"Now," cried Barclay, as he stood looking at the litter, "now, Molly, here's what I want you to do: Burn it up—burn it up," he cried. "It has burned the joy out of your life, Molly—burn it up! I have fought it all out to-day on the river—but I can't quite do that. Burn it up—for God's sake, Molly, burn it up."
When the white ashes had risen up the chimney, he put on another log. "This is our last extravagance for some time, girls—but we'll celebrate to-night," he cried. "You haven't a little elderberry wine, have you, mother?" he asked. "Riley says that's the stuff for little boys with curvature of the spine—and I'll tell you it put several kinks in mine to watch that burn."
And so they sat for an hour talking of old times while the fire burned. But Molly Brownwell's mind was not in the performance that John Barclay had staged. She could see nothing but the package lying on her cloak in the girl's room upstairs. So she rose to go early, and the circle broke when she left it. She and Jeanette left John standing with his arms about his mother, patting her back while she wept.
As she closed the door of Jeanette's room behind her, Molly Brownwell knew that she must speak. "Jeanette," she said, "I don't know just how to say it, dear; but, I stole those—I mean what is in that package—I took it and Neal doesn't know I have it. It's for you," she cried, as she broke the string that tied it, and tore off the wrapping.
The girl stared at her and asked: "Why, Aunt Molly—what is it? I don't understand."
The woman in pulling her wrap from the chair, tumbled the letters to the floor. She slipped into her cloak and kissed the bewildered girl, and said as she stood in the doorway: "There they are, my dear—they are yours; do what you please with them."
She hurried down the stairs, and finding John sitting alone before the fire in the sitting room, would have bidden him good night as she passed through the room, but he stopped her.
"There is one thing more, Molly," he said, as he motioned to a chair.
"Yes," she answered, "I wondered if you had forgotten it!"
He worried the fire, and renewed the blaze, before he spoke. "What about Neal—how does he feel?"