uld turn that talent into
enough to keep him all his days. Poor old Watts!"

And Molly Culpepper, sitting in her bedroom chewing her penholder,
finally wrote this: "Watts McHurdie went sailing by the house
to-night, coming home from the Wards', where he was making his regular
call on Nellie. You know what a mouse-like little walk he has,
scratching along the sidewalk so demurely; but to-night, after he
passed our place I heard him actually break into a hippety-hop, and as
I was sitting on the veranda, I could hear him clicking clear down to
the new stone walk in front of the post-office." Oho, Molly Culpepper,
you said "as I was sitting on the veranda"; that is of course the
truth, but not the whole truth; what you might have said was "as we
were sitting on the veranda," and "as we were talking of what I like"
and "what you like," and of "what I think" and "what you think," and
as "I was listening to war tales from a Southern soldier," and as "I
was finding it on the whole rather a tiresome business "; those things
you might have written, Molly Culpepper, but you did not. And was it a
twinge or a prick or a sharp reproachful stab of your conscience that
made you chew the tip of your penholder into shreds and then madly
write down this:--

"Bob, I don't know what is coming over me; but some way your letters
seem so far away, and it has been such a long time since I saw you, a
whole lonesome year, and Bob dear, I am so weak and so unworthy of
you; I know it, oh, I know it. But I feel to-night that I must tell
you something right from my heart. It is this, dear: no matter what
may happen, I want you to know that I must always love you better than
any one else in all the world. I seem so young and foolish, and life
is so long and the world is so big--so big and you are so far away.
But, Bob dear, my good true boy, don't forget this that I tell you
to-night, that through all time and all eternity the innermost part of
my heart must always be yours. No matter what happens to you and me in
the course of life in the big world--you must never forget what I
have written here to-night."

And these words, for some strange reason, were burned on the man's
soul; though she had written him fonder ones, which passed from him
with the years. The other words of the letter fell into his eyes and
were consumed there, so he does not remember that she also wrote that
night: "I have just been standing at my bedroom window, looking out
ove