How his heart bounded at the words “I can give you comfort;” and, heaving a breath that was almost a sob, a cry of thankfulness went up to God from his heart for the light that was beginning to shine upon his darkened life. Miss Isabel Grafton, for that was the lady’s name, led the way toward a small villa, built in the Gothic style, near by. It was a charming little place, covered with vines and climbing roses, and surrounded by noble trees with here and there a patch of gay flowers adding brightness to the scene. She invited him to enter, and ushered him into a cool and shady parlor, when she excused herself for a few moments. She was not gone long, and when she returned she carried two or three large books in her hand. “These books,” she explained, laying them carefully upon the table, as if they were a precious treasure, “comprise my father’s diary, and, I think, never during his life did he omit the record of a single day. I have taken a sad pleasure,” she continued, with a starting tear, “in reading them since his death, and I also think that there is considerable here regarding the events of which you speak. Now, if you will please give me the date I will see if I can find it for you.” He told her, and then sat in painful suspense while she turned those pages penned by a hand long since palsied in death, and which might contain so much of hope for him. “Yes,” she said at last, “here is one entry—the first, I think, since it corresponds with the date you gave me;” and she passed him the book to let him read for himself. His emotion was so great that at first the words seemed blurred and indistinct, and it was a minute or two before his vision became clear enough to read. Then he read this: “August 11th, 18—. A strange thing occurred to-day. Thomas Wight, the sexton of St. John’s chapel, came to me in evident distress, and confessed a conspiracy in which he was concerned, or rather a wrong into which he had been tempted by the offer of gold, and which lay exceeding heavy on his heart. A young man had hired him to leave the chapel open after dark that evening, that he might come to be married secretly to a young and beautiful girl, and he told him, moreover, that he would bring his own clergyman with him to perform the ceremony. He paid the sexton a golden eagle to do him the service, which the poor fellow, conscience-smitten like Judas of old, came and delivered up to me for the poor. I resolved at once to investigate the affair, for it appeared to me as if a wrong of some kind was being perpetrated, wherein a young, trusting and perhaps motherless girl, like my own fair Isabel, was being deceived. The result proved even as I thought—a romance begun, a wrong beheaded.