hand to him in adieu. One more glimpse of that brunette
face, of that rare smile, of those black Canadian eyes, and the clumsy
sleigh turned an acute angle, and she was gone.

Gone. A blank seemed to fall, the whole place turned desolate and empty.
With a wistful look in his face he turned slowly away.

"Poor little girl!" the lawyer thought. "I hope she will be happy. She
is so pretty--so pretty!"

CHAPTER II.

A WISE MAN'S FOLLY.

Mr. Richard Gilbert went to New York, and the girl with the black
Canadian eyes and floating hair went with him--in spirit, that is to
say. That dark, piquant face; that uplifted, gentle glance; that
dimpling smile haunted him all through the upward journey; haunted and
lit up his dingy office, and came between him and Blackstone, and Coke
upon Littleton, and other legal lights.

Her bright, seventeen-year old face formed itself into a picture upon
every page of those mouldering, dry-as-dust tomes, looked at him in the
purple twilight, in the sunny mornings, in the dead waste and middle of
the night. He had become "A Haunted Man," in short, Mr. Gilbert was in
love.

And so, "how it came let doctors tell," all of a sudden Mr. Gilbert
found that business required his presence Down East early in July. It
was trifling business, too, understrappers in the office thought, that
could very well have done without his personal supervision; but Mr.
Gilbert reasoned otherwise; and, with a very unwonted glow about the
region of the heart, packed his portmanteau, and started for Portland,
Me.

The hot July sun was blazing in the afternoon sky and the streets of
Portland were blistering in the heat, as the New York lawyer walked from
the cars to his hotel. That important business which had brought him so
many miles was transacted in a couple of hours, and then he returned to
his hotel to dress and dine. Dress!--when had Richard Gilbert in his
plain business pepper-and-salt suit and round-topped straw hat, ever
taken so much pains with his toilet before, ever sported such faultless
broadcloth in July, ever wore a diamond pin in his snowy linen, ever
stood so long before the glass, ever felt so little satisfied with the
result? When had the crow's feet around mouth and eyes ever shown so
plainly, when had his tall, bald forehead ever appeared so patriarchal,
when had he ever looked so dreadfully middle-aged, and plodding and
priggish in his own legal eyes? Ah, when indeed?

He hired a li