I shall not dwell upon my grief. It would be painful, and it would serve no purpose. The spring of 1871 was a very dark and dismal spring to me. It was as though a part—the best part—of myself had been taken from me. To go on living in the same old house, where everything spoke to me of her, where every nook and corner had its association with her, where every chair and table recalled her to me, yet not to hear her voice, nor see her face, nor feel her presence any more, and to realize that she had gone from me forever—I need not tell you how hard it was, nor how my heart ached, nor how utterly lonesome and desolate I felt. I need not tell you how big and bleak and empty the old house seemed.

Sometimes, though, I could not believe that it was really true, that she had really died. It was too dreadful. I could not help thinking that it must be some mistake, some hideous delusion. I would start from my sleep in the middle of the night, and feel sure that it must have been a bad dream, that she must have come back, that she was even now in bed in her room. Then, full of hope, I would get up and go to see. All my pain was suddenly and cruelly renewed when I found her bed cold and empty. I would throw myself upon it, and bury my face in the coverlet, and abandon myself to a passionate outburst of tears and sobs, calling aloud for her: “Grand'-mÈre, grand'mere, O ma grand'mÈre chÉrie!” I almost expected that she would hear me, and be moved to pity for me, and come back.

One night, when I was lying thus upon her bed, in the dark, and calling for her, I felt all at once the clutch of a strong hand upon my shoulder. It terrified me unspeakably. My heart gave a great jump, and stopped its beating. My limbs trembled, and a cold sweat broke out all over my body. I could not see six inches before my face. Who, or rather what, could my invisible captor be? Some grim and fearful monster of the darkness? A giant—a vampire—an ogre—or, at the very least, a burglar! All this flashed through my mind in a fraction of a second. Then I heard the voice of my Uncle Peter: “What do you mean, you young beggar, by raising such a hullaballoo at this hour of the night, and waking people up? Get off to your bed now, and in the morning I'll talk to you.” And though I suspected that “I'll talk to you” signified “I'll give you a good sound thrashing,” I could have hugged my Uncle Peter, so great was my relief to find that it was he, and no one worse.

Surely enough, next morning after breakfast, he led me to his room, and there he administered to me one of the most thorough and energetic thrashings I ever received from him. But now I had nobody to pet me and make much of me after it; and all that day I felt the awful friendlessness of my position more keenly than I had ever felt it before.

“I have but one friend in the whole world,” I thought, “and he is so far, so far away. If I could only somehow get across the ocean, to France, to Paris, to his house, and live with him! He would be so good to me, and I should be so happy!” And I looked up at his sword hanging upon my wall, and longed for the hour when I should touch the hand that had once wielded it.

I must not forget to tell you here of a little correspondence that I had with this distant friend of mine. A day or two after the funeral I approached my Uncle Peter, and, summoning all my courage, inquired, “Are you going to write to Uncle Florimond, and let him know?”

“What?” he asked, as if he had not heard, though I had spoken quite distinctly. That was one of his disagreeable, disconcerting ways—to make you repeat whatever you had to say. It always put me out of countenance, and made me feel foolish and embarrassed.

“I wanted to know whether you were going to write and tell Uncle Florimond,” I explained with a quavering voice.

By way of retort, he half-shut his eyes, and gave me a queer, quizzical glance, which seemed to be partly a sneer, and partly a threat. He kept it up for a minute or two, and then he turned his back upon me, and went off whistling. This I took to be as good as “No” to my question. “Yet,” I reflected, “somebody ought to write and tell him. It is only fair to let him know.” And I determined that I would do so myself; and I did. I wrote him a letter; and then I rewrote it; and then I copied it; and then I copied it again; and at last I dropped my final copy into the post-box.

About five weeks later I got an answer from him. In a few simple sentences he expressed his great sorrow; and then he went on: “And, now, my dear little nephew, by this mutual loss thou and I are brought closer together; and by a more tender mutual affection we must try to comfort and console each other. For my part, I open to thee that place in my heart left vacant by the death of my sainted sister; and I dare to hope that thou wilt transfer to me something of thy love for her. I attend with impatience the day of our meeting, which, I tell myself, if the Lord spares our lives, must arrive as soon as thou art big enough to leave thy home and come to me in France. Meanwhile, may the good God keep and bless thee, shall be the constant prayer of thy Uncle de la Bourbonnaye.”

This letter touched me very deeply.

After reading it I came nearer to feeling really happy than I had come at any time before since she died.

I must hasten over the next year. Of course, as the weeks and months slipped away, I gradually got more or less used to the new state of things, and the first sharp edge of my grief was dulled. The hardest hours of my day were those spent at table with Uncle Peter—alone with him, in a silence broken only by the clinking of our knives and forks. These were very hard, trying hours indeed. The rest of my time I passed out of doors, in the company of Sam Budd, our gardener's son, and the other village boys. What between swimming, fishing, and running the streets with them, I contrived to amuse myself after a fashion. Yet, for all that, the year I speak of was a forlorn, miserable year for me; I was far from being either happy or contented. My first violent anguish had simply given place to a vague, continuous sense of dissatisfaction and unrest, like a hunger, a craving, for something I could not name. That something was really—love: though I was not wise enough to know as much at the time. A child's heart—and, for that matter, a grown-up man's—craves affection as naturally as his stomach craves food; I did not have it; and that was why my heart ached and was sick. I wondered and wondered whether my present mode of life was going to last forever; I longed and longed for change. Somehow to escape, and get across the ocean to my Uncle Florimond, was my constant wish; but I saw no means of realizing it. Once in a while I would think, “Suppose I write to him and tell him how wretched I am, and ask him to send for me?” But then a feeling of shame and delicacy restrained me.

Another thing that you will easily see about this year, is that it must have been a very unprofitable one for me from the point of view of morals. My education was suspended; no more study, no more 'lessons. Uncle Peter never spoke of sending me to school; and I was too young and ignorant to desire to go of my own accord. Then, too, I was without any sort of refining or softening influence at home; Julia, our cook, being my single friend there, and my uncle's treatment of me serving only to sour and harden me. If, therefore, at the end of the year in question I was by no manner of means so nice a boy as I had been at the beginning of it, surely there was little cause for astonishment. Indeed, I imagine the only thing that kept me from growing altogether rough and wild and boisterous, was my thought of Uncle Florimond, and my ambition to be the kind of lad that I believed he would like to have me.

And now I come to an adventure which, as it proved, marked the point of a new departure in my affairs.

It was early in April, 1872. There had been a general thaw, followed by several days of heavy rain; and the result was, of course, a freshet. Our little river, the Yantic, had swollen to three—in some places even to four—times its ordinary width; and its usually placid current had acquired a tremendous strength and speed. This transformation was the subject of endless interest to us boys; and every day we used to go and stand upon the bank, and watch the broad and turbulent rush of water with mingled wonder, terror and delight. It was like seeing an old friend, whom we had hitherto regarded as a quite harmless and rather namby-pamby sort of chap, and been fearlessly familiar with, suddenly display the power and prowess of a giant, and brandish his fists at us, crying, “Come near me at your peril!” Our emotions sought utterance in such ejaculations as “My!” “Whew!” and “Jimminy!” and Sam Budd was always tempting me with, “Say, Gregory, stump ye to go in,” which was very aggravating. I hated to have him dare me.

Well, one afternoon—I think it was on the third day of the freshet—when Sam and I made our customary pilgrimage down through Captain Josh Abingdon's garden to the water's edge, fancy our surprise to behold a man standing there and fishing. Fishing in that torrent! It was too absurd for anything; and instantly all our wonder transferred itself from the stream to the fisherman, at whom we stared with eyes and mouths wide open, in an exceedingly curious and ill-bred manner. He didn't notice us at first; and when he did, he didn't seem to mind our rudeness the least bit. He just looked up for a minute, and calmly inspected us; and then he gave each of us a solemn, deliberate wink, and returned his attention to his pole, which, by the way, was an elaborate and costly one, jointed and trimmed with metal. He was a funny-looking man; short and stout, with a broad, flat, good-natured face, a thick nose, a large mouth, and hair as black and curling as a negro's.

He wore a fine suit of clothes of the style that we boys should have called cityfied; and across his waistcoat stretched a massive golden watch-chain, from which dangled a large golden locket set with precious stones.

Presently this strange individual drew in his line to examine his bait; and then, having satisfied himself as to its condition, he attempted to make a throw. But he threw too hard. His pole slipped from his grasp, flew through the air, fell far out into the water, and next moment started off down stream at the rate of a train of steam-cars. This was a sad mishap. The stranger's face expressed extreme dismay, and Sam and I felt sorry for him from the bottom of our hearts. It was really a great pity that such a handsome pole should be lost in such a needless fashion.

But stay! All at once the pole's progress down stream ceased. It had got caught by an eddy, which was sweeping it rapidly inward and upward toward the very spot upon the shore where we stood. Would it reach land safely, and be recovered? We waited, watching, in breathless suspense. Nearer it came—nearer—nearer! Our hopes were mounting very high indeed. A smile lighted the fisherman's broad face. The pole had now approached within twenty feet of the bank. Ten seconds more, and surely—But again, stay! Twenty feet from the shore the waters formed a whirlpool. In this whirlpool for an instant the pole remained motionless. Then, after a few jerky movements to right and left, instead of continuing its journey toward the shore, it began spinning round and round in the circling current. At any minute it might break loose and resume its course down stream; but for the present there it was, halting within a few yards of us—so near, and yet so far.

Up to this point we had all kept silence. But now the fisherman broke it with a loud, gasping sigh. Next thing I heard was Sam Budd's voice, pitched in a mocking, defiant key, “Say, Gregory, stump ye to go in.” I looked at Sam. He was already beginning to undress.

No; under the circumstances—with that man as a witness—I could not refuse the challenge. My reputation, my character, was at stake. I knew that the water would be as cold as ice; I knew that the force of its current involved danger to a swimmer of a sort not to be laughed at. Yet my pride had been touched, my vanity had been aroused. I could not allow Sam Budd to “stump” me with impunity, and then outdo me. “You do, do you?” I retorted. “Well, come on.” And stripping off my clothes in a twinkling, I plunged into the flood, Sam following close at my heels.

As cold as ice! Why, ice was nowhere, compared to the Yantic River in that first week of April. They say extremes meet. Well, the water was so cold that it seemed actually to scald my skin, as if it had been boiling hot. But never mind. The first shock over, I gritted my teeth to keep them from chattering, and struck boldly out for the whirlpool, where the precious rod was still spinning round and round. Of course, in order to save myself from being swept down below it, I had to aim diagonally at a point far above it.

The details of my struggle I need not give. Indeed, I don't believe I could give them, even if it were desirable that I should. My memory of the time I spent in the water is exceedingly confused and dim. Intense cold; desperately hard work with arms and legs; frantic efforts to get my breath; a fierce determination to be the first to reach that pole no matter at what hazard; a sense of immense relief and triumph when, suddenly, I realized that success had crowned my labors—when I felt the pole actually in my hands; then a fight to regain the shore; and finally, again, success!

Yes, there I stood upon the dry land, safe and sound, though panting and shivering from exhaustion and cold. I was also rather dazed and bewildered; yet I still had enough of my wits about me to go up to the fisherman, and say politely, “Here, sir, is your pole.” He cried in response—and I noticed that he pronounced the English language in a very peculiar way—“My kracious! You was a brave boy, Bubby. Hurry up; dress; you catch your death of cold standing still there, mitout no clodes on you, like dot. My koodness! a boy like you was worth a tousand dollars.”