Produced by Charles Aldarondo, Charles Franks and the
Online Distributed Proofreading Team.
1907
In the month of June, 1872, Mr. Edward Lynde, the assistant cashier andbookkeeper of the Nautilus Bank at Rivermouth, found himself in aposition to execute a plan which he had long meditated in secret.
A statement like this at the present time, when integrity in a place oftrust has become almost an anomaly, immediately suggests a defalcation;but Mr. Lynde's plan involved nothing more criminal than a horsebackexcursion through the northern part of the State of New Hampshire. Aleave of absence of three weeks, which had been accorded him inrecognition of several years' conscientious service, offered youngLynde the opportunity he had desired. These three weeks, as alreadyhinted, fell in the month of June, when Nature in New Hampshire is inher most ravishing toilet; she has put away her winter ermine, whichsometimes serves her quite into spring; she has thrown a green mantleover her brown shoulders, and is not above the coquetry of wearing agreat variety of wild flowers on her bosom. With her sassafras and hersweet-brier she is in her best mood, as a woman in a fresh and becomingcostume is apt to be, and almost any one might mistake her laugh forthe music of falling water, and the agreeable rustle of her garmentsfor the wind blowing through the pine forests.
As Edward Lynde rode out of Rivermouth one morning, an hour or twobefore anybody worth mention was moving, he was very well contentedwith this world, though he had his grievances, too, if he had chosen tothink of them.
Masses of dark cloud still crowded the zenith, but along the easternhorizon, against the increasing blue, lay a city of golden spires andmosques and minarets—an Oriental city, indeed, such as is inhabited bypoets and dreamers and other speculative persons fond of investingtheir small capital in such unreal estate. Young Lynde, in spite of hisprosaic profession of bookkeeper, had an opulent though as yet unworkedvein of romance running through his composition, and he said to himselfas he gave a slight twitch to the reins, "I'll put up there to-night atthe sign of the Golden Fleece, or may be I'll quarter myself on one ofthose rich old merchants who used to do business with the bank in thecolonial days." Before he had finished speaking the city was destroyedby a general conflagration; the round red sun rose slowly above thepearl-gray ruins, and it was morning.
In his three years' residence at Rivermouth, Edward Lynde had neverchanced to see the town at so early an hour. Th