they listened to Billy's earnest, gentle discourse, and might hardly cross to meal or market without being reminded of God--why, after all, the word of God was good hearing, and everyone ought to take an interest in it. Stop your ears for a moment, and you could almost believe 'twas Nicky come back to life again. Nobody could deny the man was cheerful and civil. He rowed a stroke, too, amazingly like Nicky's. As for Rosewarne, in the revulsion of their fears they began to despise him. They Had done better to pity him. Across the water, in her lodging in the Widows' Houses, Hester found work to be done which, to her surprise, kept her busier than she had ever been in her life before--so busy that the quiet quadrangle seemed to hold no room for news of the world without. She found that, if she were to satisfy her conscience in the service of these old women, she could seldom save more than an hour's leisure from the short spring days; and in that hour maybe Sir George would call with his plans, or she would put on her bonnet and walk down the hill for a call on the Bennys and a chat with Nuncey. But oftener it was Nuncey who came for a gossip; Nuncey having sold her cart and retired from business. Spring had come. Within the almshouse quadrangle, around the leaden pump, the daffodils were in flower and the tulip buds swelling. A blast from the first of those golden trumpets could hardly have startled her more than did her first sight of it flaunting in the sun. It had stolen upon her like a thief. "A letter for you, Mrs. Trevarthen!" The postman, as he crossed the quadrangle to the Matron's door, glanced up and spied Mrs. Trevarthen bending over a wash-tub in the widows' gallery. He pulled a letter from his pocket and held it aloft gaily. "I'll run up the steps with it if you can't reach." "No need to trouble you, my dear, if you'll wait a moment." Mrs. Trevarthen dried her hands in her coarse apron, leaned over the balustrade, and just contrived to reach the letter with her finger-tips. They were bleached with soap and warm water, and they trembled a little. "'Tis from your son Tom, I reckon," said the postman, while she examined the envelope. "Foreign paper and the Quebec postmark." "From Tom? O' course 'tis from Tom! Get along with 'ee do! What other man would be writing to me at my time o' life?" The postman walked on, laughing. Mrs. Trevarthen stood for some while irresolute, holding the envelope between finger and thumb, and glancing from it to a closed door at the back of the gallery. A slant low sun-ray almost reached to the threshold, and was cut short there by the shadow of the gallery eaves. "Best not disturb her, I s'pose," said the old woman, with a sigh. She laid the letter down, but very reluctantly, beside the wash-tub, and plunged both hands among the suds again. "Quebec!" The word recalled a silly old song of the sailors; she had heard her boy hum it again and again--