of me I shall be happy. You are the only girl that I
love and always will be. Other girls I have not loved. Perhaps sometime
you will love me, but I am unworthy. Without you, I am wretched, when
you are near my life is all joy.

Farewell, dearest, dearest girl!

From your faithful slave A.F.

Emma Jane knew the letter by heart in English. She even knew it in
Latin, only a few days before a dead language to her, but now one filled
with life and meaning. From beginning to end the epistle had the effect
upon her as of an intoxicating elixir. Often, at morning prayers, or
while eating her rice pudding at the noon dinner, or when sinking off
to sleep at night, she heard a voice murmuring in her ear, "Vale,
carissima, carissima puella!" As to the effect on her modest,
countrified little heart of the phrases in which Abijah stated she was
a goddess and he her faithful slave, that quite baffles description; for
it lifted her bodily out of the scenes in which she moved, into a new,
rosy, ethereal atmosphere in which even Rebecca had no place.

Rebecca did not know this, fortunately; she only suspected, and waited
for the day when Emma Jane would pour out her confidences, as she always
did, and always would until the end of time. At the present moment
she was busily employed in thinking about her own affairs. A shabby
composition book with mottled board covers lay open on the table before
her, and sometimes she wrote in it with feverish haste and absorption,
and sometimes she rested her chin in the cup of her palm, and with the
pencil poised in the other hand looked dreamily out on the village, its
huddle of roofs and steeples all blurred into positive beauty by the
fast-falling snowflakes.

It was the middle of December and the friendly sky was softly dropping
a great white mantle of peace and good-will over the little town, making
all ready within and without for the Feast o' the Babe.

The main street, that in summer was made dignified by its splendid
avenue of shade trees, now ran quiet and white between rows of stalwart
trunks, whose leafless branches were all hanging heavy under their
dazzling burden.

The path leading straight up the hill to the Academy was broken only by
the feet of the hurrying, breathless boys and girls who ran up and down,
carrying piles of books under their arms; books which they remembered
so long as they were within the four walls of the recitation room, and
which they eagerly forgot as soo