I resumed my seat and my musing. To account for the absence of
Pleyel became once more the scope of my conjectures. How many
incidents might occur to raise an insuperable impediment in his
way! When I was a child, a scheme of pleasure, in which he and his
sister were parties, had been in like manner frustrated by his
absence; but his absence, in that instance, had been occasioned by
his falling from a boat into the river, in consequence of which he
had run the most imminent hazard of being drowned. Here was a
second disappointment endured by the same persons, and produced by
his failure. Might it not originate in the same cause? Had he not
designed to cross the river that morning to make some necessary
purchases in New Jersey? He had preconcerted to return to his own
house to dinner but perhaps some disaster had befallen him.
Experience had taught me the insecurity of a canoe, and that was
the only kind of boat which Pleyel used; I was, likewise, actuated
by an hereditary dread of water. These circumstances combined to
bestow considerable plausibility on this conjecture; but the
consternation with which I began to be seized was allayed by
reflecting that, if this disaster had happened, my brother would
have received the speediest information of it.
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