nd the suggestive
vastness of his prospects, he rambled on more or less incoherently,
elaborating and amplifying his plans, occasionally even speaking of them
as already accomplished, until the moon rode high in the heavens, and
York led him again to his couch. Here he lay for some time muttering
to himself, until at last he sank into a heavy sleep. When York had
satisfied himself of the fact, he gently took down the picture and
frame, and, going to the hearth, tossed them on the dying embers, and
sat down to see them burn.

The fir-cones leaped instantly into flame; then the features that had
entranced San Francisco audiences nightly, flashed up and passed away
(as such things are apt to pass); and even the cynical smile on York's
lips faded too. And then there came a supplemental and unexpected flash
as the embers fell together, and by its light York saw a paper upon
the floor. It was one that had fallen from the old man's pocket. As he
picked it up listlessly, a photograph slipped from its folds. It was the
portrait of a young girl; and on its reverse was written in a scrawling
hand, "Melinda to father."

It was at best a cheap picture, but, ah me! I fear even the deft
graciousness of the highest art could not have softened the rigid
angularities of that youthful figure, its self-complacent vulgarity, its
cheap finery, its expressionless ill-favor. York did not look at it a
second time. He turned to the letter for relief.

It was misspelled; it was unpunctuated; it was almost illegible; it
was fretful in tone, and selfish in sentiment. It was not, I fear, even
original in the story of its woes. It was the harsh recital of poverty,
of suspicion, of mean makeshifts and compromises, of low pains and lower
longings, of sorrows that were degrading, of a grief that was pitiable.
Yet it was sincere in a certain kind of vague yearning for the presence
of the degraded man to whom it was written,--an affection that was more
like a confused instinct than a sentiment.

York folded it again carefully, and placed it beneath the old man's
pillow. Then he returned to his seat by the fire. A smile that had been
playing upon his face, deepening the curves behind his mustache, and
gradually overrunning his clear gray eyes, presently faded away. It was
last to go from his eyes; and it left there, oddly enough to those who
did not know him, a tear.

He sat there for a long time, leaning forward, his head upon his hands.
The wind th