n speaking of the
gentleman with the diamond,) Ma'am Allen tried to peek into it one day
when she left it on the sideboard. "If you please," says she,--'n' took
it from him, 'n' gave him a look that made him curl up like a caterpillar
on a hot shovel. I only wished he had n't, and had jest given her a
little sass, for I've been takin' boxin'-lessons, 'n' I 've got a new way
of counterin' I want to try on to somebody.

--The end of all this was, that I came away from the young fellow's room,
feeling that there were two principal things that I had to live for, for
the next six weeks or six months, if it should take so long. These were,
to get a sight of the young girl's drawing-book, which I suspected had
her heart shut up in it, and to get a look into the Little Gentleman's
room.

I don't doubt you think it rather absurd that I should trouble myself
about these matters. You tell me, with some show of reason, that all I
shall find in the young girl's--book will be some outlines of angels with
immense eyes, traceries of flowers, rural sketches, and caricatures,
among which I shall probably have the pleasure of seeing my own features
figuring. Very likely. But I'll tell you what I think I shall find. If
this child has idealized the strange little bit of humanity over which
she seems to have spread her wings like a brooding dove,--if, in one of
those wild vagaries that passionate natures are so liable to, she has
fairly sprung upon him with her clasping nature, as the sea-flowers fold
about the first stray shell-fish that brushes their outspread tentacles,
depend upon it, I shall find the marks of it in this drawing-book of
hers,--if I can ever get a look at it,--fairly, of course, for I would
not play tricks to satisfy my curiosity.

Then, if I can get into this Little Gentleman's room under any fair
pretext, I shall, no doubt, satisfy myself in five minutes that he is
just like other people, and that there is no particular mystery about
him.

The night after my visit to the young man John, I made all these and many
more reflections. It was about two o'clock in the morning,--bright
starlight,--so light that I could make out the time on my
alarm-clock,--when I woke up trembling and very moist. It was the heavy
dragging sound, as I had often heard it before that waked me. Presently a
window was softly closed. I had just begun to get over the agitation
with which we always awake from nightmare dreams, when I hear