Edward Irenaeus Prime-Stevenson

“ And verily, the Philip Touchtone laughing, rowing races on the lake, playing tennis before the Ossokosee House piazza, and riding about in Mr. Marcy's light wagon seemed like an insignificant sort of creature who had known nothing of life.
"And to think that I would be—well—that other fellow, that old Philip Touchtone, this minute if Gerald had not happened to come up to the Ossokosee to spend the summer!" he reflected, as his eyes turned upon the sick boy's flushed face. "But I don't believe that there are many things in life that happen." And it is to be concluded that there are not. ”

“ The boy's face was whiter at each word, although his spirit gave a ring to his threat. But Mr. Sip had invaded too many kitchens and terrified far too many helpless servant-maids to allow himself to be daunted by a boy well dressed and carrving a watch and a basket of good things. He uttered an angry oath and splashed violently toward the lad, stumbling among the sharp flints of the creek. It was open war begun by hot pursuit.
The path by which Gerald Saxton (for that happened to be the name of the solitary little fisherman) had made his way to the creek was steep and irregular. ”

“ Marcy in the barge; and on it with them, in an agony of delight at your vain prowess, stands Gerald Saxton, the friend of Philip Touchtone—Philip Touchtone, whose strong stroke has helped mightily to tell against you all the way up and back. Ah, you falter a little now; nor can you save yourselves by any more spurting. The green amphitheater rings again and again with cheers and applause, but not for you. ”

“ The preparations to leave the ship went forward swiftly, orderly. People hurried about with white and frightened faces. Now and then there were exclamations from one or another quarter, but there was no panic. Captain Widgins and his aids seemed to be in all places, cheering the timid and directing every thing. No tug came to the rescue, nor did the steady signaling bring any other help through the murk. The pumps did their duty stanchly. But the water poured through the ill-stopped, ragged hole blown out, far down in the hull; and it gained pitilessly.
Philip and Gerald had little to do. ”

“ For hours there was but a step between them and death; but death kept its distance. The boat, like some treacherous, living thing, whose cruelty had been appeased in that angry overturn, was pacified now, and seemed resolved to protect the remnant of its charge. It rode lightly over crest after crest. They bailed it out as well as they could, and disposed carefully the odds and ends left in it—a shawl, a bottle, a soaked bundle of clothing—poor relics, terribly eloquent. They fought away the chill and misery of their situation as well as Philip's energy could devise, and not unsuccessfully. ”

“ TOUCHTONE woke as the clock struck nine. The farm-house was as silent as ever. He dressed himself hurriedly and made an observation outside. The garden lay peaceful in the morning sunshine. Towzer and the large white cat that had suddenly appeared, and was on the easiest of social terms with Towzer, came about his legs on the door-sill. Sails in plenty shone in the blue sea distance, but no craft was heading for the island. ”

“ Probasco and Obed sat within ear-shot of the sick-room. In low voices they went into new particulars on both sides, discussed his plans for himself and Gerald together, and weighed this and that. Hospitable, shrewd, warm-hearted folk! Could you and your charge, Philip, have fallen into more tender or more willing hands? How interested they became in the life at the Ossokosee that had made this friendship begin, and in the thousand little or greater incidents which had perfected it and so suddenly laid such responsibilities on Touchtone's shoulders! ”

“ He could hardly be kept from calling Joe and all Knoxport to draw near and partake of such a feast.
"I do, I do congratulate you with all my heart!" he declared over and over. "Your escape has been a miracle. And to think they have been mourning and lamenting and giving you both quite up," he continued. "But the mourning is nothing to make light of when it's a father's for his son, or such a kind of grief as Mr. Marcy's. I'm glad I didn't say more before that little fellow. Never did I see a man so cut to the heart in all my life as his father. ”

“ But—if one yields to the temptation to be among the prophets, and closes his eyes, there come, chiefly, pleasant thoughts of how good are friendship and love and loyal service between man and man in this rugged world of ours; and how probable it is that such things here have not their ending, since they have not their perfecting here, perfect as friendship and the service sometimes seem. Therewith the inditer of this chronicle sees Philip and Gerald walking forward, calmly and joyfully, and in an unlessened affection and clearer mutual understanding—into their endless lives. ”

“ For when the latter had fairly come the fog hung closer than ever. Hour by hour passed with no reasonable gain in the light. Whether the sun was on the one side or the other, before or behind, no man could have told. They were ever surrounded by a dirty greenish haze that made their faces more wan, and that mixed sea and air into one elastic wall, which moved with them as they moved and closed about them as they slid helplessly onward into it.
With the lessening of his strength and the rolling of the boat Gerald became deathly sick. Philip could do little for that. ”

“ Sit down for your lives!" cried Eversham. "The boat will be swamped!" The packages of plate in the middle were shifting perilously, falling against each other. Too late! Lurching violently on the very crest of the roller, the boat toppled, plunged, and then cast out its load—men, women, boys, cars, all—pell-mell together.
For two or three seconds—the kind that seem an eternity—Philip Touchtone, thrown sidelong, struggled in the sea, conscious of but two things. He gripped the gunwale with one hand, half his body submerged. ”

“ Probasco's inmost heart, which one already will have divined was nothing like as unromantic as her features, this friendship between these two lads, this devotion of the elder lad to the younger.
"There never was any thing prettier than the way you an' him have been keeping together," she ventured once to remark, ungrammatically but earnestly. "It's like a book."
"But there never was any body else like Gerald—in or out of a book," Touchtone answered, simply, blushing. For if facts were on his lips his inner sentiments, as a general thing, were not. ”

“ Captain Widgins has promised to help me whenever it's necessary. You needn't expect to cheat him!"
Touchtone's heart sank. Belmont had been before him. The captain's conduct at supper was suspicion, not kindness! Yet this man was equal to any lie that might terrify his victim. He remembered that. It gave him comfort.
"To cheat the captain? I don't believe you have dared to!" he answered. "You can no more prove any thing of the sort than you can prove that you own this boat. I challenge you or any one else! Say what you like, do what you like, you have no business with Gerald Saxton! ”

“ Philip began, stammering, "but—but there is certainly some mistake. You are surely not the gentleman we met on the train to-day—and—"
"Train? Of course not!" laughed the irrepressible stranger. "I've been laid up in the house with malaria since I wrote Marcy. But you're you, Philip Touchtone; and you are Gerald Saxton; and I am myself, Frederick Hilliard, the only and actual, at your service. If any body has been playing me, he's some oddity—doing a poor copy of an indifferent original. ”

“ It swept the rocky coasts of New England with a power that recent tempests have seldom equaled. Fishing-smacks, merchant craft of stalwart build, and yachts, belated in their return home, were dashed by dozens on the reefs of the Middle and Eastern States, swallowed up by the terrific sea that ran at its highest for days together, or, like empty soap-boxes in surf, were driven to shore. The death-list of seamen and others, unfortunate enough to be at the gale's mercy or mercilessness ran well up into the hundreds. ”

“ Philip replied, trying to treat lightly the most important worry that now pressed on him, "but no great distance from land, I'm somehow inclined to think. A steamer, or something, may pick us up any hour."
"But perhaps every hour we are slipping out to sea all the farther?"
"Let us hope not. O, no! I'm sure not such bad luck as that. I—I don't think, Gerald," he added more seriously, "that you and I have been—carried through last night—to be put in worse trouble much longer. Keep up a good heart, like the brave fellow you are! ”

“ The claim against you is enough. Come, boy—for you are a boy and I a man, prepared to hold his ground against a hundred like you! You shall be in irons in half an hour if you try to play the hero here. Remember, I know you."
"And you will actually dare to bring such a charge against me here, and at this time of night?" cried Philip, vehemently. "And you believe you can fight the plain story that Gerald and I can tell? Do your worst! I'm not afraid to face it. In irons? That is talk out of a dime-novel, Mr. Belmont." ”

“ Then looking up at Philip, with an expression in his eyes and voice that is not easily described, he said, "Touchtone, I can't say now—any more than I have been able to say it before—what I feel about you—how I thank you! Gerald's coming back has saved my happiness, and you have saved Gerald—from I know not what. In every thing and every moment I can see—not by what you say about yourself—you have been a sort of a hero. You don't like praise to your face? ”

“ The boat kept on its course with Philip's care. The light air blew in their faces and dashed the little waves gayly. They were going to get to shore! They were saved! They should see their friends again and tell with living lips the story of their dangers and deliverance. They almost held their breaths with hope and suspense. Still nearer and nearer they slowly drew to the island. New details and those of the farm and the farm-house—there seemed to be only one—came, bit by bit, into clearer sight. ”

“ As for Gerald and Mr. Marcy, they were among the first to greet them when they were cool enough to quit their shell for a few moments. Gerald was quite unnerved with rapture.
"O, Philip," he exclaimed, "I never was so glad over any thing in my life!" And the boy spoke the exact truth.
"You deserve to be carried home on a church-steeple—a blunt one—every one of you!" declared Mr. Marcy, adding to the patron of the Victors, who stood near him, "Mr. York, your young men have lost their laurels forever. Our boys don't intend to be beaten again." ”

“ Philip, explaining his warrant, to Gerald's amusement, in spite of the lad's weariness and exhaustion, got his charge and himself safely into the kitchen. The cellar revealed pan after pan of milk and cream. They made a meal more ample than was altogether prudent after such spare commons as had been theirs at sea, but fortunately with no harm to them; nor was the famishing Towzer forgotten, nor the cat that suddenly came trotting up the walk, miauling, with tail erect. Infinitely refreshed, Philip went once more over the sober, still dwelling to satisfy the curiosity of Gerald. ”

“ I remember your mother pretty well, too."
"Don't talk of her," said Philip, sharply; "my time is short, and yours, too, if you leave here to-night."
"Quite true," replied Jennison, coolly. "I must get along in what I have to say, Touchtone, your father was innocent as a child of any share in that bank business—"
"Do you think I don't know that? Do you think any body who really knew him could believe any thing else?"
"O, plenty of people—all the world, pretty much! You know that. Even your mother's old friend, Mr. Marcy, never liked to talk much about the question, eh?" ”

“ You dart two boat-lengths behind those crimson shirts, that even your warmest friends yonder must hurrah over as they shoot by the goal! The cannon booms out their welcome far and wide! You who are the Victors must call yourselves the Defeats, for the race is over and the Ossokosees have won it gloriously!
How the next half hour passed for Philip, Davidson, McKay, Rice, and all that enraptured crew, as they received in the boat-house the friends who could press their way inside to congratulate them—this the reader may imagine. ”

“ But the solution of it is as old as the rocks in Wooden's Ravine, perhaps older. We may keep our lives and thoughts under a lock and key as tightly as we like until the day comes when, somewhere along this crowded highway called Life, we all at once run square against some other human creature who is made by fate to be our best friend. ”

“ Touchtone," Mrs. Probasco declared. "We wont give him a chance to get real sick, between us."
"What kind people they are!" Gerald said, softly, to Touchtone, just as he was dropping off into a fresh doze, with the clink of Mrs. Probasco's dishes and the murmur of her conference with Obed making a homely lullaby from the adjoining room.
"Yes, the kindest sort," assented Touchtone. "Go to sleep, old man, and dream about them and every thing else that is pleasant. ”

“ Gerald decided, in course of the afternoon. Every thing pointed, indeed, to a solitary life led by a careful, thrifty couple in this isolated spot; childless, and just now called away from their home—probably to the mainland—by some sudden and oddly detaining necessity."
"Yes; they live here alone. They have gone away in a hurry for some special reason. It's plainly that, I think. And all you and I can do is to wait for them to come back," replied Philip. ”