that I got my explanation from Betty herself--only that was a long time afterward. I can easily comprehend why no one could meet Betty Graeme without wanting to love her, and most of us ended by actually doing so. But that even Betty could have worked the miracle of reaching what passed with Fielding Thaneford for a heart! It does seem incredible. And yet, if she had not accomplished that impossible thing, I know very surely that I should not be telling this particular story. It had been ordained that I should succeed to the seat perilous of "Hildebrand Hundred," and sooner or later must I have paid the predestined price of my great possession. Truly love is the master-key to every door, but few of us think it worth while to try it, or are even willing to make the attempt. I have spoken of the gulf which seemed to open between Fielding Thaneford and me from the very moment of our first meeting--unbridgable, impassable. But Betty crossed it as easily and as surely as a bird on the wing. "It seems so unnatural and horrible," she said one afternoon as we were sitting in the sick room. "There he lies within hand reach, and yet immeasurably removed. Silence and darkness--oh, I can't bear it!" "I think he understands what is said to him," I ventured. "All the worse if he can't break through from his side of the wall. But there must be a way, and I am going to find it." She left the room, returning a few minutes later with a large square of cardboard on which she had printed the letters of the alphabet. Now I should have made it plain that the sole physical function remaining to Fielding Thaneford was a limited control of the right hand; we had learned to distinguish in its movements the two elementary expressions of assent and dissent. Betty went to the bedside, and gently slipped the sheet of cardboard under the sick man's right hand. "You see what I mean, Mr. Thaneford," she said, with an infinite note of sympathy in her voice. "If you would point out the letters one by one, no matter how slowly. We will both be very patient--please now." Fielding Thaneford's hand--the hand of a very old man, with its thickened knuckles and swollen blue veins--quivered slightly, but remained motionless. Yet I fancied that his glance consciously sought the girl's face and rested there; ordinarily you felt that his gaze merely passed over you, and then travelled inimitably onward and outward. It was certain that he understood the proposal, even while unwilling to act upon it. Twice she repeated the suggestion; and then, too tactful to force the point, she smiled and withdrew the square of cardboard. "Perhaps to-morrow," she said with exceeding gentleness, while I marvelled that any human being could have withstood her. But then what quality of our common humanity could inhere in that huge, inert mass of flesh, animated, as it was, by a mere spark of conscious intelligence.