s of Esther
Wynn's and did not look at them for many months. I felt very guilty in
keeping them; but a power I could not resist seemed to paralyze my very
hand when I thought of opening the box in which they were. At last, long
after I had left Uncle Jo's house, I took them out one day, and in the
quiet and warmth of a summer noon I copied them slowly, carefully, word
for word. Then I hid the originals in my bosom, and walked alone, without
telling any one whither I was going, to a wild spot I knew several miles
away, where a little mountain stream came foaming and dashing down
through a narrow gorge to empty itself into our broad and placid river. I
sat down on a mossy granite boulder, and slowly tore the letters into
minutest fragments. One by one I tossed the white and tiny shreds into the
swift water, and watched them as far as I could see them. The brook lifted
them and tossed them over and over, lodged them in mossy crevices, or on
tree roots, then swept them all up and whirled them away in dark depths of
the current from which they would never more come to the surface. It was a
place which Esther would have loved, and I wondered, as I sat there hour
after hour, whether it were really improbable, that she knew just then
what I was doing for her. I wondered, also, as I often before had
wondered, if it might not have been by Esther's will that the sacred hoard
of letters, which had lain undiscovered for so many years, should fall at
last into the hands of my tender and chivalrous Uncle Jo. It was certainly
a strange thing that on the stormy night which I have described, when we
were discussing what should be done with the letters, both Uncle Jo and I
at the same instant should have fancied we heard the words "Burn, burn!"

The following letter is the earliest one which I copied. It is the one
which Robert found so late at night and brought to us in the library:--

"FRIDAY EVENING.

"SWEETEST:--It is very light in my room to-night. The full moon and the
thought of you! I see to write, but you would forbid me--you who would
see only the moonlight, and not the other. Oh, my darling! my darling!

"I have been all day in fields and on edges of woods. I have never seen
just such a day: a June sun, and a September wind; clover and butter-cups
under foot, and a sparkling October sky overhead. I think the earth
enjoyed it as a sort of masquerading frolic. The breeze was so strong that
it took the butterflies half off their