The photograph was of a man past fifty, with a good head, large, wide-open eyes, and a broad nose that might mean either stupidity or a sense of humour, according as to how the nostrils moved in life. Very little else could be said of the face, for mustache and beard covered it closely, running up before the ears to meet a curly mop of hair that roofed the head. It was an attractive face at first glance, and the low, turned-over collar, flowing tie that was barely hinted at beneath the beard, and loose sack-coat carried out the suggestion of strength, that was continued to where a pair of powerful hands, whose fingers rested together easily tip to tip, completed the picture. Picture and letter had arrived three days before, and yet the answer to the latter lay in process of construction upon the flap of the old-fashioned bookcase in the window corner. Perhaps the cause for the delay was more in the fact that both picture and letter, though relating to the First Cause, had not come directly from him, but from his sister. She had been a school friend of Miss Keith’s, who occasionally came to visit her and who was now living in Boston, having become the third wife of some one connected in a humble capacity with a free library in the city where the State-house dome seeks to rival Minerva’s helmet, and whose streets ever coil in and out as if in classic emulation of Medusa’s locks. Taking the letter from under the clock, Miss Keith went to the window and re-read it for the twentieth time. “October 10, 19—. “MY DEAR FRIEND: “It is only during the past year, since I have been living within reach and under the privilege and influence of all that is inspiring to one of my aspirations, that I have realized how lonely your life must be upon that farm, where your only intimate associates are animals, feathered and otherwise, and evening, instead of becoming as it is with me the period of self-culture in the society of a loyal male companion, is too often a period of premature somnolence and apathy. “Until now I have seen no method of escape to offer you, and so have held my peace. Two weeks ago, however, fortune smiled through a letter from my brother, James White, out in Wisconsin. You must remember James—the handsome man with curly hair who waited on Jane Tilley when we were at Mt. Holyoke, until she jilted him for William Parsons. He got over it nobly, though, and brought us paper flower bouquets the day we graduated. Mine was of red and white roses, and yours was all white. Surely you will remember—he said you looked ‘quite smart enough for a bride.’ “Well, you _were_ pretty in those days, Keith, with your white skin and light brown hair, before you took on freckles; but, after all, dark complexions like mine wear the best.