“Truly glad am I, my dear Richard, to see that you once more recognize me as your friend. For such I have ever been, as many others are, and your taking up a different impression was not owing to me, or to their conduct, but to your own over sensitiveness. However, let us remember only the brightest spots in the past, and ‘look forward with hopes for the morrow.’ But I am saying nothing of that which most interests you. The bare suspicion is horrible; it cannot be true;—there could have been no motive whatever for his emigrating—but as from the tone of your letter I should judge that you had heard nothing from this place since you left, I will state to you such changes as have occurred. Your departure was unexpected to many, and I mean not to compliment you, when I say that no one could have left, whose absence would have been more deeply regretted by his friends. I did not see her for several weeks after your departure, and then her countenance bore delicate traces of grief; they would not have been perceptible to a stranger, but to me, who had known her long, they were plainly legible. She was calm, and I ventured to inquire if she had heard from you; her eyes filled with tears, she was silent, and after a moment changed the conversation. Her father has been very much censured for his opposition by the few to whom the circumstances are known. “I think about six months elapsed, when he began to speculate largely, and soon after that time removed with his family to Baltimore, that he might have a wider theatre for action; and I suppose you will pardon the rhapsody, when I say that with his removal, went the brightest star which ever shed its influence over our goodly town. But, by the by, as you are a lover that is not pretty enough. As a friend of mine would say, every thing was quite opaque when she left us,—or, as I with more gallantry would say, for we have still many bright constellations of beauty, her departure was like the gloom which follows the bursting of the rocket. “Now let me say, I think I can remove your fears, for these pretty things are called up by my having seen her some three months since in Baltimore. I was at her house, she was cheerful, and not a member of her family spoke of moving; so, my dear fellow, all your alarm was unnecessary farther than sympathy with a fellow creature had its claims. Come, quit hunting, and attend to your profession, and you may yet realize your early hopes. We lay in some of our goods in Baltimore, and I shall reserve to myself the pleasure of telling her in person, the wild fancy which entered your brain; it will serve to amuse, and yet she cannot fail deeply to appreciate your conduct.