gh she knew that he was living in the Jacobs house.
Their paths never crossed, and Lizzy had long ago forgotten her passing
suspicion of Mercy's regard for him. The haggard and bowed man who met her
now was so unlike the Stephen White she recollected, that Lizzy
involuntarily exclaimed. Stephen took no notice of her exclamation.

"No, thank you, I will not sit down," he said, as with almost solicitude
in her face she offered him a chair. "I merely wish to give you something
of"--he hesitated--"Mrs. Philbrick's."

He drew from his breast a small package of papers, yellow, creased, old.
He unfolded one of these and handed it to Lizzy, saying,--

"This is a sonnet of hers which has never been printed. She gave it to me
when,"--he hesitated again,--"when she was living in my house. She said at
that time that she would like to have it put on her tombstone. I did not
know any other friend of hers to go to but you. Will you see that it is
done?"

Lizzy took the paper and began to read the sonnet. Stephen stood leaning
heavily on the back of a chair; his breath was short, and his face much
flushed.

"Oh, pray sit down, Mr. White! You are ill," exclaimed Lizzy.

"No, I am not ill. I would rather stand," replied Stephen. His eyes were
fixed on the spot where thirty years before Mercy had stood when she said,
"I can't, Stephen."

Lizzy read the sonnet with tears rolling down her cheeks.

"Oh, it is beautiful,--beautiful!" she exclaimed. "Why did she never have
it printed?"

Stephen colored and hesitated. One single thrill of pride followed by a
bitter wave of pain, and he replied,--

"Because I asked her not to print it."

Lizzy's heart was too full of tender grief now to have any room for wonder
or resentment at this, or even to realize in that first moment that there
was any thing strange in the reply.

"Indeed, it shall be put on the stone," she said. "I am so thankful you
brought it. I have been thinking that there were no words fit to put above
her grave. No one but she herself could have written any that would be,"
and she was folding up the paper.

Stephen stretched out his hand. "Pardon me," he said, "I cannot part with
that. I have brought a copy to leave with you," and he gave Lizzy another
paper.

Mechanically she restored to him the first one, and gazed earnestly into
his face. Its worn and harrowed features, its look of graven patience,
smote her like a cry. She was about to speak to him eagerly and w