“Florida cannot help me, and I am dying,” he wrote. “I shall never go back again. Since the death of my wife, two years ago, I have had no wish to live except for my little girl, Constance. She is in New York with my sister Mrs. Hart, who is a widow with no children, and would like to take charge of her. She is a good woman and will be kind to Connie, but she thinks a great deal of society and is rather extravagant in her tastes. I’d like you to be joint guardian with Mrs. Hart of my child. I shall leave her some money, and I wish you to see to it. I can trust you, and know that anything placed in your hands will be safe. If you think my present investments are not good, and some of them are shaky, make others to suit you. I shall instruct my sister to take Connie to the farmhouse on a visit, and if the child likes the country better than the city, she is to stay with you as much as you care to have her. I want her to be brought up a good and sensible woman rather than a fashionable one. She will be beautiful, like her mother. She will be sought after, and God only knows what her future will be. I wish I could see you once more. A sight of your honest face would do me good, and I could talk to you of Connie and the money. I scarcely dare hope it, but if you can come, every expense will be paid. I am too tired to write more. My hands shake and there is a sound in my ears like the distant noise of the battles we fought together. Well, they are over now, and the battle of life is nearly ended. “Good-by, “MARK ELLIOTT.” Deacon Stannard received this letter in January, and two days later he was on his way to St. Augustine, which he reached the day before the colonel’s death, and in time to hear his verbal instructions with regard to Connie and the money left to her. As there was no one else to do it, he went with the body to New York, and saw Connie, and offered to take her home with him at once, if she wished to go. But Mrs. Hart said: “No, she belongs to me rather than to you, to whom, according to my brother’s wishes, I must look for money when she needs it. I have promised to bring her to your house, and shall do so, but naturally her place is with me.” Evidently she did not like being made joint guardian with this plain country farmer. “He is such a codger,” she said before Connie, who opened wide her great blue eyes and asked: “What is a codger?” Her aunt did not reply. She was wondering if the deacon would stay after the funeral, and how she could keep him in the background if he did. In his honest soul he felt that perhaps he ought to stay a few days and see to things and chirk her up a bit, he said, when apologizing for not doing so, and saying that he “s’posed Mary and the boys wanted him at home.”