appy in your happiness. Come to your mother's
arms, Alonzo!"

"Bless you, Rosannah, for my dear nephew's sake! Come to my arms!"

Then was there a mingling of hearts and of tears of rejoicing on
Telegraph Hill and in Eastport Square.

Servants were called by the elders, in both places. Unto one was given
the order, "Pile this fire high, with hickory wood, and bring me a
roasting-hot lemonade."

Unto the other was given the order, "Put out this fire, and bring me two
palm-leaf fans and a pitcher of ice-water."

Then the young people were dismissed, and the elders sat down to talk the
sweet surprise over and make the wedding plans.

Some minutes before this Mr. Burley rushed from the mansion on Telegraph
Hill without meeting or taking formal leave of anybody. He hissed
through his teeth, in unconscious imitation of a popular favorite in
melodrama, "Him shall she never wed! I have sworn it! Ere great Nature
shall have doffed her winter's ermine to don the emerald gauds of spring,
she shall be mine!"

III

Two weeks later. Every few hours, during same three or four days, a very
prim and devout-looking Episcopal clergyman, with a cast in his eye, had
visited Alonzo. According to his card, he was the Rev. Melton Hargrave,
of Cincinnati. He said he had retired from the ministry on account of
his health. If he had said on account of ill-health, he would probably
have erred, to judge by his wholesome looks and firm build. He was the
inventor of an improvement in telephones, and hoped to make his bread by
selling the privilege of using it. "At present," he continued, "a man
may go and tap a telegraph wire which is conveying a song or a concert
from one state to another, and he can attach his private telephone and
steal a hearing of that music as it passes along. My invention will stop
all that."

"Well," answered Alonzo, "if the owner of the music could not miss what
was stolen, why should he care?"

"He shouldn't care," said the Reverend.

"Well?" said Alonzo, inquiringly.

"Suppose," replied the Reverend, "suppose that, instead of music that was
passing along and being stolen, the burden of the wire was loving
endearments of the most private and sacred nature?"

Alonzo shuddered from head to heel. "Sir, it is a priceless invention,"
said he; "I must have it at any cost."

But the invention was delayed somewhere on the road from Cincinnati, most
unaccountably. The impatient Alonzo could hardly