There a beautiful Indian girl fell in love with him, but he remained true to Alice. After another year of wandering in the woods, he set out with the diamonds———”
“What diamonds?” asked the unimportant passenger, almost with acerbity.
“The ones the saddlemaker showed him in the Peruvian temple,” said the other, somewhat obscurely. “When he reached home, Alice’s mother led him, weeping, to a green mound under a willow tree. ‘Her heart was broken when you left,’ said her mother. ‘And what of my rival—of Chester McIntosh?’ asked Mr. Redruth, as he knelt sadly by Alice’s grave. ‘When he found out,’ she answered, ‘that her heart was yours, he pined away day by day until, at length, he started a furniture store in Grand Rapids. We heard lately that he was bitten to death by an infuriated moose near South Bend, Ind., where he had gone to try to forget scenes of civilisation.’ With which, Mr. Redruth forsook the face of mankind and became a hermit, as we have seen.
“My story,” concluded the young man with an Agency, “may lack the literary quality; but what I want it to show is that the young lady remained true. She cared nothing for wealth in comparison with true affection. I admire and believe in the fair sex too much to think otherwise.”
The narrator ceased, with a sidelong glance at the corner where reclined the lady passenger.
