so remarkable an accident, and come out
of it so well.

Ford's return, when he should make it, was to take him to a great,
pompous, stylish, crowded "up-town boarding-house," in one of the
fashionable streets of the great city. There was no wonder at all that
wise people should wish to get out of such a place in such hot weather.
Still it was the sort of home Ford Foster had been acquainted with all
his life; and it was partly owing to that, that he had become so
prematurely "knowing."

He knew too much, in fact, and was only too well aware of it. He had
filled his head with an unlimited stock of boarding-house information,
as well as with a firm persuasion that there was little more to be
had,--unless, indeed, it might be scraps of such outside knowledge as he
had now been picking up over on Long Island.

In one of the large "parlor-chambers" of the boarding-house, at about
eight o'clock that evening, a middle-aged gentleman and lady, with a
fair, sweet-faced girl of about nineteen, were sitting near an open
window, very much as if they were waiting for somebody. Such a kind,
motherly lady! She was one of those whom no one can help liking, after
seeing her smile once, or hearing her speak.

Ford Foster himself could not have put in words what he thought about
his mother. And yet he had no difficulty whatever in expressing his
respect for his father, or his unbounded admiration for his pretty
sister Annie.

"O husband!" exclaimed Mrs. Foster, "are you sure none of them were
injured?"

"So the telegraphic report said; not a bone broken of anybody, but the
pig that got in the way."

"How I wish he would come!" groaned Annie. "Have you any idea, father,
how Ford could get to the city?"

"Not clearly, my dear," said her father; "but you can trust Ford not to
miss any opportunity. He's just the boy to look out for himself in an
emergency."

Ford Foster's father took very strongly after the son in whose presence
of mind and ability he expressed so much confidence. He had just such a
square, active, bustling sort of body, several sizes larger; with just
such keen, penetrating, greenish-gray eyes. Anybody would have picked
him out at a glance for a lawyer, and a good one.

That was exactly what he was; and, if anybody had become acquainted with
either son or father, there would have been no difficulty afterward in
identifying the other.

It required a good deal more than the telegraphic report of the
accident, o