down here;
but he felt as he wrote that his mood was not the right one, and when
Mary got the letter she answered by first mail:--

"Will you not let me come to you? Is it not surely best? Say
but the word, and I'll come. It will be the steamer to Chicago,
railroad to Cairo, and a St. Louis boat to New Orleans. Alice
will be both company and protection, and no burden at all. O my
beloved husband! I am just ungracious enough to think, some
days, that these times of separation are the hardest of all.
When we were suffering sickness and hunger together--well, we
were _together_. Darling, if you'll just say come, I'll come in
an _instant_. Oh, how gladly! Surely, with what you tell me
you've saved, and with your place so secure to you, can't we
venture to begin again? Alice and I can live with you in the
bakery. O my husband! if you but say the word, a little time--a
few days will bring us into your arms. And yet, do not yield to
my impatience; I trust your wisdom, and know that what you
decide will be best. Mother has been very feeble lately, as I
have told you; but she seems to be improving, and now I see
what I've half suspected for a long time, and ought to have
seen sooner, that my husband--my dear, dear husband--needs me
most; and I'm coming--I'm _coming_, John, if you'll only say
come.

Your loving
MARY."

CHAPTER XLII.

RISTOFALO AND THE RECTOR.

Be Richling's feelings what they might, the Star Bakery shone in the
retail firmament of the commercial heavens with new and growing
brilliancy. There was scarcely time to talk even with the tough little
rector who hovers on the borders of this history, and he might have
become quite an alien had not Richling's earnest request made him one
day a visitor, as we have seen him express his intention of being, in
the foul corridors of the parish prison, and presently the occupant of a
broken chair in the apartment apportioned to Raphael Ristofalo and two
other prisoners. "Easy little tasks you cut out for your friends," said
the rector to Richling when next they met. "I got preached _to_--not to
say edified. I'll share my edification with you!" He told his
experience.

It was a sinister place, the prison apartment. The hand of Kate
Ristofalo had removed some of its unsightly conditions and