It was dated the very night preceding the morning when Squire Irving had been found dead by Aleck Floyd, and it commenced much like the one which Roger had guarded so religiously as his father’s last message to him: “MILLBANK, April —. “MY DEAR BOY, — For many days I have been haunted with a presentiment that I have not much longer to live. My heart is badly diseased, and I may drop away any minute, and as death begins to stare me in the face, my thoughts turn toward you, the boy whom I have been so proud of and loved so much. You don’t remember your mother, Roger, and you don’t know how I loved her, she was so beautiful and artless, and seemed so innocent, with her blue eyes and golden hair. Her home was among the New Hampshire hills, a quarter of a mile or so from the little rural town of Schodick, whose delightful scenery and pure mountain air years ago attracted visitors there during the summer months. Her father was poor and old and infirm, and his farm was mortgaged for more than it was worth, and the mortgage was about to be foreclosed, when, by chance, I became an inmate for a few weeks of the farm-house. I was stopping in Schodick, the hotel was full, and I boarded with Jessie’s father. He had taken boarders before,—one a young man, Arthur Grey, a fast, fashionable, fascinating man, who made love to Jessie, a mere child of sixteen. Her letter, which I enclose, will tell you the particulars of her acquaintance with him, so it is not needful that I go over with them. I knew nothing of Arthur Grey at the time I was at the farm-house, except that I sometimes heard him mentioned as a reckless, dashing young man. I was there during the months of August and September. I had an attack of heart disease, and Jessie nursed me through it, her soft hands and gentle ways and deep blue eyes weaving around me a spell I could not break. She was poor, but a lady every whit, and I loved her better than I had ever loved a human being before, and I wanted her for my wife. As I have said, her father was old and poor, and the farm was mortgaged to a remorseless creditor. They would be homeless when it was sold, and so I _bought_ Jessie, and her father kept his home. I know now that it was a great mistake; know why Jessie fainted when the plan was first proposed to her, but I did not suspect it then. Her father said she was in the habit of fainting, and tried to make light of it. He was anxious for the match, and shut his eyes to his daughter’s aversion to it.