"Just a-thinking," returned the old man, as he put his hand on the younger man's shoulder, "what a fine poet you spoiled in your life, just to get the chance to go to jail. But the Lord knows His business, I suppose!" he added with a twinkle in his eye, "and if He thinks a poet more or less in jail would help more than one out--it is all for the best, John, all for the best. But, my boy," he cried earnestly, "if you'll be going to jail, don't whine, lad. Go to jail like a gentleman, John Barclay, go to jail like a gentleman, and serve your Lord there like a man." "Damn cheerful you are, Watts," returned Barclay. "What a lot of Job's comforters you fellows have been this morning." He went on half bitterly and half jokingly: "Beginning with the general, continuing with your travelling salesman friend, and following up with Gabe, who wants me to get off the board of directors of his bank for the moral effect of it, and coming on down to you who bid me Godspeed to jail--I have had a--a--a rather gorgeous morning." The door-bell tinkled, and a woman's voice called, "Father, father!" "Yes, Molly," the harness maker answered; "he'll be here pretty soon. He said for you to wait." "Come in, for heaven's sake, Molly," cried Barclay, "come back here and cheer me up." "Oh, all right--it's you, John? What are you doing back here? I'm so glad to find you. I've just got the dearest letter from Jane. We won't talk business or anything--you know how I feel, and how sorry I am--so just let's read Jane's letter; it has something in it to cheer you. She said she was going to write it to you the next day--but I'll read it to you." And so Mrs. Brownwell took from her pocketbook the crumpled letter and unfolded it. "It's so like Jane--just good hard sense clear through." She turned the pages hastily, and finally the fluttering of the sheets stopped. "Oh, yes," she said, "here's the place--the rest she's told you. Let me see--Oh: 'And, Molly, what do you think?--there's a duke after Jeanette--a miserable, little, dried-up, burned-out, poverty-stricken Italian duke. And oh, how much good it did us both to cut him, and let him know how ill-bred we considered him, how altogether beneath any wholesome honest girl we thought such a fellow.' And now, John, isn't this like Jane?" interposed Mrs. Brownwell. "Listen; she says, 'Molly, do you know, I am so happy about Jeanette and Neal. We run such an awful risk with this money--such a horrible risk of unhappiness and misery for the poor child--heaven knows she would be so much happier without it. And to think, dear, that she has found the one in the world for her, in the sweet simple way that a girl should always find him, and that the money--the menacing thing that hangs like a shadow over her--cannot by any possibility spoil her life! It makes me happy all the day, and I go singing through life with joy at the thought that the money won't hurt Jennie--that it can't take from her the joy that comes from