usin Archie. I told you I
was following up your brother Sandie's hint about the agents for the
hunters; and at last I fell in with a merchant, who, on my inquiry,
showed me an invoice that I could have sworn to as in Archie's hand,
and described his white hair. It seems he has been acting as
manager on an ostrich farm for the last three years, far up the
country. So I lost no time in sending up a note to him, telling
him, if he had not forgotten old times, to come down and see me
while I was lying off Durban Bay. I heard no more for ten days, and
had got in the stores and was to sail the next day, thinking he had
given us all up, when a boat hailed us just come over the bar. I
saw Archie's white head, and in ten minutes I had him on deck. 'For
Heaven's sake--am I cleared, Miles?' was the first thing he said;
and when I could not say that he was, it went to my heart to see how
the eager look sank away, and he was like a worn-down man of fifty.
Poor fellow, I found he had ridden two hundred miles, with the hope
that I had brought him news that his innocence was proved, and the
revulsion was almost more than he could bear. You see, he had no
notion that we thought him dead, and so he took the entire absence
of any effort to trace him as acquiescence in his guilt; and when he
found out how it was, he laid me under the strongest injunctions to
disclose to no one that he is living--not that he fears any results,
but that he says it would only disturb every one and make them
wretched--"

"He must have gone and married. The wretch!" broke in Rosamond.

"No, oh no!" cried Anne. "Only hear the rest. 'I told him that I
could not see that at all, and that there was a very warm and tender
remembrance of him among us all, and he nearly broke down and said,
'For Heaven's sake then, Miles, let them rest in that! There's more
peace for them so.' I suppose I looked--I am sure I did not speak--
as though I were a little staggered as to whether he were ashamed to
be known; for he drew himself up in the old way I should have known
anywhere, and told me there was no reason I should fear to shake
hands with him; however his name might be blasted at home, he had
done nothing to make himself unworthy of his mother and Jenny--and
there was a sob again. So I let him know that up to my last letters
from home Jenny was unmarried. I even remembered those descriptive
words of yours, Nannie, 'living in patient peacefulness and
cheerfu