Such was Campbell's Isle, and such were its owners and occupants. For many years now it had been quiet and stagnant enough, until the development of sundry startling events that for long afterward were remembered in the country around and electrified for a time the whole community.
CHAPTER II
THE MAGIC MIRROR.
"I turned my eyes, and as I turned surveyed
An awful vision."
The sun was sinking in the far west as the little schooner Evening Star went dancing over the bright waves towards Campbell's Isle. Captain Guy Campbell stood leaning negligently over the taffrail, solacing himself with a cigar, and conversing at intervals with a slight, somewhat haughty-looking young man, who stood beside him, watching the waves flashing, as they sped along. No two could be more opposite, as far as looks went, than those two, yet both were handsome and about the same age.
Like all his race, young Campbell was very tall, and dark as a Spaniard. His short, black, curling hair shadowed a forehead high, bold, and commanding. Dark, keen, proud eyes flashed from beneath jetty eye-brows, and the firm, resolute mouth gave to his dark face a look almost fierce. His figure was exquisitely proportioned and there was a certain bold frankness, mingled with a reckless, devil-may-care expression in his fine face, that atoned for his swarthy complexion and stern brows.
His companion was a tall, elegant young man, with an air of proud superiority about him, as though he were "somebody," and knew it. His complexion was fair as a lady's, and would have been effeminate but for the dark, bold eyes and his dashing air generally. There was something particularly winning in his handsome face, especially when he smiled, that lit up his whole countenance with new beauty. Yet, with all, there was a certain faithless expression about the finely formed mouth that would have led a close observer to hesitate before trusting him too far. This, reader, was Mr. Willard Drummond, a young half-American, half-Parisian, and heir to one of the finest estates in the Old Dominion. The last five years he had passed in Paris, and when he was thinking of returning home he had encountered Campbell and his sister. Fond of luxury and ease as the young patrician was, he gave up all, after that, for the attraction he discovered on board the schooner Evening Star. And Captain Campbell, pleased with his new friend, invited him to cross the ocean with him, and spend a few weeks with him in his ancestral home, whither he was obliged to stop while some repairs were being made in his vessel, which invitation Willard Drummond, nothing loth, accepted.
"Well, Campbell, how is that patient of yours this evening?" inquired Drummond, after a pause.
"Don't know," replied Captain Campbell, carelessly; "I haven't seen him since morning. Sibyl is with him now."
"By the way, where did you pick him up? He was not one of your crew, I understand."