isters have been kind to me. I
always offered my services in the Sunday schools and sewing-rooms. The
school committees have been kind to me. They are the Public's high
chamberlains for poor girls. I have written for the journals. I won one
of Sartain's hundred-dollar prizes--"

"And I another," interrupted I.

"When I was very poor, I won the first prize for an essay on bad boys."

"And I the second," answered I.

"I think I know one bad boy better than he knows himself," said she. But
she went on. "I watched with this poor Miss Stillingfleet the night she
died. This absurd 'distribution' had got hold of her, and she would not
be satisfied till she had transferred that strange ticket, No. 2,973, to
me, writing the indorsement which you have heard. I had had a longing to
visit New York and Hoboken again. This ticket seemed to me to beckon me.
I had money enough to come, if I would come cheaply. I wrote to my
father's business partner, and enclosed a note to his only sister. She
is Mrs. Mason. She asked me, coldly enough, to her house. Old Mr. Grills
always liked me,--he offered me escort and passage as far as Troy or
Albany. I accepted his proposal, and you know the rest."

When I told Fausta my story, she declared I made it up as I went along.
When she believed it,--as she does believe it now,--she agreed with me
in declaring that it was not fit that two people thus joined should ever
be parted. Nor have we been, ever!

She made a hurried visit at Mrs. Mason's. She prepared there for her
wedding. On the 1st of November we went into that same church which was
our first home in New York; and that dear old raven-man made us

ONE!

THE SKELETON IN THE CLOSET.

BY J. THOMAS DARKAGH (LATE C.C.S.).

[This paper was first published in the "Galaxy," in 1866.]

* * * * *

I see that an old chum of mine is publishing bits of confidential
Confederate History in Harper's Magazine. It would seem to be time,
then, for the pivots to be disclosed on which some of the wheelwork of
the last six years has been moving. The science of history, as I
understand it, depends on the timely disclosure of such pivots, which
are apt to be kept out of view while things are moving.

I was in the Civil Service at Richmond. Why I was there, or what I did,
is nobody's affair. And I do not in this paper propose to tell how it
happened that I was in New York in October, 1864, on confidential
business.