"O, no, I've not," said he, grasping her hand, and shaking it heartily, but tenderly, for the tears came into his eyes; for his Jane, to whom Miss Hattie referred, was dead, and he called to mind how dearly she loved "little Hattie." Ten years had passed since he had seen Hattie. She was then a "wee bit of a thing" of her age, and she was not very large now, though grown to full womanhood, as exquisitely moulded in form as she was beautiful of face. My friend had married a Vermont girl, he himself being a native of New Jersey. The illness of his wife had led them to remove to a little town somewhere above Rutland,--New Haven, I believe, but may be that is not it,--for a summer, in which place he had first known Hattie, when but a child of six years of age. His little daughter Jane was just her age, having been born on the very same day that she was, and the two little creatures, just the opposites, however, in complexion, color of hair and eyes, and quite unlike in all respects, fell into the warmest mutual friendship. "They had not a single taste alike," said he. "Jane was a great romp, loved to be out in the stables with the horses and cows, was full of boisterous life;" but Hattie was as mild as her own blue eyes, and as delicate as her fine, glossy hair. "It was a strange affection these children had for each other," he said; "very beautiful, and I used to be constantly with them when there." He used to spend a month or so of each summer there, while the wife staid from the last of May, he said, into October. For three years his wife made the little town her summer home, and these children grew more and more together. Ten years had gone, and Hattie was now in her nineteenth year,--a beautiful woman, into whose countenance her advanced years had thrown just enough of spirit to make her interesting,--with an air of sweet, just ripe maturity about her, which gave my friend an inkling of what the two villains were pursuing her for. Pretty soon my friend introduced the subject of her "friends,"--her two "fellow-travellers,"--and she shrugged her shoulders with an expression of mingled disgust and dread, and said, "You are going down?" "Yes." "O, I am so glad, for you'll be company for me, and keep those mean men away from me--won't you?" "Why, certainly. Where did you meet them first?" "They came on at Rutland, I think, and the impudent fellows have tried to talk with me all the way down. At first I said a few words to them, and told them I was going to New York, and they've left their seats several times, and come forward to me." "Yes, I've noticed them," said my friend, "and that's why I came in here, not expecting to find Hattie Newberry, but sure that you, whoever you are, were being persecuted by those villains, and needed protection."