him a great shock as he wrote that about ‘your dear father.’ Was grandpapa, indeed, her dear father? and did she think so little of him that she never came to see with her own eyes whether he was growing old or not? And what was he, John himself, her son? Oh, but other women were not so with their sons. All this must have been in his mind, though he had never thought of it before. He wrote down all that his grandmother had told him, and then he paused in his new development of feeling. It seemed to him that he would like to take this paper and tear it into a dozen pieces in the exasperation of his soul. ‘Grandmamma,’ he said, with a little quiver in his voice, ‘don’t you think it would be better for me to write from myself, and tell her this in my own way? I will say just what you want to have said, but it shall be from myself. It would be more natural. After all she is my--mother, I suppose.’ ‘John!’ said the old lady. ‘You suppose! What should she be but your mother? Who should be your mother but she? Oh, my dear, I hope you will not take things into your head that are not true. We have enough of trouble, enough of trouble, in our family. Don’t you begin and imagine things that are not true.’ ‘I don’t imagine anything,’ said the boy, ‘but if you will consider, grandmamma, this is my mother. And I know nothing about her. For a long time it seemed all simple. I never minded. But, now I’m getting older and see how other people are, it is all so strange. Let me have my own way this time--let me just write to her as it would be natural if I were really her son.’ ‘Oh, my John, that you are, indeed, indeed; her son and nothing else. Whose son should you be but hers? Don’t take any wrong notions into your head. My poor Emily! Oh, if you knew how many things she has had to bear! And what would she do at the end of all if her own boy’s heart was cold to her? You are her son and no one’s else--hers, my dear, and hers alone.’ John looked with his clear young eyes, severe yet gentle, in her face. ‘Isn’t that too much to say, grandmamma? Am I not the son of my father, too?’ The old lady looked at him with a strange, low cry. She caught hold of both his hands for a moment, with a grasp in which there seemed something like terror. And then she dropped back upon her pillow and covered her face with her hands. ‘I always said it. I always said it,’ she cried. Just then, in the pause that followed, a heavy, familiar step, slow and steady, came along the road, audible for some time in the quiet of the afternoon and the house. Mrs. Sandford dried her eyes hastily and raised herself up again.