rather to enjoy Sarah's perplexity.

'Yes, it is unkind in you to forget an old friend--one you promised to
remember always.'

Sarah was beginning to recover herself. It was evident, from the whole
appearance of the stranger, that he would not adopt this singular mode
of addressing her, unless he had some claim to her acquaintance. So she
reasoned. Resolving she would no longer play the part of a bashful miss,
she said: 'I am very sorry to be obliged to confess it; but, really, I
have not the slightest recollection of you.'

'Ah, that is the way with the sex!' continued the other, in the same
tone. 'Who would have thought it? After bestowing on me such a precious
token (here he presented a locket, in which he exhibited a curl of
hair), you now propose to ignore me altogether.'

'I am inclined to think you are the one in error. I am quite sure you
mistake me for some other person,' retorted Sarah, quietly.

'Possibly. Therefore, permit me to inquire whether or not I have the
honor of addressing Miss Sarah Burns?'

'Yes.'

'Yet you have no recollection of presenting me with this?'

'You must have shown me the wrong locket,' said Sarah, dryly. 'The hair
is several shades lighter than mine.'

'True, I did not think of that,' said the mysterious young gentleman.' I
ought to have known it would be so; but it never occurred to me.
Good-by!'

He bowed courteously and passed on his way, leaving Sarah in complete
bewilderment. She walked slowly toward home. She roused her memory. She
went through the list of her acquaintances. She endeavored to recall
those she had encountered when taking some little trips with her
father--but the stranger was not any of these.

A faint outline was, nevertheless, before her. A shadowy image, the
same, yet not the same, with the young man who had stood in her path.

'Who? where? when?'

In vain she asked herself the questions.

Over the past hangs a dim uncertainty, like that which veils the future,
and, young as Sarah was, she could already realize it. At length she
stopped her efforts, and recurred to the more pleasing task of thinking
about the young gentleman as he now appeared, without respect to any
other circumstance. She recalled his manly form. He was nearly six feet
in height. How bright his eyes were, and how mischievously they were
turned on her, yet how kindly--she was almost ready to think
lovingly--when the locket was produced! What about that locket? She
never gav