end of the wood below your garden. Follow the path,
and you will find me waiting for you. The matter is of such
importance that I make no apologies for suggesting this romantic
proceeding!--With love, yours affectionately,

"J. HERIOT WALKINGSHAW.

"P.S.--Don't say a word to one of your family. Secrecy is
absolutely essential."

Ellen stood lost in perplexity. Rumors had reached her of Mr.
Walkingshaw's recent eccentricity. The request was entirely out of
keeping with all her previous acquaintance with him; that point of
exclamation after "romantic proceeding" struck her as uncomfortably
dissimilar to his usual methods of composition. Ought she not to consult
one of her parents, or at least a sister? And yet the postscript was too
explicit to be neglected.

For a few minutes she hesitated. Then she made up her mind; her warm
heart could not bear to disappoint anybody; and besides, Mr. Heriot
Walkingshaw, however odd his conduct might have been lately was such a
pompously respectable--indeed venerable--old gentleman that a maiden
might surely trust herself with him alone, even in a grove of trees. And
so, in a furtive and backward-glancing manner, she stole into the wood.
It was an unusual way of approaching one's father's man of business and
one's finance's parent, but Ellen consoled herself by the reflection
that an experienced Writer to the Signet should best know how these
things were done.

She hurried down a narrow, winding glade, lined by countless slender
columns supporting far overhead a roof of millions of dark green needles
swaying and murmuring in the breeze. Suddenly sunshine and green fields
filled the opening of the glade, and as suddenly a tall gentleman
stepped from behind a tree and politely raised a fashionable felt hat.
In all essential features he was the image of Mr. Heriot Walkingshaw,
only that he was so very much younger.

"Well, my dear Ellen!" he exclaimed heartily.

She stared at him, too amazed for speech.

"Am I really so changed already?" he inquired with a smile. "That shows
the beneficial effect of seeing you."

Even though his manner had altered as much as his appearance, she found
the change so agreeable that she overlooked its strangeness. She smiled
back at him.

"I am glad to see you looking so well," she said.

He beamed upon her in what he sincerely meant for a paternal manner.

"You, my dear child, look ripping