A Hero of the Pen

by E. Werner

"You seem to quite forget, Henry, how nearly this matter concerns you," he said impressively. "If, as we have reason to believe, this young Mr. Forest lives; if we find him, as we hope to do, it will cost you half the fortune you expect with your bride."

"Ah, is that so?" muttered Alison. "And I would give the other half if she had never set foot on this German soil!"

Atkins started back. He had not thought this possible. If Henry could so entirely forget and deny the merchant in his character; if he could speak in this way of the loss of a fortune, he must be terribly in earnest. He approached the young man and laid a hand upon his shoulder.

"Jealousy makes you blind," he said in a pacific tone. "Whatever there may between these two, and it is doubtless some secret, it cannot be love; Jane's terror at the unexpected meeting, betrayed anything but that."

Alison glanced at him coldly and derisively. "You are very unfortunate in your powers of observation, Mr. Atkins. Who was it that in B. derided my presentiment that I saw danger to my hopes in this consumptive professor? Does he still seem to you laughable and of little account, or do you know at least what powers have lain dormant in this man?"

"I have misjudged him, but I defy anyone to estimate justly the character of a man who for years long, plays the role of a misanthropic hermit and learned investigator, then all at once really explodes as a poet, soars aloft as a hero in war, where to all human foresight it seemed clear that he would subside at the first roar of the cannon; and, at an unexpected meeting, flames up like an eighteen-year-old enthusiast. I tell you it takes a long time to find out these Germans! Once tear them from their commonplace ruts in which they have been wont to tread, and they go on in unaccountable ways. It is so with solitary individuals, it is so with the whole nation. They hurl the pen into a corner, and draw the sword from its scabbard, as if this had been their sole business their whole life long. I fear that for the next hundred years we shall not forget in what hand the pen lay!"

Atkins said all this in a peculiar tone of grumbling admiration; but he remembered at the right time, that such observations were not designed to pacify his young companion, and dropping the subject, he said consolingly:

"But Henry, however things may turn out, Jane remains yours. You have her promise; you have received it of her own free will, and the Forests are wont to keep their word to themselves and others. In whatever manner this Fernow may cross her path, I know her, she will be yours notwithstanding."

"She will!" replied Alison morosely. "You may rely upon that, Mr. Atkins! Either with or against her consent; my determination is irrevocable, even though--" and here the former ill-omened expression reappeared upon his face--"even though a pair of blue eyes should have to close forever!"

Atkins recoiled in horror; he made no reply. Darkness had fallen; from the village, in tones long drawn out, came the evening signal; Henry started up and took his hat from the table. With a hasty step the old man stood at his side, and grasped his arm.