FISHING FOR AN INVITATION.


"What a strange girl!" muttered Richard, as he stood in the same
hollowed rock, alone, where Harry and he had first taken shelter. "What
a compound of strength and weakness--as my mother says all girls are,
though I have never known them strong before! How eager she seemed to
part company with me, and how anxious to get home without me--and I am
never to speak of what has happened, to her father nor to Solomon! This
Solomon is her unwelcome wooer, that is clear. He is neither young nor
handsome--nor attractive in any way in her eyes, I reckon. And what a
beauty she is, to be thrown away on such a boor!"

The recollection that the door at the top of the rock had been left
open, and the key inside it, here flashed upon him. "She will be sorry
about that key," he thought; "and glad and grateful to me if I go back
and fetch it. The old man will be wroth with her for having trusted a
stranger with such a treasure. This Trevethick must be an ingenious
fellow, and a long-sighted one, no doubt. It was he who applied to
Parson Whymper for a lease of the old mine, if I remember right. Perhaps
the chaplain may help me to get it him, for I owe him something for his
daughter's sake. The idea of his having such a daughter! What rubbish is
this we artists talk of birth and beauty! Neither in life nor on canvas
have I ever seen one so fair as this girl." He meditated for a moment,
then cried out, angrily: "Heaven curse me, if I harm her! What an
ungrateful villain should I be! If there be a Gehenna, and but one man
in it, I should deserve to be that man!"

Then he began to climb the rock. He did not tarry this time for breath
nor shelter, though the wind had no whit abated, but trod right on till