on, till at last, with one
long-drawn breath, his manly voice, tremulous with emotion, would break
forth: "My boy! my own Charley!" Then I pictured Considine, with port
erect and stern features, listening silently; not a syllable, not a motion
betraying that he felt interested in my fate, till as if impatient, at
length he would break in: "I knew it,--I said so; and yet you thought to
make him a lawyer!" And then old Sir Harry, his warm heart glowing with
pleasure, and his good-humored face beaming with happiness, how many a
blunder he would make in retailing the news, and how many a hearty laugh
his version of it would give rise to!

I passed in review before me the old servants, as they lingered in the
room to hear the story. Poor old Matthew, the butler, fumbling with his
corkscrew to gain a little time; then looking in my uncle's face, half
entreatingly, as he asked: "Any news of Master Charles, sir, from the
wars?"

While thus my mind wandered back to the scenes and faces of my early home,
I feared to ask myself how _she_ would feel to whom my heart was now
turning. Too deeply did I know how poor my chances were in that quarter to
nourish hope, and yet I could not bring myself to abandon it altogether.
Hammersley's strange conduct suggested to me that he, at least, could not
be _my_ rival; while I plainly perceived that he regarded me as _his_.
There was a mystery in all this I could not fathom, and I ardently longed
for my next meeting with Power, to learn the nature of his interview, and
also in what manner the affair had been arranged.

Such were my passing thoughts as I pressed forward. My men, picked no less
for themselves than their horses, came rapidly along; and ere evening, we
had accomplished twelve leagues of our journey.

The country through which we journeyed, though wild and romantic in its
character, was singularly rich and fertile,--cultivation reaching to the
very summits of the rugged mountains, and patches of wheat and Indian corn
peeping amidst masses of granite rock and tangled brushwood. The vine
and the olive grew wild on every side; while the orange and the arbutus,
loading the air with perfume, were mingled with prickly pear-trees and
variegated hollies. We followed no regular track, but cantered along over
hill and valley, through forest and prairie, now in long file through some
tall field of waving corn, now in open order upon some level plain,--our
Portuguese guide riding a little in