“He is alive and well,” she replied, with some surprise; “but now I recollect that you and his brother were both shocked by supposing the wounded person was Ernest. It was the stranger who has so constantly annoyed us, and yet we regret he is hurt. He had only fainted from loss of blood when you entered the room, but has been shot in the leg, and probably will be lame through life.”
It is impossible to describe the sudden and joyful change in my feelings. I thought not of the stranger, but of Ernest my friend, the brother of my Linda, restored to us safe and well. How the happiness of my overcharged heart struggled for utterance at my lips, but I could not speak it, and having listened almost breathlessly to the recital of the lady, now rose once more from the sofa. But again she stayed my steps.
“Listen to me a moment longer,” she said. “Your friend Ernest after leaving the Grange last evening to meet you stopped here, and this delay prevented him from arriving at the stage-road until too late to see you, but he learned that you had proceeded on horseback toward his father’s residence, more than an hour before. Thick clouds shadowed the sky, and it was dark and late when he returned through the forest, when his attention was arrested by the groans of some person. Hastily alighting, and following the sounds, he discovered this man wounded, and having raised him with some difficulty, he placed him on the horse, and brought him here as the nearest house. But Ernest has since been arrested on suspicion of wounding him, although we all know he is innocent. His brother has gone with him and the officers of the law to the next town.”
“Do not detain me a moment,” I exclaimed, “Ernest is innocent! It was I who, in self-defense, shot at Durell, who attacked me in the forest last night, no doubt mistaking me in the darkness for my friend.”
The party with Ernest had been gone but a short time, and were soon overtaken by one of the neighbors, when they immediately returned to the cottage, and I, certainly the happiest of the group, with a face too full of truth to be doubted, told my story, which entirely exonerated Ernest, and myself too. The officers then departed, and a surgeon having examined and bandaged the limb of Durell, who had only received a flesh wound, he appeared so mortified and chagrined at his mistake and exposure, and so anxious to leave the cottage, that it was thought best to remove him on a litter to the village inn. He soon recovered, and one morning made an early departure, leaving his bill to be paid by me. Subsequently we learned he was a gambler, and had probably sought the seclusion of the valley to evade the pursuit of the law. But enough of him.
What a joyous party returned to the Grange, to which Richard had been dispatched at an early hour, to relieve the anxiety of Linda and her father. Bertha, whose beauty had wrought all our past trouble, accompanied us, but I scarcely looked at her, as she rode by the side of Ernest, for I could for some time think only of him, and surprised my friend very often by the tight pressure I gave his hand whenever I could reach it.
On our arrival at the Grange, I explained the cause of the distress and anxiety I had shown there on the night before, and oh! how sincerely my heart joined in the pious and simply beautiful thanks to God, from the lips of my old tutor, as we surrounded his hospitable board. How truly I felt that a benign and overruling Providence alone could bring joy out of sorrow.
Years have passed since then, years of happiness with Linda, but the memory of that night and morning can never be effaced from my mind. Yet it has taught me a grateful dependence on the Giver of all good, and one of the earliest lessons learned by the little happy group who call us parents, was to look on the bright side of life, and never imagine sorrows which may have no reality.