etter for him had they deemed it possible. There
was talk even of sending a round-robin to Mrs. St. Clair.

It was a shorter walk from Salem Street than it had been from his
daughter's mansion, and poor Jamie had not so much time each day to
calculate the chances of a letter being there. Alas! a glance of the
eye sufficed. Her notes were always on squarish white note-paper
sealed in the middle (they still used no envelopes in those days), and
were easy to see behind the pile of business letters and telegrams.
And the five minutes of hope between breakfast and the bank were all
old Jamie had to carry him through the day, for her letters never
arrived in the afternoon.

But this foggy day Jamie came down conscious of a certain tremor of
anticipation. It has been said that he had no religion, but he had
ventured to pray the night before,--to pray that he might get a
letter. He was wondering if it were not wrong to invoke the Deity for
such selfish things. For the Deity (if there were one, indeed) seemed
very far off and awful to Jamie. That there was anything trivial or
foolish in the prayer did not occur to Jamie; it probably would have
occurred to Mercedes.

But he got to the office at the usual time. The clerks were not
looking at him (had he known it, a bad sign), and he cast his eye
hastily over the pile. Then his face grew fixed once more. No letter
from her was there, and he began to go through them all in routine
order, the telegrams first.

The next thing that happened, the nearest clerk heard a sound and
looked up, his finger on the column of figures and "carrying" 31 in
his head. Old Jamie spoke to him. "I--I--must go out for an hour or
two," he said. "I have a train to meet." His face was radiant, and all
the clerks were looking up by this time. No one spoke, and Jamie went
away.

"Did you see, he was positively blushing," said the teller.

There was a momentary cessation of all business at the bank. When old
Mr. Bowdoin came in, on his way down to the wharf, he was struck at
once with the atmosphere of the place.

"What's the matter?" he asked. "You look like you'd all had your
salaries raised."

"Old Jamie's got his foreign mail," said the cashier.

But Jamie went out into the street to think of it undisturbed. It was
a telegram:--

"Am coming on to-morrow. Meet me at five, Worcester depot. MERCEDES."

She did not say anything about St. Clair, and Jamie felt sure he was
not coming.

The fog h