“My little Ellen,” said I, holding the two hands firmly in my own, “do you know I loved your mother very dearly? I always wanted the right to protect her, but it was denied me--your daddy won out. She is gone, but you are left. Will you trust yourself to my care?” She answered with a look that meant more than words--a look that I would have given my soul to have had from another twenty years before. We washed the dishes, closed the old man’s door and started toward our destination, for I had resolved to find Ellen comfortable quarters with a companion before I finished the affair with Albert. The rain had ceased and there was a peculiarly clear, cool freshness in the atmosphere for a day in August. The hills that surrounded the farm house made clear scallops of green against a pure blue background, and it was hard to believe that turmoil and trouble could exist in such quiet, pleasant surroundings. We were commenting upon the peacefulness of the scene when an ambulance approached over the hill before us. The road was unusually rough and narrow, a typical country road edged with chinquapin bushes and dogwood trees, whose leaves had already started to turn scarlet, hiding clusters of berries beneath them. The ambulance swayed from side to side and heeded not the ruts or stones in its wake. As “coming events cast their shadows before,” I was quite confident of its destination. I motioned to the driver who gave me a sharp glance and held the horses in a walk just long enough to inform me quickly of their errand. “To Mr. Albert Wilbur’s,” was the answer to my question. “Dead?” I asked. “Don’t know, a servant ’phoned that he had tried to commit suicide.” “Take us back, we’re related,” I said. We returned to the house from which we had fled--to find that the two shots, which the misguided man had fired, had done their work only too well. There remained but the frame of him who had given nothing and taken all. As for myself, I was left alone in the world with this gentle, naïve child, and I prayed each day that she would be more generous with her love than her mother had been--and she was. It was like a gift from heaven sent to heal a wounded and longing heart. THE REPORTER.