“A young man?”

“Yes.”

“What is his name?”

“Oh, Uncle Ralph,” said Sidney, desperately, seeking
a diversion of the attack, “when I was coming home from
school I saw the line fence very badly broken between the
north farm and Mr. Rice's pasture. There was nearly a
whole length down.”

“What do you say? Where was it? In what part?”
asked Ralph, with much interest.

“By the wheat field.”

“And why did you not tell me this before?”

Now Sidney had really reserved this piece of information,
which was strictly true, for the very use to which he had
applied it, and he knew not how to answer this question.

“Why did you not tell me sooner, I say?” repeated the
guardian angrily. “You have been home two hours.”

“Oh, because, sir—because—because—”

“Because you are a stupid, bad boy. Mr. Wells, this
must be seen to before dark, or the lot will be full of cattle
before morning.”

“I will go and fix it at once,” replied the farmer, hurrying
to finish his meal, and while various conjectures began
to be made as to how the accident, which was quite a
serious one in a farmer's estimation, had happened, and
whether through their fault or their neighbor's, poor Sidney
began to breathe freer and deeper, little heeding the
chiding which he had received, so that he had warded off
the dreaded, the terrible inquiry which had been begun.

But Miss Eloise had unfortunately heard the interesting
intelligence that Sidney's teacher was a young man, and
her inquisitiveness was now fully awakened.

“Is the schoolmaster handsome, Sidney?” she asked,
after her father and Mr. Wells had left the table.

[figure description] Page 042.[end figure description]

“Oh, yes,” he replied quickly, thrown quite off his guard
by his delight at being able to answer one question freely,
and by the still greater delight of praising Addison. “O,
yes, very handsome—I never saw a handsome man.”

“Ah! a fine judge of beauty you are, I dare say,” said
Eloise, who began to imagine the teacher accompanying
his pupil home, staying to tea, and making himself generally
interesting. Handsome young men were quite the
kind of quarry she was in the habit of pursuing.

“Is he tall or short?” she continued.

“Quite tall—a good deal taller than I.”

“You, indeed! You pigmy! Why do you compare
him to yourself? You are a little boy.”

“Oh, I know that,” answered Sidney, coloring.

“Well, so this Mr. What's-his-name is both tall and
handsome. I suppose he is not very straight or graceful.”

“Yes, he is both,” answered Sidney, still quite unconscious
of the very dangerous curiosity he was awakening.

“But he dresses shabbily, and like a country bumpkin?”

“No, he does not—he dresses like a gentleman—and he
is perfectly clean and neat. His hands are as white as
yours.”

“Eloise,” said Ruth, laughing, “I think you will have
to go and call on Mary Dale soon. She lives near the
north school house.”

“Perhaps I shall,” replied the elder sister. “If I don't
others will. Mary Dale will have more calls than she ever
did before, you may depend on that.”

Although Sidney, as has been said, was not a lad of
quick perception, he could not now fail to see that his
cousin's remarks had not been mere badinage, as he had
supposed, but that she took a real interest in the subject
of her inquiries, and, in new alarm, he was about rising
from the table, when he was retained by further questions.

[figure description] Page 043.[end figure description]

“Does this wonderful man `board around' like other
schoolmasters?” asked Eloise, in allusion to a well-known
country custom of quartering the teacher successively upon
all the families in his district, a week or two at a time.

“I don't know.”

“But wait a minute. I have forgotten what you said
his name was.”

Alas! the petard was again beneath his feet, and he had
no longer power to prevent its explosion. Tell a falsehood
he would not, and to hesitate would create suspicion.
With as careless an air as, in his agitation, he could assume,
he replied—

“Mr. Jay.”

“Jay?—Jay?” said Eloise—“it seems to me I have
heard that name before. Mother, do you know any Jays?”

“Yes, I know some Jays and some Jackdaws,” replied
Mrs. Werter, tartly. “Your father used to know a Mr.
Jay in New York—but he was a sailor, and the family
were quite low, and wretchedly poor. I don't know any
others, and I don't want to.”

“There is a very respectable family of that name in
New York,” said Eloise, in whose vocabulary the word respectable
meant rich. “I'll go and ask father immediately.”

“Oh, don't!” exclaimed Sidney, affrightedly.

It was a rash and unfortunate speech, and could not fail
to awaken suspicions.

“Why, what on earth is the matter with the child?”
exclaimed Mrs. Werter, now beginning for the first time
to manifest an interest in the discussion. “Why he is as
white as a sheet—come here, sir.”

Sidney obeyed.

“What is the reason you don't want Eloise to ask about
Mr. Jay?” she said, in a sharp, harsh voice, before which

[figure description] Page 044.[end figure description]

the poor child had quailed for years, and which he dreaded
more than all other dreadful things.

He did not answer.

“What is the reason, I say? Do you know anything
about this man more than you have told us?”

There was no response.

“Sidney!” shrieked Mrs. Werter, in a note of awful
warning: but still the boy remained speechless, and at the
next instant the red hand of the virago rose and fell with
arrowy swiftness, and with the sound as of an exploded
pistol ringing in his ear, the stunned child staggered backward
and leaned against the wall, which was less white
than his countenance. He did not cry, he did not speak,
but there was a look of despair and submission in his pale
face, which his mistress was accustomed to and understood.

“Tell me now!” she said. “Do you know anything
more of this man than you have told?”

“Yes.”

“What is it?”

“He is my cousin.”

Despair has no deeper tone than that in which the
orphan boy uttered this sentence—a sentence which he
well knew would at once dispel the whole brilliant vision
which had so suddenly illumined his lonely heart.

“Your cousin! What, the son of old Jay, the sailor?”

“His father was a captain.”

“A captain, indeed! His father was a beggar, and so
is he. Ruth, go and send your father here directly. He
must know about this. You may go, if you want to.”

The last sentence was addressed to Sidney, who quickly
availed himself of the permission to leave the room and
withdraw to his own little dormitory, where he was permitted
to remain undisturbed until the next morning.
Undisturbed! Alas! what could add to the torture he

[figure description] Page 045.[end figure description]

already suffered? He felt a presentiment of his coming
doom, he knew that he should be separated from Addison,
perhaps never again to see him—never to know those other
dear friends whom he had hoped so soon to meet. It was
evening, and the bright stars were shining through the
clear, autumnal sky, affording the only light to Sidney's
room, and perhaps for that reason serving to draw his
thoughts upward, as he stood sobbing by the window, with
his raised hands upon the sash. His young spirit had
often wished to be released from earth, for that brighter
home of which he fully believed he was to be an inheritor,
through the great Mediator, but this night his heavenward
longings came upon him with increased intensity. His
faith was simple and sincere; and, although really approximating
nearer to innocence and virtue than mortals often
do, even at that tender age, yet his sense of demerit was
deep and abiding.

There was nothing mythical or mystical in Sidney's
views of Heaven; all was a solid and brilliant reality,
obscured by no clouds of doubt, dimmed by no shadows of
distrust. He gazed into the cerulean depths, and along
the glittering galaxies of stars, and believed that he saw
the exterior of that golden city, where saints and angels
walked—where his dear mother dwelt, and looked with
pitying eyes upon him, whenever sickness or suffering was
his lot. With such a faith, and with such feelings, he
knelt down and prayed long and earnestly, gazing through
blinding tears towards the material heavens, but seeing
through the sublimer vision of faith the radiant glories of
the eternal world.

Peace came in answer to prayer, and, after a night of
rest, Sidney arose prepared for and meekly expectant of
the tidings which he was not long in receiving, that he was
to see his cousin no more. His uncle professed to believe,

[figure description] Page 046.[end figure description]

perhaps did believe, that the child had long known of
Addison's position as a teacher, and had practised deceit
and cunning to obtain permission to attend his school, for
the purpose of renewing his acquaintance with him, which
had been once positively interdicted. Ralph at least knew
that there was enough of the appearance of a plot between
the boys to counteract his authority, to justify him in
seeming greatly offended, and in the use of any harsh
measures he might choose to adopt to prevent their future
meeting.

He took pains to renew in Sidney's mind the prejudices
which he had implanted there years before against the Jay
family, whom he represented as in every way unworthy of
regard; but, although his broken-spirited ward heard him
in silence, his faith in Addison remained unshaken, and his
love for him unabated.

Nor would he believe any ill of the parents or sister of
his new friend, although he could imagine no reason why
his uncle should misrepresent them; nor could he conceive
of any person being so wicked as wilfully to malign and
slander a fellow being.

p657-048

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