iod of immunity. He had
every reason to know that his regard was returned; and he had no reason
to doubt, though not an explicit word had been spoken to warrant the
belief--that when he asked the corresponding question of Josephine
Harris, as he certainly meant to do at a very early day, her answer
would be a frank and satisfactory--yes! So much for content and the
future. But Tom, like many another child, had no propensity for waiting,
and liked his sugar-plums _now_ as well as to-morrow. He would have
liked to give up business, ignore propriety, and have the company of the
odd combination of female graces and weaknesses who had won him, all the
while for the present, and afterwards by way of variety. So he felt at
that moment, at least; and it was with more than one, or two, or a dozen
yawns and "Heighos!" and several short naps that happened along on his
travel like cities of refuge, that he managed to wear through the last
hours of his journey.

But Tom Leslie, the cosmopolitan and journalist, would have been
unworthy the experience through which he had passed, had he lacked the
power to endure what he disliked. He could never have digested
horse-beef among the Kalmucks, or stomached the rancid sour-krout of Old
Haarlem, without this indispensable qualification. So, though on the
night of his arrival at the Cataract he allowed the thunder of the fall
to call him in vain to a view by the broken moonlight, and though he
tumbled into bed within ten minutes after his late and light supper and
went sullenly to sleep as if there had not been a woman in the world
worth thinking of,--yet he was in quite another mood the next morning.

Niagara was unusually full for so early a period in the season, the
leading houses being already crowded, though principally by transient
visitors. The Fourth of July, then just passed, had been kept with
unusual vigor and display, in the way of powder, fireworks and general
patriotism at the International, the Cataract and all the other more
popular houses--partially, no doubt, because the evil eyes from across
the river began to be noticeable, and because the red-cross flag had
been more conspicuously displayed at the Clifton House and on the
flag-staff at the Museum at Table Rock, than in ordinary seasons.

But whatever changes might have occurred in personal and national
feeling, Tom Leslie felt, as he strolled across the bridge and over Goat
Island, on the morning after his arrival, tha