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“YOU know all about it, Olive?” Cyprian Eveleth
said to his sister, after a brief word of greeting.

“Know of what, Cyprian?”

“Why, sister, don't you know that Myrtle Hazard is
missing, — gone! — gone nobody knows where, and that
we are looking in all directions to find her?”

Olive turned very pale and was silent for a moment.
At the end of that moment the story seemed almost old to
her. It was a natural ending of the prison-life which had
been round Myrtle since her earliest years. When she got
large and strong enough, she broke out of jail, — that was
all. The nursery-bar is always climbed sooner or later,
whether it is a wooden or an iron one. Olive felt as if she
had dimly foreseen just such a finishing to the tragedy of
the poor girl's home bringing-up. Why could not she have
done something to prevent it? Well, — what shall we do
now, and as it is? — that is the question.

“Has she left no letter, — no explanation of her leaving
in this way?”

“Not a word, so far as anybody in the village knows.”

“Come over to the post-office with me; perhaps we may
find a letter. I think we shall.”

Olive's sagacity and knowledge of her friend's character
had not misled her. She found a letter from Myrtle to
herself, which she opened and read as here follows: —

“My dearest Olive: — Think no evil of me for what

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I have done. The fire-hang-bird's nest, as Cyprian called
it, is empty, and the poor bird is flown.

“I can live as I have lived no longer. This place is
chilling all the life out of me, and I must find another home.
It is far, far away, and you will not hear from me again
until I am there. Then I will write to you.

“You know where I was born, — under a hot sun and
in the midst of strange, lovely scenes that I seem still to
remember. I must visit them again: my heart always
yearns for them. And I must cross the sea to get there,—
the beautiful great sea that I have always longed for
and that my river has been whispering about to me ever so
many years. My life is pinched and starved here. I
feel as old as Aunt Silence, and I am only fifteen, — a
child she has called me within a few days. If this is to be
a child, what is it to be a woman?

“I love you dearly, — and your brother is almost to me
as if he were mine. I love our sweet, patient Bathsheba,—
yes, and the old man that has spoken so kindly with
me, good Master Gridley; I hate to give you pain, — to
leave you all, — but my way of life is killing me, and I
am too young to die. I cannot take the comfort with you,
my dear friends, that I would; for it seems as if I carried
a lump of ice in my heart, and all the warmth I find in
you cannot thaw it out.

“I have had a strange warning to leave this place,
Olive. Do you remember how the angel of the Lord appeared
to Joseph and told him to flee into Egypt? I
have had a dream like that, Olive. There is an old belief
in our family that the spirit of one who died many
generations ago watches over some of her descendants.
They say it led our first ancestor to come over here when

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it was a wilderness. I believe it has appeared to others
of the family in times of trouble. I have had a strange
dream at any rate, and the one I saw, or thought I saw,
told me to leave this place. Perhaps I should have stayed
if it had not been for that, but it seemed like an angel's
warning.

“Nobody will know how I have gone, or which way I
have taken. On Monday, you may show this letter to my
friends, not before. I do not think they will be in danger
of breaking their hearts for me at our house. Aunt Silence
cares for nothing but her own soul, and the other
woman hates me, I always thought. Kitty Fagan will cry
hard. Tell her perhaps I shall come back by and by.
There is a little box in my room, with some keepsakes
marked, — one is for poor Kitty. You can give them to
the right ones. Yours is with them.

“Good by, dearest. Keep my secret, as I told you, till
Monday. And if you never see me again, remember how
much I loved you. Never think hardly of me, for you
have grown up in a happy home, and do not know how
much misery can be crowded into fifteen years of a young
girl's life. God be with you!

Olive could not restrain her tears, as she handed the
letter to Cyprian. “Her secret is as safe with you as with
me,” she said. “But this is madness, Cyprian, and we
must keep her from doing herself a wrong. What she
means to do, is to get to Boston, in some way or other,
and sail for India. It is strange that they have not tracked
her. There is no time to be lost. She shall not go out
into the world in this way, child that she is. No; she

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shall come back, and make her home with us, if she cannot
be happy with these people. Ours is a happy and a
cheerful home, and she shall be to me as a younger sister, —
and your sister too, Cyprian. But you must see
her; you must leave this very hour; and you may find
her. Go to your cousin Edward, in Boston, at once; tell
him your errand, and get him to help you find our poor dear
sister. Then give her the note I will write, and say — I
know your heart, Cyprian, and I can trust that to tell you
what to say.”

In a very short time Cyprian Eveleth was on his way
to Boston. But another, keener even in pursuit than he,
was there before him.

Ever since the day when Master Gridley had made that
over-curious observation of the young lawyer's proceedings
at the office, Murray Bradshaw had shown a far livelier
interest than before in the conditions and feelings of Myrtle
Hazard. He had called frequently at The Poplars to
talk over business matters, which seemed of late to require
a deal of talking. He had been very deferential to
Miss Silence, and had wound himself into the confidence
of Miss Badlam. He found it harder to establish any
very near relations with Myrtle, who had never seemed to
care much for any young man but Cyprian Eveleth, and
to care for him quite as much as Olive's brother as for any
personal reason. But he carefully studied Myrtle's tastes
and ways of thinking and of life, so that, by and by, when
she should look upon herself as a young woman, and not as
a girl, he would have a great advantage in making her more
intimate acquaintance.

Thus, she corresponded with a friend of her mother's in
India. She talked at times as if it were her ideal home,

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and showed many tastes which might well be vestiges of
early Oriental impressions. She made herself a rude
hammock, — such as are often used in hot climates, — and
swung it between two elms. Here she would lie in the
hot summer days, and fan herself with the sandal-wood
fan her friend in India had sent her, — the perfume of
which, the women said, seemed to throw her into day-dreams,
which were almost like trances.

These circumstances gave a general direction to his
ideas, which were presently fixed more exactly by two
circumstances which he learned for himself and kept to
himself; for he had no idea of making a hue and cry, and
yet he did not mean that Myrtle Hazard should get away
if he could help it.

The first fact was this. He found among the copies of
the city newspaper they took at The Poplars a recent
number from which a square had been cut out. He procured
another copy of this paper of the same date, and
found that the piece cut out was an advertisement to the
effect that the A I Ship Swordfish, Captain Hawkins, was
to sail from Boston for Calcutta, on the 20th of June.

The second fact was the following. On the window-sill
of her little hanging chamber, which the women allowed
him to inspect, he found some threads of long, black, glossy
hair caught by a splinter in the wood. They were Myrtle's
of course. A simpleton might have constructed a
tragedy out of this trivial circumstance, — how she had
cast herself from the window into the waters beneath
it, — how she had been thrust out after a struggle, of
which this shred from her tresses was the dreadful witness, —
and so on. Murray Bradshaw did not stop to
guess and wonder. He said nothing about it, but wound

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the shining threads on his finger, and, as soon as he got
home, examined them with a magnifier. They had been
cut off smoothly, as with a pair of scissors. This was
part of a mass of hair, then, which had been shorn and
thrown from the window. Nobody would do that but she
herself. What would she do it for? To disguise her sex
of course. The other inferences were plain enough.

The wily young man put all these facts and hints together,
and concluded that he would let the rustics drag
the ponds and the river, and scour the woods and swamps,
while he himself went to the seaport town from which she
would without doubt sail if she had formed the project he
thought on the whole most probable.

Thus it was that we found him hurrying to the nearest
station to catch the train to Boston, while they were all
looking for traces of the missing girl nearer home. In
the cars he made the most suggestive inquiries he could
frame, to stir up the gentlemanly conductor's memory.
Had any young fellow been on the train within a day or
two, who had attracted his notice? Smooth, handsome
face, black eyes, short black hair, new clothes, not fitting
very well, looked away when he paid his fare, had a soft
voice like a woman's, — had he seen anybody answering
to some such description as this? The gentlemanly conductor
had not noticed, — was always taking up and
setting down way-passengers, — might have had such a
young man aboard, — there was two or three students one
day in the car singing college songs, — he did n't care how
folks looked if they had their tickets ready, — and minded
their own business, — and, so saying, he poked a young
man upon whose shoulder a ringleted head was reclining
with that delightful abandon which the railroad train
seems to provoke in lovely woman, — “Fare!”

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It is a fine thing to be set down in a great, over-crowded
hotel, where they do not know you, looking dusty, and for
the moment shabby, with nothing but a carpet-bag in your
hand, feeling tired, and anything but clean, and hungry,
and worried, and every way miserable and mean, and to
undergo the appraising process of the gentleman in the
office, who, while he shoves the book round to you for
your name, is making a hasty calculation as to how high
up he can venture to doom you. But Murray Bradshaw's
plain dress and carpet-bag were more than made up for by
the air and tone which imply the habit of being attended
to. The clerk saw that in a glance, and, as he looked at
the name and address in the book, spoke sharply in the
explosive dialect of his tribe, —

“Jun! ta'tha'genlm'n'scarpetbag'n'showhimupt'thirtyone!”

When Cyprian Eveleth reached the same hotel late at
night, he appeared in his best clothes and with a new
valise; but his amiable countenance and gentle voice and
modest manner sent him up two stories higher, where he
found himself in a room not much better than a garret,
feeling lonely enough, for he did not know he had an
acquaintance in the same house. The two young men
were in and out so irregularly that it was not very strange
that they did not happen to meet each other.

The young lawyer was far more likely to find Myrtle if
she were in the city than the other, even with the help of
his cousin Edward. He was not only older, but sharper,
better acquainted with the city and its ways, and, whatever
might be the strength of Cyprian's motives, his own were
of such intensity that he thought of nothing else by day,
and dreamed of nothing else by night. He went to work,
therefore, in the most systematic manner. He first visited

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the ship Swordfish, lying at her wharf, saw her captain,
and satisfied himself that as yet nobody at all corresponding
to the description of Myrtle Hazard had been seen
by any person on board. He visited all the wharves,
inquiring on every vessel where it seemed possible she
might have been looking about. Hotels, thoroughfares,
every place where he might hear of her or meet her, were
all scarched. He took some of the police into his confidence,
and had half a dozen pairs of eyes besides his own
opened pretty widely, to discover the lost girl.

On Sunday, the 19th, he got the first hint which encouraged
him to think he was on the trail of his fugitive. He
had gone down again to the wharf where the Swordfish,
advertised to sail the next day, was lying. The captain
was not on board, but one of the mates was there, and he
addressed his questions to him, not with any great hope of
hearing anything important, but determined to lose no
chance, however small. He was startled with a piece of
information which gave him such an exquisite pang of
delight that he could hardly keep the usual quiet of his
demeanor. A youth corresponding to his description of
Myrtle Hazard in her probable disguise had been that
morning on board the Swordfish, making many inquiries as
to the hour at which she was to sail, and who were to be
the passengers, and remained some time on board, going all
over the vessel, examining her cabin accommodations, and
saying he should return to-morrow before she sailed, —
doubtless intending to take passage in her, as there was
plenty of room on board. There could be little question,
from the description, who this young person was. It was
a rather delicate-looking, dark-haired youth, smooth-faced,
somewhat shy and bashful in his ways, and evidently

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excited and nervous. He had apparently been to look about
him, and would come back at the last moment, just as the
vessel was ready to sail, and in an hour or two be beyond
the reach of inquiry.

Murray Bradshaw returned to his hotel, and, going to
his chamber, summoned all his faculties in state council to
determine what course he should follow, now that he had
the object of his search certainly within reaching distance.
There was no danger now of her eluding him; but the
grave question arose, what was he to do when he stood
face to face with her. She must not go, — that was fixed.
If she once got off in that ship, she might be safe enough;
but what would become of certain projects in which he was
interested, — that was the question. But again, she was
no child, to be turned away from her adventure by cajolery,
or by any such threats as common truants would find sufficient
to scare them back to their duty. He could tell the
facts of her disguise and the manner of her leaving home to
the captain of the vessel, and induce him to send her ashore
as a stray girl, to be returned to her relatives. But this
would only make her furious with him; and he must not
alienate her from himself at any rate. He might plead with
her in the name of duty, for the sake of her friends, for the
good name of the family. She had thought all these things
over before she ran away. What if he should address her
as a lover, throw himself at her feet, implore her to pity
him and give up her rash scheme, and, if things came to
the very worst, offer to follow her wherever she went, if
she would accept him in the only relation that would render
it possible. Fifteen years old, — he nearly ten years
older, — but such things had happened before, and this was
no time to stand on trifles.

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He worked out the hypothesis of the matrimonial offer
as he would have reasoned out the probabilities in a law
case he was undertaking.

1. He would rather risk that than lose all hold upon her.
The girl was handsome enough for his ambitious future,
wherever it might carry him. She came of an honorable
family, and had the great advantage of being free from a
tribe of disagreeable relatives, which is such a drawback on
many otherwise eligible parties. To these considerations
were to be joined other circumstances which we need not
here mention, of a nature to add greatly to their force, and
which would go far of themselves to determine his action.

2. How was it likely she would look on such an extraordinary
proposition? At first, no doubt, as Lady Anne
looked upon the advances of Richard. She would be startled,
perhaps shocked. What then? She could not help
feeling flattered at such an offer from him, — him, William
Murray Bradshaw, the rising young man of his county, at
her feet, his eyes melting with the love he would throw
into them, his tones subdued to their most sympathetic
quality, and all those phrases on his lips which every day
beguile women older and more discreet than this romantic,
long-imprisoned girl, whose rash and adventurous enterprise
was an assertion of her womanhood and her right to
dispose of herself as she chose. He had not lived to be
twenty-five years old without knowing his power with women.
He believed in himself so thoroughly, that his very
confidence was a strong promise of success.

3. In case all his entreaties, arguments, and offers made
no impression, should he make use of that supreme resource,
not to be employed save in extreme need, but

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which was of a nature, in his opinion, to shake a resolution
stronger than this young girl was like to oppose to it?
That would be like Christian's coming to his weapon called
All-prayer, he said to himself, with a smile that his early
readings of Bunyan should have furnished him an image
for so different an occasion. The question was one he
could not settle till the time came, — he must leave it to
the instinct of the moment.

The next morning found him early waking after a night
of feverish dreams. He dressed himself with more than
usual care, and walked down to the wharf where the
Swordfish was moored. The ship had left the wharf, and
was lying out in the stream. A small boat had just reached
her, and a slender youth, as he appeared at that distance,
climbed, not over-adroitly, up the vessel's side.

Murray Bradshaw called to a boatman near by and
ordered the man to row him over as fast as he could to
the vessel lying in the stream. He had no sooner reached
the deck of the Swordfish than he asked for the young person
who had just been put on board.

“He is in the cabin, sir, just gone down with the captain,”
was the reply.

His heart beat, in spite of his cool temprament, as he
went down the steps leading to the cabin. The young person
was talking earnestly with the captain, and, on his
turning round, Mr. William Murray Bradshaw had the
pleasure of recognizing his young friend, Mr. Cyprian
Eveleth.

p607-088

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