otherwise, she could not well refuse so reasonable a request. So when the doctor descended from the sick-room she asked him into the parlour, where Mr. Weatherill was. Both gentlemen bowed

slightly.

"Do you think her worse, doctor, for the excitement?" asked Mr. Weatherill, eagerly.

"No, I do not," he replied coldly. Then he turned and addressed himself to Mrs. Brownslow. "I believe she is better. A powerful stimulant-something to quicken, energise the vital powers, was what was needed, and that has been supplied. If no reaction takes place, I think we shall save her yet."

"I am so thankful," Mary said. "Did you see Doctor Moore?" "He was quite unable to arrange for a consultation to-day, and now I doubt whether it is necessary. But I shall ride over again this evening, and then I shall know better. My hopes are very strong." "Sir," he said, suddenly turning and addressing Mr. Weatherill, "You came, as I hope, just in time to save your wife's life, a very valuable life, as any one would tell you, here, or for miles around. You will doubtless recollect in future that her constitution is not one that will stand painful shocks and harsh treatment."

"Sir," replied Edward, "I am more keenly sensible both of my wife's goodness and of my own wrong-doing, than any stranger can possibly be."

"Pardon me, Mr. Weatherill," replied the doctor, colouring, and conscious that his 'attack had been hardly befitting a gentleman, and touched by the words and manner of the answer-"I trust she will long be spared to you, and you to her. Pray pardon me. Good-morning. Good-morning Mrs. Brownslow," and he hastily quitted the cottage.

As he was leaving by the gate into the road, Mr. Hensler was seen approaching, through the other gate from his garden. Mary glanced towards Edward. He was standing with his lips closely compressed, and on his face was such an expression as might be on that of a man, keenly sensitive to pain, submitting himself a second time to the surgeon's hands.

"I shall ask Mr. Hensler into the other room," said Mary.

"Thank you; no," replied Edward, "let me have it over." Bat Mr. Hensler was in haste, and would not enter. It was his second call that morning, the purpose now being to hear the doctor's opinion.

When he was gone Edward walked into the garden. It had the melancholy look of late autumn, and was scarcely in its accustomed order; for the past few days the fallen leaves had not been swept from the paths. The garden on one side adjoined the road, and

was shielded from it by a high, thick hazel hedge, under which a path lay. As Edward was slowly pacing down this path, he heard voices on the other side.

"So comfortably settled," some one was saying. "And doing so much good, and so respected and loved by everybody! I think it a great pity he ever came back."

"So do I, indeed," another voice life he'll lead her, I'll be bound.

replied; "and a pretty A fine temper a man

must have as could not live happy with such a wife as that! Went off to suit himself-came back to suit himself! I'm sorry for her, that's what I am."

So much came to Edward's ears as he traversed the path; he waited to hear no more, but turned quickly towards the house and went up to his wife's room. He entered softly, and finding her asleep and alone, sat down near the foot of the bed. Was it true what those women had said? Would it have been better-more for her happiness-if he had not come? After so leaving her had he any right to return-to intrude himself into a life which had become so full, so beautiful, in his absence? Old habits were strong; might he not again cause her trial and pain? Had he not better

make over to her the rest of his property, leave Alice with her, and go away and begin life anew in the childless widowhood to which he had doomed her? It might be happier for them; and for himself-it befitted his deserts better than did a happy, prosperous home. He would ask her when she awoke.

But when, a few minutes afterwards, she awakened with a glad smile, and whispered, "How nice it is to wake and find you near me," he felt that so to speak would be an unkindness and an unreality that, indeed, there had been somewhat of pride and wilfulness in the very indulgence of such thoughts. Less humbling might be a self-inflicted banishment in loneliness and poverty, than meeting censure which he must own as merited, and accepting a free restoration of blessings, a full forgiveness, a return of domestic joys, of which he must ever feel so utterly undeserving. But what right had he to refuse to be humbled? Pride had ruled his will too long.

So he rose and sat beside his wife, and talked a very little and in gentlest tones, and refrained from any words of self-reproach which, if a relief to himself, were a pain to her. And he administered medicine and nourishment, and smoothed her pillow, and in this quiet tendance his mind grew calmer, and presently there came to his lips and eyes, for the first time, his own peculiar smile-such a smile as had won her heart so many years ago.

As in the afternoon Clarissa lay, half waking and half sleeping, she began to wonder, though without much force of curiosity, by

what means that letter, the loss of which had wrought her so much sorrow, and the recovery of which had brought so much joy, could have been detained so long, yet have safely reached its destination at last. And when in the evening Edward was again seated beside her, she asked how it was, and he told her all that he knew; for the full details, as recorded here, were not communicated by the note of explanation and apology which accompanied the restored letter on its third passage across the Atlantic.

In true accordance with the statement made to Mr. Wea therill when he wrote to New York making inquiries, the letter, in company with another, had been duly forwarded. Both letters had safely reached England, and the one of no consequence whatever had been rightly received, while this, so important, had gone astray. By a culpable Post-office negligence it had been delivered to E. Weathered, Esq., a gentleman residing in the manor house of Kingslorton, a village situated some eight miles from Kingsport, and in the same county.

It so happened t hat, with several other missives, it reached the hands of Mr. Weathered on the morning of his eldest daughter's marriage, only a short time before the guests would be arriving. Hastily opening the envelope, he saw at the first glance that this letter was not addressed to himself. Looking at the direction, he discovered the mistake, also that it had been forwarded from New York, and he instantly understood the situation. Though enjoying no personal association with Mr. Weatherill, he had some knowledge of the firm to which he belonged, was aware that the junior partner annually visited the States, and happened to know of his recent return. The letter plainly was from Mrs. Weatherill, reforwarded as having arrived after he had sailed for home. He would send it on to-morrow with a note of explanation and apology. Such a post-office blunder as that was really inexcusable ! Then he locked the letter in a drawer of his escritoire; and in the excitements, pleasurable, and painful, of the morning, the festivities of the evening, the puttings in order and sense of vacancy on the morrow, the letter was wholly forgotten, and the matter passed entirely from his memory.

Fully six weeks after, on opening the drawer to put in some papers, he saw the letter, and stood for a few moments in annoyance and irresolution. What should he do? It would be really ridiculous to forward it now, and it could be of no consequence ; Mr. Weatherill had been at home for weeks; all the news the letter contained must have been told long ago. The most sensible thing now would be to burn it. Had there been a fire burning in the grate most likely the letter would have been then consumed; but there was not. So it was left just where it was, the papers

put in, the drawer locked, and the matter again forgotten-forgotten for nearly seven years-during which time alterations in the house had been planned and executed, and the escritoire had been relegated to a lumber-attic, and a new and more fashionable piece of furniture had taken its place in the dining-room.

So there, locked away in the attic, the letter had lain through the years which Edward, in his exile across the sea, had filled with eager, restless activities and bitter thoughts, and Clarissa, in her English home, with patient endurance and gentle charities; and beyond all probability did it seem that it should ever emerge, reach its long-delayed destination, and again make one those divided lives. Yet so it was to be; for things the most unlikely do come to pass.

In the spring of this year Mr. Weathered was attacked by serious illness, which, as the months went on, grew increasingly severe. During the long nights of sleeplessness with which he was tried, his mind often wandered back over the past years of his life; many circumstances, long forgotten and sometimes very trivial, recurring to memory in connection with the more important events reviewed. One night it happened that his thoughts turned to the time of his daughter's marriage, led in that direction, doubtless, by a visit she had on that day paid to him with her three children; and going over the various events of the day, there came a remembrance of that wrongly - delivered letter, received and opened.

Had he destroyed it? He could not recollect that he ever had done so; he believed it must be still in the old escritoire in the garret. He ought not to have forgotten to forward it, not that it could have been of any consequence; it was a very, very small negligence, compared with many of the things he had left undone in his past life. But, if not forwarded, it ought to have been destroyed; it was not fair to leave other people's private letters exposed to the chances of idle curiosity. When he was better he would seek for and burn it. Then his thoughts went to Mr. Weatherill. A strange thing his throwing up a good business and deserting his wife in the sudden way he did. But people said he was a peculiar man-good business abilities, strict integrity, public spirit, but an untoward temper-a difficult man to dealwith.

Then he slept, but in an hour awoke again, the thought of Mr. Weatherill and the retained letter still present to his mind; and the startling idea presenting itself-Why not obtain the address and forward it now? Almost angrily he tried to put aside the suggestion. He should certainly do nothing of the kind: it would be too absurd; indeed, under the circumstances, in wretchedly bad

taste; and he tried to think of something else. Yet, throughout the night, waking or sleeping, the idea of that letter, under some form or other, continued to haunt the invalid with an unaccountable, wearying persistency forcing itself on the reluctant mind—a kind of experience not unfamiliar to the sick and the jaded.

Nor when the day returned could he wholly dismiss the matter. Still with a strange insistency the idea would recur, Why not restore the letter even now? This is a neglect not wholly too late to remedy. And before the day was over, although with the feeling that he was yielding rather to a morbid impressionability, the result of illness, than to the dictates of a healthy conscientiousness, he ended the importunity by compliance.

The key of the old escritoire was still on his ring, and he had desired one of his daughters to bring down to his room the drawer in which he believed the letter to be. There beneath the papers, put in so long ago, the letter lay, in the opened envelope, just where it had been placed that morning.

Then he asked for writing materials, and penned the following note :

"DEAR SIR, The enclosed letter, directed to you, was delivered at my house-how many years ago the postmark will testify-and was inadvertently opened by myself. The mistake being instantly perceived, it was returned unread to the envelope, with the full intention of forwarding to you with explanation and apology. Unfortunately the matter passed from my memory, and the letter has from that day to this remained locked in a drawer of my writingdesk.

"The fact of its having reached my hand on the morning of my daughter's marriage may prove, I trust, some apology for the original negligence.

"Probably an apology is at least equally needed, and more difficult to find, for now troubling you with what must, in all probability, have years ago lost all interest and value; and that in acting on the proverb, Better late than never,' I am only proving its want of universal applicability.

"I remain, dear sir, yours truly,

"EDWIN WEATHERED.”

By a trusted messenger the letter was sent to Kingsport to the hands of Mr. Weatherill's business agents, and by them directed and posted.

When the brief note written by Edward, simply acknowledging the receipt of the returned letter, reached Kingslorten Mr. Weathered was too ill to be troubled with any such communications, and on the day of his landing in England Mr. Weathered died. A