“Deborah Becker, who lived with Miss Sallie as companion more than helper these forty years, is almost heart-broken, and told me this afternoon that such a happening had never entered Miss Sallie’s head, for that not long before her last illness, she even sent for samples of wall-paper, labelled and put them away in the old mahogany desk of the Squire’s that always stood in the best room; this paper for the guest room, that for the parlour, as a guide for the doing over of the house when ‘one of the boys’ should take it.” “Timothy Saunders’ saying is true, ‘The future’s a kittle mare that travels best her ain gate and lacking both bit and bridle,’” I said, “but yet it is pathetic when one has sacrificed everything to a sort of old country land-pride, to have it come to naught. Didn’t she leave you a letter of some sort, father, that was to remain sealed a year until everything was settled?” “Yes, Barbara, a sealed letter enclosing a key; the key of the old desk, which the will says is to be disposed of according to directions given me. I hope it may give rise to no complications. Who that saw Sallie Dearborn during the last half of her life would dream that she was once full of woman’s romance crossed with chivalry? These have seen her grim, calculating, measuring every egg or berry that she sold; sending her weekly paper to the Bridgeton Hospital, but first cutting the white margins therefrom, and rolling them into lamplighters to save matches at two cents a box!” * * * * * With the prospective “Vandoo” as a motive, I invited Terry Donelly for over a Sunday and his wife for a week’s visit. When she came, of a Saturday after dusk, I found, as Evan had said, that one moment she was tender and almost piteously feminine, so that I was impelled to take her in my arms as I would a child, while in a moment of animation, a flush would mantle her cheeks, too thin for her years, the gray eyes would flash, little bright glints play about her hair, until she was, indeed, like a bundle of lithe, live wires. At such moments, Terry’s laughing eyes would grow grave, and the banter, which was one of his charms, die on his lips; that she was restless and he apprehensive even through the spell of strong affection, there was no doubt, and on Monday, when Terry left her with me, there was something appealing in his glance and the grip he gave my hand. The day was fairly pleasant out-of-doors in that a frozen crust made good walking, and, arm in arm, Mrs. Terry and I explored my haunts; I pointed to the stakes and trellises where the garden had been and would be again, and for a moment we sat upon the seat where the “Mother Tree” had been and looked down the walk that had bordered that first garden of the long ago. Would she understand from these bare outlines the why of it, the voiceless potency of that which bound me?