“How soundly he sleeps!” whispered the old gentleman.  “From what a depth he draws that easy breath!  Such sleep as that, brought on without an opiate, would be worth more to me than half my income, for it would suppose health and an untroubled mind.”

“And youth besides,” said the lady.  “Healthy and quiet age does not sleep thus.  Our slumber is no more like his than our wakefulness.”

The longer they looked, the more did this elderly couple feel interested in the unknown youth to whom the wayside and the maple shade were as a secret chamber with the rich gloom of damask curtains brooding over him.  Perceiving that a stray sunbeam glimmered down upon his face, the lady contrived to twist a branch aside so as to intercept it, and, having done this little act of kindness, she began to feel like a mother to him.

“Providence seems to have laid him here,” whispered she to her husband, “and to have brought us hither to find him, after our disappointment in our cousin’s son.  Methinks I can see a likeness to our departed Henry.  Shall we waken him?”

“To what purpose?” said the merchant, hesitating.  “We know nothing of the youth’s character.”

“That open countenance!” replied his wife, in the same hushed voice, yet earnestly.  “This innocent sleep!”

While these whispers were passing, the sleeper’s heart did not throb, nor his breath become agitated, nor his features betray the least token of interest.  Yet Fortune was bending over him, just ready to let fall a burden of gold.  The old merchant had lost his only son, and had no heir to his wealth except a distant relative with whose conduct he was dissatisfied.  In such cases people sometimes do stranger things than to act the magician and awaken a young man to splendor who fell asleep in poverty.

“Shall we not waken him?” repeated the lady, persuasively.

“The coach is ready, sir,” said the servant, behind.

The old couple started, reddened and hurried away, mutually wondering that they should ever have dreamed of doing anything so very ridiculous.  The merchant threw himself back in the carriage and occupied his mind with the plan of a magnificent asylum for unfortunate men of business.  Meanwhile, David Swan enjoyed his nap.

The carriage could not have gone above a mile or two when a pretty young girl came along with a tripping pace which showed precisely how her little heart was dancing in her bosom.  Perhaps it was this merry kind of motion that caused—­is there any harm in saying it?—­her garter to slip its knot.  Conscious that the silken girth—­if silk it were—­was relaxing its hold, she turned aside into the shelter of the maple trees, and there found a young man asleep by the spring.  Blushing as red as any rose that she should have intruded into a gentleman’s bedchamber, and for such a purpose too, she was about to make her escape on tiptoe.  But there was peril near the sleeper.