ed other depths of her nature and fitted her sadder mood. At last
the thought of what might have been filled her eyes with tears.

"I'll go down to our post-office, as O'mie suggested," she declared to
herself. "Oh, anything to break away from this hungry longing for what
can never be!"

The little hidden cleft was vine-covered now, and the scarlet leaves
clung in a lacework about the gray stone under which the crevice ran
back clean and dry for an arm's length. It was a reflex action, and not
a choice of will, that led Marjie to thrust her hand in as she had done
so often before. Only cold stone received her touch. She recalled
O'mie's picture of Lettie, short-necked, stubby Lettie, down there in
the dark trying to stretch her fat arm to the limit of the crevice, and
as she thought, Marjie slipped her own arm to its full length, down the
cleft. Something touched her hand. She turned it in her fingers. It was
paper--a letter--and she drew it out. A letter--my letter--the long,
loving message I had penned to her on the night of the party at
Anderson's. Clear and white, as when I put it there that moonlit
midsummer night, when I thrust it in too far for my little girl to find
without an effort.

Marjie carried it up to "Rockport" and sat down. She had no notion of
when it was put there. She only knew it was from my pen.

"It's his good-bye for old times' sake," she mused.

And then she read it, slowly at first, as one would drink a last cup of
water on the edge of a desert, for this was a voice from the old happy
life she had put all away now. I had done better than I dreamed of doing
in that writing. Here was Rachel Melrose set in her true light, the
possibility of a visit, and the possibility of her words and actions,
just as direct as a prophecy of what had really happened. Oh! it cleared
away every reason for doubt. Even the Rockport of Rachel's rapturous
memory, I declared I detested because only our "Rockport" meant anything
to me. And then she read of her father's dying message. It was the first
time she had known of that, and the letter in her trembling hands pulsed
visibly with her strong heart-throbs. Then came the closing words:

"Good-night, my dear, dear girl, my wife that is to be, and know now and
always there is for me only one love. In sunny ways or shadow-checkered
paths, whatever may come, I cannot think other than as I do now. You are
life of my life; and so again, good-night."

The sun was gett