The island to which Charlotte had retired was the island of Hiddensee, a narrow strip of sand to the west of Rügen. Generally so wordy, the guide-book merely mentions it as a place to which it is possible for Rügen tourists to make excursions, and proffers with a certain timidity the information that pleasure may be had there in observing the life and habits of sea-birds.

To this place of sea-birds Charlotte had gone, as she wrote in a letter left with the landlady for me, because during the night she spent at Wiek a panic had seized her lest the Harvey-Brownes should by some chance appear there in their wanderings before I did. 'I daresay they will not dream of coming round this way at all,' she continued, 'but you never know.'

You certainly never know, I agreed, Mrs. Harvey-Browne being at that very moment in the room Charlotte had had the panic in; and I lay awake elaborating a most beautiful plan by which I intended at one stroke to reunite Charlotte and her husband and free myself of both of them.

This plan came into my head during the evening while sitting sadly listening to something extremely like a scolding from the Professor. It seemed to me that I had done all in my power short of inhumanity to the horses to help him, and it was surely not my fault that Charlotte had not happened to stay anywhere long enough for us to catch her up. My intentions were so good. Far preferring to drive alone and stop where and when I pleased—at Vitt for instance, among the walnut trees—I had yet given up all my preferences so that I might help bring man and wife together. If anything, did not this conduct incline towards the noble?

'Your extreme simplicity amazes me,' remarked the wise relative when, arrived at this part of my story on my return home, I plaintively asked the above question. 'Under no circumstances is the meddler ever thanked.'

'Meddler? Helper, you mean. Apparently you would call every person who helps a meddler.'

'Armes Kind, proceed with the story.'

Well, the Professor, who had suffered much in the hood between Arkona and Wiek, and was more irritated by his disappointment on getting to Wiek than seemed consistent with the supposed serenity of the truly wise, was telling me for the tenth time that if I had brought him on at once from Glowe as he begged me to do we would not only have escaped the Harvey-Brownes but would have caught his Charlotte by now, seeing that she had not left Wiek for Hiddensee till eight o'clock of this Saturday we had now got to, and I was drooping more and more under these reproaches when, with the suddenness of inspiration, the beautiful plan flooded my dejected brain with such a cheerful light that I lifted my head and laughed in the Professor's face.

'Now pray tell me,' he exclaimed, stopping short in his strides about the room, 'what thou seest to laugh at in my present condition?'

'Nothing in your present condition. It's the glories of your future one that made me laugh.'