qualities you possess in such great measure.

If I had proof of my father's death I think now, perhaps, that I might
try to break it gently to my mother, as if it were fresh news, and see
if possibly I might thus remove her principal hallucination. You see
now, do you not, how sane she is in many, indeed in most ways,--how
sweet and lovable, even how sensible?

To help you better to understand the influence that has robbed me of
both father and mother and made me and mine the subject of town and
tavern gossip for years past, I have written for you just a sketch of
the "Cochrane craze"; the romantic story of a man who swayed the
wills of his fellow-creatures in a truly marvellous manner. Some local
historian of his time will doubtless give him more space; my wish is to
have you know something more of the circumstances that have made me
a prisoner in life instead of a free man; but prisoner as I am at the
moment, I am sustained just now by a new courage. I read in my copy of
Ovid last night: "The best of weapons is the undaunted heart." This will
help you, too, in your hard life, for yours is the most undaunted heart
in all the world.

IVORY BOYNTON

The chronicle of Jacob Cochrane's career in the little villages near
the Saco River has no such interest for the general reader as it had for
Waitstill Baxter. She hung upon every word that Ivory had written and
realized more clearly than ever before the shadow that had followed him
since early boyhood; the same shadow that had fallen across his mother's
mind and left, continual twilight there.

No one really knew, it seemed, why or from whence Jacob Cochrane had
come to Edgewood. He simply appeared at the old tavern, a stranger, with
satchel in hand, to seek entertainment. Uncle Bart had often described
this scene to Waitstill, for he was one of those sitting about the great
open fire at the time. The man easily slipped into the group and
soon took the lead in conversation, delighting all with his agreeable
personality, his nimble tongue and graceful speech. At supper-time the
hostess and the rest of the family took their places at the long table,
as was the custom, and he astonished them by his knowledge not only of
town history, but of village matters they had supposed unknown to any
one.

When the stranger had finished his supper and returned to the bar-room,
he had to pass through a long entry, and the landlady, whispering to her
daughter, said:--

"Betsy, yo