oks at me and kisses me. Oh, Jamie!"

* * * * *

That was all. The handwriting, so firm at first, was straggling and
faint at the close. Twilight was creeping fast into the little back
room; the fire was getting low, and Elsie shivered in the chillness.

She knew now that this woman, whom she had almost envied, had passed
away from earth. They were together--Harold and Meta--in the home of
souls, where love finds its full satisfaction and rest.

Perhaps Elsie's vision of the pair was not as unreal as it might have
been supposed to be. The thought came to her, as she sat musing in the
twilight, that wherever there was a home there must surely be
homeliness. The hope of a home, denied to them on earth, was realised in
the eternal life--that life which has no need of marriage because the
spiritual union is complete without the earthly tie.

She folded up the manuscript carefully and reverently, and put it back
into the drawer of the table. But in doing this she did not put it out
of her mind. Where was Jamie now? It seemed to her, that evening, as if
the vanished hand of the writer were beckoning her onward to begin the
search for the boy.

Meta had been wronged, and had suffered, oh, how deeply! Meta had fought
the good fight and had won the victory. And to Elsie, in her loneliness,
there came a great longing to take up the love-task which Meta had been
suddenly called to resign, and care for Jamie as the dead woman had
cared for him.

But how was she to begin her search for the child? She knew him only as
Jamie. By some curious oversight Meta had not given any of the surnames
of those whose story she had written. There were but two surnames
mentioned in the manuscript, Penn and Wayne.

Mrs. Penn was a landlady; Arnold Wayne had been the college friend of
Harold.

Elsie moved quietly about her room, busy with many thoughts as she
lighted the lamp and shut out the evening sky. It was a beautiful sky,
with soft rose tints touching the grey of the gloaming, and a star
gleamed faintly above the tall spire. She gave a wistful look at that
star before she drew down the window-blind.

CHAPTER III

_TAKING COUNSEL_

"But round me, like a silver bell
Rung down the listening sky to tell
Of holy help, a sweet voice fell."
--WHITTIER.

"I shall consult Miss Saxon," said Elsie to herself. Sunshine was
streaming in through the Venetian shutte