ht Ivory.

"When I awoke next morning from my long sleep, the old puzzle had come
back, a thousand times worse than before, for then I knew that I had
held the clue in my own hand and had lost it. Now, praise God! I know
the truth, and you, the only one to whom I can tell it, are close at
hand."

Ivory looked at his mother and saw that the veil that had separated them
mentally seemed to five vanished in the night that had passed. Often and
often it had blown away, as it were, for the fraction of a moment and
then blown back again. Now her eyes met his with an altogether new
clearness that startled him, while her health came with ease and she
seemed stronger than for many days.

"You remember the winter I was here at the farm alone, when you were at
the Academy?"

"Yes; it was then that I came home and found you so terribly ill. Do you
think we need go back to that old time now, mother dear?"

"Yes, I must, I must! One morning I received a strange letter, bearing
no signature, in which the writer said that if I wished to see my
husband I had only to go to a certain address in Brentville, New
Hampshire. The letter went on to say that Mr. Aaron Boynton was ill and
longed for nothing so much as to speak with me; but there were reasons
why he did not wish to return to Edgewood,--would I come to him without
delay."

Ivory now sat straight in his chair and listened keenly, feeling that
this was to be no vague, uncertain, and misleading memory, but something
true and tangible.

"The letter excited me greatly after your father's long absence and
silence. I knew it could mean nothing but sorrow, but although I was
half ill at the time, my plain duty was to go, so I thought, and go
without making any explanation in the village."

All this was new to Ivory and he hung upon his mother's words, dreading
yet hoping for the light that they might shed upon the past.

"I arrived at Brentville quite exhausted with the journey and weighed
down by anxiety and dread. I found the house mentioned in the letter
at seven o'clock in the evening, and knocked at the door. A common,
hard-featured woman answered the knock and, seeming to expect me,
ushered me in. I do not remember the room; I remember only a child
leaning patiently against the window-sill looking out into the dark, and
that the place was bare and cheerless.

"I came to call upon Mr. Aaron Boynton,' I said, with my heart sinking
lower and lower as I spoke. The woman opene