Cupid of Campion

“We can pray for him; we can hope.”

“Well, if his soul is saved,” said Esmond gravely, “it’s not because of me, it’s in spite of me.”

When the bereaved father reached the hotel, the despair in his eyes told the tale to his wife. Let us drop a veil over that scene of sorrow – the sudden loss of an only child.

CHAPTER V

In which Ben, the gypsy, associates himself with the Bright-eyed Goddess in carrying out her will upon Master Clarence Esmond, and that young gentleman finds himself a captive

It was the time when the night-hawk, soaring high in air and circling wantonly, suddenly drops like a thunderbolt down, down till nearing the ground it calls a sudden halt in its fall, and cutting a tremendous angle and letting out a short sound deep as the lowest string of a bass violin shoots up into the failing light of the evening; it was the time when the whippoorwill essays to wake the darkening sky with his insistent demands for the beating of that unfortunate youth, poor Will; it was the time when the sun, having left his kingdom in the western sky, stretches forth his wand of sovereignty from behind his curtains and touching the fleecy clouds changes them into precious jewels, ruby, pearl, and amethyst; it was, in fine, the time when the day is done and the twilight brings quiet and peace and slumber to the restless world.

However – and the exception proves the rule – it did not bring quiet and peace and slumber to Master Clarence Esmond. In fact, it so chanced that the twilight hour was the time when he was deprived of these very desirable gifts; for his sleep was just then rudely broken.

First, a feeling of uneasiness came upon his placid slumbers. It seemed to him, in those moments between sleeping and waking, that a very beautiful fairy, vestured in flowing white, and with lustrous and shining eyes, appeared before him. She gazed at him sternly. “Oh, it’s you, is it?” murmured Clarence. “I’ve been looking for you, star-eyed goddess. Be good enough, now you’re here, to supply me with one or two first-class adventures in good condition and warranted to last.” In answer to which, she of the starry eyes extended her wand and struck her suppliant a smart blow on the forehead. As she did this, the light in her eyes went out, her form lost its outline, fading away after the manner of a moving picture effect into total darkness.

Clarence’s eyes then opened; it was not all a dream – the loose board above him had fallen and struck him on his noble brow. Also, although his eyes were open, he could see very little. Almost at once he realized where he was. Almost at once he recalled, with the swiftness thought is often capable of, the varied events of the day. Almost at once, he perceived that the boat, no longer drifting, was moving swiftly as though in tow.

Clarence sat up. There was a splashing of the water quite near the boat. He rubbed his eyes and peered into the gathering darkness. A brown hand, near the prow, was clasped to the gunwale. Then Clarence standing up looked again. From the hand to the arm moved his eyes; from the arm to the head. Beside the boat and swimming vigorously was a man, whom, despite the shadows of the evening, Clarence recognized as young and swarthy. They were rapidly nearing shore.

“Say!” cried Clarence. “Look here, will you? Who are you?”

The swimmer on hearing the sound of the boy’s voice suspended his swimming, turned his head, and seeing standing in what he had supposed to be an empty boat, a young cherub arrayed in a scanty suit of blue, released his hold and disappeared under the water as though he had been seized with cramp.

The boat freed of his hand tilted very suddenly in the other direction, with the result that the erect cherub lost his balance so suddenly that he was thrown headlong into the waters on the other side.

Simultaneously with Clarence’s artless and unpremeditated dive, the strange swimmer came to the surface. He had thought, as our young adventurer subsequently learned, that the figure in the boat was a ghost. But ghosts do not tumble off boats into the water; neither do ghosts, when they come to the surface, blow and sputter and cough and strike out vigorously with an overhand stroke, which things the supposed ghost was now plainly doing. The stranger, therefore, taking heart of grace, laid the hand of proprietorship upon the boat once more. Clarence from the other side went through the same operation.

“What did you spill me for?” he gasped.

“I didn’t know anyone was in the boat,” returned the stranger with a slightly foreign accent. “When you stood up and spoke, I was plumb scared.”

“I really think I’m rather harmless,” remarked the boy, blithely. “Never yet, save in the way of kindness, did I lay hand on anybody – well hardly anybody. Where are we anyhow?”

“We’re on the Mississippi River,” returned the other guardedly.

“Oh, thank you ever so much. I really thought we were breasting the billows of the Atlantic.”

Meanwhile, they had drawn within a few feet of the shore, on which Clarence now cast his eyes. On a sloping beach in a grove surrounded by cottonwoods blazed a ruddy fire. Standing about it but with their eyes and attention fixed upon the two swimmers was a group consisting of a man a little beyond middle age, a woman, apparently his wife, a younger woman, a boy a trifle older and larger than Clarence, a girl of twelve, and five or six little children. In the camp-fire’s light Clarence perceived that they were, taking them all in all, swarthy, black-haired, clad like civilized people, and yet in that indescribable wild way of which gypsies possess the secret.

“Come on,” said the man, as the boat touched the shore.

“Excuse me,” said Clarence politely, “but I’m not dressed to meet visitors. The water is fine anyway; and it’s not near so dangerous as it’s cracked up to be. Can’t you get a fellow at least a pair of trousers?”

“You’ll stay here, will you?”

“I certainly will,” answered the youth, turning on his back and floating. “I’ve had enough of being out on the Mississippi to last me for several weeks at the very least. Go on, there’s a good fellow, – and get me something to put on.”

With a not ill-natured grunt of assent, the man walked up the sloping bank. As he passed the watchful group he uttered a few words; whereupon the larger gypsy boy came down to the shore and fixed a watchful eye upon the bather, while the others broke up and gave themselves to various occupations. Clarence’s rescuer went on beyond the fire, where two tents lay pitched beside a closed wagon – a prairie schooner on a small scale. After some search in which the young woman assisted him, he issued from the larger tent with a pair of frayed khaki trousers and an old calico shirt.

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