tches, much as it shrunk from
following in the ways of their infamy.

"Ah miss," said I, as the door opened revealing in the gap her white
face clouded with some new and sudden apprehension, "I beg your pardon
but I am an old man, and I got a letter to-day and my eyes are so weak
with the work I've been doing that I cannot read it. It is from some one
I love, and would you be so kind as to read off the words for me and so
relieve an old man from his anxiety."

The murmur of suspicion behind her, warned her to throw wide open the
door. "Certainly," said she, "if I can," taking the paper in her hand.

"Just let me get a squint at that first," said a sullen voice behind
her; and the youngest of the two Schoenmakers stepped forward and tore
the paper out of her grasp.

"You are too suspicious," murmured she, looking after him with the first
assumption of that air of power and determination which I had heard
so eloquently described by the man who loved her. "There is nothing in
those lines which concerns us; let me have them back."

"You hold your tongue," was the brutal reply as the rough man opened the
folded paper and read or tried to read what was written within. "Blast
it! it's French," was his slow exclamation after a moment spent in
this way. "See," and he thrust it towards his father who stood frowning
heavily a few feet off.

"Of course, it's French," cried the girl. "Would you write a note in
English to father there? The man's friends are French like himself, and
must write in their own language."

"Here take it and read it out," commanded her father; "and mind you
tell us what it means. I'll have nothing going on here that I don't
understand."

"Read me the French words first, miss," said I. "It is my letter and I
want to know what my friend has to say to me."

Nodding at me with a gentle look, she cast her eyes on the paper and
began to read:

"Calmez vous, mon amie, il vous aime et il vous cherche. Dans
quatre heures vous serez heureuse. Allons du courage, et surtout
soyez maitre de vous meme."

"Thanks!" I exclaimed in a calm matter-of-fact way as I perceived the
sudden tremor that seized her as she recognized the handwriting and
realized that the words were for her. "My friend says he will pay my
week's rent and bids me be at home to receive him," said I, turning upon
the two ferocious faces peering over her shoulder, with a look of meek
unsuspiciousness in my eye, that in a theatre w