He had done pretty well with the father:  the next thing was to gain over the nurse.  Old Sophy was as cunning as a red fox or a gray woodchuck.  She had nothing in the world to do but to watch Elsie; she had nothing to care for but this girl and her father.  She had never liked Dick too well; for he used to make faces at her and tease her when he was a boy, and now he was a man there was something about him—­she could not tell what—­that made her suspicious of him.  It was no small matter to get her over to his side.

The jet-black Africans know that gold never looks so well as on the foil of their dark skins.  Dick found in his trunk a string of gold beads, such as are manufactured in some of our cities, which he had brought from the gold region of Chili,—­so he said,—­for the express purpose of giving them to old Sophy.  These Africans, too, have a perfect passion for gay-colored clothing; being condemned by Nature, as it were, to a perpetual mourning-suit, they love to enliven it with all sorts of variegated stuffs of sprightly patterns, aflame with red and yellow.  The considerate young man had remembered this, too, and brought home for Sophy some handkerchiefs of rainbow hues, which had been strangely overlooked till now, at the bottom of one of his trunks.  Old Sophy took his gifts, but kept her black eyes open and watched every movement of the young people all the more closely.  It was through her that the father had always known most of the actions and tendencies of his daughter.

In the mean time the strange adventure on The Mountain had brought the young master into new relations with Elsie.  She had led him out of, danger; perhaps saved him from death by the strange power she exerted.  He was grateful, and yet shuddered at the recollection of the whole scene.  In his dreams he was pursued by the glare of cold glittering eyes, whether they were in the head of a woman or of a reptile he could not always tell, the images had so run together.  But he could not help seeing that the eyes of the young girl had been often, very often, turned upon him when he had been looking away, and fell as his own glance met them.  Helen Darley told him very plainly that this girl was thinking about him more than about her book.  Dick Venner found she was getting more constant in her attendance at school.  He learned, on inquiry, that there was a new master, a handsome young man.  The handsome young man would not have liked the look that, came over Dick’s face when he heard this fact mentioned.

In short, everything was getting tangled up together, and there would be no chance of disentangling the threads in this chapter.

CHAPTER XV.

Physiological.