so, between them, they gently thrust her down the slope.

"Stop all their tongues," said Mr. Carden. "Come back to Hillsborough
a wife. I gave up my choice to yours once. Now give me my way. I am
touched to the heart by this young man's devotion: he invites me to live
with him when you are married. What other young fellow would show me so
much mercy?"

"Does he?" said Grace. "I will try and reward him for that, and for
speaking well of one who could not defend himself. But give me a little
time."

Mr. Carden conveyed this to Coventry with delight, and told him he
should only have another month or so to wait. Coventry received this
at first with unmixed exultation, but by-and-by he began to feel
superstitious. Matters were now drawing to such a point that Little
might very well arrive before the wedding-day, and just before it.
Perhaps Heaven had that punishment in store for him; the cup was to be
in his very grasp, and then struck out of it.

Only a question of time! But what is every race? The space between
winner and loser strikes the senses more obviously; but the race is
just as much a question of time as of space. Buridan runs second for the
Derby, defeated by a length. But give Buridan a start of one second, and
he shall beat the winner--by two lengths.

Little now wrote from Chicago that every thing was going on favorably,
and he believed it would end in a sale of the patent clip in the United
States and Canada for fifty thousand dollars, but no royalty.

This letter was much shorter than any of the others; and, from that
alone, his guilty reader could see that the writer intended to follow it
in person almost immediately.

Coventry began almost to watch the sun in his course. When it was
morning he wished it was evening, and when it was evening he wished it
was morning.

Sometimes he half wondered to see how calmly the sun rose and set, and
Nature pursued her course, whilst he writhed in the agony of suspense,
and would gladly have given a year out of his life for a day.

At last, by Mr. Carden's influence, the wedding-day was fixed. But soon
after this great triumph came another intercepted letter. He went to his
room and his hands trembled violently as he opened it.

His eye soon fixed on this passage:

"I thought to be in New York by this time, and looking homeward; but I
am detained by another piece of good-fortune, if any thing can be called
good-fortune that keeps me a day from you. Oh, my