It was just as Alfred Layton stepped into the boat to row out to the “Asia,” bound for New York, that a letter from Clara was placed in his hands. He read it as they rowed along,—read it twice, thrice over. It was a strange letter—at least, he thought so—from one so very young. There was a tone of frankness almost sisterly, but there was, in alluding to the happy past, a something of tenderness half shadowed forth that thrilled strangely through his heart. How she seemed to love those lessons he had once thought she felt to be mere tasks! How many words he had uttered at random,—words of praise or blame, as it might be; she had treasured all up, just as she had hoarded the flowers he had given her. What a wondrous sensation it is to feel that a chance expression we have used, a few stray words, have been stored up as precious memories! Is there any flattery like it? What an ecstasy to feel that we could impart value to the veriest commonplace, and, without an effort, without even a will, sit enthroned within some other heart!

What wisdom there was in that old fable of the husbandman, who bequeathed the treasure to his sons to be discovered by carefully turning over the soil of their land, delving and digging it industriously! How applicable is the lesson it teaches to what goes on in our daily lives, where, ever in search of one form of wealth, our labors lead us to discover some other of which we knew nothing! Little had Alfred Layton ever suspected that, while seeking to gain May's affection, he was winning another heart; little knew he that in that atmosphere of love his deep devotion made, she—scarcely more than a child—lived and breathed, mingling thoughts of him through all the efforts of her mind, till he became the mainspring of every ambition that possessed her. And now he knew it all. Yes, she confessed, as one never again fated to meet him, that she loved him. “If,” wrote she, “it is inexpressible relief to me to own this, I can do so with less shame that I ask no return of affection; I give you my heart, as I give that which has no value, save that I feel it is with you, to go along with you through all the straits and difficulties of your life, to nourish hope for your success and sorrow for your failure, but never to meet you more.... Nor,” said she, in another place, “do I disguise from myself the danger of this confession. They say it is man's nature to despise the gift which comes unasked,—the unsought heart is but an undesired realm. Be it so. So long as the thought fills me that you are its lord, so long as to myself I whisper vows of loyalty, I am not worthless in my own esteem. I can say, 'He would like this; he would praise me for that; some word of good cheer would aid me here; how joyously he would greet me as I reached this goal!”

“Bravely borne, dear Clara! would requite me for a cruel sacrifice. You are too generous to deny me this much, and I ask no more. None of us can be the worse of good wishes, none be less fortunate that daily blessings are entreated for us. Mine go with you everywhere and always.”

These lines, read and re-read so often, weighed heavily on Layton's heart; and she who wrote them was never for an instant from his thoughts. At first, sorrow and a sense of self-reproach were his only sentiments; but gradually another feeling supervened. There is not anything which supplies to the heart the want of being cared for. There is that companionship in being loved, without which life is the dreariest of all solitudes. As we are obliged to refer all our actions to a standard of right and wrong, so by a like rule all our emotions must be brought before another court,—the heart that loves us; and he who has not this appeal is a wretched outlaw! This Layton now began to feel, and every day strengthened the conviction. The last few lines of the letter, too, gave an unspeakable interest to the whole. They ran thus:—

“I know not what change has come over my life, or is to come, but I am to be separated from my mother, intrusted to a guardian I have never seen till now, and sent I know not whither. All that I am told is that our narrow fortune requires I should make an effort for my own support. I am grateful to the adversity that snatches me from a life of thought to one of labor. The weariness of work will be far easier to bear than the repinings of indolence. Self-reproach will be less poignant, too, when not associated with self-indulgence; and, better than all, a thousand times better, I shall feel in my toil some similitude to him whom I love,—feel, when my tired brain seeks rest, some unseen thread links my weariness to his, and blends our thoughts together in our dreams, fellow-laborers at least in life, if not lovers!”

When he had read thus far, and was still contemplating the lines, a small slip, carefully sealed in two places, fell from the letter. It was inscribed “My Secret.” Alfred tore it open eagerly. The contents were very brief, and ran thus:—

“She whom I had believed to be my mother is not so. She is nothing to me. I am an orphan. I know nothing of those belonging to me, nor of myself, any more than that my name is not, 'Clara Morris.'”

Layton's first impulse, as he read, was to exclaim, “Thank God, the dear child has no tie to this woman!” The thought of her being her daughter was maddening. And then arose the question to his mind, by what link had they been united hitherto? Mrs. Morris had been ever to him a mysterious personage, for whom he had invented numberless histories, not always to her advantage. But why or through what circumstances this girl had been associated with her fortunes, was a knot he could find no clew to. There arose, besides, another question, why should this connection now cease, by what change in condition were they to be separated, and was the separation to be complete and final? Clara ought to have told him more; she should have been more explicit. It was unfair to leave him with an unsolved difficulty which a few words might have set clear. He was half angry with her for the torture of this uncertainty, and yet—let us own it—in his secret heart he hugged this mystery as a new interest that attached him to life. Let a man have ever so little of the gambler in his nature,—and we have never pictured Layton as amongst that prudent category,—and there will be still a tendency to weigh the eventualities of life, as chances inclining now to this side, now to that “I was lucky in that affair,” “I was unfortunate there,” are expressions occasionally heard from those who have never played a card or touched a dice-box. And where does this same element play such a part as when a cloud of doubt and obscurity involves the fate of one we love?

For the first few days of the voyage Layton thought of nothing but Clara and her history, till his mind grew actually confused with conflicting guesses about her. “I must tell Quackinboss everything. I must ask his aid to read this mystery, or it will drive me mad,” said he, at last. “He has seen her, too, and liked her.” She was the one solitary figure he had met with at the Villa which seemed to have made a deep impression upon him; and over and over again the American had alluded to the “'little gal' with the long eyelashes, who sang so sweetly.”

It was not very easy to catch the Colonel in an unoccupied moment. Ever since the voyage began he was full of engagements. He was an old Transatlantic voyager, deep in all the arts and appliances by which such journeys are rendered agreeable. Such men turn up everywhere. On the Cunard line they organize the whist-parties, the polka on the poop-deck, the sweepstakes on the ship's log, and the cod-fishing on the banks. On the overland route it is they who direct where tents are to be pitched, kids roasted, and Arabs horsewhipped. By a sort of common accord a degree of command is conceded to them, and their authority is admitted without dispute. Now and then a rival will contest the crown, and by his party divide the state; but the community is large enough for such schism, which, after all, is rarely a serious one. The Pretender, in the present case, had come on board by the small vessel which took the pilot away,—a circumstance not without suspicion, and, of course, certain of obtaining its share of disparaging comments, not the less that the gentleman's pretensions were considerable, and his manners imposing. In fact, to use a vulgarism very expressive of the man, “he took on” immensely. He was very indignant at not finding his servant expecting him, and actually out of himself on discovering that a whole stateroom had not been engaged for his accommodation. With all these disappointing circumstances, it was curious enough how soon he reconciled himself to his condition, submitting with great good-humor to all the privations of ordinary mortals; and when, on the third or fourth day of the voyage, he deigned to say that he had drunk worse Madeira, and that the clam soup was really worthy of his approval, his popularity was at once assured. It was really pleasant to witness such condescension, and so, indeed, every one seemed to feel it. All but one, and that one was Quackinboss, who, from the first moment, had conceived a strong dislike against the new arrival, a sentiment he took no pains to conceal or disguise.

“He's too p'lite,—he 's too civil by half, sir,—especially with the women folk,” said Quackinboss; “they ain't wholesome when they are so tarnation sweet. As Senator Byles says, 'Bunkum won't make pie-crust, though it 'll serve to butter a man up.' Them's my own sentiments too, sir, and I don't like that stranger.”

“What can it signify to you, Colonel?” said Layton. “Why need you trouble your head about who or what he is?”

“I 'll be bound he's one of them as pays his debts with the topsail sheet, sir. He's run. I 'm as sartain o' that fact as if I seen it. Whenever I see a party as won't play whist under five-guinea points, or drink anything cheaper than MoËt at four dollars a bottle, I say look arter that chap, Shaver, and you'll see it's another man's money pays for him.”

“But, after all,” remonstrated Layton, “surely you have nothing to do with him?”

“Well, sir, I 'm not downright convinced on that score. He's a-come from Florence; he knows all about the Heathcotes and Mrs. Morris, and the other folk there; and he has either swindled them, or they 've been a-roguing some others. That's my platform, sir, and I'll not change one plank of it.”

“Come, come,” said Layton, laughingly, “for the first time in your life you have suffered a prejudice to override your shrewd good sense. The man is a snob, and no more.”

“Well, sir, I 'd like to ask, could you say worse of him? Ain't a snob a fellow as wants to be taken for better bred or richer or cleverer or more influential than he really is? Ain't he a cheat? Ain't he one as says, 'I ain't like that poor publican yonder, I 'm another guess sort of crittur, and sit in quite another sort of place?' Jest now, picture to your own mind how pleasant the world would be if one-fourth, or even one-tenth, of its inhabitants was fellows of that stamp!”

It was only after two or three turns on the deck that Layton could subdue the Colonel's indignation sufficiently to make him listen to him with calm and attention. With a very brief preamble he read Clara's letter for him, concluding all with the few lines inscribed “My Secret.” “It is about this I want your advice, dear friend,” said he. “Tell me frankly what you think of it all.”

Quackinboss was always pleased when asked his advice upon matters which at first blush might seem out of the range of his usual experiences. It seemed such a tribute to his general knowledge of life, that it was a very graceful species of flattery, so that he was really delighted by this proof of Layton's confidence in his acuteness and his delicacy, and in the exact proportion of the satisfaction he felt was he disposed to be diffuse and long-winded.

“This ain't an easy case, sir,” began he; “this ain't one of those measures where a man may say, 'There's the right and there's the wrong of it;' and it takes a man like Shaver Quackinboss—a man as has seen snakes with all manner o' spots on 'em—to know what's best to be done.”

“So I thought,” mildly broke in Layton,—“so I thought.”

“There's chaps in this world,” continued he, “never sees a difficulty nowhere; they 'd whittle a hickory stick with the same blade as a piece of larch timber, sir; ay, and worse, too, never know how they gapped their knife for the doin' it! You 'd not believe it, perhaps, but the wiliest cove ever I seen in life was an old chief of the Mandans, AÏ-ha-ha-tha, and his rule was, when you 're on a trail, track it step by step; never take short cuts. Let us read the girl's letter again.” And he did so carefully, painstakingly, folding it up afterwards with slow deliberation, while he reflected over the contents.

“I 'in a-thinkin',” said he, at last,—“I 'm a-thinkin' how we might utilize that stranger there, the fellow as is come from Florence, and who may possibly have heard something of this girl's history. He don't take to me; nor, for the matter o' that, do I to him. But that don't signify; there's one platform brings all manner of folk together,—it's the great leveller in this world,—Play. Ay, sir, your English lord has no objection to even Uncle Sam's dollars, though he 'd be riled con-siderable if you asked him to sit down to meals with him. I 'll jest let this crittur plunder me a bit; I'll flatter him with the notion that he's too sharp and too spry for the Yankee. He's always goin' about asking every one, 'Can't they make a game o' brag?' Well, I 'll go in, sir. He shall have his game, and I'll have mine.”

Layton did not certainly feel much confidence in the plan of campaign thus struck out; but seeing the pleasure Quackinboss felt in the display of his acuteness, he offered no objection to the project.

“Yes, sir,” continued Quackinboss, as though reflecting aloud, “once these sort of critturs think a man a flat, they let out all about how sharp they are themselves; they can't help it; it's part of their shallow natur' to be boastful. Let us see, now, what it is we want to find out: first of all, the widow, who she is and whence she came; then, how she chanced to have the gal with her, and who the gal herself is, where she was raised, and by whom; and, last of all, what is't they done with her, how they 've fixed her. Ay, sir,” mused he, after a pause, “as Senator Byles says, 'if I don't draw the badger, I 'd beg the honorable gentleman to b'lieve that his own claws ain't sharp enough to do it!' There's the very crittur himself, now, a-smokin',” cried he; “I'll jest go and ask him for a weed.” And, so saying, Quackinboss crossed the deck and joined the stranger.