“Thank Heaven!” dropped from Roger’s quivering lips, as the suspected evil which, as he grew older, he began to fear and shrink from, was thus swept away. He had no doubts, no misgivings now, and his tears fell like rain upon poor Jessie’s letter, which he kissed again and again, just as he would have kissed the dear face of the writer had it been there beside him. “Mother, mother!” he sobbed, “I believe you; oh, mother, if you could have lived!” Then he went back to the letter, the whole of which it is not our design to give at present. It embraced the history of Jessie’s life from the days of her early girlhood up to that night when she left her husband’s home, and closed with the words: “I do not ask you to take me back. I know that can never be; but I want you to think as kindly of me as you can, and when you feel that you have fully forgiven me, show this letter to Roger, if he is old enough to understand it. Tell him to forgive me, and give him this lock of his mother’s hair. Heaven bless and keep my little boy, and grant that he may be a comfort to you and grow up a good and noble man.” The lock of hair, which was enclosed in a separate bit of paper, had dropped upon the carpet, where Roger found it, his heart swelling in his throat as he opened the paper and held upon his finger the coil of golden hair. It was very long, and curled still with a persistency which Mrs. Walter Scott, with all her papers, could never hope to attain; but the softness and brightness were gone, and it clung to Roger’s finger, a streaked, faded tress, but inexpressibly dear to him for the sake of her who sued so piteously for his own and his father’s forgiveness. “When you feel that you have fully forgiven me, show this letter to Roger, if he is old enough to understand it.” Roger read this sentence over again, and drew therefrom this inference. The letter had never been shown to him, therefore the writer had not been forgiven by the dead man, whose face, even in the coffin, wore the stern, inflexible look which Roger always remembered to have seen upon it. ‘Squire Irving had been very reserved, and very unforgiving too. He could not easily forget an injury to himself, and that he had not forgiven Jessie’s sin was proved by the fact that he had never given the letter to his son, who, for a moment, felt himself growing hard and indignant toward one who could hold out against the sweet, piteous pleadings in that letter from poor, unfortunate Jessie. “But I forgive you, mother; I believe you innocent. I bless and revere your memory, my poor, poor, lost mother!” Roger sobbed, as he kissed the faded curl and kissed the sea-stained letter.