Produced by Jana Srna, Josephine Paolucci and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net. (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive/Canadian Libraries.) THE ATLANTIC MONTHLY. _A Magazine of Literature, Science, Art, and Politics._ VOL. XX.--OCTOBER, 1867.--NO. CXX. Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1867, by TICKNOR AND FIELDS, in the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the District of Massachusetts. THE GUARDIAN ANGEL. CHAPTER XXVII. MINE AND COUNTERMINE. What the nature of the telegram was which had produced such an effect on the feelings and plans of Mr. William Murray Bradshaw nobody especially interested knew but himself. We may conjecture that it announced some fact, which had leaked out a little prematurely, relating to the issue of the great land-case in which the firm was interested. However that might be, Mr. Bradshaw no sooner heard that Myrtle had suddenly left the city for Oxbow Village,--for what reason he puzzled himself to guess,--than he determined to follow her at once, and take up the conversation he had begun at the party where it left off. And as the young poet had received his quietus for the present at the publisher's, and as Master Gridley had nothing specially to detain him, they too returned at about the same time, and our old acquaintances were once more together within the familiar precincts where we have been accustomed to see them. Master Gridley did not like playing the part of a spy, but it must be remembered that he was an old college officer, and had something of the detective's sagacity, and a certain cunning derived from the habit of keeping an eye on mischievous students. If any underhand contrivance was at work, involving the welfare of any one in whom he was interested, he was a dangerous person for the plotters, for he had plenty of time to attend to them, and would be apt to take a kind of pleasure in matching his wits against another crafty person's,--such a one, for instance, as Mr. Macchiavelli Bradshaw.