“We will agree then,” Barker said, when Agnes was again seated beside him, “that the book of the past, with all its unhappy secrets, shall be closed forever, and we will only open the new leaves, which I hope we can contemplate with pleasure. But before dismissing the past forever, never to recall it again, I want to say that I have watched over you constantly for the past eight years, when I first learned you were living in Fairview. Let me say this to excuse my other neglect, and that you may know how honest my affection for you has always been. You may recollect that you once gave Ned my picture in appreciation of his friendship, and he sent it to me by Jo. He showed it to me one night when I had almost resolved to look for you at Bradford, no difference what the consequence might be, and though I recognized it at once, I tossed it to one side with a glance, though I was so much agitated that soon after I left the room to hide it. When I returned, and inquired as carelessly as I could whom the picture represented, Jo replied that it was the father of the little school-teacher, Agnes Deming and that he had been drowned at sea. By degrees I learned when you came, how you looked, and where you lived; and how often I have made them tell the story without suspecting; how often I have set them to talking of pretty Agnes, and when they told how much she mourned her father, I went away and walked in the woods until I was calm again. Since then I have been near you a hundred times when you did not know it, and a hundred times when you did. Very often I have stolen up to your window in the night, and seeing you were safe and well, crept back through the woods to my desolate home, waiting for this night to come. Once when I looked into your window--it was at Ned’s father’s house, in the country--I saw you kneel, and I heard you ask blessings on my head, though you supposed I was in heaven. It has been a long time to wait, and I have suffered a great deal, but I am satisfied; I believe I shall be happier that it came about as it did.” I noticed that they at once put into execution their resolve to bury the past in the lonely grave out in Smoky Hill, around which we had all stood two months before, for during the remainder of the night nothing was talked of but the happy future; the to-morrow of their lives, instead of the yesterday. When I had sufficiently recovered myself to congratulate them, we laughed merrily over my attempt to frighten Agnes, and Barker started to explain how he happened to come when he did, but recollecting his resolve to speak no more of that, he waived it off, and told instead how the house at the mill should be remodelled and refurnished, and the heavy shutters taken down; how the people who passed that way would wonder at the change, and how they should be told that the owner had been blessed through the mercy of God.