Near the end of the two years' limit, when the boon companions were on the eve of taking their degrees, I found that another element had come into their affairs.

Going out one evening to visit a friend who lived at some distance on one of the large railroads, I had a glimpse of a small manufacturing place, which the train passed with great rapidity at late twilight. The large mill was already lighted up, and every window flashed as we sped by. But the sunset had not quite faded, and, from the colored sky far away behind the mill, light enough still came to show the narrow glen with its wall of autumn foliage on either side, the black and silent river above the dam, the sudden shining screen of falling water at the dam itself, and again a smooth dark current below, running toward us and under the railroad embankment. There was a small settlement of operatives' houses near the factory, and two or three larger homes were visible, snugly placed among the trees. We were swept away out of sight in a moment; but there was something so striking in that single glimpse, that a traveller in the next seat, who had not spoken to me before, turned and asked me what place it was. I did not know. I afterward learned that it was Stansby, a factory village perhaps forty miles from Cambridge. Finding that the memory of the spot clung to me, I wished to know more about it; and one day in the following spring, when I needed a change from the city, I actually went out there. Stansby did not prove to be a very picturesque place; yet its gentle hills, with outcroppings of cold granite, the deep-hued river between, and the cotton-mill near the railroad, somehow roused a decided interest which I never have been able wholly to account for. I enjoyed strolling about, but was beginning to think of a train back to Boston, when a turn of the road, a quarter of a mile from the mill, brought me face to face with a young girl who was approaching slowly with a book in her hand, which she read as she walked.

She was not a beautiful girl, and not at all what is understood by a "brilliant" girl; yet at the very first look she excited my interest, as Stansby village itself had done. In every outline and motion she showed perfect health; her clear color was tonic to the eye; her deep brown hair, at the same time that it gave a restful look to her forehead, added something of fervency to her general aspect. In sympathy with the beautiful day, she had taken off her hat (which she carried on one arm), disclosing a spray of fresh lilacs in her hair. She was very simply, though not poorly, dressed. All this, and more, I was able to observe without disturbing her absorption in her book; but just as I was trying to decide whether the firm, compressed corners of her mouth only meant interest in the reading, or indicated some peculiar hardness of character, she glanced up and saw my eyes bent upon her.

Then, for an instant, there came into her own a look of eager search; no softly inquiring gaze, such as would be natural to most women on a casual meeting of this sort, but a full, energetic, self-reliant scrutiny. I don't think the compression about her lips was softened by her surprise at seeing me; but that keen level look from her eyes brought a wonderful change over her face, so that from being interesting it became attractive, and I was fired by a kind of enthusiasm in beholding it. Involuntarily I took off my hat, and paused at the side of the highway. She bent her head again,—perhaps with some acknowledgment of my bow, but not definitely for that purpose, because she continued reading as she passed me.

But now came the strangest part of the episode. This girl disappeared around the bend of the road, and after her two young fellows drew near whom I recognized as Vibbard and Silverthorn. It happened that Silverthorn, as on the very first day I had ever seen him, carried a sprig of lilac. Happened? No; the lilac in the girl's hair was too strong a coincidence to be overlooked, and I was not long in guessing that there was some tender meaning in it.

"Hullo! Ferguson."

"Did you know we were here?"

These exclamations were made with some confusion, and Silverthorn blushed faintly.

"No," said I. "Do you come often?"

They looked at each other confidentially.

"We have, lately," Vibbard admitted.

"Then perhaps you can tell me who that girl is that I just passed."

"Oh, yes," said Silverthorn, at once. "That's Ida Winwood, the daughter of the superintendent here at the mills."

"She is a very striking girl," I said. "You know her, of course?"

"A little."

Vibbard enlarged upon this: it was a curious habit they had fallen into, of each waiting for the other to explain what should more properly have been explained by himself.

"Thorny's father, you know," said Vibbard, "was a great machinist, and so they had acquaintances around at mills in different parts of the State. She—that is Ida, you know—is only sixteen now, but Thorny first saw her when he was a boy and came here, once or twice, with his father."

Silverthorn nodded his head corroboratively.

"But it seems to me," I said, addressing him, "that you treat her rather distantly for an old acquaintance; or else she treats you distantly. Which is it?"

They laughed, and Vibbard blurted out, with a queer, boyish grimace:

"It's me. She don't like me. Hey, Thorny?"

"It's nearer the truth," returned his friend, "to say that you're so bashful you don't give her half a chance to make known what she does think of you."

"Oh, time enough—time enough," said Vibbard, good-humoredly.

Remembering that I must hurry back to catch my train, I suddenly found that I had been in an abstracted mood, for I was still standing with my hat off.

"Well, let me know how you get on," I said, jocosely, as I parted from the comrades.

Yet for the life of me I could not tell which one of them it was that I should expect to hear from as a suitor for the girl's hand.

It was within a fortnight after this that they came to my office—for I had been admitted to the bar—and announced that the time for drawing up their long-pending agreement had arrived. They were still as eager as ever about it, and I very soon had the instrument made out, stating the mutual consideration, and duly signed and sealed.

Finding that they had been at Stansby again, I was prompted to ask them more about Ida.

"Do you know," I said, boldly, "that I am very much puzzled as to which of you was the more interested in her?"

They took it in good part, and Silverthorn answered:

"That's not surprising. I don't know, myself."

"I'm trying," said Vibbard, bluntly, "to make Thorny fall in love with her. But I can't seem to succeed."

"No," said his friend, "because I insist upon it that she's just the woman for you."

Vibbard turned to me with an expression of ridicule.

"Yes," he said, "Thorny is as much wrapped up in that idea as if his own happiness depended on my marrying her."

"You're rivals then, after a new fashion," was my comment. "Don't you see, though, how you are to settle it?"

"No."

"Why, each of you should propose in form, for the other. Then Miss Winwood would have to take the difficulty into her own hands."

"Ha, ha!" laughed Vibbard. "That's a good idea. But suppose she don't care for either of us?"

"Very well. I don't see that in that case she would be worse off than yourselves, for neither of you seems to care for her."

"Oh yes, we do!" exclaimed Silverthorn, instantly.

"Yes, we care a great deal," insisted Vibbard.

They both grew so very earnest over this that I didn't dare to continue the subject, and it was left in greater mystery than before.

At last the time of graduation came, and the two friends parted to pursue their separate ways. Silverthorn had a widowed mother living at a distance in the country, whose income had barely enabled her to send him through college on a meagre allowance. He went home to visit her for a few days, and then promptly took his place on a daily newspaper in Boston, where he spent six months of wretched failure. He had great hopes of achieving in a short time some prodigious triumph in writing, but at the end of this period he gave it all up, and decided to develop the mechanical genius which he thought he had perhaps inherited from his father. I began to have a suspicion when I learned that this new turn had led him to Stansby, where he procured a position as a sort of clerk to the superintendent, Winwood.

After some months, I went out to see him there. In the evening we went to the Winwoods', and I watched closely to discover any signs of a new relation between Silverthorn and the daughter. Mr. Winwood himself was a homely, perfectly commonplace man, whose face looked as if it had been stamped with a die which was to furnish a hundred duplicate physiognomies. Mrs. Winwood was a fat, woolly sort of woman, who knitted, and rocked in her rocking-chair, keeping time to her needles. A smell of tea and chops came from the adjoining room, where they had been having supper; and there was a big, hot-colored lithograph of Stansby Mills hung up over the fireplace, with one or two awkward-looking engravings of famous men and their families on the remaining wall-spaces. Yet, even with these crude and barren surroundings, the girl Ida retained a peculiar and inspiring charm. She talked in a full, free tone of voice, and was very sensible; but in everything she said or did, there was a mixture, with the prosaic, of something so sweet and fresh, that I could not help thinking she was very remarkable. In particular, there was that strong, fine look from the eyes which had impressed me on my first casual meeting in the road. It had a transforming power, and seemed to speak of resolution, aspiration, or self-sacrifice. I noticed with what enthusiasm she glanced up at Silverthorn, when he was showing her some drawings of machinery, executed by himself, and was dilating upon certain improvements which he intended to make. Still, there was a reserve between them, and a timidity on his part, which showed that no engagement to marry had been made, as yet.

He was very silent as we walked together beside the dark river toward the railroad, after our call. But, when we came abreast of the dam, with its sudden burst of noise, and its continual hissing murmur, he stopped short, with a look of passion in his face.

"Things have changed since Vibbard went away," he said. "Yes, yes; very much. I used to think it was he who ought to love her."

"And you have found out—" I began.

He laid his hand quickly on my arm.

"Yes, I have found that it is I who love her—eternally, truly! But don't tell any one of this; it seems to me strange that I should speak of it, even to you. I cannot ask her to marry me yet. But there seems to be a relief in letting you know."

I was expressing my pleasure at being of any use to him, when the ominous sound of the approaching cars made itself heard, and I had to hurry off. But, all the way back to the city, I could think of nothing but Silverthorn's announcement; and suddenly there flashed upon me the secret and the danger of the whole situation. This girl, who had so much interested the two friends, in spite of their strong contrasts of character, was, perhaps, the only one in the world who could have pleased them both; for in her own person she seemed to display a mixture of elements, much the same and quite as decided as theirs. What, then, if Vibbard also should wake up to the knowledge of a love for her?

The next time I saw Silverthorn, which was a full year later, I said to him:

"Do you hear from Vibbard anything about that agreement to divide your gains?"

"No!" he replied, avoiding my eye; "nothing about that."

"Do you expect him to keep it?"

"Yes!" he said, glancing swiftly up again, with a gleam of friendly vindication in his eyes. "I know he will."

"But I hear hard things said of him," I persisted. "Reports have lately come to me as to some rather close, not to say sharp, bargains of his. He is successful; perhaps he is changing."

For the first time I saw Silverthorn angry.

"Never say a word of that sort to me again!" he cried, with a demeanor bordering on violence.

I was a little piqued, and inquired:

"Well, how do you get on toward being in a position to pay him?"

But I regretted my thrust. Silverthorn's face fell, and he could make no reply.

"Is there no prospect of success with those machines you were talking of last year?" I asked more kindly.

"No," said he, sadly. "I'm afraid not. I shall never succeed. It all depends on Vibbard, now. I cannot even marry, unless he gets enough to give me a start."

I left him with a dreary misgiving in my heart. What an unhappy outcome of their compact was this!

Meanwhile, Vibbard was thriving. After a brief sojourn with his father, who was a well-to-do hardware merchant in his own small inland city, he went to Virginia and began sheep-farming. In two years he had gained enough to find it feasible to return to New York, where he took up the business of a note-broker. People who knew him prophesied that he would prove too slow to be a successful man in early life; and, in fact, as he did not look like a quick man, he was a long time in gaining the reputation of one. But his sagacious instincts moved all the more effectively for being masked, and he made some astonishing strokes. It began to seem as if other men around him who lost, were controlled by some deadly attraction which forced them to throw their success under Vibbard's feet. His car rolled on over them. Everything yielded him a pecuniary return.

As he was approaching his thirtieth birthday, he found himself worth a little over thirty thousand dollars—after deducting expenses, bad claims, and a large sum repaid to his father for the cost of his college course. He had been only six years in accumulating it. But how endlessly prolonged had those six years been for Silverthorn! When three of them had passed, he declared his love to Ida Winwood, though in such a way that she need neither refuse nor accept him at once; and a quasi engagement was made between them, having in view a probable share in Vibbard's fortunes. Once,—perhaps more than once,—Silverthorn bitterly reproached himself, in her presence, for trusting so entirely to another man's energies. But Ida put up her hands beseechingly, looking at him with a devoted faith.

"No, John!" she cried. "There is nothing wrong about it. If you were other than you are, I might not wish it to be so. But you,—you are different from other men; there is something finer about you, and you are not meant for battling your way. But, when once you get this money, you will give all your time to inventing, or writing, and then people will find out what you are!"

There was something strange and pathetic in their relation to each other, now. Silverthorn seemed nervous and weary; he looked as if he were growing old, even with that soft yellow beard and his pale brown hair still unchanged (for he was only twenty-eight). His spirits were capricious; sometimes bounding high with hope, and, at others, utterly despondent. Ida, meantime, had reached a full development; she was twenty-two, fresh, strong, and self-reliant. When they were together, she had the air of caring for him as for an invalid.

Suddenly, one day, at the close of Vibbard's six years' absence, Silverthorn came running from the mill during working-hours, and burst into the superintendent's cottage with an open letter in his hand, calling aloud for Ida.

"He is coming! He is coming!" cried he, breathless, but with a harsh excitement, as if he had been flying from an angry pursuer.

"Who? What has happened?" returned Ida, in alarm.

"Vibbard."

But he looked so wild and distraught, that Ida could not understand.

"Vibbard?" she repeated. Then,—with an amazed apprehension which came swiftly upon her,—shutting both hands tight as if to strengthen herself, and bringing them close together over her bosom: "Have you quarreled with him?"

"Quarreled?" echoed Silverthorn, looking back her amazement. "Why, do you suppose the world has come to an end? Don't you know we would sooner die than quarrel?"

"Vibbard—coming!" repeated Ida, as she caught sight of the letter. "Yes; now, I see."

"But, doesn't it make you happy?" asked her lover, suddenly annoyed at her cool reception of the news.

"I don't know," she answered, pensively. "You have startled me so. Besides,—why should it make me happy?" A singular confusion seemed to have come over her mind. "Of course," she added, after a moment, "I am happy, because he's your friend."

"But,—the money, Ida!" He took her hand, but received no answering pressure. "The money,—think of it! We shall be able—" Then catching sight of an expression on her features that was almost cruel in its chill absence of sympathy, Silverthorn dropped her hand in a pet, and walked quickly out of the house back to the mill.

She did not follow him. It was their first misunderstanding.

Silverthorn remained at his desk, went to his own boarding-house for dinner, and returned to the mill, but always with a sense of unbroken suffering. What had happened? Why had Ida been so unresponsive? Why had he felt angry with her? These questions repeated themselves incessantly, and were lost again in a chaotic humming that seemed to fill his ears and to shut out the usual sounds of the day, making him feel as if thrust away into a cell by himself, at the same time that he was moving about among other people.

Vibbard was to arrive that afternoon. Silverthorn wished he had told Ida, before leaving her, how soon his friend was coming. As no particular hour had been named in the letter, he grew intolerably restless, and finally told Winwood that he was going to the depot, to wait.

All this time Ida had been nearly as wretched as he; and, unable to make out why this cloud had come over them just when they ought to have been happiest, she, too, went out into the air for relief, and wandered along the hill-side by the river.

It was early summer again. The lilacs were in bloom. All along the fence in front of Winwood's house were vigorous bushes in full flower. Ida, as she passed out, broke off a spray and put it in her hair, wishing that its faint perfume might be a spell to bring Silverthorn back.

On the edge of the wood where she had been idly pacing for a few minutes, all at once she heard a crackling of twigs and dry leaves under somebody's active tread, just behind her. It did not sound like her lover's step. She looked around. The man, a stranger with strong features and thick beard, halted at once and looked at her—silently, as if he had forgotten to speak, but with a degree of homage that dispelled everything like alarm.

She stood still, looking at him as earnestly as he at her. Then, she hardly knew how, a conviction came to her.

"Mr. Vibbard?" she said, in a low inquiring tone. To herself she whispered, "Six years!"

Somehow, although she expected it, there was something terrible in having this silent, strange man respond:

"Yes."

He spoke very gently, and put out his hand to her.

She laid her own in his strong grasp, and then instantly felt as if she had done something wrong. But he would not let it go again. Drawing her a little toward him, he turned so that they could walk together back to the mills.

"Did John send you this way? Have you seen him?" she asked, falteringly.

"No," said Vibbard. "From where I happened to be, I thought I could get here sooner by walking over through Bartlett. Besides, it was pleasanter to come my own way instead of by railroad."

"But how did you know me?"

"I have never forgotten how you looked. And besides, that lilac."

With a troubled impulse, Ida drew her hand away from his, and snatched the blossoms out of her hair, meaning to throw them away. Then she hesitated, seeing her rudeness. Vibbard, who had not understood the movement, said with a tone of delight:

"Won't you give them to me? Do you remember how you wore them in your hair one day, years ago?"

"I have reasons for not forgetting it," she answered with a laugh, feeling more at her ease. "Well, I have spoiled this bunch now, but of course you may have them."

He took the flowers, and they walked on, talking more like old friends. At the moment when this happened, Silverthorn, who, while waiting for another train to arrive, had come back to the house in search of Ida, passed on into a little orchard on a slope, just beyond, which overlooked a bend in the road: from there he saw Ida give Vibbard the lilac spray. At first he scarcely knew his old friend, and the sight struck him with a jealous pang he had never felt before. Then suddenly he saw that it was Vibbard, and would have rushed down the slope to welcome him. But like a detaining hand upon him, the remembrance of his foolish quarrel with Ida held him back. He slunk away secretly through the orchard, into the woods, and hurried to meet Vibbard at a point below the house, where Ida would have left him.

He was not disappointed. He gained the spot in time, and appeared to be walking up from the mill, when he encountered his old comrade going sturdily toward it. Nevertheless, he felt uncomfortable at the deception he was using. They greeted each other warmly, yet each felt a constraint that surprised him.

Vibbard explained how he had come.

"And I have seen Ida," he exclaimed impetuously, with a glow of pleasure. Then he stopped in embarrassment. "Are you going back that way?" he asked.

"No," said the other, gloomily. "We'll go over the river to where I live."

They took the path in that direction, and on the way Vibbard began explaining how he had arranged his property.

"It's just as well not to go up to the Winwoods' until we've finished this," he said, parenthetically. "And to tell you the truth, Thorny, it's a queer business for me to be about, after I've been hard at work for so long, scraping together what I've got. I shouldn't much like people to know about it, I can tell you; and I never would do it for any man but you."

Formerly, Silverthorn had been used to this sort of bluntness, but now it irritated him.

"Do you mean to say," he asked, "that you would break your bargain, if it had been made with any one besides me?"

Vibbard drew himself up proudly.

"No, sir!" he declared, in a cold tone. "I keep my word whenever I have given it."

Silverthorn uttered an oath under his breath.

"If you mean to keep your word, why don't you do it without blustering? Suppose I have been unfortunate enough to come out behind in the race, and to need this money of yours? Is that any reason why you should grind into me like a file the sense of my obligation to you?"

"Come, Thorny," said his friend, "you are treating me like a stranger. How long is it since you got these high-strung notions?"

"I suppose I've been growing sensitive since I first perceived that I was dependent on your fortune. It has unmanned me. I believe I might have done something, but for this."

"Gad, so might I be doing something, now, if I had my whole capital," muttered Vibbard.

He did not see how his remark renewed the wound he had just been trying to heal. For several years he had felt that the compact with his friend was a useless clog on himself, and this had probably caused him to dwell too much on his own generosity in making it.

Both felt pained and dissatisfied with their meeting. It was full of sordidness and discomfort; it seemed in one hour to have stripped from their lives the romance of youth. But after their little tiff they tried to recover their spirits and succeeded in keeping up a sham kind of gayety. Arrived at Silverthorn's lodging, they completed their business; Vibbard handing over a check, and receiving in exchange Silverthorn's copy of the agreement with a receipt in due form.

"How long can you stay, Bill?" asked Silverthorn, more cheerfully, when this was over. A suppressed elation at his good luck made him tingle from top to toe; and, to tell the truth, he did not feel much interest in Vibbard's remaining.

"I must be off to-morrow," said his friend. "I suppose I can stay here to-night?"

"Of course."

"I must call on Ida, before I go."

Silverthorn's brow darkened.

"Ah, Thorny," continued Vibbard, unconsciously, "it's queer to look back to that time when we were trying to persuade each other to make love to her! Do you know that since I've been away, she's never once gone out of my mind?"

"Is that so?" returned his comrade, with a strained and cloudy effort to appear lightly interested.

"Yes," said the other, warming to his theme. "It may seem strange in a rough business man like me,—and I guess it would have played the Old Harry with anybody whose head wasn't perfectly level,—but that strong, pure, sweet face of hers has come between me and many a sharp fellow I've had to deal with. But it never distracted my thoughts; it helped me. The memory of her was with me night and day, Thorny, and it made me a hard, successful worker, and kept me a pure-hearted, happy man. You'll see that I don't need much persuasion to speak to her now!"

While Vibbard was talking, Silverthorn had risen, as if interested, and now stood with his arm stretched on the cheap, painted wooden mantelpiece above the empty grate of his meagre room. Vibbard noticed that he looked pale; and it suddenly struck him that his friend might have suffered from poverty, and that his health was perhaps weakening. A gush of the old-time love suddenly came up from his heart, though he said nothing.

"You know I always told you," Silverthorn began,—he paused and waited an instant,—"I always told you she was the woman for you."

"Indeed I know it, old boy," said Vibbard, heartily.

He rose, came to his old college-mate and took hold of his disengaged arm with both hands, affectionately.

"Look here," he added; "there's been something queer and dismal about seeing each other, after such a long interval,—something awkward about this settlement between us. If I've done anything to hurt your feelings, Thorny, I'm sorry. Let's make an end of the trouble here and now, and be to each other just as we used to be. What do you say?"

"I say you're a good, true-hearted fellow, as you always were, and I want you to promise that we shall keep up our old feeling forever."

"There's no need of any promise but this," said Vibbard, as they clasped hands.

"Now, tell me one thing," resumed Silverthorn; "did it never occur to you, in all these six years, that I, who have been living in the daily company of the girl you love, might cross your prospect?"

For a second or two Vibbard's eyelids, which fell powerless while he listened, remained shut, and a shock of pain seemed to strike downward from the brain, across his face and through his whole stalwart frame.

"It's your turn to hurt me," he said, slowly, as he looked at his friend again. "Have you any idea how that bare suggestion cut into me?"

"I think I have," said Silverthorn, mechanically. He remained very pale. "But I see, from the way it struck you, that you had never thought of it before. That relieves me. Give me your hand once more, Bill." Then he explained, hurriedly, that he must go to the mill for a few moments. "If I'm not back to tea, don't wait. The girl will come up and give it to you. And mind you don't go over to the Winwoods'" (this with a laugh); "I wish to give them a little warning of your visit."

In a moment he was gone. Vibbard amused himself as well as he could with the books and drawings in the room; then he sat down, looked all about the place, and sighed:

"Poor fellow! he can be more comfortable now."

Before long the tea hour came. Thorny had not returned, and he took the meal alone, watching the sunset out of the window. But by and by he grew restless, and finally, taking his hat and his cane, which had an odd-shaped handle made of two carved snakes at once embracing and wounding one another, he went out and strolled across the bridge toward the Winwoods'. By the time he reached there dusk had closed in, though the horizon afar off was overhung by a faint, stirring light from the rising moon. He remembered Silverthorn's injunction, however, and would not go into the cottage.

He passed the lilac-hedge, with its half-pathetic exhalations of delicious odor recalling the past, and was prompted to step through a break in the stone wall and ascend the orchard slope.

He stood there a few minutes enjoying the hush of nightfall and exulting in the full tide of happiness and sweet anticipation that streamed silently through his veins. All about him stole up the soft and secret perfumes of the summer's dusk,—perfumes that feel their way through the air like the monitions of early love, going out from one soul to another.

Suddenly, a side-door in the house below was opened, and two figures came forth as if borne upon the flood of genial light that poured itself over the greensward.

They were Silverthorn and Ida.

How graceful they looked, moving together,—the buoyant, beautiful maiden and the slender-shaped young man, who even at a distance impressed one with something ideal in his pose and motion! Vibbard looked at them with a bewildered, shadowy sort of pleasure; but all at once he saw that Silverthorn held Ida's hand in his and had laid his other hand on her shoulder. A frightful tumult of feeling assailed him. The small, carved serpents on his stick seemed suddenly to drive their fangs into his own palm, as he clutched the handle tighter.

For an instant he hesitated and hoped. Then the pair, passing along below the broken wall, came within ear-shot, and he heard his old boon comrade saying, in a pleading voice:

"But you have never quite promised me, Ida! You have never fully engaged yourself to me."

Partly from a feeling of strangulation, partly with a blind impulse to do something violent, Vibbard clutched himself about the throat, tore furiously at his collar till it gave way, and, in a paroxysm little short of madness, he turned and fled—he did not know where nor how—through the darkness.

It seemed to him for a long time as if he was marching and reeling on through the woods, stumbling over roots and fallen trunks, breaking out into open fields upon the full run, then pursuing a road, or rambling hopelessly down by the ebon-hued river,—and as if he was doing all this with some great and urgent purpose of rescuing somebody from a terrible fate. He must go on foot,—there was no other way,—and everything depended on his getting to a certain point by a certain time. The worst of it was, he did not know where it was that he must go to! Then, all at once, he became aware that he had made a mistake. It was not some one else who was to be saved. It was himself. He must rescue himself—

From what?

At this, he came to a pause and tried to think. He stood on a commanding spot, somewhere not far from Stansby, though he could not identify it. The moon was up, and the wide, leafy landscape was spread out in utter silence for miles around him. For a brief space, while collecting his thoughts, he saw everything as it was. Then, as if at the stroke of a wand, horrible deformity appeared to fall upon the whole scene; the thousand trees below him writhed as if in multitudinous agony; and, where the thick moonlight touched house or road, or left patches of white on river and pool, there the earth seemed smitten as with leprosy. Silverthorn, reaching his room in an hour after Vibbard had left it, was not at first surprised at his absence. Afterward he grew anxious; he went out, ran all the way to Winwood's house, and came back, hoping to find that his friend had returned while he was searching for him. He sat down and waited; he kept awake very late; his head grew heavy, and he fell asleep in his chair, dreaming with a dull sense of pain, and also of excitement, about his new access of comparative wealth.

A heavy step and the turning of the door-knob awoke him. Moonlight came in at the window—pale, for the dawn was breaking—and his lamp still flickered on the table. Streaked with these conflicting glimmers, Vibbard stood before him,—his clothes torn, his hat gone, his face pale and fierce.

"What have you been doing?" asked Silverthorn wearily, and without surprise, for he was too much dazed.

"You—you!" said Vibbard, hoarsely, pointing sharply at him, as if his livid gaze was not enough. "You have been taking her from me!"

"Ida?" queried Silverthorn, with what seemed to the other to be a laughing sneer.

"Are you shameless?" demanded Vibbard. "Why don't you lie down there and ask me to forgive you for demanding so little? I've no doubt you are sorry that you couldn't get the whole of my money! But I suppose you were afraid you wouldn't receive even the half, if you told me beforehand what you meant to do."

Silverthorn was numb from sleeping in a cramped posture and without covering; but a deeper chill shook him at these words. He tried to get up, but felt too weak, and had to abandon it. He shivered heavily. Then he put his hand carefully into the breast of his coat, and after a moment drew out his pocket-book.

"Here it is," said he, very quietly. "I came home intending to give you back your money, but you were not here."

"You expect me to believe that?" retorted Vibbard, scornfully, "when I know that you went from here after receiving the check, and—ah! I couldn't have believed it, if I hadn't heard—"

"You overheard us, then? You came, though I warned you not to? And what did you hear?" Silverthorn's lips certainly curled with contempt now.

Vibbard answered: "I heard you pleading with Ida to promise herself to you."

"That's a lie," said Silverthorn, calmly.

"Didn't you say to her, 'You have never yet fully engaged yourself to me?' Weren't you pleading?"

"Yes. I was begging that she would forget all the words of love I had ever spoken, and listen to you when you should come to tell her your story."

Vibbard's head bowed itself in humiliation and wonder. He came forward two or three steps, and sank into a chair.

"Is this possible?" he inquired, at last.

"And you, too, had loved her!"

Silverthorn vouchsafed no reply.

Vibbard, struggling with remorse, uncertainty, and a dimly returning hope, brought himself to speak once more, hesitatingly.

"What did she say?"

"At first she would not tolerate my proposal. I saw there was a conflict in her mind. Something warned me what it was, yet I could not help fancying that she might really be unwilling to give me up. So then I said I had made up my mind any way, as things stood, to return you your money. I—forgive me, Bill, but it was not treachery to you—only justice to all—I asked her if she would wish to marry me as I was, poor and without a future."

"And she—" asked Vibbard, trembling. "What did she say?"

Silverthorn let the pocket-book fall, and buried his face in his hands. It was answer enough for his friend.

Vibbard came over and knelt beside him, and tried to rouse him. He stroked his pale brown hair, and called him repeatedly "Dear old boy."

"Poor Thorny, I wish I could do something for you," he said, gently. "Are you sure you understood her?"

The other suddenly looked up.

"Don't blame her, Bill," he said, beseechingly. "Don't let it hurt your love for her. There was nothing mercenary. She hesitated a moment—and then I saw that it had all been a dream of the impossible. I had always associated this money with myself. It turned back the whole current of her ideas, and upset everything, when I separated myself from it. All the plans of going away—all that life I had talked of—had to be scattered to the winds in a moment. She did not love me enough, for myself alone!"

"Poor Thorny!" again murmured his friend.

* * * * *

Love, amid all its other resemblances, is like the spirit of battle. It fires men to press on toward the goal, even though a brother by their side, pushing in the same direction, should fall with a mortal wound. And the fighter goes on, to wed with victory, while his brother lies dead far behind cheated of his bride.

Vibbard offered himself to Ida the next day. It was a strange and distressful wooing; but she could not deny that, in a way unknown to herself till now, she had loved Vibbard from the beginning, more than his friend. In her semi-engagement with Silverthorn, she had probably been loving Vibbard through his friend. But when the strong man, who had gained a place in the world for her sake, returned and placed his heart before her, she could no longer make a mistake.

Silverthorn would not keep the money, neither could his friend persuade him to come and take a share in his business. He would not leave Stansby. Where he had first seen Ida, there he resolved to dwell, with the memory of her.

When I saw him again, and he told me of this crisis, he said:

"I am not 'poor Thorny,' as Vibbard called me; for now I have a friendship that will last me through life. It has stood the test of money, and hate, and love, and it is stronger than them all."



POOR OGLA-MOGA.

BY DAVID D. LLOYD.

Harper's Magazine, April, 1882.

I.

It was a great day when Miss Slopham, so many years conspicuous in our best society, discovered the North American Indian—not for the Indian, perhaps, but certainly for Miss Slopham. Envious and slanderous tongues said that Miss Slopham was afflicted with an ambition. She wanted a mission—not a foreign mission, in any sense of the words. She was debarred from one kind by her sex, and the other involved the possibility of crocodiles and yellow fever, not to mention the chance of being sacrificed to some ugly heathen god. She could not paint, or write, or sing. The stage had never offered any attractions to her, for various reasons, one of which was, so said the same untrustworthy authority, that she had never offered any attractions to the stage. She was tall and spare, and of a dry and autumnal aspect. She wanted fame, but she wanted it respectable. Therefore it was, said gossip, that this excellent woman turned to philanthropy. Even here her fate was against her. If she had not been a woman, she would have mourned the ill-luck that brought her into the world rather late for the anti-slavery agitation. The malicious rumor, by-the-way, which declared that she wore a bib and tucker at the time of Jackson's war with the United States Bank, was wickedly false. Miss Slopham tried tenement-house reform, but fled before the smells. She had a little practice in the hospitals and orphan asylums, but found the sphere too contracted. She felt that she needed the stimulus of public approval. She was almost in despair, when, as if by accident, her eye lighted on the North American Indian. For centuries he had been chasing the buffalo and the white man, shooting and being shot, taking up the tomahawk and perishing by the rifle, robbing and being robbed, massacring and pillaging whenever massacre and pillage suited his grim humor, and being all this while alternately pampered and starved, cajoled and cheated, by a government which at the same time that it furnished him with guns for shooting its own soldiers, often failed to fulfil the solemn treaties it had made with him.

He had been having this lively and variegated experience for a century or so, without any intimation, prophetic or present, of Miss Slopham's existence, when that lady discovered him, and when that happened she exclaimed: "He is mine!" Hers, she meant, for the purposes of philanthropy. Wicked tongues had suggested that in Miss Slopham's philanthropy distance lent enchantment to the view.

Only a day or two later, and before she had had time to form any plans, the postman brought a letter with the postmark of St. Louis. It read as follows:

"ST. LOUIS, October 20, 1881.

"MY DEAR MISS SLOPHAM,—I want to make an appeal to your benevolence, which I know never fails in case of need. There is in this city at this moment, in hiding, at the house of one of our friends, a poor persecuted Kickapoo. A Kickapoo is an Indian, you know. He has fled from his reservation because, he says, he cannot endure any longer the persecutions and wrongs he has received at the hands of the agent who has charge of the tribe. This agent must be a very bad man. Poor Ogla-Moga—that is his name; it means Young-man-who-digs-up-seed-potatoes-and-feeds-them-to-his-pony, he says, but we call him by his Indian name because it's so much prettier—says that this agent has repeatedly refused to let them go hunting, which is the only amusement the poor things have, on the miserable pretext that the hay must be got in; and he once took away the gun of one of the Kickapoos because he pretended to believe that the man had shot a settler, whereas there was no proof of it at all, except, Ogla-Moga says, that the man died soon after the gun went off. Ogla-Moga says nothing wounds the self-respect of an Indian so deeply as to take his gun away from him, and we have all felt a great deal of sympathy with that poor insulted Kickapoo. Isn't it a shame that a great government should deliberately and maliciously oppress these unfortunate and high-spirited people?

"But I had almost forgotten what it was that I had to ask. Poor dear Ogla-Moga—he is so quiet and gentle and sad that we have all really grown fond of him—says that it won't be safe for him to stay here: the officers will soon be after him for having left his reservation. Now we have arranged to send him eastward with Mr. Michst. He is the new lecturer before our Ethical Circle, which meets every Sunday in Azure Hall. I read a paper there last Sunday, called, 'Is there Anything?' which Mr. Michst says contains the most triumphant series of negations he ever heard. He says I completely disprove the existence of everything, including many things we all know to be true. My friends in the Circle are begging me to publish it, and I think of doing so, under the title of 'The Everlasting No Indeed.'

"But I am wandering again. When Mr. Michst brings Ogla-Moga to you, can't you get him shelter somewhere? Mr. Michst thinks of taking him on to Washington, so that he may lay the whole matter before the President. We have all been studying this Indian question for the last ten days, and we are convinced that the whole trouble is that the President doesn't understand it. Mr. Michst feels sure that if the President will give him, say, three days of his time, he can make it perfectly clear to him. Please answer by telegraph.

"Your friend, "CLARA O. VERRAUGHT."

Now Miss Slopham lived in a neat and aesthetic apartment in a fashionable apartment-house, and it might have been supposed that she was hardly prepared to set up an asylum for fugitive Kickapoos. But that intrepid woman never faltered. Her answer went whirling by wire before she had paused to think of the ways and means of caring for poor Ogla-Moga.

"October 23.

"Miss Clara O. Verraught, St. Louis, Missouri:

"Let him come at once, and send his Indian costumes with him. I have a special reason for this request.

"AMELIA SLOPHAM."

Miss Slopham formed a plan. What it was will presently appear.

II.

Not many mornings after, there was the sound of a strange footstep in Miss Slopham's kitchen, and Bridget emitted a half-shriek. "Mither of Moses! what's that?" It was Ogla-Moga, who had just arrived. His costume was an extraordinary mixture of blanket and trousers and coat, hardly consistent with the requirements of civilization. A broad slouched hat hid his coarse black locks, and cast a friendly shadow over his piercing eyes and swarthy face.

"Here, Bridget," said Miss Slopham, "get some breakfast for this—a—a—gentleman at once." Miss Slopham was not accustomed to meeting Indians in a social way. She hardly knew whether to call him chief; she thought wildly for a moment of sheik; but compromised upon gentleman.

To Bridget's astonishment, her mistress hovered about while the strange dark man gobbled his food and glared upon her with his wild eyes. Still another stranger had come in with them; but this one wore the garments of civilization as if he were used to them. He was a bald young man—in fact, one of the baldest young men that ever was seen. He seemed to be bald all over. He had no ascertainable eyebrows, or eyelashes, or hair, and this, with his bright, fresh complexion and his big spectacles, gave him a very unworldly appearance.

"Oh, Miss Slobham," he said, "I haf been so much mofed wid de story of dis poor Indian! He iss a shild of nature. He hass been so quiet, and so goot and so sad! I haf talked to him by de hour, and he hass not interroopted me vonce. I haf exblained to him the viewss of our Ettical Surkle upon de future state, and he hass listened so attentifely, and ven I haf looked at him I haf found dat he wass asleep. Oh, his sleep wass so benign! I haf vept; I could not hellp it. He iss a shild of nature;" and good Mr. Michst wiped a tear from his eye.

"Good! good!" grunted Ogla-Moga, as he put a block of beefsteak in his mouth without the formality of a fork.

"He hass eaten all de vay from St. Louis to here, and he never seem to haf enough," said Mr. Michst, in awe, looking at Ogla-Moga very much as one might at the phenomenon of a menagerie.

"Poor creatures! I've often heard that their supplies were sometimes cut off for months at a time. I suppose this is a case of that kind. Ogla-Moga," said Miss Slopham, addressing him with her most reassuring and eleemosynary smile, "does the government feed you often, you—a—poor Indians?"

"Not had—what you call it?—round meal—no, square meal," the Indian replied, making an explanatory parallelogram with his hands, "in four moons."

"Moonss?—moonss? What does he mean by moonss?"

Before the lady had time to make sure of her own knowledge on the subject, Ogla-Moga began a wild and mysterious pantomime, which caused Bridget, who had her eye steadily on the strange monster, and kept close to the window as an avenue of desperate retreat, to exclaim: "Mither of Moses! what's the baste going to do?" Ogla-Moga was throwing his arm up in the air with a fierce swing, suddenly crooking his elbow, and bringing his closed hand to his mouth, while he rolled his eyes around the room with a melodramatic ferocity, evidently intended to convey the idea of extreme rapture.

"Poor Ogla-Moga!" said Miss Slopham; "he wants something to drink. Give him a glass of ice-water, Bridget, and have it perfectly clear. It may remind him of the water he used to drink from the brooks of his far-off forest home;" and here Miss Slopham, in her turn, wiped a tear from her eye. Indeed, the crystal particle was apparently so surprised to find itself on the good lady's cheek that it seemed to disappear of its own accord.

Ogla-Moga looked at the innocent glass of Croton that was handed him with undisguised disdain; but he swallowed his thoughts, whatever they were, with the water, and signified that his meal was ended.

And now for the first time the extent of the task she had undertaken became apparent to Miss Slopham. What was to be done with this terrible infant from the prairies during the week of seclusion that her plan made necessary? She lived alone, except for the companionship of Bridget, and it was asking a good deal of a timid and shrinking nature like Miss Slopham's to take into her little household a gentleman who rolled his eyes in such an alarming manner. Then, too, there were the proprieties, against which sins could not be committed even in the name of reform. Yet what else was there to be done? He could not be sent to a hotel: that meant publicity, and perhaps recapture by the emissaries of a cruel and unsympathetic government. She could not ask a friend to take him in. He could not be sent anywhere without danger. Finally a brilliant thought struck her just as she was on the verge of distraction, with Ogla-Moga's big eyes fastened on her all the while. There was the janitor of the apartment-house. He might easily be induced to take a boarder, and he would be discreet. Ogla-Moga could be kept in retirement in his rooms. She would act at once upon the idea. And yet what was she to say? How was she to account for the presence of this stranger in her little household? Ah! he needed clothes. His present costume was an impossible one. She would begin with this subject with the janitor's wife, and feel her way gradually. So she made her way to the top of the house.

It would be hard to say who was in the greatest flutter when the janitor's door was opened upon her, Miss Slopham, whose maiden bosom was agitated with strange embarrassments, or Mrs. Doherty, who was not accustomed to receive calls from the ladies of the house. The former was so confused that she walked against a chair and knocked it over, gave a little scream, and stepped on the baby, which was sprawling on the floor, whereat the baby screamed, and she screamed, and Mrs. Doherty screamed—all of which did not tend to diminish the mental excitement of either of the ladies, especially as Mrs. Doherty had up to that moment been trying to dust off a chair with one hand while she held another baby with the other arm, and motioned with her head to a little girl—or perhaps she ought to be called a baby—who had charge of still two other babies, to take them out of the room. Poor Miss Slopham thought she had never seen so many babies in her life before, and the spectacle somehow only increased her bewilderment. So perhaps it was not to be wondered at that when she had sunk into a chair she should begin the conversation with the extraordinary and utterly unprecedented question:

"Oh, Mrs. Doherty, could you—a—could you—a—lend me—a—a pair of pantaloons?"

"A pair of what, Miss Slopham?" said the astounded Mrs. Doherty, in a low voice which expressed both the proper deference of the janitor's wife and the natural amazement of the woman.

"Oh, of course, I—I didn't mean to say that," poor Miss Slopham stammered, in hopeless embarrassment. "The fact is, there's a gentleman down-stairs—a friend of mine, you know—he has no home, and very few clothes—and I want to get you to help me. He's down-stairs now, and he's going to stay—I don't see how I am going to help it—and I must get a suit of clothes for him this afternoon. I suppose you think this is all very queer," said the poor lady in breathless confusion, with a little nervous laugh, thinking to herself at the same time that it certainly was very queer.

"I'm not at all sure that I understand ye, ma'am," said the bewildered woman, looking about her in an alarmed sort of way, as if she wondered whether Miss Slopham was quite a safe woman to be alone with.

"Oh, how can I explain it?" that lady cried, desperately. "Well," she said, drawing a long breath, "let's begin at the beginning. Of course you understand that I don't want any such clothes for myself?"

"No, ma'am, I suppose not," murmured Mrs. Doherty, evidently suspecting that the other was slightly insane.

"Well, I wanted to ask you about them, because I thought your husband might have some clothes he did not want. I'd pay him a good price for them, and they needn't be very good"—and again Miss Slopham struck that terrible snag of the conversation—"I want them for a gentleman who's got into trouble; I can't tell you what it is, but he's got to keep out of the way of people. And the thing I wanted to ask you most, Mrs. Doherty," she said, in a pleading voice, conscious that she was twisting it all into a sad snarl, "was whether I couldn't get you and Mr. Doherty to take him to board up here with you for a while," and here the good lady sighed a sigh of relief in spite of her misery and confusion. She had at last let the cat out of the bag.

Mrs. Doherty's eyes were growing very large. The man needed new clothes; must have them that afternoon; there was a reason for his keeping out of the way; Miss Slopham would not tell what it was; the man had got into trouble. The idea grew bigger and bigger in Mrs. Doherty's mind, until at last it burst out with,

"But is it a jail-bird ye've got there, ma'am?"

"No, no," cried Miss Slopham, badly frightened in her turn at the other's fear. "How could you think such a thing? He's a gentleman, you know; quite an important man where he comes from. There are reasons why I can't tell you who he is. He doesn't want anybody to know it either. But a jail-bird! why, wait till you see him, Mrs. Doherty. He looks so gentle, and he's really handsome."

Mrs. Doherty looked at Miss Slopham. Miss Slopham was a wealthy tenant, and paid a large rent, and Mrs. Doherty was only the janitor's wife. But, after all, Mrs. Doherty was a woman, and Miss Slopham was a woman also, and Mrs. Doherty looked at Miss Slopham in the way in which only a woman can look at another woman; looked at her gray and withered curls, and at her face, which had never, in the spring-time of Miss Slopham's youth, been the kind of face which painters celebrate and poets embalm in verse, and said nothing. What she may have thought, or whether she thought anything, was a matter of little consequence, for when the richer lady came to mention the terms at which she rated the hospitality of the Doherty household, Mrs. Doherty showed a positive anxiety to oblige her, and even murmured something about being glad to do anything in their power for such a kind lady.

Now began a week of agony for Miss Slopham. Ogla-Moga was duly installed in the Doherty apartment, and duly invested with a suit of Mr. Doherty's clothes. But the taste for roving was still strong upon him. The inner life of an apartment-house seemed to arouse all his savage curiosity, and the fact that the entrance to every apartment looked like the entrance to every other apartment gave rise to some disagreeable complications. In the second floor front, for example, a skirmish with a view to matrimony had long been in progress between the daughter of the family, Miss Josephine Ayr, and Mr. Margent, of the young and prosperous stock-broking firm of Margent & Bar, and the decisive engagement was plainly near at hand. The progress of the acquaintanceship had been watched with an interest not altogether friendly by the second floor back, while Miss Slopham had deigned to catch such neutral and impartial glimpses of it as she could over the stairs from the third floor front. In fact, the second floor back, who bore the name of Pound, had in an unguarded moment introduced Mr. Margent to the second floor front, and had then in silent rage seen him borne away from them by Miss Josephine. Perhaps this was to be accounted for by the fact that the two marriageable daughters in the second floor back had been offered, to use the coarse expression of the young stock-broker, "with no takers" for a series of years, and perhaps by the bold and shocking manners of Miss Josephine, which were often the subject of remark in the Pound household, where the opinion was frequently heard that it was difficult to understand how old Mrs. Ayr could keep so cheerful with a daughter whose behavior was the scandal of all her acquaintances. By one of those unaccountable coincidences which will occur in apartment-houses, the remarks of the Ayrs about the Pounds were repeated to the Pounds, while at the same time the remarks of the Pounds about the Ayrs were repeated to the Ayrs, the result being that Miss Josephine said that it must be a great satisfaction to Mrs. Pound to feel that she would probably always have her daughters with her, especially as they were already of an age to have many tastes in common with her, and the Misses Pound said that it was truly painful to see people who had once been very wealthy reduced in circumstances, like the Ayrs, for example, and that both families were carefully polite when they met.

Now Mr. Margent was thought to be on the point of declaring himself, and when he appeared one afternoon his intentions were obvious. He was, if possible, more scrupulously dressed than ever. His clothes, trimly cut in the latest style, were new and spotless. His plump, not to say puffy, face, of an overfed white, was as smooth-shaven as ever. His plentiful watch-chain and his elegant shoes and his expensive stockings were, if possible, more plentiful and elegant and expensive than ever. When Miss Josephine appeared in a fresh costume, his small gray eyes revolved about her with an appearance of sluggish satisfaction which for him was almost animation.

"Business," said he—"business's been splendid this year. Tip-top. C. B. & Q. brought us in ten thousand at one clip the other day. Fact;" and Mr. Margent paused for a fresh supply of ideas.

"How nice that is!" said Miss Josephine, gently, with a shade of tender appreciation in her voice.

"But it costs a dreadful deal to live. We all live at hotels, you know—all the boys. And then a fellow has to have his cab: all the boys have cabs. And then we've got to have clothes. But I'm economizing on that. I cut myself down to twenty suits last year. I don't see any use of a fellow's having more than twenty suits;" and Mr. Margent paused again, intellectually out of breath.

"I think you're a very extravagant creature," said the charming Miss Josephine, playfully shaking her finger at him. "If you had a wife to take care of you, you wouldn't be allowed to spend so much money."

"Well, do you know, I've been thinking of getting married. I was talking with the boys about it the other day. I said I believed a man could support a wife on seven thousand a year—keeping a fellow's cab, and staying at the hotel, you know, and all that sort of thing"—he hastened to add, with a little anxiety in his voice. "The boys bet I couldn't, and I bet I could, and I believe it was then that I really made up my mind to get married. Don't you believe it could be done on that?" Mr. Margent found himself the subject of a suffusion of ideas, and had the appearance of being surprised at his own gifts.

Miss Josephine was of the opinion, in a low voice, and with an expression of intense interest in the lace in her sleeve, that it could be done for that.

"Well, now," said the ardent youth, moving over to the sofa where she was sitting, and settling himself down beside her, "why shouldn't we get married? You're just the kind of girl I like—tip-top, you know. I like a girl with style about her. Come, say yes." And here the crude outlines of something like a joke, for the first time in Mr. Margent's history, began to be visible to him in the dim recesses of his obese mind. "Let's make it buyer sixty days," and he laughed until his small eyes almost closed.

"And what's buyer sixty days, you horrid man?"

"Why, don't you know that? I should have thought you'd know that. It's when the buyer has sixty days to call for the stock. Let's get married in sixty days, and we'll invite all the boys."

Poor Miss Josephine! Was this her romance? She had not counted on much—but was this all? She was a sensible and practical girl, however, and the instructions of an excellent mother had not been lost upon her. She yielded herself to the embrace of this winsome wooer, her head drooped upon his shoulder, and he was just about to collect the dividend of a kiss, when the hall door swung open with a crash, and no other than Ogla-Moga plunged into the room, with a bundle intended for Miss Slopham. It was Ogla-Moga's unfortunate peculiarity that all floors were alike to him, and likewise all interiors. He stood in the dark hallway glaring with amazement upon the bewildered couple. Miss Josephine screamed, and Mr. Margent swore with actual animation. Ogla-Moga grew still more excited. He had learned enough of civilized life to know that strangers and intruders were objects of suspicion.

"G'out! g'out!" he roared, with his voice at prairie pitch. "G'out! or I put you out!"

Miss Josephine screamed again; her estimable mother rushed in by the door leading to the bedrooms, followed by three children, all beside themselves with curiosity and wonder, and Mr. Ayr himself appeared in the doorway leading to the dining-room, in a state of respectable consternation; and last of all appeared the heads of the two Misses Pound in the hallway outside, uttering simultaneously, with many deprecatory little bobs, the same words, to the effect that they thought perhaps some one was hurt, all of which only increased the wrath of Ogla-Moga, more than ever convinced that something was wrong.

"You no belong here!" he cried, swinging his arms wildly about. "This wigwam belongs gray squaw!"

Miss Josephine always persisted in believing that Ogla-Moga had first gone to the Pound door, and that the Misses Pound, who knew only too well that Mr. Margent was calling upon her, had sent him to the other. But if it were true, she had a real woman's revenge. She had no sooner descried them in the doorway than with wonderful presence of mind she fainted straight into Mr. Margent's arms, much to that gentleman's astonishment. It was a master-stroke. The Misses Pound disappeared as suddenly as if they had been pictures from a magic lantern, and had been slid off the screen. Mrs. Ayr at once looked more cheerful, and Mr. Ayr began an insane effort to remove Ogla-Moga from the premises, in which it would have gone ill with him had it not been for a sudden vision of curl-papers and gray hair behind the Indian. His name was called in a voice he was accustomed to hear, he turned away, the door was banged to upon his heels, and the tableau closed.

The very next day Mrs. Gottom of the third floor back was to give a dinner party to the distinguished Italian musician, Signor Barbazzo. Mrs. Gottom was known among the irreverent young men of her acquaintance as "the menagerie woman." Her favorite exclamation was, "I must have a fresh lion," and visitors to her apartment were always sure of beholding the latest leonine specimens landed on these shores. Signor Barbazzo's freshness made him a rarus leo. He was famous, and all the world was waiting for him, but he had not yet appeared in public. As a cruel fate would have it, Mrs. Gottom fell sick the very day set for the dinner, and was compelled to resign her place as hostess to her pretty and simple-hearted niece, Miss Tristan, who had never seen Signor Barbazzo. As fate would also have it, that gentleman himself fell sick, and being in the habit of doing as he pleased among the barbarians of the West, sent no excuses. As fate would still have it, Ogla-Moga, taking the wrong door as usual, strolled into Mrs. Gottom's drawing-room, which happened to be empty, about an hour before dinner, settled himself in a luxurious arm-chair in the middle of the room, and—fell asleep. Half an hour later, pretty Miss Tristan came rustling into the room with her coolest and sweetest dress on. She gave a start of surprise when she saw a man there, stepped forward, thinking that it was the distinguished guest himself, stopped again, seeing that he was fast asleep, and then taking a swift woman's glance at him, sped softly out of the room.

"Aunty, what do you think?" said she, breathlessly, running into that lady's room. "Signor Barbazzo is in the parlor, sound asleep in the big chair!"

"What are you saying, child? Signor Barbazzo in the parlor asleep! Nonsense!"

"But it must be he. Who else can it be? Hasn't he got long black hair?"

"Yes. And no beard or mustache? and a swarthy complexion?"

"Yes, yes."

"Well," said the aunt, wearily, "I suppose he has come in tired. Doing what he pleases, as they all do. But he mustn't be disturbed, on any account. I wish I was there to manage him. The other day at Mrs. Vicar's he went away in the middle of the dinner because the macaroni wasn't right. He'll do something dreadful, I suppose. Now be sure. Don't begin by making him cross. So if he should sleep an hour, keep the people quiet at all hazards, and let him sleep two hours if he wants to."

Poor Miss Tristan went back to the post of duty oppressed with a great responsibility. The servant was stationed at the door to prevent any ringing of the bell, and as the guests came in one by one, they were warned in whispers not to rouse the sleeping lion. Very soon Mrs. Gottom's drawing-room presented a striking example of the homage due to genius. The guests stood about in little groups, conversing in the most timid whispers, and even making signs take the place of language, glancing every moment at the supposed great man in the chair, who had his legs stretched out before him, his head thrown back, and was, if it must be confessed, snoring audibly, not to say visibly. There was Professor Phyle, the celebrated phrenologist—a tall man, with a gaunt face and long gray hair. He had been a lion once, but was now out of date. There were also present Mrs. Blenkin, a comparatively new soprano, having seen only two seasons; Lieutenant Wray, a lion just caught, or rather polar bear, having only then returned from a trip to the arctic regions, in which his ship had covered itself with glory; a young lady who had written a novel, and another who had written a poem, both unpublished, but both understood to be of a mysterious excellence; and others not necessary to mention. Even for these great people the chance to see a genius off his guard was not to be resisted. He seemed to be so soundly asleep that they might safely approach him. They tiptoed toward him, and hovered about him, holding their breath meanwhile. The ladies gazed at him longest, and seemed best satisfied with their inspection, with the exception of Professor Phyle, who was in raptures.

"I have never," said he, in a blood-curdling whisper, and waving his hand toward the unconscious Ogla-Moga, while the guests gathered about to hear what his verdict would be, "seen a more distinctly musical face. It is remarkable. It ought to convert any skeptic to phrenology. The development of what we phrenologists call, for the sake of convenience, the organs of tune and time—just over and near the side of the eye—the fulness of the eyes, the exquisite mobility of the mouth, are fairly abno-or-r-mal," and here the learned professor's whisper made one's flesh creep. "And I have no doubt, if I could examine the organs which are concealed by those luxuriant locks"—and now the professor smiled his society smile, and his fingers rayed out toward the sleeping Indian's head in a nervous, eager way—"that I should find ideality, adhesiveness, time, hope, veneration, and so on, strongly developed, as in the case of the great composers." The ladies nodded at each other, and drew long breaths of astonishment.

"I am glad," continued the professor, in his most approving manner, "that this little social incident"—but now the smile was more labored, and his eyebrows went up with less ease than usual, for, to tell the truth, the professor, like the rest of the company, was getting a little hungry—"should have given us an opportunity to make a scientific proof of his great genius."

Meanwhile the lieutenant, who was a practical person, if he was a lion, bent toward the still snoring Ogla-Moga with his eyeglass.

"It's a singular thing," said he, coming back, "but the face doesn't seem at all Italian to me. It's more like an Indian's face than that of any civilized man I ever saw."

There was an indignant whisper of dissent all about.

"How can you say so?" responded the professor. "There are centuries of culture and refinement in that face—the stern old Roman cast softened and modified by generation after generation of the artistic training and cultivation of modern Italy. I would venture to assert from this mere glance at his face that his fathers before him for a long way back were musicians, and I would pick him out from a crowd on Broadway as a genius in music. Why," said the professor, with as much of a flourish as he could get into a whisper, "his very nostrils convict him."

It must be said that at that particular moment Ogla-Moga's nostrils were convicting him of a genius for music of a most discordant kind. He was snoring a profound snore whose chords could not be found in Beethoven or Rossini, nor even in Liszt or Wagner. Just as the professor finished his eulogy, there came a terrific rumble and rattle, and the Indian snored so loud that he fairly woke himself up. He raised himself up in the chair and looked about in speechless amazement. No one spoke. All were waiting, with the deference due to genius, to see what the great man would do, and were, at the same time, if it must be confessed, a little overcome with the novelty of the situation. His black eye ran quickly from one to the other, when it fell upon the uniform of Lieutenant Wray, assumed on that occasion by the express wish of his hostess. At that sight, which must have recalled to Ogla-Moga's mind the power and authority of the Government of the United States, a look of terror blanched his face, and darting up, he fled through the open door into the hall, and disappeared, leaving behind him the impression that the eccentricity of distinguished Italian musicians is past finding out.

III.

Of many other of the deeds of Ogla-Moga—of how he imprisoned three estimable old ladies in the elevator, and before they were released had frightened them into hysterics; of how he at first took the milkman to be a brother Indian, and regularly for a time answered his morning howl with a terrifying war-whoop; of how he kept the house in turmoil by ringing an electric bell wherever he could find one, in doing which he took a childish delight—there is no need to speak here. Happily for Miss Slopham, it so came about that Ogla-Moga was rescued from all his scrapes without the responsibility for him being traced to her, and without her secret being discovered, although many complaints poured into the office of the carelessness by which strange and dreadful men were allowed to get into the house—a subject, however, on which the landlord could never get any satisfactory information from Mr. Doherty. Happily for Miss Slopham again, the week of trial was almost ended. She had issued invitations to a reception for a Thursday evening, at which she caused it to be understood a paper would be read upon an important reform question. Many of her friends in the apartment-house were included in the bidding to this feast of reason. The evening had arrived, and she was seated in her reception-room, talking to the first-comer—a very tall and grave gentleman with solemn long hair. This was Mr. Blagg, the well-known newspaper correspondent. He was a most ingenious and laborious writer. Having accumulated a certain amount of information, he wrote it out on Monday to a paper in the far West, and on Tuesday to another paper in the far East, varying the mixture somewhat, and on Wednesday varying it again to a paper in the North, and on Thursday to a paper in the South, giving the kaleidoscope of gossip still another shake. If it be true that a stamp of the foot displaces every atom of the globe, and that a word, once spoken, never ceases to reverberate through the universe, the intellectual atmosphere must have been disorganized with the clash and confusion of Mr. Blagg's contributions to contemporary history. But Mr. Blagg was also a general literary workman. He took contracts to write articles, pamphlets, and books, as a lawyer takes cases—not on their merits, but for the fee. If it must be admitted, he had written Miss Slopham's paper on the wrongs of the Indian, for a pecuniary compensation, for that lady was far from being a literary person.

"Oh, it is so strong, Mr. Blagg," she was saying, "so noble, and the array of facts is so overwhelming! Where did you get them? Oh, what a power your pen is!"

"Such as it is, Miss Slopham, it is always at your service;" and Mr. Blagg closed his eyes in a faint ecstasy. Unlike literary persons as a class, he was not reluctant to be openly appreciated. "As for the facts," he continued, "they were easily secured. I had occasion to write another article on the Indian question, taking an exactly opposite view, and I found that many of the facts, in the hands of a skilful artist, could be used in both articles. I have often found that plan beneficial. It economizes labor, gives exercise to all the intellectual faculties, and, where one can secure orders for a brace of documents to contradict each other, is, I may say"—and here Mr. Blagg coughed a little cough—"pleasant to the pocket."

"But I want your help still further, dear Mr. Blagg. We must make this poor Indian's cause our own. We must agitate the matter. I hope that when this paper has been read to-night" (and Miss Slopham looked down at the roll in her lap), "you will be willing to write something about it to your papers. I want the influence of your pen to rouse the country."

"I'll do what my pen enables me to do, Miss Slopham; and I will say that I think it is not without its effect," replied Mr. Blagg, with the conscious pride of a man who knew that public opinion would never get itself properly moulded without his help.

"It will be painful for us, of course, to be involved in anything like notoriety, but" (and now a shade of lofty resignation passed over the lady's face), "we must bear it for the sake of the cause." Miss Slopham already called it "the cause."

But the company had begun to assemble. Mr. Michst was there, having deprived the Ethical Circle of the benefit of his ministrations for an entire week in order to be present. Mr. and Mrs. Ayr were there, with Miss Josephine and her lover, who was heard to remark that this would be "great larks to tell the boys." The Misses Pound were also there, conveying in their looks their profound pity for a young man so sadly insnared. Mrs. Gottom was there, with her pretty niece, who looked, as really pretty girls always do, prettier than ever. Professor Phyle was there, and Mrs. Blenkin. But Lieutenant Wray had not been able to accept Miss Slopham's invitation. There were besides a considerable number of persons of limited celebrity, most of them fierce hobby riders, who, instead of leaving those unruly animals at home in their luxurious stalls, or outside of their friends' houses, as the instinct of politeness might have suggested, rode them boldly into the parlors of the best society, and ran them at full gallop into the midst of any conversation, so that often no sound could be heard but the noise of their hoofs. Of the number and kind of these hobbies there is no need here to speak, but when there were so many gathered into a single place, the neighing and snorting, the champing of conversational bits, and the pounding of huge and heavy feet were curious to behold and to hear.

And Ogla-Moga? Now the native costumes were coming into play, and Miss Slopham's long martyrdom was to have its reward. She had conveyed to the Indian her desire that he should discard the garments of civilization, and array himself in those of his pristine barbarity. Remembering also that an Indian toilet is not complete without a good deal of decorative art, she lent him a collection of artists' materials kept for purposes of aesthetic display, and explained to him how to use them. The result was that when he emerged he was a sight to strike terror into any heart. His robes became him fiercely, and the blazonry of his colors even frightened her a little. She began to wonder whether, after all, Indian reform might not be a dangerous pursuit. But all this was accomplished, in her haste, three hours before the time of the reception. What was to be done with him in the mean time? He must needs sit and wait, like the ladies in the olden time who on the occasion of some great fete were obliged, through the multiplicity of the hair-dresser's engagements, to pass under his hands early in the morning, perhaps, and then to sit like statues all day lest the lofty and beautiful structure on their heads should tumble into ruins. But how restrain him—this untutored Kickapoo? In her desperation a wild and wonderful scheme occurred to her. He had become savagely fond of raspberry jam. She would offer him a bribe of an unlimited quantity of this delicacy to go into some room and stay there, and once there, she would quietly lock the door. She canvassed in her mind all the rooms in her little box of a home. There was one, convenient, appropriate, and secure—the store-room. No sooner said than done. To see this fierce-looking Kickapoo clad in robes of savagery, and gleaming in all the paint of the war-path, seated on Miss Slopham's refrigerator, and looking about on either side with barbaric curiosity at her array of shelves of jars and bottles, while he ate raspberry jam out of a rare and elegant saucer with an exquisite silver spoon, might have seemed a ludicrous spectacle to anybody less austere than Miss Slopham. But she only gave a sigh of relief, and softly turned the key, and went away to prepare for her guests. Ogla-Moga did not miss her. He finished the saucer of jam, and finished the jar, and then began explorations. He found various relishes, condiments, and preserves, and what not, all of which he tasted, some of which he enjoyed, and some of which he seemed to objurgate in choice Kickapoo. At last—for his terrific figure was now erect on the refrigerator—he saw something that sent a gleam of joy across his fiery face. It was a dark bottle that bore an inscription which he could not read, "S. O. P. Brandy." But there is one sense which needs no education. He pulled out the cork, and put the mouth of the bottle to his nostrils; then he smiled grimly, and straightway sat down on the refrigerator.

The time had arrived for Miss Slopham to read her paper. Mr. Michst claimed the attention of the company by tapping on a table with a paper-knife. "Laties and shentlemen," said he, "we haf come here dis efening as drue philossophers—not for our own selfish bleasure enti-er-lee, but"—Mr. Margent looked uneasy, and fidgeted in his chair—"in order to hellp in de solution of one of de great questions of de day—de Indian question. I haf met some off dese obbressed and downdrodden beoble. I know how amiable, how excellent, they are—like little shildren dey haf lissened to me ven I haf talked to dem of de aura of Schrellenbach and de ofersoul—all vunder, and, I know, all pelief. But I vill not take down de time. My young and pyootiful friend, Miss Slobham" (the good, loyal man was sadly near-sighted), "vill read to you, and I belief she vill have some derrible dings to say."

Terrible things indeed! Miss Slopham's manuscript ran with gore—the gore of the red-man always. Massacres, surprises, and butcheries, in which the white man had slaked, only to renew it, his notorious thirst for Indian blood, followed each other across the pages of the paper, leaving each a darkening trail behind. The government of these United States, which, in the inconsistent, uncontinuous, and often bungling way of all governments, has probably tried to do its duty by the Indian—often succeeding only in making its benevolence a source of pauperism, and often betrayed by unfaithful officials and corrupt citizens into shameful acts of bad faith—was portrayed as a huge ogre, a giant Blunderbore, drinking Indian blood from two-quart bowls, and never breakfasting but on Indian baby. Meantime there filed through Miss Slopham's flowing sentences, like a procession of children with banners, the mild and faithful Modoc, the unsophisticated Sioux, the exemplary Pi-Ute, the large-eyed and pensive Pottawattamie, the polished Nez-Perce, the amiable Pawnee, the meek and unobtrusive Ogallala, and the playful Apache. If there ever had been a massacre by Indians, or an act of savage cruelty by other than white men, it was not found necessary for the purposes of this paper to mention it. Perhaps emphasis is indispensable in advocating reforms, and Indian reforms are surely needed. At all events, there was no lack of accentuation in Miss Slopham's paper. The little audience murmured to each other of its literary skill, and noticed that Mr. Blagg, who was a high authority, wore an approving smile.

"And now," she read, as she approached the end of the essay, "we have felt that there could be no better way to enlist the sympathies of practical men and women than to show them one of these unfortunate people as he is at home, in his native dress, in the picturesque pigments which he delights, in his innocent and child-like fancy, to adorn himself with, and to let you see how far he is from being the wretch he is represented to be, how clearly the natural mildness of his disposition, when unvexed by the tyranny of governments, shines through the manly beauty of his countenance. It has so happened that one of these poor creatures has been placed for a time under my charge" (and here a look of dawning suspicion began to appear simultaneously upon the faces of Miss Ayr and Miss Tristan), "and I shall be able to summon him in a few moments into your presence, and beg you to render, in behalf of this simple and suffering race, the kind yet impartial testimony of your own eyes. I ask this because"—

But what was this strange noise in the distance that made Miss Slopham pause in her reading, and sent a pallor across her cheek?—a sound as of the dragging of a heavy body through the private hallway leading from her kitchen—a sound as of a struggle, and of scuffling and heavy breathing, and loud mutterings. It flashed upon her in an instant that she had forgotten the little window in the store-room. Had Ogla-Moga escaped? What had happened?

But she made an effort and resumed: "I ask this because—"

"Mither of Moses! what are ye a-doin'? Let go me hair, or I'll scrame for the perlice;" and forthwith there went up just outside of the drawing-room door a scream in the unmistakable voice of Bridget, which must have reached the traditionally absent policeman, no matter how far he was away.

The company had now started to their feet in astonishment and fright.

"Queltzcoatchstepukulistini!"—or that was what the response sounded like.

Another scream from Bridget.

"Akuishnapaccademipechacquinishcrekepa!"

In another instant an extraordinary group reeled into the doorway—Ogla-Moga, with his robes torn and spattered, his paint smeared out of its original lines and colors, and his face furrowed with scratches inflicted by the hands of Bridget—Ogla-Moga drunk, utterly drunk, and brandishing in the air a glittering carving-knife; and Bridget—alas! drunk too—with her hair in the firm grasp of the Indian, who was pulling her along.

There was a universal shriek of horror. Three of the ladies bolted through the only door which the Indian did not occupy, and which opened into a small bedroom. They frantically pulled it shut, just as three other ladies seized the knob on the outside and tried to pull it open. As luck would have it, Miss Ayr and her mother and Mrs. Blenkin were on the inside, and the two Misses Pound were on the outside—a fact which did not seem to diminish the natural anxiety of the ladies on either side of the door for their personal safety. At all events, the tug of war went on. Mr. Blagg showed extreme terror, and being plainly reduced by the same to a state of utter intellectual confusion and imbecility, made an insane attempt to scale the heights of a large what-not in the corner of the room, which, of course, promptly came over with him, hurling him to the floor with great violence, and falling directly upon him, while it covered his body and the larger part of the floor with the fragments of unprecedented teapots and alleged salad-bowls. Mrs. Gottom and her niece barricaded themselves in the corner with a sofa, and armed themselves with huge photograph albums to be hurled at the enemy; while Professor Phyle, who was a prominent member of the Peace Society, quietly stepped into the window recess, and drew the curtains in defence of his person and his principles.