Augusta Huiell Seaman

“ What will they think?" cried Joyce.
"Never mind what they think, just for to-night!" responded Mrs. Collingwood, gaily. "You can tell them when you're explaining all this, that what you've done for us two people is beyond the power of words to express. They'll forgive you!" She bent down and kissed them both with a caress that thrilled them to their finger-tips. Then they all passed out through the great front door to the wide old veranda. Mr. Collingwood, taking the key from his mother, locked the little door in the boarding, after them. ”

“ But as it went on, we got more and more deeply interested, till at last this—this all seemed more important than our own lives," ended Joyce. "Only, I know we did wrong in the beginning ever to come in here at all. We are trespassers and meddlers, and I hope you can forgive us!"
"The dearest little meddlers in the world!" cried Mrs. Collingwood. "Can any forgiveness be necessary?" And she cuddled them both in her arms.
"There's just one thing I'd like to ask, if you don't mind," said Cynthia, coming suddenly out of a brown study. "It's the one thing we never could account for. ”

“ Collingwood turned to the girls:
"I am taking my mother back to New York for a few days. She must rest, and we have much to talk over. I scarcely need tell you that I am not returning to Australia!—We shall come back here very soon, open up this old home, put it in order, and probably spend the rest of our lives between here and the South.
"Dear girls, I hardly need say to you that in all the world we shall consider that we have no closer or more devoted friends than yourselves! This house will always be open to you. ”

“ What does anything matter so long as we are together again—for always?" He leaned over, pulled her hands from her face, and kissed her tenderly. The moment was an awkward one, and Cynthia wished madly that she had not been prompted to ask that unfortunate question. Suddenly, however, the tension was broken by Mrs. Collingwood exclaiming:
"Mercy me! See that enormous cat walking in! Wherever did it come from?" They all turned toward the door.
"Oh, that's Goliath!" said Joyce, calmly. "He feels very much at home here, for he has come in with us often. ”

“ And so they began, first Joyce and then Cynthia,—interrupting and supplementing each other. They were still rather anxious on the subject of meddling and trespassing, but they did not try to excuse themselves, recounting the adventures simply and hiding nothing. The older people listened intently, sometimes amused, sometimes touched, often more deeply moved than they cared to show. ”

“ The knowledge was like a knife-wound in my heart. There could be no doubt of the truth. I knew of no other of that name, and the town was the very one in which she lived. My mother now tells me that she knew of this mistake, an error of the New York paper in copying the item from a Southern journal. As a matter of fact, it was a very distant cousin of hers who had died, a Mrs. Fanshawe Collingwood, who also lived in the town. She was my mother's only living relative, and the paper mentioned this circumstance. ”

“ The region was, at that time, practically a trackless wilderness, and to brave it at all was considered the limit of folly. That, however, far from deterring me, attracted me only the more. I got together an outfit, and bade a long farewell to even the rough civilization of California.
"Those were strange years, marvelous years, that I spent in the mountain fastnesses of upper Canada. For month on month I would see no human being save the half-breed Indian guide who accompanied me, and most of the time he seemed to me scarcely human. ”

“ As I lay on the field with scores of others, after the battle, a poor fellow near me, who had been terribly hurt, was moaning and tossing. My own wound did not hamper me so much at the time, so I crawled over to him and tried to make him as comfortable as possible till a surgeon should arrive. ”