the vampire whom she chose to cherish and obey because it was her
misfortune to be his daughter.

The old home was reached at last. On the whole, the doctor had rather
enjoyed the journey, and brought to the family board, as of yore, a
tremendous appetite. He "resumed practice at the old stand" without
delay, publishing a card to that effect in the village newspaper. He
seemed scarcely to note the absence of his wife, who for a quarter of
a century had been wearing her life out in a vain endeavor to justify
his existence on this globe. In short, he speedily settled back into
his old habit of life, and appeared to have totally forgotten that he
had come home to die. And Dora, too, soon lapsed into her old routine
of schoolkeeping, and so once more the pot boiled merrily. Once a
week, with scrupulous regularity, she wrote her promised letter to
Posey, and she waited long and anxiously for some word from him, but
in vain. Weary weeks lost themselves in months, and month after
month crept slowly away till almost a year had passed, and still the
faithful soul famished for some token that she was not forgotten. Then
one evening she went home from her school to find that the heavens had
fallen. Her father, whom she had left four hours before apparently
in the highest health and spirits, was dead. The village physician
attributed his sudden death to apoplexy, which seems illogical. But
he was dead, whatever the cause, and his orphaned daughter mourned him
with as genuine a grief as ever wrung a human heart.

When in process of time the first transports of grief had subsided
there seemed to be nothing left for Dora to do but to concentrate all
the overflowing tenderness and devotion of her heart upon her lover,
and to brood and pine over his long-continued silence. She never
doubted that he had written to her, for the mail-service to and from