e life you will very soon find other
relations which will make you forget your old one with me. I did you a
great harm, but we were both ignorant of our mistake. I pray that it may
yet be repaired, and that you may soon be at rest in a happy home with a
wife and children. Then I should be glad to see you: until then, it is not
best.

"Yours most honestly,

"MERCY."

Until he read this letter, Stephen had not known that secretly in the
bottom of his heart he riad all these years cherished a hope that there
might yet be a future in store for him and Mercy. Now, by the new sense of
desolation which he felt, he knew that there must have been a little more
life than he thought left; in him to die.

As soon as his mother was buried, he closed the house and went abroad.
There he roamed about listlessly from country to country, for many years,
acquiring a certain desultory culture, and buying, so far as his income
would permit, every thing he saw which he thought Mercy would like. Then
he went home, bought the old Jacobs house back again, and fitted it up in
every respect as Mercy had once suggested. This done, he sat down to
wait--for he knew not what. He had a vague feeling that he would die soon,
and leave the house and his small fortune to Mercy; and she would come and
spend her summers there, and so he would recall to her their old life
together. He led the life of a hermit,--rarely went out, and still more
rarely saw any one at home. He looked like a man of sixty rather than like
one of fifty. He was fast becoming an invalid, more, however, from the
lack of purpose and joy than from any disease. Life had been very hard to
Stephen.

Nothing seemed more probable, contrasting his listless figure, gray hair,
and jaded face with Mercy's full, fresh countenance and bounding
elasticity, than that his dream of going first, and leaving to her the
gift of all he had, would be realized; but he was destined to outlive her
by many a long year.

Mercy's death was a strange one. She had gone with two of Lizzy Hunter's
daughters to spend a few weeks in one of the small White Mountain
villages, which was a favorite haunt of hers. The day after their arrival,
a two days' excursion to some of the mountains was proposed; and Mercy,
though not feeling well enough to join it herself, insisted that the girls
should go. They were reluctant to leave her; but, with her usual
vehemence, she resisted all their protestations, and compelled the