To the strong, loving, and loyal heart of Walter, a letter from Marian was a sacred treasure, a full, intense, solemn delight. She had thought the thoughts, written the words, touched the paper. When disappointment, distress, depression, and uncertainty accumulated upon him most ruthlessly, and bore him most heavily to the ground, he shook them from him at the bidding of a letter from her, and rose more than ever determined not to be beaten in the struggle which was to bring him such a reward. The calmness, the seeming coldness even of her letters did not annoy or disappoint him; theirs was the perfect love that did not need protestation--that was as well and as ill, as fully and as imperfectly, expressed by the simplest affirmation as by a score of endearing phrases. No letter of Marian's had ever failed to delight, to strengthen, to encourage Walter Joyce, until this one reached him. He opened the envelope with an eager touch, his dark cheek flushed, and a tender smile shone in his eyes; he murmured a word of love as the closely written sheets met his impatient gaze. "A long letter to-day, Marian, my darling. Did you guess how sadly I wanted it?" But as Walter read the letter his countenance changed. He turned back, and read some portions twice over, then went on, and when he concluded it began again. But not with the iteration of a lover refreshing his first feeling of delight, seeking pet passages to dwell on afresh. There was no such pleasurable impulse in the moody re-reading of his letter. Walter frowned more than once while he read it, and struck the hand in which he held it monotonously against his knee when he had acquired the full unmistakable meaning of it. His face had been sad and anxious when the letter reached him--he had reason for sadness and anxiety--but when he had read it for the last time, and thrust it into his breast-pocket, his face was more than sad and anxious--it was haggard, gloomy, and angry. CHAPTER XI. THE LOUT.