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found out Myrtle's tastes and ways of thinking and of life, so that, by and by, when she should look upon herself as a young woman, and not as a girl, he would have a great advantage in making her more intimate acquaintance.

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

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These circumstances gave a general direction to his ideas, which were presently fixed more exactly by two circumstances which he learned for himself and kept to himself; for he had no idea of making a hue and cry, and yet he did not mean that Myrtle Hazard should get away if he could help it. The first fact was this. He found among the copies of the city newspaper they took at The Poplars a recent number from which a square had been cut out. He procured another copy of this paper of the same date, and found that the piece cut out was an advertisement to the effect that the AI Ship Swordfish, Captain Hawkins, was to sail from Boston for Calcutta, on the 20th of June.

The second fact was the following. On the window-sill of her little hanging chamber, which the women allowed him to inspect, he found some threads of long black glossy hair caught by a splinter in the wood. They were Myrtle's of course. A simpleton might have constructed a tragedy out of this trivial circumstance, how she had cast herself from the window into the waters beneath it, how she had been thrust out after a struggle, of which this shred from her tresses was the dreadful witness, and so on. Murray Bradshaw

did not stop to guess and wonder. He said nothing about it, but wound the shining threads on his finger, and, as soon as he got home, examined them with a magnifier. They had been cut off smoothly, as with a pair of scissors. This was part of a mass of hair, then, which had been shorn and thrown from the window. Nobody would do that but she herself. What would she do it for? To disguise her sex of course. The other inferences were plain enough.

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

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

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It is a fine thing to be set down in a great, over-crowded hotel, where they do not know you, looking dusty, and

for the moment shabby, with nothing but a carpet-bag in your hand, reeling tired, and anything but clean, and hungry, and worried, and every way miserable and mean, and to undergo the appraising process of the gentleman in the office, who, while he shoves the book round to you for your name, is making a hasty calculation as to how high up he can venture to doom you. But Murray Bradshaw's plain dress and carpet-bag were more than made up for by the air and tone which imply the habit of being attended to. The clerk saw that in a glance, and, as he looked at the name and address in the book, spoke sharply in the explosive dialect of his tribe,

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place where he might hear of her or meet her, were all searched. He took some of the police into his confidence, and had half a dozen pairs of eyes besides his own opened pretty widely to discover the lost girl.

On Sunday, the 19th, he got the first hint which encouraged him to think he was on the trail of his fugitive. He had gone down again to the wharf where the Swordfish, advertised to sail the next day, was lying. The captain was not on board, but one of the mates was there, and he addressed his questions to him, not with any great hope of hearing anything important, but determined to lose no chance, however small. was startled with a piece of information

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"Jun! ta'tha'genlm'n's carpetbag'n'- which gave him such an exquisite pang showhimupt'thirtyone!

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

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

of delight that he could hardly keep the usual quiet of his demeanor. A youth corresponding to his description of Myrtle Hazard in her probable disguise had been that morning on board the Swordfish, making many inquiries as to the hour at which she was to sail, and who were to be the passengers, and remained some time on board, going all over the vessel, examining her cabin accommodations, and saying he should return to-morrow before she sailed, doubtless intending to take passage in her, as there was plenty of room on board. There could be little question, from the description, who this young person was. It was a rather delicate-looking, dark-haired youth, smoothfaced, somewhat shy and bashful in his ways, and evidently excited and nervous. He had apparently been to look about him, and would come back at the last moment, just as the vessel was ready to sail, and in an hour or two be beyond the reach of inquiry.

Murray Bradshaw returned to his hotel, and, going to his chamber, summoned all his faculties in state council to determine what course he should follow, now that he had the object of his search certainly within reaching distance. There was no danger now of her eluding him; but the grave question arose, what was he to do when he stood face to face with her. She must

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not go, that was fixed. If she once got off in that ship, she might be safe enough; but what would become of certain projects in which he was interested, that was the question. But again, she was no child, to be turned away from her adventure by cajolery or by any such threats as common truants would find sufficient to scare them back to their duty. He could tell the facts of her disguise and the manner of her leaving home to the captain of the vessel, and induce him to send her ashore as a stray girl, to be returned to her relatives. But this would only make her furious with him; and he must not alienate her from himself at any rate. He might plead with her in the name of duty, for the sake of her friends, for the good name of the family. She had thought all these things over before she ran away. What if he should address

her as a lover, throw himself at her feet, implore her to pity him and give up her rash scheme, and, if things came to the very worst, offer to follow her wherever she went, if she would accept him in the only relation that would render it possible. Fifteen years old, he nearly ten years older, but such things had happened before, and this was no time to stand on trifles.

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

1. There was not the least question on his part. The girl was handsome enough for his ambitious future, wherever it might carry him. She came of an honorable family, and had the great advantage of being free from a tribe of disagreeable relatives, which is such a drawback on many otherwise eligible parties. To these considerations were to be joined other circumstances which we need not here mention, of a nature to add greatly to their force, and which were sufficient of themselves to determine his action.

2. How was it likely she would look on such an extraordinary proposition? At first, no doubt, as Lady Anne looked upon the advances of Richard. She

would be startled, perhaps shocked. What then? She could not help feeling flattered at such an offer from him, — him, William Murray Bradshaw, the rising young man of his county, at her feet, his eyes melting with the love he would throw into them, his tones subdued to their most sympathetic quality, and all those phrases on his lips which every day beguile women older and more discreet than this romantic, Jongimprisoned girl, whose rash and adventurous enterprise was an assertion of her womanhood and her right to dispose of herself as she chose. He had not lived to be twenty-five years old without knowing his power with women. He believed in himself so thoroughly, that his very confidence was a strong promise of success.

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

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

sel's side.

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

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THE

HE term "literature of the age of Elizabeth" is not confined to the literature produced in the reign of Elizabeth, but is a general name for an era in literature, commencing about the middle of her reign, in 1580, reaching its maturity in the reign of James I., between 1603 and 1626, and perceptibly declining during the reign of his son. It is called by the name of Elizabeth, because it was produced in connection with influences which originated or culminated in her time, and which did not altogether cease to act after her death; and these influences give to its great works, whether published in her reign or the reign of James, certain mental and moral characteristics in common. The most glorious of all the expressions of the English

mind, it is, like every other outburst of national genius, essentially inexplicable in itself. It occurred, but why it occurred we can answer but loosely. We can state the influences which operated on Spenser, Shakespeare, Bacon, Hooker, Raleigh, but the genesis of their genius is beyond our criticism. There was abundant reason, in the circumstances around them, why they should exercise creative power; but the possession of the power is an ultimate fact, and defies explanation. Still, the appearance of so many eminent minds in one period indicates something in the circumstances of the period which aided and stimulated, if it did not cause, the marvel; and a consideration of these circumstances, though it may not enable us to penetrate the mystery of

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