minutes in the window seat, there came to her other
recollections of her later girlhood, when she had stolen to this
corner for the sake of being alone with her pleasant thoughts, though
she had cried there many an hour after Jack's behavior had given them
the sorrow they hardly would own to each other. She remembered hearing
her father's angry voice down stairs. No! she would not think of that
again, why should she? and she shut the window and went back to be
sure that she had locked the camphor chest, and hung its key on the
flat-headed rusty nail overhead. Miss Prince heard some one open and
shut the front door as she went down, and in the small front room she
found Captain Walter Parish, who held a high place among her most
intimate friends. He was her cousin, and had become her general
adviser and counselor. He sometimes called himself laughingly the
ship's husband, for it was he who transacted most of Miss Prince's
important business, and selected her paint and shingles and her garden
seeds beside, and made and mended her pens. He liked to be useful and
agreeable, but he had not that satisfaction in his own home, for his
wife had been a most efficient person to begin with, and during his
absences at sea in early life had grown entirely self-reliant. The
captain joked about it merrily, but he nevertheless liked to feel that
he was still important, and Miss Prince generously told him, from time
to time, that she did not know how she should get on without him, and
considerately kept up the fiction of not wishing to take up his time
when he must be busy with his own affairs.

"How are you this fine morning, Cousin Nancy?" said the captain
gallantly. "I called to say that Jerry Martin will be here to-morrow
without fail. It seems he thought you would send him word when you
wanted him next, and he has been working for himself. I don't think
the garden will suffer, we have had so much cold weather. And here is
a letter I took from the office." He handed it to Miss Prince with a
questioning look; he knew the handwriting of her few correspondents
almost as well as she, and this was a stranger's.

"Perhaps it is a receipt for my subscription to the"--But Miss Prince
never finished the sentence, for when she had fairly taken the letter
into her hand, the very touch of it seemed to send a tinge of ashen
gray like some quick poison over her face. She stood still, looking at
it, then flushed crimson, and sat down in the neare