e
he stopped without speaking, as he saw Helen come down the garden, and
she walked close by him without raising her eyes, and passed on.

CHAPTER TWENTY THREE.

THE TROUBLE GROWS.

Dexter got down out of the willow-tree with a seed in his brain.

Bob Dimsted had dropped that seed into his young mind, and there it had
struck root directly, and continued to grow. A hard fight now
commenced.

So long as he was with Helen or the doctor, he could think of nothing
but the fact that they were so kind to him, and took so much interest in
his welfare, that it would be horribly ungrateful to go away without
leave, and he vowed that he would not go.

But so sure as he was alone, a series of dissolving views began to float
before his vivid imagination, and he saw Sir James Danby's boat managed
by Bob Dimsted and himself, gliding rapidly along through river and
along by sunlit shores, where, after catching wonderfully tinted fish,
he and the boy landed to light a fire, cook their food, and partake of
it in a delightful gipsy fashion. Then they put to sea again, and
glided on past wondrous isles where cocoa-nut palms waved in the soft
breeze.

Try how he would, Dexter could not keep these ideas out of his head, and
the more he thought, the brighter and more attractive they became; and
day after day found him, whenever he had an opportunity, waiting about
by the river-side in the expectation of seeing Bob Dimsted.

Bob did not come, but as Dexter climbed up into his nest in the willow
pollard his vivid imagination supplied the words he had said, and he
seemed to see himself sailing away, with the boy for his companion, down
the river, and out into the open sea; a portion of this globe which he
formed out of his own fancy, the result being wonderfully unlike the
truth.

Bob did not come, but Helen noticed how quiet and thoughtful the boy
seemed, and also how he affected that portion of the garden.

"Why don't you fish, Dexter?" she said to him one day, as she saw him
gazing disconsolately at the river.

He had not thought of this as an excuse for staying down by the river,
but he snatched at the idea now, and for the next week, whenever he
could get away from his lessons or their preparation, he was down on the
bank, dividing his time between watching his float and the opposite
shore.

But still Bob Dimsted did not come; and at last Dexter began to settle
down seriously to his fishing, as the impressions made gre