"Mamma," pleaded the girl, "how can you even think of leaving me?" "Millie, Millie darling, I fear I must. My heart feels as if it were bleeding internally. Millie"--and she grasped her child's shoulder convulsively, "Millie, look in his room for--for--his pistol." "Oh, mamma, mamma!" "Look, look!" said her mother excitedly. "I can't bear the suspense." Thinking that her mother was a little hysterical, and that compliance would quiet her, Mildred went to the place where her father always kept his cavalry revolver--the one memento left of his old heroic army life. IT WAS GONE! She almost sank to the floor in terror, nor did she dare return to her mother. "Millie, Millie, quick!" came in a faint cry from the outer room. The poor girl rushed forward and buried her face in her mother's bosom, sobbing, "Mamma, oh mamma, live for my sake." "I knew it, I knew it," said the stricken wife, with a long low cry. "I saw it in his desperate face. Oh, Martin, Martin, we will die together!" She clasped Mildred tightly, trembled convulsively a moment, and then her arms fell back, and she was as still as poor Belle had been. "Oh, mamma!" Mildred almost shrieked, but she was far beyond recall, and the suffering heart was at rest. When the woman returned with the cup of tea she had gone to prepare for Mrs. Jocelyn, she found the young girl leaning forward unconscious on the bosom of the dead mother. When she revived it was only to moan and wring her hands in despair. Mrs. Wheaton soon appeared, and having learned what had happened she threw her apron over her head and rocked back and forth in her strong sympathetic grief. But her good heart was not long content with tears, and she took Mildred into her arms and said: "I vill be a mother to you, and you shall never vant a 'ome vile I 'ave von," and the motherless girl clung to her in a way that did the kind soul a world of good. Before the evening was very far advanced a boy brought a note to the door. Mildred seized it and asked: "Who gave it to you?" "I don't know--a man. He pointed to this door, and then he went away very fast." She tore it open, and read in horror: "My darling wife, dear beyond all words in these my final despairing moments. My love for you and those left is the only trace of good remaining in my heart. I die for your sakes. My continued existence would be a curse, for I have lost my manhood. I am possessed by a devil that I can't control. I cannot ask you to forgive me. I can never forgive myself. Farewell. After I am gone, brighter days will come to you all. Pity me if you can, forgive me if you can, and remember me as I was before--" And there the terrible missive ended.