The Weekly Herald

The Professor's Substitute.

Professor Bond's brows were knit in honest perplexity, and he brushed up his shaggy gray hair with his slender white hand, while his keen but kindly eyes were fixed upon a sweet faced girl standing modestly before him.

"You are such a child!" he said, presently.

"I am fifteen, Herr Professor."

"A great age! and these are all big boys, you see."

"But I do not have to do more than teach them, and I can do that because—" and here her low, sweet voice broke, and the sensitive lips quivered piteously-"my father was training me for a teacher."

"H'm! Yes!''

"If you will only let me try, Herr Professor, until my father is stronger. The doctor says a few weeks of entire rest is all he needs. but if his salary is stopped how are we to live?"

Professor Bond's brows knit again. It was a dilemma out of which he saw no way. Professor Schorn was his German teacher, and three distinct classes of pupils were expecting to recite to him that very day. It was impossible to find another competent teacher for some days, and Professor Schorn had had a stroke of paralysis. In this emergency the professor's only child, Doretta, had offered her services.

Professor Bond was puzzled about the expediency of substituting for a gruff, gray-headed German of sixty or there-abouts, a slender girl of fifteen. with a voice like a flute, and a smile like a baby. Yet there was resolution too in the blue eyes and on the pretty lips, while the low, broad brow promised intellect.

"Well-" he said, after a long pause. "you may try. I am within call if you need me."

And Doretta, with a long, quivering sigh, followed him to a class room where about twenty boys awaited the arrival of the German professor. After Professor Bond left her, she said. with a gentle pathos:

"My poor father lies helpless at home. and we shall starve if I cannot do his work here. You know him and love him, and I am sure you will not make it too hard for me."

All the boy chivalry wakened at this. and the class as a whole was exemplary. There were some imperfect lessons. but little inattention, and the new teacher excused nothing, let no mistake pass undiscovered, Her own knowledge of English was better than her father's. and, greatly to his amazement, Professor Bond found the classes progressing favorably

The second school term of the year made some changes, and one morning Doretta, lifting her soft blue eyes to her class, found a new boy facing her. He had large, dark eyes, a handsome face, a tall. strong figure, and rather awed her because he was older than any of her class. She found his name upon her book-Sidney Rynear, and her pretty face clouded as she read it, for there were vague but unpleasant memories associated with the name of Rynear in her mind.

But Sidney Rynear was the very pink of courtesy. Just from New York, his clothing was in the latest style, and at nineteen foppishness is not so offensive as at twenty-nine. Only a boy and a girl liking was the result of the meeting.

The romance of a first love lasted all winter, and, as spring opened, Professor Schorn gained his strength until he could hobble about on crutches, and talk of resuming his interrupted duties. It was in April that little Doretta stayed at home to cook the soup, and her father went once more to the seminary to teach the boys German. She was restless, this pretty Doretta, that day. She told herself she missed the boys, but did not admit even to her own heart that if she could have retained one scholar she could well have spared the others.

Only one-hour had passed when a carriage drove swiftly to the door of the little cottage, and Doretta, hurrying out, saw three men carrying her father up the garden path, while following, with a frightened face, came Sidney Rynear and the doctor.

I went for the doctor as fast as I could," Sidney whispered, taking Doretta's little, cold hand in his warm clasp, "and we met the carriage at the gate. I am no end of sorry, Retta, but I-it fact-he-it was seeing me-I am afraid—"

"What?" she said.

"Why, you see, he was all right, teaching the class, when he saw me suddenly, and turned as white as a ghost! He asked me my name, and, as soon as he heard it, dropped down like a dead man!'

All this was spoken hurriedly, and Doretta was too busy for hours to weigh the hasty words,

"A second stroke," the doctor said. and Doretta watched hungrily for one return of consciousness.

Towards midnight, the invalid moved slightly, and in a moment Doretta was bending over him, meeting the glance of his large haggard eyes fixed upon him, meeting the glance of his large haggard eyes fixed upon her face.

"Rynear!" her father said. in thick utterance. "He here-diamond studs— and you-rich-starving--curse him! I curse him!"

The passionate utterance of the last words exhausted him, and he lay panting, while Doretta tried to coax him to take a stimulant left by the doctor. But he moved his head from the spoon- muttering, "Rynear! Rynear! my ruin-my curse!" and again the distorted face warned Doretta of a third stroke. Before the day dawned she was fatherless.

It was not strange, with that death scene fresh in her mind, that she shrank from Sidney's well-meant effort at consolation; but as the weary days wore on this gave way before his kindly services. How could he have wronged her father, when he must have been a mere child, twelve years before, when the Schorns had left New York

Time, with its many changes, brought comfort to Doretta, who obtained a situation as governess in a private family. and went abroad with her pupil and her parents. Sidney Rynear left the country village to enter his father's counting house in New York. vowed eternal constancy to Doretta, and forgot her in six months.

Five years later. in a private room in one of the New York hotels, two gentlemen, one a middle aged lawyer, one a man still young and exceptionally handsome, were talking together.

"The whole matter rests with you,' the older man was saying. "I will give you the facts, but you understand I accepted them in confidence, and will never repeat them after to-night.'

"'I understand," said his companion. gravely.

"Your father left my office three weeks ago, in perfect health; one hour later I was summoned to his death bed. and found him suffering from fatal injuries from a building that had fallen as he was passing

"I know."

"He had made his will years ago. leaving you his heir, with the exception of a few legacies."

"I have seen the will."

"Ah, yes, Well. in his dying moments he desired to have a new will drawn, but finding death approach too fast he made his confession to me, and I swore to repeat it to you."

"Confession!" burst from the young man's lips, while his face grew white.

"I repeat his own words. Years ago. when he was in a manufacturing business in Harlem, your father employed a foreman named Schorn, a German- with but an imperfect knowledge of English, but with a genius for mechanics. This man had been for years studying out and perfecting a valuable discovery in the branch of manufacture your father carried on, and it was to test the value of his machine that he entered your father's house. Ignorant of the language, and the laws of this country, he confided his schemes to your father, who undertook to have his invention patented and introduced. This he did, only in so doing he substituted the name of Sidney Rynear for that of Herman Schorn, and obtained full possession and control of the patent, upon which he built an enormous fortune which you inherit.

"The German, Schorn, in vain tried to gain his rights; he was poor, an alien, a scholar, and he was crushed down and driven away by the superior wealth and influence of his employer. Your father saw his death in a paper some years ago, but his charge to you is to seek out his heirs, and divide with them the fortune out of which their father was defrauded. Now I have told you all. If you wish to treat this story as a death bed chimera, you may do so. I will not betray you. If you desire to obey your father's last request I will aid you materially, for I can tell you where to find Doretta Schorn."

"My father's last will is a sacred legacy," Sidney Rynear said, in a low, hoarse voice. "I will obey it strictly, but the secret-the confession?"

"Remains a secret."

One more revolution of time's ever-revolving wheel, and six months after this conversation, I ask my reader to look with me into a very pretty sitting-room in a house on the outskirts of Paris. It is a luxurious home, but the dress of a fair haired girl sitting near one of the open windows, is only a white cambric tastefully made, while her abundant fair hair is without ornament to its own glossy beauty.

She is lifting sky-blue eyes to the handsome face of a gentleman in deep mourning, who is talking to her earnestly. And this is what she says:

"You know all now ! You know why your father cursed mine upon his death-bed, and why I must make such restitution as lies in my power to his child I came to Paris only to do this, but since I have been here, Retta, I have learned a new lesson of life-the lesson of love, little Retta. I love you, my darling, I love you! Can you let the cruel past sleep, and be my wife?"

Very shyly she whispered :

"I have always loved you, Sidney. I think I gave you my heart on the first day when you came into my class at L-- Seminary. For I have never forgotten you, though I long ago gave up all hope of ever seeing you again."

So the world was none the wiser when Sidney Rynear settled half his large estate upon his fair young wife. and only the lawyer who drew the deeds knew they were payment of a long standing debt, and that for the second time pretty Doretta was Professor Schorn's substitute.