Sadness is sure to seek shelter in shadowy places. Mine carried me into the chamber of my lost friend. It was dim and orderly, like a church closed after service. The white bed on which she died, gleamed upon me through the dim light like an altar. The blinds were closed, the sashes down; a funereal stillness had settled on everything she once loved to look upon. I sunk down upon my knees by the bed, weeping bitterly. Would that woman ever dare to stand in Mrs. Lee's room, its mistress? Had she ever yet been able to wipe the blood-stain from her own lips gathered from the heart she had broken by a Judas kiss? Upon my knees in that room, I felt and knew that a murder, so crafty that the criminal herself could torture it into accident to her own conscience, had been perpetrated there. The voice of my dead friend seemed calling on me to avenge her, and save the man she had loved better than her own soul, from a thraldom worse than death. In my anguish I cried out, "What can I do? what can I do?" Nothing answered me. I was alone, doubly alone, since that girl had left us. Never before had my helplessness been so complete. Perhaps I had indulged in some wild hope connected with Lottie, and that had been cut from under my feet by her desertion. If so, I was unconscious of it; but no lame man ever felt the loss of his staff, as I felt the cruel ingratitude of this girl. Still I had a vague trust in her, a hope changing and fantastic as the wind, but still a hope that she might not prove the thoughtless creature her conduct seemed to bespeak her. One end of the room was less gloomy than the rest, and a bar of light cutting across it disturbed me. It came through the partially opened door of Lottie's little chamber, in which a blind had been left unclosed. I went into the room, and there, directly beneath the window, saw the girl's writing-desk, on which lay a letter and a blank-book, which I remembered to have given Lottie one day, when she had pressed me earnestly for something of the kind. The letter was placed ostentatiously on its edge, and I saw that it was addressed to me. I opened it with some trepidation and read:--