“MY DEAR ANNIE,--I thought you were never going to keep your promise and write to me after all, and you haven’t told me much now you do write to me. For I want to know ever so much more than you say. You need not be afraid of anybody seeing your letter. For when I got it at Moss’ I took it straight back and down to the willow-pond. I read it, and fastened it under the lining of my hunting-cap. So its all rigt. There was a shindy when they new you were gone. George went to your aunt and first he scolded mother and Lil and said they ought to be ashamed of themselves and your aunt dident know where you were. And Harry you should have seen him go on. You would have thought he was a good husbend and you a bad wife if you heard him. He had been to London and sold his hunting-wach and bougt you a dimand ring which I think you would have liked but of course you were write to go away and I said so and he punched my head and I punched him back. So he dident get much good by his interferring with me. They thought I new where you were and I said if they thought I did they migt just try to make me say thats all. So they lissened to reason and Harry drinks more than ever he is as bad as Wilfred evry bit. And he is allways hanging about Green’s forge now. Susan Greens come back a pretty thing for a man married like he is now. I only tell you this becos I think you ought to know being his wife which is a great pity. They none of them know you will never come back except Lil who says you wont and that makes George very angry and one evening made Harry cry like a great baby insted of trying to find you. The place is beesly now you are gone and if I wasent going to uncle Geralds in Ireland I thing I should have to come and dig you out. “Your afecsionate brother-in-law, “WILLIAM FITZPATRICK BRAITHWAITE. “P.S.--If you could see the black and white rabit now I think you would laugh for his legs are alright but so stiff that he hops bout as if he was made of wood. Jo bit the pups tail off a fortnight ago.” This letter made Annie thoughtful. The Rubicon was passed now; she could not have gone back, even had she wished to do so, with what they would have considered the contamination of the stage upon her. But what William said about Harry caused her to ask herself for the first time whether she had not done him wrong, whether she ought not still to have stayed and continued coldly to fulfill her wifely duty to the letter, whether there had not been more selfishness than self-sacrifice in giving him back his liberty. She felt not one whit more of affection for the drunken lad who had become the ardent admirer of the blacksmith’s daughter, but this last fact was too significant not to awaken her self-reproach. She felt at the bottom of her heart an unacknowledged gladness that it was no longer in her power to go back, and in the cares of her present life she soon forgot again those of her past.