CHAPTER IXTHE RESULT.

Reason said to her, “Perhaps there is no such person as Joe Fleming. Mr. Everard is crazy and does not know what he is saying;” but to this Rossie replied, “That may be, but even then there can be no harm in writing. The letter will go to the dead-letter office and no one be the wiser, and if there is a Joe, he deserves to have a piece of my mind. I shall write any way.” And she did write, and this is a copy of the letter:

“Forrest House, Rothsay, Ohio,“August 3d, 18—.

“Forrest House, Rothsay, Ohio,

“August 3d, 18—.

“Mr. Fleming—Sir: I take the liberty of writing to you, because I think you ought to know how sick Mr. Everard Forrest is, and how much he is troubled about the money he owes you. He was thrown from a carriage and hurt, more than ten days ago, and his mother died that same night, and you wrote for money, and everything together made him very sick and out of hishead, and that is the way I came to know about you and that gambling debt of his. I am Rosamond Hastings, a little girl who lives in the family, and Mr. Everard is like a brother to me, and I take care of him, and heard him talk ofJoeand money which he had to pay, and he wanted to sell his clothes to raise it, and I found out from him that your name was Fleming, and that he owed you fifty dollars which must be paid at once.

“I suppose men would call it a debt ofhonor, but, Mr. Fleming, do you think it right to gamble and entice young men like Mr. Everard to play? I think it is very wicked, and dishonorable, and disreputable, and that you ought not to expect him to pay. Why, hecannot, for he has no money of his own, and his father would not give it to him for that, and would be so very angry that whatever comeshemust never know it,—never.

“Now, will you give up the debt and not bother him any more? If you will, please write to him and say so. If you will not, write to me, and I shall try what I can do, for Mr. Everard must not be troubled with it.

“Hoping you will excuse me, and that you will reform and be a better man, I am,

“Yours respectfully,“Rosamond Hastings.”

“Yours respectfully,

“Rosamond Hastings.”

“P. S.—You are not to suppose that Mr. Everard knows I am writing, for he does not; nor are you to think that he has spoken ill of you in his delirium. On the contrary, I imagine that he likes you very much indeed, and so I am led to hope that there is much good in you, and that you will not only release him, but quit gambling yourself.”

She sealed the letter, and directing it to “Mr. Joe Fleming, Esq., Holburton, Mass.,” posted it herself, and then anxiously waited the answer.

Three days later, and the clerk in the post-office at Holburton said, in reply to Josey’s inquiry for letters:

“There’s one here for Mr. Joe Fleming; that can’t be you.”

“Let me see it,” Josey said; and when she saw that it was from Rothsay, Ohio, she continued: “It is for me, and it is done for a joke. I will take it.”

Then, hurrying home, she broke the seal and readthe curious letter, amid screams of convulsive laughter, which brought both her mother and Agnes to her side.

“Look here; just listen, will you?” she said, “somebody thinks I’m a man, and a gambler, and everything bad.” And she read the letter aloud, while the tears ran down her face, and she grew almost hysterical with her glee. “Did you ever know a richer joke? What a stupid thing that girl must be,” she said.

But Agnes made no reply, and went quietly back to her work, while Josephine read the letter a third time, feeling a little sorry for and a little anxious about Everard. Rossie’s postscript that he seemed to like her very much touched her and brought something like moisture to her eyes; but she never for a moment thought of giving up thedebt. She must have the fifty dollars, for the brown silk was nearly finished, and the merchant expected his money, so she wrote to Rossie as follows:

“Holburton, August 7th, 18—.

“Miss Rosamond Hastings:—

“Your letter is received, and though I am very sorry for Mr. Forrest’s illness, and agree with you that it is wrong to gamble, I must still insist upon the money, as I am in great want of it, and Mr. Forrest will tell you that my claim is a just one. I may as well add that twenty-five dollars more are due me, which I shall be glad to have you send. I have written Mr. Forrest about it, but presume he has not been able to attend to it.

“Hoping he is better, I am

“Yours truly,“Joe Fleming.”

“Yours truly,

“Joe Fleming.”

Josephine’s handwriting was large and plain, and she took great pains to make it still plainer and more masculine, and Rossie, when she received the letter, had no suspicion that it was not written by a man. Hastily breaking the seal, she read, with sinking heart, that the money must be paid, and, worse than all, that it was seventy-five instead of fifty dollars, as she had supposed. And she must raise it, and save Mr. Everard from all further trouble and anxiety. He was better now, and very quiet, and had allowed her to remove the satchel of clothes from his bed. Occasionally he spoke to herof Joe, and asked if she was sure she could help him out of the scrape.

“Yes, sure,” was always the reply of the brave little girl; and she must keep her word at the sacrifice of what she held most dear, her abundant and beautiful hair.

Rossie’s mind was made up, and, after lunch was over, she started for Elm Park, where Miss Belknap lived. Bee was at home, and glad to see her little friend. She was very fond of Rossie, whose quaint, old-fashioned ways amused and rested her; and she took her at once to the pretty blue chamber, which Rossie admired so much, and which seemed so in keeping with its lovely mistress. All Bee’s tastes were of the most luxurious kind, and, as she had no lack of means, she gratified them to the full. The fever, which had deprived her of her hair, had hurt her pride sorely; for the wig which she was wearing until her own hair grew again was not a success, and she chafed against it, and hated herself every time she looked in the glass; and when Rosamond, who could not wait lest her courage should fail her, said, “Miss Beatrice, are you in earnest about my hair? Will you buy it now?” she answered,

“Buy it? Yes, in a moment.”

“And give me seventy-five dollars?” Rossie faltered, ashamed of herself for asking this enormous sum.

But it did not at all appall Miss Belknap. Seventy-five dollars was nothing if she wished for anything, and she did want Rossie’s hair. It was just the color and texture of her own, and she could have such a natural looking wig made of it.

“Yes, give you seventy-five dollars willingly;” she said. “But it seems very mean and selfish in me to take it,” she continued; and Rossie, fearful lest the bargain should fall through, answered eagerly:

“Oh, no, it don’t. I want the money very much indeed. I am anxious to sell it, and, if you do not buy it, I shall go to some one else. But you must not ask me why,—I can’t tell that; only, it is not for myself,—it’s for a friend; I don’t think the hair worth seventy-five dollars, but that is what I must have, and so I asked it. Maybe if you can give me fifty, and loan me twenty-five, I can pay it when my allowance is due.”

“You conscientious little chit,” Bee said, laughingly, “you have not yet learned the world’s creed,—take all you can get. I am willing to give you seventy-five dollars, and, even at that price, think it cheap. But you are a little girl, and will not look badly with short hair.”

With her natural shrewdness and her knowledge of some of Everard’s shortcomings, Bee guessed that it was for him the sacrifice was made, and, when the barber’s scissors gleamed among the shining tresses, she saw that they did not cut too close and make the girl a fright. But the loss of her hair changed Rossie very much, and when she went back to the Forrest House she shrank from the eyes of the servants, and stole up to her own room, where she could inspect herself freely, and see just how she looked.

“Oh, how ugly I am, and how big my eyes are!”, she said, and two hot tears rolled down her cheeks; but she resolutely dashed them away, and thought, “His mother would be so glad if she knew I was doing it for him.”

And the memory of the dead woman, who had been so kind to her, helped her. For her sake she could bear almost anything, and, putting on her hat, she left the house again, going this time to the office of the family lawyer, Mr. Russell, a kind, elderly man, who was very fond of Rossie, and at once put aside his papers when she came in.

“Can I do anything for you to-day?” he asked, and she replied:

“I’ve come to ask you to write me just such a receipt as you would write if somebody owed you seventy-five dollars and you paid it in full. Don’t ask me anything, only write it, and make it read as if the debtor didn’t owe the creditor a penny after the date.”

Mr. Russell looked curiously at the flushed face raised so eagerly to him, and in part guessed her secret. Like Bee, he knew of Everard’s expensive habits, and suspected that this money had something to do with him. But he merely said:

“What name shall I use? The receipt will read like this: ‘Received of,—blank,—seventy-five dollars,’ and so forth. Now, how shall I fill the blank?”

Rossie thought a moment, and then replied:

“Will it make any difference who writes the receipt?”

“Not at all; the signature is what gives it its value.”

“Then will you please give me a form,—a true one, you know,—which I can copy and send, and ought I not to register the letter to make it safe?”

She was quite a little business woman, and the old lawyer looked at her admiringly as he gave her the necessary directions, suggesting that a draft or post-office order would be better than to send the money. But Rossie did not care for so much publicity as she fancied drafts and post-office orders would involve. She preferred to send the bills, a fifty, a twenty, and a five, directly toJoe, and she did so that very afternoon, for, as good luck would have it, Beatrice asked her to drive to an adjoining town, where she registered and posted her letter, and felt as if a weight were lifted from her mind. She had no suspicion ofJoe’splaying her false. He would, of course, return the receipt, and Mr. Everard would be free, and her heart was almost as light as her head when she returned home and went to Everard’s room. That poor shorn head, how it stared at her in the glass, and how she tried to brush up the short, wavy hair, and make the most of it. But do the best she could, she presented rather a forlorn appearance when she went in to Everard, and asked him how he was.

He had missed her very much that day, and greeted her with a bright smile, so much like himself, that she exclaimed, joyfully:

“Oh, Mr. Everard, you are better; you are almost well!”

He was better, but his mind was still unsettled, and running upon thescrapefrom which Rossie was to extricate him, and he said to her:

“Have you fixed it yet? Is it all right?”

“Yes, all right,” she answered; and he continued:

“Every single bit right? Am I cut loose from the whole thing?”

She thought he was, and soothed him into quiet until he suddenly noticed her head, and exclaimed:

“Halloa, what have you been doing? Where’s yourhair? Have you taken it off and laid it in the drawer as mother used to do? I thought yours was a different sort from that; not store hair, but genuine. I say, Rossie, you look like a guy.”

She knew he was not responsible for what he said, but it hurt her all the same, and tears sprang to her eyes as she answered him:

“My hair was very heavy and very warm this hot, sultry weather. I am sorry you do not like my looks. It will grow again in time.”

That was Rossie’s one comfort. Her hair would grow again, and she met bravely the exclamations of her girl friends and of the servants, who asked her numberless questions. But she kept her own counsel, and waited impatiently for the assurance that the money had gone in safety to Holburton. It came at last, on the very day when Everard began to seem like himself, and spoke to those about him rationally and naturally. His reason had returned, and his first question to Rossie was to ask if any letters had come to him during his illness, and his second, to interrogate her with regard to her hair, and why she had cut it off. She told him the old story of its being heavy and warm, and then hastened to bring his letters, of which she had taken charge. She was certain that some of them were from Joe Fleming, though the handwriting was much finer than that which had come to her in that morning’s mail.Joehad sent back the receipt without a word of comment, but Rossie did not care for that; she only felt that Everard was free, and she had the receipt in her pocket, and her face was almost pretty in her bright eagerness and gladness as she came to his bedside and handed him his letters. Three were from college chums, and three from Josephine. These he opened first, beginning with the one bearing the oldest date. She had not then heard of his mother’s death, and she wrote for more money,—twenty-five dollars more, which were absolutely needed. Seventy-five in all it was now, and the perspiration started from every pore and stood thickly on Everard’s forehead and about his lips, as, with an involuntary moan, he dropped the letter from his nerveless hand and turned his eyes toward Rossie, not with a thought that she could help him, only with a feeling that he wouldtell her, and ask her what to do, and if it were not better to leave college at once, acknowledge his marriage, and hire out as a day laborer, if nothing better offered.

She saw the hunted, hopeless expression in his eyes, and guessed the cause of it. In hers there was a great gladness shining, as she said:

“I am almost certain that letter is from Mr. Joe Fleming, and I have one from him, too, or rather, a receipt in full for the gambling debt!” and taking the receipt from her pocket, she handed it to Everard, and watched him while he read it.

There it was in black and white, an acknowledgment of seventy-five dollars, and a receipt in full of all Everard Forrest’s indebtedness to Joe Fleming up to that date. What did it mean? What could it mean? Everard asked, while through his mind there flitted a vague remembrance of something about Joe, and money, and the scrape from which Rossie was to extricate him.

“Rossie, tell me, what do you know of Joe? What does it mean?” he asked, and then Rossie told him how he had raved about aJoe, to whom he said he owed money, and how once, when he seemed a little rational, she had questioned him, and found out that the man was Joe Fleming, who lived in Holburton, and to whom he owed fifty dollars which he could not pay.

“You had your best clothes in your valise on the bed, and were going to sell them to get it,” Rossie said, “and I felt so sorry for you that I wrote to Mr. Fleming myself, and told him what I thought about such debts, and how sick and crazy you were, and your mother just dead, and you no way to pay, and asked him to give up the debt.”

“Yes, yes,” Everard gasped, while his face grew white as ashes; and still he could not forbear a smile at the mistake with regard to Joe’s sex, a mistake of which he was very glad, however. “Yes,” he continued, “you wrote all this, and what was the reply?”

“Just what you might expect from the bad, unprincipled, grasping man,” Rossie said, energetically, shaking her shorn head. “I told him it was wrong to gamble and tempt you to play, and told him how sick you were, and how angry your father would be, and added that, ifafter all this, he still insisted upon the money, he was not to trouble you, but write directly to me, and he was mean enough to do it. He said he was sorry you were sick, but he must have the money, and that you owed him seventy-five, and you would tell me he had a right to ask it.”

“Yes,” Everard said again, but the yes was like a groan, and every muscle of his face twitched painfully, “yes. He wrote this to you, and you raised the money; but how?”

Rosamond hesitated a moment, and then replied:

“Do you remember I told you that Miss Belknap once offered to buy my hair?”

“Oh, Rossie!” Everard exclaimed, as the truth flashed upon him, making the plain face of that heroic little girl seem like the face of an angel,—“oh, Rossie, you sold your beautiful hair for me, a scamp, a sneak, a coward! Oh, why did you humiliate me so, and make me hate and loathe myself?” and in his great weakness and utter shame Everard covered his face with his hands and sobbed like a child.

Rosamond was crying, too,—was shedding bitter tears of disappointment that she had made the great sacrifice for nothing except to displease Mr. Everard.

“Forgive me,” she said at last, “I thought you would like it. I did not want you to sell your clothes,—did not want your father to know. I meant to do right. I am sorry you are angry.”

“Angry!” and in the eyes which looked at Rossie there was anything but anger. “I am not angry except with myself; only I am so mortified, so ashamed. I think you the dearest, most unselfish person in the world. Who else would have done what you have?”

“Oh, ever so many,” Rossie said, “if they were sorry for you and loved you; for, Mr. Everard, I am so sorry, and I love you a heap, and then,—and then, I did it some because I thought your mother would like it if she knew.”

Rosamond’s lip quivered as she said this, and there was such a pitiful look in her soft eyes that Everard raised himself in bed, and drawing her toward him, took the thin little face between his hands and kissed it tenderly,while his tears flowed afresh at the mention of his dead mother, who had been so much to him.

“Rossie,” he said, “what can I ever do to show you how much I appreciate all you have done for, and all you are to me?”

The girl hesitated a moment, and then said:

“If you will promise never to have anything to do with Joe Fleming, I shall be so happy, for I am sure he is a bad man, and leads you into mischief. Will you promise not to go near Joe Fleming again?”

Everard groaned as he answered her:

“You do not know what you ask. I cannot break with Joe Fleming. I,—oh, Rossie, I am a coward, a fool, and I wish I were dead,—I do, upon my word! But there is one thing I can promise you, and I will. I pledge myself solemnly, from this day forth, never to touch a card of any kind in the way of gambling, never to touch a drop of spirits, or a cigar, or a fast horse, or to bet, or do anything of which you would not approve.”

“I am so glad,” Rossie said, “and to make it quite sure, suppose you sign something just as they do the pledge to keep from drinking.”

He did not quite know what she meant, but he answered, unhesitatingly:

“I’ll sign anything you choose to bring me.”

“I’m going to write it now,” Rossie said, and the next moment she left the room, and Everard was free to finish his letters alone.

Taking the second one from Josephine, he read that she was sorry to hear of his affliction, and wished she could comfort him, and that it must be a consolation for him to know that his mother was in heaven, where he would one day meet her if he was a good man.

This attempt at piety disgusted Everard, who knew how little Josephine cared for anything sacred, and how prone she was to ridicule what she called pious people.

Immediately following this mention of his mother, she said she was missing and longing for him so much, and hoped he would write at once, and send her the money for which she was obliged to ask him. Then she added the following:

“I find myself in rather a peculiar position. So longas I am known as Miss Fleming, I shall of course be subject to the attentions of gentlemen, and what am I to do? Shall I go on as usual,—discreetly, of course,—and receive whatever attentions are paid to me, never allowing any one to get so far as an offer? I ask you this because I wish to please you, and because, since my marriage, it seems as if so many men were inclined to be polite to me. Even old Captain Sparks, the millionaire, has asked me to ride after his fast horses; and as there was no reason which I could give him why I should not, I went, and he acted as silly as an old fool well can act. Tell me your wishes in the matter, and they shall be to me commands.”

For an instant Everard felt indignant at Captain Sparks for presuming to ride with and say silly things to Josephine, but when he reflected a moment he knew that to the captain there was no reason why he should not do so. Josephine was to him a young, marriageable maiden, and rumor said that the old man was looking for a fourth wife, and as he would, of course, look only at the young girls, it was natural for him to single out Josephine as an object of favor.

“Josey must, of course, hold her place as an unmarried person,” he thought, “but oh! the horror of this deception. I’d give worlds to undo the work of that night.”

He thought so more than ever when he read the third and last letter, in which, after expressing her sorrow and concern for his sickness, she told him of her correspondence with Rosamond, and which, as it gives a still clearer insight into the young lady’s character, we give, in part, to the reader:

“Dear Everard:—Whatdoyou suppose has happened? Why, I laughed until I nearly split my sides, and I almost scream every time I think of the funny letter I got from Rosamond Hastings, the little girl who lives with you, and who actually thinks I am aman, a bad, good for nothing, gambling, swearingman, who leads you into all sorts of scrapes, and to whom you owe money. It seems she gathered this when you were crazy, and took it upon herself to write toMr. Joe Fleming;—that’s what she called me,—and lecture him soundly on his badness. You ought to hear her once; but I’ll keepthe letter and show you. She wished me to give up the debt, which she took for granted was a gambling one, but said if I would not I must write toherand not trouble you. Now, I suppose it would have been generous and nice in me to say I did not care for the money, but you see I did; I must have it to pay my bills; and so I wrote to her and saidyouwould tell her my claim was a just one, if she asked you about it. In due time she sent me seventy-five dollars, though how she raised it I am sure I cannot guess, unless she coaxed it from your father, and I hardly think she did that, as she seemed in great fear lest he should know that you owedJoe Fleming! She is a good business woman,—for, accompanying the money was a receipt, correctly drawn up, and declaring you discharged in full from all indebtedness to me. I wonder what the child would have done if I had not returned it, and just for the mischief of it I thought once I wouldn’t, for a while at least, and see what she would do. But Agnes made such a fuss that I thought better of it, and shall send the receipt in the same mail which takes this to you. By the way, you’ve no idea how much Agnes has you and your interests at heart. I believe, upon my word, she thinks you did a dreadful thing to marry me as you did, and she says her prayers in your behalf, to my certain knowledge, three or four times a day. Verily, it ought to make your calling and election sure.

“Dr. Matthewson was in town yesterday, and inquired particularly for you. I told him of your mother’s death, and that I had written to Clarence as he bade me do, and made inquiries about him, and had not received a very good report of his character as a clergyman. He took it good-humoredly, and said that the Gospel didn’t agree with him very well. I like the doctor immensely, he is so amusing and friendly. I hope you will not care because I told him of Rosamond’s mistake, and showed him her letter. How he did roar! Why, he actually laid down on the grass, and rolled and kicked, and would not believe me till I showed him the letter. He left town this morning, saying he should be here again in the fall, and would like to board with mother.

“How I hate this life,—planning how to get your bread and butter,—and how glad I shall be when I amout of it; but I mean to be patient and bear it, knowing what happiness there is in the future for me. When shall I see you, I wonder? Will you not come as soon as you are able to travel and spend the remainder of your vacation with me? You will at least stop here on the way to Amherst, and for that time I live.

“Lovingly yours,Joe.”

It would be impossible to describe the nature of Everard’s feelings as he read this letter, which seemed to him coarse, and selfish, and heartless in the extreme. Couldn’t Josephine, understand such a character as Rossie’s, or appreciate the noble thing she had done? Could she only see in it a pretext for laughing till “she split her sides,” and was it a nice thing in her to tell Dr. Matthewson of the letter, and even show it to him, making him roll on the grass, androarandkickin her presence? Had she no delicacy or refinement, to allow such a thing? Would any man dare do that with Bee or even Rossie, child though she was? Was Josey devoid of that womanly dignity which puts a man always on his best behavior? He feared she was, he said sadly to himself, as he recalled the free and easy manner he had always assumed with her. How many times had he sat with his feet higher than his head, and smoked directly in her face, or stretching himself full length upon the grass while she sat beside him, laid his head in her lap and talked such slang as he would blush to have Rossie hear; and she had laughed, and jested, and allowed it all, or at the most reproved him by asking if he were not ashamed of himself. Josey wasnotmodest and womanly, like his mother, and Bee, and Rosamond. She was not like them at all, and for a moment there swept over the young man such a feeling of revulsion and disgust that his whole being rose up against the position in which he was placed, and from his inmost soul he cried out, “I cannot have it so!”

He had sown the wind, and he was beginning to reap the whirlwind; and it was a very nervous, feverish patient which Rossie found when she came back to him, bringing the paper he was to sign, and which was to keep him straight. She called it a pledge, and it read:

“I hereby solemnly promise never to drink a drop ofliquor, never to smoke a pipe or cigar, never to race with fast horses, never to play cards or any other game for money, never to bet, and to have just as little to do with Joe Fleming as I possibly can.

“Signed by me, at the Forrest House, this —— day of August, 18—.”

“There!” Rossie said, as she read it to him, and offered him the pen; “you’ll sign that and then be very safe.”

“Rossie,” he said vehemently, “I wish to Heaven I could honorably subscribe to the whole of it, but I cannot. I must erase the part about Joe Fleming. I cannot explain to you why, but I must keep my acquaintance with Joe, but I’ll promise not to be influenced in that direction any more. Will that do?”

“Yes, but I did so hope you would break with him entirely. I know he makes you bad. You told me when you came home you had no debts, and I believed you, and yet you owed this man seventy-five dollars, and I was so sorry to find you did not tell me true.”

Rossie’s eyes were full of tears as she said this, for losing faith in Everard had hurt her sorely, but he hastened to reassure her.

“Rossie,” he said, “I did not know of this debt then. It has come up since. What I told you was told in good faith. Bad as I am, I would not tell a deliberate lie, and you must believe me.”

She did believe him, and watched him as he put his pen through the sentence, “have just as little to do with Joe Fleming as I possibly can,” and then signed his name to the paper.

“There!” he said, as he handed it to her with a sickly effort to smile. “Keep it, Rossie, and if I break that pledge, may I never succeed in anything I undertake so long as I live; and now bathe my head with the coldest ice-water in the house, for it feels as if there was a bass drum in it.”

He was very restless and nervous, and did not improve as fast as the doctor had said he would, if once his reason returned. Indeed, for a few days he did not seem to improve at all, and Beatrice and Rosamond both nursed him tenderly, and pitied him so much when theysaw him lying so weak and still, with his eyes shut, and the great tears rolling down his face.

“It’s for his mother,” Rossie whispered to her companion, and her own tears gathered as she remembered the sweet woman whose grave was so fresh in the church-yard.

But it was not altogether for the dead mother that Everard’s tears were shed. It was rather from remorse and sorrow for the deed he would have given so much to undo; for he was conscious of an intense desire to be free from the chain which bound him. Not free from Josephine, he tried to make himself believe, for if that were so he would indeed be the most wretched of men, but free from his marriage vow, made so rashly. How was it that he was tempted to do it? he asked himself, as he went over in his mind with the events of that night. He was always more or less intoxicated with Josephine’s beauty when he was with her, and he remembered how she had bewitched and bewildered him with the touch of her soft hands, and sight of her bare arms and neck. She had challenged him to the act, and Dr. Matthewson had given him the wine, which he knew now must have clouded his reason and judgment, and so he was left to his fate. And a terrible one it seemed, as, in his weakness and languor, he looked at it in all its aspects, and saw no brightness in it. Even Josephine’s beauty seemed fading into nothing, though he tried so hard to keep his hold on that, for he must hold to something,—must retain his love forheror go mad. But she was so unlike Beatrice, so unlike Rosamond, so unlike what his mother had been, and they were his standards for all that was noble, and pure, and sweet in womankind. Josey was selfish and unrefined; he could not put it in any milder form when he remembered the past as connected with her, and remembered how she had ridiculed little Rossie Hastings, whose letter she had shown to Dr. Matthewson. How plainly he could see that scene, when the doctor rolled upon the grass and roared and kicked, and Josephine laughed with him at the generous, unselfish child who, to save him, had sacrificed her only beauty. And Josephine was his wife, and he must not cease to respect her one iota, for that was his only chance for happiness, and he struggled so hard to keep her in hisheart and love that it is not strange the great drops of sweat stood thickly on his brow, or that the hot tears at intervals rolled down his cheeks.

It was Rossie who brushed them away, Rossie who wiped the sweat from his face, and whispered to him once:

“Don’t cry, Mr. Everard. Your mother is so happy where she has gone, and I don’t believe she has lost all care for you either, she loved you so much when she was here.”

Then Everard broke down entirely, and holding Rossie’s little, brown, tanned hands in his, said to her:

“It isn’t that, though Heaven knows how much I loved my mother, and how sorry I am she is dead; but there are troubles worse than death, and I am in one now, and the future looks so dark and the burden so heavy to carry.”

“Can I help you bear it?” Rossie asked, softly, with a great pity in her heart for this young man who had given way like a child.

“No, Rossie, nobody can help me,—nobody,” he said; and after a moment Rossie asked timidly: “Is it Joe Fleming again?”

“Yes, Rossie, Joe Fleming again;” and Everard could scarcely restrain a smile, even in his grief, at this queer mistake of Rossie’s.

In her mind Joe Fleming was a dreadful man, through whom Mr. Everard had come to grief, and she ventured at last to speak of him to Beatrice as somebody of whom Everard had talked when he was crazy, and who had led him into a great trouble of some kind.

“And that’s what ails him now, and keeps him so weak and low, and makes him cry like a girl,” she said.

And then Beatrice resolved to help the sick youth, if possible, and that afternoon when she sat alone with him for a few moments, she said to him:

“Everard, I am quite sure that something is troubling you, something which retards your recovery. I do not ask to know what it is, but if money can lighten it let me help you, please. I have so much more than I know what to do with. Let me lend you some, do.”

“Oh, Bee,” Everard cried, “don’t talk to me that way; you will kill me, you and Rossie together; and you can’t help me. Nobody can. It is past all help.”

She did not at all know what he meant, but with her knowledge of what money could do, she felt sure it could help, and so she said:

“Not so bad as that, I am sure. You have probably been led astray by some designing person, but there is always a backward path, you know, and you will take it sure; and if you should want money, as you may, will you ask me for it, Everard? Will you let me give it to you, as if I were your sister?”

He did not know; he could not tell what he might do in sore need, for he felt intuitively that the call on him for money, commenced so soon, would increase with every year; so he thanked her for her kind offer, which, he said, he would consider, should the time ever come when he wanted help.

For ten days more Everard kept his room, and then arose suddenly one morning and said that he was able to go back to college, where he ought to have been two weeks ago, for he was getting far behind his class, and would have to study hard to overtake and keep up with it as he meant to do. Nothing could restrain him; go he must, and go he did, early one morning in September, before the people of Rothsay were astir. He had held a short conference with Rosamond, and bidden her tell the postmaster to forward to Amherst any letters which might come to him, and on no account let them go to the Forrest House. And Rossie had promised to comply with all his wishes, and pressed upon him a twenty-dollar bill which she made him take, because, as she said, she did not need it a bit, and should just squander it for peanuts, and worsteds, and things which would do her no good. It was a part of her quarterly interest, and she could do what she liked with it, and so Everard took it, and felt humiliated, and hated himself, especially as he knew just where the money would go. A letter from Josephine had come to him, asking for more funds, with which to replenish her wardrobe for the autumn. They had no boarders now except Dr. Matthewson, who was occasionally in town for a day or two and stopped with them, and Mrs. Fleming did not get as much sewing as usual, and so Josey was compelled to come to her husband for money, though sorely against her will, for she feared she must seem mercenary to him,and she hoped he would forgive her and love her just the same.

It was this letter which had determined him to return to Amherst without delay. On his way thither, he should stop in Holburton over a train, and tell Josephine how impossible it was for him to supply her demands until in a position to help himself.

“If father would only give me something more than my actual needs,” he thought; and, strangely enough, his father did.

Possibly the memory of the dead mother pleaded for her boy, and prompted the judge to give his son at parting a fifty-dollar bill over and above what he knew was needed for board and tuition.

“Make it go as far as you can; it ought to last you the whole year,” he said, and Everard’s spirits sank like lead as he foresaw the increasing drain there would be on him, and felt how impossible it would be to ask his father for more.

There was still his best suit of clothes; and a little diamond pin and a ring Rossie had given him, and his books, which he could sell, and perhaps he could find something to do after study hours which would bring him money. He might write for the magazines or illustrate stories; he had a natural taste for drawing, and could dash off a sketch from nature in a very few minutes. He could do something, he assured himself, and his heart was a little lighter, when he at last said good-by to Rossie and his father, and started northward for college and Josephine.

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