of his rescuers in Metropolisville. But he had grown weak and
nervous from confinement--prisons do not strengthen the moral power--and
he had moreover given way to dreaming about liberty until he was like a
homesick child, who aggravates his impatience by dwelling much on the
delightfulness of the meeting with old friends, and by counting the
slow-moving days that intervene.

But there came, just the day before the trial, a letter with the
post-mark "Metropolisville" on it. That post-mark always excited a
curious feeling in him. He remembered with what boyish pride he had taken
possession of his office, and how he delighted to stamp the post-mark on
the letters. The address of this letter was not in his mother's undecided
penmanship--it was Isa Marlay's straightforward and yet graceful
writing, and the very sight of it gave him comfort. The letter was simply
a news letter, a vicarious letter from Isabel because Mrs. Plausaby did
not feel well enough to write; this is what Isa said it was, and what she
believed it to be, but Charlton knew that Isa's own friendly heart had
planned it. And though it ran on about this and that unimportant matter
of village intelligence, yet were its commonplace sentences about
commonplace affairs like a fountain in the desert to the thirsty soul of
the prisoner. I have read with fascination in an absurdly curious book
that people of a very sensitive fiber can take a letter, the contents and
writer of which are unknown, and by pressing it for a time against the
forehead can see the writer and his surroundings. It took no spirit of
divination in Charlton's case. The trim and graceful figure of Isa
Marlay, in perfectly fitting calico frock, with her whole dress in that
harmonious relation of parts for which she was so remarkable, came before
him. He knew that by this time she must have some dried grasses in the
vases, and some well-preserved autumn leaves around the picture-frames.
The letter said nothing about his trial, but its tone gave him assurance
of friendly sympathy, and of a faith in him that could not be shaken.
Somehow, by some recalling of old associations, and by some subtle
influence of human sympathy, it swept the fogs away from the soul of
Charlton, and he began to see his duty and to feel an inspiration toward
the right. I said that the letter did not mention the trial, but it did.
For when Charlton had read it twice, he happened to turn it over, and
found a postscript on the f