him away to die at once,
unless I went with him as his wife. So I go.

"I hope he will come home quite strong and well, and able to begin
building our cottage on that wee bit of ground on the hill-side above
Cairnforth which you have promised to give to him. I am inexpressibly
happy about it. We shall all live so cheerily together--and meet
every day--the Castle, the Manse, and the Cottage. When I think of
that, and of my coming back, I am almost comforted for this sad going
away--leaving my dear father, and the boys, and you.

"Papa has been so good to me, you do not know. I shall never forget it
--nor will Ernest. Ernest thought he would stand in the way of our
marriage, but he did not. He said I must choose for myself, as he had
done when he married my dearest mother; that I had been a good girl to
him, and a good daughter would make a good wife; also that a good wife
would not cease to be a good daughter because she was married--
especially living close at hand, as we shall always live: Ernest has
promised it.

"Thus, you see, nobody I love will lose me at all, nor shall I forget
them: I should hate myself if it were possible. I shall be none the
less a daughter to my father--none the less a friend to you. I will
never, never forget you, my dear!" (here the writing became blurred, as
if large drops had fallen on the paper while she wrote.) "It is twelve
o'clock, and I must bid you good-night--and God bless you ever and
ever! The last time I sign my dear old name (except once) is thus to
you.

"Your faithful and loving friend,

"Helen Cardross."

Thus she had written, and thus he sat and read--these two, who had
been and were so dear to one another. Perhaps the good angels, who
watch over human lives and human destinies, might have looked with pity
upon both.

As for Helen's father, and Helen herself too, if (as some severe judges
may say) they erred in suffering themselves to be thus easily deceived
--in believing a man upon little more than his own testimony, and in
loving him as bad men are sometimes loved, under a strong delusion, by
even good women, surely the errors of unworldliness, unselfishness, and
that large charity which "thinketh no evil" are not so common in this
world as to be quite unpardonable. Better, tenfold, to be sinned
against than sinning.

"Better trust all, and be deceived,
And weep that trust and that deceiving,
Than doubt one heart which, if believed,