r power, and a hater of fools;
but one who, at the end, was capable of a great love for a great
woman.

"I send some verses, which are of my own making to-day. As
Shakespeare says, 'Ill favored, but mine own,' and so good night--a
long good night.

"TO NANCY STAIR

"I stand upon the threshold going out
Into the night.
The mists of old misdeeds crowd all about
And blind my sight.

"But thro' the many worlds to come, my feet
No more shall roam.
The light from thy dear face at last my sweet
Will bring me home.

"To you always, my dear Pitt,

"Borthwicke"

I was dimly conscious of the uproar which arose in the court-room, for
I was away in a by-gone time, a vision before me, clear as a picture,
of a sunny room, myself at a writing-desk overlooking accounts, and a
small curly haired child poring over a book on the rug at my feet

"_Nancy made it just like Jock's!_"
"_Nancy made it just like Jock's!_"

I can recall the fear that seized me as the duke's letter was being
examined by those familiar with his writings; the chill I felt as
Blake, who knew his hand the best, was summoned to inspect it; my
terror as he hesitated, with all the time that sing-song refrain going
over and over in my head, so loud that I was afraid that everyone in
the court would hear it; and then, far away and little, like a
wood-call, "Nancy made it----" And when Blake and Dundas identified the
writing, and O'Sullivan, the duke's own secretary, declared that not
only would he be willing to swear to his belief of the duke's hand, but
to the spirit of the document as well, I put my head on the back of
Danvers's chair to hide the tears which rolled down my cheeks, tears of
relief, but springing from a very different cause than the one
attributed for them.

There was more summing up and going back and forth, but the tension of
the trial was over for all except me and one other--one wide-eyed
little creature, sitting in her black gown, with Dickenson beside her,
on the other side of the court-room; a slender girlish figure before
whom my soul was on its knees.

I imagined her work, after she asked me to pray for her, upon that
awful night. I thought of fifty things on the second, as it seemed.
Visions came to me of Nancy dipping her head in the basin of water,
Nancy by the mail-bag in the early dawning before the offi