I think if you don’t come, she will surely die. She is very feeble herself, but that don’t keep her from wearing her to skin and bone. She keeps her doing tricks from morning to night. Every minute that she is awake she keeps her jumping. It’s a mercy she sleeps so much, or she wouldn’t get any sleep at all. I can’t do nothing, but I can see something has got to be done. She’s killing her, and she’s getting where she don’t care for nobody but her, and if she’s to be kept in trim to keep on amusing her she’ll have to have some rest pretty quick. Respectfully, L. COOKE. If the sisters were perturbed by the general trend of these epistles, Jack was half wild over the situation. He swore vigorously and he tramped up and down his room nights until the people underneath put it in their prayers that his woes might suggest suicide as speedily as possible. In vain he wrote to Mrs. Rosscott to restore Janice to her proper place in town; Mrs. Rosscott answered that as long as Aunt Mary desired Janice at her side, at her side Janice should stay. Jack knew his lady well enough to know that she would keep her word, and although he longed to assert his authority he was man enough to feel that he had better wait now and settle the debt after marriage. Nevertheless the whole affair was unbearably vexatious and at last he felt that he could endure it no longer. “I’m a fool,” he said, in a spirit of annoyance that came so close to anger that it led to an utter loss of patience. “I’ll take the train for Aunt Mary’s to-day, and straighten out that mess in short order.” It was Saturday, and he arranged to leave by the noon train. He laid in a heavy supply of bribes for his aged relative and of reading matter for himself, and went to the station with a heart divided ’twixt many different emotions. It was an unconscionably long ride, but he did get there safely about ten o’clock. It was a pleasant night—not too cold—even suggestive of some lingering Indian summer intentions on the part of Jack’s namesake. The young man thought that he would walk out to his childhood’s home, and his decision was aided by the discovery that there was no other way to get there. So he took his suit-case in his hand and set off with a stride that covered the intervening miles in short order and brought him, almost before he knew it, to where he could see Lucinda’s light in the dining-room and her pug-nosed profile outlined upon the drawn shade. Everyone else was evidently abed, and as he looked, she, too, arose and took up the lamp. He hurried his steps so that she might let him in before she went upstairs, but in the same instant the light went out and with its withdrawal he perceived a little figure sitting alone upon the doorstep. His heart gave a tremendous leap—but not with fright—and he made three rapid steps and spoke a name. She lifted up her head. Of course it was Janice, and although she had been weeping, her eyes were as beautiful as ever.