S.

THE FIRST DAY.

SHOWERY and unsettled. In spite of the weather, Jessie put on my
Mackintosh cloak and rode off over the hills to one of Owen's outlying
farms. She was already too impatient to wait quietly for the evening's
reading in the house, or to enjoy any amusement less exhilarating than a
gallop in the open air.

I was, on my side, as anxious and as uneasy as our guest. Now that the
six weeks of her stay had expired--now that the day had really arrived,
on the evening of which the first story was to be read, I began to
calculate the chances of failure as well as the chances of success. What
if my own estimate of the interest of the stories turned out to be a
false one? What if some unforeseen accident occurred to delay my son's
return beyond ten days?

The arrival of the newspaper had already become an event of the deepest
importance to me. Unreasonable as it was to expect any tidings of George
at so early a date, I began, nevertheless, on this first of our days of
suspense, to look for the name of his ship in the columns of telegraphic
news. The mere mechanical act of looking was some relief to my
overstrained feelings, although I might have known, and did know, that
the search, for the present, could lead to no satisfactory result.

Toward noon I shut myself up with my collection of manuscripts to revise
them for the last time. Our exertions had thus far produced but six of
the necessary ten stories. As they were only, however, to be read, one
by one, on six successive evenings, and as we could therefore count on
plenty of leisure in the daytime, I was in no fear of our failing to
finish the little series.

Of the six completed stories I had written two, and had found a third
in the form of a collection of letters among my papers. Morgan had only
written one, and this solitary contribution of his had given me more
trouble than both my own put together, in consequence of the perpetual
intrusion of my brother's eccentricities in every part of his narrative.
The process of removing these quaint turns and frisks of Morgan's
humor--which, however amusing they might have been in an essay, were
utterly out of place in a story appealing to suspended interest for its
effect--certainly tried my patience and my critical faculty (such as it
is) more severely than any other part of our literary enterprise which
had fallen my share.

Owen's investigations among his papers had supplied us with the two
remaining na