“My Cousin Ronald! What! The little lad I left in the schoolroom when I went to sea? Is he in the house?” inquired Lonny, with a gleam of delight in his dark eyes, as he entered the room and dropped into the nearest easy-chair. “Yes; but he is not a little lad now, by any manner of means! He is even a bigger lad than you, if anything. I will send him to you at once. He will take you to his room and attend to all your wants. Unluckily, Lonny, I must leave you.” “Must you? I am sorry. I would like the circle of friends to be complete to-day,” said Leonidas with a look of disturbance. “Why, so should I; but I am called to an old patient of mine who is lying dangerously ill at the Wilderness Manor-house. At the moment you stopped me I was even then on my way to join the messenger who was waiting in his wagon to take me away.” “Oh, indeed, I see that you have no time to spare; so don’t let me detain you,” said the young man with visible reluctance. “No, not a moment more even to bestow on such a joyful arrival as yours. Lord bless my soul! how strange all this is! I never was so unwilling to obey a professional call in my life. However, I will dispatch Ronald to you immediately.” So saying the good doctor hurried out of the drawing-room and upstairs to the private apartment of Lieutenant Bruce. Time being too precious to permit much ceremony, he entered without knocking, and found the young gentleman sitting at his table absorbed in writing a letter—to Em., most likely, as he was so deeply engaged as not to be disturbed even by the bustling entrance of the old physician. “LIEUTENANT!” exclaimed the latter. “Well, doctor,” cried the young man, starting to his feet. “What news? Has the lady succeeded in bringing my uncle to reason?” “The lady is still with your uncle, I believe, though I don’t know. But I haven’t come about your sweetheart, Ronald, but about something of more pressing importance; and I haven’t time to break the news, so you must brace yourself at once for a severe shock. Are you braced?” “Yes,” answered the young man, turning white as death and setting his teeth firmly; for he knew not what disastrous stroke he was to be called upon to bear. “Yes, I am ready.” “Now, then, think of Alexander Selkirk, Robinson Crusoe, La Parouse, Captain John Riley, the Swiss Family Robinson, the four Russian Sailors, the——” “In the name of Heaven, man, speak!” exclaimed the lieutenant. “—And Lonny Bruce! there, it’s out!” said the doctor. “What in the world do you mean?” demanded the young officer, wondering if the staid old physician, for the first time in his life, had taken a glass too much. “Haven’t I told you? Lonny Bruce has come home.” “WHAT!” cried Ronald, starting to his feet. “Lonny Bruce, so long supposed to have been lost at sea, has come home, safe and sound, as many a missing man has done before him!” repeated the doctor. Ronald stared as if his eyes would have started from their sockets.