CHAPTER X.

MR. CLEMENT

LINDSAY FINISHES HIS LETTER. WHAT CAME OF IT.

should she do! He was almost killed, she knew he was, or he had broken some of his bones. O dear! O dear! She would go and see him, there!—

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

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

Of course, poor Susan Posey burst out crying, and cried as if her heart would break. O dear! O dear! what

she knew he would, and so on.

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

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

What a sight! There were Sossy and Minthy intrenched in a Sebastopol which must have cost a good halfhour's engineering, and the terrible Byles Gridley besieging the fortress

with hostile manifestations of the most singular character. He was actually discharging a large sugar-plum at the postern gate, which having been left unclosed the missile would certainly have reached one of the garrison, when he paused as the door opened, and the great round spectacles and four wide, staring infants' eyes were levelled at Miss Susan Posey.

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

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

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

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

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

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

-

He read the paragraph over again,

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

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

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

But he, in the mean time, was busy with thoughts she did not suspect. "A young person," he said to himself, "why a young person? Why not say a boy, if it was a boy? What if this should be our handsome truant?—'June 16th, Thursday morning!'-About time to get to Alderbank by the river, I should think. None of the boats missing? What then? She may have made a raft, or picked up some stray skiff.

Who knows?

And then got ship wrecked, very likely. There are rapids and falls further along the river. It will do no harm to go down there and look about, at any rate."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

the village, lying a few rods back from the river.

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

"Does Mr. Clement Lindsay live here?"

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

"Nothing very serious, I hope ?" "A bruise on his head, not very bad, but the doctor was afraid of erysipelas. Seems to be doing well enough now."

"Is there a young person here, a stranger?"

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

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

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

"Is she violent in her delirium?"

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

--

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

Mrs. Lindsay took a good long look at

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

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

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

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

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

She returned presently. "Follow me softly, if you please. She is asleep, — so beautiful, so innocent!"

Byles Gridley, Master of Arts, retired professor, more than sixty years old, childless, loveless, stranded in a lonely study strewed with wrecks of the world's thought, his work in life finished, his one literary venture gone down with all it held, with nobody to care for him but accidental acquaintances, moved gently to the side of the bed and looked upon the pallid, still features of Myrtle Hazard. He strove hard against a strange feeling that was taking hold of him, that was making his face act rebelliously, and troubling his eyes with sudden films. He made a brief stand against this invasion. "A weakness, —a weakness!" he said to himself. "What does all this mean? Never such a thing for these twenty years! Poor child! poor child!-Excuse me, madam," he said, after a little

interval, but for what offence he did not mention. A great deal might be forgiven, even to a man as old as Byles Gridley, looking upon such a face, so lovely, yet so marked with the traces of recent suffering, and even now showing by its changes that she was struggling in some fearful dream. Her forehead contracted, she started with a slight convulsive movement, and then her lips parted, and the cry escaped from them, how heart-breaking when there is none to answer it," Mother!"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"No, my dear, but you are out of it,