Amory hesitated. "Mother is very anxious that I should come, if possible," he faltered; "and she is right. There—there are reasons why I ought to go and settle a matter that has given me much distress. I told her of it, and she writes that only one course is open to me." And the deep dejection and trouble in his face upset me completely.
"Youngster," said I, impulsively. "Forgive me if I appear to intrude in your affairs, but you have become very near to me, if you know what I mean, in the last few months. We have learned to regard you as something more than a friend, the Summers' and I, and lately it seems to me that an inkling of your trouble has been made known to me (who would have said, 'I have been prying into your affairs?')—and—Frank, don't worry if it is about Bella Grayson. She is my own niece,—you may not know,—and I had a letter from her the other day."
Amory almost started up in bed (capital nurse Mr. G. S. Brandon would make for a fever patient ordinarily, you are probably thinking), but though his eyes were full of eager inquiry and astonishment, he choked back the question that seemed to rise to his lips and simply stared at me, then with flushing cheeks turned quickly away.
"I cannot explain just now; try and be content with what I tell you for a day or two," I went on. "You can hear more when you are better. One thing I want to ask you for the benefit of the detectives who are looking for Peyton. How do you suppose you were so fortunate as to escape missing him and the other blackguard? We found them just below the bridge to the right."
"I don't know," was the weary reply. "Things were all in a whirl after I got that note. I remember telling that fellow to say that I would be there without fail. Then it took some time to hurry up here and get my horse, and to write a line to mother; then I did not go straight out Canal Street. There were one or two things that had to be done; but I rode like the devil to get there, and there wasn't a soul that I could see anywhere around the far end of the bridge."
"But didn't you go down towards the lake,—to the right hand, I mean?"
"To the right? No, of course not," said Amory. "He said to the south; look at the note again and you'll find it; and I had that little compass there on my watch-chain. South was to the left, man, and,—why, it seems to me I rode all night; found myself in town and rode back to the swamps; then gave it up and came home somehow; I don't know. It was all a blur."
Then, fortunately, the doctor came back, and, with one glance at Amory's face, motioned to me that enough or more than enough had been said. I bent over Amory and said, with the best intentions in the world of being reassuring, "Remember, do not fret about going North or about anything else of that kind; that is coming out all right." And with the profound conviction that it was coming out all right through his ministration, the recorder of this curious tangle took his leave.