e was dead, and I sat in the sullen dusk, wishing that I need
not go on with life either. The loneliness of the big echoing house
weighed on my spirit. I was solitary, without companionship. I looked
out on the outside world where the only sign of human habitation
visible to my eyes was the light twinkling out from the library window
of Glenellyn on the dark fir hill two miles away. By that light I knew
Alan Fraser must have returned from his long sojourn abroad, for it
only shone when he was at Glenellyn. He still lived there, something
of a hermit, people said; he had never married, and he cared nothing
for society. His companions were books and dogs and horses; he was
given to scientific researches and wrote much for the reviews; he
travelled a great deal. So much I knew in a vague way. I even saw him
occasionally in church, and never thought the years had changed him
much, save that his face was sadder and sterner than of old and his
hair had become iron-grey. People said that he had inherited and
cherished the old hatred of the Shirleys--that he was very bitter
against us. I believed it. He had the face of a good hater--or
lover--a man who could play with no emotion but must take it in all
earnestness and intensity.

When it was quite dark the housekeeper brought in the lights and
handed me a letter which, she said, a man had just brought up from the
village post office. I looked at it curiously before I opened it,
wondering from whom it was. It was postmarked from a city several
miles away, and the firm, decided, rather peculiar handwriting was
strange to me. I had no correspondents. After Father's death I had
received a few perfunctory notes of condolence from distant relatives
and family friends. They had hurt me cruelly, for they seemed to
exhale a subtle spirit of congratulation on my being released from a
long and unpleasant martyrdom of attendance on an invalid, that quite
overrode the decorous phrases of conventional sympathy in which they
were expressed. I hated those letters for their implied injustice. I
was not thankful for my "release." I missed Father miserably and
longed passionately for the very tasks and vigils that had evoked
their pity.

This letter did not seem like one of those. I opened it and took out
some stiff, blackly written sheets. They were undated and, turning to
the last, I saw that they were unsigned. With a not unpleasant
tingling of interest I sat down by my desk to read. The let