"Well, well," said Peter, "there need be no more about it, then—say that I meet you at this house to-morrow at two o'clock."
"Agreed," replied the other.
"But," returned Peter, "there is one thing I forgot to tell ye, and that is, that I understand Miss Bertha is on the eve of being married, and highly married, too, they say wi' us. Therefore, ye will not be surprised if ye find your former acquaintance forgotten, or seemingly forgotten, which, in such matters, amounts to somewhat about the same thing."
On the following day, Mr Peter Liddell and Robert Musgrave entered a cab in Fleet Street together, and proceeded towards Elstree.
"Now," said Peter, as they approached the residence of his landlord, "I believe that I may be running my head against a wall; for I am well aware that the old colonel never liked ye. Ye are one who would be unwelcome at any time, but doubly so at a time like this, when his daughter is on the point of being married. But I will tell ye what it is—I am just as independent as he is. I am as able to live without the help o' the landlord, as the landlord is to live without the help o' the tenant. Therefore, if he puts down his brows at you when we are introduced, I will show him the back o' my coat, and so good-day to him."
"I believe, then," said Musgrave, "that with him I shall be no welcome guest; but, if Bertha welcome me, it is enough. You have spoken to me of her intended marriage—be it so. If she has forgotten me, if she has ceased to care for me, I will look upon her and bless her, in remembrance of days which have passed away as the shadow of a cloud passeth over the earth. But with that blessing hope will depart; for, sir, it was the remembrance of her that sustained me in all my struggles. It was the hope that she might, would one day be mine, that induced me to hope against hope, to wrestle with despair. For her sake only have I sought for fame, as a miser would seek after hidden treasure; and when it began to throw its light and its sunniness over me, she was the flower that rendered sunlight beautiful—for what is there lovely in light but as a thing which maketh the face of the earth fair to look upon?"
They drew up at the door of the colonel's residence, and were ushered into a room where he and a party of his friends sat. Peter, who was what people in the south would call a 'cute man, was beginning to make an apology, saying—
"I beg your pardon, colonel, for the liberty I have taken; but meeting with my old friend, Doctor Musgrave, yesterday, I prevailed on him to come out wi' me, as we were a' Cumberland folk together; and though he is a great man now——"
But, while Peter spoke, one of the company started forward. He grasped our hero by the hand, and exclaimed—
"My deliverer! Long and anxiously have I sought for you; but, until this hour, nothing have I been able to learn respecting you. Father," he added, "this is the gentleman of whom a hundred times you have heard me speak, as having at the peril of his own life saved mine. I have never known or met him again until now. Thank him with me." And, as he spoke, he held the doctor's hand between his.