ade its quiet tones more touching to the hearer
than any declamation or any profession of profound regret, however
eloquently expressed, could possibly have been.

"Have you explained to her since you received the letter?" asked Reuben.
"Don't you think, uncle, that she ought to know?"

Ezra looked at him in a faint surprise. He supposed he had guarded
himself from any suspicion of betraying his old sweetheart's
personality.

"Yes," he said, still bent upon this reservation. "It happens as the
person I speak of came back to Heydon Hay some time ago, and was within
the parish this very day. I went to make a call upon her, and to show
how Providence had seen fit to deal with both of us, but her refused to
exchange speech with me. You see, Reuben," he went on, coughing with a
dry mildness of demeanor, "it's doubtless been upon her mind for a many
years as I was making a sort of cruel and unmanly game of her. Seeing
her that offstanding, it seemed to me her valued me so lowly as to take
my letter for a kind of offence. It seems now as it was me, and not her,
as was too prideful."

They were both silent for a time, but Reuben was the first to speak
again.

"She ought to know, uncle. She should be told. Perhaps Ruth could tell
her."

"My lad, my lad!" said Ezra, mournfully reproving him. "How could I tell
another of a thing like this?"

"Well, sir," Reuben answered, "I know now how the idea came into her
mind, though I was puzzled at first. But she is strongly opposed to my
being engaged to Ruth, and came down to tell Mr. Fuller this morning
that I was a villain. I am thinking of her own lonely life, and I am
sure that if Ruth and I are married she will never speak again to the
only relatives she has unless this is explained. For her own sake,
uncle, as well as yours, I think she ought to know the truth."

He was looking downward as he spoke, and did not see the questioning air
with which Ezra regarded him.

"You know who it was, then, as wrote this letter?"

"Yes," said Reuben, looking up at him. "Ruth knew the handwriting."

"Reuben!" cried the old man, sternly. He rose with more open signs of
agitation than Reuben had yet seen in him, and walked hurriedly to and
fro. "Reuben! Reuben!" he repeated, in a voice of keen reproach. "Ah!
when was ever youth and folly separate? I never thought thee wast the
lad to cry thine uncle's trouble i' the market-place!"

"No, uncle, no! Don't think that of me," cried his nep