for meeting to-morrow morning this girl must be in her bed at her home,
at Oxbow Village, and we must keep her story to ourselves as far as may
be. It will all blow over, if we do. The gossips will only know that she
was upset in the river and cared for by some good people,--good people
and sensible people too, Mrs. Lindsay. And now I want to see the young
man that rescued my friend here,--Clement Lindsay, I have heard his name
before."

Clement was not a beauty for the moment, but Master Gridley saw well
enough that he was a young man of the right kind. He knew them at sight,
fellows with lime enough in their bones and iron enough in their blood
to begin with,--shapely, large-nerved, firm-fibred and fine-fibred, with
well-spread bases to their heads for the ground-floor of the faculties,
and well-vaulted arches for the upper range of apprehensions and
combinations. "Plenty of basements," he used to say, "without attics
and skylights. Plenty of skylights without rooms enough and space enough
below." But here was "a three-story brain," he said to himself as he
looked at it, and this was the youth who was to find his complement in
our pretty little Susan Posey! His judgment may seem to have been hasty,
but he took the measure of young men of twenty at sight from long and
sagacious observation, as Nurse Byloe knew the "heft" of a baby the
moment she fixed her old eyes on it.

Clement was well acquainted with Byles Gridley, though he had never seen
him, for Susan's letters had had a good deal to say about him of late.
It was agreed between them that the story should be kept as quiet
as possible, and that the young girl should not know the name of her
deliverer,--it might save awkward complications. It was not likely
that she would be disposed to talk of her adventure, which had ended so
disastrously, and thus the whole story would soon die out.

The effect of the violent shock she had experienced was to change the
whole nature of Myrtle for the time. Her mind was unsettled: she
could hardly recall anything except the plunge over the fall. She was
perfectly docile and plastic,--was ready to go anywhere Mr. Gridley
wanted her to go, without any sign of reluctance. And so it was agreed
that he should carry her back in his covered wagon that very night. All
possible arrangements were made to render her journey comfortable. The
fast mare had to trot very gently, and the old master would stop and
adjust the pillows from time