n. Yet, she felt
glad; she thought it would comfort her mother to know how carefully he
had kept these letters. Soon after she found a memento of herself--a
little curl, wrapped in silver-paper, and marked with his own hand,
"Olive's hair." Her father had loved her then--ay, and more deeply than
she knew.

The chief thing which troubled Olive was the sight of the paper on which
her father's dying hand had scrawled "Harold." No date of any kind had
been found to explain the mystery. She determined to think of the matter
no more, but to put the paper by in a secret drawer.

In doing so, she found a small packet, carefully tied and sealed. She
was about to open it, when the superscription caught her eyes. Thereon
she read her father's written desire that it should after his death be
burnt unopened.

His faithful daughter, without pausing to think, threw the packet on
the fire; even turning aside, lest the flames, while destroying, should
reveal anything of the secret. Only once, forgetting herself, the
crackling fire made her start and turn, and she caught a momentary
glimpse of some curious foreign ornament; while near it, twisted in the
flame into almost life-like motion, was what seemed a long lock of black
hair. But she could be certain of nothing; she hated herself for even
that involuntary glance. It seemed an insult to the dead.

Still more did these remorseful feelings awake, when, her task being
almost done, she found one letter addressed thus:

"For my daughter, Olive. Not to be opened till her mother is dead, and
she is alone in the world."

Alone in the world! His fatherly tenderness had looked forward, then,
even to that bitter time--far off, she prayed God!--when she would be
alone--a woman no longer young, without parents, husband, or child, or
smiling home. She doubted not that her father had written this letter to
counsel and comfort her at such a season of desolation, years after he
was in the dust.

His daughter blessed him for it; and her tender tears fell upon words
which he had written, as she saw by the date outside, on that
night--the last he ever spent at home. She never thought of breaking
his injunction, or of opening the letter before the time; and after
considering deeply, she decided that it was too sacred even for the ear
of her mother, to whom it would only give pain. Therefore she placed it
in the private drawer of her father's desk--now her own--to wait until
time should bring abo