“Dear old Friend,—I have so little time for writing any thing but prescriptions in this busy place, that you will be surprised indeed to receive this. But your happiness is mine, and I can no longer keep secret what I know is in store for you. The twenty dollars that you in your simple benevolence slipped into the hands of the old gray-coat, has brought you interest indeed. That shabby was Sir William C——, the rich English banker, who diseased in body, and plunged into insane misanthrophy by the death of his wife, and of all save one of four children, to whom he was devotedly attached, spent this summer at the springs. At the urgent solicitation of his only son, a young man of most prepossessing manners and appearance, I had been for some time attending him, when you met him in the garden. Your kindness to him when you could not know him, his conversation with you, and your warm, humane nature made the greatest impression upon him, and so moved him that he was immediately afterward seized with a violent attack of illness, which proved a favorable crisis, and his health both of body and mind is completely restored. His gratitude to you knows no bounds. He is now, by my advice, traveling through Italy previous to coming to R——, where he intends to present himself at your door in his former shabby dress, and require at your hands the friendship you so generously proffered him. As for his son, ask your daughter, Theodora, she can tell you far more about him than I can. All this I should not have told you, but how could I help it? With the warmest congratulations, and repeated injunctions laid upon you to keep the secret from your wife and children better than I have been able to keep it from you, believe me, my dear old friend, truly yours, Herman A——.” It was long before the worthy pastor became convinced that all this was no dream, but when the reality burst upon him, he folded his hands, and his heart was filled with love and gratitude to God. “But,” said he to himself, “how can I keep all this from my dear Catharine? Heaven grant that that for the first time in my life I may keep my tongue between my teeth, and not betray every thing as my old friend here has done.” “Father,” said his wife at supper, “your face shines like Moses, when he came down from the mount. What did the doctor write about?” “Oh!—he—why of course about every thing that is going on at the springs, about the flowers, and my _Banksia serrata_.” “And nothing,” asked Theodora, “of the old man and—and—” “Why, what should he know of them?” said her father. “Doubtless the young fellow has forgotten our existence, dear Dora, but don’t be troubled, we are so happy here.” And then he bit his lips, and swallowed the secret as best he could, and as he was obliged to do fifty times a day.