ng herself, and, turning from the desk, came
toward me. I saw that she held in her hand a bundle of letters.

"I understand that you and Jack made some fool agreement that he was
not to write to you, and that you were not even to read his letters
to me. I'm not expressing my opinion about it, but now that he's gone,
I'm going to turn these letters over to you. I'm not blind, you know.
Most of them were all really written to you, even if I did receive
them. Poor lad! It seems such a pity he should be struck down just as
a little happiness seemed coming his way."

She put the letters in my hands, and, turning swiftly, went out of
the room. I knew her well enough to realize that she would not return
until I had read the messages from Jack. But what in the world did she
mean by her last words?

I drew a big, easy chair to the fireside, and began to read the
missives. Some were short, some were long, but all were filled with
a quiet courage and cheerfulness that I knew had illuminated not only
Jack's letters to his old friend, but his life and the lives of others
wherever he had been. Every one of them had some reference to me--an
inquiry after my health, an injunction to Mrs. Stewart to be sure to
keep track of my happiness, a little kodak print or other souvenir
marked "For Margaret if I do not come back."

I felt guilty, remorseful, that I had seen so little of Mrs. Stewart
since his departure. My own affairs, especially my long, terrible
summer's experience with Grace Draper, had shut everything else from
my mind.

One letter in particular made my eyes brim with sudden tears. The
first of it had been cheery, with entertaining little accounts of the
few poor bits of humor which the soldiers in the trenches extracted
from their terrible every day round. Along toward the end a sudden
impulse seemed to have swept the writer's pen into a more sombre
channel.

"I have been thinking much, dear old friend," he wrote, "of the
futility of human desires. Life in the trenches is rather conducive to
that form of mediation, as you may imagine. You know, none better,
how I loved Margaret, how I wanted to make her my wife--I often wonder
whether if I had not delayed so long, 'fearing my fate too much,'
I might not have won her. But thoughts, like that are worse than
useless.

"Instead, there has come to me a clearer understanding of Margaret, a
better insight into the golden heart of her. If she had never met
the other man, or