rous! so unfair!" I said, still pressing my hands
tightly over my eyes. "How can I ever forgive you?"

With softer murmur than the last he repeated the words,

"'Tis sweet to let the pardoned in."

"Astounding presumption that!" I said, now giving him the benefit of
my full gaze--"to speak of pardon before making a confession of
your guilt! But before I give you time even for that, the remaining
mysteries which still hang around your tale of woe shall be cleared
up. Please to inform the court how the original of your purloined
sketch could have been the object of years of devotion, when it has
been only four weeks to-day since you laid your mortal eyes on her?"

"Ah! you may well say mortal; but you know the soul too has its visual
organs. I saw and loved and worshiped my ideal in those years, and
sought her too--how unceasingly!--and I said,

Only for the real will I with the ideal part:
Another shall not even tempt my heart.

When I saw her just four weeks since, I knew her,

And my heart responded as, with unseen wings,
An angel touched its unswept strings,
And whispers in its song,
Where hast thou strayed so long?"

But the avenging demon of curiosity was not to be exorcised by
sentimental evasion: "Those letters, sir, of which you spoke, _they_
must have been of a real, tangible form--not a part of the mythical
phantasmagoria of your idealistic vision."

He laughed as a light-hearted child would, but knitted his brow with
a perplexed air as he said, "Why don't the British government send
a woman to find the source of the Nile? I must thank your
unsophisticated brother's pride in his sister's epistolary
accomplishments for my privilege of perusal. What next?"

I thought a moment. Before, I had fifty other queries to propound, but
now as I looked into the glowing anthracite before me which gave us
those pleasant Reveries, they very naturally all resolved themselves
into explained mysteries without his aid.

He insists that the "prophetic little yes or no" never came.

Upon my honor, dear reader, as a confidante, I still think it the
most unfair procedure which ever "disgraced the annals of civilized
warfare;" but I shall have abundant opportunity for revenge, for we
are to make the journey of life together.

GLIMPSES OF JOHN CHINAMAN.

When John Marshall picked up the first golden nugget in California,
a call was sounded for the gathering of an immense gold-seeking
arm