'Well,' continued he, 'that night I saw her.'

'I remember,' said Ethel, 'that Mr. Wilmot told us you knew at once what he was come to tell you.'

'It was soon after I was in bed, the lights were out, and I do not think I was asleep, when she was by me—not the plump rosy thing she used to be, but tall and white, her hair short and waving back, her eyes—oh! so sad and wistful, but glad too—and her hands held out—and she said, "Turn you to the stronghold, ye prisoners of hope. O Leonard, dear, it does not hurt."'

'It was the last thing she did say.'

'Yes, so Ave's letter said. And observe, one o'clock in Indiana is half-past nine with us. Then her hair—I wrote to ask, for you know it used to be in long curls, but it had been cut short, like what I saw. Surely, surely, it was the dear loving spirit allowed to show itself to me before going quite away to her home!'

'And you have seen her again?'

'Just now'—his voice was even lower than before—'since it grew dark, as I sat there. I had left off reading, and had been thinking, when there she was, all white but not wistful now; "Leonard, dear," she said, "it has not hurt;" and then, "He brought me forth, He brought me forth even to a place of liberty, because He had a favour unto me."'

'O, Leonard, it must have made you very happy.'

'I am very thankful for it,' he said. Then after a pause, 'You will not speak of it—you will not tell me to think it the action of my own mind upon itself.'

'I can only believe it a great blessing come to comfort you and cheer you,' said Ethel: 'cheer you as with the robin-note, as papa called it, that sung all through the worst of times! Leonard, I am afraid you will think it unkind of me to have withheld it so long, but papa told me you could not yet bear to hear of Minna. I have her last present for you in charge—the slippers she was working for that eighteenth birthday of yours. She would go on, and we never knew whether she fully understood your danger; it was always "they could not hurt you," and at last, when they were finished, and I had to make her understand that you could not have them, she only looked up to me and said, "Please keep them, and give them to him when he comes home." She never doubted, first or last.'