him, your ardent lover will
think it the grandest epistle that ever a young girl wrote."

Such a time as there was over that letter!

Over and over again it was copied, this word erased, and that word
inserted, until at the very best it looked more like the map of Scotland
than anything else.

Dorothy was terribly in earnest over it.

One would almost have thought, to have seen her, that her life was at
stake over the result of it; but at last it was finished, and one of
the servants was called to take it to Mr. Kendal's room.

Harry was pacing restlessly up and down when it was delivered to him. He
took it eagerly and broke the seal, for he had recognized Dorothy's
cramped, school-girl chirography at once.

"She is mine!" he cried, triumphantly; and with the knowledge that he
had won her without a doubt, his ardor suddenly cooled; he did not know
whether he was pleased or sorry over the result of his wooing.

After he had read the letter over carefully, he fell to scrutinizing the
chirography.

"The first thing I shall have to do will be to teach the girl how to
write a legible letter," he thought.

Only the day before she had written a letter to Jack, which contained
but the few words that she was well and happy, and that a great change
of fortune had come into her life. But the letter bore neither date,
postmark, nor signature, and he could not tell where it had been posted.

But it was the first intimation which Jack had had that she was in the
land of the living, and to have seen his face as he read it would have
touched a heart of stone.

Tears sprang to his eyes, strong young man though he was, and he covered
the half-written page with burning kisses. To him those irregular,
girlish strokes were dearer than anything else this wide world held,
because they were Dorothy's.

Although she had suddenly disappeared, and all her friends had turned
against her in the bindery, declaring that she had eloped with the
handsome, dark-eyed stranger, he still believed her true. He had been
searching for her ever since, without rest--almost without food--day and
night, until he had almost worn himself out.

He believed she was in the city somewhere, that she had been ashamed to
return to the bindery after that scene on the steamer, and had gone some
place else to work, and he walked the streets for hours at a time,
searching for her among the crowds of working-girls as they trooped down
Broadway in laughing, cha