for another man would have most effectively
debarred me from calling into requisition that promise so exactingly
obtained from her. My wife must have no fondness for another man than me.
And yet when, a few days after the receipt and reply of her father's
letter, another in friend Barbara's writing was placed in my hand, I can
but say that more joy than I had ever before experienced was mine, and I
thought of Miriam's song so full of triumph and gladness. And then the
wonderful words of the psalm came to me. "'Yea, though I walk through the
valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for Thou art with me,
Thy rod and Thy staff they comfort me,'" I said aloud, and thought of poor
friend Jordan as she had understood those words so short a time ago.

Suppose Barbara had written in answer to my letter to her--had owned that
her thought of the man was a delusion, and that she cared for me, and me
only, above all others in the world! I carried the letter by me for many
an hour, for it was business-time when I had it, and I let nothing
interfere with needful duties of the day. It lay within my pocket
pulseless, as a letter always is: its envelope had my name upon it
carefully and neatly inscribed. Then when I had an hour to myself I
walked, not more briskly than usual, to a sunny hollow surrounded by new
boards smelling most pleasantly of the rich forests they had helped to
form, and there, surrounded by deal that had held many a singing bird's
voice in its time, I broke the seal of Barbara's second letter to me. I
think I was vastly stricken as I read it--more stricken perhaps than life
can ever experience twice. Did she write as I had most hoped and desired?
It was a long letter, and I read it through twice to fully comprehend it.
She was a thief! she herself had stolen the money! She knew that her
father must have written me that the money was gone, and she did not wish
to see the blame rest on an innocent person. Her father had been harsher
than usual with her, and, when she would have asserted herself in many
ways, had always referred her to me, telling her that I was the rightful
one to say what might and what might not be: her father had refused to
hear her make mention of the man she had mentioned to me, and had not
recognized her being with him at all. (I could see in this that friend
Hicks had tried more than arbitrary means to reduce his daughter's mind to
the level of his wishes. But to the letter.) How could