Part 29 (1/2)

”It distressed me,” added the lady; ”for I felt he must think we were ungrateful. We advertised in the papers, but it was useless. I do not suppose we shall ever know who he was.”

”He may have been some poor boy in need of help,” added Mr. Warmore; ”but so brave a lad as that is sure to get along.”

”I presume _you_ remember the incident?” remarked Tom, turning toward the daughter.

”How can I ever forget it?” she asked in reply, with a s.h.i.+ver. ”I can feel that icy water even now, as it closed round me that wintry night. It was too dark to see my rescuer's face plainly, but I would know him if I met him fifty years from now. He was remarkably handsome.”

”A boy of that age changes very much in a few years.”

”He could never change so as to grow out of my recollection,” said Jennie with a positiveness that made Tom Gordon smile.

”And of all the strange things that were ever done by a child,” said Mrs.

Warmore, ”none ever equalled what Jennie did while floating in the water.”

”Indeed, what could that be?”

”Tell him yourself, daughter.”

The young lady blushed and laughed.

”I don't know what possessed me to do it. I hardly think I was conscious of matters or responsible for all I did. When the lad was fighting his way through the icy waters, I remember s.n.a.t.c.hing a chain and locket containing my likeness from my neck, and twisting the chain about a b.u.t.ton on his coat. I had a feeling of wis.h.i.+ng to do something that should help him to remember me. After that I became wholly unconscious.”

”It seems to me the little fellow was rewarded by securing the chain and locket,” remarked Tom with a significant smile.

”That was but a trifle compared to what he ought to have received,”

replied Jennie.

”You forget that it contained _your_ picture.”

The compliment was so neatly put that all laughed, and the face of the young lady became rosier than ever.

”Pardon me,” Tom hastened to say; ”of course the little fellow has preserved those mementoes, and I should not he surprised if he turns up some day when least expected.”

”I hope so,” was the fervent response of Jennie, in which sentiment her parents joined.

It is not necessary to dwell upon the evening, which was a red letter one in Tom Gordon's life. No more delightful hours were ever spent by him; and when, without tarrying too late, he left, he could make no mistake as to the sentiments of the three, and especially the youngest, toward him. He had made an impression there, and it would be his own fault if it failed to ripen into something serious.

But, as he walked homeward in the silvery moonlight, he felt a respect for himself which, it is safe to say, would have come to few placed as he was.

He had not given the first hint that he was the boy who, at the risk of his own life, had leaped into the wintry waters and rescued little Jennie Warmore from death.

Who would have held back the secret in his situation? Would you or I?

Doubtful, if when smitten with love for a fair, sweet girl, we had felt that its telling would have riveted the bonds which, at the most, were only partly formed, and might dissolve into nothingness if not thus strengthened.

It was the youth's fine-grained sense of honor that restrained him.

”She holds a good opinion of me now. If it should ever happen that that feeling grows into love (and Heaven grant it may!), it must be for me alone, and not for any accident in the past. Suppose I had not done her a good turn to-day,--she might have discarded Catherwood for his baseness, but what would have caused her to transfer her regard to me? No, she shall never know the whole truth until--until”--