er hand across her lids, choking down hard sobs that
rose insistently. When she could control her emotions enough to read,
she fixed her eyes upon the first words: "My own darling:"

Crunching the paper between her fingers, she dropped her head and wept
wildly for several minutes. She wanted Frederick then as she had never
wanted a soul in all the living world.

"I am here alone in the writing room," Tess read on, wiping her eyes.
"Oh, Tessibel, when I think of you there without me, I go almost mad!
What I've done seems the very worst thing in the world, and it grows
worse as the hours go by. Forgive me, my darling. I dared not come back
after that night; I was afraid some one would see me and tell my mother
or some of the Waldstrickers. Tessibel, if I could only jump into the
sea and get back to you, I should be the happiest fellow in the world. I
love you more and more, and I'm perfectly miserable without you."

Her fingers on her lips, and her eyes on the letter, Tess wept softly.
Oh, how she loved him, too, her husband.

"I won't stay away very long, my dearest," the letter continued. "I'm
coming back to you and shall never leave you again. I'm sending you some
money which I want you to use, and I'll send more very soon. This will
make you comfortable for a little while."

Tess picked up the bill and looked at it once more. Then she put it down
again and went on reading the letter.

"I shall always love you better than any one else in the world,
Tessibel ... when I return we shall be together most of the time. I shall,
I hope, get over my fear of Ebenezer Waldstricker. I'm studying in my mind
a way to make it possible for us to have a home together, of which no
one shall know. Believe that I love you ... always and always, my
darling.
Your
Frederick."

Tess lifted her head with a long-drawn sigh. But there was something
more to read, a line or two tacked on the end of the letter.

"P. S. My darling, I want you to burn this! I fear some one might get
hold of it.
F."

After reading over and over the letter, until she had almost learned it
by heart, she went back to the shanty, to do as Frederick had bidden
her. Kissing the pages again and again and weeping softly so as not to
disturb Andy, Tess burned the letter.

That night when Daddy