A night-lamp was burning on a wall-piece and Betsey Shewell did not shriek, as Sarah feared she might, on her entrance. She was dressed and lying on a sofa listening to the sounds of mirth from below. She had been pondering over Sarah's strange words of the morning and the day before, and their meaning was now dawning on her. The Franklins were going to help her to escape from Penn Rhyn. The girl, in disordered party finery, seized a candle from a stand, lit it over the lamp, and held it before the window. Betsey Shewell ran to her and began to clutch at her skirts, unnerved at the glorious thoughts of freedom. "Hist!" the other said, touching her lips. "West's father comes across the lawn." Both girls had mounted the sill and were motioning to the man below, who was placing a ladder before the window. Betsey began to sob in her excitement. "I cannot go! I cannot go!" she wailed. Sarah shook her companion gently as she drew a heavy hooded cape about her head. "Hush! Hush!" she murmured. "Do you want to wake the woman by the door? Your lover longs for you in London Town and my father and I want to get thee to him. There is no time to stop now for your things," she added. "Part of the play I prated of is ruined, for we did not count on your being shut up here to-night." She was losing her breath and the din downstairs seemed to be lessening. "Go! go!" she said. For a moment the girls were clasped in each other's arms. "I can ne'er repay your goodness," one of them said. From the other's eyes flashed all manner of sweet wishes. "Go!" she whispered again hoarsely. "Good that is too late is as good as nothing." She was smiling alone in the darkness. Off into the night floated the murmur of convivial voices in bibulous cadence. Now the great Franklin was laughing. A watchful ear could catch the patter of faint footsteps. Outside the room the servant still snored by the door. Sarah passed her safely and replaced the key. No one was ever the wiser for the part she and her father had played in West's life until she told it herself in later years. Down to the river an old man and a girl stole through the darkness. Off to an unknown land it bore them to bask in the sunshine of a laurel-strewn pathway the painter Benjamin West knew through a long and fruitful life. Recently one of his old letters to Doctor Jonathan Morris was brought to light, written four years after his marriage to Betsey Shewell, on September 2, 1765, in the church of St. Martin's in the Fields. It breathes of peace and contentment, and when that worthy read it to the Franklin household, there was one who sighed over its sentiments, and another, alas! over the spelling. "DEAR JONATHAN,