decorating with flowers. Then she turned from the picture to her father’s writing-desk, and opened drawer after drawer until she came to one containing nothing but a faded bouquet of flowers, such as the girl in the picture might have been putting on the grave, and a little lock of yellow hair. Pinned about the hair was a paper, which bore the same date as did that letter which Roger Irving guarded with so much care. Alice had heard of Roger Irving from Frank, who called him “uncle” when speaking of him to her. She had him in her mind as quite an elderly man, with iron-gray hair, perhaps, such as her auntie wore, and she had thought she would like to see Frank’s paragon of excellence; but she had no idea how near he was brought to her by that faded bouquet and that lock of golden hair, which so excited her curiosity. Her father had always been a mystery to her. That there was something in his past life which he wished to conceal, she felt sure, just as she was certain that he was to blame for that shattered wreck which sometimes made Beechwood a terror and a dread, but to which Alice clung with so filial devotion. There was very little in common between Alice and her father. A thorough man of the world, with no regard for anything holy and good, except as it helped to raise him in the estimation of his fellows, Mr. Grey could no more understand his gentle daughter, whose life was so pure and consistent, and so constant a rebuke to him, than she could sympathize with him in his ways of thinking and acting. There was a time when in his heart he had said there was no God,—a time when, without the slightest hesitancy, he would have trampled upon all God’s divine institutions and set his laws at naught; and the teachings of one as fascinating and agreeable as Arthur Grey had been productive of more harm than this life would ever show, for they had reached on even to the other world, where some of his deluded followers had gone before him. But as Alice grew into girlhood, with her sweet face and the example of her holy Christian life, there was a change, and people said that Arthur Grey was a better man. Outwardly he was, perhaps. He said no longer there was no God. He _knew_ there was when he looked at his patient, self-denying daughter, and he knew that Grace alone had made her what she was. For Alice’s sake he admitted Alice’s God, and, because he knew it helped him in various ways, he paid all due deference to the forms of religion, and none were more regular in their attendance at the little church on the mountain side than he, or paid more liberally to every religious and charitable object. He believed himself that he had reformed, and he charged the reform to Alice and the memory of a golden-haired woman whom he had loved better than he had since loved a human being, save his daughter Alice. But far greater than his love for his daughter was his love of self and because it suited him to do it he