r boy!" exclaimed the Captain, delighted at the change
that seemed to have come over his son. "Here you are," he said, opening
a case--"everything to your hand. You'll be back to dinner?"

"Ay, ay, sir!" cried Brace, strengthened in his resolve, on seeing the
pleasure his high spirits seemed to impart to his elders. "I am going
to see where they are marking out the drain."

"To be sure. Quite right, Brace--quite right. I should like, above all
things, to go with you."

"Well, why not?" said Brace, heartily.

Captain Norton smiled, and shook his head, as he pointed to his
writing-table, covered with correspondence.

"Too much engaged, my boy--too many letters to write. I'll go over with
you one day, though, if you will."

"To be sure," said Brace.

And then he saluted his mother, who held his hands tightly, as if
unwilling to part from him, as she gazed fondly in his face. Then
having secured the gun and ammunition, he started off, with a bold,
elastic step, apparently as free from care as if no cloud had crossed
his young career.

He had not gone far before again and again came the longing desire to
sit down beneath some shady tree, and picture the soft sweet face that
his heart whispered him he loved--the face that seemed to be so
impressed upon his brain, that, sleeping or waking, asked for or
uncalled, it was always there vividly before his gaze; though, beyond a
distant salute and its response, since the day of the accident, he had
never held the slightest intercourse with Isa Gernon. He might have
laughed at another for being so impressionable; but, none the less, he
felt himself to be greatly moved, and hour by hour he felt that the task
he had imposed upon himself was greater than he could ever expect to
master.

But that day Brace would not yield to the sweet temptation, striving
manfully and trying hard to tire himself out. He visited the portions
of the great marsh where arrangements were being made for forming the
drain; he tramped to and fro over the boggy land with his gun, hour
after hour; and at last, utterly weary, he entered the pine-wood on the
marsh edge, having unwittingly wandered to the spot where, years before,
his father had, in his wild despair, so nearly cast away his life.

It was with a sigh of satisfaction that he leaned his gun against a
tree, and seated himself upon the fallen trunk of a large fir; for there
was something soothing to his feelings in the solemn silence