s to make, just to add an occasional
luxury to the bare necessities of life provided by her mother's will.

His letters were brief, dispirited, and infrequent, but they had not
ceased altogether till within the last few months, during which
Letty's to him had been returned from Boston with "Not found"
scribbled on the envelopes.

The firm in whose care Letty had latterly addressed him simply wrote,
in answer to her inquiries, that Mr. Gilman had not been in their
employ for some time and they had no idea of his whereabouts.

The rest was silence.

[Illustration]

V

A good deal of water had run under Beulah Bridge since Letty Boynton
had sat at her window on a December evening unconsciously furnishing
copy and illustration for a Christmas card; yet there had been very
few outward changes in the village. Winter had melted into spring,
burst into summer, faded into autumn, lapsed into winter again,--the
same old, ever-recurring pageant in the world of Nature, and the same
procession of incidents in the neighborhood life.

The harvest moon and the hunter's moon had come and gone; the first
frost, the family dinners and reunions at Thanksgiving, the first
snowfall; and now, as Christmas approached, the same holiday spirit
was abroad in the air, slightly modified as it passed by Mrs. Popham's
mournful visage.

One or two babies had swelled the census, giving the minister hope of
a larger Sunday-School; one or two of the very aged neighbors had
passed into the beyond; and a few romantic and enterprising young
farmers had espoused wives, among them Osh Popham's son.

The manner of their choice was not entirely to the liking of the
village. Digby Popham had married into the rival church and as his
betrothed was a masterful young lady it was feared that Digby would
leave Mr. Larrabee's flock to worship with his wife. Another had
married without visible means of support, a proceeding always to be
regretted by thoroughly prudent persons over fifty; and the third,
Deacon Todd's eldest son, had somehow or other met a siren from
Vermont and insisted on wedding her when there were plenty of
marriageable girls in Beulah.

"I've no patience with such actions!" grumbled Mrs. Popham. "Young
folks are so full of notions nowadays that they look for change and
excitement everywheres. I s'pose James Todd thinks it's a decent,
respectable way of actin', to turn his back on the girls he's been
brought up an' gone to school