Bill took his hands from his pockets. “Thar isn't a man ez crawls above his grave ez is worthy to lie in the same ground with him!” “Thank you, Bill. Good night; I'm going to turn in!” “Look yar, boy! G-d d--n it all, Jeff! what do ye mean?” There were two tears--twin sisters of those in his sweetheart's eyes that afternoon--now standing in Jeff's! Bill caught both his hands in his own. Had they been of the Latin race they would have, right honestly, taken each other in their arms, and perhaps kissed! Being Anglo-Saxons, they gripped each other's hands hard, and one, as above stated, swore! When Jeff ascended to his room that night he went directly to his trunk and took out Miss Mayfield's slipper. Alack! during the day Aunt Sally had “put things to rights” in his room, and the trunk had been moved. This had somewhat disordered its contents, and Miss Mayfield's slipper contained a dozen shot from a broken Eley's cartridge, a few quinine pills, four postage stamps, part of a coral earring which Jeff--on the most apocryphal authority--fondly believed belonged to his mother, whom he had never seen, and a small silver school medal which Jeff had once received for “good conduct,” much to his own surprise, but which he still religiously kept as evidence of former conventional character. He colored a little, rubbed the medal and earring ruefully on his sleeve, replaced them in his trunk, and then hastily emptied the rest of the slipper's contents on the floor. This done, he drew off his boots, and, gliding noiselessly down the stair, hung the slipper on the knob of Miss Mayfield's door, and glided back again without detection. Rolling himself in his blankets, he lay down on his bed. But not to sleep! Staringly wide awake, he at last felt the lulling of the wind that nightly shook his casement, and listened while the great, rambling, creaking, disjointed “Half-way House” slowly settled itself to repose. He thought of many things; of himself, of his past, of his future, but chiefly, I fear, of the pale proud face now sleeping contentedly in the chamber below him. He tossed with many plans and projects, more or less impracticable, and then began to doze. Whereat the moon, creeping in the window, laid a cold white arm across him, and eventually dried a few foolish tears upon his sleeping lashes. IV. Aunt Sally was making pies in the kitchen the next morning when Jeff hesitatingly stole upon her. The moment was not a felicitous one. Pie-making was usually an aggressive pursuit with Aunt Sally, entered into severely, and prosecuted unto the bitter end. After watching her a few moments Jeff came up and placed his arms tenderly around her. People very much in love find relief, I am told, in this vicarious expression. “Aunty.”