rearier than before. I wondered
if he, too, in his time, had sent out ships that drifted and drifted and
never came to port; and if these poor toys were to him types of his own
losses.

"That man has a story, and I should like to know it," I said, half
aloud, halting in one of those winding paths which branch off from
the pastoral quietness of the Pond, and end in the rush and tumult of
Tremont Street.

"Would you?" exclaimed a voice at my side. I turned and faced Mr.
H------, a neighbor of mine, who laughed heartily at finding me talking
to myself. "Well," he added, reflectingly, "I can tell you this man's
story; and if you will match the narrative with anything as curious, I
shall be glad to hear it."

"You know him, then?"

"Yes and no. That is to say, I do not know him personally; but I know
a singular passage in his life. I happened to be in Paris when he was
buried."

"Buried!"

"Well, strictly speaking, not buried; but something quite like it. If
you 've a spare half hour," continued my friend H------, "we 'll sit on
this bench, and I will tell you all I know of an affair that made some
noise in Paris a couple of years ago. The gentleman himself, standing
yonder, will serve as a sort of frontispiece to the romance--a full-page
illustration, as it were."

The following pages contain the story Which Mr. H------ related to
me. While he was telling it, a gentle wind arose; the miniature sloops
drifted feebly about the ocean; the wretched owners flew from point
to point, as the deceptive breeze promised to waft the barks to either
shore; the early robins trilled now and then from the newly fringed
elms; and the old young man leaned on the rail in the sunshine, little
dreaming that two gossips were discussing his affairs within twenty
yards of him.

*****

Three persons were sitting in a _salon_ whose one large window
overlooked the Place Vendome. M. Dorine, with his back half turned on
the other two occupants of the apartment, was reading the Journal des
Debats in an alcove, pausing from time to time to wipe his glasses, and
taking scrupulous pains not to glance towards the lounge at his right,
on which were seated Mile. Dorine and a young American gentleman, whose
handsome face rather frankly told his position in the family. There was
not a happier man in Paris that afternoon than Philip Wentworth. Life
had become so delicious to him that he shrunk from looking beyond
to-day. What could the future add t