yes--oh! so sad and wistful, but glad too--and her hands held out--and
she said, "Turn you to the stronghold, ye prisoners of hope. O
Leonard, dear, it does not hurt."'

'It was the last thing she did say.'

'Yes, so Ave's letter said. And observe, one o'clock in Indiana is
half-past nine with us. Then her hair--I wrote to ask, for you know it
used to be in long curls, but it had been cut short, like what I saw.
Surely, surely, it was the dear loving spirit allowed to show itself to
me before going quite away to her home!'

'And you have seen her again?'

'Just now'--his voice was even lower than before--'since it grew dark,
as I sat there. I had left off reading, and had been thinking, when
there she was, all white but not wistful now; "Leonard, dear," she
said, "it has not hurt;" and then, "He brought me forth, He brought me
forth even to a place of liberty, because He had a favour unto me."'

'O, Leonard, it must have made you very happy.'

'I am very thankful for it,' he said. Then after a pause, 'You will
not speak of it--you will not tell me to think it the action of my own
mind upon itself.'

'I can only believe it a great blessing come to comfort you and cheer
you,' said Ethel: 'cheer you as with the robin-note, as papa called it,
that sung all through the worst of times! Leonard, I am afraid you
will think it unkind of me to have withheld it so long, but papa told
me you could not yet bear to hear of Minna. I have her last present
for you in charge--the slippers she was working for that eighteenth
birthday of yours. She would go on, and we never knew whether she
fully understood your danger; it was always "they could not hurt you,"
and at last, when they were finished, and I had to make her understand
that you could not have them, she only looked up to me and said,
"Please keep them, and give them to him when he comes home." She never
doubted, first or last.'

Ethel, who had daily been watching for the moment, took out the parcel
from the drawer, with the address in the childish writing, the date in
her own.

Large tears came dropping from Leonard's eyes, as he undid the paper,
and looked at the work, then said, 'Last time I saw that pattern, my
mother was working it! Dear child! Yes, Miss May, I am glad you did
not give them to me before. I always felt as if my blow had glanced
aside and fallen on Minna; but somehow I feel more fully how happy she
is!'

'She was the messenger of comfor