he had been very clever and that
great things had been expected of him. But I anticipated no pleasure
from exploring musty old letters and papers of forty neglected years.

I went up to Uncle Alan's room at dusk that night. We had been having
a day of warm spring rain, but it had cleared away and the bare maple
boughs outside the window were strung with glistening drops. The room
looked to the north and was always dim by reason of the close-growing
Sweetwater pines. A gap had been cut through them to the northwest,
and in it I had a glimpse of the sea Uncle Alan had loved, and above
it a wondrous sunset sky fleeced over with little clouds, pale and
pink and golden and green, that suddenly reminded me of Miss Sylvia
and her fluffy knitting. It was with the thought of her in my mind
that I lighted a lamp and began the task of grubbing into Uncle Alan's
trunkful of papers. Most of these were bundles of yellowed letters, of
no present interest, from his family and college friends. There were
several college theses and essays, and a lot of loose miscellania
pertaining to boyish school days. I went through the collection
rapidly, until at the bottom of the trunk, I came to a small book
bound in dark-green leather. It proved to be a sort of journal, and I
began to glance over it with a languid interest.

It had been begun in the spring after he had graduated from college.
Although suspected only by himself, the disease which was to end his
life had already fastened upon him. The entries were those of a doomed
man, who, feeling the curse fall on him like a frost, blighting all
the fair hopes and promises of life, seeks some help and consolation
in the outward self-communing of a journal. There was nothing morbid,
nothing unmanly in the record. As I read, I found myself liking Uncle
Alan, wishing that he might have lived and been my friend.

His mother had not been well that summer and the doctor ordered her to
the seashore. Alan accompanied her. Here occurred a hiatus in the
journal. No leaves had been torn out, but a quire or so of them had
apparently become loosened from the threads that held them in place. I
found them later on in the trunk, but at the time I passed to the next
page. It began abruptly:

This girl is the sweetest thing that God ever made. I had not
known a woman could be so fair and sweet. Her beauty awes me,
the purity of her soul shines so clearly through it like an
illuminating lamp. I