True and Other Stories   By: George Parsons Lathrop (1851-1898)

AND

OTHER STORIES

BY GEORGE PARSONS LATHROP

AUTHOR OF "AN ECHO OF PASSION," "NEWPORT," ETC.

FUNK & WAGNALLS

1884

NEW YORK 10 AND 12 DEY STREET

LONDON 44 FLEET STREET

All Rights Reserved

Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1884, by FUNK & WAGNALLS, In the Office of the Librarian of Congress at Washington, D. C.

CONTENTS.

TRUE.

CHAPTER I. HER EYES WERE GRAY

CHAPTER II. THE DE VINES

CHAPTER III. TWILIGHT

CHAPTER IV. A VISION

CHAPTER V. BIRTHDAY TOKENS

CHAPTER VI. A NEW LESSON IN BOTANY

CHAPTER VII. THE RACES, AND THE MOTTO

CHAPTER VIII. ADELA'S LEGEND

CHAPTER IX. LANCE AND SYLVESTER

CHAPTER X. THE LIKENESS

CHAPTER XI. LANCE RETURNS

CHAPTER XII. SYLV'S TROUBLE

CHAPTER XIII. LANCE AND ADELA

CHAPTER XIV. DENNIE'S TROUBLE

CHAPTER XV. ELBOW CROOK SWAMP

CHAPTER XVI. "I LIVE, HOW LONG I TROW NOT"

MAJOR BARRINGTON'S MARRIAGE

"BAD PEPPERS"

THREE BRIDGES.

I. THE IMPORTANCE OF A HAT

II. FATHER, DAUGHTER, AND WHO ELSE?

III. LISTENING

IV. THE THIRD BRIDGE

IN EACH OTHER'S SHOES

TRUE.

CHAPTER I.

HER EYES WERE GRAY.

It might have been yesterday, but in simple fact it was three hundred years ago, that something happened which has an important bearing on this story of the present.

Antiquity is a great discourager of the sympathies: the centuries are apt to weigh like lead on an individual human sentiment. Yet we find it pleasant sometimes to throw off their weight, and thereby to discover that it is a mere feather in the scale as against the beating of a heart.

I know that when I speak of Guy Wharton as having been alive and in love in the year 1587, you will feel a certain patronizing pity for him because he is not alive now. So do I. But then it is possible that you will be interested, notwithstanding because he was a lover. Would you like to hear what experience he had? I promise not to go through the history of those three hundred years. The story of Guy is merely the starting point of my narrative.

He was in love with a sweet English girl, Gertrude Wylde, who lived in Surrey; and she, for her part, was the daughter of a small tenant farmer there, well connected as to family, but not well furnished with worldly goods, Guy's father was a country gentleman; but that circumstance failed to affect the young man's eyesight and emotions injuriously; he beheld Gertrude, and he loved her. I can see it all, now, as if it were something that had happened to myself how they strolled together in those wondrous lanes hedged with hawthorn and brier and hazel, which stray so sweetly over the rolling lands about Dorking; how they met beneath the old yew tree where, half way up Box Hill, it hung out its foliage black as night, spotted with strange waxen blossoms of scarlet, like drops of blood upon a funeral pall; how they wandered in the untamed forest of great box trees at the top; what joys they had, what anxieties beset them.

"And will thy father indeed take his leave of old England so soon?" he asked her, when they had reached the brow of the hill.

"Yes, in truth," she answered, sadly enough, looking out over the white chalk highlands, and the arborous glades and open downs, to where the waters of the English Channel showed soft against the hazy sky at the horizon, like a blue vein on a circling arm. "And that means that I must take leave of thee , Guy."

"Never, my darling!" cried Guy, drawing her to him. "If thou goest, I go as well."