Presently Lee sat up and unfolded a piece of paper. It was only the scrap of a fly-leaf, its jagged edges showing it had been torn from some school-book. "Do you think it will hurt if I put this in his pocket?" he asked in a trembling voice. "I want him to take it with him. I felt like if I burned up those books in here, and put this in his pocket, he'd know how sorry I was." David took the bit of paper, all blistered with boyish tears, where a penitent little hand, out of the depths of a desolate little heart, had scrawled the promise: "Dear Papa,--I will be good." A sob shook the man's strong frame as he read it. "I think he will be very glad to have you give him that," he answered. "You'd better put it in his pocket before any one comes in." Lee slipped down from his lap, and crossed the room. "O, I can't," he moaned, attempting to lift the lifeless hands. David reached down, and unbuttoning the coat, laid the promise of the little prodigal gently on his father's heart, to await its reading in the glad light of the resurrection morning. Then he called some one else to take his place, and went to telephone for a sleigh. In a little while he was driving through the twilight out one of the white country roads, with Lee beside him, that nature's wintry solitudes might lay a cool hand of healing sympathy on the boy's sore heart. Bethany took him home with her after the funeral, and kept him a week. Miss Caroline and Miss Harriet petted him with all the ardor of their motherly old hearts. Jack did his best to amuse him, and with the elasticity of childhood, he began to recover his usual vivacity. "This can not go on always," Mr. Marion said to Bethany one day. He had gone up to the office to talk to her about it. Dr. Trent had left a small insurance, requesting that Frank Marion be appointed guardian. "Ray wants him," continued Mr. Marion. "She would have turned the house into an orphan asylum long ago if I had allowed it. But she has so many demands on her time and strength that I am unwilling to have her taxed any more. You see, for instance, if we should take Lee, I am away from home so much, that the greater part of the care and responsibility would fall on her. Just now his father's death has touched him, and he is making a great effort to do all right; but it will be a hard fight for him in a big place like this, so full of temptations to a boy of his age. He would be a constant care. The only thing I can see is to put him in some private school for a few years." "Let me keep him till after Christmas," urged Bethany. "I can't bear to let the little fellow go away among strangers this near the holiday season. I keep thinking, What if it were Jack?" "How would it do for me to take him out on my next trip?" suggested Mr. Marion. "I will be gone two weeks, just to little country towns in the northern part of the State, where he could have a variety of scenes to amuse him."