Lilian ill! I hastened up-stairs as fast as my feet would carry me. It was the room in which her father had died, and it had been shut up ever since. I had advised her to have it opened and the furniture changed, in order to destroy painful associations; and she had at length yielded to my persuasions. But we decided that she and I were first to give a last look through the cabinet before it was removed, she having resolved to keep that one memento of her father in her own room. She had gone on, and I was only waiting to give some instructions to the housekeeper before following her. I found her standing near the cabinet, which was open, with her eyes fixed upon a paper she held in her hand, and looking as though she had been suddenly turned to stone. Quietly and quickly closing the door, and turning the key in the lock, I went towards her. 'What is it, Lilian?' Without a word, she put the paper into my hands, then knelt down before her father's chair, burying her face in her hands. I knelt down beside her, and passing my arm round her waist, turned my eyes upon the paper. I was in a measure prepared for some kind of calamity. But this! I read the lines slowly through a second time: I, JACOB FARRAR, take LUCY REED as my lawful wife, on this twelfth day of January 1839, at this place, Dunkeld, Perthshire, in the presence of the undersigned witnesses. DONALD GREY, _Shepherd_ PETER FORBES, _Hostler_. The date I knew to be three years previous to Mr Farrar's marriage with Lilian's mother; and with that knowledge, something else broke upon me. I myself had left that paper in the recess of the cabinet from which I had taken the letters and little packet. I could even recollect having had a moment's hesitation as to whether I should take it or not, when I lifted the papers which lay upon it; but it looked so insignificant, merely like a piece of blank paper folded together, that I let it remain. From the moment my eyes fell upon its contents I recognised that it was of vital importance to Lilian. Not a moment's doubt as to its genuineness entered my head. Mr Farrar's anxiety to have those papers destroyed was too vividly impressed upon my mind. But my fear of what that paper might import, and my love for Lilian notwithstanding, I strongly resented his having endeavoured to make me an instrument to destroy it. 'Help me, Mary!' Imagining that she was speaking in grief, instead of joy, I offered up a mental prayer for strength to help her in the right way, then drew her head on to my shoulder. 'I will, Lilian.' 'You think it is true?' she whispered, clinging to me.