that ear? No: and I looked up. Could I trust my
eyes? Had I recognised the tone? Did I now look on the face of the
writer of that very letter? Was this gentleman near me in this dim
garret, John Graham--Dr. Bretton himself?

Yes: it was. He had been called in that very evening to prescribe for
some access of illness in old Madame Kint; he was the second gentleman
present in the salle-a-manger when I entered.

"Was it _my_ letter, Lucy?"

"Your own: yours--the letter you wrote to me. I had come here to read
it quietly. I could not find another spot where it was possible to have
it to myself. I had saved it all day--never opened it till this
evening: it was scarcely glanced over: I _cannot bear_ to lose it. Oh,
my letter!"

"Hush! don't cry and distress yourself so cruelly. What is it worth?
Hush! Come out of this cold room; they are going to send for the police
now to examine further: we need not stay here--come, we will go down."

A warm hand, taking my cold fingers, led me down to a room where there
was a fire. Dr. John and I sat before the stove. He talked to me and
soothed me with unutterable goodness, promising me twenty letters for
the one lost. If there are words and wrongs like knives, whose
deep-inflicted lacerations never heal--cutting injuries and insults of
serrated and poison-dripping edge--so, too, there are consolations of
tone too fine for the ear not fondly and for ever to retain their echo:
caressing kindnesses--loved, lingered over through a whole life,
recalled with unfaded tenderness, and answering the call with undimmed
shine, out of that raven cloud foreshadowing Death himself. I have been
told since that Dr. Bretton was not nearly so perfect as I thought him:
that his actual character lacked the depth, height, compass, and
endurance it possessed in my creed. I don't know: he was as good to me
as the well is to the parched wayfarer--as the sun to the shivering
jailbird. I remember him heroic. Heroic at this moment will I hold him
to be.

He asked me, smiling, why I cared for his letter so very much. I
thought, but did not say, that I prized it like the blood in my veins.
I only answered that I had so few letters to care for.

"I am sure you did not read it," said he; "or you would think nothing
of it!"

"I read it, but only once. I want to read it again. I am sorry it is
lost." And I could not help weeping afresh.

"Lucy, Lucy, my poor little god-sister (if there be such a
relationship