But if he was going to marry Agnes Demming, she could gain nothing by enlightening him. They might as well be even. They had met too late, too late!

There was a gentle turning of the door knob, and Captain Wilmer entered, looking around in surprise, murmured an apology, and made a motion of backing out:

"Excuse me, sir, I really regret my intrusion, Mrs. St. John, but Grace sent me to find you. She has danced herself into a headache and is going home."

Rose bowed a quiet adieu and walked away as she had come, on the captain's arm, leaving Vaughn Edgeworth alone with the water drip and geraniums. There is never any counting to a certainty on what a woman will do.

Vaughn Edgeworth went home, also, shortly afterwards, prepared to make a night of it. Turning up the gas in his room he lit his cigar and searched among half a dozen papers on the table for a book he had been reading after dinner. But there was only Colburn's Arithmetic and a slate well covered with a neat row of sums.

"Herbert has been studying again by my drop-light and turning everything upside down. Where is my 'Strathmore ?' Ah! what have we here?"

Tossing aside the schoolbook a letter had fallen out. Close, fine writing in a woman's delicate hand on one side, faded but legible still, and on the other Coral's excuse for not sending her dear Herbert the valentine she had promised.

"Ethel's writing-her name at the bottom! Good God, what is it?"

He read it through, turning white as the snowy vest of his rich evening suit. It ran thus:

"To you, Rose, my truest, best loved friend, I commit these letters for safe keeping. They are, as you will see, Alfred's letters to me, written in the floodtide of our unfortunate attachment. I cannot find it in my heart to destroy them, and I wish you to guard them safely and return them to him after I am dead. Knowing my recovery impossible, you will easily understand that, having escaped detection so far, I wish to escape it to the end. Above all, I charge you never to let these letters come to the eyes of my brother Vaughn, your husband. My name, you perceive, is not mentioned at all; and it would take much to convince him they were not

written to you. Come and see me and let me hear the promise from your lips.

"ETHEL AVERY."

"Good God!" he exclaimed, aloud, wiping the cold sweat from his face with a delicate perfumed handkerchief; "here then is the solution of all this dreadful mystery. Ethel, my pure, sweet little sister! ah, I see it all now, and Rose was innocent-my love, my wife. But where in the name of wonder did Herbert get this letter ?"

He turned it over helplessly, vexed and puzzled over the comical characters printed on the back.

"A child's note, evidently, and, I should judge, no other than a child could read it. 'Coral St. John'-that is decently legible; clueless labyrinth! I will go and wake Herbert."

So, letter in hand, he went into the adjoining room, where the moon was shining across the white bed, full in the face of the sleeping boy, who lay breathing quietly as an infant, with a smile around his full red mouth like one in a pleasant dream.

Waking him was the work of time; but, after half a dozen gentle shakes, he sat upright in bed rubbing open his eyes.

"Uncle Vaughn! Is it you? I believe I was dreaming."

"Very likely you were, my boy. But never mind dreaming just now. I want you to tell me where you got this letter."

Herbert took it, turning it slowly over in his hand.

"That? O, that is Coral's letter." "Coral who?"

"Why, don't you see, sir? little Coral St. John, up at the St. Nicholas. She and I have a sort of skating, dancing acquaintance. I've seen her sometimes in the park walking with her maid. She is a jolly little team-a regular brick; and you ought to see her mother, sir, she is like that angel there in the picture." "And her father?"

"I do not know that she has one, sir. I never heard her speak of him. But isn't this my mother's name on the back of this letter? -I had not noticed it before."

"Perhaps; but never mind that," said Uncle Vaughn, tucking the letter safely away in his pocket; "you can finish that dream of yours now, my boy; but draw down your curtains, it is not good for you to sleep with the full moon shining in your face."

Then he went back to his own room and

sat down to smoke, with a fierce wonder in his eyes.

"I have been worse than an idiot-a brute," was one of the mental compliments he paid himself. "It is hardly probable Rose has married St. John, or even procured a divorce from me at all. But that child-there is a mystery! If God ever sends daylight again I will know the truth."

God did send the daylight in due season, but Vaughn Edgeworth did not go out that day nor the next, nor for many weary weeks. And one day, when Rose was dining with the Wilmers, Grace excused her father's absence from the table by remarking:

"You really must excuse father, to-day, my dear. He has his hands unusually full, and hardly takes time to eat or sleep. By the way did you hear about that splendid Mr. Edgeworth, Miss Demming's lover? He is dreadfully ill at that great house of his on Fifth Avenue. Typhoid, I believe."

Just at that instant Doctor Wilmer passed through the hall and hung up hat and coat. Rose listened intently and heard him go up stairs to his own little "den," as Grace called it. Two minutes afterwards Rose stood at his side very like a lily as to color.

The doctor was standing back to the fire eating an apple.

"Ah, Mrs. St. John, glad to see you, my dear. Gracie said you were coming. Sorry I could not be at home to enjoy your company-and my dinner. Have had nothing but lunches for a week. Terrible sickly." "Doctor," she faltered, "is Mr. Edgeworth very sick ?"

"Very sick? well, I should rather think so. Old-fashioned typhus, and runs away up among the nineties."

"Indeed, sir; is he likely to get up in time for the wedding?"

"Wedding! whose wedding? No, poor fellow, he isn't likely to get up at all, alive.” "But people say he is going to marry Agnes Demming early in the spring."

"He marry! Vaughn Edgeworth marry Agnes-anybody! you dear little goose, you must not believe what people say! I never

do. That Miss Demming is engaged to a sea

captain-a widower, who was the husband of Mr. Edgeworth's sister, till she died of consumption three years ago."

"But, Doctor Wilmer, are you sure?"

"To a dead certainty, dear. Vaughn Edgeworth has a wife living whom he still loves distractedly. They became estranged, it seems, by the deucedest misunderstanding I ever did hear of, and she is, I believe, married again. Edgeworth told me part of it. Worrying after her has made him ill. Child, you are faint."

"No; at least, not very," the white lips stammered; then desperately, "O doctor! my heart is breaking. I am not Rose St. John, but Rose Edgeworth-his, Vaughn's wife-and if he dies I shall die too."

"The devil!" exclaimed the staring little man, tossing his apple-core into the grate; "then you are the Rose he raves about night and day! And the little girl-"

"Is our child-his and mine-born a few months after our separation. But I must go to him, immediately, may I not?"

"Go to him? I should think you might. It will be the saving of his life, like enough. Get on your shawl and I'll take you there myself."

So ere the twilight fell, Rose sat by the sick bed dropping silent tears on the feeble hands and pain-drawn forehead. Her noiseless entrance had not broken his deathlike sleep, but hours afterwards he opened his eyes to see hers, sweetly pitiful, looking fondly into his.

Heavenly Father, is this some

"Rose! mocking dream ?"

Then she drew his head gently up to her bosom and her soft red lips caressed his pallid cheek.

"Dear love, it is no dream, I am your wife; yours only. O Vaughn, we cannot live without you-I and Coral-do not die!"

"Die! indeed; and who ever knew a patient of mine to die?" interposed the doctor, mopping his face with an immense silk handkerchief.

And Vaughn Edgeworth recovered. What sensible man would not, under those circumstances?

Ir was toward the last of March. We were making maple sugar over in the "Bradbury lot." It was "court week," and father had gone. He and old Deacon Stetson had been having a little difficulty about the line fence; the deacon wouldn't build his half, and father was trying to make him. So Will, and Tom, and I were in the business alone. There had been an excellent run of sap, as there always is when the mornings are cold and frosty and the days warm. We had four large kettles, hung on the "lug-pole" over our stone-arch, and kept them boiling from daylight till dark.

Some folks talk as if it were nothing but fun to make sap-sugar. That's all nonsense! It's the very hardest kind of work. We used to get so tired with lugging sap through the soft snow, cutting wood, and standing over the smoky, steaming fires, that we could scarcely get to the house when night came. We enjoyed it though, for the rewards were sweet, and further up the ridge the Edwards boys were making too; so we used to halloo back and forth. We did a little the biggest business, I think, though they were always bragging how much they had boiled down the day before.

We had driven hard all the week, and now night was coming on, with two barrels of sap still on hand. It was Saturday night, too, and it would all sour before Monday. Father had left word to get it all "turned in "Saturday night, and we had done our best, but it had been an unusually heavy run. About six o'clock the Edwards boys came down past us, drawing their syrup on a sled. They had got theirs done early, and laughed a little at the fix we were in.

Tom ran off after them; he was glad to have company; it was nearly a mile to the house, and all the way through the woods; and he was younger than Will and I. So we staid to finish boiling. The wood was cut; all we had to do was to tend the four kettles. It came on dark, and by-and-by grew very dark, for it was cloudy. How bright the fire looked, while all around it seemed a black wall. We piled in the wood; and now and then we would throw a blazing brand off into the darkness, to keep off, as Will said, the "lucivees." They call the Canada Lynx a lucivee. There were lots of them about; we didn't get sight of them very often, but saw by the track mornings where they had come up pretty near the fire the night before, to see us. We were not much afraid of them, though, for they rarely touch any one, for all they are such fierce-looking chaps. But as it grew late, and was so very dark, we began to feel more scary than usual.

There was a story going the rounds just then of a catamount's being in the vicinity, that leaped twenty-five feet from tree to tree. Everybody phooed at it; but it is one thing to phoo at such a story, and quite another to keep it out of your mind when you're off in the night!

It had got to be about eleven o'clock, I think; we had just turned the last of the cold sap into the "heater," when all at once there came a most unearthly scream, a long lonely screech, so near and startling that we almost jumped into the kettles.

"O! it's that catamount!" whispered Will; and ere he could say it, there came another cry, seemingly from the treetops overhead. "He's watching us! he'll spring down! Let's

"Let's put it all in somehow," said Will. "But it will take till midnight!" exclaimed Tom, looking wistfully after the Edwardses.

"Let it take till midnight then," replied Will. "But, look here, Tom, you'd better go over and do the chores; you can go along with the Edwards boys, and tell them, if they ask you, that we are going to finish ours anyhow."

breathlessly. And together we crouched on the further side of the arch, almost into the fire, amid the steam-clouds which gushed up from the boiling syrup.

Screech after screech followed, as we lay there trembling, expecting every moment to see the terrible form of the catamount shoot down from the dark treetops. I don't know how long we endured it, but it seemed an age. We began to get provoked in our suspense.

"By gracious, Jed!" exclaimed Will, at last. "Swallowed or not, I'll not lie here. I'm going to have a look at him."

Some long poles were within reach, and a plenty of birch bark, such as we kindled the fires with. Will lighted a piece, and fixing it on the end of a pole, thrust it slowly upward. Slowly it rose, lighting up the branches. And lo! upon the limb of a great maple, standing near, stood a little screech-owl! one of the genuine shrieking sort. Any one who has ever heard one will not wonder that we mistook it for something bigger.

i don't know whether we felt more glad or mad; but we certainly felt relieved. He bristled up at the torch, and shrieked again. "O, that's played out!" cried Will. "Your little game's up now. You've had your day, now it's our turn. Here, Jed, take the torch and hold it before his eyes; the light bothers him. Blind him with it. I'll take another pole and knock him down."

I put the torch up within a few feet of him, and Will gave him a whack on his great round head that brought him tumbling down. "Little scamp!" cried Will. "Chuck him under the kettles."

I caught him up, as he lay fluttering on the snow, but he instantly set his sharp talons into the palm of my hand. I had on a thick sheepskin mitten, but they went right through that, and scratched my hand pretty deep. I got my hand out of the mitten; he held on to it, however, in spite of all the choking I could give him. I didn't want to burn up my mitten, and while we were trying to get it out of his claws, it occurred to us to keep him a while. So "getting the mitten "proved his salvation, as it has many a chap's before him.

I tied my old pocket-handkerchief over his head; then we tied his legs, and laid him down to wait our motions. We didn't hear any more catamounts that night! While we were fooling with him, the kettles "went over" and put out the fire. We never finished boiling till three o'clock in the morning, and it was an hour later when we got to the house. Mother had worried and worried; she and Tom were just starting off after us. The owl explained the delay. We threw him into the woodhouse chamber to pass the remainder of the night, and get over his headache as best he might. We didn't think him entitled to much clemency or consideration. I think we didn't get up very early Sunday morning.

During the day the Edwards boys came in to hear how we came out with our night job. Their older brother Addison, then at home on a vacation, came with them. Of course, we told them of the owl, omitting the part behind the kettles. They wanted to see him, so we brought him down and took the handkerchief off his head, at which he rolled his great yellow eyes around in much amazement. "O ho!" said Addison; 66 a little Strix, flammea." I think he said flammea. I know 'twas Strix, for after that we always called him "Little Strix the Screecher."

All through the spring we kept him in that old chamber a prisoner. It was a great place for mice, and he was a great mouser in his way; so he managed to pick up a very fair living, probably. We made no use of the chamber; and after the first few days nobody went near him, or ever troubled themselves about his wants. If he had starved nobody would have cared. He had no friends; he didn't be in right. Rain and snow used to beat through the roof, and if he found any necessity for drink he took what came through the cracks, and made much of it.

He didn't allow us to entirely forget him, however; for such hootings and dismal cries as used occasionally to proceed from his lodgings, would have got the place the name of being haunted, from any one not in the secret.

After the warm weather began, in June, we opened the window, thus giving him liberty to go or stay. He chose to stay; he had got wonted to the place and liked it. His method of life was to mope all day under the eaves, in the darkest corner, and sally out nights for food. Just after nightfall we would hear him begin to hoot and screech, and in a few minutes he would make his appearance on the window sill, roll his eyes, flap his wings, and give a few extra hoots. After these preliminaries he would launch out, and flit in noiseless circles around the buildings, catching a bat or two, by way of putting an edge to his appetite, then start off on a regular hunt.

On one or two occasions we gave him a big dinner of mice and "chipmunks." Instead of tearing them in pieces, and eating in a sensible way, like a hawk or a crow, he just opened his big mouth and gobbled them down at one gulp. But he always fared the worse for such bolting, for an hour or so after he would have a sick stomach, and then up would come all the skins and bones in little