“I don’t know what’s come over me,” she said. “I actually feel as homesick as I did the first night I staid away from mother when I was a little girl. Maybe it’s Roger’s letter taking me back to when his father and I were young and lived on the farm at home. That’s fifty years ago, and John is dead. Everybody is dead but Roger and me, and he might almost as well be dead as to be buried alive in that heathenish country among miners and the dear knows what. Poor as Job’s turkey, five children, six hundred a year, with now and then a missionary box full of half-worn truck, catechisms, and old Churchmans I’ll warrant, though Roger didn’t say so. Queer that he would be a minister after all I said to him about going into business, offering to set him up and all that. But no; he must be a ’Piscopal minister and go out as a missionary to the West and marry Lucy Potter. I told him she was shiftless, and she was. I told him she’d be weakly, and she is. He said he didn’t care how shiftless or weakly she was, he should marry her. I wonder what he thinks now; five children, six hundred a year, and she not very strong, that’s the way he put it. I was glad to hear from him again, and to get Elithe’s picture.” Taking from her pocket a letter received the previous day from her nephew, who was bravely doing his Master’s work among the mountains and mines of Montana, she read for a second time: “Samona, May ——, 18——. “My Dear Aunt— “It is a long time since I have heard from you, and for the last few days I have been thinking a great deal about you and the old times when I was a boy and you were so kind to me. It is more than twenty years since you saw me and I wonder if you would know me now. Lucy says I am growing old, but I feel as young as ever, except, perhaps, when I have had a long ride of twenty or thirty miles on horseback and am very tired. I like my work and I think I have done some good among the people here. They are not all miners, and we have in our little town several good families from the East and from England. We are all poor, and that is a bond between us. I have six hundred dollars a year, which is a pretty good salary for this vicinity. Then we frequently get a missionary box and that helps wonderfully. You should be here when we open one and hear the expressions of delight as article after article is taken out,—not all new, of course, nor the best fit, but the neighbors come in and help cut and make them over, and we feel quite in touch with the world in our finery. I have five children, four of them sturdy boys, healthy as little bears and, I am sometimes fearful, almost as savage, brought up, as they are, just on the verge of civilization. Our eldest child and only daughter, Elithe, is nineteen, and as lovely a flower as ever blossomed in the wilds of the West. Lucy is not strong, and Elithe is our right hand and left