then pushing past another, who, with a
+hesitating movement, was making towards him, he dashed down a sloping
+mass of rocks, dived into a labyrinth of thickets, and thence into a
+dark and hollow gorge of the mountain. Along this he ran like one with
+death's shadow behind him, losing himself deeper and deeper among the
+chaotic rocks and ragged trees. He stopped, at last, and listened. Far
+behind, he could hear his pursuers shouting to each other. The pack
+were at fault, and ranging in vain search after him.
+
+Spent as he was, he pressed on again, following upward for an hour or
+more the course of a brook, which issued from a narrow glen, reaching
+far back into the solitude of the mountains. His mind was dim and
+confused, a cloudland of mixed emotions; deep grief for his murdered
+friend, deep rage that he had been hunted like a wild beast, a longing
+for further vengeance, a sense, almost to despair, of his own
+loneliness and peril. He felt himself outcast from mankind, driven
+back to find a sanctuary among the dens and fastnesses of Nature. She
+alone, amid the general frown, seemed propitious; for of a sudden the
+clouds sundered in the west; a gush of warm light poured across the
+dripping mountains, and flushed the distant glaciers with their
+evening rose-tint. In the depths where he stood, all was shadow; but
+the crags above were basking in the sunshine, and the savage old
+pines, jewelled with rain drops, seemed stretching their shaggy arms
+to welcome the kindly radiance. Morton threw himself on the ground,
+and commended his desperate fortunes to the God of the waste and the
+mountain.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLIV.
+
+  In dread, in danger, and alone,
+  Famished and chilled, through ways unknown,
+  Tangled and steep, he journeyed on.--_Lady of the Lake_.
+
+
+Whoever, journeying southward from Coire, passes through the Via Mala,
+thence through the village of Andeer, and thence turns to the left,
+following a mountain path up the torrent of the Aversa, will soon lose
+himself in the solitudes of the savage valley of Ferrera. Thither
+Morton made his way; but not by so smooth an access. Ignorant of the
+country, and guided chiefly by the sun, he had pushed blindly forward
+by paths best known to the chamois and those who chase them.
+
+His best hope had been to meet some of his travelling countrymen, from
+whom he could gain help. To this end he had once and again approached
+the highways, and as often some real or seeming danger had driven him
+back to the mountains. For a day or more, the food he had taken from
+the inn served to support him. He had flung away Max's pistol, but
+still had his own. It served him to kindle a fire; and by loading it
+with gravel, in place of shot, he contrived to kill thrushes and other
+small birds. Their nests, too, full at this time of eggs and young,
+supplied a meagre resource; and once, being hard pressed, he made a
+Gallic banquet on a party of serenaders who were croaking and trilling
+their evening concert about the edge of a shallow pool. Frogs have
+found warm eulogists; but never did the art of Paris or Bologna
+transmute those delectable reptiles into so savory a repast as did the
+famine-sharpened appetite of Morton.
+
+Upon fare like this, he wandered on, till he stumbled upon the valley
+of Ferrera.
+
+He had found at last an asylum wild enough to content the most pious
+of eremites, or the most desperate of bandits. Below he saw the raging
+water foaming along the depths of its black ravine; above--the
+stupendous ramparts that walled the valley in--cliffs, along whose
+giddy verge the firs were dwindled to feathers. Cascades spouted from
+their tops, scattering to mist and nothingness long before their
+measureless leap was done. The tribute drawn from the clouds the
+lavish mountain flung back to the clouds again. Rocks were piled on
+rocks, ruin on ruin, and, high over all, the glaciers of the Splugen
+shone like cliffs of silver.
+
+Take a savage from his woods or his prairies, and, school him as you
+will, the ingrained savage will still declare itself. Take the most
+polished of mankind, turn him into the wilderness, and forthwith the
+dormant savage begins to appear. Hunt him with enemies, gnaw him with
+hunger, beat him with wind and rain, and observe the result; how the
+delicate tissues of civilization are blown away, how rude passions
+start into life, how his bodily cravings grow clamorous and
+importunate, how he grows reckless of his own blood and the blood of
+others. "Men are as the times." Young Lovelace of the hussars singing
+a duet at Lady Belgrave's _soiree_, would hardly know himself, hewing
+down Russian artillerymen at Balaklava.
+
+Had Meredith met his old comrade as he was making his slow way among
+the rocks and ravines, in dress no better than the meanest peasant,
+his face moustached and bearded, and thin and dark with hardship, he
+would have needed the eyes of a lynx to detect Morton the millionaire.
+The mind of the latter shared, in some sort, the changes of his outer
+man. Proscribed and hunted, starved into fierceness, his best friend
+murdered at his side, his mood was, to say the least, none of the most
+benign. But, as he toiled on his way, he turned aside to rest in a
+sunny nook, deep sheltered among rocks. Here, where the fresh grass
+tempted him, and where, from a jutting crag, the water, trickling from
+some hidden spring, fell in rapid drops, tinkling into a pool below,
+and, as they fell, flashing in the sun like a string of
+diamonds,--here, in this quiet nook, he sat down; and, as he did so,
+he saw by his side, close nestled in the young grass, a little family
+of white and purple blossoms. They were blossoms of the crocus, a
+native of these valleys.
+
+Morton bent over them, and put aside the grass from the delicate
+petals. A flower will now and then find a voice, and that not a weak
+one. As he looked, there came in upon him such a surge of
+recollection, such a memory of New England gardens, such a vision of
+loved faces, and, chief before them all, the face he best loved, such
+an awakening of every tender thought that had once possessed him, and
+all in such overpowering contrast with his present misery, that the
+famished outlaw burst into a flood of tears.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLV.
+
+  The lamentable change is from the best;
+  The worst returns to laughter. Welcome, then,
+  Thou unsubstantial air that I embrace.--_Lear_.
+
+
+The Honorable Charles Augustus Murray, recreating himself with a
+hunting tour among the Pawnees, killed a buffalo; and being, as he
+assures us, ravenously hungry, proceeded to regale himself on his
+game, without asking the aid of the cook. Morton, in his wandering,
+had the good luck to kill a straggling sheep; and being twice as
+hungry as the Honorable Charles Augustus Murray, it may be set down
+largely to his credit, if he did not follow that gentleman's example.
+At all events, the sheep was a windfall of the first magnitude. Morton
+had woodcraft enough to turn the fleece into a receptacle for carrying
+such parts of the flesh as best answered his purposes; and thus he was
+well provisioned for several days.
+
+After various roamings, by night and by day, he came upon a broad
+road, clearly one of the great alpine passes. Which of them he could
+not tell. He would have given the world to learn; for he knew nothing
+of his whereabouts, and thought himself still in Tyrol, or, at the
+best, in Bormio. His attempts to gain information from the peasants
+had always failed, and, in one or two instances, had seemed to
+threaten serious consequences. Though brave enough in the front of an
+open danger, the secret toils which had been about him so long had
+taught him to shrink from the face of man. Moreover, he could not
+speak the prevalent language of the district, and his Italian, which
+might sometimes have served him, was none of the best. A little local
+knowledge could have saved him a world of suffering; but, in the lack
+of it, he pushed blindly on, resolved to die on the mountains rather
+than risk another prison.
+
+The sky for some days had been overclouded. He had lost the points of
+the compass; and when he saw the great highway stretching before him,
+dim and lonely in the gray of the morning, he thought, or hoped, that
+it would lead him into the heart of Switzerland. It was the pass of
+the Splugen, where it leaves the Rheinwald. Turning his back on
+safety, he began to plod on towards the lion's jaws.
+
+Seeing a small cottage, in a recess of the forest, he reconnoitred it,
+with the laudable view of robbing a henroost. While thus employed, he
+saw two men leave the house, and betake themselves to their work in
+some remote part of the mountain. After a long reconnaissance, he
+could see no one about the place but a young woman, about six feet
+high, who, fork in hand, was busying herself in a field with labors
+much less elegant than useful. Morton watched her for a time, then,
+taking heart of grace, walked towards her from his lurking-place,
+holding between his fingers, as a talisman, a piece of silver, part of
+the scanty trust which Max had left him.
+
+When he beheld her lusty proportions, her white teeth, grinning
+between perplexity at his appearance and pleasure at sight of the
+coin, and her broad cheeks, ruddy with health, good-nature, and
+stupidity, his apprehensions vanished. She seemed not at all afraid of
+him. In truth, she and her pitchfork might between them have put two
+common men to flight. He spoke to her in bad Italian, and asked for
+food, proffering the money in exchange. She answered in a _patois_
+which was Greek to him, mixed with a few words of Italian, worse than
+his own. She seemed, however, to catch his meaning very clearly; for,
+running to the house, she presently emerged with a loaf of barley
+bread and a formidable piece of bacon. These she gave him, and, taking
+the silver, tied it up with much care in a corner of her apron.
+
+Thus far successful, Morton next tried to learn something touching the
+country and the routes; but here his failure was signal. Where food
+and drink were the topics in hand, and especially when her wits were
+quickened by the sight of silver, she had contrived to understand him;
+but with matters more abstruse her faculties had never been trained to
+grapple. She showed, however, no lack of good-will, nodding, laughing,
+and answering, "_Si, si!_" to all his questions indiscriminately. With
+this he had to content himself. He bade her "_addio_," received a
+friendly nod and grin in return, and went on his way, much less bitter
+against mankind than he had been ten minutes before.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLVI.
+
+_Auf._ Your hand! Most welcome.
+
+_1 Serv._ Here's a strange alteration!
+
+_2 Serv._ By my hand, I had thought to have strucken him with a
+cudgel; and yet my mind gave me his clothes made a false report of
+him.--_Coriolanus_.
+
+
+In passing the Splugen, Morton journeyed chiefly in the night, making
+a wide detour over the crusted snow to avoid the station at the
+summit. By day, he found some safe retreat where he could rest and
+sleep in tolerable ease and warmth. His night progress was, for the
+most part, on a broad, clear road, very different from that rugged
+path by the Cardinel, where, some forty-seven years before, the
+avalanches cut through Macdonald's columns, and swept men and horses
+to bottomless ruin.
+
+The sky was still clouded; but there was a full moon behind the
+clouds, and the mountains reflected its light, from their vast
+surfaces of snow. He could hear any approaching foot from a great
+distance, for there was nothing to break the stillness but the hollow
+fall of torrents, and the whisper and moan of winds through ravines
+and gorges.
+
+On the third night, he was descending the defiles that lead from Campo
+Dolcino to Chiavenna. He passed Chiavenna, and soon a new scene opened
+upon him. The Alps were behind him, cliff and chasm, torrent and
+ravine, and the icy sheen of glaciers. Italy received him, robed in
+her "fatal gift of beauty;" in the midst of her shame, radiant as in
+her day of honor; breathing still of history, and art, and poetry.
+
+Standing on the heights behind Colico, he saw the Lake of Como
+stretching southward, its banks studded with villas, its hills green
+with the chestnut and the laurel, the fig, pomegranate, and vine. But,
+to the north, the sheer cliffs rose like a battlement, and, higher
+yet, towered cold white peaks, aloof in stern and lofty desolation.
+
+Reality will now and then make fancy blush for herself. The Easter
+illumination of St. Peter's may match the wildest dream of the Arabian
+Nights; and this scene on the Lake of Como, with the sunset upon it,
+may outvie the highest wrought counterfeit of Claude or Salvator, or
+both combined. The world, much abused as she is, does her part. She is
+profuse of beauties; but, in the midst of them, one still drags with
+him his own work-day identity. Go where he will, his old Adam still
+hangs about him; and the spell-breaking sense that he is himself and
+no other scatters every charm that Art and Nature would cast over him.
+
+Morton, poor devil, had other matters to think of than scenery. Hunger
+and danger are a cure for the most rabid love of landscape. His bread
+and bacon had given out, and the phantom of an Austrian _sbirro_ rode
+him like a nightmare. Mustering his best recollections of geography,
+he came to the belief that he was either on the Lake of Como, or, as
+seemed to him much more likely, on the lake farther eastward, that of
+Garda. One thing was certain: he was on a great route of travel. His
+best course, as he thought, was to watch for the chance of a meeting
+with some American or English tourist, to whom he could make his case
+known; and meanwhile, though a worse actor never appeared on any
+stage, to pass himself off, if he could, as a beggar.
+
+He passed a night on the hills above Colico, and happily for him,
+above the malaria; woke half famished from his miserably broken sleep,
+and wearily walked on his way, wondering if, in support of his
+character, he could ever find grace to say, "_Datemi qualche cosa_."
+There was something in the idea of thus sneaking through a country
+that grated on him with peculiar discomfort; and to have headed the
+forlorn hope of a storming party would have been less trying to his
+nerve.
+
+The thought how to content the cravings of his hunger soon absorbed
+all other thoughts. Looking about him, he saw a small white house,
+standing alone on the road by the shore of the lake; and over the door
+he could read from afar the sign, "_Spaccio di Vino_." Famine got the
+better of caution. He approached warily, ensconced himself behind an
+old wall, and, quite unseen, began his observations. The house was but
+a few rods off, on the other side of the road. An old wayfarer sat in
+the porch, busy in breakfasting on curds, pressed hard like a cheese,
+a slice of very black and solid-looking bread serving him for a plate.
+In a few moments, the landlord, a freckled-faced Italian, came to the
+door, and began to chat with his customer. Morton took a coin from his
+pocket, walked forth from his hiding-place, and was approaching, still
+unnoticed, when he was startled by the sound of a horse's tread, on
+the road beyond the house. A single glance at the rider told him that
+there was no danger, and made his heart beat with sudden hope.
+
+"_Il signor Inglese_," remarked the host to his friend.--"_Buon'
+giorno, eccellenza, buon' giorno_,"--lifting his white night cap, and
+bowing with a great flourish.
+
+The young man touched his hat with a careless smile, and half-turning
+his horse, asked,--
+
+"Padrone, has my man passed this way?"
+
+He had, to Morton's eye, rather the easy manner of a well-bred
+American, than the more distant bearing common with an English
+gentleman.
+
+"_Eccellenza, si,_" replied the padrone,--"he passed a quarter of an
+hour ago, with the birds your excellency has shot."
+
+The young man rode on, passing Morton, as he stood by the roadside.
+
+"I have seen that face before," said the latter to himself--"in a
+dream, for what I know, but I have seen it."
+
+It was a frank and open face, manly, yet full of kindliness, not
+without a tinge of melancholy.
+
+"Come of it what will," thought the fugitive, "I will speak to him."
+
+He walked after the retiring horseman, and when an angle of the road
+concealed him from the inn, quickened his pace almost to a run. But at
+that moment the Englishman struck into a sharp trot, and disappeared
+over the ridge of a hill. Morton soon gained sight of him again, and
+kept him in view for about a mile, when he saw him enter the gateway
+belonging to a small villa, between the road and the water. It was a
+very pretty spot; the grounds terraced to the edge of the lake; with
+laurels, cypresses, box hedges, a fountain or two, an artificial
+grotto, and a superb diorama of water and mountains.
+
+Morton stood waiting at the gate. At length he saw a female domestic,
+evidently Italian, passing through the shrubbery before the house, and
+disappearing behind it. In a few minutes more, a solemn personage
+appeared at the door, whom he would have known at a mile's distance
+for an old English servant. He stood looking with great gravity out
+upon the grounds. Morton approached, and accosting him in Italian,
+asked to see his master.
+
+John was not a proficient in the tongue of Ariosto and Dante. Indeed,
+in his intercourse with the natives, he had seen occasion for one
+phrase alone, and that a somewhat pithy and repellant one,--_Andate al
+diavolo_.
+
+He glared with supreme and savage scorn on the tatterdemalion
+stranger, and uttered his talismanic words,--
+
+"_Andarty al devillio!_"
+
+Morton changed his tactics; and, looking fixedly at the human mastiff,
+said in English,--
+
+"Go to your master, sir, and tell him that I wish to speak with him."
+
+The Saxon words and the tone of authority coming from one whom he had
+taken for a vagrant beggar, astonished the old man beyond utterance.
+He stared for a moment,--turned to obey,--then turned back again,--
+
+"Mr. Wentworth is at breakfast, sir."
+
+The last monosyllable was spoken in a doubtful tone, the speaker being
+perplexed between respect for the tone and language of the stranger,
+and contempt for his vagabond attire.
+
+"Then bring me pen, ink, and paper--I will write to him."
+
+And pushing past the servant, he seated himself on a chair in the
+hall.
+
+John went for the articles required, first glancing around to see what
+items of plunder might be within the intruder's reach. Morton in his
+absence opened several books which lay upon a table; and in one of
+them he saw, pencilled on the fly leaf, the name of the owner, Robert
+Wentworth.
+
+The pen, ink, and paper arriving, he wrote as follows, John meanwhile
+keeping a vigilant guard over him:--
+
+Sir: I am a native of the United States, who, for the past four years,
+have been a prisoner in the Castle of Ehrenberg, confined for no
+offence, political or otherwise, but on a groundless suspicion. I
+escaped by the assistance of a soldier in the garrison, and have made
+my way thus far in the dress of a peasant. I am anxious to reach
+Genoa, or some other port beyond the power of Austria, but am
+embarrassed and endangered by my ignorance of the routes and the state
+of the country. Information on these points, and the means of
+communicating with an American consul, are the only aid of which I am
+in necessity; and I take the liberty of applying to you in the hope of
+obtaining it. By giving it, you will oblige me in a matter of life and
+death. The people of the country cannot be trusted; but I may rely
+securely on the generosity of an English gentleman.
+
+                                  Your obedient servant,
+                                              VASSALL MORTON.
+
+He sealed the note, and gave it to the old servant. The latter mounted
+the stairs, and reappearing in a few moments, said, in his former
+doubtful tone, "Please to walk up."
+
+Morton followed him to the door of a small room looking upon the lake.
+Near the window stood the young man whom he had seen at the inn, with
+the note open in his hand. Morton entered, inclining his head
+slightly. The other returned his salutation, looked at him for an
+instant without speaking, and then, coming forward, gave him his hand,
+and bade him welcome with the utmost frankness.
+
+Astonished, and half overcome, Morton could only stammer his
+acknowledgments for such a reception of one who came with no passport
+but his own word.
+
+"O," said Wentworth, smiling, "when I meet an honest man, I know him
+by instinct, as Falstaff knew the true prince. Sit down; I am glad to
+see you; and shall be still more glad if I can help you."
+
+The old servant received some whispered directions, and left the room.
+Morton gave a short outline of his story, to which his host listened
+with unequivocal signs of interest.
+
+"I wish," said Wentworth, "that you were the only innocent victim of
+Austrian despotism. It is a monstrous infamy, built on fraud and
+force, but too refined, too artificial, too complicated to endure."
+
+"Bullets and cold steel are the medicines for it," said Morton.
+
+Here the servant reappeared.
+
+"Here, at all events, you are safe. Stay with me to-day, and I think I
+can promise you that in a few days more you may stand on the deck of
+an American frigate. If you will go with John, he will help you to get
+rid of that villanous disguise."
+
+Morton followed the old man into an adjoining room, where he found a
+bath, a suit of clothes, and the various appliances of the toilet
+prepared for him. And here he was left alone to indulge his
+reflections and revolutionize his outward man.
+
+Meanwhile Wentworth sat musing by the window: "His face haunts me; and
+yet, for my life, I cannot remember where I have seen him before. I
+would stake all on his truth and honor. That firm lip and undespairing
+eye are a history in themselves. Strange--the difference between man
+and man. How should I have borne such suffering? Why, gone mad, I
+suppose, or destroyed myself. One sorrow--no, nor a hundred--would
+never unman _him_, and make him dream away his life, watching the sun
+rise and set, here by the Lake of Como. I scarcely know why, but my
+heart warms towards him like an old friend. Cost what it may, I will
+not leave him till he is out of danger."
+
+He was still musing in this strain, when Morton returned, a changed
+man in person and in mind. It seemed as if, in casting off his squalid
+livery of misery and peril, a burden of care had fallen with it; as if
+the sullen cloud that had brooded over him so long had been pierced at
+length by a gladdening beam of sunlight, and the sombre landscape were
+smiling again with pristine light and promise. His buoyant and defiant
+spirit resumed its native tone; and a strange confidence sprang up
+within him, as if a desperate crisis of his destiny had been safely
+passed.
+
+Wentworth saw the change at a glance.
+
+"Why, man, I see freedom in your eye already. But sit down; 'it's ill
+talking between a full man and a fasting,' and you must be half
+starved."
+
+Morton was so, in truth. He seated himself at the table, and addressed
+himself to the repast provided for him with the keenness of a mountain
+trapper, while his entertainer played with his knife and fork to keep
+him in countenance.
+
+"Do you know," said Wentworth, at length--"I am sure I have seen you
+before."
+
+"And I have seen you--I could swear to it; and yet I do not know
+where."
+
+"Were you ever in England?"
+
+"Only for a few days."
+
+"I was once in America."
+
+"When?"
+
+"In 1839. I was at Boston in March of that year."
+
+Morton shook his head. "I remember that time perfectly. I was in New
+Orleans in March, and afterwards in Texas."
+
+"From Boston I went westward--up the Missouri and out upon the
+prairies."
+
+Morton paused a moment in doubt; then sprang to his feet with a joyful
+exclamation,--
+
+"The prairies! Have you forgotten the Big Horn Branch of the Yellow
+Stone, and the camp under the old cottonwood trees!"
+
+Wentworth leaped up, and grasped both his guest's hands.
+
+"Forgotten! No; I shall never forget the morning when you came over to
+us with that tall, half-breed fellow, in a Canadian capote."
+
+"Yes,--Antoine Le Rouge."
+
+"We should have starved if you had not found us, and perhaps lost our
+scalps into the bargain."
+
+"The Rickarees had made a clean sweep of your horses."
+
+"Not a hoof was left to us. Our four Canadians were scared to death; I
+was ill; not one of us was fit for service but Ireton; and we had not
+three days' provision. If you had not given us your spare mules and
+horses, and seen us safe to Fort Cass, the wolves would have made a
+supper of some of us."
+
+"And do you remember," said Morton, "after we broke up camp that
+morning, how the Rickaree devils came galloping at us down the hill,
+and thought they could ride over us, and how we fought them all the
+forenoon, lying on our faces behind the pack saddles and baggage?"
+
+"I remember it as if it were yesterday. I can hear the crack of the
+rifles now, and the yelling of those bloodthirsty vagabonds."
+
+"It is strange," pursued Wentworth, "that I did not recognize you at
+once. I have thought of you a thousand times; but it is eight years
+since we met, and you are very much changed. Besides we were together
+only two days. And yet I can hardly forgive myself."
+
+"Any wandering trapper would have done as much for you as I did; or,
+if he had not, he would have deserved a cudgelling. What has become of
+the young man, or boy, rather, who was with you?"
+
+"You mean Ireton. Dead, poor fellow--dead."
+
+"I am very sorry. He was the coolest of us all in the fight. He had a
+singular face, but a very handsome one. I can recall it distinctly at
+this moment."
+
+Wentworth took a miniature from a desk, opened it, and placed it
+before Morton.
+
+"These are his features," said the latter, "but this is the portrait
+of a lady."
+
+"His sister--his twin sister. Dead too!"
+
+There was a change, as he spoke, in his voice and manner, so marked
+that Morton forbore to pursue the subject farther. He studied the
+picture in silence. It was a young and beautiful face, delicate, yet
+full of fire; and by some subtilty of his craft, the artist had given
+to the eyes an expression which reminded him of the restless glances
+which he had seen a caged falcon at the Garden of Plants cast upwards
+at the sky, into which he was debarred from soaring.
+
+In a few moments, Wentworth spoke in his accustomed tone.
+
+"The point first to be thought of, is to get you out of this
+predicament. I have a man who took to his bed this morning, and is at
+present shaking in an ague fit. He is of about your age, height, and
+complexion; and by wearing his dress, you could travel under his
+passport. I am not at all a suspected person, and if my friend will
+pass for a few days as my servant, I do not doubt that we shall reach
+Genoa without interruption."
+
+Morton warmly expressed his gratitude, but protested against
+Wentworth's undertaking the journey on his account.
+
+"O, I am going to Genoa for my pleasure, and shall be glad of your
+company. The steamer for Como touches here this afternoon. 'Dull not
+device by coldness and delay;' we will go on board, and be in Milan
+to-morrow."
+
+They conversed for an hour, when Morton withdrew to adjust his new
+disguise. Wentworth followed him with his eye as he disappeared; then
+sank into the musing mood which had grown habitual to him.
+
+"When I saw him last,"--so his thoughts shaped themselves,--"my drama
+was opening; and now it is played out--light and darkness, smiles and
+tears--and the curtain is dropped forever. When I saw him last, I was
+gathering the prairie flowers and dedicating them to her,--though she
+did not suspect it,--and dreaming of her by camp fires and in night
+watches."
+
+The miniature still lay on the table. He drew it towards him and gazed
+on it fixedly:--
+
+"Mine for a space, and now--gone--vanished like a dream. You were a
+meteor between earth and sky, with a light that flickered and blazed
+and darkened, but a warmth constant and unchanged. Of all who admired
+the brightness of that erratic star, how few could know what gladness
+it shed around it, what desolation it has left behind!"
+
+He gazed on the picture till his eyes grew dim; then sat for a few
+moments, listless and abstracted; then rose, with an effort, and bent
+his mind to the task before him.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLVII.
+
+  O that a man might know
+  The end of this day's business ere it come.--_Julius Caesar_.
+
+
+The diligence rolled into Genoa. Wentworth was in the _coupe_, and on
+the top sat Morton, as his servant. They had made the journey without
+interruption.
+
+Morton reported himself to the American consul, and told his story.
+The wrath and astonishment of that official were great; but they were
+as nothing to the patriotic fury of three New York dry goods
+importers, who, mingling pleasure with business, were just arrived
+from Paris. Nothing was talked of but an immediate bombardment of
+Trieste, and a probable assault of Vienna.
+
+Escaping as soon as he could from this demonstration, Morton bade his
+fervid countrymen good morning, and went out with Wentworth, who
+introduced him to his banker. He learned from the consul that a
+merchant brig was in port, nearly ready to sail for home, and gladly
+took passage in her.
+
+And now at last he was safe; and safety should have brought with it a
+lightening of the spirits, a sense of relief. In fact, however, it
+brought little or nothing of the kind. The human mind, happily, cannot
+well hold more than one crowning evil at a time. One black thought,
+firmly lodged, will commonly keep the rest at bay. The fear of famine
+and a prison had left him no leisure to plague himself with less
+imminent mischiefs; but now, this fear being ousted, a new devil
+leaped into its empty seat. At the first moment when he could find
+himself alone, he wrote to Edith Leslie, telling her how he had been
+imprisoned, how, for almost five wretched years, her image had been
+his constant friend, how he had escaped, and how he was hastening
+homeward to claim the fulfilment of her word. He hinted nothing of his
+conviction that Vinal had been instrumental to his detention. He began
+divided between hope and fear, but as he wrote, a foreboding grew upon
+him that she was no longer living, or, at least, no longer living for
+him. The letter, despatched post haste, would reach home a full
+fortnight before his own arrival.
+
+Having seen his friend in safety, Wentworth set out on his return;
+and, as they shook hands at parting, their eyes met with a look that
+showed how clearly the two men understood each other.
+
+Wentworth smiled as Morton tried to express his gratitude.
+
+"You have cleared that score. I do not mean now the old affair on the
+Big Horn. I have been dreaming, lately, and you have waked me."
+
+"I should never have imagined that you were dozing."
+
+"Call it what you will. The truth is," added Wentworth, with some
+hesitation, "an old memory has been hanging about me, and I believe
+has made a girl of me. But that is past and done. I shall leave the
+Lake of Como. There is a career for me at home, and a good one, if I
+will but take it. Come to England, and you will find me there."
+
+Morton went with him past the gates, and, with a heavy heart, watched
+him on his way northward.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLVIII.
+
+                      His restless eye
+  Glanced forward frequently, as if some ill
+  He dared not meet were there.--_Willis_.
+
+
+After some days' delay, the brig put to sea, Morton on board. The
+cliffs behind Gibraltar came in sight at last, and a fresh levanter
+blew her out like an arrow upon the Atlantic. They were becalmed off
+the Azores. The sea was like glass; the turtles came up to sleep at
+the top; the tar melted out of the seams; and as the vessel moved on
+the long, lazy swells, the masts kept up their weary creaking from
+morning till night, and from night till morning. Morton walked the
+deck in a fever of impatience.
+
+At length an east wind sprang up, and with studding sails spread like
+wings, the brig ran before it, reeling like a drunken sea-gull.
+
+On the forty-first day, the Neversink heights rose on the horizon.
+Vessels innumerable passed--steamers, merchantmen, war ships. The
+highlands of Staten Island, with its villages and villas, lay close on
+their left, and the Bay of New York opened before them, sparkling in
+the morning sun, and alive with moving sails. On the right lay a
+forest of masts; in front, the Castle lifted its ugly familiar front;
+and farther on, the spire of Trinity towered over the wilderness of
+brick.
+
+Morton called a boat alongside, embarked his luggage, and went on
+shore. And, in spite of that depression which follows long and deep
+excitement, in spite of the anxieties that engrossed him, he felt a
+thrill of delight as his foot pressed American soil.
+
+This pleasure, however, was short. The thought of Edith Leslie had
+been so long the solace of his confinement, that it seemed to have
+grown into a part of himself; at all events, now that his doubts were
+on the verge of decision, for good or evil, it drove every other
+thought from his mind. Reaching his hotel, he found that he could not
+set out for Boston till the afternoon; and to get rid of the interval,
+he turned over the Boston newspapers in the reading room, searching
+for the mention of any familiar names. Here he was more successful
+than he cared to be; for he presently discovered the name of Horace
+Vinal, figuring in the list of directors of a joint stock company.
+
+"The hound!" muttered Morton; "so he is alive yet!"
+
+And leaving the hotel, he walked up the crowded sidewalk of Broadway,
+in a mood any thing but tranquil.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLIX.
+
+  Affliction is enamoured of thy parts,
+  And thou art wedded to calamity.--_Romeo and Juliet_.
+
+
+He had not gone far, when he became aware of a footstep closely
+following him. He was about to look back, when a little man passed
+before him, glancing furtively in his face with a ludicrous expression
+of doubt, amazement, and curiosity. Morton at once recognized the
+features of an odd, simple-minded classmate, named Shingles.
+"Charley," he exclaimed, "how do you do?"
+
+"It _is_ you," cried Shingles, with an ejaculation of profound
+astonishment; "solid flesh and blood!"--grasping Morton's extended
+hand--"and not your ghost. Why, we all thought you were dead!"
+
+"Not quite," said Morton.
+
+"Dead and buried," repeated Shingles, "off in Transylvania, or some
+such place."
+
+"I _was_ buried, but they buried me alive."
+
+Shingles, who had a taste for the horrible, took the assertion
+literally, and dilated his eyes like an owl on the lookout for a
+mouse.
+
+"But how did you manage to get out?"
+
+"I contrived to break loose, after a few years."
+
+Shingles stared in horror and perplexity.
+
+"Don't be frightened, Charley. I'm all right,--neither ghost nor
+vampire. But we shall be pushed off the sidewalk, if we stand here."
+
+"Come down into Florence's, then, and let me hear about it. Hang me if
+I ever expected to see you again. I shouldn't like to have met you
+alone, at night, any where near a graveyard. At our last class
+meeting, we were all talking about you, and saying you were a deused
+good fellow, and what a pity it was. And here you are alive; it was
+all for nothing!"
+
+"That's very unlucky," said Morton, as they descended into the
+restaurant.
+
+"By Jove," exclaimed Shingles, whose amazement was still strong upon
+him, "I was never so much astonished in my life as when I saw you just
+now. I was coming out of a shop, as you passed along the sidewalk. I
+felt as if I had seen a spirit. I followed behind you, and wasn't
+quite sure it was you, till I saw your trick of rapping your cane
+against the bricks as you walked along. Then I said to myself, it's
+he, or else old Beelzebub, in his likeness. But come, tell us how it
+was. How did you get off alive?"
+
+Morton briefly recounted his imprisonment and escape, interrupted by
+the wondering ejaculations of his auditor.
+
+"Who would have thought," exclaimed Shingles, "when you and I used to
+go up to Elk Pond, on Saturdays, to catch perch and pickerel, that you
+would ever have been shut up in the dungeon of an Austrian castle? You
+remember those old times--don't you?"
+
+"That I do," said Morton.
+
+"Do you remember the old tavern, where we used to lunch, and the
+pretty girl that waited on the table?"
+
+"The girl that you raved about all the way home? Yes, I remember."
+
+"By Jove, to think you've been shut up in a dungeon! Well, I haven't
+any very brilliant account to give of _my_self. I began to practise
+law, but I was never meant for a lawyer; so I gave it up, and have
+been ever since at my father's old place, just pottering about, you
+know. I was born in the country, and brought up there, and I mean to
+live there, only now and then I come down to New York, on a
+bend,--just for a change."
+
+"I suppose you can tell me the news. How are all the fellows? How is
+Meredith?"
+
+"Very well, I believe. He is living in Boston."
+
+"Married, or single?"
+
+"Single. We are not much of a marrying class. Wren was the first. Was
+that before you went away, or after? We voted to send him a cradle;
+but he did not know how to take it. He thought we were fooling him,
+and got quite angry. No, we are not at all a marrying class, nor a
+dying class either, for that matter. There are not more than five or
+six dead, and twelve or fourteen married; we reckoned them up last
+class meeting."
+
+"Vinal--what of him?"
+
+"O, he's alive, and married, too."
+
+Morton turned pale. "Married!--to whom?"
+
+"Well, they say he's made a first-rate match. I don't know her myself.
+I'm not a party-going man; I never was, you know. I haven't been
+thrown in much with that kind of people. But they tell me he couldn't
+have done better."
+
+"What's her name?" demanded Morton.
+
+"Miss Leslie--Colonel Leslie's daughter. But what's the matter? Are
+you ill?"
+
+"It's nothing," gasped Morton; "I had a fever in prison, and have
+never been quite well since. I grow dizzy, sometimes."
+
+"You _will_ grow dizzy, with a vengeance, if you drink wine in that
+way."
+
+"It's nothing," repeated Morton; "it will be over in a minute. What
+were you saying?"
+
+"About the fellows that have married,--O, Vinal,--I was saying that he
+had just got married."
+
+"Well, what about it?"
+
+"Why, nothing particular."
+
+"When was it?"
+
+"Last month."
+
+"Within a month! Are you sure?"
+
+"O, yes. I was in Boston myself at the time, and heard all about it.
+Her father was ill; so the marriage was private. Vinal is a sort of
+fellow that somehow I never cottoned to much. I don't think he's very
+disinterested. I like a fellow that will swear when he is angry, and
+not keep close shut up, like an oyster."
+
+The tattle of his rustic companion was become intolerable to Morton.
+He had received his stab, and wished to hear no more. In a few
+minutes, he rose from the table. "Charley, I am sorry to leave you so
+suddenly, but I am not well. The fresh air and a hard walk are all
+that will set me up. I shall see you again."
+
+"But where are you staying?"
+
+"At Blancard's. Good morning, old fellow."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER L.
+
+_Fab._ . . . Elle est----.
+
+_Sev._                      Quoi?
+
+_Fab._                             Mariee!
+
+_Sev._ . . . . . Ce coup de foudre est grand!--_Polyeucte_.
+
+  The world's my oyster, which I with sword will open.--_Henry IV_.
+
+  Put money in thy purse; follow these wars.--_Othello_.
+
+
+Morton walked down Broadway at a rapid pace, entered his hotel,
+mounted to his room, seated himself, rested his forehead on his hand,
+and, with fixed eyes and compressed lips, remained in this position
+for some minutes, motionless as if carved out of oak. Then, rising, he
+paced the room, buried his face in his hands, and groaned with
+irrepressible anguish. Suddenly the door was burst open, and an Irish
+servant, apparently in a great hurry, bolted in, and tossed a card on
+the table, saying at the same time,--"Gen'lman down stairs wants to
+see you."
+
+Morton broke into a rage, to hide the traces of a different passion.
+
+"Why do you come in without knocking? Learn better manners, or I shall
+teach them to you."
+
+"I beg pardon, sir," said the servant, reduced at once to the depth of
+obsequiousness, "there's a gentleman, sir--an officer, sir,--would
+like to see you, sir."
+
+"An officer!--I don't know any officers. There's some mistake."
+
+"He _said_ Mr. Morton, sir. This is his card, sir."
+
+Morton looked at the card, and read the name of his classmate Rosny.
+
+"Very well. Ask the gentleman to come up.--No,--here,"--as the servant
+was retreating along the passage,--"where is he?"
+
+"In the reading room, sir."
+
+"Tell him I will come down in a moment."
+
+"Yes, sir, I will, sir."
+
+Morton adjusted his dress, strove to banish from his features all
+traces of the emotion which had just overwhelmed him, went down
+stairs, and met Rosny with an air of as much cordiality as if there
+were nothing in his mind but the pleasure of seeing an old friend.
+Rosny, his first welcome over, surveyed him from head to foot.
+
+"A good deal changed! Thinner,--darker complexioned, decidedly older.
+And yet you've weathered it well. It's a thing that I could never
+stand,--to be boxed up in four stone walls. I would throttle the
+jailer first, and then knock my brains out against the stones."
+
+"Did Shingles tell you of my being here?"
+
+"Yes, I met him just now, with his eyes bigger than ever. When I saw
+him making a dive at me across the street, among the omnibuses and
+carriages, I knew that something extraordinary was to pay."
+
+"_You_ have changed your outward man, too, since I saw you last," said
+Morton, looking at his companion's costume, which consisted of a gray
+volunteer uniform.
+
+"Yes, I'm in Uncle Sam's pay now.--Off for Mexico in a day or
+two;--revel in the Halls of the Montezumas, you know."
+
+"What rank do you hold in the service, Dick?"
+
+"You'll please to address me as Major Rosny; that is, till good luck
+and the Mexican bullets make a colonel of me.--I have just dropped in
+to shake hands with you. I have an appointment to keep in five
+minutes. You have nothing particular to do to-day--have you?"
+
+"Nothing very particular," said Morton, hesitating.
+
+"Then come and dine with me at Delmonico's at four o'clock. What!--you
+don't mean to say no, do you?--Is that the way you treat your friends?
+Come, I shall be here at four, precisely. _Au revoir._"
+
+And, with his usual celerity of motion, Rosny left the hotel.
+
+Morton slowly remounted to his room, locked the door this time, to
+keep out intruders, seated himself, and gave himself up to his dark
+and morbid reveries.
+
+"God! of what is this world made! Villany thrives, and innocent men
+are racked with the pangs of hell. Poverty starving its
+victims,--luxury poisoning them;--the passions of tigers and the mean
+vices of reptiles;--treacherous hatred, faithless love;--deceitful
+hope, vain struggles, endless suffering,--a hell of misery and
+darkness. A fair sunrise, to cheat the eye;--then clouds and storms,
+blackness and desolation! To look back over the last five years! Then
+I was basking in sunshine; and out of that brightness what a doom is
+fallen on me! My life--my guiding star quenched in a vile morass--lost
+forever in the arms of this accursed villain!"
+
+Morton rose abruptly, went to the window, and stood looking out with a
+fixed gaze, wholly unconscious of what was before him. In a moment he
+turned again, and there was a wild and deadly light in his eyes. A
+thought had struck him, shooting an electric life through all his
+veins, and kindling him into a kind of fierce ecstasy. He would go to
+Vinal, charge him with his perfidy, challenge him, and put him to
+death. He paced the room in great disorder. A resistless power seemed
+to have seized upon him, sweeping him forward with the force of a
+torrent. He clinched his teeth and breathed deeply. The thought of
+action and of vengeance lighted up his perturbed and gloomy mind as
+the baleful glare of a conflagration lights up a stormy midnight.
+Suddenly he stopped, seated himself again, and remained for some
+minutes in violent mental conflict. "I thank God," he murmured at
+length, apostrophizing his enemy, "that you were not just now within
+my reach. You have ruined me for this life; you shall not ruin me for
+the next. Live, and work out your own destruction."
+
+He walked the room again, calmly enough, but in great dejection. "It
+may be," he thought, "that I am not his only victim. Perhaps the same
+art that snared me, has, by some infernal machination, entrapped her
+also. I believe it;--at least, I will try to believe it."
+
+He looked from the window upon the keen and busy crowds passing below
+in unbroken streams, to and from their places of business; and his
+mind tinged them with its own moody coloring.
+
+"You flight of human vultures! How many of you can show lives governed
+by any generous purpose or noble thought? Behind how many of those
+sharp and sallow features, furrowed with early wrinkles, lies the soul
+of a man? Desperate chasers after wealth, which, when you have won it,
+you have never been taught to use;--reckless pleasure hunters,
+beguiling others that your victims may beguile in turn, and both sink
+to perdition together. What you win with trickery, you throw away in
+vanity or debauch. The counting room or the broker's board by
+day;--brandy, billiards, and the rendezvous by night;--so you go,--a
+short, quick road;--driving to your doom with a high-pressure power of
+rapacity, vain glory, and lust. Man!--the thistledown of fortune, the
+shuttlecock of passion;--whirled on to destruction by the wildfire in
+his veins, unless by struggling and by prayer he can keep the narrow
+adamantine track laid down for his career!"
+
+In such distempered reflections he passed some time. Even in the
+darkest passages of his imprisonment, his mind had scarcely been
+shaken so far from its habitual poise. Growing weary at length of
+solitude, he went out of the house; and, avoiding the great
+thoroughfares, where he might perhaps meet an acquaintance, he
+threaded at a rapid pace those meaner streets and lanes, where even
+the best balanced mind may find abundant food for gloomy meditation.
+From time to time, as the image of his enemy rose before him, the
+desire for vengeance came upon him afresh, like a fever fit. He burned
+to seize Vinal by the throat, and, at least, force him to unmask his
+iniquity to the world.
+
+As he was passing down Water Street, he recollected, with some
+vexation, that Rosny had promised to call for him at four o'clock, and
+retraced his steps to the hotel, where, true to the minute, that
+punctual adventurer presently appeared.
+
+"Come," said Rosny; "if you are ready, we will walk down street."
+
+They repaired to Delmonico's, where, in a private room, a sumptuous
+repast had been made ready. Morton, over his companion's claret, was
+obliged to recount the circumstances of his imprisonment. Rosny, on
+his part, gave an outline of his own fortunes since they had last met.
+He had been once or twice on the point of very considerable success,
+but his vaulting ambition had always overleaped itself, and by too
+great eagerness and grasping at too much, he had repeatedly failed of
+his prize, only, however, to rally after every reverse with
+undiminished confidence and spirit. Such, at least, were the
+conclusions which Morton drew from his companion's somewhat inflated
+account of himself.
+
+After the cloth had been removed, Rosny bit off the end of a cigar,
+lighted it, puffed at it two or three times, and then, holding it
+between his fingers, went on with an harangue which the operations of
+the waiter had interrupted.
+
+"I tell you, these are great times that we live in. The world has seen
+nothing like them since the days of Columbus and Cortes. These are the
+times and this is the country for a man of merit to thrive in. Let him
+identify himself with the progressive movements of the age,--yes,
+faith, let him be a leader of them,--and there's nothing too large for
+him to hope for. Why, sir, the day is not far off, when the stars and
+stripes will be seen from Hudson's Bay to Panama. Cuba will come next;
+Brazil next. Lord knows where we shall stop. There's a field for a man
+of ability and pluck!"
+
+Morton smiled. Rosny relighted his cigar, which, in the fervor of his
+declamation, he had allowed to go out, gave a vigorous whiff or two,
+and proceeded.
+
+"We have just lost a splendid chance. I _did_ flatter myself that
+there was going to be a row with England, on the Oregon question; but
+it was a flash in the pan; it all ended in smoke."
+
+"Why do you want to fight with John Bull?" asked Morton.
+
+"For two good reasons. In the first place, I hate him. I hate him in
+right of my French ancestors, and I hate him as a true American
+democrat. Then, over and above all that, a war with the English would
+be the making of me. I should rise then. I would be their Hannibal.
+But now we have nothing better to do than giving fits to these yellow
+Mexican vagabonds."
+
+"A shabby employment," said Morton, "and yet I think I should like
+it."
+
+"You would, ey?--then go with me to Mexico."
+
+"It's a temptation," said Morton, his eyes lighted with a sudden
+gleam,--"I am in a mood for any thing, I do not care what."
+
+"I knew there was something ailing you," said Rosny; "why, you have
+had no appetite. You've lost all your spirits. Has any thing happened?
+Are you ill?"
+
+"Nothing to speak of. I am well enough in health."
+
+"Well, come with me to Mexico. When a man is under a cloud, he always
+makes the better soldier for it. If you have had bad luck, why, you
+can fight like a Trojan."
+
+"I could storm Hell Gates to-day," exclaimed Morton, giving a
+momentary vent to his long pent up emotion.
+
+"Good! I always knew that there was stuff in you, though you _are_
+worth half a million. It isn't that, though--is it? You haven't lost
+property--have you?"
+
+"Not that I know. Never mind, Dick; every man has his little
+vexations, sometimes, and is entitled to the privilege of swearing at
+them."
+
+"Well, I am not the man to pry into your private affairs. Come with me
+to Mexico. I can promise you a captain's commission,--perhaps I can
+get you a major's. I am not a cipher in the democratic party, I'd have
+you know, though I am not yet what I shall be soon. I helped Polk to
+his election, and my word will go for something. But, pshaw!--what am
+I talking about? With your money, and a little management, you can get
+any thing you want."
+
+"I have more than half a mind," said Morton, hesitating; "but, no,--I
+won't go."
+
+"Pshaw, man! You don't know what you are saying. You don't know what
+chances you are throwing away. Look at it. It isn't the military
+fame,--the glorification in the newspapers,--seeing pictures of
+yourself in the shop windows, charging full tilt among the Mexicans,
+and all that. You can take that for what it's worth. Tastes differ in
+such matters. But, I tell you, the men who distinguish themselves in
+Mexico are going to carry all before them in the political world. The
+people will go for them, neck or nothing. I know what our enlightened
+democracy is made of."--Here a slight grin flickered for an instant
+about the corners of his mouth; but he grew serious again at
+once.--"Yes, sir, a new world is going to begin. The old
+incumbents--Webster, Clay, Calhoun, and the rest--will pass off the
+stage, before long, and make room for younger men--men who will keep
+up with the times. Then will be our chance! Put brass in your
+forehead,--you have money enough in your purse already,--get a halo of
+Mexican glory round your head,--and you will shoot up like a rocket.
+First go to the war, then dive into politics, and you and I will be
+the biggest frogs in the puddle."
+
+"There's a fallacy in your conclusions," said Morton; "the officers of
+rank, the generals and colonels, will carry off the glory; and we
+shall have nothing but the blows."
+
+"The Mexican bullets will make that all right. I tell you, they are
+going to fly like hail. They will dock off the heads above us, and
+make a clear path for us to mount by."
+
+"Suppose that they should hit the wrong man," suggested Morton.
+
+"Pshaw!" exclaimed Rosny, "we won't look at the matter in that light."
+
+There was a momentary pause.
+
+"Now's your time," urged Rosny. "Come, say the word."
+
+Morton paced the room with knit brows and lips pressed together.
+
+"Glory,"--exclaimed his military friend, summing up the advantages of
+a Mexican campaign,--"glory,--preferment,--life, of the fastest
+kind,--what more would you have?"
+
+Morton had a strong native thirst for adventure, and a _penchant_ for
+military exploit. In his present frame of mind, he felt violently
+impelled to cut loose from all his old ideas and scruples, and launch
+at once upon a new life, fresh, unshackled, and reckless,--to plunge
+headlong into the tumult of the active world; fight its battles, run
+its races, give and take its blows, strain after its prizes,--forget
+the past and all its associations in the fever of the present. Mexico
+rose before his thoughts--snowy volcanoes, and tropical forests; the
+cocoa, the palm, and the cactus; bastioned cities and intrenched
+heights; the rush and din of battle; war with its fierce excitements
+and unbounded license. To his disordered mood, the scene had
+fascinations almost resistless, and he burned to play his part in the
+fiery drama.
+
+"And why not?"--so his thoughts ran,--"why not obey what fate and
+nature dictate? Calm, and peace, and happiness,--farewell to them!
+That stake is played and lost. I am no more fit now for domestic life
+than a prairie wolf. I should answer better for an Ishmaelite or a
+Pawnee. _Deus vult._ Why should I fly in the face of Providence?"
+
+Rosny, his uniform coat half unbuttoned for the sake of ease, sat
+lolling back in his chair, puffing wreaths of cigar smoke from his
+lips, eying Morton as he paced the room, and throwing out, from time
+to time, a word of encouragement to stimulate his resolution. He was
+about to lose all patience at his companion's pertinacious silence,
+when the latter stopped, and turned towards him with the air of one
+whose mind is made up.
+
+"Dick," said Morton, "when I was in college, I laid down my plan of
+life, and adopted one maxim--to which I mean to hold fast."
+
+"Well, what was that?" demanded the impatient Rosny.
+
+"Never to abandon an enterprise once begun; to push on till the point
+is gained, in spite of pain, delay, danger, disappointment,--any
+thing."
+
+"Good, so far. What next?"
+
+"Some years ago, I entered upon certain plans, which have not yet been
+accomplished. I have been interrupted, balked, kicked and cuffed by
+fortune, till I am more than half disgusted with the world. But I mean
+still to take up the broken thread where I left it, and carry it
+forward as before."
+
+"The moral of that is, I suppose, that you won't go to Mexico."
+
+"Precisely."
+
+"Well, I shan't try to debate the matter with you. I know you of old.
+When your foot is once down, it's useless for me to try to make you
+lift it up again. But remember what I say,--you will repent not taking
+my advice."
+
+Rosny finished his cigar, and they left the restaurant together. On
+their way up the street, they stopped at a recruiting office. "Captain
+Rumbold, my friend Mr. Morton," said Rosny, who soon after, however,
+entered into an earnest conversation with the officer upon some affair
+of business, leaving Morton at leisure to observe six or eight
+volunteers, who were about to be sent to Governor's Island, in charge
+of a sergeant.
+
+"What do you think of our boys?" asked Rosny, casting a comical look
+at Morton, as they went down stairs.
+
+"I never saw such a gang of tobacco-chewing, soap-locked rascals."
+
+"Food for powder," said Rosny, "they'll fill a ditch as well as
+better. The country needs a little blood-letting. These fellows are
+not like Falstaff's, though. They will fight. Not a man of them but
+will whip his weight in wildcats."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LI.
+
+  A raconter ses maux, souvent on les soulage.--_Polyeucte_.
+
+
+"Do you remember Buckland?" asked Rosny, as they walked up Broadway.
+
+"The Virginian? Yes, perfectly."
+
+"There he is."
+
+Morton, following the direction of his companion's eye, saw, a little
+in advance, a tall man, slenderly but gracefully formed, walking
+slowly, with a listless air, as if but half conscious of what was
+going on around him. They checked their pace, to avoid overtaking him.
+
+"Poor fellow!" said Rosny; "he's in a bad way."
+
+"I am sorry to hear it. He was a lively, pleasant fellow when I knew
+him,--very fond of the society of ladies."
+
+"That's all over now. He has been very dissipated for the last two or
+three years, and is broken down completely, body and mind. It's a
+great pity. I am very sorry for him," said Rosny, in whom,
+notwithstanding his restless ambition, there was a vein of warm and
+kindly feeling.
+
+"Is he living in New York?"
+
+"Yes, he has been here ever since leaving college. He began to
+practise as a lawyer. It's much he ever did or ever will do at the
+law! There was never any go-ahead in him--no energy, no decision--and
+he does nothing now, but read a little, and lounge about, in a moody,
+abstracted way, with his wits in the clouds. Get him into good
+company, and wind him up with a glass of brandy, and he is himself
+again for a while,--tells a story and sings a song as he used to
+do,--but it is soon over. Do you want to speak to him?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Come on, then. How are you, Buckland? Here's an old friend,
+redivivus."
+
+Hearing himself thus accosted, Buckland turned towards the speaker a
+face which, though pale and sallow, was still handsome. His dress,
+contrary to his former habit, was careless and negligent; and, though
+he could not have been more than thirty, a few gray hairs had begun to
+mingle with his long, black moustache. Changed as he was, he had that
+air of quiet and graceful courtesy which can only be acquired by
+habitual intercourse with polished society in early life; and Morton
+saw in him the melancholy wreck of a highly-bred gentleman.
+
+When the first surprise of the meeting was over, Rosny related the
+story of Morton's imprisonment to the wondering ear of Buckland.
+Having urgent business on his hands, he soon after took leave of his
+two companions. Morton and Buckland, after strolling for a time up and
+down Broadway, entered the restaurant attached to Blancard's hotel,
+and took a table in a remote corner of the room, which was nearly
+empty.
+
+Buckland was, as Rosny had described him, moody and abstracted, often
+seeming at a loss to collect his thoughts. He sipped his chocolate in
+silence, and, even when spoken to, sometimes returned no answer.
+Morton, in little better spirits than his companion, sat leaning his
+forehead dejectedly on his hand.
+
+"I am sorry," said Buckland, after one of his silent fits, "to be so
+wretched a companion; but I am not the man I used to be."
+
+"We are but a melancholy pair," replied Morton.
+
+"I saw from the first that you were very much out of spirits,--not at
+all what one would expect a man to be who had just escaped from
+sufferings like yours. There is some trouble on your mind."
+
+Morton was fatigued and sick at heart. He had practised self-control
+till he was tired of it; and he allowed a shade of emotion to pass
+across his face.
+
+"There is a woman in it," said Buckland, regarding him with a
+scrutinizing eye.
+
+"Why do you say that?" demanded Morton, startled and dismayed at this
+home thrust.
+
+"Are not women the source of nine tenths of our sufferings?" replied
+Buckland. "The world is a huge, clashing, jangling, disjointed piece
+of mechanism, and they are the authors of its worst disorder."
+
+"Sometimes," said Morton, "men will blame women for sufferings which
+they might, with better justice, lay at their own doors."
+
+Buckland raised his head quickly, and looked in his companion's face.
+"It may be so," he said, after a moment's pause. "Perhaps you are
+right,--perhaps you are right. But, let that be as it will, there are
+no miseries in life to match those which spring out of the relation of
+the sexes."
+
+Morton, for reasons of his own, did not care to pursue the subject,
+and his companion relapsed into his former silence. After a time, they
+went into the smoking room, where Buckland lighted a cigar. Morton
+observed that, as he did so, his fingers trembled in a manner which
+showed that his whole nervous system was shattered and unstrung.
+
+"I would not advise you to smoke much," said Morton; "you have not the
+constitution to bear it."
+
+Buckland smiled bitterly. He had grown reckless whether he injured
+himself or not.
+
+They seated themselves near the window; but Buckland soon grew uneasy,
+alternately looking at his watch and gazing into the street. At length
+he rose, and asked Morton to walk out with him. The latter, on the
+principle that misery loves company, readily complied; and they went
+down Broadway nearly to the Bowling Green. Here Buckland turned, and
+they retraced their steps to within a few squares of the Astor House.
+This they repeated several times, Morton's companion constantly
+resisting every movement on his part to vary in the least the course
+of their promenade. While their walk was up the street, Buckland,
+though evidently restless and uneasy, had the same abstracted air as
+before; but when they moved in the opposite direction, his whole
+manner changed, and he seemed anxiously on the watch, as if for some
+person whom he expected every moment to meet. It was about eight in
+the evening. The street was brilliant with gas; crowds of people, men
+and women, were moving along the sidewalk; and upon each group, as it
+approached, Buckland bent a gaze of eager scrutiny.
+
+They were passing a large bookstore, when Morton felt his companion
+suddenly press the arm on which he was leaning. Hastily stepping
+aside, and dragging Morton with him, he ensconced himself behind the
+board on which the bookseller pasted his advertising placards, which
+partially concealed him, and, together with the projection over the
+shop door, screened him from the light of the neighboring gas lamp.
+Here he stood motionless, his eyes riveted on some approaching object.
+Following the direction of his gaze, Morton saw a tall man in the
+uniform of an army officer of rank, and, leaning on his arm, a light
+and delicate female figure, elegantly, but not showily dressed. They
+were close at hand when he discovered them, and in a moment they had
+passed on under the glare of the lamp, and mingled with the throng
+beyond; but Morton retained a vivid impression of features beautifully
+moulded, and a pair of restless dark eyes, roving from side to side
+with piercing, yet furtive glances.
+
+Buckland, stepping from his retreat, made a hesitating, forward
+movement, as if undecided whether to follow them or not. He stopped
+with a kind of suppressed groan, and taking Morton's arm again, moved
+slowly with him down the street. Two or three times, Morton spoke to
+him, but he seemed not to hear, or, at best, answered in
+monosyllables, with an absent air. When they reached the hotel, then
+recently established on the European plan, near the Bowling Green,
+Buckland entered, called for brandy, and, his companion declining to
+join him, hastily drank the liquor with the same trembling hand which
+Morton had before remarked. On leaving the house, they continued their
+walk downward till they reached the Battery. And as they entered the
+shaded walks of that promenade, the moon was shining on the trees, and
+on the quiet waters of the adjacent bay.
+
+"You must think very strangely of me," said Buckland, at length
+breaking his long silence; "in fact, I scarcely know myself. I am a
+changed man,--a lost and broken man, body and soul,--a sea-weed
+drifting helplessly on the water."
+
+"You take too dark a view," said Morton, greatly moved; "there is good
+hope for you yet, if you will not fling it away."
+
+Buckland shook his head. "I wish I had been born such a man as Rosny.
+He is a practical man of the world, always in pursuit of something,
+with nothing to excite or trouble him but the success or failure of
+his schemes. He cannot understand my feelings. Yes, I wish to Heaven I
+had been born a practical, hard-headed man,--such, for instance, as
+your cool, common sense Yankees. What do they know or care for the
+troubles that are wearing me away by inches?"
+
+"Buckland," said Morton, "your nerves are very much weakened and
+disordered, and particular troubles weigh upon and engross you, as
+they could not if you were well. What you most need is a good
+physician."
+
+"'Could he minister to a mind diseased?' Come, sit down here--on this
+bench. Perhaps you have never felt--I hope you have never had occasion
+to feel--impelled to relieve some torment pressing on your mind, by
+telling it to a friend. Genuine friends are rare. When one meets them,
+he knows them by instinct. I need not fear you; you will not laugh at
+me to yourself, and tell me, as some others do, that a man of force
+and energy would fling off an affair like mine, and not suffer it to
+weigh upon him like a nightmare."
+
+"When you have recovered your health, perhaps I may tell you so; but
+not till then."
+
+"I am like the Ancient Mariner," continued Buckland, with a faint
+smile; "when I find the man who must hear my story, I know him the
+moment I see his face. Your good sense will tell you that I have been
+a knave and a fool; but your good heart will prevent your showing me
+that you think so."
+
+Morton looked with deep compassion on his old comrade, and wondered
+what follies or misfortunes could have sunk his former gallant spirit
+so far. In his weakened and depressed condition, Buckland seemed to
+lean for support on his friend's firmer and better governed nature,
+and to draw strength from the contact.
+
+"After all," he said in a livelier tone, "what right have I to bore
+you with this story of mine?"
+
+"Any thing that you are willing to tell," answered Morton, "I shall be
+glad to hear."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LII.
+
+  On me laisse tout croire; on fait gloire de tout;
+  Et cependant mon coeur est encore assez lache
+  Pour ne pouvoir briser la chaine qui l'attache.--_Le Misanthrope_.
+
+
+"I had an old friend," Buckland began, with some glimmering of his
+former vivacity,--"De Ruyter,--I don't think you ever knew him. He was
+the representative of a family great in its day and generation, but
+broken in fortune, and without means to support its pretensions. This
+did not at all tend to diminish their pride,--precisely of that kind
+which goeth before destruction. De Ruyter was a good fellow, however,
+and, if he had had twenty thousand a year, he would have spent it all.
+One summer, four years ago, he went with his child--his wife had died
+the year before--and his two sisters to spend a few weeks at a quiet
+little watering-place on the Jersey shore, frequented by people of
+good standing, but not fashionably inclined. De Ruyter praised the
+sporting in the neighborhood, and persuaded me to go with him.
+
+"His sisters were very agreeable women,--cultivated and lively, but
+proud as Lucifer, and desperately exclusive. A _nouveau riche_ was, in
+their eyes, equivalent to every thing that is odious and detestable;
+and to call a man a _parvenu_ was to steep him in infamy forever. The
+men at the house were, for the most part, of no great account--chiefly
+old bachelors, or sober family men run to seed, with a number of
+awkward young boobies not yet in bloom. The two ladies liked the
+company of a lazy fellow like me, a butterfly of society, with the
+poets, at least the sentimental ones, on my tongue's end, and the
+latest advices from the fashionable world. I staid there a week, and
+when that was over they persuaded me to stay another.
+
+"On the day after, there was a fresh arrival,--a gentleman from
+Philadelphia, with his sister and his daughter. He only remained for
+the night, and went away in the morning, leaving the ladies behind.
+The sister was a starched old person,--a sort of purblind duenna, with
+grizzled hair, gold spectacles, and cap. The daughter I need not
+describe, for you saw her half an hour ago.
+
+"Her family was good enough; her father a lawyer in Philadelphia. She
+was well educated--played admirably, and spoke excellent French and
+Italian. How much or how little she had frequented cultivated society,
+I do not know,--her own assertions went for nothing; but she had the
+utmost ease and grace of manner, and an invincible self-possession.
+Her ruling passion was a compound of vanity and pride, an insatiable
+craving for admiration and power. Whatever associates she happened to
+be among, nothing satisfied her but to be the cynosure of all eyes,
+the centre of all influence. I have known women enough,--women of all
+kinds, good, bad, and indifferent; but such a one as she I never met
+but once. I shall not soon forget the evening when I first saw her,
+seated opposite me at the tea table. She was a small, light
+figure,--as you saw her just now,--the features, perhaps, a trifle too
+large. I never recall her, as she appeared at that time, without
+thinking of Byron's description of one of his mischief-making
+heroines:--
+
+  "'Her form had all the softness of her sex,
+      Her features all the sweetness of the devil,
+    When he put on the cherub to perplex
+      Eve, and paved--God knows how--the road to evil.'
+
+"She was utterly unscrupulous. The depth of her artifice was
+unfathomable. She soon became the moving spirit of that little cockney
+watering-place--some admiring her, some hating her, some desperately
+smitten with her. I can see through her manoeuvres now, but then I was
+blind as a mole. She understood every body about her, and held out to
+each the kind of bait which was most likely to attract him. There was
+a sort of _dilettante_ there whose heart she won by talking to him of
+the Italian poets, which, by the way, she really loved, for there was
+a dash of genius in her. She aimed to impress each one with the idea
+that in her heart she liked him better than any one else; and it was
+her game to appear on all occasions perfectly impulsive and
+spontaneous, while, in fact, every look, word, or act of hers had an
+object in it. In short, she was an accomplished actress; and, had her
+figure been more commanding, she might have rivalled Rachel on the
+stage. No two people were exactly agreed in opinion concerning her;
+but all--I mean all the men--thought her excessively interesting; and
+I remember that two young collegians had nearly fought a duel about
+her, each thinking that she was in love with him. Nothing delighted
+her more than to become the occasion of the jealousy of married women
+towards their husbands,--nothing, that is, except the still greater
+delight of fascinating a certain young New Yorker who had come to the
+house on a visit to his betrothed.
+
+"For some time every one supposed her to be unmarried. She did her
+best, indeed, to encourage the idea, since she thus gained to herself
+more notice and more marked attentions. At length, to the astonishment
+of every body, it came out that she had been, for more than a year,
+married to a cousin of her own, a weak and imbecile youngster, as I
+afterwards learned, who was then absent on an East India voyage, and
+who, happily for himself, has since died.
+
+"I said that all the men in the house were interested in her; but you
+should have seen the commotion she raised among the women! There were
+three or four simple girls about her who admired her, and were her
+devoted instruments; but with the rest she was at sword's point. There
+were a thousand ways in which they and she could come into collision;
+and, of course, they soon found her out, while the men remained in the
+dark. If they were handsome and attractive, she hated them; and if
+they would not conform to her will, she could never forgive it. The
+disputes, the jars, the jealousies, the backbitings, the tricks and
+stratagems of female warfare that I have seen in that house, and all
+of her raising! She was a dangerous enemy. Her tongue could sting like
+a wasp; and all the while she would smile on her victim as if she were
+reporting some agreeable compliment. She had a satanic dexterity in
+dealing out her stabs, always choosing the time, place, and company,
+where they would tell with the sharpest effect.
+
+"With all her insincerity, there was still a tincture of reality in
+her. Her passions and emotions were strong; and she was so addicted to
+falsehood, that I am confident she did not always know whether the
+feeling she expressed were real or pretended.
+
+"The grace and apparent _abandon_ of her manner, her beauty, her wit,
+her singular power of influencing the will of others, and the dash of
+poetry, which, strange as you may think it, still pervaded her, made
+her altogether a very perilous acquaintance. I, certainly, have cause
+to say so. I lingered a week, a fortnight, a month, and still could
+not find resolution to go. I had an air, a name in society, and the
+reputation of being dangerous. She thought me worth angling for, put
+forth all her arts, and caught me.
+
+"I have read an Indian legend of a fisherman who catches a fish and
+drags him to the surface, but in the midst of his triumph, the fish
+swallows him, canoe and all. The angler, however, kills him by
+striking at his heart with his flinty war club, and then makes his
+escape by tearing a way through his vitals. The case of the fish is
+precisely analogous to mine. She caught me, as I said before; but I
+caught her in turn. She fell in love with me, wildly and desperately.
+Her passions were as fierce and as transient as a tropical hurricane.
+She had no scruples; and I had not as many as I should have had. One
+evening we were gone, and two days after we were out of sight of land
+on board one of the Cunard steamers.
+
+"For the next two months, I was in paradise. Then came a purgatory, or
+something worse. Her passion for me subsided as quickly as it had
+arisen. She was herself again. Her vanity and artifice, her insatiable
+love of intrigue and adventure, returned with double force. I wore
+myself out with watching, vexation, and anxiety. She tried every means
+to attract attention and draw admirers, and every where she succeeded.
+I remember that one night at Naples she insisted on going with me to
+the theatre of San Carlo, in the dress of a young man, and wearing a
+moustache. The disguise was detected, as she meant it should be, and
+eyes centred upon her from all the boxes. I tried to travel with her
+through remote and unfrequented countries, such as the interior of
+Sicily; but it was all in vain. There was no resisting her fiery will,
+and I was compelled to go wherever she wished.
+
+"One afternoon, at Messina, at the _table d'hote_, we met a lively
+young Spanish nobleman. She caught his eye; I saw them exchange
+glances. In spite of all my precautions, messages, billets, and
+momentary interviews passed between them. I challenged the Spaniard,
+gave him a severe flesh wound, and thought I had taught him a lesson.
+Not at all. On the next day, coming to my lodgings, I found her gone,
+no one could tell whither. I was desperate, and could have done any
+thing; but there was nothing to be done. I could not find her, and if
+I had it would have availed me nothing.
+
+"I returned to America, wrought up to the verge of a nervous fever;
+and, by mingling in amusements of every kind, tried to forget her. In
+six or eight months I had partially succeeded. My health was not good,
+and I had made a journey of a few weeks to the west; when, on
+returning,--it was a sultry July afternoon,--I remember it as if it
+were yesterday,--sitting in the reading room window of the New York
+Hotel, I saw her passing down Broadway in an open carriage; and, with
+the sight, my passion awoke again at fever heat. She had left the
+Spaniard, and come to America with a New York gentleman, who had lived
+for some time in Paris. I had an interview with her, and she promised
+to join me again; but she broke her word. She saw at once what a power
+she still held over me; and she has used it most mercilessly ever
+since. She practises all her arts on me, as if I were a new lover,
+whom she wished to insnare. Sometimes she flatters me; sometimes she
+repels me; now and then she allows me stolen interviews, or long walks
+or rides with her. She plays me as an angler plays a salmon that he
+has hooked, till he brings him gasping to his death. I have plunged
+into dissipations of all kinds, to drown the memory of her. It is all
+useless. She knows the torments I am suffering, and she rejoices in
+them. Perhaps she remembers that it was I who made her what she is,
+and takes this for her revenge. But, pshaw!--if I had not eloped with
+her, some one else would have done so soon; and that she perfectly
+well knows. It is her vanity--nothing but her vanity: she delights to
+hold me in bondage; she knows that I am her slave, and she glories in
+it."
+
+"But why, in Heaven's name," demanded Morton, "do you not break away
+from this miserable fascination?"
+
+"There it is!" Buckland answered; "I only wish that I had the power. I
+have resolved twenty times to leave New York, and my resolution has
+failed me as often."
+
+"Who takes charge of her now?"
+
+"Colonel ----. He seems as crazy after her as I was."
+
+"I can hardly comprehend," pursued Morton, "how, understanding her
+character as you do, you can still remain so infatuated with her."
+
+"Neither can I comprehend it. I can only feel it. Strange--is it
+not?--that I, who used to be regarded as a mere flirt; who, as a lady
+acquaintance once told me, had a great deal too much sentiment, but no
+heart at all; I, who, in my time, have written love verses to twenty
+different ladies,--should be so enchained at last by this black-eyed
+witch!"
+
+"Very strange."
+
+"And now what would you recommend? what advice do you give me? You see
+in what a predicament I stand. What ought I to do?"
+
+"With your broken health and weakened nerves," said Morton, "it is
+useless for you to attempt contending against this fancy that has
+taken possession of you. You must run away from it. Take a long
+voyage; the longer the better. I will go with you to engage your
+passage to-morrow."
+
+Buckland hesitated at first, slowly shaking his head; but in a moment
+he said, with some animation, "Yes, I will go, on one condition; you
+must promise to go with me."
+
+The will, the motive power,--never very strong in him,--was now
+completely relaxed. He was unfitted for action of any kind, and was,
+as he himself said, no better than a sea weed drifting on the water.
+Morton walked the streets with him for some hours. He seemed to cling
+to his companion, like an ivy to the supporting trunk, and was
+evidently reluctant to resign his company. At length, Morton, who was
+exhausted with the excitements of the day, pleaded fatigue, and bade
+him good night. He turned again, however, and, by the blaze of the gas
+lamps, followed with his eye Buckland's slowly receding figure.
+
+"A few hours ago," he said to himself, "I thought myself unhappy; but
+what is my suffering compared to his? I am not, thank God, the builder
+of my own misfortunes, nor pursued with the reflection that they are a
+just retribution for my own misdeeds. With health, liberty,
+self-respect, and a good conscience, what man has a right to call
+himself miserable?"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LIII.
+
+  The paths of glory lead but to the grave.--_Gray's Elegy_.
+
+
+Mr. Shingles had an acquaintance among the gentlemen of the press;
+and, chancing to meet his quill-driving friend, he told him Morton's
+story. It appeared, accordingly, beautifully embellished, in one of
+the evening papers, and was copied, the next morning, into several
+others. Consequently, Morton had scarcely risen from breakfast, when
+he was visited by half a dozen persons, editors and others, eager to
+hear his adventures, for the gratification of their own curiosity, or
+that of the public. As he detested such visitations, and as several of
+his callers, from their countenances alone, inspired him with an
+earnest longing to kick them down stairs, he hastened to avoid the
+nuisance by escaping into the street. Since the tidings he had heard
+from Shingles, his native town had lost all attraction for him; in
+fact he shrank from going thither, and willingly lingered another day
+in New York.
+
+Going to Buckland's lodgings, he renewed his persuasions of the
+evening before, and strongly urged him to leave New York. Buckland
+assented to every thing he said; and, hearing of a ship about to sail
+for the East Indies, Morton went with his friend to the merchant to
+whom she belonged, and induced him to engage a passage in her.
+
+Returning to his hotel at about two o'clock, a waiter brought him a
+card, telling him that a boy had just left it for him. It was Rosny's;
+and on it were scrawled with a pencil the following concise and
+characteristic words:--
+
+Dear M.: Uncle Sam in a deuse of a hurry. Ordered to the island this
+afternoon. Off for Mexico to-morrow. Sorry not to see you, but haven't
+a minute to spare. Good luck.--_Au revoir._
+
+                       Yours till doomsday,
+                                                       ROSNY.
+
+Morton went to the recruiting office where he had been with Rosny on
+the day before, learned the time and place of the embarkation, was on
+the spot at the hour named, and in a few minutes saw Rosny striding
+down the wharf in most unmilitary haste, his hair fluttering in the
+wind. He was so engrossed in making certain arrangements, and issuing
+his mandates to the soldiers who were to row him and some other
+officers to Governor's Island, that he did not observe Morton, who
+stood quietly leaning against a post.
+
+"Hallo, Dick," said the latter at length. "Haven't you eyes to see
+your friends?"
+
+Rosny turned, in great surprise, and greeted him most emphatically.
+
+"Come, Morton," he said, as he was stepping into the boat, "you'll
+change your mind after all,--won't you?--and meet me at Vera Cruz."
+
+"I'll sit at home, and read your exploits in the papers," replied
+Morton.
+
+"Well; a wilful man must have his way. Adieu."
+
+"Good by. May you live to be a general, or any thing else you like,
+short of the presidency."
+
+"Why, shouldn't I make a good president?"
+
+"No."
+
+"What? too progressive,--too wide awake,--too enlightened, ey?"
+
+"Yes, and too pugnacious."
+
+"There you are again, Boston all over. I'll be president yet, if only
+to spite the Bostonites. You shall write my life, and I'll give you an
+office for it. Farewell."
+
+Morton watched the receding boat till it was almost out of sight,
+waved his hat to Rosny, who waved his own in return, and walked back
+to the hotel, wondering what would be the issue of his old classmate's
+ambitious schemes.
+
+How, among a throng of brave men, Rosny gained a name for determined
+daring;--how, on every occasion that offered, he displayed the fire of
+the Frenchman, and the stubborn mettle of the Saxon, whose blood
+mingled in his veins;--how, though sick and wounded, he dragged
+himself from the hospital at Puebla, and, mounting his horse, pushed
+forward with the advancing columns;--how gallantly, under the
+murdering storm of musketry and grape, he led his intrepid blackguards
+up the rocks of Chapultepec;--how, while shouting among the foremost,
+he climbed the hostile rampart, a bullet plunged into his brain, and
+dashed him, quivering and dead, to the foot of the scaling
+ladders;--all this, and more likewise, is it not written in the New
+York Herald?
+
+About a year after Rosny's departure, Morton chanced to be again in
+New York, when, in going out one morning, he beheld all the symptoms
+of some impending solemnity. Flags, festooned with crape, were strung
+across Broadway from building to building. The shops were half closed,
+and the streets were fast filling with people. Patriot citizens,
+exchanging the yardstick for the sword, strode the sidewalk in
+gorgeous panoply; and now and then a mounted warrior cantered along
+the pavement, struggling to keep his balance on his fiery coach horse.
+In an hour or two more, the pageant was in full operation. Looking
+from his hotel window Morton beheld a radiant river of shining
+bayonets, many colored plumes, and martial millinery, solemnly flowing
+down the middle of Broadway, to strange and lugubrious music, between
+melancholy shores of black broadcloth and beaver hats. At length a
+train of hearses appeared slowly advancing to the wailing music of the
+bands, encircled by the harmless sabres of the civic warriors, playing
+soldier, around the remains of those who had borne the part in tragic
+earnest. Over every hearse the national flag was drooping, and upon
+each was inscribed the name of its unconscious tenant. They were
+officers slain in battle during the last Mexican campaign. Four of the
+hearses passed. Morton read the names. They were all unknown to him;
+but as the fifth approached, he looked, started, and looked again; for
+wrought in white upon the sable drapery he saw, distinct and clear,
+the name of Rosny. Descending to the street, he joined the procession;
+he even underwent the funeral oration at the City Hall; and when it
+was over, shouldering through the crowd, he stood by the side of all
+that remained of his old classmate. Rosny's cap, and the sword he had
+used so well, lay on the lid of the coffin; and Morton turned away,
+with eyes not quite dry, as he recalled his many genial traits and his
+undaunted spirit.
+
+To resume. On returning to his hotel after taking leave of Rosny,
+Morton found a note awaiting him, directed in a female hand. He opened
+it, and read the signature,--Ellen Ashland,--the name of a lady whom
+he had well known in Boston, and who, just before he had sailed for
+Europe, had been married to an eminent lawyer of his acquaintance. She
+wrote that she had seen an account of his escape from prison, and
+arrival in New York, in the morning paper,--expressed an earnest wish
+to see him, and invited him to visit her at the New York Hotel, where
+she was spending a few days with her husband.
+
+As the time named was almost come, Morton called a coach, and drove up
+town. His friend received him with a peculiar warmth and earnestness
+of manner. Morton had known her as a person of marked character and
+strong but strictly governed emotions, not always permitting the
+expression of a feeling to keep pace with the feeling itself. He
+greatly liked and esteemed her, and her presence disarmed him, in a
+great degree, of his usual reserve.
+
+Her husband had been absent all day in Brooklyn, and would not return
+till late in the evening.
+
+"It is five years since I have spoken to a lady," said Morton, as he
+seated himself at the tea table.
+
+As he was not scrupulous to wear a mask before her, she quickly
+discovered the depressed condition of his mind; and on her charging
+him with being very much out of spirits, he admitted that he was so.
+
+"One would think," she observed, "that after the sufferings that you
+have passed, you would have come home in a different mood of mind."
+
+"And so I did," said Morton.
+
+"You seem in no great haste to see your friends and relations in
+Boston."
+
+"I have no near relations there."
+
+"But you have friends."
+
+"Yes; I have heard from them. I met an acquaintance yesterday."
+
+"You have heard, then----" And she bent her eyes upon his face, with a
+look searching but full of kindness, as if studying his thoughts.
+
+"Five years," she continued, "is a long time. Great changes may have
+taken place."
+
+"Changes _have_ taken place," said Morton.
+
+"You have lost none of your intimate friends, as far as I know them;
+but some have left Boston, and some are married."
+
+Morton did not look up; but an undefined expression passed across his
+face, like the shadow of a black cloud. When, a moment after, he
+raised his eyes, he saw those of Mrs. Ashland fixed upon him with the
+same earnest gaze as before. Such scrutiny from another would have
+been intolerable to him; but in her it gave him no uneasiness.
+
+A servant entering changed for a time the character of their
+conversation. A quarter of an hour afterwards they were again alone,
+and Morton was seated near the window, when his friend approached him,
+her features kindling with a look of ill-suppressed feeling, laid her
+hand on his shoulder, and said, "Vassall,"--she had always before
+addressed him as Mr. Morton,--"my heart bleeds for you--for you and
+for Edith Leslie."
+
+Morton looked up till he met her eyes. The surprise, the sudden
+consciousness that she was privy to his grief, the warm and heartfelt
+woman's sympathy that he read in every line of her face, were too much
+for his manhood, and he burst into tears.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LIV.
+
+  Elle n'est point parjure, elle n'est point legere;
+  Son devoir m'a trahi, mon malheur, et son pere.--_Polyeucte_.
+
+
+Morton's evening with Mrs. Ashland, and the story which she told him,
+removed at least one pain from his breast. He learned that Edith
+Leslie was not in fault; and that, great as his misfortune might be,
+his idol was not turned to clay.
+
+His friend's narrative, however, was very defective. She could give
+results merely, not knowing, or suspecting, the hidden springs which
+produced them; and Morton was left to form his own conclusions. The
+following is a more explicit statement.
+
+Morton embarked for Europe, and the return steamer brought, in due
+course, a letter to Edith Leslie. With the next steamer came another;
+with the next, a third; all as absurd epistles as the most exacting
+mistress could desire. The succeeding mail was silent. She wondered
+and hoped; but when the next arrived, and brought no tidings, her
+heart began to fail. The winter wore away, and still no letter came.
+She was living, at that time, with her father, at his country seat.
+Leslie's health was declining, and when Vinal returned from his short
+European tour, he consigned to his hands the care of his affairs, and
+spent the greater part of his time at Matherton; for he had a strong
+love for the home of his boyhood.
+
+Spring returned, and blossomed into summer; but nothing was heard of
+Morton. The season ripened; the fringed gentian sprang in the meadow,
+and the aster by the roadside; but no word came. In the forests, the
+October frosts began their gorgeous work. The ash put on its purple;
+the oak its varied coloring; the sumach its blood-red glare; and at
+evening, the sun went down in cold, stern splendors behind the painted
+mountains. Dry leaves whirled upon the ground; chill clouds mustered
+in the sky; and flakes of snow, the harbingers of storm, were blown
+along the frozen road. Then winter sank upon the landscape, and deeper
+winter on the heart of the unhappy girl.
+
+Time passed on, and the hope of Morton's return grew fainter. Leslie,
+seeing his daughter's deep distress, made a journey to Europe; but his
+search was fruitless. Meredith, who spent a year on the continent,
+pursued the same inquiries, but could trace his friend no farther than
+the town of Neuburg, in Bavaria. Morton, before his departure, had
+made his will, and in the ardor of his attachment, had left the bulk
+of his property to his betrothed, distributing a comparatively small
+residue among a number of poor relations, none of whom had either the
+means or the worldly knowledge to take measures for ascertaining his
+fate.
+
+Meanwhile, Leslie had fallen into a decline; and there was no hope
+that his life could be protracted beyond a year or two. He became more
+than ever dependent upon Vinal, who now assumed nearly the whole
+charge of his affairs, acquitting himself with great ability, and, in
+this instance, with entire faithfulness. A rickety manufacturing
+concern, which for years had been a drain upon Leslie's purse, began,
+under Vinal's control, to yield a good profit; and the former saw all
+his resources quickened and replenished, as if by an infusion of new
+life.
+
+Vinal was mounting very high in the general esteem. His polished
+address,--a little too precise, however,--his acknowledged
+scholarship, his character for honor and integrity, and his energy and
+capacity for business, commended him to all classes. He passed current
+alike in ball rooms and on change. Men of the world never doubted him;
+and, after all, this confidence was not quite groundless, for Vinal,
+who had a sage eye to his own interest, had embraced the maxim that,
+in matters of business, a course of absolute integrity is, under all
+ordinary circumstances, the only wise policy.
+
+As, in process of time, the conviction of Morton's death was
+confirmed, Leslie's old wish for a union between his daughter and
+Vinal began again to grow strong within him. Some two years after her
+lover's disappearance, he ventured to speak to her of this favorite
+plan; but it was long before he dared allude to it again. Meanwhile,
+Vinal's attentions had been assiduous and constant, yet so tempered as
+to convey the idea that he despaired of any other reward than the
+continuance of her friendship. At length, however, certain of her
+father's countenance, and assuming Morton's death as now beyond a
+doubt, he began, with all possible delicacy and caution, to renew his
+former addresses. He was not long in discovering that his cause was
+quite hopeless, unless he could produce some positive proof that
+Morton was no longer alive.
+
+During the third summer of the latter's absence, Vinal went, for two
+or three months, to Europe, the state of his health being the alleged
+motive. While in Paris, he tried to find his former confederate,
+Speyer, but could only learn that he was no longer in that city. On
+returning to America, he told Leslie that he had inquired after
+Morton, on all sides, without the least success, but had taken
+measures which, he thought it not impossible, might in time lead to
+some discovery. In various parts of Germany, there was, as he
+affirmed, a class of travelling merchants and commercial agents, who,
+from the nature of their avocations, had every facility for making
+inquiries within the districts which they frequented. He had taken
+pains, he said, to become acquainted with a large number of these men,
+to whom he had stated the case of Morton's disappearance, and promised
+a reward for any information concerning him.
+
+Some time after this, he told Leslie that he had had word from one of
+these correspondents. The latter, he affirmed, had heard that a young
+man, said to be an Englishman, had died very suddenly three or four
+years before, in an unfrequented part of Bohemia. The German declared
+himself ready, if desired, to go to the district in question, and
+inquire into the matter. Leslie was anxious that the inquiry should be
+made; upon which Vinal, though seeming not at all sanguine as to any
+result, gave him the name of his imaginary correspondent, and advised
+that he should write to him. Leslie, however, as Vinal had foreseen,
+desired that the latter should carry on the correspondence. He
+accordingly wrote a letter, directed to Jacob Hatz. This he showed to
+Leslie, and mailed it in his presence, consigning it to a long repose
+in some continental dead letter office. At the same time, he secretly
+despatched another letter, directed to Henry Speyer; for he had
+meanwhile discovered the address of this serviceable person. This
+letter was as follows:--
+
+Dear Sir: You cannot have forgotten some interviews and correspondence
+which formerly passed between us concerning a person who soon after
+was unfortunate enough to fall under the notice of the Austrian
+police. Nothing has since been heard of him, and it is commonly
+believed here that he is dead. It is my desire to have this opinion
+confirmed; and having found you honorable and efficient on another
+occasion, I cannot doubt that I shall find you so in this. May I beg
+your services in the following particulars?
+
+1st. To take an imaginary journey into Bohemia, Moravia, or parts
+adjacent.
+
+2d. To discover that, three years or more ago, a young man, an
+American, named ---- ----, travelling alone on horseback in an
+unfrequented part of the country, (this was his habit,) was attacked
+by cholera, or any other violent disease prevalent thereabouts, which
+carried him off in less than three days.
+
+3d. That he died at a small village inn; that a Lutheran clergyman
+took charge of his effects, and wrote to his friends; but that the
+letter may have miscarried, or the clergyman may have played false,
+and kept the windfall that had come to him.
+
+4th. That two years ago, the clergyman removed into Hungary, but that
+the innkeeper, a stupid, beetle-headed fellow, showed you a headstone
+in the Protestant burial ground, with ----'s name upon it. The
+innkeeper may describe him as a young man of twenty-four, or less, but
+must not remember too much, as this might attract further inquiry.
+
+This is the outline, and will serve to indicate the kind of thing
+required. Vary it, in respect to details, as your judgment and your
+knowledge of the customs of the country may suggest. Names are
+omitted. Please observe the ciphers which stand in their places. You
+will soon receive, through another channel, means to supply the
+deficiency, if, indeed, your memory will not do so unaided.
+
+Sign your letter _Jacob Hatz_. There is another point, which I beg you
+to observe particularly. Mention that on the gravestone, besides the
+name, was carved a figure, like an urn or cup, with a large ball above
+it. Date of death, also;--December 7, 1841.
+
+I herewith enclose five hundred francs. On receiving your reply, _with
+this letter enclosed_, I shall immediately send you five hundred more.
+If I were not a poor man, and expecting always to be so, I could
+remunerate your services better.
+
+With the fullest reliance on your honor and discretion, I remain,
+
+                          Yours, truly, ---- ----.
+
+P. S. For your better direction, I subjoin a formula to be followed in
+the beginning of your letter. You can word the rest in your own way.
+Write in French.
+
+Vinal, if he had dared, would gladly have forged such a letter as he
+required, instead of trusting to another person; but art or nature had
+not gifted him with the needful skill; and he was anxious, moreover,
+to have the foreign postmarks stamped upon it in form.
+
+In due time, Speyer's answer came. He had neglected to return Vinal's
+letter, as desired; but in other respects, his performance gave his
+employer ample satisfaction. The latter showed it to Leslie, who
+seemed convinced by it; while his daughter, on reading it, abandoned
+at once the hope to which she had hitherto clung, that Morton might
+still be living.
+
+"I remember this Hatz very well," said Vinal; "he seemed to be a
+plain, honest sort of man,--an agent, I believe, of a merchant in
+Strasburg. And yet the reward I promised might have been too great a
+temptation."
+
+"Then," said Leslie, "you would not receive this as a proof of Mr.
+Morton's death?"
+
+"No, I would not: that is, I should not but for one thing;--it is so
+very much like Vassall Morton to be travelling alone, on horseback, in
+an out-of-the-way part of the country."
+
+"Did you observe," pursued Leslie, "what he says of figures of an urn
+and ball cut on the gravestone?"
+
+"I saw it, but did not observe it particularly."
+
+Leslie gave him the letter, and Vinal read the part referred to.
+
+"What can it mean?" asked Leslie.
+
+"I can't conceive," replied Vinal.
+
+"It is the vase and sun," said Edith Leslie; "the device of his
+mother's family, the Vassalls."
+
+"Ah," exclaimed Vinal, looking up with a face of mournful interest,
+"you must be right; the same figures are carved on the tomb of the
+Vassalls, in the old churchyard at Cambridge."
+
+"They were cut," pursued Miss Leslie, "on a garnet ring, which he
+always used as a seal."
+
+"I remember his showing me that ring," said her father, "and telling
+me that it was older than the voyage of the Mayflower. It was a kind
+of heirloom, which his mother had left him."
+
+"Yes," suggested the sympathizing Vinal, who had long known that
+Morton used no other seal than this ring; "and the device on it was
+supposed to be his armorial bearing, and so cut on the gravestone, as
+it is on the Vassall tomb at Cambridge."
+
+All doubt of Morton's death was now dispelled. His betrothed stored
+his image in her thoughts, as that of one lost for this world; and
+Vinal saw the field clear before him. Leslie was failing fast; and, as
+his life ebbed, his wish for his daughter's marriage with Vinal grew
+and strengthened. He urged her, daily, to listen to his suit;
+extolling his favorite's talents, energy, acquirements, and
+unimpeachable character--praises which she believed to be wholly just.
+Vinal, on his part, seconded these parental efforts with most earnest,
+beseeching, not to say abject importunities. The compassion which he
+contrived to excite, an idea of duty, and an urgent wish to gratify
+her dying father, at length prevailed with her; and laying before
+Vinal the true state of her feelings, she consented, on such terms, to
+accept his suit.
+
+Vinal had gained his point; but he had scarcely done so, when his
+spirits were dashed by an untoward incident, the nature of which may
+be guessed hereafter. And, as it never rains but it pours, this
+reverse of luck was soon followed by a second, of another kind.
+
+One afternoon, returning from his customary constitutional ride, he
+was in the act of turning the upper corner of a street which slopes
+downward somewhat steeply till it meets a main thoroughfare of the
+town. A small ragamuffin boy was standing on the curbstone, with a
+blade of grass between his thumbs, through which he blew with might
+and main, evidently to startle Vinal's horse, whose head was within a
+yard of him. He succeeded to his complete satisfaction. Vinal switched
+at the youngster with his whip; but this only made matters worse. The
+horse galloped down the street at a rate which his rider's weak arm
+could not check; and, at the corner of the main street, wheeling
+suddenly to the left, he slipped on the wet pavement, and fell with a
+crash on his side. Horse and man lay motionless, till a city teamster,
+running up, raised the former by the bridle. Two or three passers by
+came to Vinal's aid; but as they lifted him, he set his teeth with
+pain. The horse had fallen on his left leg, breaking it above the
+knee.
+
+Vinal was timid to excess in time of danger; but he could bear pain
+with the firmness of a stoic. While he felt himself run away with, and
+at the moment of his fall, he had been greatly confused. He no sooner
+saw that the worst was over, than he rallied his faculties, and
+asserted his usual self-mastery. His face was fast growing pale with
+violence of pain; but he was quite himself again.
+
+A crowd gathered about him, as he lay leaning on the steps of the
+neighboring church.
+
+"Shall we carry you to the ---- Hotel?" asked a gentleman.
+
+"Yes, if you please. But first be kind enough to bring a shutter. They
+will give you one at the school round the corner. When a man is
+killed, drunk, or maimed, there is nothing like a shutter. How do you
+do, Edwards?"--to a man whom he recognized in the crowd.
+
+"I hope you are not badly hurt."
+
+"My leg is broken."
+
+"Are you in great pain?"
+
+"Yes; a bad business, I think. Will you oblige me by seeing that my
+horse is led to the stable in ---- Street?"
+
+The shutter was soon brought.
+
+"Thank you. Lift me very gently."
+
+As they moved him he clinched his teeth again in silent torture.
+
+"All right. Now one take the shutter at the head, and one at the feet.
+You'll find me a light weight."
+
+And thus, between two men, escorted by a procession of schoolboys just
+let loose, Vinal was carried to the hotel.
+
+The event justified his presage. He was forced to lie motionless for
+weeks, suffering greatly from bodily pain, and no less from certain
+anxieties which of late had harassed him. Leslie, on his part, was in
+great distress at the disaster. He felt, or fancied himself, near his
+end; and the wish next his heart was to see the marriage accomplished
+before he died. It was therefore determined that, notwithstanding the
+inauspicious plight of the bridegroom, it should take place at the
+time before fixed upon, four months after the beginning of the
+engagement.
+
+The ceremony was very private. None were present but two or three
+friends of Miss Leslie, the dying father, borne thither in a chair,
+the disabled bridegroom, and the pale and agitated bride; for that
+morning, standing before Morton's picture, a strange misgiving and a
+dark foreboding had fallen upon her, and the sun never shone on a
+bride more wretched. Her nearest friend, Mrs. Ashland, was at her
+side. She was the only person, besides her father and Vinal, who knew
+of her engagement to Morton, and, indeed, had been her confidante from
+first to last. Soon after Morton's disappearance, an accident had
+brought them together, reviving an old school intimacy; and Edith
+Leslie, in her suspense and misery, was but too glad to find a friend
+in whom she could trust without reserve.
+
+The rite was ended, and Edith Leslie was Edith Vinal. Days and weeks
+passed; Leslie slowly declined, and Vinal slowly recovered. She
+divided her time between them, passing the greater part of the day
+with the latter, and returning at evening to watch by her father's bed
+or rest within sound of his voice. At length, three weeks after her
+marriage, on a morning the horror of which remained scarred always in
+her memory, Morton's letter from Genoa was put into her hands; and the
+long-disciplined patience with which she had armed herself, the
+religion which she had called to her aid, all the guards and defences
+of her mind, were borne down, for a time, by the resistless flood of
+passion, which, like a river bursting its barriers, swept all before
+it.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LV.
+
+  We twain have met like ships upon the sea,
+  Who hold an hour's converse,  *  *  *
+  One little hour! and then away they speed
+  On lonely paths, through mist, and cloud, and foam,
+  To meet no more.--_Alexander Smith_.
+
+
+"Good morning, Ned," said Morton to his friend Meredith. He had come
+to Boston the day before, and had already seen Meredith more than
+once.
+
+"Going already? Sit down, man. Why are you in such a hurry?"
+
+"I shall look in again before night."
+
+"You are not well. I never thought you could look so worn and
+haggard."
+
+"Try the prison of Ehrenberg for four or five years, and see how you
+will look when you get out. It's nothing, though. A little rest will
+make all right again."
+
+"You are not very likely to get it. You are a lion now, and people
+will not leave you alone."
+
+"They shall. I am not in the humor for balls and dinner parties."
+
+He went to the house of Mrs. Ashland, whom he had accompanied homeward
+from New York.
+
+"Have you the letter for me?"
+
+The letter was that which had come from Europe with the story of his
+death. On hearing Mrs. Ashland's account, he had at once conjectured
+that this was but another stroke of Vinal's diplomacy; but he had been
+careful not to intimate to his friend the least suspicion against the
+latter.
+
+The commission of obtaining from Edith the letter in question was far
+from an agreeable one; but Mrs. Ashland had accomplished it, and now
+placed the paper in Morton's hands.
+
+The signature was not that of Speyer; but at the first glance, Morton
+was sure that the small, neat handwriting was the same with that of
+the treacherous notes of introduction given him by Vinal at Paris. As
+he studied the letter, reading and re-reading it, his companion, who
+remembered him chiefly as a frank, good-humored young man, was
+startled at the stern and almost fierce expression which once or twice
+came over his features, and seemed to be banished by an effort. A
+vague suspicion of some mystery rose in her mind, but Morton hastened
+to divert her.
+
+"I hope that Edith will not refuse a visit from me."
+
+Here, again, Mrs. Ashland promised to mediate for him, and in the
+afternoon he received a note from her, saying that Vinal's wife would
+see him on the next morning.
+
+At the hour named, he rang at the door, forced his lips to inquire for
+"Mrs. Vinal," gave his name to the servant, and was shown into the
+drawing room.
+
+It was nearly five years since he had last seen that well-remembered
+room. Nothing was changed. It remained precisely as he had known it
+when he stood prosperously on the farther verge of that dreary chasm
+of time; and as each familiar object met his eye, such a flood of
+bitter recollection came upon him, that for a moment he bent his head
+upon his breast.
+
+He raised it, and started as he did so. Reflected in the mirror at the
+end of the room, as if the art of some new Cornelius had evoked it,
+stood, pale as marble, the form that had so long attended his sleeping
+and waking dreams. Morton turned quickly, and saw Edith standing
+motionless in the doorway.
+
+He advanced towards her, and took her hand in both his own. She raised
+her eyes to his face in silence. He tried to speak, but tried in vain.
+At length he found utterance.
+
+"I know it all. Ellen Ashland has told me every thing. I do not blame
+you;--no one can blame you."
+
+"Thank God that you think so."
+
+"Yes, thank God; for when I thought that you had forgotten me----"
+
+"Then you _did_ think so?"
+
+"For a time; and it seemed to me as if no more constancy were left on
+earth; as if it had been sapped and undermined in its very citadel."
+
+"Do not believe that I forgot you for a single hour; or that I can
+ever forget you. You and I have been joined at least in an equal
+sorrow and suspense. We have walked through depths together, and drank
+the same gall and bitterness."
+
+"That one month--four miserable weeks--should have worked all this!
+One month sooner, and this black picture of our lives would have been
+bright again as the sunshine. I could believe that some infernal power
+had taken the reins of our fate."
+
+"Do not say so, nor think so. You have fronted death; you have braved
+despair; and now bear this blow victoriously as you have borne the
+rest."
+
+"The crowning blow is the heaviest of all."
+
+"Look into my heart,--if you could look into it,--and see on which of
+us it has fallen with the more sickening and withering force."
+
+Morton looked into her face. It was like a deep lake becalmed, into
+which strong springs are boiling up from rocks at the bottom. The
+surface is still; but looking more closely, one may discern faint
+gliding undulations and trembling lines, which betray the turmoil
+below. Morton saw them, and felt their purport.
+
+"I would to God," he said, "I could bear your burden for you."
+
+Edith buried her face, and burst into a flood of weeping.
+
+Grief, mixed with more ardent emotion, wrought with such violence in
+Morton's breast, that he scarcely restrained his impulse to throw
+himself at her feet. In a few moments, she raised her head.
+
+"Do not think from this, that I am not resigned to what has fallen on
+us. It is best. Incomprehensible as it is, it is best for us both."
+
+A passionate denial rose to Morton's lips; but he did not utter it.
+
+"I overrated my strength. I am weaker than I hoped to have found
+myself. You wish to bear my burden! You have had enough to bear of
+your own, Vassall; but with you, endurance is not the whole. You still
+have youth, health, vigor. To one of your instincts, the world has
+noble tasks enough. With a heart steeled by dangers, refined by
+sufferings, tempered in fires of anguish, what path need you fear to
+tread? Forget the past;--no, do not forget it; only forget all in it
+that may damp your courage or weaken your hand. When I knew you first,
+you were full of zeal in a worthy and generous enterprise. Cling to it
+still. Let me see the tree which I knew in its blossoming bear a full
+fruit at maturity. Let me see the ardent and earnest spirit which I
+knew in the beginning, not quelled or flagging by the way, but holding
+on its course to the end. The pure chivalry of your heart which
+constrained me to love you, the instinct which turned towards honor
+and nobleness as a tree turns its branches to the sun,--do not part
+from it; keep it unstained for my sake, and let it brighten and
+strengthen all your life."
+
+"If preachers could speak with your tongue," exclaimed Morton, "the
+world would forget itself and grow virtuous. The love that I have lost
+on earth I will set among the stars. It shall be my beacon till the
+day I die."
+
+"We are too delicate and timorous to bear a part in the active
+struggles of life; but it is a woman's office to raise and purify the
+thoughts of those who do. You, whose strong natures are formed for
+warfare, cannot be so sensitive as we are to every spot that dims the
+brightness of your armor. It is easy for me, before one whom I have
+loved as I have loved you, to hold this tone, and be borne up for a
+time above the thought of grief and renouncement. But it is a
+different task to still, through all a lifetime, the longings of a
+woman's heart, and the impatient surgings of a woman's temperament.
+This is the task assigned me, and I accept it. Life--action--are
+before you. Patience is my medicine; the slow talisman which must open
+in the end my door of promise."
+
+Morton pressed her hand to his lips.
+
+"'There is some soul of goodness in things evil.' A sorrow under
+which, feebly borne, the mind would wither to the earth, borne well
+will lift it above the clouds. Do not believe that I have deceived any
+one. He knows on what terms he takes me. I feel respect, esteem,
+confidence, warm friendship for him."
+
+"May you never be undeceived," thought Morton to himself.
+
+"But for any more ardent love,--that, I told him, was buried in the
+grave with you."
+
+She was silent for a moment, and then went on.
+
+"It will not be wise, or right, for us to see each other often. In
+time, you will meet some one with whom you can forget the pain of this
+separation."
+
+Morton shook his head.
+
+"Yes--at least I trust you will. But we can never forget what we have
+been to each other. Our reality is melted into a dream, but we must
+not allow it to remain a dream. Let it be to us a fountain of high
+thoughts, whose streams may water all our lives."
+
+"You are an alchemist, Edith," said Morton; "you have found the secret
+to change lead and iron into pure gold. And yet you make me feel, more
+than ever, if that can be, what a crown I have lost."
+
+When Morton left the house, after a half hour's interview, the
+agitation with which he had entered it had sunk into quiet; for an
+influence had fallen upon him as soothing and elevating as if he had
+been listening to the paschal music in the chapel of the choir at St.
+Peter's. And as an aeronaut, tossed among tempestuous clouds, is borne
+of a sudden above the turmoil, and floats serene in a calmer sky, so
+the troubled mind of Morton felt itself buoyed up for a space above
+the tumult of passionate and bitter thought.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LVI.
+
+  For close designs and crooked counsels fit,
+  Sagacious, bold, and turbulent of wit.--_Dryden_.
+
+
+On the next morning he was walking near the Court House, when a man
+accosted him, touching his hat with one hand, and holding out the
+other in the way of friendly salutation. Morton, however, was at a
+loss to recognize him. He had an air which may most conveniently be
+described as _raffish_, a hat set on one side of his head, and a
+good-natured, easy, devil-may-care face.
+
+"Richards is my name," said the stranger. "I met you at Paris, just
+before you went into Austria."
+
+This was quite enough. Morton, who had repeatedly revolved all the
+circumstances connected with his arrest, at once recalled the accident
+by which he had discovered Richards and Vinal, on their way together
+to visit Speyer. Morton determined to cultivate this new acquaintance;
+which, however, seemed likely to grow without much tillage.
+
+"I went on two or three excursions about the city with you, Mr. Vinal,
+and the rest. Perhaps you have not forgotten it."
+
+"Not in the least; but you are changed since then."
+
+"Yes," said Richards, touching the place where his moustaches had once
+grown, "I cut them off when I went into practice here in Boston. I
+found they were ruining my character as a professional man."
+
+"How long were you in Paris after I saw you?"
+
+"Two years, off and on. I wish I were there now." And taking Morton's
+arm, he proceeded to catechize him touching his imprisonment and
+escape, of which he said he had first read in the New York Herald.
+Morton satisfied his curiosity, taking care to give him no suspicion
+of Speyer's connection with the affair, and allowing him to infer that
+the arrest was caused by an accidental concurrence of suspicious
+circumstances. Richards, at the end, broke out into a savage, red
+republican tirade against Metternich and the Austrian government.
+
+"By the way," said Morton, when his companion's heat had subsided, "do
+you happen to remember a man called Speyer, or something like it,--a
+republican propagandist, at Paris? I believe you knew him."
+
+"I never knew any body else," replied Richards, adopting a
+cis-Atlantic figure of speech for which rhetoricians have as yet found
+no name.
+
+"Do you know where he is now?"
+
+"What, have you lent money to Speyer, too?"
+
+"He is heavily in my debt," said Morton, evasively.
+
+"That's odd. He seems to have been borrowing money all round. I
+remember, about a year or more ago, I met Mr. Vinal, and he began to
+talk about Paris. 'By the way,' said he to me, 'do you happen to
+remember a man named Spires, or Speyers, or some such thing? I lent
+him five hundred francs.' 'I wish you may get it,' said I. 'Well,'
+said Vinal, 'I have a friend going to Paris, who will try what can be
+done for me.' So I set him on the track. I don't know whether he got
+his money or not, but I saw him talking with Speyer in the street, one
+evening last spring, and Vinal looked as sour as if he had swallowed a
+bottle of vitriol."
+
+"Talking with Speyer last spring!" repeated Morton; "has he been to
+Paris?"
+
+"Speyer has come out to America. There is not a country in Europe but
+has grown too hot for him. He was under surveillance in Paris, all the
+time I knew him."
+
+"When did he come?"
+
+"Six or eight months ago."
+
+"Where is he to be found?"
+
+"In New York, chiefly. If you could have caught him when he was here
+in Boston, in the spring, you might have got something out of him; for
+he seemed flush of money."
+
+"What, after you saw him with Vinal?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Have you seen him more than once in Boston?"
+
+"Yes, two or three times."
+
+"Is he in New York now?"
+
+"I suppose so; but I would not advise your trying to do any thing with
+him. You had better pocket your loss, and let him go. However, if you
+want to try, I can refer you to a man who can probably help you to
+find his whereabouts."
+
+"Thank you; there's no harm in making the attempt. I don't know Speyer
+well. What kind of man is he?"
+
+"Well, I will draw his portrait for you. He is sly as a fox; always
+contriving, plotting, and working under ground. Intrigue is his native
+element. He takes to it like a chameleon to air, or a salamander to
+fire."
+
+"An artful, managing fellow, not bold enough to make a direct attack?"
+
+"Bold! There is nothing on the earth, or under it, that he fears. He
+will not make a direct attack, if he can help it, because it is
+against his instinct; but press upon him--crowd him a little--and he
+will show his teeth like a Bengal tiger. He is always in hot water;
+for he never could be happy out of it. He has his weaknesses, though.
+A woman whom he takes a fancy to can turn him round her finger. I
+never knew a man so desperate in that way, or such a devil incarnate
+when a fit of jealousy seizes him."
+
+"You draw a flattering likeness of your friend," said Morton."
+
+"O," said Richards, laughing, "I cut half my foreign acquaintance, now
+that I am at home."
+
+Before leaving his new companion, Morton obtained from him the name
+and direction of the person of whom he had spoken as likely to know
+where Speyer was to be found. Left alone at length, he pondered on
+what he had heard:--
+
+"So Vinal applied to Richards, to learn Speyer's address, when he
+wrote to him to report me dead. Speyer in America!--having interviews
+with Vinal!--and flush of money! Can it be possible that this agent of
+his villany has become the instrument of his punishment?--that the
+Furies are already on his track? If Speyer kept Vinal's letter, as,
+under the circumstances, such a calculating knave would be apt to do,
+he has that in his hands which would make my friend open his purse
+strings; yes, make him coin his life blood, to satisfy him. It is past
+doubting; Vinal has it now; this cormorant is preying upon him."
+
+That afternoon Morton took the night train to New York, in search of
+Speyer.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LVII.
+
+              Though those that are betrayed
+   Do feel the treason sharply, yet the traitor
+   Stands in worse case of woe.--_Cymbeline_.
+
+
+Vinal sat alone, propped and cushioned in an arm chair, when a clerk
+from his office came to bring him his morning letters. He looked over
+the superscriptions till he saw one in a foreign hand. Vinal
+compressed his pale lips. When the clerk had left the room, he glanced
+about him nervously, tore open the letter, and read it in haste.
+
+"The bloodsucker! Money; more money! He soaks it up like a sponge; or,
+rather, I am the sponge, and he means to wring me dry. In jail! Well,
+he has found his place, for once. Six hundred dollars! That, I
+suppose, is to pay his fine; to uncage the wild beast, and set him
+loose. I wish he were sentenced for ten years; then he might lie
+there, and rot. I must send him something--enough to keep him in play.
+No, I will send him nothing. He is in trouble; and I may turn it to
+account. I will write to him that, if he will return me my letters, I
+will give him a thousand dollars now, and an annuity of five hundred
+for six years to come. I shall do well if I can draw the viper's teeth
+at that price. Then I can breathe again; unless Morton should have
+suspected the trick I played him, or--what if he should meet with
+Speyer! But that is not likely, for he never knew him, nor saw him,
+and Speyer will shun him as he would the plague. I wish they had shot
+him in the prison, as I am told they meant to do. There would have
+been one stumbling block away; one lion out of my path. But now the
+sword hangs over me by a hair; I am racked and torn like a toad under
+a harrow; no rest, no peace! What if Speyer should do as he threatens,
+print my letters, and placard them about the streets! I will buy them
+out of his hands if it cost all I have. And even then I shall not be
+safe, as long as this ruffian is above ground. With him and Morton to
+haunt me, my life is a slow death, a purgatory, a hell."
+
+He tore Speyer's letter into small fragments, rolled and crushed them
+together, and scattered them under the grate.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LVIII.
+
+When rich villains have need of poor ones, poor ones may make what
+price they will.--_Much Ado about Nothing_.
+
+
+Morton reached New York, and found the person to whom he had been
+referred by Richards. He proved to be a German, of respectable
+appearance enough; but Morton could learn nothing from him. He
+admitted that he had once known Speyer; but stubbornly denied all
+present knowledge concerning him; and after various inquiry elsewhere,
+which brought him into contact with much vile company, without helping
+him towards his end, Morton gave over the search, and returned to
+Boston.
+
+A day or two after, he met Richards in the street.
+
+"Well, Mr. Richards, I was in New York the other day, and saw your
+man; but he knew nothing about Speyer."
+
+Richards laughed.
+
+"I dare say not; just let me write to him; he will tell me a different
+story. I used to be hand and glove with all these refugees; and I will
+lay you any bet I find Speyer's whereabouts within a week."
+
+Accordingly, three or four days after, Richards called at Morton's
+lodgings, with an air of great self-satisfaction.
+
+"I have spotted your game for you, sir, and he won't run away in a
+hurry, either. He'll be sure to wait till you come. He's in jail."
+
+"What, for debt?"
+
+"No, for an assault on a Frenchman. It was about a woman, a friend of
+Speyer's. You know I told you what a jealous fellow he is." And he
+proceeded to recount what further information he had gained.
+
+"Odd," pondered Richards, after parting from Morton, "that a
+millionnaire like him, and not at all a mean man either, should
+trouble himself so much about any picayune debt that Speyer can owe
+him. There is something in this business more than I can make out."
+
+While Richards occupied himself with these reflections, Morton
+repaired to his lodgings and made his preparations. On the next
+morning, he was in New York again.
+
+He went to the jail where Speyer was confined, and readily gained
+leave to see him. A somewhat loquacious officer, who was to conduct
+him to the prisoner's room, confirmed what Richards had told him, and
+gave him some new particulars. Speyer, he said, had never before, to
+his knowledge, come under the notice of the police. He had been living
+in good lodgings, and in a somewhat showy style. The person who had
+occasioned the quarrel was an Italian girl. "She comes every day to
+see him," said the policeman--"she's a wild one, I tell you; and he
+frets himself to death because he is shut up here, and can't be round
+to look after her."
+
+"So much the better," thought Morton, who hoped that this impatience
+would aid him in his intended negotiation.
+
+"For how long a time is he sentenced?" he asked.
+
+"For three weeks; unless he can find somebody to pay his fine for
+him."
+
+On entering the prisoner's room, Morton saw a man of about forty, well
+dressed, though in a jail, but whose sallow features, deep-set eyes,
+and square, massive lower jaw, well covered with a black beard,
+indicated a character likely to be any thing but tractable. If he had
+been either a gentleman on the one hand, or a common ruffian on the
+other, his visitor might have better known how to deal with him; but
+he had the look of one to whom, whatever he might be at heart, a
+various contact with mankind had armed with an invincible
+self-possession, and guarded at all points against surprise.
+
+Morton was a wretched diplomatist, and had sense enough to know it. He
+knew that if he tried to manoeuvre with his antagonist, the latter
+would outflank him in a moment, and he had therefore resolved on a
+sudden and direct attack. But when he saw Speyer, he could not repress
+a lingering doubt whether he were in fact the person of whom he was in
+search. His chief object was to gain from him, if possible, any
+letters of Vinal which might be in his hands. There was no direct
+evidence that he had any such letters; yet Morton thought that the
+only hope of success lay in assuming his having them as a certainty,
+and pretending a positive knowledge, where, in truth, he had no other
+ground of action than conjecture. So he smothered his doubts, and as
+soon as the policeman was gone, made a crashing onset on the enemy.
+
+"My name is Vassall Morton. I escaped four months ago from the Castle
+of Ehrenberg. I have known something of you through Mr. Vinal."
+
+If Morton were in doubt before, all his doubts were now scattered, for
+a look of irrepressible surprise passed across Speyer's features,
+mingled with as much dismay as his nature was capable of feeling. At
+the next instant, every trace of it had disappeared; and slowly
+shaking his head, to indicate unconsciousness, he looked at Morton
+inquiringly, with an eye perfectly self-possessed and impenetrable.
+His visitor, however, was not to be so deceived.
+
+"I have no enmity against you, nor any wish to injure you. On the
+contrary, I will pay your fine, and set you free, if you will have it
+so. You have letters concerning me, written to you by Vinal. Give them
+to me, and I will do as I say. No harm shall come to you, and I will
+give you money to carry you to any part of the world you wish."
+
+"What letters?" asked Speyer.
+
+"We will have no bush-beating. You wish to get out of jail, and have
+good reason for wishing to get out at once. If you will give me those
+letters, you shall be free in three hours, and safe. If you will not,
+I may give you some trouble."
+
+Speyer was silent for a moment.
+
+"I know the letters are of use to you. You can play a profitable game
+with them; but I can stop your game at any moment I please."
+
+"I can get four thousand dollars for them to-morrow," said Speyer.
+
+"Then why are you here in jail?"
+
+"Vinal offers it; here it is." And taking a note from his pocket,
+Speyer read Vinal's proposal to buy the letters.
+
+"Let me see it," said Morton, taking the note from Speyer's hand.
+"This, of itself, is evidence against him. With your leave, I will
+keep it. Now hear my offer. Give me the letters, and I will pay your
+fine. Then go with me to Boston, and I will make Vinal pay you on the
+spot every dollar that he has offered, on condition that you promise
+to leave the United States, and never return."
+
+Speyer reflected. He came to the conclusion that Morton did not mean
+to expose Vinal; but only, like himself, to extort money from him; and
+wished that he, Speyer, should leave the country in order to get rid
+of a competitor. Morton's object was quite different. He could not
+foresee to what extremities Speyer's extortion might drive its victim;
+and he aimed to check it, by no means out of any tenderness for Vinal,
+but lest his wife might suffer from its consequences.
+
+Speyer, on his part, fevered with jealousy, was chafing to be at large
+again.
+
+"When will you pay my fine?"
+
+"Now."
+
+"Then I accept your proposal."
+
+"Can I rely on your promise to leave the country, and make no further
+drafts on Vinal?"
+
+Speyer cast a glance at him, as if he had read his mind.
+
+"I will promise."
+
+"Will you swear?"
+
+Speyer readily took the oath, insisting that Morton should swear in
+turn to keep his part of the condition.
+
+"Now let me see the letters."
+
+"I must send to my lodgings for them. If you will come back in two
+hours, you shall have them."
+
+"I should have thought you would keep them by you."
+
+"No; but they are safe. Come back at twelve with the money for my
+fine, and they shall be here for you."
+
+Morton had no sooner left the room, than Speyer despatched an
+underling of the jail to buy for him a few sheets of the thin,
+half-transparent paper in common use for European correspondence. This
+being brought, he opened his trunk, and delving to the bottom, drew up
+a leather case, from which he took the letters in question. Laying the
+thin paper over them, he proceeded to trace with a pen an exact
+facsimile. He was well practised at such work, and after one or two
+failures, succeeded perfectly. Folding his counterfeits after the
+manner of the originals, he placed them in the envelopes belonging to
+the latter; and within a half hour after his task was finished, Morton
+reappeared.
+
+Speyer gave him one of the facsimiles. He read it attentively, without
+seeing the imposture. The handwriting, though disguised, was evidently
+Vinal's; but it had neither the signature of the writer, nor Morton's
+name. The place of each was supplied by a cipher.
+
+"Reference is made here to another letter. Where is it?"
+
+Speyer gave him the second counterfeit. The envelope bore a postmark
+of a few days later than the first. The note contained merely the
+names of Morton and Vinal, with ciphers affixed, referring to those in
+the first letter.
+
+"Have you no more of Vinal's papers?"
+
+Speyer shook his head. Indeed, the letters, if genuine, would have
+been amply sufficient to place their writer in Morton's power. The
+latter at once took the necessary measures to gain the prisoner's
+release. Speyer no sooner found himself at liberty than he hastened to
+search out the fair object of his anxieties, promising to meet Morton
+on the steamboat for Boston in the afternoon. His doubts were strong
+whether the other would keep faith with him; but he amply consoled
+himself with the thought that, at the worst, he still had means to
+bring Vinal to terms.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LIX.
+
+  What spectre can the charnel send
+  So dreadful as an injured friend?--_Rokeby_.
+
+
+"Strange," thought Vinal, "that I hear nothing from him."
+
+It was three days since he had written to Speyer; and his chief
+anxiety was, lest his note should have miscarried. Pain and long
+confinement had wrought heavily upon him. Every emotion, every care,
+thrilled with a morbid keenness upon his brain and nerves; but
+hitherto he had ruled his sensitive organism with an iron
+self-control, and calmed its perturbations with a fortitude which in a
+better man would have been heroic.
+
+His wife was in the room, and, as his eye rested on her, it kindled
+with a kind of troubled delight, for he loved her strongly, after his
+fashion. He had remarked of late a singular assiduity and tenderness
+in her devotion to him. Her position, in fact, was not unlike that of
+one who, broken and overborne by some irreparable sorrow, had
+renounced the world and its happiness, to embrace a new life, and
+build up for herself a new hope in the calm sanctuary of a convent. In
+the same spirit, Edith Leslie, bidding farewell to her girlish dream
+of life, its morning rose tint, and cloud draperies of gold and
+purple, gave herself to the practical duties before her, and sought,
+in their devoted fulfilment, to strengthen herself against the flood
+which for a time had overwhelmed her.
+
+Vinal, who, acute as he was, could not understand the state of mind
+from which her peculiar kindness of manner towards him rose, pleased
+himself with the idea that his rival's return was not so great a shock
+to her as he had at first feared, and that, after all, she was more
+fond of him than of Morton. This notion consoled his disturbed
+thoughts not a little. Still he was abundantly anxious and harassed.
+
+"If Morton should suspect! He has not come to see me; but that is
+natural enough, under the circumstances. And if he does suspect, he
+can have no proof. No one here suspects me. They say it was strange
+that my European correspondent should have made such a mistake; but
+that is all. No one dreams that I had a hand in it; and why should
+they? No one knew of Edith's engagement to him, except herself, her
+father, and her confidantes. I suppose she has confidantes--all girls
+have them. I wish their epitaphs were written, whoever they are. Well,
+
+  'Come what come may,
+   Time and the hour run through the roughest day.'
+
+But this is a dangerous business--a cursed business. Why does not
+Speyer write?"
+
+As his thoughts ran in this strain, he looked up, and his eye caught
+that of his wife. She was struck with his troubled expression.
+
+"You look anxious and care-worn. Are you ill?"
+
+"Come to me, Edith," said Vinal, with a faint smile.
+
+She came to the side of his chair, and he took her hand.
+
+"Edith, I am not well to-day. My head swims. This long confinement is
+eating away my life by inches."
+
+"In a week more, I trust, you will be able to move again. The country
+air will give you new life. But why do you look so troubled?"
+
+"Dreams, Edith,--bad dreams, like Hamlet's, I suppose. It is very
+strange,--I cannot imagine why it is,--but to-day I have felt
+oppressed, weighed down, shadowed as if a cloud hung over me. I am not
+myself. A man is a mere slave to his nervous system, and when that is
+overthrown, his whole soul is shaken with it. The country is my hope,
+Edith. We will go there together, soon, and begin life anew."
+
+A knock at the door interrupted him.
+
+"Come in," cried Vinal, in his usual quick, decisive tone.
+
+A servant entered.
+
+"Well, what is it?"
+
+"A gentleman wishes to see you, sir."
+
+"Did he give his name?"
+
+"Mr. Edwards, sir."
+
+"Ask him to come up."
+
+"A man whom I expected this morning on business," he said, in
+explanation to his wife, as the servant closed the door. "I wish he
+were any where but here. And so you are going away."--She was dressed
+to go out.--"He will be here only a moment; do not be gone long."
+
+"No, I will be with you again in an hour."
+
+"Do not forget," said Vinal, pressing her hand, "for when you leave
+the room, Edith, it is as if a sunbeam were shut out."
+
+As Vinal, sick in body and mind, thus leaned in his distress on the
+victim of his villany, he cast into her face a look that was almost
+piteous. She, seeing nothing but his love for her, warmed towards him
+with compassion; the more so since, till that moment, she had known
+him as a calm, firm man, a model, to her eyes, of masculine
+self-government. A mind tortured with suspense, acting upon a weak and
+morbidly sensitive body, had betrayed him into this unwonted
+imbecility.
+
+The step of the visitor sounded in the passage; and returning the
+pressure of his hand, his wife went out at the door of a small
+adjoining room, opening upon the side passage by which she commonly
+entered and left the hotel.
+
+After a few minutes' interview, Edwards took his leave, and Vinal,
+left alone, fell into his former train of thought. In a moment, he was
+again interrupted by a knock at the door, quite unlike the hasty rap
+of the hotel servant.
+
+"Come in," cried Vinal.
+
+The door opened, and Vassall Morton entered. He had learned from the
+retiring visitor that Vinal was alone.
+
+"My dear fellow!" exclaimed Vinal, his face beaming with a transport
+of welcome. "My dear fellow!"
+
+But Morton stood without taking his proffered hand. The smile remained
+frozen on Vinal's face, and cold drops of doubt and fear began to
+gather on his forehead.
+
+"There is another friend of yours in the passage," said Morton.--"Come
+in, Speyer."
+
+Speyer entered, bowing with his usual composure. Vinal sank back in
+his chair, collapsing like a man withered with a palsy stroke.
+
+"Vinal," said Morton, after a silence of some moments, "you have a
+cool way of receiving your acquaintances."
+
+He made no answer, but still sat, or rather crouched, in the depths of
+his easy chair, where the thick bounding of his heart almost choked
+him. Morton stood for some time longer, looking at him. He had not
+reached such a point of Christian forgiveness as not to find pleasure
+in his enemy's tortures, and he saw that his silence tortured him more
+than words.
+
+"Vinal," he said at length, "I used to know you in college for a liar
+and a coward; and since then you have grown well in both ways. You
+have hatched into a full-fledged villain; and now that I have found
+you out, you crouch like a whipped cur."
+
+No answer was returned, and Morton's anger began to yield to a
+different feeling. If he could have seen the condition of Vinal's mind
+and body, he might, between pity and contempt, have spared him.
+
+"I came to upbraid you with your knaveries; but I find you hardly
+worth the trouble. Do you see this letter? It is the same that you
+wrote to this man at Marseilles, instructing him to forge a story that
+I was dead, and that he had seen my gravestone, with my mother's
+family device upon it. Will you dare deny that you wrote it? You will
+not! I thought as much. I have unravelled you from first to last. Five
+years ago, you bribed Speyer, here, to compromise me with the Austrian
+police. Pretending to be my friend, you gave me letters which betrayed
+me into a prison, where you hoped that I would end my days; and, next,
+you contrived this trickery to prove me dead. Is there any name in the
+English tongue too vile to mark you?"
+
+Vinal sat as if stricken dumb.
+
+"I know your reputation," pursued Morton. "You are in high feather
+here. You pass for a man of virtue, integrity, and honor. You make
+speeches at public meetings; Fourth of July orations; Phi Beta
+orations; charity harangues--any thing that smacks of philanthropy and
+goodness; any thing that will varnish you in the public eye. Why am I
+not bound to lay bare this whitewashed lie? What withholds me from
+grinding you like a scorpion under my boot-heel, or flinging you on
+the pavement to be stared at like a scotched viper? A word from me,
+and you are ruined. You need not fear it. Stay, and enjoy your honors
+as you can; but my foot shall be on your neck. This letter of yours is
+the spell by which I will rule you, body and soul."
+
+Here he paused again; but Vinal's tongue was powerless.
+
+"I tell you again, for I would not have you desperate, that I do not
+mean to ruin you. Bear yourself wisely, and you are safe, at least
+from me. Have you lost your speech? Are you turned dumb?"
+
+Vinal muttered inarticulately.
+
+"There is another danger which I have done my best to ward off from
+you. This man, who had you at his mercy, has sworn to leave the
+country, and never to return; on which score you will please to pay
+him the money you offered him for the purchase of your letters."
+
+Vinal seemed confused and stupefied, and Morton was forced to be more
+explicit in his demands. At length, the former signed a note for the
+amount, though not without stammering objections to his name appearing
+on it in connection with Speyer's. Morton, however, turned a deaf ear
+to these remonstrances.
+
+"Here is your pay," he said to Speyer. "Any bank will discount this
+for you. Now, to what place do you mean to go?"
+
+"To Venezuela. I have a friend there in the army. He will get a
+commission for me."
+
+"Very well. See that you stay there; or, at all events, do not come
+back to the United States. If you do, you will perjure yourself. Now,
+go; I have done with you. Vinal, I will leave you to your reflections;
+and when you can sleep in peace, free from Speyer's persecutions,
+remember to whom you owe it."
+
+Vinal sat like a withered plant, his head sinking between his
+shoulders, while his hand, still unconsciously holding the pen, rested
+on the arm of his chair. There was something in his appearance at once
+so abject and so piteous, that a changed feeling came over Morton as
+he looked on him. By a sudden impulse, akin to pity, he stepped
+towards him, and took his wrist. The pen dropped from his pale
+fingers, which quivered like an aspen bough; and as Morton stood
+gazing on him, Vinal's upturned eyes met his, as if riveted there by a
+helpless fascination.
+
+"You unhappy wretch! You are burning already with the pains of the
+damned. Flint and iron could not see you without softening. I have
+saved you,--not out of mercy, nor forgiveness,--not for _your_
+sake;--but I have saved you. I have pushed away the sword that hung
+over you by a hair. You are free now to be happy."
+
+But as he spoke this last word, so fierce a pang shot into his heart,
+remembering what he had lost, and what Vinal had won, that his pity
+was scattered like mist before a thunder squall. He flung back the
+passive hand against the breast of its terrified owner, turned
+abruptly, and left the room.
+
+No sooner had the door closed behind him, than the door of the
+anteroom opposite was flung open, and Edith Leslie, rushing in, stood
+before Vinal with the wild look of one who gasps for breath. She
+attempted to speak, but broken words and inarticulate sounds were all
+her lips would utter. Strength failed her in the effort, and pressing
+her hands to her forehead, she sank fainting to the floor.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LX.
+
+               I will not go with thee;
+  I will instruct my sorrows to be proud.--_King John_.
+
+
+On the next morning, Vinal learned that his wife was ill, and confined
+to her room in her father's house. On the day following, he was told
+that she was no better; but on the third morning, a letter, in her
+handwriting, was given him. He opened it, and read as follows:--
+
+I heard all. I have learned, at last, to know you. These were your bad
+dreams! This was the cloud that overshadowed you! No wonder that your
+eye was anxious, your forehead wrinkled, and your cheek pale. To have
+led that brave and loyal heart through months and years of
+anguish!--to have buried him from the light of day!--to have buried
+him in darkness and despair, if despair could ever touch a soul like
+his! And there he would have been lost forever, if you had had your
+will,--if a higher hand had not been outstretched to save him. One
+whom you dared not meet face to face; one as far above your sphere as
+the eagle is above the serpent to which he likened you! You have
+taught me how sin can cringe and cower under the anger of a true and
+deeply outraged man. That I should have lived to hear my husband
+called a villain!--and still live to tell him that the word was just!
+My husband! You are _not_ my husband. It was not a criminal, a
+traitorous wretch, whom I pledged myself to love and honor. You have
+insnared me; you have me, for a time, safely entangled in your meshes.
+The same cause which led me to this yoke must withhold me from casting
+it off. I cannot imbitter my father's dying moments. I cannot bring
+distress and horror to his tranquil death bed. For his sake, I will
+play the hypocrite, and stoop to pass in the world's eye as your wife.
+For the few weeks he has to live, I will lodge, if I must, under your
+roof; I will sit, if I must, at your table; but when my father is
+gone, let the world impute to me what blame it will, I will leave you
+forever. You need not fear that I shall expose your crimes. If _he_
+could spare you, it does not become me to speak. Live on, and make
+what atonement you may; but meanwhile there is a gulf between us wider
+than death.
+
+                                                EDITH LESLIE.
+
+An accident, arising out of her very devotion to Vinal, had made known
+his secret to her. In the anteroom which led from the side passage of
+the hotel to his apartment, and through which, on the morning of his
+interview with Morton, she had intended to pass on her way out, was a
+table, covered with books and engravings, with which the invalid had
+been amusing his leisure. The sight of them reminded her that she had
+promised to get for him a series of German etchings, which he had
+expressed a wish to see. She seated herself, to write a request to the
+friend who had them, that he would send them to the hotel. Her hand
+was on the bell, to call the servant, when the peculiarly emphatic and
+earnest manner with which Vinal greeted some new visitor caught her
+attention. The door had sprung ajar on the lock; the speakers were
+very near it, and Morton's tone was none of the softest. She remained
+as if charmed to her seat; and every word fell on her ear as clearly
+as if she had stood in the same room.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LXI.
+
+  I hold the world but as the world, Gratiano,
+  A stage where every man must play a part,
+  And mine a sad one.--_Merchant of Venice_.
+
+  The past is past. I see the future stretch
+  All dark and barren as a rainy sea.--_Alexander Smith_.
+
+
+Morton took possession again of his house in the country, which still
+remained in the keeping of one of his humble relatives, into whose
+charge he had given it. He turned the key of his long-deserted
+library. A loving influence had presided here in his absence, and,
+even when he was given up for lost, every thing had been scrupulously
+kept as he had left it.
+
+Here he immured himself; avoided all society but that of a few
+personal friends; and by plunging into the studies which had formerly
+engrossed him, tried to escape the persecution of his own thoughts. It
+was a forced and painful task. The marks in his books, the pencil
+notes on their margins, his voluminous piles of memoranda, were all so
+many sharp memorials of the past, to remind him that he was resuming
+in darkness and despondency the work that he had left in sunshine.
+
+In process of time, however, his ancient interest in his favorite
+pursuit began to rekindle. He began to feel that the years of his
+imprisonment had not been the dead and barren blank which he had
+inclined to think them. His mind had ripened in its solitude, and the
+studies which he had before followed with the zeal of a boy, more
+eager than able to deal with the broad questions which they involved,
+he could now grasp with the matured intellect of a man.
+
+But while Morton was thus laboring on, Edith Leslie was passing
+through an ordeal incomparably more severe. Month after month dragged
+on, and her father still lingered, sinking again and again to the very
+edge of the grave, and then rallying, as if with a fresh life. Vinal,
+meanwhile, was in a good measure recovered from the effects of his
+accident. His home and hers, if it could be called a home, was now a
+house in town, which her father had fitted up for her in view of her
+marriage. She had a painful and delicate part to act--at her father's
+bedside, to appear as the happy and contented wife; at home, to endure
+the presence of the man whose treachery filled her with horror, and
+whose love for her, though she had never spoken a word of reproof, had
+changed into fear and hatred. Of his actual presence, however, she had
+to endure little; for he shunned her studiously; and her house was to
+her a solitude, where she passed hours of a suffering more intense
+than Morton had ever known in the dungeons of Ehrenberg.
+
+Meanwhile, the servants, those domestic spies, did not fail to rumor
+abroad the singular mode of life of the bride and bridegroom; that
+Vinal avoided the house; that they seldom met, even at meals; and that
+no word or look of sympathy or confidence seemed ever to pass between
+them. Such rumors found their currency among the busier gossips of the
+town; but Morton, secluded among his books, remained wholly ignorant
+of them.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LXII.
+
+  Old friends, like old swords, still are trusted best.--_Webster_.
+
+
+It was nearly a year since he had landed at New York, and Morton still
+remained a literary hermit. Society was stale and distasteful to him.
+He passed three fourths of his day in his library, and the rest on
+horseback. At length, however, it happened that a cousin of his
+mother, one of his few relatives in the city, was to give a ball on
+occasion of her daughter's _debut_; and lest his refusal should be
+thought unkind, Morton promised to come. He drove to town in the
+afternoon; and walking through a somewhat obscure street, suddenly, on
+turning a corner, saw, some four or five rods before him, a
+well-remembered face. It was the face of Henry Speyer. The discovery
+was mutual. Speyer instantly turned down a by-lane. Morton quickened
+his pace, and reached the head of the lane in time to see the broad
+shoulders of the patriot in full retreat. He soon lost sight of him
+among a wilderness of back yards and squalid houses. The incident
+greatly disturbed and exasperated him. "A broken oath is nothing to
+him," he thought to himself; "he is at Vinal again, dragging at his
+veins like a vampire."
+
+The evening drew on, and he entered the ball room in a gloomy and
+dejected frame of mind. After a few words to his relatives, he took
+his stand among a group who were watching the dancers; and had
+scarcely done so, when he saw a young lady, simply, but very richly
+dressed, whose fine figure and powerfully expressive beauty arrested
+his eye at once. The indifference and listlessness with which he had
+entered vanished. He soon observed that she was not an object of
+attention to him alone; for near him stood a certain old beau, well
+known about town, and a young collegian, both following her with their
+eyes. The music ceased, and her partner led her to a seat at the
+farther side of the room. Glancing at his two neighbors, Morton saw
+that they were in the act of moving towards her; but he, being nearer,
+had the advantage. Gliding through the dissolving fragments of the
+dance, he stood by her side.
+
+"Miss Fanny Euston, I see two persons coming to ask you to dance. May
+I hope that you will reject them for an old friend's sake, and let me
+be your partner?"
+
+She raised her eyes with a perplexed look, which instantly changed to
+a bright gleam of recognition, and cordially took his proffered hand.
+
+"So," said Morton, "you have not forgotten me. And yet, as I see you,
+I hardly dare to take up again the broken thread of our old intimacy.
+I used to call you Fanny."
+
+"Call me Fanny still," she said, "if only for the memory of auld lang
+syne."
+
+"I hoped to have seen you before, but you have been away."
+
+"Yes, with my relations, and yours, at Baltimore. I have heard a great
+deal about you. Your story is the talk of the town. You might be the
+lion of the season; but I have not seen you at parties."
+
+"No, I have outlived my liking for such matters."
+
+"I cannot wonder at it. What horrors you have suffered! what dangers
+you have passed!"
+
+"I have weathered them, though."
+
+"You were more than four years in a dungeon."
+
+"Yes, but I gave them the slip."
+
+"You were led out to be shot by the soldiers."
+
+"They thought better of it, and saved their ammunition."
+
+"And yet I see," said Miss Euston, smiling, "that you still remain
+your former self. I remember telling you that, if you were sentenced
+to the rack, you would go to it with a gibe on your tongue, and speak
+of it afterwards as a pleasant diversion. But," she added, with a
+changed look, "you have not come off unscathed. Your face is darker
+and thinner than it used to be, and there are lines in it that were
+not there before."
+
+"Fortune fondled me till she grew tired of me; then turned at me,
+tooth and nail."
+
+"You banter with your lips, but your look belies your words. You have
+suffered greatly; you have suffered intensely."
+
+Morton looked grave in spite of himself.
+
+"Perhaps you are right. I have very little heart left for jesting."
+
+The eyes of his companion, as they met his, assumed a peculiar
+softness.
+
+"You must have suffered beyond all power of words to speak it. The
+world to you was fresh and full of interest. You were ambitious; full
+of ardor and energy; loving hardship for its own sake, and obstacles
+for the sake of conquering them. You were formed for action. It was
+your element--your breath; and without it you did not care to live.
+You were high in confidence, and believed that whatever you had once
+resolved on must, sooner or later, come to pass."
+
+"Why are you saying this?" demanded Morton, in great surprise.
+
+"Out of this life you were suddenly snatched and buried in a dungeon;
+shut off from all intercourse with men; your energies stifled; your
+restless mind left to prey upon itself, or sustain a weary siege
+against despair. Pain or danger you could have faced like a man; but
+this passive misery must to you have been a daily death."
+
+"Who," interrupted Morton, "taught you, a woman, to penetrate the
+nature of a man, and describe sufferings that you never felt?"
+
+"Your mind was like a spring of steel, springing up the more strongly
+the harder it was pressed down. The suffering must have been deep
+indeed from which you could not rebound. To have escaped, to have
+reached home, and to have found any thing but relief and delight----"
+
+"Home!" ejaculated Morton, bitterly, as a sharp memory of the anguish
+which had met him on the threshold came over him. "A prison may be
+borne with patience. Those are fortunate who have felt no keener
+stabs."
+
+The words, equivocal as they were, were scarcely spoken, when he had
+repented them. Fanny Euston was silent for a moment. "Can it be
+possible," she thought, "that the stories whispered about, that before
+he went away he was engaged to Edith Leslie, are something more than
+an idle rumor?"
+
+"Why do you look at me so searchingly?" thought Morton, on his part,
+as, raising his eyes, he saw those of his friend fixed on him in a
+gaze in which a woman's curiosity was mingled with a fully equal share
+of a woman's kindliness and sympathy. He hastened to escape from the
+critical ground which he had approached.
+
+"I can retort upon you," he said. "You have had your ordeal, too."
+
+"What, do you see its traces? Do you find me scorched and withered?"
+
+"I see," said Morton, "such traces as on gold that has passed through
+the furnace."
+
+"Truly, I have cause to rejoice, then; for I remember that, among
+other compliments, you once intimated your opinion that I was
+possessed with a devil."
+
+"I am afraid that I pushed to its farthest limit my privilege of
+cousinship."
+
+"And yet, when I look back to that time, I cannot help thinking that
+you had some reason for believing that an influence from the nether
+world had some share in me."
+
+"Now pardon me, if I am rude again. Looking at you, I can see the same
+devil still."
+
+"Indeed, and you will console me now, as you did then, by telling me
+that a dash of viciousness is necessary to make a character
+interesting."
+
+"I should prune and explain my speech. By a devil, I did not mean a
+malicious imp of darkness, wholly bent on evil. I meant nothing more
+than certain impulses and emotions,--passions, if I may call them
+so,--very turbulent tenants, yet of admirable use when well dealt
+with. These were the devil whom I used to see in you, and whom I see
+still."
+
+"I shall tremble at myself."
+
+"Then you are not so brave as you were when you leaped the fallen tree
+at New Baden. Your demon has ceased to have an alarming look. I think
+you have turned him to good account. Shall I illustrate from the
+legends of the saints?"
+
+"In any way you please; but I should never have expected you to resort
+to so pious a source."
+
+"St. Bernard, crossing the Alps on some holy errand, was met by Satan,
+who, being anxious to prevent his journey, broke one of his carriage
+wheels. But St. Bernard caught him, sprinkled him with holy water,
+doubled him into a wheel, and put him upon the carriage in place of
+the broken one. The legend says that he answered the purpose
+admirably, and bore the saint safely to the end of his journey."
+
+"Your legend is absurd enough; but I think I catch your meaning, and
+wish I could think you wholly in the right. It is singular that you
+and I have never met without our conversation becoming personal to
+ourselves. We are always studying each other--always trying to
+penetrate each other's thoughts."
+
+"On one side, at least, the success has been complete. As you look at
+me, I feel that you are reading me like a book, from title page to
+finis."
+
+"You greatly overrate my penetration. I am conscious, at this moment,
+of movements in your mind which I do not understand."
+
+"And would you have me confess them to you?"
+
+"You might repent it afterwards; and that would make a breach between
+us."
+
+"You are a miraculous woman, to postpone your curiosity to a scruple
+like that. No, I would not have spoken of confession, if I should ever
+repent it. Do you know, I would rather open my mind to you than to any
+one else I am now acquainted with."
+
+"But you have male friends; very old and intimate ones."
+
+"Excellent in their way; but I would as soon confess to my horse. Find
+me a woman of sense, with a brain to discern, a heart to feel, passion
+to feel vehemently, and principle to feel rightly, and I will show her
+my mind; or, if not, I will show it to no one. Now, after this
+preamble, you have a right to think that I should begin to confess
+something at once. But first, I will ask you a question."
+
+"What is it?"
+
+"Tell me what effect you think any long and severe suffering ought to
+have on a man--something, I mean, that would bring him to the brink of
+despair, and keep him there for months and years."
+
+"What kind of man do you mean?"
+
+"Suppose one given over to pleasure, ambition, or any other engrossing
+pursuit not too disinterested."
+
+"It would depend on how the suffering was taken."
+
+"Suppose him resolved to make the best of a bad bargain."
+
+"Why, the effect ought to be good, I suppose,--so the preachers say."
+
+"I do not wish to know what the preachers say. I wish your own
+opinion."
+
+"Are you quite in earnest?"
+
+"Quite."
+
+"Such suffering, rightly taken, would strip life of its disguises, and
+show it in its naked truth. It would teach the man to know himself and
+to know others. It would awaken his sympathies, enlarge his mind, and
+greatly expand his sphere of vision; teach him to hold present
+pleasure and present pain in small account, and to look beyond them
+into a future of boundless hopes and fears."
+
+"Now," said Morton, "you have betrayed yourself."
+
+"How have I betrayed myself?" asked his friend, in some discomposure.
+
+"You have shown me the secrets of your own mind. You have given me a
+glimpse of your own history, since we last met."
+
+"And so, under pretence of confessing to me, you have been plotting to
+make me confess to you!"
+
+"No, you shall hear my confession. I have it now, such as it is, at my
+tongue's end."
+
+"I have no faith in you."
+
+"Perhaps you will have still less when you have heard this great
+secret. You remember me before I went away. I was a very exemplary
+young gentleman,--quiet, orderly, well behaved,--of a studious
+turn,--soberly and virtuously given."
+
+"You give yourself an excellent character."
+
+"And what should be the results of the discipline of a dungeon on such
+a person?"
+
+"Discipline would be a superfluity, considering your perfections."
+
+"So I thought myself. Nevertheless, for four years, or so, I was shut
+up, with nothing to look at but stone walls, under circumstances most
+favorable for the culture of patience, resignation, forgiveness, and
+all the Christian virtues; and yet the devil has never been half so
+busy with me as since I came out; never whispered half so many
+villanous suggestions into my ears, nor baited me with such scandalous
+temptations."
+
+"That is very strange," said Fanny Euston, who was looking at him
+intently.
+
+"For example," pursued Morton, "a little more than a year ago, in New
+York, he said to me, 'Renounce all your old plans, and habits, and
+antiquated scruples--reclaim your natural freedom--fling yourself
+headlong into the turmoil of the world--chase whatever fate or fortune
+throws in your way--enjoy the zest of lawless pleasures--launch into
+mad adventure--embark on schemes of ambition--care nothing for the
+past or the future--think only of the present--fear neither God nor
+man, and follow your vagrant star wherever it leads you."
+
+Morton knew that, restrained and governed as it might be, there was
+quicksilver enough in his companion's veins to enable her to
+understand what he had said, and prevent her being startled at it. But
+he was by no means prepared for the close attack she proceeded to make
+on him.
+
+"Such a state of mind is foreign to your nature. You have prudence and
+forecast. You used to make plans for the future, and study the final
+results of every thing you did. There is something upon your mind. It
+is not imprisonment only that has caused that compression of your
+lips, and marked those lines on your face. You have met with some deep
+disaster, some overwhelming disappointment. Nothing else could have
+wrought such a convulsion in you."
+
+Morton was taken by surprise; and, as he struggled to frame an answer,
+his features betrayed an emotion which he could not hide. Fanny Euston
+hastened to relieve his embarrassment, and assuage, as far as she
+could, the tumult she had called up.
+
+"With whatever fate you may have had to battle, your wounds are in the
+front,--all honorable scars. Your desperation is past;--it was only
+for the hour;--and for the other extreme, it is not in you to suffer
+that."
+
+"What other extreme?"
+
+"Idle dreaming;--melancholy;--weak pining at disappointment."
+
+"No, thank God, it is not in me to lie and whine like a sick child."
+
+"You are the firmer for what you have passed. Manhood, the proudest of
+all possession to a man, is strengthened and deepened in you."
+
+"What do you call this manhood, which you seem to hold in such high
+account?"
+
+"That unflinching quality which, strong in generous thought and high
+purpose, bears onward towards its goal, knowing no fear but the fear
+of God; wise, prudent, calm, yet daring and hoping all things; not
+dismayed by reverses, nor elated by success; never bending nor
+receding; wearying out ill fortune by undespairing constancy;
+unconquered by pain or sorrow, or deferred hope; fiery in attack,
+steadfast in resistance, unshaken in the front of death; and when
+courage is vain, and hope seems folly, when crushing calamity presses
+it to the earth, and the exhausted body will no longer obey the still
+undaunted mind, then putting forth its hardest, saddest heroism, the
+unlaurelled heroism of endurance, patiently biding its time."
+
+"And how if its time never come?"
+
+"Then dying at its post, like the Roman sentinel at Pompeii."
+
+Her words struck a chord in Morton's nature, and roused his early
+enthusiasm, dormant for years.
+
+"Fanny," he said, "I thank you. You give me back my youth. An hour
+ago, the world was as dull to me as a November day; but you have
+brought June back again. You would make a coward valiant, and breathe
+life into a dead man."
+
+Miss Euston seemed, for a moment, in embarrassment what to reply;
+indeed, she showed some signs of discomposure, contrasting with her
+former frankness. They were still in the recess of the window. She was
+visible to those in the room; while he, standing opposite, was hidden
+by a curtain. At this moment, a gentleman, with a slight limp in his
+gait, approaching quickly, accosted Miss Euston, smiling with an air
+of the most earnest affability. She looked up to reply, but, as she
+did so, her eyes were arrested by a sudden change in the features of
+her companion, who was bending on the new comer a look so fierce and
+threatening, that she scarcely repressed an ejaculation of surprise.
+Mr. Horace Vinal followed the direction of her gaze, and saw himself
+face to face with the victim of his villany. He started as if he had
+found a grizzly bear behind the curtain. The smile vanished from his
+lips, the color from his cheeks, and he hastily drew back, and mingled
+with the crowd.
+
+This sudden apparition, breaking in upon the brightening mood of the
+moment, incensed Morton almost to fury; and his anger, absurdly
+enough, was a little tinged with a feeling not wholly unlike jealousy.
+He made an involuntary movement to follow his enemy, but recollecting
+himself, smoothed his brow and calmed his ruffled spirit as he best
+might.
+
+"You seem to know that man very well," he said to Miss Euston.
+
+"Yes, I know him."
+
+"He seems to think himself on excellent terms with you."
+
+"He has charge of my mother's property."
+
+"You are good at reading faces. I hope you liked the expression on
+his, as he slunk away just now."
+
+"It was fear--abject fear. Why are you so angry? Why is he so
+frightened?"
+
+"His nerves, you may have observed, are something of the weakest. He
+is my attendant genius, my familiar. A word from me, and he will run
+my errand like a spaniel."
+
+"How could you gain such power over him?" she asked, in great
+astonishment.
+
+"Magnetism, Fanny, magnetism. The effects of the mesmeric fluid are
+wonderful. See, the polking is over; they are forming a quadrille.
+Shall we take our places in the set?"
+
+During the dance, Morton looked for his enemy, but could not discover
+him till it was over, and he had led his partner to a seat.
+
+"Look," he said, "there is our friend again; in the next room, just
+beyond the folding doors, talking with Mrs. ---- and Mrs. ----. He
+seems to have got the better of the shock to his nerves; at least, he
+stands up manfully against it. Mr. Horace Vinal has a stout heart, and
+needs nothing but valor, and one other quality, to make a hero. But
+his face is flushed. I fear he suffers in his health. See, he makes
+himself very agreeable. Vinal was always famous for his wit. Pardon me
+a moment; I have a word for my friend's ear."
+
+Fanny Euston looked at him doubtingly.
+
+"Pray, don't be discomposed. There's no gunpowder impending. Vinal is
+not a fighting man; nor am I. What I have to say is altogether
+pacific, loving, and scriptural."
+
+And passing into the adjoining room, he approached Vinal, who no
+sooner saw the movement, than he showed a manifest uneasiness. His
+forced animation ceased, his manner became constrained, and while
+Morton stood near, waiting an opportunity to speak to him, he withdrew
+to another part of the room. Morton followed, and pronounced his name.
+Vinal, with pretended unconsciousness, mingled with the crowd. Morton
+again tried to accost him, and again Vinal moved away. Impatient and
+exasperated, Morton stepped behind him, touched his shoulder, and
+whispered in his ear,--
+
+"You fool, do you know your danger? Speyer is looking for you. I saw
+him this afternoon. He looks as if he needed your charity. You had
+better be generous with him. He is a tiger, and will be upon you
+before you know it."
+
+Anger and terror, of which the latter vastly predominated, gave a
+ghastly look to Vinal's face, as he turned it towards Morton. But he
+drew back without a word, and soon left the room.
+
+"Where is Mr. Vinal?" asked the wondering Fanny Euston, as her
+companion returned to her side. The momentary interview had been
+invisible from where she sat.
+
+"Obeyed the magic word, and vanished. Never doubt again the power of
+magnetism. Now you may see that the claptrap of the charlatans about
+the mutual influence of congenial spheres is not quite such trash as
+one might think. Vinal and I, being congenial spheres, put each other,
+the one into a passion, the other into a fright. But I have a request
+to you. Whoever knows you, knows, in spite of the libellers, a woman
+who can keep counsel; and as I am modest in respect to my magnetic
+gifts, I shall beg it of you, that you will not mention these
+experiments to any one. Good evening. I have revived to-night an old
+and valued friendship. If I can help it, it shall not die again."
+
+He took leave of his hostess, wrapped his cloak about him, and walked
+out into the drizzling night.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LXIII.
+
+             Nought's had, all's spent,
+  Where our desire is got without content.
+  'Tis safer to be that which we destroy,
+  Than by destruction dwell in doubtful joy.--_Macbeth_.
+
+
+Morton walked the street, on the next day, in a mood less grave than
+had lately been his wont, but in one of any thing but self-approval.
+
+"It is singular," he thought, "I could never meet her without
+forgetting myself,--without being betrayed into some absurdity or
+other. I thought by this time that I had grown wiser, or, at least,
+was well fenced against that kind of risk. But it is the same now as
+ever. I was a fool at New Baden, and I was a fool again last night,
+though after a different fashion. After all, when a fresh breeze
+comes, why should I not breathe it? when a ray of sun comes, why
+should I not bask in it? But what impelled me to insult that wretch,
+who I knew dared not and could not answer me?"
+
+He pondered for a moment, then turned and walked slowly towards
+Vinal's place of business.
+
+"Is Mr. Vinal here?" he asked of one of the clerks.
+
+"Yes, sir, he is in that inner room."
+
+"Is any one with him?"
+
+"No, sir." And Morton opened the door and entered.
+
+Vinal sat before a table, on which letters and papers were lying; but
+he was leaning backward in his chair, with a painfully knit brow, and
+a face of ghastly paleness. It flushed of a sudden as Morton appeared,
+and his whole look and mien showed an irrepressible agitation.
+
+Morton closed the door. "Vinal," he said, "you need not fear that I
+have come with any hostile purpose. On the contrary, I will serve you,
+if I can. Last night I used words to you which I have since regretted.
+I beg you to accept my apology."
+
+Vinal made no reply.
+
+"I saw Speyer in the street last evening, and tried to speak with him,
+but could not stop him. He can hardly have any other purpose in
+breaking his oath and coming here again, than to get more money from
+you. Has he been to you?"
+
+Still Vinal was silent.
+
+"I think," continued Morton, "that you cannot fail to see my motive. I
+wish to keep him from you, not on your account, but on your wife's. If
+you let him, he will torment you to your death. Have you seen him
+since last evening?"
+
+Vinal inclined his head.
+
+"Where is he now?"
+
+"I don't know."
+
+"Has he left the city?"
+
+"I don't know. I suppose so."
+
+"And you gave him money?"
+
+Vinal was silent again. Morton took his silence for assent.
+
+"When he comes again, tell me of it, and let me speak to him. Possibly
+I may find means to rid you of him. Meantime remember this. He has
+given your letter up to me. He has no proofs to show against you,
+unless he has other letters of yours;--is that the case?"
+
+Vinal shook his head.
+
+"Then, if he proclaims you, his word will not be taken, unless I
+sustain it; and I shall keep silent unless you give me some new cause
+to speak. I do not see that he can harm you much without my help; so
+give him no more money, and set him at defiance."
+
+Morton left the room; but his words had brought no relief to the
+wretched Vinal. Speyer had shown him his letter, and told him the
+artifice by which he had kept it, and palmed off a counterfeit on
+Morton. He felt himself at the mercy of a miscreant as rapacious,
+fierce, and pitiless, as a wolverene dropping on its prey.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LXIV.
+
+            Ah, would my friendship with thee
+  Might drown the memory of all patterns past!--_Suckling_.
+
+
+Some few days after, riding, as usual, in the afternoon, Morton saw on
+the road before him a lady on horseback, riding in the same direction.
+At a glance, he recognized the air and figure of Fanny Euston. This
+remnant, at least, of her former spirit remained to her,--she did not
+hesitate to ride unattended. Morton checked his horse, reflected for a
+little, then touched him with the spur, and in a moment was at her
+side. After they had conversed for a while, she said,--
+
+"I have heard a great deal of your imprisonment from others, but
+nothing from yourself. Will you not let me hear your story from your
+own lips?"
+
+"It was a long and dull history to live through, and will be a short
+and dull one to tell."
+
+"I have never been able to hear clearly why you were arrested at all."
+
+"It was a simple matter. The Austrian government is like a tyrant and
+a coward, frightened at shadows. I had one or two acquaintances at
+Vienna who had been implicated, though I did not know it, in plots
+against the government. I, being an American, was imagined to be, as a
+matter of course, a democrat, and in league with them. It needed very
+little more; and they shut me up, as they have done many an innocent
+man before me."
+
+"Looking back at your imprisonment, it must seem to you a broad, dark
+chasm in your life."
+
+"Broad and black enough; but not quite so void as I once thought."
+
+"No; in struggling through it, I can see that you have not come out
+empty handed."
+
+"Not I; I should be glad to rid myself of the larger part of the load.
+One is sometimes punished with the fulfilment of his own whims. I
+remember wishing--and that not so many years back--that I might sound
+all the strings of human joys and sufferings,--try life in all its
+phases,--in peace and war, a dungeon, if I remember right, inclusive.
+I have had my fill of it, and do not care to repeat the experiment."
+
+"Some of the damp and darkness of your dungeon still clings about you,
+and out of the midst of it, you look back over the gulf to a shore of
+light and sunshine, where you were once standing."
+
+"You read me like a sibyl, as you always do. None but a child or a
+fool will seriously regret any shape of experience out of which he has
+come with mind and senses still sound, though it may have changed the
+prismatic colors of life into a neutral tint, a universal gray, a
+Scotch mist, with light enough to delve by, and nothing more."
+
+"One's life is a series of compromises, at best. One must capitulate
+with Fate, gain from her as much good as may be, and as little evil."
+
+"And then set his teeth and endure. As for myself, though, if gifts
+were portioned out among mankind in equal allotments, I should count
+myself, even now, as having more than my share."
+
+"That idea of equalized happiness is a great fallacy."
+
+"Every idea of mortal equality is a great fallacy; and all the systems
+built on it are built on a quicksand. There is no equality in nature.
+There are mountains and valleys, deserts and meadows, the fertile and
+the barren. There is no equality in human minds or human character.
+Who shall measure the distance from the noblest to the meanest of men,
+or the yet vaster distance from the noblest to the meanest of women?
+The differences among mankind are broader than any but the greatest of
+men can grasp. With pains enough, one may comprehend, in a measure,
+the minds on a level with his own or below it; but, above, he sees
+nothing clearly. To follow the movements of a great man's mind, he
+must raise himself almost to an equal greatness."
+
+"A hopeless attempt with most. Every one has a limit."
+
+"But men make more limits for themselves than Nature makes for them."
+
+"You seem to me a person with a singular capacity of growth. You push
+forth fibres into every soil, and draw nutriment from sources most
+foreign to you."
+
+"An indifferent stock needs all the aliment it can find. I am
+fortunate in my planting. Companionship is that which shapes us; and I
+have found men, and what is more to the purpose, women, who have met
+my best requirement. One's friends have all their special influence
+with which they affect him. Yours, to me, was always a rousing and
+wakening influence, an electric life. You have shot a ray of sun down
+into my shadow, and I am bound at least to thank you for it."
+
+"I hope, for old friendship's sake, that your shadow may soon cease to
+need such farthing-candle illumination.--Here is my mother's house.
+She will be glad to see you."
+
+"I thank you: I will come soon, but not to-day."
+
+And, taking leave of his companion, he turned his horse homeward.
+
+"A vain attempt! I thought a light might kindle again; but it is all
+dust and ashes, with only a sparkle or two. No more flame; the fuel is
+burnt out. Shall I go on? Shall I offer what is left of my heart? A
+poor tribute for her. She should command a better; and there is
+something in her manner, warm and cordial as she is, that tells me
+that I should offer it in vain."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LXV.
+
+           Art thou so blind
+  To fling away the gem whose untold worth,
+  Hid 'neath the roughness of its native mine,
+  Tempts not the eye? Touched by the artist's wheel,
+  The hardest stone flashes the diamond's light.--_Anon_.
+
+
+A few days later, Morton was seated with his friend Meredith.
+
+"Ned, this is a slow life. Do you know, I have made up my mind to
+change it."
+
+"You have been so busy this year past, that I thought you would be
+content to stay where you are."
+
+"On the contrary, my vocation takes me abroad."
+
+"Where will you go?"
+
+"To Egypt, Arabia, India, the East Indies, the South Sea Islands."
+
+"All in the cause of science?"
+
+"At any rate, the thing is necessary to my plans."
+
+"The old Adam sticks to you still. Are you sure that no Pequot blood
+ever got into your veins?"
+
+"I don't know as to that. My ancestors were Puritans to the backbone,
+witch-burners, Quaker-killers, and Indian-haters. I only know that
+when I am bored, my first instinct is to cut loose, and take to the
+woods. It comes over me like an ague-fit. There are two places where a
+man finds sea room enough; one is a great metropolis, the other is a
+wilderness. There is no freedom in a place like this. One can only be
+independent here by living out of the world as I have been doing."
+
+"Here in America, we have political freedom _ad nauseam_; and we pay
+for it with a loss of social freedom."
+
+"You remember an agreement of ours, years ago, that you and I should
+travel together. Now, will you stand to it, and go with me?"
+
+"Other considerations apart, I should like nothing better; but, as
+matters stand with me now, it's quite out of the question."
+
+Morton was silent for a moment. "Ned," he said, at length, "I heard a
+rumor yesterday. It is no part of mine to obtrude myself into your
+private affairs, and I should not speak if I had not a reason, the
+better half of which is, that I think I can serve you. I heard that
+you were paying your addresses to Miss Euston."
+
+"One cannot look twice at a lady without having it noted down in black
+and white, and turned into tea-table talk."
+
+"I met Miss Euston a few evenings ago. I used to know her before I
+went to Europe, but had not seen her since. If what I heard is true, I
+think you have shown something more than good taste."
+
+"You remember her," said Meredith, after a pause, "as she was the
+summer when you and I went to New Baden."
+
+"Yes, I knew her then very well."
+
+"I liked her better at that time than you ever supposed. She was very
+young; just out of school, in fact. She had lived all her life in the
+suburbs, and had grown up like an unpruned rose bush,--a fine stock in
+a strong soil, but throwing out its shoots quite wildly and at
+random."
+
+"I know it; but all that is changed, I can't conceive how."
+
+"I can tell you. The one person whom she loved and stood in awe of was
+her father. He was a man, and a strong one. He died suddenly about the
+time you went away. It was the first blow she had ever felt; and his
+death was only the beginning of greater troubles. You remember her
+brother Henry."
+
+"I remember him when he was at school--a good-natured, high-spirited
+little fellow, whom every body liked."
+
+"With wild blood enough for a regiment, and as careless, thoughtless,
+and easy-tempered as a child, such as he was, in fact. His father,
+being out of the country on his affairs, sent him to New York, where
+he fell in with a bad set, and grew very dissipated. Then, to get him
+out of harm's way, they shipped him off to Canton, where he soon began
+to ruin himself, hand over hand. At last, a few months after his
+father's death, his mother and sister heard that he was on his way
+home, with his health completely broken. The next news was, that he
+was at Alexandria, dangerously ill of a slow fever. His mother, who,
+with all respect, is the weakest of mortals, broke down at once into a
+state of helplessness, and could do nothing but weep and lament. The
+whole burden fell upon his sister. She went with her mother and a man
+servant to Alexandria, and took charge of her brother, whose fever
+left him in such an exhausted state that he fell into a decline. She
+brought him as far as Naples, but he could go no farther; and here she
+attended him for five months, till he died; her mother sinking,
+meanwhile, into a kind of moping imbecility. By that time, her uncle
+had found grace to come and join them. Then her turn came; her
+strength failed her, and she fell violently ill. For a week, her life
+was despaired of; but she rallied, against all hope. I was in Naples
+soon after, and used to meet her every morning, as she drove in an
+open carriage to Baiae. I never saw such a transformation. She was pale
+as death, but very beautiful; and her whole expression was changed.
+She had always been very fond of her brother. There were some points
+of likeness between them. He had her wildness, and her kindliness of
+disposition, but none of her vigorous good sense, and was altogether
+inferior to her in intellect. Now you can have some idea why you find
+her so different from what you once knew her to be."
+
+"I knew," said Morton, "that she had passed through the fire in some
+way; but how I could not tell. I think, now, still better of your
+judgment, Ned."
+
+"Then you see why I will not go with you. I must bring this matter to
+an issue. For good or evil, I must know how it goes with me. It is not
+a new thing. It is of longer date than you imagined, or she either.
+What the end of it may be, Heaven only knows; but one thing is
+certain,--you will not see me in the South Seas before this point is
+cleared."
+
+"Then I shall never see you there."
+
+"Why do you say that?"
+
+"Your travelling days are over. At least I think so."
+
+"Do you mean----?"
+
+"That you are playing at a game where I think you will win."
+
+"What reason have you to think so?" demanded Meredith, nervously.
+
+"Take the opinion, and let the reason go. On such an argument a good
+reason will sometimes dwindle into nothing when one tries to explain
+it."
+
+His hand was on the door as he spoke, and bidding his friend good
+morning, he left him to his meditations.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LXVI.
+
+  Why waste thy joyous hours in needless pain,
+  Seeking for danger and adventure vain?--_Fairy Queen_.
+
+
+Morton mounted his horse, and rode to the house of Mrs. Euston. He
+found her daughter alone.
+
+"I have come to take leave of you. I am on my travels again."
+
+"Again! You are always on the wing. I supposed that you must have
+learned, by this time, to value home, or, at least, be reconciled to
+staying there in peace."
+
+"My home is a little lonely, and none of the liveliest. Movement is my
+best repose."
+
+"You are wholly made up of restlessness."
+
+"That is Nature's failing, not mine; or if Nature declines to bear the
+burden of my shortcomings, I will put them upon Destiny, and with much
+better cause. But this is not restlessness; or, if it is, it has
+method in it. This journey is a plan of eight years' standing. I
+concocted it when I was a junior, half fledged, at college, and never
+lost sight of it but once, and then for a cause that does not exist
+now."
+
+"Where are you going?"
+
+Morton gave the outline of his journey.
+
+"But is not that very difficult and dangerous?"
+
+"Not very."
+
+"You will not be alone, surely."
+
+"I provided for a companion years ago. My friend Meredith and I struck
+an agreement, that when I went on this journey he should go with me."
+
+An instant shadow passed across the face of Fanny Euston.
+
+"So you will have a companion," she replied, with a nonchalance too
+distinct to be genuine.
+
+"Not at all. He breaks his word. He won't hear of going."
+
+The cloud vanished.
+
+"I take it ill of him; for I had relied on having him with me. He and
+I are old fellow-travellers. I have tried him in sunshine and rain,
+and know his metal." And he launched into an emphatic eulogy of his
+friend, to which Fanny Euston listened with a pleasure which she could
+not wholly hide.
+
+"He best knows why he fails me. It is some cogent and prevailing
+reason; no light cause, or sudden fancy. Some powerful motive, mining
+deep and moving strongly, has shaken him from his purpose; so I
+forgive him for his falling off."
+
+As Morton spoke, he was studying his companion's features, and she,
+conscious of his scrutiny, visibly changed color.
+
+"Dear cousin," he said, with a changed tone, "if I must lose my
+friend, let me find, when I return, that my loss has been overbalanced
+by his gain. I will reconcile myself to it, if it may help to win for
+him the bounty that he aspires to."
+
+The blush deepened to crimson on Fanny Euston's cheek; and without
+waiting for more words, Morton bade her farewell.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LXVII.
+
+  Mais ai-je sur son ame encor quelque pouvoir,
+  Quelque reste d'amour s'y fait il encor voir.--_Polyeucte_.
+
+
+With a slow step and a sinking heart, Morton entered Mrs. Ashland's
+drawing room. He told her of his proposed journey; told her that he
+should leave the country within a few days, to be absent for a year or
+two at least, and asked her mediation to gain for him a parting
+interview with Edith Leslie.
+
+Mrs. Ashland, and she only, knew the whole misery of her friend's
+position, and feared lest, exhausted as she was by mental pain and
+long watching, and divided between her unextinguished love for Morton,
+and her abhorrence of the criminal who by name and the letter of the
+law was her husband, the meeting might put her self-mastery to too
+painful a proof. She therefore, though with a very evident reluctance,
+dissuaded Morton from it.
+
+"Edith has been taxed already to the farthest limit of her strength.
+She is not ill, but quite worn and spent. She is almost constantly
+with her father, who, now, can hardly be said to live, and needs
+constant care. To see you at this time would agitate her too much."
+
+"Can the sight of me still have so much power to move her?"
+
+"You know what she is. A feeling once rooted in her mind does not
+loosen its hold. There are very few who comprehend her. Her character
+is so balanced and so harmonious, so quiet and noiseless in its
+movement, that no one suspects the force, and faith, and energy that
+are in it. It is not in words or in looks that she shows herself. It
+is in action, in emergencies, that she declares her power over herself
+and over others."
+
+Morton's passion glowed upon him with all its early fervor.
+
+"I will tell her what you wish. But her cup is full already, and you
+can hardly be willing to shake it to overflowing. It is impossible
+that her father should linger many days more; and when that is over,
+it will bring her a relief, though she may not think it so, in more
+ways than one."
+
+Morton assented to his friend's reasons, and leaving his farewell for
+Edith Leslie, mournfully took his leave.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LXVIII.
+
+          Grief and patience, rooted in her both,
+  Mingle their spurs together.--_Cymbeline_.
+
+
+Leslie was dead; beyond the reach of wounds and sorrow; and the only
+tie which held his daughter to Vinal was at last broken. She left him,
+as she had promised, and made her abode with Mrs. Ashland, in her
+cottage by the sea shore.
+
+She sat alone at an open window, looking out upon the sea, an
+illimitable dreariness, waveless and dull as tarnished lead; clouded
+with sullen mists, but still rocking in long, dead swells with the
+motion of a past storm.
+
+Her thoughts followed on the track of the absent Morton.
+
+"It is best for you to have gone; to have made for yourself a relief
+in your man's element of action and struggle. Such a change is
+happiness, after the misery you have known. It was a bitter schooling;
+a long siege, and a dreary one; but you have triumphed, and you wear
+its trophy,--the heroic calm, the mind tranquil with consciousness of
+power. You have wrung a proud tribute out of sorrow; but has it
+yielded you all its treasure? Could you but have rested less loftily
+on your own firm resolve and unbending pride of manhood! Could you but
+have learned that gentler, deeper, higher philosophy which builds for
+itself a temple out of ruin, and makes weakness invincible with
+binding its tendrils to the rock!
+
+"Your fate and mine have not been a bed of roses; but the fierceness
+of yours is past, and I must still wait the issues of mine. I have
+renounced this fraud and mockery of empty words which was to have
+bound me to a life-long horror. The world will think very strangely of
+me. That must be borne, too; and such a load is light, to the burden I
+have borne already."
+
+A few days later, tidings came that Vinal was ill. Edith Leslie
+rejoined him; but, finding that her presence was any thing but
+soothing to him, she left him in the care of others, and returned to
+her friend's house. It was but a sudden and short attack, from which
+he recovered in a week or two.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LXIX.
+
+_Fal._--Reason, you rogue, reason; thinkest thou I'll endanger my soul
+gratis?--_Merry Wives of Windsor_.
+
+_Pistol._--Base is the slave that pays.--_Henry V_.
+
+
+Time had been when, his youth considered, Vinal was a beaming star in
+the commercial heaven. On 'change,
+
+      "His name was great,
+  In mouths of wisest censure."
+
+The astutest broker pronounced him good; the sagest money lender took
+his paper without a question. But of late, his signature had lost a
+little of its efficacy. It was whispered that he was not as sound as
+his repute gave out; that his operations were no longer marked by his
+former clear-headed forecast; that he was deep in doubtful and
+dangerous speculation. In short, his credit stood by no means where it
+had stood a twelvemonth earlier.
+
+Possibly these rumors took their first impulse, not on 'change, but at
+tea tables, and in drawing rooms. His wife's separation from him had
+given ample food to speculation; and gossip had for once been just,
+asserting, with few dissenting voices, that there must needs be some
+fault, and a grave one, on the part of Vinal. The event had ceased to
+be a very recent one; but surmise was still rife concerning its
+mysterious cause.
+
+Meanwhile, Vinal was being goaded into recklessness, frightened out of
+his propriety, haunted, devil-driven, maddened into desperate courses.
+Late one night, he was pacing his library, with a quick, disordered
+step. His servants were in their beds, excepting a man, nodding his
+drowsy vigil over the kitchen fire. Vinal's affairs were fast drawing
+to a crisis. A few weeks must determine the success or failure of a
+broad scheme of fraud, on which he had staked his fortunes and
+himself, and whose issues would sink him to disgrace and ruin, or lift
+him for a time to the pinnacle of a knave's prosperity. But,
+meanwhile, how to keep his head above water! Claims thickened upon
+him; he was meshed in a network of perplexities; and, with him,
+bankruptcy would involve far more than a loss of fortune.
+
+There was a ring at the door bell. Vinal stopped short in his feverish
+walk, raised his head with a startled motion, and listened like a fox
+who hears the hounds. His instinct foreboded the worst. His cheek
+flushed, and his eye brightened, not with spirit, but with
+desperation.
+
+The bell rang again. This time, the sleepy servant roused himself.
+Vinal heard his step along the hall; heard the opening of the street
+door, and a man's voice pronouncing his name. The moment after, his
+evil spirit stood before him, in the shape of Henry Speyer.
+
+Vinal gave him no time to speak, but shutting the door in the
+servant's face, turned upon his visitor with such courage as a cat
+will show when a bulldog has driven her into a corner.
+
+"Again! Are you here again? It is hardly a month since you were here
+last. What have you done with what I gave you then? Do you think I am
+made of gold? Do you take me for a bank that you can draw on at will?"
+
+"I am sorry to trouble you so soon, but I am very hard pressed."
+
+"Hard pressed! So am I hard pressed. Here for a year and more I have
+been supporting you in your extravagance--you and your mistresses; you
+have been living on me like princes,--dress, drinking, feasting,
+horses, gambling!--among you, you make my money spin away like water.
+Every well has a bottom to it, and you have got to the bottom of
+mine."
+
+Speyer laughed with savage incredulity.
+
+"Any thing in reason I am ready to do for you; but it's of no use.
+More! more! is always the word. You think you have found a gold mine.
+You mistake. Here I have a note due to-morrow; and another on
+Monday--that was for money I borrowed to give you. Heaven knows how I
+shall pay them. Go back, and come again a month from this."
+
+"It won't do. I must have it now."
+
+"I tell you, I have none to give you."
+
+"Do you see this?" said Speyer, producing a roll of printed papers,
+and giving one to Vinal.
+
+It was Vinal's letter, in the form of a placard, with a statement of
+the whole affair prefixed. Speyer had had it printed secretly in New
+York, the names of Morton and Vinal being left blank, and ingeniously
+filled in by himself with a pen.
+
+"Give me the money, or show me how to get it, or I will have you
+posted up at every street corner in town. I have your letter here. I
+shall send it to your friend, the editor of the Sink."
+
+The Sink was a scurrilous newspaper, which the virtuous Vinal, always
+anxious for the morals of the city, had once caused to be prosecuted
+as a nuisance, for which the editor bore him a special grudge.
+
+But Vinal at last was brought to bay. Threats, which Speyer thought
+irresistible, had lost their power. He threw back the paper, and said
+desperately, "Do what you will."
+
+Speyer made a step forward, and faced his prey.
+
+"Will you give me the money?"
+
+"By G--, no!"
+
+"By G--, you shall!"
+
+And Speyer seized him by the breast of his waistcoat.
+
+Vinal had been trained in the habits of a gentleman. He had never
+known personal outrage before. He grew purple with rage. The veins of
+his forehead swelled like whipcord, and his eyes glittered like a
+rattlesnake's.
+
+"Take off your hand!"
+
+The words were less articulated than hissed between his teeth.
+
+"Take off your hand."
+
+Speyer clutched him with a harder gripe, and shook him to and fro.
+Quick as lightning, Vinal struck him in the face. Speyer glared and
+grinned on his victim like an enraged tiger. For a moment, he shook
+him as a terrier shakes a rat; then flung him backward against the
+farther side of the room. Here, striking the wall, he fell helpless,
+among the window curtains and overturned chairs. Speyer would probably
+have followed up his attack; but at the instant, the servant, who, by
+a happy accident, was at the side door, in the near neighborhood of
+the keyhole, ran in in time to save Vinal from more serious
+discomfiture.
+
+Speyer hesitated; turned from one to the other with murder in his
+look; then, slowly moving backwards, left the room, whence the
+servant's valor did not mount to the point of following him.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LXX.
+
+  He is composed and framed of treachery,
+  And fled he is upon this villany.--_Much Ado about Nothing_.
+
+
+Edward Meredith, the affianced bridegroom of Miss Fanny Euston,
+sailing on a smooth sea, under full canvas, towards the pleasing but
+perilous bounds of matrimony, was walking in the morning towards the
+post office, in the frame of mind proper to his condition. He passed
+that place of unrest where the Law hangs her blazons from every
+window, and approached the heart and brain of the city, the precinct
+sacred to commerce and finance. Here, gathered about a corner, he saw
+a crowd, elbowing each other with unusual vehemence. Meredith, with
+all despatch, crossed over to the opposite side. But here, again, his
+attention was caught by a singular clamor among the rabble of
+newsboys, as noisy and intrusive as a flight of dorr-bugs on a June
+evening. And, not far off, another crowd was gathered at the office of
+the Weekly Sink. Curiosity became too strong for his native antipathy.
+He saw an acquaintance, with a crushed hat, and a face of bewildered
+amazement, just struggling out of the press.
+
+"What's the row?" demanded Meredith.
+
+"Go and read that paper," returned the other, with an astonished
+ejaculation, of more emphasis than unction.
+
+Meredith shouldered into the crowd, looked over the hats of some,
+between the hats of others, and saw, pasted to the stone door post, a
+placard large as the handbill of a theatre. Over it was displayed a
+sheet of paper, on which was daubed, in ink, the words, _Astounding
+Disclosures!!! Crime in High Life!!!!_ And on the placard he beheld
+the names of his classmate Horace Vinal, and his friend Vassall
+Morton.
+
+Meredith pushed and shouldered with the boldest, gained a favorable
+position, braced himself there, and ran his eye through the whole.
+Then, with a convulsive effort, he regained his liberty, beckoned a
+newsboy, and purchased the extra sheet of the Weekly Sink. Here,
+however, he learned very little. The editor, taught wisdom by
+experience, had tempered malice with caution. He spoke of the duty he
+owed to the public, his position as guardian and censor of the public
+morals, and affirmed that, in this capacity, he had that morning
+received through the post office the original of the letter of which a
+copy was printed on the placards posted in various parts of the city.
+With the letter had come also an anonymous note, highly complimentary
+to himself in his official capacity, a copy of which he subjoined. As
+for the letter, he did not think himself called upon to give it
+immediate publicity in his columns; but he would submit it for
+inspection to any persons anxious to see it, after which he should
+place it in the hands of the police.
+
+Though the editor of the Sink was thus discreet, the letter, in the
+course of the day, found its way into several of the penny papers, to
+which copies of the placard containing it had been mailed. From the
+dram shop to the drawing room, the commotion was unspeakable. The mass
+of readers floundered in a sea of crude conjecture; but those who knew
+the parties, recalling a faint and exploded rumor of Morton's
+engagement to Miss Leslie, and connecting it with her separation from
+Vinal, gained a glimpse of something like the truth.
+
+The only new light thrown upon the matter came from the servant, who
+told all that he knew, and much more, of the nocturnal scene between
+Speyer and Vinal, affirming, with much complacency, that he had saved
+his master's life. Miss Leslie and Mrs. Ashland studiously kept
+silent. Morton was at the antipodes; while the unknown divulger of the
+mystery eluded all attempts to trace him. Speyer, in fact, having
+sprung his mine, had fled from his danger and his debts, and taking
+passage for New Orleans, sailed thence to Vera Cruz.
+
+Meredith, perplexed and astounded, wrote a letter to Morton, directing
+it to Calcutta, whither the latter was to repair, after voyaging among
+the East India Islands.
+
+Meanwhile, great search was made for Vinal; but Vinal was nowhere to
+be found.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LXXI.
+
+Now would I give a thousand furlongs of sea for an acre of barren
+ground.--_Tempest_.
+
+                    Let the great gods,
+  That keep this dreadful pother o'er our heads,
+  Find out their enemies now. Tremble, thou wretch,
+  That hast within thee undivulged crimes
+  Unwhipped of justice! Hide, thou bloody hand;
+  Thou perjured and thou simular man of virtue,
+  That art incestuous! Caitiff, to pieces shake,
+  That under covert and convenient seeming,
+  Hast practised on man's life!--_Lear_.
+
+
+At one o'clock at night, in the midst of the Atlantic, a hundred
+leagues west of the Azores, the bark Swallow, freighted with salt cod
+for the Levant, was scudding furiously, under a close-reefed foresail,
+before a fierce gale. On board were her captain, two mates, seven men,
+a black steward, a cabin boy, and Mr. John White, a passenger.
+
+The captain and his mates were all on deck. John White, otherwise
+Horace Vinal, occupied a kind of store room, opening out of the cabin.
+Here a temporary berth had been nailed up for him, while on the
+opposite side were stowed a trunk belonging to him, and three barrels
+of onions belonging to the vessel's owners, all well lashed in their
+places.
+
+The dead lights were in, but the seas, striking like mallets against
+the stern, pierced in fine mist through invisible crevices,
+bedrizzling every thing with salt dew. The lantern, hanging from the
+cabin roof, swung angrily with the reckless plungings of the vessel.
+
+Vinal was a good sailor; that is to say, he was not very liable to
+that ocean scourge, seasickness, and the few qualms he had suffered
+were by this time effectually frightened out of him. As darkness
+closed, he had lain down in his clothes; and flung from side to side
+till his bones ached with the incessant rolling of the bark, he
+listened sleeplessly to the hideous booming of the storm. Suddenly
+there came a roar so appalling, that he leaped out of his berth with
+terror. It seemed to him as if a Niagara had broken above the vessel,
+and was crushing her down to the nethermost abyss. The rush of waters
+died away. Then came the bellow of the speaking trumpet, the trampling
+of feet, the shouts of men, the hoarse fluttering of canvas. In a few
+moments he felt a change in the vessel's motion. She no longer rocked
+with a constant reel from side to side, but seemed flung about at
+random, hither and thither, at the mercy of the storm.
+
+She had been, in fact, within a hair's breadth of foundering. A huge
+wave, chasing on her wake, swelling huger and huger, towering higher
+and higher, had curled, at last, its black crest above her stern, and,
+breaking, fallen on her in a deluge. The captain, a Barnstable man of
+the go-ahead stamp, was brought at last to furl his foresail and lie
+to.
+
+Vinal, restless with his fear, climbed the narrow stairway which led
+up to the deck, and pushed open the door at the top; but a blast of
+wind and salt spray clapped it in his face, and would have knocked him
+to the foot of the steps, if he had not clung to the handrail. He
+groped his way as he could back to his berth. Here he lay for a
+quarter of an hour, when the captain came down, enveloped in
+oilcloths, and dripping like a Newfoundland dog just out of the water.
+Vinal emerged from his den, and presenting himself with his haggard
+face, and hair bristling in disorder, questioned the bedrenched
+commander touching the state of things on deck. But the latter was in
+a crusty and savage mood.
+
+"Hey! what is it?"--surveying the apparition by the light of the
+swinging lantern,--"well, you _be_ a beauty, I'll be damned if you
+ain't."
+
+"I did not ask you how I looked; I asked you about the weather."
+
+"Well, it ain't the sweetest night I ever see; but I guess you won't
+drown this time."
+
+"My friend," said Vinal, "learn to mend your way of speaking, and use
+a civil tongue."
+
+The captain stared at him, muttered an oath or two, and then turned
+away.
+
+Day broke, and Vinal went on deck. It was a wild dawning. The storm
+was at its height. One rag of a topsail was set to steady the vessel;
+all the rest was bare poles and black dripping cordage, through which
+the gale yelled like a forest in a tornado. The sky was dull gray; the
+ocean was dull gray. There was no horizon. The vessel struggled among
+tossing mountains, while tons of water washed her decks, and the men,
+half drowned, clung to the rigging. Vast misshapen ridges of water
+bore down from the windward, breaking into foam along their crests,
+struck the vessel with a sullen shock, burst over her bulwarks,
+deluged her from stem to stern, heaved her aloft as they rolled on,
+and then left her to sink again into the deep trough of the sea.
+
+Vinal was in great fear; but nothing in his look betrayed it. He soon
+went below to escape the drenching seas; but towards noon, Hansen, the
+second mate, a good-natured old sea dog, came down with the welcome
+news that the gale had suddenly abated. Vinal went on deck again, and
+saw a singular spectacle. The wind had strangely lulled; but the waves
+were huge and furious as ever; and the bark rose and pitched, and was
+flung to and fro with great violence, but in a silence almost perfect.
+Water, in great quantities, still washed the deck, but found ready
+escape through a large port in the after part of the vessel, the lid
+of which, hanging vertically, had been left unfastened.
+
+The lull was of short space. A hoarse, low sound began to growl in the
+distance like muffled thunder. It grew louder,--nearer,--and the gale
+was on them again. This time it blew from the north-west, and less
+fiercely than before. The venturous captain made sail. The yards were
+braced round; and leaning from the wind till her lee gunwale scooped
+the water, the vessel plunged on her way like a racehorse. The clouds
+were rent; blue sky appeared. Strong winds tore them apart, and the
+sun blazed out over the watery convulsion, changing its blackness to a
+rich blue, almost as dark, where the whirling streaks of foam seemed
+like snow wreaths on the mountains. Jets of foam, too, spouted from
+under the vessel's bows, as she dashed them against the opposing seas;
+and the prickling spray flew as high as the main top. The ocean was
+like a viking in his robust carousals,--terror and mirth, laughter and
+fierceness, all in one.
+
+But the mind of Vinal was blackness and unmixed gall. His game was
+played and lost. The worst that he feared had befallen him. Suspense
+was over, and he was freed from the incubus that had ridden him so
+long. A something like relief mixed itself with his bitter and
+vindictive musings. He had not fled empty handed. He and Morton's
+friend Sharpe had been joint trustees of a large estate, a part of
+which, in a form that made it readily available, happened to be in
+Vinal's hands at the time of his crisis. Dread of his quick-sighted
+and vigilant colleague had hitherto prevented him from applying it to
+his own uses. But this fear had now lost its force. He took it with
+him on his flight, and converted it into money in New York, where he
+had embarked.
+
+At night the descent of Hansen to supper was a welcome diversion to
+his lonely thoughts. The old sailor seated himself at the table:--
+
+"I've lost all my appetite, and got a horse's. Here, steward, you
+nigger, where be yer? Fetch along that beefsteak. What do you call
+this here? Well, never mind what you call it, here goes into it, any
+how."
+
+A silent and destructive onslaught upon the dish before him followed.
+Then, laying down his knife and fork for a moment,--
+
+"I've knowed the time when I could have ate up the doctor
+there,"--pointing to the steward,--"bones and all, and couldn't get a
+mouthful, no way you could fix it." Then, resuming his labors, "Tell
+you what, squire, this here agrees with me. Come out of that berth
+now, and sit down here alongside o' me. Just walk into that beefsteak,
+like I do. That 'ere beats physicking all holler."
+
+Thus discoursing, partly to himself and partly to Vinal, and, by
+turns, berating the grinning steward in a jocular strain, Mr. Hansen
+continued his repast. When, at last, he left the cabin, Vinal found
+the solitude too dreary for endurance; and, to break its monotony, he
+also went on deck.
+
+The vessel still scoured wildly along; and as she plunged through the
+angry seas, so the moon was sailing among stormy clouds, now eclipsed
+and lost, now shining brightly out, silvering the seething foam, and
+casting the shadows of spars and rigging on the glistening deck. Vinal
+bent over the bulwark and looked down on the bubbles, as they fled
+past, flashing in the moon.
+
+His thoughts flew backward with them, and dwelt on the hated home from
+which he was escaping.
+
+"What an outcry! what gapes of wonder, and eyes turned up to heaven!
+Gulled, befooled, hoodwinked! and now, at last, you have found it out,
+and make earth and heaven ring with your virtuous spite. I knew you
+all, and played you as I would play the pieces on a chess board. The
+game was a good one in the main, but with some blunders, and for those
+I pay the price. If I had had that villain's brute strength, and the
+brute nerve that goes with it, there would have been a different story
+to tell. Before this, I would have found a way to grind him to the
+earth, and set my foot on his neck. They think him virtuous. He thinks
+himself so. The shallow-witted idiots! Their eyes can only see
+skin-deep. They love to be cheated. They swallow fallacies as a child
+swallows sweetmeats. The tinsel dazzles them, and they take it for
+gold. Virtue! a delusion of self-interest--self-interest, the spring,
+lever, and fulcrum of the world. It is for my interest, for every
+body's interest, that his neighbors should be honest, candid, open,
+forgiving, charitable, continent, sober, and what not. Therefore, by
+the general consent of mankind,--the inevitable instinct of
+self-interest,--such qualities are exalted into sanctity; christened
+with the name of virtues; draped in white, and crowned with halos;
+rewarded with praises here and paradise hereafter. Drape the skeleton
+as you will, the bare skeleton is still there. Paint as thick as you
+will, the bare skull grins under it,--to all who have the eyes to see,
+and the hardihood to use them. How many among mankind have courage to
+face the naked truth? Not one in a thousand. Cannot the fools draw
+reason out of the analogy of things? Can they not see that, as their
+bodies will be melted and merged into the bodily substance of the
+world, so their minds will be merged in the great universal mind,--the
+_animus mundi_,--out of which they sprang, like bubbles on the water,
+and into which they will sink again, like bubbles when they burst?
+Immortality! They may please themselves with the name; but of what
+worth is an immortality where individuality is lost, and each
+conscious atom drowned in the vast immensity? What a howling and
+screeching the wind makes in the rigging! If I were given to
+superstition, I could fancy that a legion from the nether world were
+bestriding the ropes, yelping in grand jubilation at the sight of----"
+
+Here his thoughts were abruptly cut short. A combing wave struck the
+vessel. She lurched with violence, and a shower of foam flew over her
+side. Vinal lost his balance. His feet slipped from under him. He
+fell, and slid quickly across the wet and tossing deck. Instinctively
+he braced his feet to stop himself against the bulwark on the lee
+side. But at the point where they touched it was the large port before
+mentioned. Though closed to all appearance, the bolt was still
+unfastened. It flew open at his touch. Vinal clutched to save himself.
+His fingers slipped on the wet timbers, and with a cry of horror, he
+was shot into the bubbling surges. There was a blinding in his eyes, a
+ringing in his ears; then, for an instant, he saw the light, and the
+black hulk of the vessel fled past like a shadow. Then a wave swept
+over him: all was darkness and convulsion, and a maddened sense of
+being flung high aloft, as the wave rolled him towards its crest like
+a drift sea weed. Here again light broke upon him; and flying above
+the merciless chaos, he saw something like the white wing of a huge
+bird. It was the reefed main-topsail of the receding vessel. He
+shrieked wildly. A torrent of brine dashed back the cry, and foaming
+over his head, plunged him down into darkness again. Again he rose,
+gasping and half senseless; and again the ravenous breakers beat him
+down. A moment of struggle and of agony; then a long nightmare of
+dreamy horror, while, slowly settling downward, he sank below the
+turmoil of the storm; slowly and more slowly still, till the denser
+water sustained his weight. Then with limbs outstretched, he hovered
+in mid ocean, lonely, void, and vast, like a hawk poised in mid-air,
+while his felon spirit, bubbling to the surface, winged its dreary
+flight through the whistling storm.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LXXII.
+
+  Adventure and endurance and emprise
+  Exalted his mind's faculties, and strung
+  His body's sinews.--_Bryant_.
+
+
+On a rock, at the end of the promontory which forms the harbor of
+Beyrout, stood Vassall Morton; and at his side his friend Buckland,
+whom he had met in New York just after his return from Austria. They
+had encountered again in the East Indies, and had made together a long
+and varied journey, not without hardship and danger, among the tribes
+of Upper India and Central Asia. Buckland was greatly changed. His
+look and bearing betokened recovered health and spirit; while his
+companion, in the fulness of masculine vigor, was swarthy as an Arab
+with the long burning of the Eastern sun.
+
+"Our travels are over, Buckland. We have nothing to do, now, but to
+get on board ship, and lie still for a few weeks, and we shall be at
+home again. I hardly know why it is that I wish so much to shorten the
+space, unless from a cat-like propensity to haunt old places."
+
+"And to see your friends again."
+
+"Yes, that is something--a good deal. I have friends enough, unless
+they have died since I last heard from them. But for household gods, I
+have none; or, rather, my ancestral Lares have no better abode than an
+old clapboarded parsonage in an up-country Yankee village. You are
+much more fortunate in that respect. You go home again, besides, a new
+man, rejuvenated in mind and body."
+
+"Thanks to you for that. I was a wreck till you set me afloat and
+refitted me."
+
+"I gave you a shove off shore; but the refitting came afterwards, and
+was no doing of mine. I should hardly know you for the same man."
+
+"That infatuation seems to me like a dream, as I remember you
+prophesied on the evening when we sat together on the Battery."
+
+"Half of a woman's weakness springs from the sensitiveness of her
+bodily organization; and three fourths of your infatuation may be laid
+to the same account. One may say that, without any tendency to
+flounder into materialism. You are a man again now; and even if you
+had not heard of your sorceress's death, you might go back, I think,
+without the least fear of her spells."
+
+"I hope so; but I wish that, like you, I had some engrossing object to
+return to."
+
+"I wish that, like you, I had a family, and a fixed home to return to.
+My travels are finished, though. I have roamed the world enough. My
+objects are accomplished, as well as I could ever accomplish them. I
+have not wandered for nothing; and now I shall bend myself to make my
+journeyings bear what fruit I can. By the sun, and by my watch, it is
+time for the consul to have returned. Did not his servant say that he
+would come ashore from the frigate at about six?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"If he does not, I will get a boat and go to find him. He must have
+letters for one or the other of us."
+
+"I will ride to the town, and see if he has come."
+
+"Very well; I will wait for you here."
+
+Their horses were near at hand, in the keeping of an Arab servant.
+Buckland mounted his own, and rode off.
+
+Morton seated himself on a jutting edge of the rock overhanging the
+bay, and gave himself up to his thoughts.
+
+"Two years of wandering! Two years more, and I should grow like the
+man in Anastasius, never happy at rest, never content in motion. I
+have had my fill of adventure. I must learn repose before it is too
+late. Why is it that I look so longingly towards America? Except half
+a dozen near friends, I have no ties there that are worth the name.
+America is the paradise of the laboring class, the purgatory of those
+of educated tastes. What career is open to me there, that I could not
+better follow elsewhere? I have chosen my path. I have an object which
+fills and engrosses me, and would fill the lifetime of twenty men
+abler than I. America is not my best field of labor; but where else
+should I plant myself? I could not live in England. I am of English
+race, but of an altered type; too like, and too unlike, to find
+harmony there. The continent is more cosmopolitan; but it would be a
+dreary life. I should grow homesick, thinking of the old woods and
+rocks. I will go home, buckle to my work, and end my days where I
+began them.
+
+"My life has been, in its small way, a varied one; very hard, at
+times, but perhaps none too much so. Blows are good for most men, and
+suffering, to the farthest limit of their endurance, what they most
+need. It is a child's part to complain under any fate; and what color
+of complaint have I, or any man sound in mind and body, and with the
+world free before him? And yet I turn girl-hearted when I think of
+that summer evening by the lake at Matherton. What is my fate to Edith
+Leslie's? How will a few years of suffering, with one deadening memory
+in their wake, compare with her life-long endurance? A woman's nature,
+it is said, will mould itself into conformity with her husband's. I
+will rather believe that Vinal's presence, instead of drawing her to
+itself, has repelled her upward into a higher atmosphere, and made her
+life as lofty as it must be sad. I wish to go back, and yet I shrink
+from this voyage. I have some cause, remembering my last welcome home.
+Heaven knows what I may learn of her this time. It was her marriage
+then; perhaps it will be her death now. And which of the two will have
+been the worse either for me to hear or for her to undergo? Perhaps
+these letters may bring some word of her; though that is not likely,
+for none of my friends, but one, know that I should have any special
+interest in hearing it. If they write of her, it will be some news of
+disaster."
+
+These dismal forebodings weighed upon him, and his desire to have them
+resolved soon grew so importunate, that mounting his horse, he
+followed Buckland's track towards the town. Threading the busy
+streets, he stopped before a door adorned with the effigy of a spread
+eagle wearing a striped shield about his neck, and clutching
+thunderbolts and olive boughs in his claws. He threw the rein to his
+servant, mounted the consular stair, and at the head met Buckland
+emerging.
+
+"Is the consul come?"
+
+"Yes; and letters for you. I am sorry for you, if you mean to answer
+them all."
+
+And he gave Morton a formidable packet. Morton cut the string.
+
+"These are all six or eight months old. They are postmarked from
+Calcutta."
+
+"Yes, they came after we had gone up the country, and were sent back
+to this place to meet you. Wait a moment; here are more. These two
+have just come from England."
+
+Morton took them; recognized on one the handwriting of Meredith; on
+the other, that of his friend Mrs. Ashland. His heart leaped to his
+throat; he tore open the seal, and glanced down the page.
+
+Buckland saw his agitation.
+
+"No bad news, I trust."
+
+"I had an enemy, and he is dead. You shall know more of it to-morrow."
+
+And hastening from the house, he mounted again, and through the midst
+of mules, donkeys, dromedaries, men, children, and old women, rode at
+an unlawful speed towards his lodging.
+
+Here, with a beating heart, he explored his profuse correspondence
+from beginning to end. By the Calcutta packet, he learned how his
+native town had been thrown into commotion by the exposure and flight
+of Vinal, and how his friends were eager and impatient to hear his
+explanation of the affair. The more recent letters bore tidings still
+more startling. The bark Swallow had touched at Gibraltar, and a
+letter from her captain to her owners, forwarded by the Oriental
+steamer on her return voyage, told how his passenger, John White, had
+been lost overboard during a gale, two of the crew having seen the
+accident; how, arriving at Gibraltar, his trunks had been opened in
+the consul's presence, to learn his address; and how, along with a
+large amount of money in gold, letters and papers had been found,
+showing that he was not John White, but Horace Vinal, of Boston.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+On the next morning, Morton despatched a letter to Meredith. In it, he
+told his friend the whole course of his story; and these were the
+closing words:--
+
+"One thing you may well believe--that, before you will have had this
+letter many days, I shall follow it. There will be no rest for me till
+I touch American soil. An old passion, only half stifled under a load
+of hopelessness, springs into fresh life again, and burns, less
+brightly, perhaps, but I can almost believe, more deeply and fervently
+than ever. I was consoling myself yesterday with trying to think that
+blows were my mind's best medicine; but I feel now, that after being
+broken with the plough and harrow, it will yield the better for the
+summer sunshine. Yet I am afraid to flatter myself with too bright a
+prospect. Miss Leslie loved me, and the planets in their course are
+not more constant and unswerving; but I cannot tell what may have been
+the effect of so much suffering, or what determination, fatal to my
+hope, it may not have impelled her to embrace. She will soon know my
+mind. I have written to her, and begged her to send her reply to New
+York, where, if my reckoning does not fail, I shall arrive about the
+middle of June. By it I shall be able to judge to what fortune I am to
+look forward.
+
+"You have so lately passed your own anxieties, that you will easily
+appreciate mine. I can wish for them nothing more than that they may
+find as happy an issue; and I will take it as an earnest of the
+intentions of destiny towards me that it has just brought together my
+two best friends."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LXXIII.
+
+  Joy never feasts so high
+  As when his first course is of misery.--_Suckling_.
+
+
+Again the Jersey heights rose on the eye of Morton, and the woods and
+villas of Staten Island. Again the broad breast of New York harbor
+opened before him, sparkling in the June sun; the rugged front of the
+Castle, and the tapering spire of Trinity. He bethought him of his
+last return, and its unforgotten blackness threw its shadow across his
+mind. He turned, doubting and tremulous, towards the future; but here
+his horizon brightened as with the sunrise, shooting to the zenith its
+shafts of tranquil light.
+
+Meanwhile, the telegraph had darted to Boston a notice that the
+approaching steamer had been signalled off the coast. Meredith took
+the night train to meet his friend; but, arriving, he learned that
+Morton was already on shore. Driving from one hotel to another, he
+found, at length, the latter's resting-place.
+
+"Shall I take up your name, sir?"
+
+"No, show me his room; I will go myself."
+
+He knocked at the door. There was no answer. He knocked again, and a
+voice replied suddenly, like that of a man roused from a revery.
+
+He entered; and at the next moment, Morton grasped his hand.
+
+"You have found yourself again," said Meredith; "you have grown back
+again to your old look."
+
+Morton's eye glistened.
+
+"I think I know the handwriting of that letter. Miss Leslie's,--I will
+call her so still--it is hers, is it not?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"She writes, I trust, what you hoped to hear."
+
+"All that I hoped, and much more."
+
+"I am glad of it from my heart. Fortune has been hard enough upon you.
+She was bound to pay you her score."
+
+"She has done so with usury."
+
+"Are you going to Boston this afternoon?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Then you have just two hours to spare. If you have any leisure for
+such sublunary matters, we had better get dinner at once. Romeo
+himself, at his worst case, asks his friend when they shall dine."
+
+Three hours later, the eastward-bound steamer was ploughing the Sound,
+and Morton and Meredith paced her deck.
+
+"I have told you now the whole history, from first to last. I need not
+ask you to forgive my having kept it secret from you so long."
+
+"Why should you ask me? Every man has a right to his own secrets, and
+I like him the better for keeping them. Vinal, at all events, had good
+cause to thank you."
+
+"He is dead; and his memory, if it will, had better die with him."
+
+"You said in your letter that his agent was called Henry Speyer. I
+thought, at the time, that I had seen the name before; and a day or
+two since, I found it accidentally again. The newspapers, two months
+or more ago, mention a foreigner called Henry Speyer as an officer in
+this last piratical forray into Cuba. His party lost their way, fell
+into an ambuscade of government soldiers, and Speyer was shot through
+the head."
+
+"He found a better end than his principal."
+
+"And deserved a better one. A professed rascal is better than a
+pharisee."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LXXIV.
+
+       The rainbow to the storms of life;
+  The evening beam that smiles the clouds away.--_Bride of Abydos_.
+
+
+Morton rode along the edge of the lake at Matherton. He passed under
+the shadowy verdure of the pines, and approached the old family
+mansion of the Leslies. It was years since he had seen it. His
+imprisonment, his escape, his dreary greeting home, all lay between.
+He was the same man, yet different;--with a mind calmed by experience,
+and strong by action and endurance; an ardor which had lost all of its
+intoxication, but none of its force; and which, as the past and the
+present rose upon his thoughts, was tempered with a melancholy which
+had in it nothing of pain.
+
+The hall door stood open, as if to welcome him. The roses and the
+laurels were in bloom; the grass, ripe for the scythe, was waving in
+the meadow; and, by glimpses between the elm and maple boughs, the
+lake, crisped in the June wind, was sparkling with the sunlight.
+
+Morton dismounted; his foot was on the porch; but he had no time for
+thought; for a step sounded in the hall, and Edith met him on the
+threshold.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+That evening, at sunset, Miss Leslie and Morton stood on the brink of
+the lake, at the foot of the garden. It was the spot which had been
+most sweet and most bitter in the latter's recollections.
+
+"Do you remember, Edith, when we last stood here?"
+
+"How could I ever forget?"
+
+"The years that have passed since are like a nightmare. I could
+believe them so, but that I feel their marks."
+
+"And I, as well; we were boy and girl then."
+
+"At least, I was a boy; and, do you know, I find you different from
+what I had pictured you."
+
+"Should I be sorry for it, or glad?"
+
+"I had pictured you as I saw you last, very calm, very resolute, very
+sad; but you are like the breaking of a long, dull storm. The sun
+shines again, and the world glows the brighter for past rain and
+darkness."
+
+"Could I have welcomed you home with a sad face? Could I be calm and
+cold, now that I have found what I thought was lost forever?--when the
+ashes of my life have kindled into flame again? Because I, and others,
+have known sorrow, should I turn my face into a homily, and be your
+lifelong _memento mori_?"
+
+"It is a brave heart that can hide a deep thought under a smile."
+
+"And a weak one that is always crouching among the shadows."
+
+"There is an abounding spirit of faith in you; the essence which makes
+heroes, from Joan of Arc to Jeanie Deans."
+
+"I know no one with faith like yours, which could hold to you through
+all your years of living burial."
+
+"Mine! it was wrenched to its uttermost roots. I thought the world was
+given over to the devil."
+
+"But that was only for the moment."
+
+"I consoled myself with imagining that I had come to the worst, and
+that any change must needs be for the better; but now I am lifted of a
+sudden to such a pitch of fortune, that I tremble at it. Many a man,
+my equal or superior, no weaker in heart or meaner in aim than I, has
+been fettered through his days by cramping poverty, while I stand
+mailed and weaponed at all points. Many a man of noble instincts and
+high requirements has found in life nothing but a mockery of his
+imaginings,--a bright dream, matched with a base reality. Who can
+blame him if he turn cynic? I have dreamed a dream, too; wakened, and
+found it a living truth."
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Vassall Morton, by Francis Parkman
+
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