This was a sadder duty. There were letters extending over more than a half century. The Squire received so few that he seemed never to have burnt one. The oldest--fifty years old--were love-letters, of the time when people wrote love-letters beginning “Honoured Miss,” and “Dear and respected Sir,” overlaying the plain heart-truth with no sentimentalisms of the pen. The signatures, “Catherine Grey,” and “Nathanael Harper,” in round, formal, girl and boy hand, told how young they were when this correspondence began;--young still, when its sudden ceasing showed that courtship had become marriage. From that time, for nearly twenty years, there was scarcely a letter signed Catharine Harper. “This looks,” said Agatha, who unconsciously to both had come to stand by her husband and share in his task--“this looks as if they were so rarely parted that they had no need for letter-writing.” “It was so: I believe my father and mother lived very happily together.” “I should like to read these letters all through, if I might? They are the only love-letters I ever saw.” “Are they, indeed?” The sharp questioning look startled Agatha. She remembered that first letter of Nathanael's--perhaps he was vexed that she had apparently forgotten it--the letter which had been such a solemn epoch in her young life. She coloured vividly and painfully. “I mean--that is”-- Her husband looked another way. “You shall have these letters if you so much desire it.” “Thank you. I would like to keep something of your mother's. And she was indeed so happy in her marriage?” “Very happy, Anne Valery says. My father's was not a perfect temper, but she understood him thoroughly, and he trusted her. He had need; he knew--what is a rare thing in marriage now-a-days--that he had been his wife's first love.” Agatha made no reply, and the conversation dropped. Next to Mrs. Harper's letters, and preserved with almost equal care, was another packet. It began with a child's scrawl--double-lined, upright and stiff: “My dear Father, “Uncle Brian has ruled me this paper, and ruled Anne another. We are all very merry at Weymouth. We don't want to come home, except to see”--(here a word, apparently “_ponies_” had been carefully altered, by a more delicate hand, into something like “_Papa_”)--“Anne's love, and everybody's, from your dutiful son, “Frederick.” “'_Frederick?_'--I thought the letter was yours.” “No, if he had kept any it was sure to be my brothers. Frederick must have them back.” “Let me tie them up,” said Agatha stretching out her hand. “No--no--are they so very precious? Why do you want to touch them?” said he, sharply, drawing them out of her reach. “Only that I might help you.” Mr. Harper regarded her a moment, and then put back the letters into her lap. “Forgive me, I did not mean to be cross with you. But this task confuses me.”