“DEAR MADAM,—Your favor (of the pie) of the 24th inst. is received and I beg you to accept my sincere and warm thanks. Ned is an efficient clerk and his habits are very correct. We are reading history, in our leisure hours. We have read Fisk’s Constitutional History of the United States and two volumes of Macaulay’s History of England. Both very interesting books. I think that Judge Jeffreys was the meanest and worst judge I ever heard of. My early education was not as extensive as I could wish, and I am very glad of the valuable assistance which I receive from your son. He is doing well and sends his love. Hoping, my dear Madam, to be able to see you and thank you personally for your very kind and welcome gift, I am, with respect, “Very Truly Yours, “AMOS T. WICKLIFF.” Paisley read the letter soberly. In fact, another feeling destroyed any inclination to smile over the unusual pomp of Wickliff’s style. “That’s out of sight!” he declared. “It will please the old lady to the ground. Say, I take it very kindly of you, Mr. Wickliff, to write about me that way.” “I had a book to help me,” confessed the flattered sheriff. “And—say, Paisley, when you are writing about me to your ma, you better say Wickliff, or Amos. Mr. Wickliff sounds kinder stiff. I’ll understand.” The letter that the sheriff received in return he did not show to Paisley. He read it with a knitted brow, and more than once he brushed his hand across his eyes. When he finished it he drew a long sigh, and walked up to his mother’s portrait. “She says she prays for me every night, ma”—he spoke under his breath, and reverently. “Ma, I simply have _got_ to save that boy for her, haven’t I?” That evening Paisley rather timidly approached a subject which he had tried twice before to broach, but his courage had failed him. “You said something, Mr. Wickliff, of paying me a little extra for what I do, keeping the books, etc. Would you mind telling me what it will be? I—I’d like to send a Christmas present to my mother.” “That’s right,” said the sheriff, heartily. “I was thinking what would suit her. How’s a nice black dress, and a bill pinned to it to pay for making it up?” “But I never—” “You can pay me when you get out.” “Do you think I’ll ever get out?” Paisley’s fine eyes were fixed on Wickliff as he spoke, with a sudden wistful eagerness. He had never alluded to his health before, yet it had steadily failed. Now he would not let Amos answer; he may have flinched from any confirmation of his own fears; he took the word hastily. “Anyhow, you’ll risk my turning out a bad investment. But you’ll do a damned kind action to my mother; and if I’m a rip, she’s a saint.” “_Sure_,” said the sheriff. “Say, do you think she’d mind my sending her a hymn-book and a few flowers?”