THE LIAR DETECTED.
"I DIDN'T tell you the whole of my story last night," said Frank, as the next morning, Ellen, pale and sad, seated herself in the window to study her lesson. "Mr. Taylor is a real good teacher, though he is awfully strict. As soon as he found his pencil just where he had left it, he thought, I suppose, that he had suspected me without cause, or rather because I was silly enough to blush upon being asked a simple question.
"He took occasion to give the whole school a lecture on circumstantial evidence, and proved, by some good anecdotes, how unsafe a mode of judging it was. Why, some men have been hanged, being judged by circumstantial evidence; and afterwards they were found to be innocent. When he had done, he alluded to the pencil again, and said he had known some persons with such a tender conscience that the simple fact of their being questioned would cause them to show all the signs of guilt. I guess I blushed some then; for all the scholars smiled as they looked at me, and Mr. Taylor looked in my face and smiled too. So you see, I knew just how to pity you last night. But, of course, Mary is glad to give you paper and pens, too, whenever you want them."
"Oh, how I wish he would never speak another word about it!" thought Ellen, almost ready to cry again.
"Mary is a dear, good sister!" cried Frank, gayly, determined, if possible, to win a smile from his cousin before he left her.
"So she is!" was the earnest response. "She is just as kind to me as if she were my sister, too. But I must study my lesson now."
It took but one day for a letter from P— to reach the city, and one day for an answer to be returned; so that, when at the close of the third day, Ellen had received neither answer nor money, her anxiety and restlessness were almost more than she could endure. Her feverish appearance attracted the attention of her uncle. He called her to him to feel her pulse, ordered her to take a cup of weak tea and go to bed.
The next morning, however, all was explained. On his way to visit his first patient, he called at the post office and took out a letter to his wife from her brother-in-law, Mr. Saunders. There was something peculiar in the appearance of the envelope, and he hastily tore it open, hoping it enclosed a note for Ellen, which would bring back her old gayety: for the doctor was almost as much vexed as his wife at the sad change in their young guest.
The clerk who had noticed the postmark, and was interested in the result, saw the doctor change color and, after a brief glance at an enclosed paper, shut his lips firmly together, and leave the store.
When he was in his sulky, the doctor unfolded the letter again, when his eye fell upon a pencilled memorandum, "Abercrombie's Mental Philosophy, page 50, etc., etc."