"Ought I to read it?" she demurred. "Are you sure she would like it?"

"Somehow I am very sure," he answered. "And I feel that it will be a
grip on our friendship. I have told you the worst, I wish you to know
the best of me."

She acquiesced, and, an elbow on her knee, shading her eyes with her
hand, she read the letter, whose date was thirty years ago. Far back
in the past this seemed to Margaret Elizabeth, yet it was a girl like
herself who wrote.

The first sentences were almost meaningless, so strong was the feeling
that she had no right to be reading it at all, but as she went on she
forgot her scruples. It was evidently a reply to a letter from her lover
in which he had spoken of the cloud that hung over his name, and it was
a confession of her faith in him, girlish, sweet and tender. "I trust
you, Robert," it said. "It is in you to do heedless things, to be
reckless, if only because you are young and eager and strong; but it
is not in you to be dishonourable; of this I am as certain as I am of
anything in life. Some day the truth will be known and you will be
cleared, but whether it is or no, I choose to walk beside you. I choose
it gladly, happily. I write the words again, gladly, happily, Robert.
Yours, Mary."

"Oh!" cried Margaret Elizabeth, lifting a glowing face, "I love Mary."

"She was brave and unselfish," said the Candy Man.

Margaret Elizabeth nodded. "Yes, that is one side of it. Still, you see,