S2
��THE GRANITE MONTHLY.
��her hand as she went. He seemed to s,te her white scarf still, but when he made his way to the spot, he saw that it was only a dead sycamore bough. Edgar explored the woods and cop- pices, but it was all of no avail ; there was no sign of human habitation. Half despairing, though not without hope for the future, he sat down at last on the stone where he had seen Linda first. Suddenly a voice cried again, as it seemed, " Lindalin, Linda- lin." He started up, and looked about, rubbing his eyes, but he soon per- ceived that the sound was only the note of a whip-poor-will, and he almost wondered if the first call had been .any thing more.
" Oh, Mr. Somerton, I am so glad to see you again," exclaimed his good liostess, Mrs. Odlin, when he knocked at the door long after dark ; " I have •been so worried about you. Where .have you been ; and only look, what a .mess your shoes are in, and your .stockings, too. You must go right off up stairs, and change your clothes, and then come down, and I will have a
- good cup of coffee for you. and some
nice jjorridge that I saved for you from dinner, and you shall have a mug of some fine hard cider that old Reu- ben Abbott just sent down to-day. But come, what are you waiting for?" and she bundled the young man up .stairs. Edgar felt for the first time that he was ravenously hungry, a fact that it had not occurred to him to
- notice before. He slept soundly until
the following morning, notwithstanding the'mixed thoughts that thronged his •memory.
IV.
The duties of the morrow, which ■was the Lord's day, gave little room for reflection, and kept him constantly bu.sy from morning to night. One or two ladies, it is true, did wonder a lit- tle at his absent answers to their ques- tions about the new Sunday-school in West Parish A'illage. His thoughts were far away in a woodland glen ; but lie was unable that day to follow them
��in the body ; and whom should he meet the next morning, when he strode out of the gate, but Miss Lucretia, who, wiser than Ponce de Leon, knew that the ])hantom island of Bimini lay at her own door, and had risen thus early to drink a cup of Nature's own elixir. Mr. Somerton must walk with her. She had been reading about the river (Gan- ges, and would he tell her something about the pagans who lived there, as she knew he had read a great deal about India, having, indeed, at one time, contemplated going thither as a missionary. He could not refuse ; but the day was so bright that Miss Walker could not bear to think of the ]x:)or, half-dead Hindoos, and would talk of the birds and flowers instead. She seemed to him as beautiful as ever this morning, but he no longer felt the same dejection in her presence. She was foir like a Grecian goddess, fair like marble, and he felt that Pygma- lion's art was not for him to warm the cold heart of stone to life ; she might be responsive to others, but he was no Pygmalion, and he felt that her disturb- ing spell had fallen away from him. And yet his walk with her had a strange influence upon him : it seemed, after he left her, that he had been walking in a land of illusion for the two days past, and that he was now brought back to the common light of da)-. The strange circumstances of his meet- ing with Linda on vSaturday came to him with their full force for the first time, and his reason sought to unfold the riddle. It fell upon his heart, all at once, like lead that the occurrences which lingered in his memory coukl have been no more than a dream. Every thing pointed to that conclusion ; the vision had begun after a fit of drowsiness, and had ended by his be- ing aroused from a brooding study, and he now recollected that in his childhood he had often been unable to separate reality from dream. That was long ago, but a man's nature is an inveterate thing, and faculties dormant often work again. The irre sistible conviction filled him with de
��ong
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