I ought not to have written that last word. I am not a good novelist, or I would have been brought to my confessions at a slower rate. However, it is a fact. Theirs was the rare case, in which neither the language, nor the feelings of childhood had ever changed. They had vowed themselves to each other at least a hundred times. More and more solemn the pledge had grown at every repetition; and when Tom came from college a few weeks before, it had been cemented with tears. Ah! she was a noble girl, that Jane! Why did not fate give me a chance at her, or rather, why did not I, instead of flirting with all the pretty faces that I saw, why did not I love her, and cherish her, as Tom did from the first. However, that is nothing to any body but myself. Jane rose next morning unrefreshed from her sleepless couch, and the first thing she did was to write the following note: “Dear Tom,—My mother is angry with me for the intimacy to which I have admitted you, and has directed me to break it off. So you must not come here so often. Nothing in my life has grieved me more than this, but I am sixteen only, and my mother’s will is mine. Wont you travel? I prefer not seeing you at all, than not to see you as of old. But be assured, wherever you go, and whatever may be your fortune, one heart will be with you, that of yours ever, Jane Elliot.” Now was not she a dear girl. She wept when she wrote it, and she wept when she sent it, and she had not dried her tears when little Cæsar brought back this answer: “Dear Jane,—Your letter was like a thunderbolt to me, and I am hardly able to pen a reply. But I see the wisdom of the course you suggest, and shall make my arrangements at once to go to the law school at Cambridge. I know my own heart so well that I can have no doubts concerning yours; and if labor, and toil, and success can win your mother’s approbation, it shall be mine. But in any case I am yours till death. Thomas Barton.” Accordingly, Tom went off to Cambridge, and devoted all his strength to the herculean task of piling up his legal knowledge “higher than one story”—Everett has said so many witty things in his day, that he need not mind lending one occasionally—whilst I, with envy in my heart, was still playing the part of a faithful friend, and keeping Jane advised of all his movements, and of all his success. But neither his success in his studies, nor the reputation which one year’s practice at the bar had given him, softened the prejudices of the Huguenot lady; and it was as much with a view of keeping them apart as any thing else, that she traveled with her daughter every summer.