Half Brothers. Stretton Hesba

necessary business. Possibly he had been alarmed at his own rashness.

      But one afternoon a note reached Sidney by post. It was written in a hand as clear and legible as a clerk's and was quite as brief, and to the point. He read it with a smile.

      SIR: My father, Colonel Cleveland, has met with an accident. He bids me ask you if you can come to-night and see him at his house? MARGARET CLEVELAND.

      "No superfluous words here," he thought; "no empty compliments; no conventional forms. If every woman wrote notes like this, a good deal of time would be saved. It is like a telegram."

CHAPTER VI.

       COLONEL CLEVELAND.

       Table of Contents

      The house where Colonel Cleveland was for the present living stood alone on Wimbledon Common, surrounded by a large garden, which was completely walled in on every side. Sidney rode toward it in the twilight of an autumn evening. A yellow light in the western sky shone through the delicate net-work of silver beech trees, where a few leaves were still clinging to the slender branches. All around him there were the forewarnings of the coming winter, and the lingering traces of the dead summer. The pale gray of the low sky overhead was sad; and sad was the fluttering of the brown leaves as they floated to the ground. A robin was singing its mournful little song, as if all the other birds had forsaken the land, and left it to bear alone the burden of song through the winter. A few solitary ramblers, looking as if they had lost their way in the gathering mist, were passing to and fro along the sodden paths. The scent of dying fern filled the air.

      Sidney was the more open to all the impressions of nature because of his busy life in the city. This almost deserted, open common, looking like a stretch of distant moorland, was all the more touching and pathetic to him because an hour ago he had been threading his way through the crowded labyrinths of London. The yellow light shining through the beech stems was more lovely, because for half the day his eyes had seen nothing but gaslights burning amid the fog.

      He let his horse's pace fall into a slow walk, and lingered to watch the evening star grow brighter as the golden glow died out in the west. There was little anxiety in his mind about Colonel Cleveland's accident. At any rate, for this moment he would enjoy the calm and silence of nature after the noise and hurry of the day. It was a wonderful thing, this stillness of the broad heath, and of the quiet heavens above him, throbbing with life and appealing to his inmost soul with a strange and delicate appeal. It seemed to him as if a voice were speaking, and speaking to him from the sky, and the blue mists, and the vague shadows, and the silent stars overhead; but what the voice said he did not know.

      "A little more, and I should be as fanciful as a poet," he said to himself, with a laugh. There had been a time when he had thought himself a poet, or at least a lover of poetry. But that was when he was a boy, before the spell of the world had been cast over him; and before he had yielded to a selfish passion which he could not altogether forget.

      It was in a very softened mood that he turned from the Common into Colonel Cleveland's grounds. He felt almost like a boy again. The life led in the city, the keen competition and cruel strife for fortune, seemed to him, as it had once seemed, to be ignoble, sordid, and barbarous. There were better things than money; things which money could never buy. There was something almost pleasant to him in this vague disdain he felt for the cares and trammels of business. He was inwardly glad that he was not a slave to Mammon. "Not yet," said conscience, entering an unheeded protest.

      He was shown into a library, where a lamp, with a shade over it, filled the room with strong lights and deep shadows. It was unoccupied; but in a minute or two the door opened, and a girl entered with a quiet step. She approached him with her hand stretched out, as if he were a well-known friend, and spoke eagerly with a frank, sweet voice, the sweetest voice, he thought at the first sound of it, that he had ever heard.

      "My father wants you so much," she said. "Oh! he is so dreadfully hurt."

      Her face was in shadow, but he could see that it was pale and troubled; her eyelids were a little red with weeping, and her mouth quivered. It was a lovely face, he felt; and the eyes she lifted up to him seemed, like her voice, to be more beautiful than any he had ever known. She was a tall, slender girl; and the soft white dress she wore hung about her in long and graceful folds. He held her hand for a moment or two in a firm grasp.

      "Tell me what I can do for you," he said in a low tone, as if afraid of startling her.

      She met his gaze with an expression on her face full of relief and trust.

      "I am so glad you are come," she said frankly, "my father has been asking for you so often. He was thrown on the Common this morning, and his back is injured, and he suffers, oh! so much pain. Will you come upstairs and see him at once?"

      She led the way, running on before him with light and eager footsteps, and, when she had reached the last step on the staircase, looking back upon him with the simplicity of a child, she opened the door of her father's room softly, and beckoned to him to follow her.

      "He is longing to see you," she said in a low voice.

      It seemed to Sidney, when he thought of it afterward, that he had been so occupied in watching Margaret's movements, and listening to her voice, that he had hardly seen her father. He had an indistinct impression of seeing the gray head lying on a pillow, and the face drawn with pain as the injured man tried to stretch out his hand to welcome him. It was not till Margaret had gone away, after kissing her father's cheek fondly, that he came to himself, and could attend intelligently to what Colonel Cleveland was saying.

      "The doctors are gone now, but they've a poor opinion of me, Sidney, a very poor opinion. Time, they say, may work wonders. 'How much time?' I asked. 'Three or four years, perhaps,' they said. And I'm to lie like a log for years! Good Heavens! is life worth living when it is like that?"

      "But they do not always know," answered Sidney, in a voice full of sympathy. "How can they know in so short a time? This morning you were as strong as I am; and in a few weeks you may be nearly as strong as ever, in spite of the doctors."

      "To lie like a log for years," repeated Colonel Cleveland, with a groan, "and to chain Margaret to me! Though she would not mind it, poor child. She'd nurse me, without a murmur or a sigh, till she was worn out and gray herself. I know what sort of a daughter she would be, and I am as sorry for her as I am for myself. I'd have let her have some pleasure in her life if I'd known it was coming to this."

      "You must not begin to despair so soon," said Sidney; "it is not possible that anyone can judge so quickly of your state. Wait a few days, or weeks even, before you give up hope."

      "But I cannot move," he answered, with a hopeless expression on his face, "I cannot stir myself by a hair's breadth. I feel as if I had been turned into stone; only there's such dreadful pain. Sidney, what shall I do? what can I do?"

      He broke down into a passionate burst of tears, turning his head from side to side, as if seeking to hide his face from sight, but unable to lift his hand or to move. Sidney knelt down by the side of the bed, and with; as gentle a touch as a woman's wiped the tears away, whispering comforting words into his ear.

      "It is too soon to despair," he repeated, "much too soon. And if it should be partly true, I will do all I can for you, as if I were your son. But it cannot be true. It is only for a little while. You are bruised and stiff now, but that will wear off by degrees. Hold fast to the hope of getting over it, for your own sake and Margaret's."

      He lingered over Margaret's name as if it were a pleasure to utter it. But he was thinking chiefly of her father at this moment. It was a pitiful thing to witness a strong man suddenly stretched as helpless as a child. Sidney's heart was wrung for him, as he listened to his deep-drawn sobs, which gradually ceased, yet left heavy sighs, which were as disturbing as the sobs. Margaret came in noiselessly and stood by the fire at the other end of the room, her face turned wistfully toward her father. But she did not