“Why didn’t the other manage to make her think he didn’t?”

“Well, sir, he did manage it,” returned the professor, compressing his white-bearded lips, and lowering his eyebrows.  “He told the father some story of having met relations of his in Spain; told him the climate would cure him of all his ailments, without need of a physician, and persuaded him to make the journey at last.  The doctor heard of it first by a note written by his intended father-in-law.  It contained no request nor encouragement to accompany them—­of course, the daughter was to go too; her father wouldn’t separate from her.  But the doctor’s friend had not trusted only to that:  he knew that the other’s resolution never to leave his country was not likely to be broken, so he was quite secure.”

“And the doctor knew nothing of how his friend was cheating him?”

“No, not then.  Far from it; he showed him the letter, and asked him for advice.  He never dreamed of doubting his constancy, either to himself or to the girl he was engaged to marry.  His friend counseled him to write a letter to her he meant to make his wife, explaining his position, and asking her not to leave him.  He would carry it to her, and advocate it himself, he said, and do all in his power to influence the father.  The young doctor didn’t altogether relish this course, nevertheless he trusted in his friend, wrote the letter, and gave it into his hands.

“He never saw his friend after that day.  The next morning came an answer from the young lady—­a cruel and cold rejection of him—­repudiation of his love, and a doubt of his honor.  It bewildered him, and, for a time, crushed him.  Long afterward, he found out that she had never seen the letter he wrote, but a very different one, of his friend’s concoction.

“Very soon afterward, they were gone—­all three! and, before a year was passed, he heard that his friend and the daughter were married, and the father died of a fever contracted in Spain.

“He tried to go on as usual for several months, but it was no use.  At last, he left his practice, and all his connections, and wandered over the United States—­through towns and wildernesses.  He rode across the plains on a mustang; clambered through the gorges of the Rocky Mountains; saw the tide come in through the Golden Gate at San Francisco.  He pushed north as far as Canada, and thence came down the Mississippi to New Orleans.  From there he crossed to the Pacific coast again, and lived to find himself a second time in San Francisco.  He didn’t stay there long, but struck overland, slanting southward, and, in four or five months, appeared at Charleston, South Carolina.  So he worked up the Atlantic coast to New York.  By the time he got there, he was older and wiser, and strengthened, body and mind, by a rough experience.  He resolved to travel no more; but, as yet, it was not in his power to feel happy.