University of Virginia Library

36. CHAPTER XXXVI.
TREASURE-TROVE.

It was a balmy September evening, some weeks after
Mr. Brown's return to Ohio, when Karl, or, as he was
now generally styled, Dr. Windsor, standing beside his
horse, in the quiet Main Street of Greenfield, saw Dr.
Gershom riding lazily into town, accompanied by a sturdy,
good-looking lad, also on horseback, whom Karl failed to
recognize.

“A new student, maybe,” thought he, and, taking his
foot out of the stirrup, waited to see.

“Hollo, Windsor, hold on a minute!” shouted Dr. Gershom
as they approached. “Here's a young gentleman
asking for you.”

Karl bowed, and began hastily to review his half-forgotten
army acquaintances; failing, however, to identify
any of them with the young man now bowing to him, and
taking a letter from his pocket-book.

“Mr. Brown favored me with this letter of introduction
to you, sir,” said he, holding it out.

Karl glanced hastily at the few lines, and remembered
an allusion the chaplain had made to a particularly promising
student of his, whom he thought of sending to travel a
little in the West. So he frankly smiled, extended his
hand, and said, —

“Ah, yes! I have heard Mr. Brown speak of you, Mr.
Ginniss; and I am very happy to welcome you to our prairie
life. I am just setting out for home; and, if you please, we
will ride along directly.”

“Better come in, boys, and have a glass of bitters to keep
the night-air off your stomachs. Got some of the real stuff
right here in the office,” said the old doctor; but, both young
men declining the proffered hospitality, he withdrew, grumbling,
—

“You never'll make it work, Windsor, I tell you now!
Such a dog's life as a country doctor's isn't to be kept up
without fuel.”

Karl laughed, and, turning to his new acquaintance,
said, —

“So they told me in the army; but I got through without.
I never tasted spirit but once, and then I didn't like it.”

“I never have at all,” said Ginniss simply. “I gave my
mother a promise, when I was twelve years old, that I never
would; and I never have.”

Karl nodded.

“That's right,” said he; “and all the better for you to
have had such a mother.”

“You'd say that, Mr. Windsor, if you knew what she'd
done for me. There ain't many such mothers in any class,”
said the young man heartily.

Karl looked at his new acquaintance with increasing
favor, and found something very attractive in his open,
manly face, and the honest smile with which he met his
scrutiny.

“I hope you'll stay with us some time, Mr. Ginniss,” said
he heartily.

“Thank you; but, I believe, only for one day. The journey
was my principal object in coming; and I must be at Antioch
College again in a week, or ten days at the outside.”

“Tell me about the life there. I was at old Harvard,
and never visited any other college,” said Karl; and the
young men found plenty of conversation, until, in the soft
twilight, they came upon the pleasant slope and vine-clad
buildings of Outpost.

“Here is our house, or rather my cousin's house,” said
Karl. “You have heard Mr. Brown speak of Dora?”

“Yes, before he went away,” said Ginniss significantly.

“But not since his return?” asked Karl eagerly.

“Very seldom.”

“Hem! Seth, will you take our horses round? Jump
off, and come in, sir. This is my sister Kitty, Mr. Ginniss.
A scholar of Mr. Brown's, Kitty: I dare say you remember
his speaking of him.”

“Yes, indeed! Very happy to see you, Mr. Ginniss; walk
in,” said Kitty, who, if she had never heard the line, certainly
knew how to apply the idea, of, —

“Where is Dora?” asked Karl, glancing round the room
where the pretty tea-table stood spread, and Dora's hat and
gloves lay upon a chair; but no other sign of her presence
was to be found.

“Why,” said Kitty, laughing a little, “Dolly took a fancy
for rafting down the river on a log that she somehow managed
to push off from the bank. Of course, she slipped off
the first thing, and might have been drowned; but Argus got
her out somehow, and Seth, hearing the noise, ran down and

brought her home. Of course, she was dripping wet; and
Dora has put her to bed.”

“Is it a sanitary or a disciplinary measure?” asked Karl:
“because, if the latter, we shall have Dora out of spirits all
the evening. She never punishes Dolce half so much as she
does herself.”

“Well, I believe it is a little of both this time,” replied
Kitty. “I think she'll be down to tea. You had better take
Mr. Ginniss right into your bedroom, Charlie. Perhaps
he'd like to wash his hands before tea.”

“Thank you; I should, if you please,” said the guest,
and left the room with his host.

When they returned, Dora was waiting to receive them,
somewhat pale and sad at having felt obliged to refuse Sunshine's
entreaties to “get up, and be the 'bedientest little
girl that ever was,” but courteously attentive to the guest,
and ready to be interested and sympathetic in hearing all
Karl's little experiences of the day. As for Kitty, her careless
inquiry on seating herself at the table, of, —

“How has Mr. Brown been since he got home?” may
serve as index to the course of her meditations.

“How in the world came Dolce to undertake the rafting
business?” asked Karl, when his sister's inquiries had been
amply satisfied.

“Why, poor little thing!” said Dora, laughing a little,
“she thought she had found the way to heaven. She
noticed from the window how very blue the river was, and,
as she says, `goldy all over in spots:' so she slipped out, and
ran down there, forgetting for once that she is forbidden to
do so. Standing on the brink, she saw the reflection of the
little white clouds floating overhead, and was suddenly possessed
with an idea that this was heaven, or the entrance to
it. So, as she told me, she thought she would float out on
the log till she got to the middle, and then `slip off, and
fall right into heaven.”'

“How absurd!” said Kitty, laughing.

“Not at all. She would certainly have reached heaven
if she had carried out the plan,” said Karl.

“Don't, please,” murmured Dora, with a little shiver.
“Don't talk of it.”

“That is like a little sister of mine; a little adopted sister,
at least. She was always talking of going to heaven,
and planning to get there,” said the guest.

Dora looked at him with pity in her honest eyes, and
hastened to prevent Kitty's evident intention of questioning
him further with regard to this “little sister.”

“It seems to be a natural instinct with children,” said

she, “to long for heaven. Perhaps that is the reason they
bring so much of heaven to earth.”

“I'm afraid mothers of large and troublesome families
would say that earth would be better with less of heaven,”
suggested Karl slyly; and the conversation suddenly veered
to other topics. But all through the evening, and even after
he had gone to rest, the mind of Teddy Ginniss was haunted
by the memory of the pretty child, so loved and mourned,
and of whom this anecdote of the little heaven-seeker sc
forcibly reminded him.

“Whose child is this, I wonder?” thought he a dozen
times: but, in the hints he had solicited from Mr. Brown
upon manners, none had been more urgent than that forbidding
inquisition into other people's affairs; and indeed Teddy's
natural tact and refinement would have prevented his
erring in this respect. So now he held his peace, and slept
unsatisfied.

This may have been the reason of his rising unusually
early, — in fact, while the rosy clouds of dawn were yet in
the sky, — and quietly leaving the house with the purpose of
a river-bath. Strolling some distance down the bank, until
the intervening trees shut off the house, he plunged in, and
found himself much refreshed by a swim of ten minutes

through waters gorgeous with the colors of the sunrise-sky;
and, as he paused to notice them, Teddy muttered, —

“The poor little sister! She'd have done just the same
if she'd been here.”

It was hardly time to return to the house when the young
man stood again upon the bank; and he strolled on through
the wood, at this point touching upon the river so closely,
that a broken reflection of the green foliage curved and
shimmered along the fast-flowing waves.

Teddy looked at the water; he looked at the trees; he
looked long and eagerly across the wide prairie that far
westward imperceptibly melted its dim green into the faint
blue of the horizon, leaving between the two a belt of tender
color, nameless, but inexpressibly tempting and suggestive
to the eye. All this the lad saw, and, raising his
face skyward, drew in a long draught of such air as never
reaches beyond the prairies.

“Oh, but it's good!” exclaimed he, with more meaning
to the simple phrase than many a man has put to an oration.
And then he muttered, as he walked on, —

“If it wasn't for the thought that's always lying like a
stone at the bottom of my heart, there'd not be a happier
fellow alive to-day than I. Oh the little sister! — the little

sister that I never shall forget, nor forgive myself for the
loss of!”

And, from the cottonwood above his head, a mocking-bird,
who had perhaps caught the trick of grief from some
neighbor whippoorwill, poured suddenly a flood of plaintive
melody, that to the boy's warm Irish fancy seemed a lament
over the loved and lost.

He took off his hat, and looked up into the tree.

“Heaven's blessing on you, birdy!” said he. “It's the
very way I'd have said it myself; but I didn't know
how.”

The mocking-bird flew on; and Teddy followed, hoping
for a repetition of the strain: but the capricious little songster
only twittered promises of a coming happiness greater
than any pleasure his best efforts could afford, and darted
away to the recesses of the forest, where was in progress
an Art-Union matinée of such music as all the wealth of all
our cities cannot buy for us.

Teddy followed for a while; and then, fearing that he
should be lost in the trackless wood, turned his back upon
the rising sun, and walked, as he supposed, in the direction
of the house, his eyes upon the ground, his mind strangely
busy with thoughts and memories of the life he had left

so far behind, that, in the press and hurry of his present
career, it sometimes seemed hardly to belong to him.

“God and my lady have been very good to me,” thought
the boy; “but I never'll be as happy again as when the little
sister put her arms about my neck, and called me her dear
Teddy, and kissed me with her own sweet mouth that maybe
is dust and ashes now. No: I never'll be happy that way
again.”

He raised his eyes as he spoke, and started back, pale and
trembling, fain to lean against the nearest tree for support
under the great shock.

Not fifty feet from him, and bathed in the early sunlight
that came sifting through the trees to greet her, stood a child,
dressed in a white robe, her sunny hair crowned with flowers,
her little hand holding sceptre-wise a long stalk with snow-white
bells drooping from its under edge. Her arms were
bare to the shoulder, and her slender feet gleamed white from
the bed of moss that almost buried them. Still as a little
statue, or a celestial vision printing itself in one never-to-be-forgotten
moment upon the heart of the beholder, she stood
looking at him; and Teddy dropped upon his knees, gasping,
—

“It's out of glory you've come to comfort me, darling!
and God ever bless you for the same!”

The child looked at him with her starry eyes, and slowly
smiled.

“I knew you sometime,” said she. “Was it in heaven?”

“No: it's better than ever I'll be, you know, in heaven,
little sister. Are you happy there, mavourneen?” asked
Teddy timidly.

“Oh! I haven't gone to heaven yet. I never could find
the way,” said the child, with a troubled expression suddenly
clouding her sweet face; and then she added musingly,
—

“I thought I'd get there through the river last night; but
I tumbled off the log, and only got wet: and Dora said I was
naughty; and so I had to go to bed, and not have some
supper, only” —

“What's that, then!” shouted Teddy, springing to his feet,
and holding out his hands toward her, though not yet daring
to approach. “It's not the spirit of the little sister you are,
but a live child?”

“Yes, I'm alive; though, if I'd staid into the river,
I wouldn't have been, Dora says,” replied Sunshine
quietly.

“Oh! but the Lord in heaven look down on us this day,
and keep me from going downright mad with the joy that's

breaking my heart! Is it yourself it is, O little sister! is
it yourself that's in it, and I alive to see it?”

He was at her feet now, his white face all bathed with
tears, his trembling fingers timidly clasping her robe, his
eyes raised imploringly to those serenely bent upon him.

“I knew you once, and you was good to me,” said the
child musingly; “but I got tired when I danced so much
in the street. I don't ever dance now, only with Argus.”

“But, little sister, are you just sure it's yourself alive?
And don't you mind I was Teddy, and we used to go walking
in the Gardens and on the Commons; and there was the good
mammy at home that used to rock you on her lap, and warm
the pretty little feet in her hands, and sing to you till you
dropped asleep? Don't you mind them things, Cherry darling?”

The child looked attentively in his face while he thus spoke,
and at the end nodded several times; while a light, like that
of earliest dawn, began to glimmer in her eyes.

“Tell me some more,” said she briefly.

“And do you mind the picture-books I used to bring you
home, and the story of the Cock Robin you used to like so
well to hear, and the skip-jack you played with, and the big
doll that mammy made for you, and you called it Susan?” —

“O—h! Susan!” cried the child suddenly, and then
stood all pale and trembling, while her earnest eyes seemed
searching in the past for some dimly-remembered secret,
which to lose was agony, to recall impossible.

“Susan!” said she softly again. “Yes, there was
Susan, somewhere, and — Oh! tell me the rest; tell me
who it was that loved me so!”

“Sure, it was Teddy loved you best of all,” said the boy
longingly: for, though her eager eyes dwelt upon his face, it
was not for him or his that the depths of her heart were
stirring; and, with the old thrill of jealous pain, he felt
it so.

But then from the remorse and bitterness of the fault he
had never ceased to mourn rose a nobler purpose, a higher
love. He took the child in his arms, and kissed her tenderly,
then released her, saying, —

“Good-by, little sister; for I never will call you so again,
and you never more will call me brother. It's your own
lady-mother, darling, that you're missing and mourning, —
the own beautiful mother that lost you two years ago, and
has gone to heaven's gates looking for you, and never would
have come back if you had not been found. It's your own
home, darling, that you have remembered for heaven; and

it's waiting for you, with father and mother, and joy and
plenty, all ready to receive you the minute you can get
there.”

But it was too much for the fine organization and sensitive
temperament; and, as Teddy's words reached her heart
in their full meaning, the child, with a long sobbing cry, fell
forward into his arms, utterly insensible.

Teddy, not too much terrified (for he had seen her thus
before), raised the slender little figure in his arms, and carried
it swiftly toward the house, now just visible through a
vista of the wood, but, before he reached it, met Dora
coming to look for her little charge.

“Good-morning, Mr. Ginniss. So you have caught my
naughty runaway,” cried she gayly; but coming near
enough to notice Sunshine's drooping figure, and Teddy's
agitated face, she sprang forward, asking, —

“Is any thing the matter with her? Where did you find
her, Mr. Ginniss?”

“She's fainted, ma'am; but it's with joy, and will never
hurt her. It's you and I that will be the sufferers, I'm
afraid,” said Teddy, with a sudden pang at his heart of
love not yet cleansed of selfish jealousy.

“Bring her to the house, please, as quickly as you can.

Poor little darling, she is so delicate!” said Dora, not yet
caring to ask this strange news, but walking close beside
Teddy, her hand clasping that cold little one which swung
nervelessly over his shoulder, her eyes anxiously watching
the beautiful pale face, half hidden in the showering curls.