Year: 1874

| many years, DuJ not until ne nau succeed
ed in making ducks and brakes of his re-
Gently. acquired money by rash specula-
ton and the undertaking of New England
farming on South American scale, with
the result to be expected from more zeal
than discretion. That accomplished
concluding, perhaps, that he had about
exhausted this world-he betook himself
to another, leaving Rory with the wreck
of his property-just enough, as Celia had
said, TO let him dawdle along through life
Boy and property were confided to the
care of the Captains half-brother, Jacob
Wetherell, who was to give the lad a
home during his minority send him to
college-this being expressly stipulated
by the testator, with the exaggerated ideas
Of the advantages of that institution pecul-
lar to those who have not shared them
and be altogether father to the father
less boy.


The provisions of the will had been
duly carried out: Rory, grown up, had
passed his four years within the univer-
sity walls and left them the wiser, no
doubt, by all that experience of prank
playing and authority. cheating which are
among the benefits of collegiate course.
Otherwise it cannot be said that he had
particularly distinguished himself He
had just graduated and returned home at
the age of twenty-five, healthy, handsome
and lazy with his life all before him and
no apparent notion of what to do with it
beyond smoking, idling and making love,
in season and out of season, to his cousin
Celia Wetherell


As for this last pastime, no one seeing
Celia would be disposed to blame him.
She was the type we all know in New
England and shall hardly meet with out
of it: mixture of fun and gravity, senti-
ment and shrewdness so pretty it seemed
that she must be good for nothing, and so
capable one felt that she ought to be
ugly; kind, keen and clever; fresh and
sweet as an opening briar.rose, with all
the roses bloom and some of its thorns-
as luckless Rory could testify. Occupied
herself from morning till night, she
looked with extreme disfavor on his pur.
poseless existence, as she regarded it.
But then, as it happened, he had one pur-
pose, and that was to make her his wife;
so when she said tonight, with such
uncompromising plainness, that she
would never marry shirk, the words
went straight home as no others could
have done. He could not get rid of them; (;
the mill-current seemed to ripple
to their tune; they formed the



and modification that ran through
his mind while he sat ON the
stone thinking it out, and of the plan that
had taken shape before he returned home
to let himself in al the pantry window,
unheard by anybody but Celia, who,
though she would not sit up for folk that
staid out late courting. nevertheless did
not sleep till she mad heard said folk
come in.


The next morning at breakfast Rory as
tonished his uncle Jacob by inquiring if
there were not some books of his fathers
on South America somewhere about the
house.


"I guess so" answered the old farmer,
intent on the carving of pink-and-white
ham artistically picked out with black
pepper spots. "But what do you want
of South American books, hey, Rory?"


"Only because I'm going there myself"
was Rory's startling answer.


Celia improvidently dropped five large
Jumps of sugar one after another into her
fathers coffee cup, and the old man him
self left the knife quivering halfway in
the ham.


"You going to South Americal" he re.
peated, wrinkling up his eyebrows the
better to stare at Rory "Why, bless the
boy, he amt walked up yetp'


"On the contrary, Uncle Jacob, I've just
walked up" answered Rory, with a side
glance at Celia. "And quite time, too. l
must see something of the world, you
know; of course l can't be always hang
ing round here doing nothing"


Considering that, at that time yesterday,
Rory had not appeared to find the slightest
difficulty in such mode of life, it was no
wonder if Uncle Jacob was somewhat
surprised by the decided way in which
this statement was advanced. But, as his
nephew stuck to his plan, the old man
too was soon brought round to regard it
as, on the whole, an excellent idea. So
the thing was settled, and Rory, with an
eager energy which Uncle Jacob declared
he had not thought was in the boy, set
about his preparations forthwith, and
gave no rest to himself or anybody else
till all was ready.


"Good-by, Celia" he said, as he held
his cousins hand at the moment of de-
parture. "The moths going where he
won't trouble you again for one while, at
any rate! The Lord knows if I'll ever
come back, but, whatever happens,
whether live or die, you sha'n't call me
a shirk again" Then he looked at her
with his great, pleading, deep-blue eyes
which said all that pride tied his tongue
from saying, kissed her twice, thrice,
passionately, and was gone.


Celia, perhaps, if she could have or
dered all exactly to her liking, would not
have had her moth fly quite so far of, but
she was not one to look back, her hand
once put to the plow; she had spoken for
Rory's good, come what might of it. If
he was thereby lost to her at least he was
gained to himself, as she believed, and
she was not going, to regret her work be-
cause it was working itself out beyond
her anticipation. So she kept on cheerily
along the round of her daily duties, those
multifarious cares known only to farmers
wives and daughters, who, what
ever happens, mast be prepared
for seed-time and harvest. Celia was
as capable little mistress as ever
lived, and her quick eye and step per.
vaded the house like a spring breeze; she
was here, there, and everywhere, provid-
ing for the men, overseeing the maids,
scOlding them, too, sometimes, no doubt
all through the week, and then on Sun
days ready in her place in the choir, with
a voice and face as fresh as her go-to'
meeting best, laid up in lavender and
rose leaves leading, in short, the good
old.fashioned, orthodox village life, in
cluding, perhaps, the Sparkling" who
knows? for she was not only the prettiest
, girl in the town, but an only child, whose
father possessed substantial charms of an
other sort.


Rory, meanwhile, was doing well "oveI
! there" as they called the great, far.away
tropical country, whose distance in cross
| ing he seemed somehow to have bridged
over for those left behind in the red house
under the Northern pines and naples
He had been very lucky, he wrote, in the
, partnership into which he had entered
Z was not making money with a rush, ex
: actly, but was certainly not losing it; was
getting very rich in experience if not in
| gold. His letters were assuredly prosaiC
3 enough; they dealt less with description
, than with facts, and with sentiment leas
4 of all the widest stretch of Imagination
= could not have made them into love.let
Y ters; they might have been read aloud OF
, town.meeting day without raising blush
D on Celia's cheek. Yet still there was al