esence, that it seemed to him as though the sheer longing
would call her out of her retreat, on to the streets through which he
must pass, across his path, into the sight of his eyes and reach of his
hand. He had thought that he felt all this before. He found, as the
space diminished between them,--as, perchance, she was but a stone's
throw from his side,--that the pain, and the longing, and the
intolerable desire to behold her once again, increased a hundred-fold.

Eager as he had been a little while before to reach his home, he was
content to remain quietly here now. He laughed at himself as he stepped
into a carriage, and, tired as he was,--for his amputated arm, not yet
thoroughly healed, made him weak and worn,--drove through all the
afternoon and evening, across miles and miles of heated, wearisome
stones, possessed by the idea that somewhere, somehow, he should see
her, he would find her before his quest was done.

After that last painful rebuff, he did not dare to go to her home, could
he find it, till he had secured from her, in some fashion, a word or
sign. "This," he said, "is certainly doubly absurd, since she does not
live in the city; but she is here to-day, I know,--she must be here";
and persisted in his endeavor,--persisted, naturally, in vain; and went
to bed, at last, exhausted; determined that to-morrow should find him on
his journey farther north, whatever wish might plead for delay, yet with
a final cry for her from the depths of his soul, as he stretched out his
solitary arm, ere sinking to restless sleep, and dreams of battle and
death--sleep unrefreshing, and dreams ill-omened; as he thought, again
and again, rousing himself from their hold, and looking out to the
night, impatient for the break of day.

When day broke he was unable to rise with its dawn. The effect of all
this tension on his already overtaxed nerves was to induce a fever in
the unhealed arm, which, though not painful, was yet sufficient to hold
him close prisoner for several days; a delay which chafed him, and which
filled his family at home with an intolerable anxiety, not that they
knew its cause,--_that_ would have been a relief,--but that they
conjectured another, to them infinitely worse than sickness or
suffering, bad and sorrowful as were these.

CHAPTER X

"_Gentlemen, let not prejudice prepossess you._"

Izaak Walton

Car No. 14, Fifth Street line, Philadelphia, was crowded. Travelling
bags, shawls,