st-office with me; perhaps we may find a letter. I
think we shall."

Olive's sagacity and knowledge of her friend's character had not misled
her. She found a letter from Myrtle to herself, which she opened and
read as here follows:

MY DEAREST OLIVE:--Think no evil of me for what I have done. The
fire-hang-bird's nest, as Cyprian called it, is empty, and the poor bird
is flown.

I can live as I have lived no longer. This place is chilling all the
life out of me, and I must find another home. It is far, far away, and
you will not hear from me again until I am there. Then I will write to
you.

You know where I was born,--under a hot sun and in the midst of strange,
lovely scenes that I seem still to remember. I must visit them again:
my heart always yearns for them. And I must cross the sea to get
there,--the beautiful great sea that I have always longed for and that
my river has been whispering about to me ever so many years. My life is
pinched and starved here. I feel as old as aunt Silence, and I am only
fifteen,--a child she has called me within a few days. If this is to be
a child, what is it to be a woman?

I love you dearly,--and your brother is almost to me as if he were mine.
I love our sweet, patient Bathsheba,--yes, and the old man that has
spoken so kindly with me, good Master Gridley; I hate to give you
pain,--to leave you all,--but my way of life is killing me, and I am too
young to die. I cannot take the comfort with you, my dear friends, that
I would; for it seems as if I carried a lump of ice in my heart, and all
the warmth I find in you cannot thaw it out.

I have had a strange warning to leave this place, Olive. Do you remember
how the angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph and told him to flee into
Egypt? I have had a dream like that, Olive. There is an old belief in
our family that the spirit of one who died many generations ago watches
over some of her descendants. They say it led our first ancestor to come
over here when it was a wilderness. I believe it has appeared to others
of the family in times of trouble. I have had a strange dream at any
rate, and the one I saw, or thought I saw, told me to leave this place.
Perhaps I should have stayed if it had not been for that, but it seemed
like an angel's warning.

Nobody will know how I have gone, or which way I have taken. On Monday,
you may show this letter to my friends, not before. I do not think they
will be in danger of breaking their hear