peeped in and caught sight of her
smiling face, his cold fear was melted.

"Here it is," she said, holding the letter out to him. Almost at one
stride he crossed the room and seized the letter. In the light of the
window he stood to read it, but it fluttered away from him the moment he
saw that there was a greeting in it for himself. He grabbed at it as if,
possessing life, it were trying to escape, and with a tight grip upon it
he said: "I knew she would write and I am sure she would have written
sooner if--if it had been necessary."

Mrs. Cranceford was laughing tearfully. "Oh, you simple-hearted man, so
trustful and so big of soul, what is your love not worth to a woman?"

"Simple-hearted? I am nothing of the sort. I try to be just and that's
all there is to it."

"No, Jim Taylor, there's more to it than that. A man may be just and his
sense of justice may demand a stricter accounting than you ask for."

"I guess you mean that I'm weak."

"Oh, no," she hastened to reply, "I don't mean that. The truth is I mean
that you give something that but few men have ever given--a love blind
enough and great enough to pardon a misdeed committed against yourself.
It is a rare charity."

He did not reply, but in the light of the window he stood, reading the
letter; and Mrs. Cranceford, sitting down, gave him the attention of a
motherly fondness, smiling upon him; and he, looking up from the letter
which a pleasurable excitement caused to shake in his hand, wondered
why any one should ever have charged this kindly matron with a cold lack
of sympathy. So interested in his affairs was she, so responsive to a
sentiment, though it might be clumsily spoken, so patient of his talk
and of his silence, that to him she was the Roman mother whom he had met
in making his way through a short-cut of Latin.

"Jim."

"Yes, ma'm."

"I want to ask you something. Have you talked much with Tom lately?"

"Not a great deal. He was over at my place the other night and we talked
of first one thing and then another, but I don't remember much of what
was said. Why do you want to know?"

"Can't you guess?"

"Don't know that I can. I was always rather slow at guessing. And don't
let me try; tell me what you mean?"

"You are as stupid as you are noble."

"What did you say, ma'm?" Again he had given his attention to the
letter.

"Oh, nothing."

"But you must have said something," he replied, pressing the letter into
narrow folds, and ap