"I am very sorry, dear," said Ruth. "I did not mean to hurt you."

But Rachel was very indignant, and it was only as she remembered the purloined letter that she consented to be appeased. After all, she had taken the girl's welfare in hand, and had interested herself so kindly in her niece's behalf that she could not bear to be angry with her.

So she permitted a truce to be called, and on Ruth's renewed apologies asked graciously that no more should be said about the matter. They parted at the green door of the garden, and Rachel, walking homeward, pondered on one important question. Ought she or ought she not to know the contents of the letter? Without knowing them, how could she know exactly the length to which her niece and the intending worker of her ruin had already gone together? It was necessary to know that, and she slid her hand into the bosom of her dress, and held the letter there, half resolving to read it on her arrival at home. But although, as her theft of the letter itself would prove, her ideas of honor were quaint, they were strong. She had const.i.tuted herself Niece Ruth's guardian, and she meant to fulfil all her self-imposed duties to the letter, but there was one whose rights came before her own. The letter should be opened in the presence of Ruth's father, and the two authorities should consult together as to what might be done.

She cast about for a safe and unsuspicious resting-place for the letter, and at last decided upon the tea-caddy.

She placed it there, locked it up, and by the aid of a chair and a table stowed it securely away in the topmost corner of a tall cupboard. Then, having hidden the key in the parlor chimney, she went to bed and to sleep, profoundly convinced that she had adopted the wisest of possible courses, and that Niece Ruth would be saved in the morning.

Meantime Aunt Rachel's antique griefs being out of sight for Ruth, were out of mind. She had her own affairs to think of, and found them at once pressing and delightful. By this time Reuben would have read her note, and would know all it had to tell him. When she thought how much it told him it seemed daring and strange, and almost terrible that she should have written it. For it admitted that his letter had made her very happy; she was not quite sure that she had not written "very, very happy," and wished it were to write again. But here in the solitude of her own chamber she could kiss Reuben's letter, and could rest it against her hot cheek in an ecstasy of fluttering congratulations. How he looked, how he walked, how he talked, how he smiled, how he played!

How brave, how handsome, how altogether n.o.ble and good and gifted he was! There was n.o.body to compare with him in Heydon Hay, and the young men of Castle Barfield were contemptible by comparison with him. A human sun before whose rays other young women's luminaries paled like rush-lights! She seemed to have loved him always, and always to have been sure that he loved her; and yet it was wonderful to know it, and strange beyond strangeness to have told. She fancied him in the act of reading her letter, and she kissed his as she did so. Did he kiss hers?

Was he as glad as she was? At these audacious fancies she hid herself and blushed.

Reuben all this while, and until a much later hour, was bewildering himself about the curious and old-fashioned missive he had discovered between the melodious pages of Manzini. Over and over again he searched through the volume, though he had already turned it leaf by leaf and knew that there was no chance of his having overlooked anything. Almost as often as he turned over the leaves of the music-book he reread the note he had taken from it. He questioned himself as to the possibility of his having allowed Ruth's note to fall, and mentally retraced his own fashion of taking up the book, and step by step the way in which he had carried it home. He was sure that nothing could have escaped from its pages since he had laid hands upon it, and was confronted with a double mystery. How had this time-stained epistle found its way into the pages, and how had the more modern missive be had fully expected to find there found its way out of it?

Suddenly an idea occurred to him which, though sufficiently far-fetched, seemed as if it might by chance explain the mystery. Long and long ago a son of the house of Gold had married a daughter of the house of Fuller.

It was not outside the reasonable that Ruth should have had possession of this old doc.u.ment, in which a Ruth of that far-distant day had accepted a member of his own household. She might have chosen to answer him by this clear enigma, but a sense of solemnity in the phrasing of the letter made him hope his guess untrue. Desperate mysteries ask naturally for desperate guesses, and Reuben guessed right and left, but the mystery remained as desperate as ever. His thoughts so harried him that at last, though it was late for Heydon Hay, he determined to go at once to Fuller's house and ask for Ruth.

He slipped quietly down-stairs, and, leaving the door ajar, walked quickly along the darkened road, bearing poor Rachel's long-lost letter with him; but his journey, as he might have expected, ended in blank disappointment. Fuller's house was dark. He paced slowly home again, refastened the door, and went to bed, where he lay and tossed till broad dawn; and then reflecting that he would catch Ruth at her earliest household duties, fell asleep, and lay an hour or two beyond his usual time.

But if Reuben were laggard the innocent guardian dragon was early astir. Fuller, in his shirt-sleeves and a broad-brimmed straw hat, was pottering about his garden with a wheelbarrow and a pair of shears. He saw her at the open door of the garden, and sang out cheerily,

"Halloo, Miss Blythe! Beest early afoot this mornin'. I'm a lover o'

the mornin' air myself. Theer's no time to my mind when the gardin-stuff looks half as well. The smell o' them roses is real lovely."

He gave a loud-sounding and hearty sniff, and smacked his lips after it.

Rachel seemed to linger a little at the door.

"Come in," said Fuller, "come in. There's n.o.body here as bites. Beest come to see Ruth? I doubt if her's about as yet. We ode uns bin twice as early risin' as the young uns, nowadaysen. Wait a bit and I'll gi'e her a bit of a chi-hike. Her'll be down in a minute."

"No," said Rachel, "don't call her. I do not wish to see her yet. It will be necessary to see her later on; but first of all I desire to speak to you alone." Fuller looked a little scared at this exordium, but Rachel did not notice him. He had never known her so precise and picked in air and speech as she seemed to be that morning, and through all this a furtive air of embarra.s.sment peeped out plainly enough for even him to become aware of it. "May we sit down at this table?" she asked.

"I presume the chairs are aired already by the warm atmosphere of the morning? There is no danger of rheumatism?"

"What's up?" inquired Fuller, sitting down at once, and setting his shirt-sleeved arms upon the table. "Theer's nothin' the matter, is theer?"

"You shall judge for yourself," replied Rachel. She drew a letter from her pocket, and covering it with her hand laid it on the table. A distinct odor of tea greeted Fuller's nostrils, and he noticed it even then. "I presume that you are not unacquainted with the character of the Messrs. Gold?"

"It 'ud be odd if I warn't acquynted with 'em," said Fuller. "I've lived i' the same parish with 'em all my days."

"That being so," said Rachel, "you will be able to appreciate my feelings when I tell you that almost upon my first arrival here I discovered that the younger Gold was making advances to my niece Ruth."

"Ah?" said Fuller, interrogatively. "I don't count on bein' able to see no furder through a millstone than my neighbors, but I've been aweer o'

that for a day or two."

"Ruth is motherless," pursued Rachel, a little too intent upon saying things in a predetermined way to take close note of Fuller. "A motherless girl in a situation of that kind is always in need of the guidance of an experienced hand."

"Yis, yis," a.s.sented Fuller, heartily. "Many thanks to you, Miss Blythe, for it's kindly meant, I know."

"Last night," said Rachel, "I made a discovery." There was nothing in the world of which she was more certain than she was of Fuller's approving sanction. Only a few minutes before she had had her doubts about it, and they had made her nervous. She was so very serious that Fuller began to look grave. But he was built of loyalty and unsuspicion; and though for a mere second a fear a.s.sailed him that the old lady was about to charge Reuben with playing his daughter false, he scouted the fancy hotly. In the warmth thus gained he spoke more briskly than common.

"Drive along, ma'am. Come to the root o' the matter."

"This letter," said Rachel, taking Ruth's answer to Reuben in both hands, "was written last night. It is addressed in your daughter's handwriting to Mr. Reuben Gold."

"Tis, yis, yis," said Fuller, impatiently, not knowing what to make of Rachel's funereal gravity.

"It appeared to me, after long consideration, that the best and wisest course I could adopt would be to bring it to you. I regard myself as being in a sense, and subject always to your authority, one of the child's natural guardians. If I did not view things in that light,"

the old lady explained, making elaborate motions with her lips for the distinct enunciation of every word, "I should consider that I was guilty of a sinful neglect of duty."

"Well," said Fuller, "as to sinful. But drive on, Miss Blythe."

"It appeared to me, then," continued Rachel, "that our plain duty would be to read this together, and to consult upon it."

"Wheer does the letter come from?" Fuller demanded, with a look of bewilderment.

"I discovered it in the--"

"What!" cried the old fellow, jumping from his chair and staring at her across the table with red face and wrathful eyes.

"I discovered it," replied Rachel, rising also and facing him with her head thrown back and her youthful eyes flashing, "I discovered it in the music-book which was left last night upon this table. I saw it placed there clandestinely by my niece Ruth."

"Be you mad, Miss Blythe?" asked Fuller, with a slow solemnity of inquiry which would have made the question richly mirthful to an auditor. "Do you mean to tell me as you go about spyin' after wheer my little wench puts her letters to her sweetheart? Why, fie, fie, ma'am!

That's a child's trick, not a bit like a growd-up woman."

Fuller was astonished, but Rachel's amazement transcended his own.

"And you tell me, John Fuller, that you know the character of this man?"

"Know his character!" cried Fuller. "Who should know it better nor me?

The lad's well-nigh lived i' my house ever sence he was no higher 'n my elber. Know his character? Ah! Should think I did an' all. The cliverest lad of his hands and the best of his feet for twenty mile around--as full o' pluck as a tarrier an' as kindly-hearted as a wench. Bar his Uncle Ezra, theer niver was a mon to match him in Heydon Hay i' my time.

Know his character!" He was unused to speak with so much vigor, and he paused breathless and mopped his scarlet face with his shirt-sleeve, staring across his arm at Rachel meanwhile in mingled rage and wonder.

"His Uncle Ezra?" said Rachel, looking fixedly and scornfully back at him. "His Uncle Ezra is a villain!"

For a second or two he stared at her with a countenance of pure amazement, and then burst into a sudden gurgle of laughter. This so overmastered him that he had to cling to the table for support, and finally to resume his seat. His jolly face went crimson, and the tears chased each other down his fat cheeks. When he seemed to have had his laugh quite out, and sat gasping and mopping his eyes with his shirt-sleeve, a chance look at Rachel reinspired the pa.s.sion of his mirth, and he laughed anew until he had to clip his wide ribs with his palms as if to hold himself together. A mere gleam of surprise crossed the scorn and anger of Rachel's face as she watched him, but it faded quickly, and when once it had pa.s.sed her expression remained unchanged.

"Good-morning, Aunt Rachel," cried Ruth's fresh voice. "You are early."

Rachel turned briskly round in time to see Ruth disappear from a white-curtained upper window. Fuller rose with a face of sudden sobriety, and began once more to mop his eyes. In a mere instant Ruth appeared at the door running towards the pair with a face all smiles.

"Why, father," she cried, kissing the old man on the cheek, "what a laugh! You haven't laughed so for a year. What is the joke, Aunt Rachel?"

She saw at a glance that, whatever the jest might be, Aunt Rachel was no sharer in it.

"I know of no joke, Niece Ruth," said the old lady, with mincing iciness.

"Theer's summat serious at the bottom on it, but the joke's atop, plain for annybody to see," said Fuller. "But Miss Bly the's come here this mornin' of a funny sort of a arrant, to my thinking, though her seems to fancy it's as solemn a business as a burying."

"What is the matter?" asked Ruth, looking from one to the other. Some movement of Rachel's eyes sent hers to the table, and she recognized her own letter in a flash. She moved instinctively and laid her hand upon it.

"That's it," said her father, with a new gurgle. "'Twas your Aunt Rachel, my dear," he explained, "as see you put it somewheer last night, an' took care on it for you." Ruth turned upon the little old lady with a grand gesture, in which both hands were suddenly drawn down and backward until they were clinched together, crushing the letter between them behind her. "Her comes to me this morning," pursued Fuller, while the old woman and the young one looked at each other, "an' tells me plump an' plain as her wants t' open this letter and read it, along with me."