tly in a woman's hand.

"For me--ah, yes; I see," said Tom, taking it carelessly, and
thrusting it into his pocket.

"Won't you read it at once, Mr. Thurnall? I'm sure you must be anxious
to hear from friends abroad;" with an emphasis on the word friends.

"I have a good many acquaintances all over the world, but no friends
that I am aware of," said Tom, and went on with his breakfast.

"Ah--but some people are more than friends. Are the Montreal ladies
pretty, Mr. Thurnall?"

"Don't know; for I never was there."

Miss Heale was silent, being mystified: and, moreover, not quite sure
whether Montreal was in India or in Australia, and not willing to show
her ignorance.

She watched Tom through the glass door all the morning to see if he
read the letter, and betrayed any emotion at its contents: but Tom
went about his business as usual, and, as far as she saw, never read
it at all.

However, it was read in due time; for, finding himself in a lonely
place that afternoon, Tom pulled it out with an anxious face, and read
a letter written in a hasty ill-formed hand, underscored at every
fifth word, and plentifully bedecked with notes of exclamation.

"What? my dearest friend, and fortune still frowns upon you? Your
father blind and ruined! Ah, that I were there to comfort him for your
sake! And ah, that I were anywhere, doing any drudgery, which might
prevent my being still a burden to my benefactors. Not that they are
unkind; not that they are not angels! I told them at once that you
could send me no more money till you reached England, perhaps not
then; and they answered that God would send it; that He who had sent
me to them would send the means of supporting me; and ever since they
have redoubled their kindness: but it is intolerable, this dependence,
and on you, too, who have a father to support in his darkness. Oh,
how I feel for you! But to tell you the truth, I pay a price for this
dependence. I must needs be staid and sober; I must needs dress
like any Quakeress; I must not read this book nor that; and my
Shelley--taken from me, I suppose, because it spoke too much
'Liberty,' though, of course, the reason given was its infidel
opinions--is replaced by 'Law's Serious Call.' 'Tis all right and
good, I doubt not: but it is very dreary; as dreary as these black
fir-forests, and brown snake fences, and that dreadful, dreadful
Canadian winter which is past, which went to my very heart, day after
day, like a swor