It was evident that there had been the deepest intellectual sympathy between them. Closely and fervently and passionately as their hearts must have loved, the letters were never, from first to last, simply lovers' letters. Keen interchange of comment and analysis, full revelation of strongly marked individual life, constant mutual stimulus to mental growth there must have been between these two. We were inclined to think, from the exquisitely phrased sentences and rare fancies in the letters, and from the graceful movement of some of the little poems, that Esther must have had ambition as a writer. Then, again, she seemed so wholly, simply, passionately, a woman, to love and be loved, that all thought of anything else in her nature or her life seemed incongruous. "Oh," groaned Uncle Jo, after reading one of the most glowing letters, "oh, was there really ever in any other man's arms but mine a woman who could say such things as these between kisses? O Nell, Nell, thank God that you haven't the dower of such a double fire in your veins as Esther had!" All night we sat reading, and reading, and reading. When the great clock in the hall struck six, we started like guilty persons. "Oh, my childie," said Uncle Jo, "how wrong this has been in me! Poor little pale face, go to bed now, and remember, I forbid you to go to school to-day; and I forbid your getting up until noon. I promise you I will not look at another letter. I will lock them all up till to-morrow evening, and then we will finish them." I obeyed him silently. I was too exhausted to speak; but I was also too excited to sleep. Until noon I lay wide awake on the bed, in my darkened room, living over Esther Wynn's life, marvelling at the inexplicable revelation of it which had been put into our hands, and wondering, until the uncertainty seemed almost anguish, what was that end which we could never know. Did she die in the Holy Land? or did she come home well and strong? and did her lover die some day, leaving his secret treasure of letters behind him, and poor stricken Esther to go to her grave in fear lest unfriendly hands might have gained possession of her heart's records? He was a married man we felt sure. Had the wife whom he did not love paced up and down and up and down for years over these dumb witnesses to that of which she had never dreamed? The man himself, when he came to die, did he writhe, thinking of those silent, eloquent, precious letters which he must leave to time and chance to destroy or protect? Did men carry him, dead, down the very stairs on which he had so often knelt unseen and wafted kisses towards the hidden Esther? All these conjectures and questions, and thousands more, hurried in wild confusion through my brain. In vain I closed my eyes, in vain I pressed my hands on my eyelids; countless faces, dark, light, beautiful, plain, happy, sad, threatening, imploring, seemed dancing in the air around my bed, and saying, "Esther, Esther!"