ry was
more from a vague sense that liberties had been taken with his, Dick's,
personality, than that he had borrowed anything from the portrait.

But he was not so clear about the young girl. Her tender, appealing
voice, although he knew it had been addressed only to a vision, still
thrilled his fancy. The pluck that had made her withstand her fear
so long--until he had uttered that dreadful word--still excited his
admiration. His curiosity to know what mistake he had made--for he knew
it must have been some frightful blunder--was all the more keen, as he
had no chance to rectify it. What a brute she must have thought him--or
DID she really think him a brute even then?--for her look was one more
of despair and pity! Yet she would remember him only by that last word,
and never know that he had risked insult and ejection from her friends
to carry her to her place of safety. He could not bear to go across the
seas carrying the pale, unsatisfied face of that gentle girl ever before
his eyes! A sense of delicacy--new to Dick, but always the accompaniment
of deep feeling--kept him from even hinting his story to his host,
though he knew--perhaps BECAUSE he knew--that it would gratify his
enmity to the family. A sudden thought struck Dick. He knew her house,
and her name. He would write her a note. Somebody would be sure to
translate it for her.

He borrowed pen, ink, and paper, and in the clean solitude of his fresh
chintz bedroom, indited the following letter:--

DEAR MISS FONTONELLES,--Please excuse me for having skeert you. I hadn't
any call to do it, I never reckoned to do it--it was all jest my
derned luck; I only reckoned to tell you I was lost--in them blamed
woods--don't you remember?--"lost"--PERDOO!--and then you up and
fainted! I wouldn't have come into your garden, only, you see, I'd just
skeered by accident two of your helps, reg'lar softies, and I wanted to
explain. I reckon they allowed I was that man that that picture in the
hall was painted after. I reckon they took ME for him--see? But he ain't
MY style, nohow, and I never saw the picture at all until after I'd
toted you, when you fainted, up to your house, or I'd have made my
kalkilations and acted according. I'd have laid low in the woods, and
got away without skeerin' you. You see what I mean? It was mighty mean
of me, I suppose, to have tetched you at all, without saying, "Excuse
me, miss," and toted you out of the garden and up the steps into your