“Well, doctor, I am ready, you see! As you have ridden so much to-day I shall give you my seat in the carriage, old friend, and take your horse. No, now! Not one word of objection! I will have it so. Besides, I have ordered a second horse for Leonidas, so that I and my son may trot side by side, as we used to do when I was younger and he was smaller,” added the commodore as he drew on his gloves. As he spoke Leonidas Bruce, equipped for riding, accompanied by his cousin, Ronald, re-entered the room. The two ladies soon followed—Mrs. Leonidas Bruce in the dress she had worn on her short journey from Edengarden to The Breezes, and Em. in her boat cloak and hood. “Well, we are all ready, I believe?” inquired the doctor. The other members of the party assented, and after bidding good-evening to the three ladies and the one gentleman left behind, they went out the front door to the place where the carriage and the saddle horses were awaiting them. Dr. Willet handed the two ladies into the carriage, then followed and took his seat at their side. Leonidas Bruce assisted his father to mount his horse, then leaped into his own saddle and rode after the carriage, which had already started. The commodore was soon by his son’s side. And so they wound down the road leading down the mountainside and through the forest to the back road, and thence to the Wilderness Manor-house. There was no moon, but the sky was perfectly clear, and the innumerable stars shone with a sparkling brilliancy that compensated for her absence. The three passengers in the carriage spoke but little. Dr. Willet went to sleep. It was very rude of him to do so, but he was aged and tired. Mrs. Leonidas Bruce was absorbed in reverie. Em. was silently weeping and stealthily wiping away her tears. Em. had scarcely realized how much she loved the uncouth old creature who had been her nurse and companion all her young life and until within a few weeks. Yet these were tears of tender compassion rather than of bitter sorrow; tears, too, which Em.’s cheerful faith taught her were more natural than rational, since “death is but an orderly step in life,” and to die out of this sphere is to be born in a higher one. The two men enjoyed _their_ ride. Neither of them took any more than a kindly interest in the dying woman they were going to see, so they talked of everything else than of her—of Lonny’s shipwreck, and rescue, and capture; of his experiences in the long years of his captivity; of his flight and escape, and his voyage home on the French ship, etc., etc., etc. All these adventures Lonny had already related. But now, at his father’s request, he went over them again, as he was destined many times to repeat them at intervals for his father, his father’s friends and—their friends, for many years to come. It was ten o’clock when they drew near a pile of dark buildings in the valley below them, which they recognized as the Wilderness Manor.