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OU will observe," said the Rev. Albion Nichols, of Boston, to Mr. Mortimer Brooks, of New York, "that the young girls who wait upon the table here are ladies. Some of them are school-teachers. If you should address them, they would answer you in English fit to be printed."

"These potatoes are not done," observed Mr. Brooks experimentally to the first girl who approached him.

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Them is the donedest there be," answered the girl.

Mr. Brooks turned rather a supercilious smile on his loquacious neighbor and fell to dissecting his beefsteak.

"You selected that girl with malice aforethought," persisted the undaunted clergyman. "Our dear New England

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"Consumption and nasal twang,' Brooks interrupted, while Mr. Nichols took a long draught of ice-water.

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'Yes, perhaps-unhappily," the conciliatory clergyman admitted; "but what I mean to say is that here you have a feeling that you are in America among Americans. Here the spirit of our fathers is still alive, though much weakened by the lapse of time. That's the reason I return here year after year. When my coal-man, without the faintest perception of the difference in our stations, comes up and shakes hands with me, I make a point of returning his grasp cordially. But I presume you do not sympathize with this spirit."

"Oh! yes, I sympathize; but I wash my hands afterward."

Mr. Nichols looked up reproachfully, but could not forbear to smile.

"You are a cynic," he said; "a scoffer." "Not at all," replied his neighbor; "I am a guileless optimist."

Mr. Nichols smiled again, this time incredulously, and drank more ice-wa

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"Fiddle-sticks! Now look at that girl there. Charity, I think, is her name. She is book-keeper, secretary and what not to Mrs. Morgan, who, by the way, is not strong in arithmetic and chirography. Did you ever see a sweeter face than that girl has? How shy and demure and maidenly! demure and maidenly! Why, girls of that type, sir, when once the primness and the cool virginal reserve is conquered, make the loveliest wives and mothers in the world. They are the results of generations of-of

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"Pork and beans," suggested Brooks; "and pie for breakfast."

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'No, sir; they are the results of generations of high thinking and right liv ing, of fear of God, cleanliness, virtue, and prayer."

The girl who furnished the text for these remarks had entered very opportunely, by the door leading from the of fice, and seated herself in the vacant chair next to Brooks. His friend's declamation had naturally aroused his interest in her; and in order to have a chance to observe more closely this epitome of all New England's virtues, he asked her kindly to pass him the casters which were standing in front of her. She was just complying with this request when suddenly he flashed upon her a gaze of deep and serious scrutiny. He was the possessor of a pair of large and

extraordinarily expressive eyes; and the abruptness and solemn intensity of their glance frightened the girl. She gave a start so violent that she dropped the casters into her soup-plate, whence they fell with a crash upon the floor. The unhappy creature, seeing the havoc she had wrought, rose precipitately and ran out of the room. There was a chorus of startled exclamations from the lady boarders; the landlady apologized for the awkwardness of the girl, and declared that she would tolerate her no more in her house. But when the first excitement had subsided, Brooks found the attention of the whole table concentrated upon him. What had he done to Charity to make her behave so shockingly? There was no one who uttered this query, but it was written upon all the curious, amused, or indignant faces that were turned toward the gentleman from New York.

"Those New York men," an elderly Boston spinster was heard to remark, sotto voce, "they are shockingly-well, I won't say what I mean."

She had no idea that the New York man in question rather enjoyed the sensation he was making. He made himself as broad as he could, looked up from his plate now and then with his contemptuous smile, and ate on with a kind of insolent appetite and imperturbable defiance. Before the meal was at an end, he had managed, somehow, without opening his mouth, to make all the ladies at the table his enemies.

II.

It was not the first time in the life of Mortimer Brooks that he made an unfavorable impression. He was a tall, well-grown man with a handsome face, and yet the majority of people disliked him. From his earliest childhood he had met with antagonism and hostility, and he was utterly at a loss to explain why. He had somehow entered the world with the wrong foot foremost. There had been some difficulty between his father and mother which had clouded his earliest years; and he had a vague impression that the latter was more to blame. She had during his boyhood

dragged him about from Rome to Wiesbaden and from Wiesbaden to Paris and then back again to Rome, interrupting his schooling whenever it suited her whim. An unquenchable thirst for excitement impelled her to change continually her place of residence; but like the man who moved from house to house to get rid of the Brownie, she always carried her Brownie with her. Her Brownie was named Discontent. She had been born with poor blood; and was blasé from the very cradle. Toward her son she was by turns plaintive and irritable perhaps because she felt herself in the wrong before him and suspected in him a silent accuser. She had subordinated his life to hers, persuading herself always that whatever she liked to do was the best for him.

After fifteen years of this migratory existence, during which no permanent relations had been formed and no ties, either local or personal, Mortimer found himself impelled to explore the land of his birth. His father was then dead; and the uncle to whom he was referred for funds and counsel gave him such a cool reception that he felt disinclined to make advances. He was dimly aware that his alienism, which he deplored but could not help, was mistaken by his kinsman for affectation; and he was too proud to disabuse him. At Harvard, where he sojourned for two years, his reserve and foreign appearance gained him much admiration but no friends. And it was friends he yearned for-close human relations, freedom from restraint, and communion of souls. It was in pure self-defence that he appeared haughty; because, being driven by his temperament to extremes, he was too strong to be humble. He could not sue for confidence and good-will; even though he ardently desired them; and the only alternative was to appear to despise them. The gift to unlock hearts had somehow been denied him; and he would gladly have given all advantages he possessed in exchange for this one gift. membered having once envied a Roman gamin whose mother slapped him in the street and afterwards hugged him with repentant tears to her bosom. The impulsive naturalness of both acts lay so far beyond the sphere in which his lot

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was cast, that, by contrast, they appeared admirable. He hungered at times for censure almost as much as he hungered for praise; but both were refused him. He moved about in a shadow world, where all seemed unreal, except his own acute sense of his unsatisfied desires. People loved, wooed, and mourned round about him; and only he seemed to be cut off from all these sweet experiences of common, every-day mortality. He was scarcely himself aware that, as he brooded over the exceptional character of his lot, there grew a certain vague satisfaction within him which tempered his regret, a subtile pride in the very fact that he was exceptional. But this was a bitter-sweet feeling, after all, and far removed from contentment.

After having gotten into collision with the college authorities about a question of discipline, Mortimer left the academic halls, and drifted about for some years, in search of a vocation. He was conscious of great powers, that seemed available for almost anything; but the particular task which presented itself was always more or less distasteful. He had money enough to support existence in a modest way, without working, but could imagine nothing more contemptible than such impotent resignation. He would have taken to literature if he had not felt confident that the first note he struck would be a strident discord. He had written some things, to be sure; but had received them back from the magazines with the consoling assurance that "non-acceptance did not necessarily imply lack of merit." His private conviction was that in his case it implied too much merit; but, of course, it was useless to argue the thing, and he was too clever not to see that the magazine point of view was commercially right. In the meanwhile, feeling the need of doing something to put the editors in the wrong, he retired to the remote island of Poltucket, where the conditions for such an enterprise were said to be favorable. He engaged comfortable lodgings at Mrs. Morgan's boardinghouse on the Bluff, and had just prepared himself to establish amicable relations with all the spinsters on the back piazza, when the incident with the bookkeeper spoiled all his beautiful plans.

During the long eventless afternoons, this scandalous occurrence was vehemently debated on all the piazzas in the town, and a Brooks and an anti-Brooks party were soon distinguishable among Mrs. Morgan's boarders. The former consisted chiefly of Miss Anastasia Herkomer, a rather plain young lady from Vassar, who declared that she could see no reason why a man should not look at a girl as much as he liked, and step on her foot, too, if it amused him, provided he granted her the privilege to step on his in return. She took it into her head to admire Brooks prodigiously (also by way of diversion), and felt flattered and exhilarated by the teasing comments and railleries which were aimed at her by her fellow-boarders. She got up quite a

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Hamlet," not only in the absence of the Prince, but without his knowledge.

As for the girl who had been the innocent cause of all this disturbance, she had been in some manner spirited away. Mrs. Morgan professed to be ignorant of her whereabouts, and declined to entertain the proposition to take her back. A great deal of hysterical philanthropy which was stirred up in her behalf ran absolutely to waste. Even a purse that was made up by the lady boarders who resented her dismissal failed to reach her through the Post Office, and it was on that occasion that Miss Anastasia scandalized the company on the piazza by recommending that it be intrusted to Mr. Brooks, who probably had a better knowledge of the topography of the island than the Postmaster. The Rev. Mr. Nichols, who kindly acted as agentin-chief for the ladies' indignation committee, had, in the meanwhile, become possessed of some scraps of the girl's history, which he communicated with slight dramatic embellishments to the committee. Her name, as they already knew, was Charity Howland. She was the daughter of a once prosperous lawyer, long since deceased; her mother was a Miss Tuthill and was said to have had some of the best blood in New England in her veins. The daughter had lived, since her mother's death, in the houses of various remote relatives, and had been badly treated by some of them. She had been an omnivorous reader and had acquired a sort of fragmentary education.

She was as shy as a plover, and when you chanced to look at her, started like a bird about to take flight. The fact was, although she was born and bred on the island, nobody seemed to know much about her, one way or the other, except that she was a "poor orphaned critter," that, as an old sea-captain remarked, she was "sorter shet-up-tight, like a quorehog," and "that it warn't no easy job to get a shot at her." Mr. Nichols was about to inquire why anybody should want to shoot at her; but caught himself in time to discover that the remark was metaphorical.

III.

THE great scenic feature of Poltucket is a jagged mole or jetty, made of enormous stones, running three quarters of a mile out into the water. It has sagged a little in places and is there overrun at high tide; but when the tide is below the flood-mark, it is dotted all over with bright-colored sun-umbrellas, under each of which will be found, on investigation, a young lady, a novel, and occasionally also a young man. In the latter case, it sometimes happens that the novel floats in to the town with the rising tide. Mortimer Brooks found this jetty attractive, not so much on account of the vacancies under the sun-umbrellas, as on account of the facilities it offered for fishing. Here was an opportunity for catching lobster, scup, and even plaice-fish, without resorting to oars.

It was on a blustery afternoon in July, about two weeks after the disappearance of Charity Howland, that Brooks, in fashionable sportsman's attire, was seen looming up against the horizon, with a fishing-spear and a rod on his shoulder. He passed successfully the various pitfalls, marked by blue and scarlet parasols, and after a stiff climb over the rough stones reached the part of the jetty where eel and plaice-fish were said to abound. He stood there for fully three hours, and had fair luck, though the exasperating little wharf-fish amused themselves stealing his bait and, by their superior agility, snatching the hook before the very noses of their larger and more desirable neighbors. The tide had, in the meanwhile, changed, and was run

ning out at a high speed. The sun had set, and the wind was blowing a gale from the north. The spray beat over the stones every moment, and flew in hissing showers through the air. It was getting decidedly unpleasant, and Brooks determined to tempt fortune no longer, but betake himself back to the security of the solid earth and Mrs. Morgan's hostile piazza. He had just wound his line on the rod, and was about to turn his back on Boreas, when he discovered the figure of a solitary woman in a dory, some twenty feet beyond the end of the jetty. She was making great exertions to pull up her anchor, but apparently did not succeed. Brooks watched her for a minute or two, then shouted to her, but received no reply. The wind drowned his voice. He could not make up his mind whether she was in danger or not; and therefore feared to appear importunate with his offer of help. The tide, in the meanwhile, which at that very point ran with the greatest vehemence, was tossing the dory up and down and drenching its occupant with spurts of flying spray. Sudden squalls swept, with smoke and blackening water in their track, across the harbor; and a few belated catboats which had been out bluefishing came scudding along with doublereefed sails, careening heavily, and burying their noses with a great splash in the white-crested waves. The young girl in the dory was casting anxious glances toward the dark-blue horizon, in the pauses between her futile struggles with the anchor-chain. Brooks had by this time made up his mind that he would rather risk offending her than see her perish before his eyes. Having fastened his rod between the stones, he started forward, with the spear, leaping from rock to rock, and in ten or fifteen minutes reached the end of the jetty. The girl was then seated with averted face in an attitude of resignation, watching the motions of the gulls that circled screaming over her head. Two fishing-lines were hanging over the gunwale; but she did not heed them. "Do you need help?" shouted Brooks.

She started at the sound of his voice as if she had been shot; glanced shyly toward him, and then looked again at

the horizon.

"Do you need help?" he repeated, bellowing with all his might against the wind. She writhed for a moment with bashful self-consciousness; then rose and seemed to struggle with a desire to leap into the water. At last, when she had no alternative but to face him, she turned slowly about, and he saw that she was none other than Charity Howland, the vanished book-keeper. It was rather an unexpected denouement, and to him, with his European notions, rather an absurd one. He appeared to himself in anything but a heroic light. However, when fate plays a prank upon you, there is no use in rebelling. Brooks promptly smothered the snobbish feeling that threatened to assert itself; and determined to play knight-errant to the book-keeper with amiability and good grace.

"Can't you pull your anchor up?" he cried.

"No, it is caught between two stones," she answered, with a look of imploring timidity that went straight to his heart. "Try another pull; jerk sideways!" "It is no use. I've tried every way." A spirit of enterprise and adventure invaded the young man's soul. Steadying himself with the lobster-spear, he stalked calmly out over the submerged part of the jetty, planting his feet firmly on the slippery, kelp-covered stones. The tide whirled and eddied about his knees-six or eight steps more and he stood waist-deep in the surging water. It was hard work to keep his footing there; and he knew he could not do it long. He could now barely reach the dory with the spear; and he managed to fasten its hook in the prow and to pull it slowly toward him. The girl was crouching in the bottom of the boat, with shy glances and little timid movements, as if she were wishing to apologize for having the hardihood to exist at

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"If you don't come," he broke forth, "I shall be carried out to sea with the tide. I can't keep my footing much longer."

That appeal she could not withstand; but she looked the picture of misery, as with flaming cheeks and a wildly palpitating heart she obeyed his summons. He put his arms about her in a prompt and business-like fashion, which ought to have been reassuring. But, for all that, she could not control an inclination to shiver.

"Lean to the left; put your arms about my neck," he said in the tone of a drill sergeant who commands: "Forward, march."

The girl obeyed bashfully because she did not dare to disobey. But suddenly a thrill of joy, of exultation, of ineffable well-being tingled through her. The blood gushed in warm streams from her heart and danced through her veins. Her humility, her bashfulness, her trembling confusion dropped from her like a garment. She sat enthroned upon his arm, with the wide horizon about her, proud and happy as a queen. She felt that he was wholly preoccupied with her rescue, oblivious of herself. But she had suddenly become quite unconcerned about herself, and absorbed in him. She was not afraid that he would stumble, though she saw him strain every nerve to keep his footing, and anxiously fumble his way with his feet over the slippery rock-weed that streamed like green hair over the stones. The brilliant star-fishes clung to the rocks and stared up at her, and somehow they had never before seemed so bright and beautiful. The gulls grew clamorous about her, and with shrill bad-weather screams swept past her, so close that she felt the wind of their wings on her cheeks. But her heart sung within her, and made light of their ominous voices. The gale tossed her hair wildly about her head; and she felt as if a new soul had been abruptly awakened within her-a soul sympathetic with all that was beautiful and bold and free. There were showers pouring in black-blue slanting lines from sky to sea, on the Western horizon, and they came sweeping eastward with splendid uproar and lashed waters and

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