"And I think, dear," he hesitatingly proceeded, "we would better not speak of this. It will be one sacred little secret that you and your old uncle will keep. As no more letters will be found on the stairs, the whole thing will be soon forgotten."
"Oh yes, uncle," replied I; "of course it would be terrible to tell. It isn't our secret, you know; it is dear Esther Wynn's."
I do not know why it was that I locked up those four letters of Esther Wynn's and did not look at them for many months. I felt very guilty in keeping them; but a power I could not resist seemed to paralyze my very hand when I thought of opening the box in which they were. At last, long after I had left Uncle Jo's house, I took them out one day, and in the quiet and warmth of a summer noon I copied them slowly, carefully, word for word. Then I hid the originals in my bosom, and walked alone, without telling any one whither I was going, to a wild spot I knew several miles away, where a little mountain stream came foaming and dashing down through a narrow gorge to empty itself into our broad and placid river. I sat down on a mossy granite boulder, and slowly tore the letters into minutest fragments. One by one I tossed the white and tiny shreds into the swift water, and watched them as far as I could see them. The brook lifted them and tossed them over and over, lodged them in mossy crevices, or on tree roots, then swept them all up and whirled them away in dark depths of the current from which they would never more come to the surface. It was a place which Esther would have loved, and I wondered, as I sat there hour after hour, whether it were really improbable, that she knew just then what I was doing for her. I wondered, also, as I often before had wondered, if it might not have been by Esther's will that the sacred hoard of letters, which had lain undiscovered for so many years, should fall at last into the hands of my tender and chivalrous Uncle Jo. It was certainly a strange thing that on the stormy night which I have described, when we were discussing what should be done with the letters, both Uncle Jo and I at the same instant should have fancied we heard the words "Burn, burn!"
The following letter is the earliest one which I copied. It is the one which Robert found so late at night and brought to us in the library:--
"FRIDAY EVENING.
"SWEETEST:--It is very light in my room to-night. The full moon and the thought of you! I see to write, but you would forbid me--you who would see only the moonlight, and not the other. Oh, my darling! my darling!
"I have been all day in fields and on edges of woods. I have never seen just such a day: a June sun, and a September wind; clover and butter-cups under foot, and a sparkling October sky overhead. I think the earth enjoyed it as a sort of masquerading frolic. The breeze was so strong that it took the butterflies half off their air-legs, and they fairly reeled about in the sun. As for me, I sat here and there, on hillocks and stones, among ferns, and white cornels, and honey-bees, and bobolinks. I was the only still thing in the fields. I waited so long in each spot, that it was like being transplanted when I moved myself to the north or the south. And I discovered a few things in each country in which I lived. For one thing, I observed that the little busy bee is not busy all the while; that he does a great amount of aimless, idle snuffing and tasting of all sorts of things besides flowers; especially he indulges in a running accompaniment of gymnastics among the grass-stalks, which cannot possibly have anything to do with honey. I watched one fellow to-day through a series of positive trapeze movements from top to bottom and bottom to top of a grass-tangle. When he got through he shook himself, and smoothed off his legs exactly as the circus-men do. Then he took a long pull at a clover well.
"Ah, the clover! Dearest! you should have seen how it swung to-day. The stupidest person in the world could not have helped thinking that it kept time to invisible band-playing, and was trying to catch hold of the buttercups. I lay down at full length and looked off through the stems, and then I saw for the first time how close they were, and that they constantly swayed and touched, and sometimes locked fast together for a second. Stately as a minuet it looked, but joyous and loving as the wildest waltz I ever danced in your arms, my darling. Oh, how dare we presume to be so sure that the flowers are not glad as we are glad! On such a day as to-day I never doubt it; and I picked one as reverently and hesitatingly as I would ask the Queen of the Fairies home to tea if I met her in a wood.
"Laughing, are you, darling? Yes, I know it. Poor soul! You cannot help being a man, I suppose. Nor would I have you help it, my great, strong, glorious one! How I adore the things which you do, which I could not do. Oh, my sweet master! Never fear that I do you less reverence than I should. All the same, I lie back on my ferny hillock, and look you in the eye, and ask you what you think would become of you if you had no little one of my kind to bring you honey! And when I say this--you--ah, my darling, now there are tears in my eyes, and the moonlight grows dim. I cannot bear the thinking what you would do when I said those words! Good-night! Perhaps in my sleep I will say them again, and you will be there to answer. In the morning I shall write out for you to-day's clover song.
"YOUR OWN."