A Second Story of Two Brothers - Page 2

invoked the aid
of the authorities all over the province; the loss of the child was
advertised and a large reward offered for his recovery and agents were
employed to look for him. In this search, which continued for years,
Mr. Gilmour spent a large part of his fortune, and eventually it had to
be dropped; and of all the family Mrs. Gilmour alone still believed
that her lost son was living, and still dreamed and hoped that she
would see him again before her life ended.

One day the Gilmours entertained a traveller, a native gentleman, who,
as the custom was in my time on those great vacant plains where houses
were far apart, had ridden up to the gate at noon and asked for
hospitality. He was a man of education, a great traveller in the land,
and at table entertained them with an account of some of the strange
out-of-the-world places he had visited.

Presently one of the sons of the house, a tall slim good-looking young
man of about thirty, came in, and saluting the stranger took his seat
at the table. Their guest started and seemed to be astonished at the
sight of him, and after the conversation was resumed he continued from
time to time to look with a puzzled questioning air at the young man.
Mrs. Gilmour had observed this in him and, with the thought of her lost
son ever in her mind, she became more and more agitated until, unable
longer to contain her excitement, she burst out: "O, Señor, why do you
look at my son in that way?--tell me if by chance you have not met
someone in your wanderings that was like him."

Yes, he replied, he had met someone so like the young man before him
that it had almost produced the illusion of his being the same person;
that was why he had looked so searchingly at him.

Then in reply to their eager questions he told them that it was an old
incident, that he had never spoken a word to the young man he had seen,
and that he had only seen him once for a few minutes. The reason of his
remembering him so well was that he had been struck by his appearance,
so strangely incongruous in the circumstances, and that had made him
look very sharply at him. Over two years had passed since, but it was
still distinct in his memory. He had come to a small frontier
settlement, a military outpost, on the extreme north-eastern border of
the Republic, and had seen the garrison turn out for exercise from the
fort. It was composed of the class of men one usually saw in these
border forts, men of the lowest type, miztiros and mulattos most of
them, criminals from the gaols condemned to serve in the frontier army
for their crimes. And in the midst of the low-browed, swarthy-faced,
ruffianly crew appeared the tall distinguished-looking young man with a
white skin, blue