"DEAR OLLY,--If it don't run a fowl uv yer lessings and the Maddam's willin' and the young laddies, Brother Gab's waitin' fer ye at Wingdam, so no more from your affeshtunate brother, GAB." Mr. Hamlin was in a quandary. It never had been part of his plan to let Olly know the importance of her journey. Mr. Maxwell's injunctions to bring her "quietly," his own fears of an outburst that might bring a questioning and sympathetic school about his ears, and lastly, and not the least potently, his own desire to enjoy Olly's company in the long ride to One Horse Gulch without the preoccupation of grief, with his own comfortable conviction that he could eventually bring Gabriel out of this "fix" without Olly knowing anything about it, all this forbade his telling her the truth. But here was a coil he had not thought of. Howbeit, Mr. Hamlin was quick at expedients. "Then you think Sophy can see me," he added, with a sudden interest. "Of course she will!" said Olly, archly. "It was right smart in you to get acquainted with Gabe and set him up to writing that, though it's just like him. He's that soft that anybody could get round him. But there she is now, Mr. Hamlin; that's her step on the stairs. And I don't suppose you two hez any need of me now." And she slipped out of the room, as demurely as she had entered, at the same moment that a tall, slim, and somewhat sensational young lady in blue came flying in. I can, in justice to Mr. Hamlin, whose secrets have been perhaps needlessly violated in the progress of this story, do no less than pass over as sacred, and perhaps wholly irrelevant to the issue, the interview that took place between himself and Miss Sophy. That he succeeded in convincing that young woman of his unaltered loyalty, that he explained his long silence as the result of a torturing doubt of the permanence of her own affection, that his presence at that moment was the successful culmination of a long-matured and desperate plan to see her once more and learn the truth from her own lips, I am sure that no member of my own disgraceful sex will question, and I trust no member of a too fond and confiding sex will doubt. That some bitterness was felt by Mr. Hamlin, who was conscious of certain irregularities during this long interval, and some tears shed by Miss Sophy, who was equally conscious of more or less aberration of her own magnetic instincts during his absence, I think will be self-evident to the largely comprehending reader. Howbeit, at the end of ten tender yet tranquillising minutes Mr. Hamlin remarked, in low thrilling tones--