ionless letter, which he had not lifted from the stair.
At last, purely by accident, he looked up to the staircase overhead--the
front stairs, down which he had just come from his room. He jumped to his
feet! There, up among the dark cobwebbed shadows, he thought he saw
something white. He held up the candle. It was, yes, it was a tiny corner
of white paper wedged into a crack; by standing on the beam at the side he
could just reach it. He touched it,--pulled it;--it came out
slowly,--another of Esther's letters. They were hid in the upper
staircase! The boards had been worn and jarred a little away from each
other, and the letters were gradually shaken through the opening; some
heavier or quicker step than usual giving always the final impetus to a
letter which had been for days slowly working down towards the fated
outlet.

Stealthily as any burglar he had crept about his own house, had taken up
the whole of the front staircase carpet, and had with trouble pried off
one board of the stair in which the letters were hid. There had been a
spring, he found, but it was rusted and would not yield. He had carefully
replaced the carpet, carried the letters into the library, and come for
me; it was now half-past one o'clock at night.

Dear, blessed Uncle Jo! I am an old woman now. Good men and strong men
have given me love, and have shown me of their love for others; but never
did I feel myself so in the living presence of incarnate love as I did
that night, sitting with my white-haired uncle, face to face with the
faded records of the love of Esther Wynn.

It was only from one note that we discovered her last name. This was
written in the early days of her acquaintance with her lover, and while
she was apparently little more than a child. It was evident that at first
the relation was more like one of pupil and master. For some time the
letters all commenced scrupulously "my dear friend," or "my most beloved
friend." It was not until years had passed that the master became the
lover; we fancied, Uncle Jo and I, as we went reverently over the
beautiful pages, that Esther had grown and developed more and more, until
she was the teacher, the helper, the inspirer. We felt sure, though we
could not tell how, that she was the stronger of the two; that she moved
and lived habitually on a higher plane; that she yearned often to lift the
man she loved to the freer heights on which her soul led its glorified
existence.

It was stran