grass-plot prettily planted with flowers,
and ignores his brilliant enemy in the comfortable durability of bronze;
and there always awaited them in the old pleasaunce the pathos of Kaspar
Hauser's fate; which his murder affixes to it with a red stain.

After their cups of willow leaves at the cafe they went up into that
nook of the plantation where the simple shaft of church-warden's Gothic
commemorates the assassination on the spot where it befell. Here the
hapless youth, whose mystery will never be fathomed on earth, used to
come for a little respite from his harsh guardian in Ansbach, homesick
for the kindness of his Nuremberg friends; and here his murderer found
him and dealt him the mortal blow.

March lingered upon the last sad circumstance of the tragedy in which
the wounded boy dragged himself home, to suffer the suspicion and
neglect of his guardian till death attested his good faith beyond cavil.
He said this was the hardest thing to bear in all his story, and that he
would like to have a look into the soul of the dull, unkind wretch who
had so misread his charge. He was going on with an inquiry that pleased
him much, when his wife pulled him abruptly away.

"Now, I see, you are yielding to the fascination of it, and you are
wanting to take the material from Burnamy!"

"Oh, well, let him have the material; he will spoil it. And I can always
reject it, if he offers it to 'Every Other Week'."

"I could believe, after your behavior to that poor woman about her son
in Jersey City, you're really capable of it."

"What comprehensive inculpation! I had forgotten about that poor woman."

LI.

The letters which March had asked his Nuremberg banker to send them came
just as they were leaving Ansbach. The landlord sent them down to the
station, and Mrs. March opened them in the train, and read them first so
that she could prepare him if there were anything annoying in them, as
well as indulge her livelier curiosity.

"They're from both the children," she said, without waiting for him to
ask. "You can look at them later. There's a very nice letter from
Mrs. Adding to me, and one from dear little Rose for you." Then she
hesitated, with her hand on a letter faced down in her lap. "And there's
one from Agatha Triscoe, which I wonder what you'll think of." She
delayed again, and then flashed it open before him, and waited with a
sort of impassioned patience while he read it.

He read it, and gave it back to