Bad Hugh | Page 4

its leaves was a curl of golden hair. It was
faded now, and its luster was almost gone, but as often as he looked
upon it, it brought to mind the bright head it once adorned, and the
fearful hour when he became its owner. That tress and the Bible which
inclosed it had made Hugh Worthington a better man. He did not often
read the Bible, it is true, and his acquaintances were frequently startled
with opinions which had so pained the little girl on board the _St.
Helena_, but this was merely on the surface, for far below the rough
exterior there was a world of goodness, a mine of gems, kept bright by
memories of the angel child which flitted for so brief a span across his
pathway and then was lost forever. He had tried so hard to save
her--had clasped her so fondly to his bosom when with extended arms
she came to him for aid. He could save her, he said--he could swim to
the shore with perfect ease and so without a moment's hesitation she
had leaped with him into the surging waves, and that was about the last
he could remember, save that he clutched frantically at the long, golden
hair streaming above the water, retaining in his firm grasp the lock
which no one at Spring Bank had ever seen, for this one romance of
Hugh's seemingly unromantic life was a secret with himself. No one
save his uncle had witnessed his emotions when told that she was dead;
no one else had seen his bitter tears or heard the vehement exclamation:
"You've tried to teach me there was no hereafter, no heaven for such as
she, but I know better now, and I am glad there is, for she is safe
forever."
These were not mere idle words, and the belief then expressed became
with Hugh Worthington a firm, fixed principle, which his skeptical
uncle tried in vain to eradicate. "There was a heaven, and she was
there," comprised nearly the whole of Hugh's religious creed, if we
except a vague, misty hope, that he, too, would some day find her, how

or by what means he never seriously inquired; only this he knew, it
would be through her influence, which even now followed him
everywhere, producing its good effects. It had checked him many and
many a time when his fierce temper was in the ascendant, forcing back
the harsh words he would otherwise have spoken, and making him as
gentle as a child; and when the temptations to which young men of his
age are exposed were spread out alluringly before him, a single thought
of her was sufficient to lead him from the forbidden ground.
Only once had he fallen, and that two years before, when, as if some
demon had possessed him, he shook off all remembrances of the past,
and yielding to the baleful fascinations of one who seemed to sway him
at will, plunged into a tide of dissipation, and lent himself at last to an
act which had since embittered every waking hour. As if all the events
of his life were crowding upon his memory this night, he thought of
two years ago, and the scene which transpired in the suburbs of New
York, whither immediately after his uncle's death he had gone upon a
matter of important business. In the gleaming fire before him there was
now another face than hers, an older, a different, though not less
beautiful face, and Hugh shuddered as he thought how it must have
changed ere this--thought of the anguish which stole into the dark,
brown eyes when first the young girl learned how cruelly she had been
betrayed. Why hadn't he saved her? What had she done to him that he
should treat her so, and where was she now? Possibly she was dead. He
almost hoped she was, for if she were, the two were then together, his
golden-haired and brown, for thus he designated the two.
Larger and fuller grew the veins upon his forehead, as memory kept
thus faithfully at work, and so absorbed was Hugh in his reverie that
until twice repeated he did not hear his mother's anxious inquiry:
"What is that noise? It sounds like some one in distress."
Hugh started at last, and, after listening for a moment he, too, caught
the sound which had so alarmed his mother, and made 'Lina stop her
reading. A moaning cry, as if for help, mingled with an infant's wail,
now here, now there it seemed to be, just as the fierce north wind
shifted its course and drove first at the uncurtained window of the

sitting-room, and then at the ponderous doors of the gloomy hall.
"It is some one in