But this the minister was so doubtful of--and perhaps with some reason, for the discoverers of jelly fishes are not perhaps distinguished as devout men--that the interview ended in a very cool parting, Mr. Buchanan even hinting that this was a desertion of his Master’s standard, and that the love of beasts was an unhallowed passion. And Johnny disappeared from St. Rule’s shortly after, and was long absent, and silence closed over his name. In those days perhaps people were less accustomed to frequent letters than we are, and could live without them, for the most anxious heart has to acknowledge the claim of the impossible. Johnny Wemyss, however, wrote to Rodie now and then, and Elsie had the advantage of many things which Rodie never understood at all in these epistles. And sometimes a newspaper came containing an account of some of Mr. Wemyss’s experiments, or of distinctions won by him, which electrified his old friends. For one thing, he went upon a great scientific voyage, and came home laden with discoveries, which were, it appeared, though no one in St. Rule’s could well understand how, considered of great importance in the scientific world. And from that time his future was secure. It was just after his return from this expedition, that one day there came a letter franked by a great man, whose name on the outside of an envelope was of value as an autograph, openly and boldly addressed to Miss Elsie Buchanan, The Manse, St. Rule’s. It was written very small, on a sheet of paper as long as your arm, and it poured out into Elsie’s heart the confidences of all those silent years. She showed it to her mother, and Mrs. Buchanan gasped and could say no word. She took it to her father, and the minister cried “Johnny Wemyss!” in a voice like a roar of astonishment and fury. “Do you mean this has been going on all the time,” he cried, “and not a word said?” “Nothing has been going on,” said Elsie, pale but firm. “Oh, it was settled, I suppose, before he went away.” “Never word was spoken either by him or me,” said Elsie; “but I will not say but what we knew each other’s meaning, I his, and he mine,” she added, softly, after a pause. There was a good deal of trouble about it one way and another, but you may believe that neither father nor mother, much less Rodie and John, though the one was a W. S., and the other an advocate, could interfere long with a wooing like this. THE END. End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Unjust Steward, by Margaret Oliphant