Now, as of old, Oliver was her refuge when weary or low spirited. On the day of Lawrence’s visit to him, he had been found by one of his companions lying upon the floor in a kind of fainting-fit, which left him so weak that he was unable longer to pursue his studies, and at last came home to Hepsy, who declared him to be in “a galloping consumption.” Mildred was sorry for his ill health, but she was glad to have him home again; it seemed so nice to steal away from laces, silks, satins and flowers, and sit alone with him in his quiet room. She wondered greatly at the change one short month had produced in him, but she was too happy herself to think very much of it, and she failed to see how he shrank from talking with her of the future, even though he knew nothing could interest her more. “I ain’t a bit anxious to be married,” she said to him one night, when making him her usual visit, “but I do want to be with Lawrence. I think it real mean in his father to send him West just now. Did I tell you he’s gone to Minnesota, and I shan’t see him for two whole weeks. Then he’ll stay with me all the time till the very day; but it seems so long to wait. To think I must eat breakfast, and dinner, and supper fourteen times before he comes! It’s terrible, Oliver, and then I’ve got a fidget in my brain that something is going to happen, either to him or to me,—him, most likely. Maybe he’ll be killed. I do wish he hadn’t gone;” and Mildred’s eyes filled with tears as she thought of Lawrence dying on the distant prairies, the victim of some horrible railroad disaster. “But I am not going to borrow trouble,” she said. “It comes fast enough,” and asking Oliver if he should be very, very sorry when she was Mildred Thornton, she tripped back to the house, still bearing with her the harrowing presentiment that “something was going to happen.” “I mean to write to Lawrence,” she said, “and tell him to be careful; tell him not to ride in the front car, nor the last car, nor the middle car, nor over the wheels, nor in the night, and to be sure and walk across Suspension Bridge when he comes back.” Satisfied that, if he followed the directions implicitly he would return to her alive, she ran up to her room, where she could be alone while she wrote the important letter. Groping about in the dark until she found the matches, she struck a light, and finding her portfolio, took it to the table, where lay a singular looking note, sealed with a wafer, and directed to “Miss Mildred Howell.” “What in the world!” she exclaimed, taking up the soiled bit of foolscap. “Where did this come from, and what can it be?” As a sure means of solving the mystery, she broke the seal at once, and with a beating heart read as follows: