“There was no hope for her, as he had said. During the early stage of her illness she was always asking for him—wondering why he stayed away—for I obeyed the priest’s injunctions, and never told her he’d been coward enough to run. As she got worse, she began to wander, and, from having seen us so often together, she would confuse him with me; and, at the last, was perfectly happy so long as I was with her; calling me by his name, and thanking him, as she imagined, for all his care and kindness to her. The lock of hair that puzzled you is hers. She gave it to me just before she died (she had nothing else to give, poor girl) in the belief she was giving it to Richards. And then, quite quietly, still in the belief that he was with her, and that it was his hand and not mine that she was holding, she died. “There you have the story, Fred, such as it is. All the other things were given me by the villagers—the few of them, that is, who lived—all except the missal, which came from my old friend the priest. It was his most cherished possession; given, I believe, in the hope of converting me. Well, if conversion would make me another such as he was, I wouldn’t say no to it. “Shall I ever see him again, I wonder? Some day, Fred, you and I will go and hunt him up.” Ronald’s Courtship I I HAVE been looking through all my old letters to-night. It is a strange sensation in these days, when the shuttle spins so fast, to re-read the letters between childhood and manhood. All details seem softened, viewed through the haze of time. Human nature was (or so it seems to one) so much kindlier then than now. What pleasant ghosts are raised by these old letters; what touches that one missed in them in the hurried, feverish days when they were written! In so very many cases, too, the hands that penned them are still. I have come upon one from Ronald, written when he was just twenty-five. It is singularly devoid of romance, compared with many of the others, and has “brisked me up” considerably, when I was verging on melancholia. “DEAR FRED (it runs), “I shall want you for a wedding a month hence. Guess the name of the happy lady. No more escapades from—Yours respectably, “RONALD.”