The Judge knew it was not the _papers_ she wanted, and Mildred knew so, too, but it answered quite as well for Finn, who, within half an hour after leaving the house, came galloping up the hill. “Was there anything for me?” asked Mildred, meeting him at the gate. “Yes’m,” he answered; “papers by the bushel. There’s the _Post_, the _Spy_, the _Traveler_, and——” “Yes, yes,” interrupted Mildred; “but the letter. Wasn’t there a letter?” “Yes’m;” and diving first into one pocket and then into another, Finn handed her _the_ letter. She knew it by its superscription, and leaving the papers Finn had tossed upon the grass, to be blown about the yard, until they finally fell into the little destructive hands of Rachel’s grandbaby, she hurried to her room, and breaking the seal, saw that it was herself and not Lilian Veille whom Lawrence Thornton would have for his bride. Again and again she read the lines so fraught with love, lingering longest over the place where he called her “his beautiful, starry-eyed Mildred,” telling her “how heavy his heart was when he feared she loved another, and how that heaviness was removed when the Judge explained the matter.” “Write to me at once, darling,” he added in conclusion, “and tell me yes, as I know you will, unless I have been most cruelly deceived.” “I will write to him this very night,” she said, “but I will show this to Oliver first. I am sure he is anxious to know if it came,” and pressing it to her lips she went flying down to the gable-roof. Hepsy was not this time on guard, and gliding up the stairs Mildred burst into the room where Oliver lay, partially propped up in bed, so that he could see the fading sunlight shining on the river and on the hill-tops beyond. “It’s come, Oliver, it’s come!” she exclaimed, holding the letter to view. “I am glad for your sake, Milly,” said Oliver, a deep flush stealing over his face, for he felt instinctively that he was about to be called upon to pass a painful ordeal. “I wouldn’t show it to anybody else,” she continued: “and I can’t even read it to _you_ myself; neither can I stay here while you read it, for, somehow, I should blush, and grow so hot and fidgety, so I’ll leave it with you a few minutes while I take a run down to the tree where Lawrence found me sleeping that Sunday,” and thrusting the letter into his hand, she hurried out, stumbling over and nearly upsetting Hepsy, who was shelling peas by the open door. “Oh, the Lord!” groaned the old lady, “you’ve trod on my very biggest corn,” and the lamentations she made over her aching toe, she forgot to go up and see “if the jade had worried Oliver,” who was thus left to himself, as he wished to be. He would not for the world have opened that letter. He could not read how much Mildred Howell was beloved by another than himself, and he let it lay just where it had dropped from his nerveless fingers.