ISHMAEL AT BRUDENELL
God loves no heart to others iced,
Nor erring flatteries which bedim
Our glorious membership in Christ,
Wherein all loving His, love Him.
—M. F. Tupper.
It was a long day's ride from the Beacon to Brudenell Hall. The greater length of the road lay through the forest. It was, in fact, the very same route traversed, five years before, by Reuben Gray, when he brought Hannah and Ishmael from the Hill Hut to Woodside.
Ishmael thought of that time, as he ambled on through the leafy wilderness.
At noon he stopped at a rural inn to feed and rest his horse, and refresh himself, and an hour afterwards he mounted and resumed his journey.
It was near sunset when he came in sight of the bay and the village to which it gave the name of Baymouth. How well he remembered the last time he had been at that village—when he had run that frantic race to catch the sleigh which was carrying Claudia away from him, and had fallen in a swoon at the sight of the steamer that was bearing her off.
How many changes had taken place since then! Claudia was a viscountess; he was a successful barrister; their love a troubled dream of the past.
He rode through Baymouth, looking left and right at the old familiar shops and signs that had been the wonder and amusement of his childhood; and at many new shops and signs that the march of progress had brought down even to Baymouth.
He paused a moment to gaze at Hamlin's book store, that had been the paradise of his boyhood; and he recalled that noteworthy day in August, when, while standing before Hamlin's window, staring at the books, he had first been accosted by Mr. Middleton, afterwards assaulted by Alfred Burghe, and finally defended by Claudia Merlin. Claudia was noble then—but, ah, how ignoble now!
He passed on, unrecognized by anyone, first because the years between the ages of seventeen, when he was last there, and twenty- one, when he was now there, really had wrought serious changes in his personal appearance, and secondly because no one was just then expecting to see Ishmael Worth at all, and least of all in the person of the tall, distinguished-looking, and well-mounted stranger, who came riding through their town and taking the road to Brudenell.