From that day also he began to mend. On a temper such as his, treachery, like Clara Clayton’s, must either be fatally effectual or perfectly harmless. His haughty and contemptuous spirit did the service of coat armor in the protection of his heart. It broke not! It remained whole and manly as ever—but it strengthened itself in its strength against all future approaches of love. Whether the soundness of Leslie’s heart extended itself to his limb or the energy of his proud spirit exerted a commanding influence over the physical body cannot be ascertained; but the fact is clear that he began rapidly to convalesce from the day he so cavalierly gave Clara her freedom. At the end of three months thereafter, after having gone through the regular course of, first, two crutches, then a crutch and a cane, and then a single crutch alone, he made his appearance with Dr. M—— on one side and his only support on the other an ordinary walking stick! Every where he received the congratulations of his friends and rejoiced in them; for he had all along felt a triumphant pride in getting well—a sort of cherished spirit of revenge, though he confessed it not to himself, upon Clara—false, heartless Clara. It is true he walked lame with his cane and the doctor, but every day he grew better, and at length his physicians, contrary to their previous decision, pronounced that the bones of the leg were properly reunited and that strength in the limb was only necessary to restore it to its original sound condition. Tenderly and most gingerly did Leslie nurse his leg and humor its kindly temper towards health. Time at length rewarded his care, and at the end of fourteen months from the time he received Clara’s letter he walked Chesnut street sound in limb and with “the lofty carriage, distinguished air and noble step” that had captivated the fancy and won the shallow heart of Clara Clayton. Leslie, however, never again looked kindly upon woman. He believed the sex to be instinctively false-hearted and selfish; he acknowledged no love in her but love of herself, and religiously believed that she married only for self-interest and that she looked upon men only as instruments for the gratification of her vanity. No, he never trusted woman from that time up to the period we have introduced him to the reader seated in his arm-chair in his library with the gentle snows of forty-one winters upon his head. But time aided by circumstances achieves apparent impossibilities. Leslie Pierpoint possessed a heart that would be a treasure to any woman; and because one had proved traitorous to its noble confidence, Love had resolved that it should not always be locked in the ice of winter—that its summer should come to it again, its seed time and harvest should return, and fruits and flowers once more bear witness to the moisture and richness of the long barren soil. But this change, its progress and extraordinary results, will form the theme of a Second Tale.