ould object to his being told! Indeed, I should have
spoken to him myself on the subject this morning had not Dr. Pillsbury
said he was too ill to see strangers. I tried to make this plain to Miss
Sparrow. I implored her to tell me how I had vexed her, but she broke away
from me and rushed out of the room. I cannot understand her conduct. I
might have known such a bright young girl couldn't fancy an old fossil
like me, but am I so bad a fellow, Hal, that she need feel insulted by my
love? I would have walked barefooted over burning coals sooner than have
wounded her as I have done.' And so on, and so on, till the cock crew.

"I ventured a second time to hint that he had merely been too precipitate
in his wooing, but he shook his head incredulously, and finally went away
as mystified as he came.

"At our next meeting the little soprano asked me in a shy, conscious way
if my friend were quite well. Had I ever fancied his brain affected? I
might have answered with a simple negative: I shall always think a little
better of myself, Steve, that then and there, in the full bewitchment of
Miss Sparrow's presence, I had manliness enough to speak a good word for
Timothy--to tell her that, spite of some eccentricities, he had the finest
brain, as well as the warmest heart, of any man of my acquaintance.

"I did not see her again for months, as she withdrew from the choir to
devote herself exclusively to her father, whose sufferings were becoming
daily more intense. These were not so much from actual pain, as from
extreme nervousness that opiates failed to relieve. Dr. Pillsbury often
spoke of the case--the doctor was boarding here then--and one day he
appealed to Timothy to go with him and try his magnetic power upon the
patient. A queer look came over Timothy's face, but he went at once, and
was able to soothe the sick man simply by the laying on of hands. After
this, while Mr. Sparrow lived, he went often, and comforted him greatly in
his last hours, not only by his mesmeric influence, but indirectly as well
by keeping those boys out of the way. The money he spent at that time in
taking the lads to panoramas and menageries would have constituted him
life member of a missionary society.

"You can see the natural result. Having proved a blessed narcotic to the
dying father, Timothy ceased to be an irritant to the daughter. An
irritant? Timothy couldn't irritate her, and she couldn't irritate
Timothy. I've studied them curiously