t attracted him, to see how
clear and deep it was, like a still pool in a shaded glen. It was years
since Stephen Wainwright had been so close to a young girl's soul, and,
to do him justice, he felt that he was on holy ground.

When at last he left her, he had made up his mind that he would try an
experiment. He would help this child out of the quagmire of poverty, and
give her, in a small way, a chance. The question was, how to do it. He
remained at Ellerby, made acquaintances, and asked questions. He
pretended this, and pretended that. Finally, after some consideration,
he woke up the old library association, reopened the building, and put
in Honor as librarian, at a salary of two hundred dollars a year. To
account for this, he was obliged, of course, to be much interested in
Ellerby; his talk was that the place must eventually become a summer
resort, and that money could be very well invested there. He therefore
invested it. Discovering, among other things, pink marble on wild land
belonging to the Colonel, he bought a whole hillside, and promptly paid
for it. To balance this, he also bought half a mile of sulphur springs
on the other side of the valley (the land comically cheap), and spoke of
erecting a hotel there. The whole of Ellerby awoke, talked, and
rejoiced; no one dreamed that the dark eyes of one young girl had
effected it all.

Honor herself remained entirely unconscious. She was so openly happy
over the library that Wainwright felt himself already repaid. "It might
stand against some of my omissions," he said to himself.

One thing detained him where he was; then another. He could not buy
property without paying some attention to it, and he did not choose to
send for his man of business. He staid on, therefore, all summer. And he
sent books to the library now and then during the winter that
followed--packages which the librarian, of course, was obliged to
acknowledge, answering at the same time the questions of the letters
which accompanied them. Stephen's letters were always formal; they might
have been nailed up on the walls of the library for all comers to read.
He amused himself, however, not a little over the carefully written,
painstaking answers, in which the librarian remained "with great
respect" his "obliged servant, Honor Dooris."

The second summer began, and he was again among the mountains; but he
should leave at the end of the month, he said. In the mean time it had
come about that he w