On his departure, Mr Langridge hastily entered the apartment in which, he had left the messengers with their prisoner.
"We're just waiting marching orders, Mr Langridge," said the latter, on his entering, and making an attempt at playfulness, with which his spirit but ill accorded. "My friends here are getting tired of their charge, and anxious to be relieved of him."
"Are they so, Mr Reid?" replied Mr Langridge, smiling.
"Why, then, we had best relieve them at once." Then turning to the principal officer--"Quit your prisoner, Maxwell--the debt is settled. Mr Reid, you are at liberty."
The blood rushed to poor Reid's face, and then withdrew, leaving it as pale as death, and yet he could express no part of the feelings which caused these violent alternations. At length--
"Mr Langridge," he said, "what is the meaning of this? How do I come to be liberated?"
"By the simplest and most effectual of all processes, Mr Reid," replied the worthy writer, smiling; "by the payment of the debt."
"But _I_ have not paid the debt, Mr Langridge. I _could_ not pay the debt."
"No; but somebody else might. The short and the long of it is, Mr Reid, that a _friend_ has come forward, and settled the claim on which diligence was raised against you. The bill, with interest and all expenses, _is_ paid, and you are again a free man."
Again overwhelmed by his feelings, which were a thousand times more eloquently expressed by a flood of silent tears than they could have been by the most carefully rounded periods, it was some time before the young man could pursue the conversation, or ask for the further information which he yet intensely longed to possess. On recovering from the burst of emotion which had, for the moment, deprived him of the power of utterance--
"And _who_, pray, Mr Langridge, is this friend--this friend indeed?"
"Why, I do not know exactly whether I am at liberty to tell you, Mr Reid," replied Mr Langridge. "The friend you allude to declined transacting this matter personally with you, which seems to imply that he did not care that you should know who he was; yet, as he certainly did not expressly forbid me to disclose him, and as I think it but right that you should know to whom you are indebted, I will venture to tell you. Had you some conversation, at an early hour this morning, with an old stone-breaker, on the highway side, about three or four miles from town?"