thin pale slip of a girl, locally famous for her memory and grasp of the Scriptures; but it was only at her fourteenth year that her health began perceptibly to fail, at the same time that a succession of material mischances overwhelmed her family. Finally, borne down to actual privation, her father decided to remove to another section and opportunity. He sold his place for a fraction more than the elder Meikeljohn could pay . . . but there was Hester, now an invalid; and there was the agreement that Meikeljohn had made when it had seemed to his advantage. The latter was a rigidly upright man—he accepted for his son the responsibility he himself had assumed, and Hester was left behind. Space in the Meikeljohn household was valuable, the invalid presented many practical difficulties, and, with the solemn concurrence of the elders of their church, Elim—something short of seventeen but a grave mature-seeming boy—and Hester were married.
The winter of his marriage Elim departed for college—his father was a just man, who had felt obscurely that some reparation was due Elim; education was the greatest privilege of which Meikeljohn could conceive, so, at sacrifices that all grimly accepted, Elim was sent to Cambridge. There, when he had been graduated, he remained—there were already more at the Meikeljohn home than their labor warranted—assistant to the professor of philosophy and letters.
Elim again opened the paper before him and spread it severely on the table. The supposititious letter, "Two, Linden Row," opened in proper form and spelling, addressed to "Dearest Elizabeth." Its progress, however,
