emained gazing at each other with a half-amused,
half-guarded expression. Mr. Hamlin was first to begin. "I didn't think
YOU'D be such a fool as to try on this kind of thing, Fred," he said,
half seriously.

"Yes, but it was to keep you from being a much bigger one that I hunted
you up," said the editor, mischievously. "Read that. I got it an hour
after you left." And he placed a little triumphantly in Jack's hand the
letter he had received from White Violet.

Mr. Hamlin read it with an unmoved face, and then laid his two hands
on the editor's shoulders. "Yes, my young friend, and you sat down and
wrote her a pretty letter and sent her twenty dollars--which, permit me
to say, was d----d poor pay! But that isn't your fault, I reckon: it's
the meanness of your proprietors."

"But it isn't the question, either, just now, Jack, however you have
been able to answer it. Do you mean to say seriously that you want to
know anything more of a woman who could write such a letter?"

"I don't know," said Jack, cheerfully. "She might be a devilish sight
funnier than if she hadn't written it--which is the fact."

"You mean to say SHE didn't write it?"

"Yes."

"Who did, then?"

"Her brother Bob."

After a moment's scrutiny of his friend's bewildered face, Mr. Hamlin
briefly related his adventures, from the moment of his meeting Bob at
the mountain-stream to the barkeeper's gossiping comment and sequel.
"Therefore," he concluded, "the author of 'Underbrush' is Miss Cynthia
Delatour, one of four daughters of a widow who lives two miles from
here at the crossing. I shall see her this evening and make sure;
but to-morrow morning you will pay me the breakfast you owe me. She's
good-looking, but I can't say I fancy the poetic style: it's a little
too high-toned for me. However, I love my love with a C, because she is
your Contributor; I hate her with a C, because of her Connections; I met
her by Chance and treated her with Civility; her name is Cynthia, and
she lives on a Cross-road."

"But you surely don't expect you will ever see Bob, again!" said the
editor, impatiently. "You have trusted him with enough to start him for
the Sandwich Islands, to say nothing of the ruinous precedent you have
established in his mind of the value of poetry. I am surprised that
a man of your knowledge of the world would have faith in that imp the
second time."

"My knowledge of the world," returned Mr. Hamlin, sententiously, "tells
me that's t