and friend."

I did so, but with an awful feeling of doubt at my heart. In half an
hour my father entered the room, and reassured me with a quiet smile and
nod, which was of great comfort to me.

Another half hour went by, and then a rustling at the door made me
tremble with anticipation and doubt, for something told me it was
Priscilla. The handle turned, and as I held out both my hands to greet
her, for it was she, she bounded forward with a cry of joy, and fell
fainting into my arms.

Here was a _denoument_. I gently laid her inanimate form on the couch,
and was immediately hustled out of the room by the combined force of my
mother and our old domestic, Ellen, and not allowed to return for a
time, which to my fevered mind seemed an age, but which the clock
pronounced to be twenty minutes only.

This time Priscilla came coyly to my arms, and I then knew all was well
between us, especially when she turned me round with,

"Dear old Harry! come to the light, you great brown giant, and look me
in the face. Ah!" said she, as Alec obligingly held up the lamp that she
might get a full view of me, "I can read truth in those bonny brown
eyes, but you are a cruel fellow, or why did you not answer my letters?
You bad boy!"

"Sit down, Priscilla," and I quietly took her hands in mine, and drew
her down beside me on the couch.

"Now, Miss Fortune Teller! what letters do you refer to?"

"Two that I sent you, one in June and the other only five weeks since,
at the beginning of August."

"Believe me, Priscilla, I have never received them, and did not know of
your writing to me till my father informed me of it, but an hour since.
Where did you write them?"

"Here, Harry, in this very room."

"And who posted them, did you do so yourself?"

"No, your father posted the first, and Ellen the other."

"No," interposed my father, "I recollect young Johnson called in
directly you left, and seeing the letter in my hand, said he was going
up to the village, and would post it for me, so I gave it to him."

Just then Ellen entered with glasses and decanters, and it suddenly
struck me to interrogate her on the subject.

"Ellen, do you remember posting a letter to me, about a month ago, that
Miss Grant gave you?"

"Yes, sir, very well; at least I went half way to the post, when Mr.
Walter Johnson overtook me on his bay horse, and stopped me to ask how
Miss Grant was, and seeing the letter in my hand, he offered to drop it
in t