"It can't be more than four o'clock," said she to herself. "You stupid robin, what did you wake me so early for? Can't you get up yourself without making such a fuss about it? I suppose I had better go to bed again." She lay down, accordingly, and tried to go to sleep for full ten minutes. Then she decided that there was no use is trying any longer, and she might as well get up and finish looking over the things. She was soon dressed and seated on the ground before her treasures. She opened the work-box first: it contained the usual working implements, and one thing not often seen in these days—a thread-case, stitched into long, numbered compartments, into each of which was drawn a skein of thread or silk, cut at one end. Calista opened a velvet case with some trouble, and found, as she expected, a miniature picture of her father. Fastened into the lid of the case was a sketch, in water colors, of a sweet, fair, somewhat prim and precise-looking female face, evidently done by no professional hand. It afforded a great contrast, in its thin tints and stiff outlines, to the beautifully painted picture on the other side; but there about it that nameless something which showed it was a likeness. The clear, well-opened, but somewhat hollow blue eyes, with their level, even brows, looked at Calista with love; and the firm, but not stern, mouth seemed as if it might speak. A shadowy remembrance came over Calista of her mother sitting before a glass and painting, while she herself sat on the floor and scribbled with a lead pencil. She kissed the picture again and again. "She painted it for me—I am sure she painted it for me. My precious mother!" But the writing-desk was the most interesting and important of all. It was of pretty good size, and was packed full of papers arranged in neat order. There were letters, which had evidently been received from young friends, full of news and gossip about companions and work and books, and also with more serious matters—news of a schoolmate's conversion, requests for prayers, and the like. There were letters from her father, written after he left her mother to go to the wars; manly and tender, and thoroughly devout and Christian in their tone. The last one expressed great regret at the writer's estrangement from his father. "I have written to him, and I hope you will do the same. I am sure if he were only to see you, all would be right between you." This letter was endorsed,— "The last letter I ever had from my dearest husband. God's will be done!" Wrapped up with this letter was a very different one. On the cover was written, in her mother's hand: "I have been, two or three times, on the point of destroying this letter; but have refrained, thinking it might, at some time, be of use. I wish to record my firm belief that General Stanfield never saw it or ordered it written." Calista opened the letter. It was in Miss Priscilla's clear, cramped hand, and read as follows: