know
your name. Do you think a lady like me would marry a colored man?"

"Who said anything about that?" asked the other, opening his eyes wide
in astonishment. "I couldn't marry, nohow, for I've got a wife and four
children."

Rachel felt ready to collapse. Was it possible that she had made a
mistake, and that this was not her unknown correspondent, Daniel?

"There is some mistake," she said, nervously. "Where is that letter you
thought I wrote? Have you got it with you?"

"Here it is, ma'am."

He handed Rachel a letter addressed in a small hand to Daniel Thompson.

She opened it and read:

"Mr. Thompson: I hear you are out of work. I may be able to give
you a job. Meet me at Washington Park, Tuesday afternoon, at four
o'clock. I shall wear a blue ribbon round my neck, and you may have
a red rose pinned to your coat. Otherwise I might not know you.

"RACHEL HARDING."

"Some villain has done this," said Rachel, wrathfully. "I never wrote
that letter."

"You didn't!" said Daniel, looking perplexed. "Who went and did it,
then?"

"I don't know, but I'd like to have him punished for it," said Rachel,
energetically.

"But you've got a blue ribbon," said Mr. Thompson. "I can't see through
that. That's just what the letter said."

"I suppose somebody wrote the letter that knew I wear blue. It's all a
mistake. You'd better go home."

"Then haven't you got a job for me?" asked Daniel, disappointed.

"No, I haven't," said Rachel, sharply.

She hurriedly untied the ribbon from her neck, and put it in her pocket.

"Don't talk to me any more!" she said, frowning. "You're a perfect
stranger. You have no right to speak to me."

"I guess the old woman ain't right in her head!" thought Daniel. "Must
be she's crazy!"

Poor Rachel! she felt more disconsolate than ever. There was no Daniel,
then. She had been basely imposed upon. There was no call for her to
sacrifice herself on the altar of matrimony. She ought to have been
glad, but she wasn't.

Half an hour later a drooping, disconsolate figure entered the house of
Timothy Harding.

"Why, what's the matter, Rachel?" asked Martha, who noticed her
woe-begone expression.

"I ain't long for this world," said Rachel, gloomily. "Death has marked
me for his own."

"Don't you feel well this afternoon, Rachel?"

"No; I feel as if life was a burden."

"You have tired yourself with walking, Rachel. You have been out twice
to-day."

"This is a vale o