the log farm-house by the pleasant river.
The same evening two persons on wonderfully different missions drifted into the depot and transfer-house at Detroit, and mingled with the great throng that the east and the west continually throw together at this point. One was a handsome, apparently self-possessed young lady, who attended to her baggage personally, and moved about among the crowds with apparent unconcern; though, closely watched, her face would have shown anxiety and restlessness. The other was a gaunt, though solidly built young fellow, whose clothes, although of good material, had the appearance of having been thrown at him and caught with considerable uncertainty upon his bony angles. He wandered about in a dejected way, looking hither and thither as if forever searching for some one whose discovery had become improbable, but who should not escape if an honest search by an honest, simple fellow as he seemed to be, could avail anything. By one of those unexplainable coincidences, or fatuities, as some are pleased to term them, these two persons—the one desirous of avoiding a crowd, and the other anxious to ascertain whom every throng contained—approached the ticket-office from different directions at the same moment.
He at the gent's window heard her at the ladies' window say to the agent, "Yes, to Buffalo, if you please;" and he jumped as though he had been lifted by an explosion. He peered through the window and saw her face at the other window, and without waiting to step around to her, yelled to the agent like a madman: "Say, you, mister!—don't give the gal that ticket. It's a mistake. She's going 'tother way;" and shoving his gaunt head and shoulders into the window and wildly gesticulating to the young lady, as the agent in a scared way saw the muscular intruder hovering over his tickets and money-box, he continued excitedly:
"Say, Lil, old gal! Lil Nettleton!—Dick—Dick Hosford, ye know! Ain't I tellin' the truth? ain't it all a mistake, and ain't you goin' the other way—with me, ye know—yes, 'long with Dick?"
Lilly Nettleton, for it was no other, nodded to the agent—who returned the money—and quickly stepped around to help Dick disengage himself from the window, and then quickly drew him away from the crowd which the little episode had collected, sat down beside him, and, heartily laughing at his ludicrous appearance, said, "Why, Dick, where under heaven did you come from?"
"Lil, gal," said poor Dick, wiping the tears of joy out of his eyes, "I come all the way from Californy fur ye, found ye gone and the old folks all bust and banged up about it. Fur six weary weeks I've been huntin', huntin' ye up and down, here and yon, and was goin' back to Terre Haute, sell the d——d farm I bought fur ye, and skip back to the Slope to kill Injuns, or somethin', to drown my sorrow, fur I told the old folks I'd bring ye back, or never set foot in them diggin's agin'!"
Lilly looked at the great-hearted man beside her in a strange, calculating kind of a way, never touched by his tenderness and simple sacrifice, but moving very closely to him in a winsome way that quite overcame him.
"And I come to marry ye, Lil," persisted Dick, anxiously.
"To marry me, Dick?"
"Yes, and bought ye a purty farm at Terre Haute."
"A farm, Dick?"
"Yes, Lil, a farm, with as snug a little house as ye ever sot eyes on."
"But where did you get so much money? You never wrote anything about it."
"No, I wanted to kinder surprise ye; but I got it honest—got it honest; with these two hands, Lil, that'll work for ye all yer life like a nigger, if ye'll only come 'long with me and never go gallavantin' any more."
"And won't you ask me any questions or allow them—at home, Dick—to ask any, and take me just as I am?"
"Just as ye are; fur better, or fur wus, Lil."
"And marry me here, now, before we go home?"
"Marry ye, Lil? I'd marry ye if I'd a found ye in a——; I won't give it a name, Lil. I didn't to them, and I won't to you."
She gave him her hand as firmly and frankly as though she had been a pure woman, and said, "I'm yours, Dick. We'll be married here, to-morrow."
She took charge of all the arrangements; called a cab which took them to the Michigan Exchange; sent Dick off to his room with orders to secure a license the first thing in the morning; wrote two notes to a certain person, one addressed to Mother Blake, and the other to his post-office box, ordering them posted that night; and went to her room to sleep the sleep of the just, which, contrary to general belief, also often comes to the unjust.
Early in the morning, Dick came with the license and suggested securing the services of a preacher; but Lilly said that she had arranged that matter already, and had got a clergyman who, she was sure, would not disappoint them; and promptly at two o'clock in the afternoon courteously admitted the Rev. Mr. Bland, whom she had given the choice of officiating or an exposure, and who performed the ceremony in a pale, trembling way as the wicked old light gleamed in her great, gray eyes, and the swift shuttles of color played over her curled lip.
That night found the newly-wedded couple whirling back to Kalamazoo, where they arrived the next morning and were driven out to the farm-house, where they were joyfully welcomed, and where Dick Hosford in his blunt way announced that he had "found Lil workin' away like a good girl, had married her and took a little bridal 'tower,' and had come back to have no d——d questions asked."
So in a few days the young couple bade the Nettletons good-by and were soon after installed in the pleasant farm-house near Terre Haute, where the years passed on happily enough and brought them competence and contentment and three children, who for a long time never knew the meaning of the strange light in the eyes, or the swift colors on the lips, of the mother who cared for them with an apparent full measure of kindness and affection.
CHAPTER VI.
Mr. Pinkerton is called upon.—Mr. Harcout, a ministerial-looking Man, with an After-dinner Voice, appears.—A Case with a Woman in it, as is usually the case.—Mr. Pinkerton hesitates.—An anxious Millionaire.
ONE hot July afternoon in 186-, I was sitting in my private office at my New York Agency, located then, and now, at the corner of New Street and Exchange Place, in the very heart of the money and stock battles of Gotham, pretty well tired out from a busy day's work in carrying to completion some of the vast transactions that had accumulated during the war, and which were in turn waiting for my professional services to unravel.
It had been a terribly hot day, and the city seemed like a vast caldron filled with a million boiling victims; and now that the day's labor was nearly over, I was principally employed in an attempt to keep cool, but finding it impossible with everybody about me, settled myself in my easy-chair at the window to watch the Babel of brokers below.
From such an altitude, where one can look down soberly upon these madmen and see their wild antics, when for the moment they are absolutely insane in their thirst for gold, never halting at the most extreme recklessness even though they know it may compel wholesale ruin, it is easy to realize how isolated cases occur where the whole human nature yields to greed, and sweeps on to the certain accomplishment of crime for its satisfaction.
Just after a particularly heavy "rush" had been made, resulting in a few broken limbs and numberless tattered hats and demolished garments, and the bulls and bears were gathered about in knots excitedly talking over their profit and loss, and wiping the great beads of perspiration, from their lobster-like faces, I noticed an important-looking gentleman turn into New Street from the direction of Broadway, and after edging through the crowds, occasionally halting to ask a question in the politest possible manner—the replies and gestures to which seemed to indicate that he was seeking my agency, which afterwards proved true—this vision