th its miniature box
borders and its single clipped yew-tree, over which a young moon was
rising. "A mixture of a fighter and a dreamer," the old man had once
called me, and it seemed to me now that something apart from the mere
business of living and the alert man of affairs, brooded in me over the
young moon and the yew-tree.

A letter from Sally had reached me a few hours before, and taking it
from my pocket, I turned to the lamp and read it for the sixth time with
a throbbing heart.

"You ask me if I am happy, dearest," she wrote, "and I answer that I am
happy, with a still, deep happiness, over which a hundred troubles and
cares ripple like shadows on a lake. But oh! poor Aunt Mitty, with her
silent hurt pride in her face, and poor Aunt Matoaca, with the strained,
unnatural brightness in her eyes, and her cheeks so like rose leaves
that have crumpled. Oh, Ben, I believe Aunt Matoaca is living over again
her own romance, and it breaks my heart. Last night I went into her
room, and found her with her old yellowed wedding veil and orange
blossoms laid out on the bed. She tried to pretend that she was
straightening her cedar chests, but she looked so little and
pitiable--if you could only have seen her! I wonder what she would be
now if the General had been a man like you? How grateful I am, how
profoundly thankful with my whole heart that I am marrying a man that I
can trust!"

"That I can trust!" Her words rang in my ears, and I heard them again,
clear and strong, the next morning, when I met Miss Matoaca as I was on
my way to my office. She was coming slowly up Franklin Street, her arms
filled with packages, and when she recognised me, with a shy, startled
movement to turn aside, a number of leaflets fluttered from her grasp to
the pavement between us. When I stooped and gathered them up, her face,
under the old-fashioned poke bonnet, was brought close to my eyes, and I
saw that she looked wan and pinched, and that her bright brown eyes were
shining as if from fever.

"Mr. Starr," she said, straightening her thin little figure as I handed
her the leaflets, "I've wanted for some time to speak a word to you on
the subject of my niece--Miss Mickleborough."

"Yes, Miss Matoaca."

"My sister Mitty thought it better that I should refrain from doing so,
and upon such matters she has excellent judgment. It is my habit,
indeed, to yield to her opinion in everything except a question of
conscience."

"Yes?" for agai