saying if it were, she must return the check as they could not keep it.

"Direct your answer to me," she wrote, "as I transact all my father's
business for him."

In two days the answer come, very stiffly worded, but assuring her that
the donor was not Mr. Trevellian and that her father need have no
scruples about taking the money, and would have none did he know from
whom it came. This satisfied Bessie, who took the letter to her father,
confessing all she had done, and with him trying to guess who had been
so kind to them.

"I can think of no one except my aunt in America," Archie said, "and she
is not likely to remember us in this way after so many years' silence."

"If I thought it were she I would write to her," Bessie said, "and at
all events I will write to _somebody_ and thank them, and send the
letter to Messrs. Blank & Blank, in London. They know who it is and will
forward it for me."

Accordingly the next Bangor mail for London bore in it a letter from
Bessie to their unknown friend.

"DEAR MADAM, OR SIR, whichever you may be," she began, "I wish I
could tell you how much joy and gladness, and relief, too, your
generous gift of one hundred pounds brought to both father and me.
God bless you for it, and may you never know the want and actual
need which made your gift so very welcome that instead of shrinking
from it we could only cry over it, and be glad that somewhere in the
world there was somebody thinking and caring for us. Every night of
my life I shall pray for you, and if I ever know who you are, and
meet you face to face, I will try and thank you better than I feel
that I am doing on paper. Yours gratefully and sincerely,"

BESSIE McPHERSON,

"P.S.--If, as papa half suspects, you are his Aunt Betsey, I am
doubly glad, because it shows that you sometimes think of us in the
old home at Stoneleigh, and I wish you would write a few words to
father. It will do him so much good, and he is so sick and helpless,
and lonely, and--I dare not tell you what I fear, only he sometimes
forgets my name and his own, too, and calls things different from
what they are. Oh, if he should die, I should die, too!"

This was sent to Messrs. Blank & Blank with instructions to forward it
to the donor. But Messrs. Blank & Blank were very busy with other
matters than forwarding letters of thanks. They had just written to Miss
McPherson that her orde