he pet name he often gave her, 'you
_are_ some like Gretchen as she must have been when of your age. Oh, if
you only were hers and mine! But there was no child; and yet--and yet--'

He seemed to be thinking intently for a moment, and then going to a
drawer in his writing desk, which Jerry had never seen open before, he
took out a worn, yellow letter, and ran his eye rapidly over it until he
found a certain paragraph, which he bade Jerry read.

The paragraph was as follows:

'I have something to tell you when you come, which I am sure will make
you as glad as I am.'

Jerry read it aloud slowly, for the handwriting was cramped and
irregular, and then looked up questioningly to Arthur, who said to her:

'What do you think she meant by the something which would make me glad
as she was?'

'I don't know,' Jerry answered him. 'Who wrote it? Gretchen?'

'Yes, Gretchen; it is her last letter to me, and I never went back to
see what she meant, for the bees were bad in my head and I forgot
everything, even Gretchen herself. Poor little Gretchen! What was the
idea which came to me like a flash of lightning, in regard to this
letter, when I heard you sing? It is gone, and I cannot recall it.'

There was a worried, anxious look on his face as he put the letter away,
and went on talking to himself of Gretchen, saying he was going to write
her again, or her friends, and find out what she meant.

The next day Jerry met Frank in the Tramp House, as we have described,
and gave him the promise to bring him any letter directed to Germany
which Arthur might entrust to her. But the promise weighed heavily upon
her as she walked slowly on towards the field where Harold was at work,
and where she found him resting for a moment under the shadow of a
wide-spreading butternut. He looked tired and pale, and there were great
drops of sweat upon his white forehead, and an expression on his face
which Jerry did not understand.

Harold was not in a very happy frame of mind. Naturally cheerful and
hopeful, it was not often that he gave way to fits of despondency, or
repining at his humble lot, so different from that of the boys of his
own age, with whom he came in daily contact, both at school and in the
town.

Dick St. Claire, his most intimate friend, always treated him as if he
were fully his equal, and often stood between him and the remarks which
boys made thoughtlessly, and which, while they mean so little, wound to
the quick such sen