him to understand that it had been
mere friendship of course from her point of view, and Harry indulgently
allowed her to think that he had hoped for more and was grieved but
consolable over the outcome.

They waxed a trifle sentimental at the parting, but when Harry was gone,
Hannah wrote a most touching letter to Lemuel Skinner which raised him to
the seventh heaven of delight, causing him to feel that he was treading
upon air as he walked the prosaic streets of his native town where he had
been going about during Hannah's absence like a lost spirit without a
guiding star.

"DEAR LEMUEL:" she wrote:--

"I am coming home. I wonder if you will be glad?

(Artful Hannah, as if she did not know!)

"It is very delightful in New York and I have been having a gay
time since I came, and everybody has been most pleasant, but--

"'Mid pleasures and palaces though we may roam,
Still, be it ever so humble, there's no place like home.
A charm from the skies seems to hallow it there,
Which, go through the world, you'll not meet with elsewhere.
Home, home, sweet home!
There's no place like home.

"That is a new song, Lemuel, that everybody here is singing. It is
written by a young American named John Howard Payne who is in
London now acting in a great playhouse. Everybody is wild over
this song. I'll sing it for you when I come home.

"I shall be at home in time for singing school next week, Lemuel.
I wonder if you'll come to see me at once and welcome me. You
cannot think how glad I shall be to get home again. It seems as
though I had been gone a year at least. Hoping to see you soon, I
remain

"Always your sincere friend,

"HANNAH HEATH."

And thus did Hannah make smooth her path before her, and very soon after
inditing this epistle she bade good-bye to New York and took her way home
resolved to waste no further time in chasing will-o-the-wisps.

When Lemuel received that letter he took a good look at himself in the
glass. More than seven years had he served for Hannah, and little hope had
he had of a final reward. He was older by ten years than she, and already
his face began to show it. He examined himself critically, and was pleased
to find with that light of hope in his eyes he was not so bad