But that was an office mystery. We never have solved it, and no one had the courage to tease Mehronay about it the next morning. After that we knew, and Mehronay knew that we knew, that he and Miss Merley went to church every Sunday evening--the Presbyterian church, mind you, where there is no foolishness--and that after church Mehronay always spent exactly half an hour in the parlour of the house where his divinity roomed. A whole year went by wherein Mehronay was sober, and did not look upon the wine when it was red or brown or yellow or any other colour. Now when he "writ a piece" there was frequently something in it defending women's rights. Also he severed diplomatic relations with the girl clerks in the White Front and the Bee Hive and the Racket, and bought a cane and aspired to some dignity of person. But Mehronay's heart was unchanged. The snows of boreal affection did not wither or fade his eternal spring. The sap still ran sweet in his veins and the bees still sang among the blossoms that sprang up along his path. He was everyone's friend, and spoke cheerily to the dogs and the horses, and was no more courteous to the preachers and the bankers, who are our most worshipful ones in town, than to the men from Red Martin's gambling-room, and even the woman in red, whom all the town knows but whom no one ever mentions, got a kind word from Mehronay as they met upon the street. He always called her sister. And so another year went by and Mehronay's "pieces" made the circulation grow, and we were prosperous. It became known about town long before we knew it in the office that if Mehronay kept sober for three years she would have him, and when we finally heard it he was on the last half of the third year and was growing sombre. "In the Cottage by the Sea" was his favourite song, and "Put Away the Little Playthings" also was much in his throat when he wrote. We thought, perhaps--and now we know--that he was thinking of a home that was gone. The day before Mehronay's wedding a child died over near the railroad, and on the morning he was to be married we found this on the copy hook when we came down to open the office, after Mehronay had gone to claim his bride: