Prudence Palfrey

XIII.

JONAH.

MR. JOSEPH TWOMBLY was sitting on a high stool at a desk in the counting-room of Messrs. Rawlings & Sons, the Chicago bankers. It was after bank hours, and the office was deserted. The gray-haired head book-keeper, and the spruce young clerks who occupied the adjoining desks, had been gone an hour or more. The monotonous ticking of the chronometer, pinioned against the wall above the massive iron safe, was the only sound that broke the quiet of the room, except when Twombly made an impatient movement with one of his feet on the attenuated rungs of the stool, or drummed abstractedly with his fingers on the edge of the desk.

An open letter lay before him, and beside it an envelope bearing a Shasta postmark and addressed to Joseph Twombly at Rivermouth. This letter had just come to him inclosed in one of the deacon’s, and was to this effect : —

SHASTA, CAL., October 31, 186-. MY DEAR JOE:

You will probably be surprised to receive a letter from me after all these months of silence — or rather years, for it is nearly three years, is n’t it? — since we parted. I have been in no mood or condition to write before, and I write now only because I may not have another chance to relieve you of any uncertainty you may feel on my account. I have thought it my duty to do this since I came to the resolve, within a few days, to give up my hopeless pursuits here and go into the army. If you do not hear from me or of me in the course of four or six months, you will know that my bad luck, which began in Montana, has culminated somewhere in the South. Then you can show this to my Uncle Dent, or even before, if you wish; I leave it to your discretion. Perhaps I shall do something in the war; who knows ? It is time for me to do something. I am a failure up to date. I’m not sure I am a brave man, but I have that disregard for life which well fits me to lead forlorn-hopes,— and I’ve led many a forlorn-hope these past three years, Joe.

Ever since the day we said goodby at Red Rock I have been on the go. I have not stayed more than a month in any one spot, except this last half year at a ranch in the neighborhood of Shasta, where I went into the stockraising business with another man (who didn’t know I was the spirit of Jonah revisiting the earth), and would have made my fortune, if the cattle-disease had not got into the herd just as we were on the point of selling out at great profit. I was not aware that I had the cattle-disease myself, but I fancy I must have given it to the herd.

Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1874, by H. O. HOUGHTON & Co., in the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington.

What had I been doing all the rest of the time ?—for it took me only six months to ruin my friend the stockraiser. I had been searching for George Nevins, Joe Twombly!

What a story I could tell you, if I had the heart and the patience to go over it all again! How I first heard of him in California, where I tracked him from place to place, sometimes only an hour or so behind him; once I entered a mining-camp just as he went out the other side, confound his cleverness ! — how I followed him to Texas, and thence to Montana again, and from there to Mexico, where I lost trace of him; what I suffered mentally and physically in those mad hunts would not be believed if I could write it out! — how I worked my way from town to town, and from camp to camp, only halting here and there to earn a few dollars to help me on. Hunger, thirst, cold, and heat, I have known them all, Joe, as few men have known them. Shall I tell you — and that is the strangest thing! — what took the life out of me more than the poverty and the treachery and the rest ? It was the conviction that that man, though I could not put my hand on him, had his eye on me all the while, — the certainty that I never went to sleep without his knowing where I lay down, that I never got up but he was advised of my next move, that I was under his espionage day and night!

I think my steps were dogged from the time I first left Montana, though I had no suspicion of it until long after. The suspicion fired me and gave me strength in the beginning, and then it paralyzed me, when I saw how easily he eluded my pursuit, and how defenseless I was. I could trust nobody. The fellow sleeping at my side by the campfire might be Nevins’s spy. Every stranger that looked at me any way curiously sent a chill to my heart. Whether there were three men or a hundred employed to watch me, I cannot tell; but at every point there was some one to mislead me or balk my plan. The wilds of Montana seemed to be policed by this terrible man. Why did n’t he kill me, and have done with it? I don’t know. My life was in His hands, and is to-day. The sense of being surrounded and dogged and snared grew insupportable at last. Can you understand how maddening it was? I gave up the hope of meeting Nevins face to face, and only longed to hide myself somewhere out of his sight.

About six months ago I fell in with a man at Shasta, one Thompson, who owned a ranch twenty miles back in the country; he wanted help in managing his herds, and offered me a share in the stock. This business has just turned out disastrously, as I have said. Everything I touch turns worthless. It was a sorry day for you, poor Joe, when you joined fortune with me. I could sink a cork ship. I am Jonah without Jonah’s whale. If ever I am thrown overboard, I shall be drowned, mark that!

I had to leave the ranch, and left it two days ago. The moment I put foot in Shasta, I felt I was again under the eye of Nevins’s invisible police. I am not sure I shall escape them by going into the army. 1 am not sure, on patriotic grounds, that I ought to go into the army. My luck is enough to bring on a national defeat.

In all these thirty-six months, Joe, I had not heard a word from Rivermouth — until last night. I suppose you must have written to me; if you have, your letters missed fire. No one else, I imagine, has been much troubled about my fate. My dear old friend, Parson Wibird, is dead, and Miss Palfrey is going to marry his successor. So runs the world away! These two items of news gave a hard tug at my heart-strings. I got the intelligence in the oddest way. Last night, sitting on the porch of the hotel, I overheard a stranger talking about Rivermouth. You may fancy I pricked up my ears at the word, and invented occasion to speak with the man. He did not belong to the town, but he appeared to have come from there lately, and I gathered from him all I wanted to know — and more! Oh, Joe, there are things in the world that cut one up more cruelly than hunger and cold! But I can’t write of this. I did not mean to write so long a letter; I meant only to let you know I was alive. Indeed, I am in frightfully good health. If I had been rich and happy, I might have been dead these two years. “There’s nae luck aboot the house! ”

Good-by, my dear Joe. I hope you are prospering, you and your tribe. There must be a lot of you by this time! You continue, I suppose, to have an annual brother or sister? I trust Uncle Dent is well also. He is a fine old fellow, and I ’ve regretted a thousand times that I quarreled with him. But he did brush my hair the wrong way. I start from here to-morrow for the East.

I have not decided yet whether to join the army in the North or in the West; but wherever I go, I am, my dear boy,

Your faithful and unfortunate friend,

JOHN DENT.

Mr. Joseph Twombly read these eight pages through twice very carefully, interrupting himself from time to time to give vent to an exclamation of surprise or pity or disapproval or indignation, as the mood moved him.

“ Poor Jack! ” said Twombly. “ He is a kind of Jonah, sure enough, and I don’t believe the healthiest whale in the world could keep him on its stomach for five minutes. What a foolish fellow to throw himself away in that fashion! Why in thunder did n’t he tell me where to write him? October 31st. That’s more than a month ago. The Lord only knows what may have happened since then. ”

Twombly sat pondering for some time with his elbows on the desk; then he folded up the letter, and placed it in a fresh envelope, which he directed in a large, round, innocent hand to “ Ralph Dent, Esq., Rivermouth, N. H.”

XIV.

KING COPHETUA AND THE BEGGAR MAID.

MR. DENT had watched the increasing intimacy between Prudence and the young minister with much peculiar, secret satisfaction, as the reader has been informed; and that afternoon, while she and Mr. Dillingham were gazing at the sunset through the embrasure of the fort, Mr. Dent, in spite of the pain in his ankle, of which he had complained earlier in the day, was walking briskly up and down the library, building castles for the young people.

When a man has reached the age of Mr. Dent, and is too rheumatic himself to occupy castles in the air, he indulges in this kind of architecture for the benefit of others, that is, if he has a generous nature; and Mr. Dent had a very generous nature. To see Prue well settled in life, and to have two or three of Prue’s children playing around the arm-chair of his old age, was his only dream now. So, in constructing his castles, he added to each a wing for a nursery on a scale more extensive, perhaps, than would have been approved by either of the prospective tenants, if the architect had submitted his plans to them.

Mr. Dent had never asked himself — and possibly the question would have posed him — why he was so willing now for Prudence to marry, when the thought of her marrying had appeared so terrible to him in connection with his nephew. It was John Dent’s misfortune, perhaps, that he was the first to stir Mr. Dent’s parental jealousy; maybe Mr. Dillingham would have fared no better, if he had come first. At all events, he had come second, and Mr. Dent was far from raising objections.

He was in the sunniest of humors, this afternoon, contemplating Prue’s possible happiness and his own patriarchal comfort in it, when Fanny brought in the evening papers, and with them the letter which Mr. Joseph Twombly had considerately mailed to Mr. Dent a few days before.

He tore open the envelope carelessly, recognizing Twombly’s handwriting, but the sight of John Dent’s penmanship gave him a turn. He ran over the pages hurriedly, and with various conflicting emotions, among which a sympathy for Jack’s past and present sufferings was not, it is to be feared, so pronounced as Twombly' s had been.

It was unquestionably a relief to know that Jack was alive and in good health; but it was a little unfortunate to have the letter come just then, when everything was going on so smoothly. The reflection that Jack might take it into his head to return to Rivermouth and insist on marrying Prue, was not agreeable to Mr. Dent. He had assented to this at one time; he had overlooked his nephew’s poverty; but since then John Dent had not behaved handsomely to Prue.

Whatever Prudence’s feelings were, this letter could but disturb her. It would set her to thinking of the past, and that was not desirable. But why show her the letter, at present?—he would have to show it to her if he spoke of it; why not wait until he heard again from Jack, whose plans were still with loose ends? He could not be put into possession of the Hawkins property or even informed that he was to inherit it, for the year specified in the will lacked several months of expiration. Moreover, the letter was one that for several reasons could not well be shown to Prudence; it spoke of her marriage as a foregone conclusion, —the very way to unsettle everything; and then what business had Jack to go and say there were things in the world that cut one up more cruelly than hunger and cold ? What an intemperate kind of phraseology that was!

These reflections were struggling through Mr. Dent’s mind when he heard the clatter of hoofs at the gate. He crumpled the letter in his hand, and thrusting it into his pocket, hastened out to the front door. In the middle of the hall he recollected what a bad state his ankle was in, and limped the rest of the way.

“ Won’t you stop to tea, Dillingham? ” he cried, as he saw the young clergyman with one foot in the stirrup, Mr. Dillingham having dismounted to assist Prudence from the saddle,

“Thanks, my friend; but to-night, you know, is the night I am obliged to prepare my sermon.”

With which words Mr. Dillingham touched his hat to Miss Palfrey, waved his hand smilingly to Mr. Dent, and rode away.

As Prudence came up the graveled path, with the trail of her riding habit thrown over her arm, showing two neat bronze boots, she was too much engaged with her own thoughts to notice Mr. Dent closely; at another time she would have seen that something had disturbed him. Mr. Dent was sharper-sighted, and he saw that Prudence was laboring under unusual excitement. Had Dillingham spoken at last? and if so, how had Prue taken it? He did not dare to conjecture, for he felt it would be a bitter disappointment to him if she had refused Dillingham.

“ At any rate,” Mr. Dent said to himself, “Jack’s letter is not the thing for popular reading just now.”

After tea Prudence told her guardian what had passed between her and Mr. Dillingham. He had asked her to be his wife, but so abruptly and unexpectedly, that he had startled her more than she liked. He had, without any warning, leaned forward and taken her hand while they were looking at the sunset in the bastion of the ruined fort; then he had stepped down from his horse, much as King Cophetua must have stepped down from the throne, and stood at her stirrup-side.

Prudence felt it would be dreadfully sentimental to repeat what Mr. Dillingham had said to her, so she did not repeat his words, but gave Mr. Dent the substance of them. The young man perceived that the suddenness of his action had displeased Prudence, and begged to be forgiven for that, and for the abruptness of his words, if they seemed abrupt to her; they did not seem so to him, for he had carried her presence in his thought from the hour he first saw her. If during the past months he had concealed his feelings with regard to her, it was because he knew his own unworthiness, and did not dare to hope for so great happiness as her love would be to him. He had betrayed his secret involuntarily; the hour, the place, and her nearness must plead for him.

“He really turned it very neatly,” said Prue, trying to brush off the bloom of romance which she was conscious overspread her story, though she had endeavored to tell it in as prosaic a manner as possible.

“He’s a noble fellow!” exclaimed Mr. Dent warmly, “ and is worthy of any woman, — the best of women, and that’s you.”

“ He is noble,” said Prudence, meditatively; “ and as he stood there, looking up at me, I think I more than half loved him.”

“ And you told him so!” cried Mr. Dent.

“ No, I did not,” said Prudence, with a perplexed expression clouding her countenance. “ The words were on my lips, but I could not say them. I could not say anything at first; he quite took away my breath. When I was able to speak I was full of doubt. I do not know if I love him. I esteem him and admire him; he has genius and goodness, and I can understand how a woman might be very proud of his love; but when he asked me to marry him, it startled me and pained me, instead of — of making me very happy, you know.”

Mr. Dent did not know at all; Prudence’s insensibility and hesitation were simply incomprehensible to him; but he nodded his head appreciatively, as if he took in the whole situation.

“ What did you say to him? ”

“ Almost what I am saying to you.”

“ But that was not a very definite answer to a proposal of marriage, it strikes me.”

“ I asked him not to refer to the subject again at present.”

“ That was dodging the question, Prue.”

“ I wanted time, uncle, to know my own mind.”

In effect, Prudence had neither accepted nor rejected the young minister.

“ Rather flattering, for a man of Dillingham’s character and position,” thought Mr. Dent, “to be kept cooling his heels in an anteroom that way.”

“ You see, uncle, it was too important a step to be taken without reflection. Thoughtless people should not be allowed to marry, ever.”

“ How long will it take you, Prue, to know your mind? ”

“ I don't know,” she said, restlessly; “ a week — a month, perhaps.”

“And in the mean time Dillingham will continue his visits here just the same? ”

“ Just the same. I arranged all that.”

“Oh, you arranged all that? ”

“Yes.”

“ But won’t it be a little awkward for everybody ? ’ ’

“ I suppose so,” said Prudence, looking wretched as she thought it over.

Mr. Dent was too wily to say anything more, for he saw that if Prudence was urged in her present wavering humor to give Dillingham a conclusive answer, it might possibly be in the negative.

However, the ice was broken, that was one point gained; the rest would naturally follow; for Prue could not long remain blind to the merits of a man like Dillingham, after knowing that he loved her. Mr. Dent laughed in his sleeve, thinking how sly it was in the young parson to corner Prue up there in the old fort, and attempt to carry her by storm. A vague exultation at Prue’s not allowing herself to be taken in this sudden assault, formed, in spite of him, an ingredient in the good gentleman’s merriment.

Mr. Dillingham passed the following evening at Willowbrook as though nothing unusual had occurred between him and Miss Palfrey. If the beggar maid, instead of accepting King Cophetua on the spot, — as I suppose the minx did, — had reserved her decision for a month or two to consider the matter, the king could not have behaved meanwhile with more tact and delicacy than Mr. Dillingham exercised on this evening and in his subsequent visits.

Prudence carefully but not ostensibly avoided being left alone with him, and there was none of that awkwardness or constraint attending the resumption of purely friendly intercourse which Mr. Dent had anticipated.

Observing that the young people no longer rode horseback, Mr. Dent’s ankle recovered miraculously, and the rides were resumed under his supervision; but the bridle-path leading to the old earthworks was tacitly ignored by all parties. Prudence and Mr. Dillingham had gone that road once too often if nothing was to come of it.

Mr. Dillingham retraced his steps so skillfully, and had come back with so good grace to the point from which he had diverged, that Prudence began to doubt if she had not dreamed that tender episode of the old fort, and to question if the old fort itself were not a figment. The whole scene and circumstance had become so unreal to her that one morning, riding alone, as she sometimes did now, she let Jenny turn into the rocky path leading to the crest of the hill, and secured ocular proof that the ruined earthwork at least was a fact. Standing there in the embrasure, she felt for an instant as if the young clergyman’s hand rested on her own. That same evening Mr. Dillingham made it all seem like a delusion again by talking to her and smiling upon her just as he had done the month previously. But the recollection that he had asked her to be his wife, and that she had a response to make to the momentous question, now and then came over Prudence like a chill.

Rather vexatiously for Mr. Dent, somewhat restlessly for his ward, and perhaps not altogether happily for Mr. Dillingham, — however composed he seemed, — two weeks went by.

XV.

COLONEL PEYTON TODHUNTER.

AT the end of those two weeks, Mr. Dillingham, who had not spoken to Mr. Dent relative to the position of affairs between himself and Prudence, took occasion to do so one December afternoon, as he was sitting with his friend before the open wood-fire in the library.

There is a quality in an open woodfire that stimulates confidence; it is easy, in the warm, mellow glow, to say what would be impossible with other accessories to put into unreluctant words; there is no place like an old-fashioned chimney-side in which to make love or to betray the secret of your bosom.

Mr. Dent was in an unusually receptive state for the young minister’s confidence. The slow process by which Prudence was arriving at a knowledge of her own mind did not rhyme well with her guardian’s impatience, and was beginning to depress him. He had expected, as a matter of course, that his friend Dillingham would seize the first opportunity, and he had given him several, to broach the subject; but two weeks had elapsed, and the young man had not spoken. Mr. Dent drew a distressing inference from this silence. Perhaps while Prudence was pondering what to do, Mr. Dillingham was regretting what he had done. Mr. Dent ached to give the young minister an encouraging word; but he Could not, without a sacrifice to his dignity, be the first to touch upon the topic. He desired above all things that Prudence should wed Dillingham, but he was not going to throw her at his head.

When Mr. Dillingham saw fit, then, this December afternoon, to break through his reticence, his friend welcomed the confidence eagerly. The younger man was gratified, but presumably not surprised, to find that Mr. Dent had his interests very much at heart.

“ Nothing in the world, Dillingham, would make me happier,” Mr. Dent was saying, with his hand resting on the young minister’s shoulder, when Fanny came into the room and gave Mr. Dent a card.

“ ‘ Colonel Peyton Todhunter,’ ” Mr. Dent read aloud. “ What an extraordinary name! Wants to see me? I don’t know any Colonel Todhunter. Another subscription to the soldiers’ fund, maybe. Show him in, Fanny.”

“ Perhaps I had better withdraw,” suggested Mr. Dillingham.

“ Not at all; the gentleman will not detain me long, and I have a great deal to say to you.”

Mr. Dillingham rose from the chair and walked to the farther part of the library, where he occupied himself in looking over a portfolio of Hogarth prints. Presently Fanny, with a rather confused air, ushered in the visitor — a compactly-built gentleman somewhat above the medium height, with closelycut hair, light side-whiskers, inclining to red, and a semi-military bearing. He wore, in fact, the undress uniform of an officer of artillery.

“Mr. Dent —Mr. Ralph Dent? ” inquired this personage.

“Yes, sir; I am Mr. Ralph Dent.”

“My name is Todhunter — Colonel Todhunter, of South Carolina.”

Mr. Dent bowed somewhat formally, for he was an uncompromising Union man, and a South Carolinian colonel — a prisoner on parole, he supposed — was not a savory article to his nostrils.

“ Of South Carolina? ” repeated Mr. Dent, placing a chair at the colonel’s disposal.

“Perhaps I ought to say, sir,” said Colonel Todhunter, seating himself stiffly, “ that I am in the United States army. I am one of the few West Point officers born in the South who have stuck to the old flag. Stuck to the old flag, sir. ’ ’

Mr. Dent complimented him on his loyalty, and begged, with a slight access of suavity, to know how he could be of service to him.

“ I come on very unhappy business; business of a domestic nature, sir,” said the colonel, glowering at Mr. Dillingham as much as to say, “ Who in the devil is that exceedingly lady-like young gentleman in the white choker? ”

“ Whatever your business is,” said Mr. Dent, disturbed by this gloomy preamble, “ do not hesitate to speak in the presence of my friend, the Rev. Mr. Dillingham. Mr. Dillingham, Colonel Todhunter.”

The two gentlemen bowed distantly.

“ I am the bearer of bad news for you, sir,” said the colonel, turning to Mr. Dent. “Your nephew” —

“ Gad, I knew it was Jack! ” muttered Mr. Dent. “ My nephew, Colonel Todhunter? I hope he is in no trouble.”

“In very serious trouble, sir. In fact, sir, you must prepare yourself for the worst. In a skirmish with the enemy last month, near Rich Mountain, he was wounded and taken prisoner, and has since died. He was in my regiment, sir; the 10th Illinois.”

Mr. Dent, who had partly risen from his chair, sank back into the seat. Though Jack’s letter, when it came a fortnight before, had annoyed him, he had been glad to know the boy was alive and well, gladder than he acknowledged to himself. The intelligence of Jack’s death, dropping upon him like a shell from a mortar, — for the colonel had acquitted himself of his duty with military brevity and precision, — nearly prostrated Mr. Dent.

“Dear me, Dillingham,” he said huskily, “ this is very sad.”

He sat for several moments without speaking, and then, recollecting his position as host, he begged the young minister to ring for Fanny and ask her to bring in some sherry and biscuits for the colonel.

Mr. Dent took a glass of the wine mechanically, which he held untasted in his hand, leaving it to Mr. Dillingham to entertain the stranger.

“ Did I understand you to say you were from South Carolina? ” asked Mr. Dillingham, breaking through the thin ice of his reserve.

“ From South Carolina, sir,” replied the colonel.

“ That is also my State,” said the young clergyman. “ I am distantly connected by marriage with one branch of the Todhunters, — the Randalls.”

“ I come from the Peyton branch, sir. I beg a hundred pardons, sir, but I did not quite catch your name when our afflicted friend did me the honor.”

“ Dillingham.”

“ Ah, yes, I recollect,” said the colonel, fixing his eye abstractedly on the ceiling, and fingering his glass, “ a Todhunter did marry a Dillingham; but it was one of the other branch. However, sir, delighted to make your acquaintance— delighted,” and Colonel Todhunter, who had not spared the sherry, shook hands effusively with Mr. Dillingham, who immediately froze over again.

The conversation between them still went on, with a difference, and the colonel explained how he came to be the bearer of the mournful news just delivered. Young Dent had joined his regiment only a short time before, but he had taken a liking to the young man; saw his ability with half an eye, sir. Was terribly cut up when the report came in that young Dent was hurt. Dent had mentioned the fact of his uncle living at Rivermouth, and the colonel, being at Boston on private affairs, determined to bring the information in person. The report of Dent’s death in the rebel hospital — or rather in an ambulance, for he died on the way to the hospital, sir — had reached the colonel as he was on the point of starting for the North.

After this the conversation flagged; the colonel made several attempts to leave, but the decanter of sherry seemed to exert a baleful fascination over him. Finally he departed.

“ Upon my word, Dillingham,” said Mr. Dent, “ this grieves me more than I can tell you. ”

“ I can understand your sorrow,” said Mr. Dillingham softly. “I once lost a nephew, and though he was only a child, and I was very young then, the impression lingered with me for years.

It was my first knowledge of death.”

” I have known death before,” said Mr. Dent sadly; “ it is always new and strange.” Then after a long pause: “ I would like to have your advice on one point, Dillingham. Years ago there was a slight love-passage between Prue and my nephew,—a boy’s and girl’s love affair, which amounted to nothing; but for all that, this news will affect Prue seriously — under the circumstances. I am certain of it. How can I tell her? ”

“Is it necessary to inform her immediately?'' ” asked Mr. Dillingham, thoughtfully.

“I am afraid it is; there is, you know, a question of property involved.”

“Of course,” said Mr. Dillingham, “ I would naturally advocate any step to shield Miss Palfrey from a thing likely to afflict her. So perhaps my judgment is not worth much; but suppose there should be some mistake in this ? Colonel Todhunter’s account, according to his own showing, is at second hand. It may or may not be authentic. Why take the darkest view of the case, while there is a chance to hope that he has been misinformed or deceived? Either of these things is likely. If I were entirely disinterested,

I believe I should advise keeping this from Miss Palfrey as long as possible. In the mean time, with her mind undisturbed ” —

“ You are right; you are always right, Dillingham. ”

Mr. Dent grasped eagerly at the slight hope held out by the young minister’s words. There was Lieutenant Goldstone, Goldstone’s youngest son, reported killed at Big Bethel, reported officially; prayers were offered in church for the family, and they had gone into mourning, when young Goldstone announced himself at head-quarters one day, having escaped through the Confederate lines. This and two or three similar instances occurred to Mr. Dent, and he began to be sanguine that the worst had not happened. It would be a remarkable thing, indeed, if Jack, after passing three years unscathed among the desperadoes of Montana and California, should be killed within a week after setting foot on civilized ground, even in a state of war. Mr. Dent was one of those men who have the faculty of deferring the unpleasant, and seem, superficially considered, to be lacking in proper sensibility ; while in fact it is the excess of sensibility that causes them to shrink, as long as may be, from facing what is disagreeable.

“ Dillingham,” he exclaimed, looking up quickly, “ I hope Colonel Todhunter will not spread this rumor in town. It would be dreadful for Prue to hear it unprepared. Stories fly so! I wish you would hunt up the colonel and caution him.”

‘‘I will,” returned Mr. Dillingham, “ and I will do it without delay. I confess, however, that nothing less urgent would induce me to conlinue his acquaintance. I was not favorably impressed by him.”

“ Nor I. He likes his sherry,” observed Mr. Dent, glancing at the empty decanter, and smiling.

“Much too well,” said Mr. Dillingham gravely.

The young minister lost no time in returning to the hotel, and the first person he met was Colonel Todhunter, who had been refreshing himself at the sample-room attached to Ordione’s grocery. The colonel was in so boisterous a mood that it was not pleasant to confer with him in so public a place as the doorway of the Old Bell Tavern, and Mr. Dillingham was obliged to invite the gentleman into the study.

During the four days he remained in town, Colonel Todhunter left very few sample-rooms unexplored. By sheer force of instinct, and seemingly without effort on his part, he went directly to every place where mixed drinks were obtainable. He made the acquaintance of everybody, spent his money with a lavish hand, and was continually saying, “ Gentlemen, will you walk up and cool your coppers? ” In less than twenty-four hours Colonel Peyton Todhunter was a marked character in Rivermouth, and stood deservedly high in the estimation of those gentlemen — mostly congregated at Ordione’s grocery — whose coppers required periodical cooling.

Jeremiah Bowditch was seen flitting about the streets at this period, in a state of high cerebral excitement. He became almost ubiquitous under the colonel’s inspiration, and nearly accomplished the difficult feat of taking two drinks at the same instant in two different sections of the town. Those were halcyon days for Mr. Bowditch.

Mr. Dillingham was grossly scandalized by the unseemly conduct of Colonel Todhunter, who, on the score of the faroff matrimonial alliance between their families, claimed a near relationship with the young minister, and insisted on dropping into his rooms at all hours of the day and night. “My cousin James,” he would remark, a little pompously, to the admiring circle in Ordione’s store, “ has lost something of his hearty Southern manner since he came up North; but he’s a good fellow at bottom.” “ Dill, my boy,” he was overheard to say, one night, when the young clergyman was vainly remonstrating with him on the staircase of the hotel, “ Dill, my boy, you ’re a trump, — you are ! ”

All this was very shocking, and for once the gentle face of Mr. Dillingham lost its serenity. The anxious, worn expression that came upon it showed how keenly he was suffering from the colonel’s persecutions.

The day succeeding Colonel Todhunter’s visit to Willowbrook, Mr. Dent drove over to town to pay his respects to the colonel, if he had not already gone, and to interrogate him more explicitly as to the sources of his information concerning the unhappy tidings he had brought. At the interview the day before, Mr. Dent had been too much distressed to inquire, as he afterwards wished to do, into the particulars of the case. The colonel was not in.

“ Perhaps you are fortunate in not finding him,” said Mr. Dillingham wearily. “He is drinking, and behaving himself in the most reckless manner. I have no doubt Colonel Todhunter is a warm-hearted, loyal person,” — Mr. Dillingham would not speak unleavened evil of any one, — “and in the South his free, liberal ways would be thought nothing of ; but here they seem strange, to say the least, and I shall be heartily glad when he clears out.”

“ I hope he has not been indiscreet about Jack,” said Mr. Dent, uneasily.

“ I do not think he has. I cautioned him, and he appeared to understand that he was not to mention the matter.”

“ But a man in his cups will talk.”

“ Still, I believe he has said nothing on the subject. I fancy he does not care enough about it. I trust to that for his silence rather than to his promise. I only wish he would go.”

Mr. Dent went back to Willowbrook without seeing the colonel, who vanished from the town at the end of the week. But the fame of Colonel Peyton Todhunter was long kept green in Rivermouth,— in the confused brain of Mr. Bowditch, and in the annals of Ordione’s grocery store, where the colonel had neglected to pay for numerous miscellaneous drinks. Fanny, the chambermaid at Willowbrook, used to allude to him as “ that merry gentleman,” his merriment (as Fanny afterwards confessed to Wingate, the coachman) having expressed itself to her in a most astonishing wink just as she was ushering him that day into Mr. Dent’s library. Against the dull background of New England life the figure of the gay colonel of artillery stood out like a dash of scarlet in a twilight sky.

The gallant colonel had dawned on the Rivermouthians like the god Quetzal on the Aztecs, like Hiawatha on the Indian tribes of North America; and like them, also, he had departed mysteriously. A belief in his second coming, to inaugurate an era of gratuitous Jamaica rum, formed a creed all by itself among a select few. Mr. Ordione was very anxious to have him come again; but his was a desire rather than a belief.

The more Mr. Dent reflected on Colonel Todhunter’s visit, the more skeptical he grew on the subject of his nephew’s death.

“ He’s a rattle-brained, worthless fellow,” said Mr. Dent, meaning Colonel Todhunter, “ and I don’t believe a word of it. But what could possess him to come to me with such a story? What possesses people to do all sorts of mad things? Maybe it was a drunken freak of the colonel’s; perhaps he intended to borrow money of me, and forgot to do so. Very likely he borrowed money of Dillingham. I’ll ask him.”

Colonel Todhunter had borrowed fifty dollars of the young clergyman. Mr. Dent enjoyed that.

“ You may smile, my friend,” said Mr. Dillingham, acknowledging the fact, “ but I was not so blind a victim as you imagine. I attached a slight condition to the loan, —that he should clear out on the instant. If he had suspected his strength he could have wrung ten times the sum from me. The colonel was an infliction, a positive agony, and I think I did very well to invest fifty dollars in his departure.”

“ You may rely upon it, Dillingham, that man was an impostor, and his purpose was money.”

“I begin to fear so,” said Mr. Dillingham. “ It is disheartening to see a man of good average ability, like the colonel’s, fallen so low.”

Mr. Dent laughed, not at the unworldliness of the young clergyman, —that was rather touching to Mr. Dent, — but at the picture he had in his mind of the consternation and panic into which his friend must have been thrown by the insolent familiarity of the dashing Southern colonel during his sojourn at the Old Bell Tavern. The man had necessarily stayed at the same house, there being but one hotel in the town.

That Colonel Peyton Todhunter was an adventurer and a rascal was so excellent a key to the enigma of his raid on Rivermouth, that Mr. Dent in his heart forgave him, and felt rather under obligations to him for his moral turpitude. If the colonel had been a gentleman, Mr. Dent would have been forced to receive his communication in good faith; as it was, Mr. Dent was not going to give it the faintest credence.

“Must know Jack, though,” Mr. Dent reflected; “ must have known that Jack was not in the habit of writing to me, or the man would not have dared to come here with any such yarn. If the colonel is a sample of the friends Jack has picked up, I hope he has not picked up many.”

The result of Mr. Dent’s cogitations was that Colonel Todhunter’s statement was a fabrication, at least the tragic part of it; the man must have had a general knowledge of Jack’s antecedents and of his present surroundings, or he would not have been able to invent so plausible a story. The colonel was a bounty-agent, a camp hanger-on of some kind, and had come across Jack in the army. It was clear that Jack had carried out the intention, expressed in his letter to Twombly, to join the service; the rest was apocryphal.

Strengthened by Mr. Dillingham’s view of the case, Mr. Dent concluded for the present to keep from Prudence the nature of Colonel Todhunter’s visit, and also decided not to mention the letter which John Dent had written to Twombly. If it had not been for Parson Hawkins’s will, Mr. Dent would have laid both matters before her now without hesitation; but he remembered how Prudence had recoiled at the mere suggestion of becoming John Dent’s heir, — it was not to be wondered at under the circumstances, — and he lacked the courage to inform her of Colonel Todhunter’s ridiculous report.

If Jack had actually been killed in action, it was not a difficult thing to obtain an official statement of the fact; if there was nothing in the story, it would be worse than useless to annoy Prue with it. The matrimonial question still remained open, and was sufficiently vexatious without other complications.

Prudence’s capricious delay in making up her mind about Mr. Dillingham pressed more heavily each day on Mr. Dent. It was so unfair to Dillingham; but what could he, Mr. Dent, do? If he urged her to marry the young man, she would probably refuse. If he let matters take their own turn, they might be Heaven only knew how long in coming to a satisfactory end. In the mean time, there was John Dent likely to be alive or likely to be dead at any moment.

Mr. Dent’s was an open nature, and to be the repository of secrets weighed him down. His face was a dial on which the workings of the inner man were recorded with inconvenient aceuracy. Prudence observed her guardian’s perturbed state, and attributed it to her own perversity in not loving Mr. Dillingham on the spot.

Though Mr. Dent discredited the colonel’s assertions, they troubled him; but Prudence’s procrastination troubled him more. Mr. Dillingham had borne it with noble patience, but he was obviously becoming restless under the suspense. A man may be a saint, yet, after all, there are circumstances under which a saint may be forgiven for recollecting that he is a man. Of the three people concerned, Mr. Dent was perhaps the most worthy of commiseration, though Prudence was far from being as unruffled and happy as she had the grace to appear.

The conference between Mr. Dent and the young minister, interrupted by the apparition of Colonel Peyton Todhunter that winter afternoon, was resumed a few days subsequently, and was most satisfactory to both parties. Prue’s conscientiousness, which amounted almost to a flaw in her character, explained her hesitation in responding to his young friend’s wishes. (That was the way Mr. Dent put it.) When she did give him her heart, it would be a heart of gold, and would be given royally. Mr. Dillingham did not regard this extreme delicacy as a flaw in Miss Palfrey; on the contrary, it heightened his admiration for her, and he would await the event with as much patience as he could teach himself.

“ By the bye, Dillingham,” said the amiable tactician, “ I got a letter this morning from the War Department. My nephew is not down on the payroll of the 10th Illinois. I wrote to them relative to Colonel Todhunter. The colonel of the 10th Illinois is — what ’s his name? — I declare it has slipped my mind; and there ’s no such person in the regiment as Todhunter. Practically, I suppose there are plenty of tod-hunters in the regiment, but they are not so named.”

Mr. Dillingham smiled, as one smiles at the jokes of one’s meditated fatherin-law.

“ And so the man really was an impostor? ”

“Of course he was. I suspected it the instant I set eyes on him,” said Mr. Dent unblushingly.

XVI.

HOW PRUE SANG AULD ROBIN GRAY.

WHEN, months before, Mr. Dillingham’s intimacy at Willowbrook had given rise to those cruel stories which made Prudence half wish the young minister would fall in love with her, that she might refuse him and prove how far she was from dying of blighted affections, — at that time it had seemed a simple thing to Prudence to tell Mr. Dillingham that she valued his esteem very highly, that she wanted him always for her friend, but that she could never love him. One cannot be positive that she had not, in some idle moment, framed loosely in her thought a pretty little speech embodying these not entirely novel sentiments; but if this were the ease, there was a difficulty now which she had not anticipated in the pronouncing of that little sentence.

Did she want to pronounce it? If such was to be the tenor of her reply to Mr. Dillingham, why had she not spoken the words that evening in the fort? There had been her time and chance to sweep all the Rivermouth gossips from the board with one wave of her hand, and so end the game. To be sure, Mr. Dillingham had confused her by the abruptness of his declaration; but she had recovered herself almost instantly, and ought to have been frank with him then and there. But she had been unable to give him an answer then, and now two weeks and more had slipped away, leaving her in the same abject state of indecision. Thus far Mr. Dillingham had shown to Prudence no sign of impatience; but her guardian was plainly harassed by her temporizing, and to Prudence herself the situation had grown intolerable.

She knew what her guardian’s wishes were, though he had not expressed them, and his delicacy in not attempting to sway her, influenced Prudence greatly, She knew that her hesitation was adding to Mr. Dillingham’s disappointment and mortification if she finally said No. He could not but draw a happy augury from her delay; for if, in grammar, two negatives make an affirmative, in love, too much hesitation is equivalent to at least half a Yes. She was not certain that her vacillation had not made it imperative on her to accept his addresses. She stood aghast when she reflected that without speaking a word, she had partly promised to be his wife.

The time when she could think lightly of putting aside his proffered love was gone; she shrunk now from the idea of giving him pain. Since Mr. Dillingham settled in Rivermouth her life had been very different, and if he passed out of it, as he must if she could not love him, the days would be blank again. Her esteem and friendship for him had deepened month by month, and during the past two weeks his bearing towards her, his deference, his patience, and his tenderness, had filled her with gratitude to him. There were moments when she felt impelled to go to him and place her hand in his, but some occult influence withheld her. There were other moments, for which she blamed herself, when the thought of him made her cold, a sense of aversion came over her, — an inexplicable thing. Mr. Dillingham was so wise and noble and conscientious, there was no one with whom to compare him. He had the stable character, the brilliant trained intellect, all the sterling qualities, in short, that — that John Dent had not had. He was not arrogant, or impetuous, or lightminded, as John Dent had been: He had a singularly gentle and affectionate nature, and yet — and the absurdity of the fancy caused Prudence to laugh in the midst of her distractions — she could not imagine herself daring to call Mr. Dillingham “ James. ” It was twice as easy to say “Jack” even now. In her girlish love for him there had been none of these doubts and repulsions and conflicts! She had given him her whole heart, and had not known any better than to be happy about it. Why could she not do that now ?

It was the oddest thing how, whenever she set herself to thinking of Mr. Dillingham, she thought of John Dent. There was no one to whom Prudence could appeal for guidance out of the labyrinth into which she had strayed. Mr. Dent could not offer her unprejudiced counsel; she had an intuitive perception of the unfitness of her friend Veronica to help her, and the old parson was in his grave.

It was positively necessary that she should come to some determination soon; but she was as far away from it as ever that afternoon when these thoughts passed through her mind for the hundredth time.

“ Let me think! let me think! ” cried Prudence, walking up and down her room with a tortoise-shell dressing-comb rather unheroically in one hand.

Unheroically ? I suppose Ophelia twined those wild-flowers in her tresses with some care before she drowned herself. Medea and Clytemnestra would not make so graceful an end of it if they did not look a little to the folds of their drapery. One must eat, and drink, and dress, while life goes on. And if I show my poor little New England heroine in the act of putting up her back hair,—it being nearly six o’clock, and Mr, Dillingham coming to tea, — I feel that I am as true to nature as if I set her on a pedestal.

It was her chief beauty, that brown hair, and there were floods of it, with warm sparkles in it here and there, like those bits of gold-leaf that glimmer in a flask of Eau-de-vie de Dantzick when you shake it. She was arranging the hair, after the style of that period, in one massive braid over the brows, making a coronet which a duchess might have been proud to wear. The wonder of this braid was, it cost her nothing. As Prudence set the last pin in its place, she regarded herself attentively for a moment in the cheval-glass, and smiled a queer little smile, noticing

a cherry ribbon at the throat and waist.

“I’m growing to be a fright,” said Prudence, looking so unusually lovely that she could well afford to say it, as women always can — when they say it.

There was a richer tint to her cheeks than ordinarily, and a deeper glow in her eyes this evening, and it did not escape the young minister, who, without seeming to see, saw everything.

When she came into the library where the two gentlemen sat, both were conscious of the brightness that surrounded her like an atmosphere. " Dillingham’s fate is to be signed and sealed tonight,” was Mr. Dent’s internal comment; “there is business in her eye.” But poor Prue’s brave looks sadly belied her irresolute, coward heart. She had no purpose but to look pretty, and that she accomplished without trying.

It was Mr. Dillingham’s custom to leave Willowbrook at ten o’clock, unless there was other company; then he kept later hours. There were no visitors on this occasion, and the evening appeared endless to Prudence, who paused absently in the midst of her sentences when the time-piece over the fire-place doled out the reluctant half-hours. It seemed to her as if ten o’clock had made up its mind not to come. Once or twice in the course of the evening the conversation flickered and went out curiously, as it was not in the habit of doing among these friends.

When the talk turns cold in this sort, it requires great tact to bury the corpse decently. Even with a gifted young divine to conduct the services, the ceremony is not always a success.

At half past nine Mr. Dent violated the tacit covenant that had existed between him and Prudence, by leaving her alone with Mr. Dillingham,—for the first time since it had become embarrassing to be left alone with him. They had been discussing a stanza in Lowell’s Vision of Sir Launfal, and Mr. Dent had coolly walked off to the library on a pretext to look up the correct reading.

Prudence regarded her guardian’s action as a dreadful piece of treachery, and the transparency of it was perhaps plain to Mr. Dillingham, who came to her rescue, for an awkward silence had immediately fallen upon Prue, by requesting her to sing a certain air from Les Huguenots, which she had been practicing.

Prudence was in no humor for music, but she snatched at the proposition with a kind of gratitude, and sang the passage charmingly, with a malicious enjoyment, meanwhile, in the reflection that her recreant guardian, hearing the piano, would know that his purpose was frustrated. And in fact, at the first note that reached the library, there came over Mr. Dent’s face an expression of mingled amusement and disgust, in strange contrast with the exquisite music that provoked it. He stood with one hand lifted to a book-shelf, and listened in a waiting attitude, but when the aria was finished, he made no motion to return to the drawing-room.

Prudence sat with her fingers playing in dumb-show on the ivory keys, wondering what the next move would be. Mr. Dillingham, who had been turning over a portfolio of tattered sheetmusic, took up a piece which he had selected from the collection, and came with it to the piano.

“ I wish you would sing this, Miss Prudence. It is an old favorite of mine, and it is many years since I heard it. These homely Scotch ballads are not perhaps high art, but they have a pathos and an honesty in them which I confess to admiring.”

As the young minister spoke he spread out on the piano-rack some yellowed pages containing the words and music of Auld Robin Gray.

Prudence gave a little start, and a peculiar look flitted across her face, then she dropped her eves, and let her hands lie listlessly in her lap.

“ But perhaps you don’t sing it? ” said Mr. Dillingham, catching her half dreamy, half pained expression.

“ Oh, yes, I do,” said Prudence, rousing herself with an effort, “if I have not forgotten the accompaniment.”

She touched the keys softly, and the old air came back to her like a phantom out of the past. She played the accompaniment through twice, then her voice took up the sweet burden, half inaudible at first, but gathering strength and precision as she went on. It was not a voice of great compass, but of pure quality and without a cold intonation in it. One has heard famous cantatrici, all art down to their fingernails, who could not sing a simple ballad as Prudence sang this, because they lacked the one nameless touch of nature that makes the whole world kin. “ ‘Young Jamie loo’d me weel,’ ” sang Prue,—

Mr. Dillingham, who understood music thoroughly, as he seemed to understand everything, listened to Prudence with a sort of wonder, though he had heard her sing many a time before. The strange tenderness and passion there was in her voice brought a flush to his pale cheek, as he leaned over the end of the piano, with his eyes upon her.

It was with unconscious art that Prudence was rendering perfectly both the sentiment and the melody of the song, for her thought was far away from the singing. It was a day in midsummer; the wind scarcely stirred the honeysuckles that clambered over the porch of the little cottage in Horseshoe Lane; John Dent was telling her of his plans and his hopes and his love; it was sunshine and shadow, and something sad; again he was holding her hand; for an instant she felt the touch of his lips on her cheek; then she heard the gate close, and the robins chattering in the garden, and the tears welled up to Prue’s eyes, as she sang, just as they had done that day when all this had really happened. And still the song went on: —

Suddenly something grew thick in Prudence’s throat; the dual existence she was leading came to an end, and the music died on her lip. She looked up, and met the young clergyman’s eyes glowing upon her.

“I — I can’t sing it, after all,” she said, with a wan look. “ I will sing it another time.”

Then she pushed back the piano-stool abruptly, hesitated a moment, and glided swiftly out of the room.

Mr. Dillingham followed her with his eyes, much mystified, as he well might have been, at Prudence’s inexplicable agitation and brusqueness. He leaned against the side of the piano, waiting for her to return; but she did not come back again to the drawing-room.

In a few minutes Mr. Dent appeared, and could scarcely control his astonishment at finding the young minister alone.

It was as plain to Mr. Dent as one and one make two (though they sometimes refuse to be added together) that events had culminated during his absence. He had intended they should; but there was a depressing heaviness in the atmosphere for which he was not prepared. He did not dare to ask what had happened.

Mr. Dillingham was ill at ease, and after one or two commonplace remarks, he said good night mechanically and withdrew.

“ She has thrown him over, the foolish girl!” muttered Mr. Dent, as he went gloomily up-stairs with his bedroom candle in his hand, “ and I am devilishly sorry.”

For my part, I think the young minister’s fortunate star was not in the ascendant that night, when he asked Prue to sing Auld Robin Gray.

T. B. Aldrich.