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 Chantico or else carry them alone. So, you see, we are fairly started toward getting back to civilization and our friends again. The suspense all around will soon be over."

"We've been through a good deal together, haven't we? And in such a little while."

"We certainly have," said Touchtone, half seriously, half smiling.

Gerald slept. Philip added a few lines to his letters, and, now that their situation was so happily determined, his anxiety for their being dispatched came upon him with double force. Not an hour longer must needlessly intervene.

It was impossible for him to guess what conclusion Mr. Marcy and Gerald's father could have or could not have arrived at by this. According to Probasco's account there had been plenty in all the newspapers about the steamer—"Folks had done nothing else but read an' talk about it"—although Obed's "plaguey turn o' the wust sort o' rheumatism" had kept himself, his wife, and their Chantico relatives in too much excitement for reading news, to say nothing of the funeral at the house. In his last writing Philip told Mr. Marcy and Mr. Saxton that within as few hours as possible for