One of the veterans answered, close to his ear: "It was Jimmy Parish
come to say the party got delayed, but they're right up the road a
piece, and coming along. Her horse is lame, but she'll be here in half
an hour."

"Oh, I'm SO thankful nothing has happened!"

He was asleep almost before the words were out of his mouth. In a moment
those handy men had his clothes off, and had tucked him into his bed in
the chamber where I had washed my hands. They closed the door and came
back. Then they seemed preparing to leave; but I said: "Please don't go,
gentlemen. She won't know me; I am a stranger."

They glanced at each other. Then Joe said:

"She? Poor thing, she's been dead nineteen years!"

"Dead?"

"That or worse. She went to see her folks half a year after she was
married, and on her way back, on a Saturday evening, the Indians
captured her within five miles of this place, and she's never been heard
of since."

"And he lost his mind in consequence?"

"Never has been sane an hour since. But he only gets bad when that time
of year comes round. Then we begin to drop in here, three days before
she's due, to encourage him up, and ask if he's heard from her,
and Saturday we all come and fix up the house with flowers, and get
everything ready for a dance. We've done it every year for nineteen
years. The first Saturday there was twenty-seven of us, without counting
the girls; there's only three of us now, and the girls are gone. We
drug him to sleep, or he would go wild; then he's all right for another
year--thinks she's with him till the last three or four days come round;
then he begins to look for her, and gets out his poor old letter, and we
come and ask him to read it to us. Lord, she was a darling!"

A HELPLESS SITUATION

Once or twice a year I get a letter of a certain pattern, a pattern that
never materially changes, in form and substance, yet I cannot get used
to that letter--it always astonishes me. It affects me as the locomotive
always affects me: I saw to myself, "I have seen you a thousand times,
you always look the same way, yet you are always a wonder, and you are
always impossible; to contrive you is clearly beyond human genius--you
can't exist, you don't exist, yet here you are!"

I have a letter of that kind by me, a very old one. I yearn to print it,
and where is the harm? The writer of it is dead years ago, no doubt, and
if I conceal her name and address--her this-world addre