The third day. My life is being tortured away. I believe that I shall die before seeing Minnie. The prescience of death is upon me. Every few minutes Susan runs into the street to see if Minnie is coming; but there is no sign of her. The slightest sound in the house causes my heart to beat so violently that I am afraid. I try to think, but I cannot; I can only fear. These few words have taken me long to write. I cannot read what I have previously written. I have tried to do so, but the words swim before my eyes. I can write no more to-day. With a despairing mind I trace these words slowly and painfully. They are powerless to express my feelings. Death is near. I know it. Not by physical pain am I warned, but I know it. I saw my wife last night. She stood by my side for full an hour. It is a sign that my hour is come. Susan is below, looking for Minnie, perhaps--looking for Minnie, who will never, never come. . . . I take up my pen again. What lies before me? A letter. Susan brought it up a while ago, and gave it to me. But when I saw the writing on the cover, I had not courage to open it, so I placed it in the desk. It is addressed to me in Minnie's writing. And on the cover are these words: "The 'Merry Andrew;' John Steele, pilot." The letter, then, comes from the "Merry Andrew," and is in Minnie's writing. What follows? That Minnie is on board the "Merry Andrew" with Joshua Marvel! I must read it--I _must_, if it strike me dead! That was all that was written. Dan read every word of the manuscript aloud, but was compelled by emotion to pause many times. During the silence that followed, one thought rose uppermost in their minds. Ellen thought, "How will Dan bear this?" And Dan had the same thought with respect to Ellen. Is such noble unselfishness rare? Let us hope not. For the first and only time in the course of this narrative, the writer pauses to speak of a personal experience of devotion and unselfishness. It was before him during his boyhood in the person of his mother; and it is to her, and to the patient, unmurmuring gentleness with which she bore the trials of her life, that her children owe whatever little of good there may be in their nature. It is from his experience of his mother's life of goodness and self-sacrifice that he knows that the noble unselfishness of Dan and Ellen is not, thank God, a creation of his fancy. And as he writes these words in the midst of a great city, with all the whirl of its busy life around him, he is glad to think that in it--in great mansions and mean houses, in sight of gardens where Nature makes holiday, and of dirty streets and courts where bright leaf never grows--flowers of human life which the world shall never see are blossoming tenderly and holily, and living gentle lives for others' good.