round loose and handy," and as habit is everything, so Hugh
soon grew accustomed to his surroundings, and became as careless of his
external appearance as his uncle could desire. Only once had there come
to him an awakening--a faint conception of the happiness there might
arise from constant association with the pure and refined, such as his
uncle had labored to make him believe did not exist. He was thinking of
that incident now, and as he thought the veins upon his broad, white
forehead stood out round and full, while the hands clasped above the
head worked nervously together, and it was not strange that he did not
heed his mother when she spoke, for Hugh was far away from Spring Bank,
and the wild storm beating against its walls was to him like the sound
of the waves dashing against the vessel's side, just as they did years
ago on that night he remembered so well, shuddering as he heard again
the murderous hiss of the devouring flames, covering the fatal boat with
one sheet of fire, and driving into the water as a safer friend the
shrieking, frightened wretches who but an hour before had been so full
of life and hope, dancing gayly above the red-tongued demon stealthily
creeping upward from the hold below, where it had taken life. What a
fearful scene that was, and the veins grew larger on Hugh's brow while
his broad chest heaved with something like a stifled sob as he recalled
the little childish form to which he had clung so madly until the cruel
timber struck from him all consciousness, and he let that form go
down--down 'neath the treacherous waters of Lake Erie never to come up
again alive, for so his uncle told when, weeks after the occurrence, he
awoke from the delirious fever which ensued and listened to the
sickening detail.

"Lost, my boy, lost with many others," was what his uncle had said.

He heard the words as plainly now as when they first were spoken,
remembering how his uncle's voice had faltered, and how the thought had
flashed upon his mind that John Stanley's heart was not as hard toward
womenkind as people had supposed. "Lost"--there was a world of meaning
in that word to Hugh more than any one had ever guessed, and, though it
was but a child he lost, yet in the quiet night, when all else around
Spring Bank was locked in sleep, he often lay thinking of that child and
of what he might perhaps have been had she been spared to him. He was
thinking of her now, and as he thought visions of a sweet, pa