ngth in both hands.

"Infatuated child!" she said, in her primmest and most fashionable
accent. "My premonitions have not deceived me."

She placed the note in the bosom of her dress, set the book in its
former position upon the table, and left the garden. Nobody looking at
her could have supposed that she had been guilty of such an act; for
if ever conscious rectitude and high resolve for good shone in a human
face, they lighted hers. Once she stopped short in the lonely lane, and
stamped one small foot with lofty emphasis.

"The very method!" she said aloud, in a voice of scorn. "For aught I
know, the very book! You shall not suffer as I have suffered, my poor
dear child. I thank Heaven that I am at hand to preserve you."

Thus animated by her own self-approval, Aunt Rachel, sometimes in scorn,
sometimes in tenderness, but of tener in triumph, walked homeward,
waited the due time, and walked back to church again. She succeeded in
getting Ruth away without a sight of Reuben, but the young man passed
them on their way with a step still quicker than he had used that
morning. He threw a gay "good-night, Ruth," over his shoulder as he
walked, and Ruth felt the old lady's hand tighten on her arm, though she
was far from guessing the nature of the emotion which moved her.

Once out of sight in the summer dusk, Reuben ran. He reached the green
door, and with no surprise found it wide open. He approached the table,
seized the old folio? and turning it back downward so that nothing could
fall from it, sped home, hugging it by the way. When he reached his own
room he was breathless, but he struck a light, drew down the blinds, and
turned over the leaves of the music-book one by one. In the centre
of the book he paused, for there he seemed to find the object of his
search. A note, bearing for sole superscription "Mr. Gold," was pinned
to the edge of the page. But was that quaint, old-fashioned handwriting
Ruth's? Why should she write to him on paper so old and yellow and
faded? Why should the very pin that held it to the page be rusted as if
it had been there for years?

The note was sealed with two wafers, and the paper cracked across as he
opened it. It began "Dear Mr. Gold," and was signed "R." It ran thus--

"I have not ansrd your estmd note until now, though in receipt of it
since Thursday, for I dare not seem precipitate in such a matter. But I
have consulted my own heart, and have laid it before the Throne, knowing