ago; I knew it, but I didn't trust my instincts."

"Here comes father," she said, as the gate clicked.

They stood together, listening to the slow shuffle of the colonel
coming up the walk, and the heavy fall of his cane. The wife put out
her hand and said gently, "I think I have wronged you, Adrian, more
than any one else."

He did not take her hand but sighed, and turned and went up the wide
stairway. He was an old man then, and she remembered the years when he
tripped up gayly, and then she looked at her own gray hair in the
mirror and saw that her life was spent too.

As the colonel came in gasping asthmatically, he found his daughter
waiting for him. "Is Adrian better?" he asked excitedly. "Neal said
Adrian was sick."

"Yes, father, he's upstairs packing. He is going out on the four
o'clock train."

"Oh," said the colonel, and then panted a moment before asking, "Has
any one told you how it happened?"

"Yes," she replied, "I know everything. I think I'll run over there
now, father." As she stood in the doorway, she said, "Don't bother
Adrian--he'll need no help."

And so Molly Brownwell passed the last night with her dead lover.
About midnight the bell rang and she went to the door.

"Ah, madam," said Jacob Dolan, as he fumbled in his pockets, and tried
to breathe away from her to hide the surcease of his sorrow, "Ah,
madam," he repeated, as he suddenly thought to pull off his hat, "I
did not come for you--'twas Miss Hendricks I called for; but I have
one for you, too. He gave the bundle to me the last thing--poor lad,
poor lad." He handed her the letter addressed to Mrs. Brownwell, and
then asked, "Is the sister about?"

And when he found she could not be seen he went away, and Molly
Brownwell sat by the dead man's body and read:--

"My darling--my darling--they will let a dead man say that to
you--won't they? And yet, so far as any thought of mine could sin
against you, I have been dead these twenty years. Yet I know that I
have loved you all that time, and as I sit alone here in the bank, and
take the bridle off my heart, the old throb of joy that we both knew
as children comes back again. It is such a strange thing--this
life--such a strange thing." Then there followed a burst of
passionate regret from the man's very heart, and it is so sacred to a
manly love that curbed itself for a score of years, that it must not
be set down here.

Over and over Molly Brownwell read the letter and then crept