letter--the missing letter of Daddy, which by mistake Falloner
had handed back instead of the photograph. Miss Boutelle saw the
superscription and Californian postmark with a vague curiosity.

"Did you look inside, dear? Perhaps it slipped in."

Jimmy had not. Miss Boutelle did--and I grieve to say, ended by reading
the whole letter.

Bob Falloner had finished packing his things the next morning, and was
waiting for Mr. Ricketts and Jimmy. But when a tap came at the door, he
opened it to find Miss Boutelle standing there. "I have sent Jimmy into
the bedroom," she said with a faint smile, "to look for the photograph
which you gave him in mistake for this. I think for the present he
prefers his brother's picture to this letter, which I have not explained
to him or any one." She stopped, and raising her eyes to his, said
gently: "I think it would have only been a part of your goodness to have
trusted me, Mr. Falloner."

"Then you will forgive me?" he said eagerly.

She looked at him frankly, yet with a faint trace of coquetry that the
angels might have pardoned. "Do you want me to say to you what Mrs.
Ricketts says were the last words of poor Cissy?"

A year later, when the darkness and rain were creeping up Sawyer's
Ledge, and Houston and Daddy Folsom were sitting before their brushwood
fire in the old Lasham cabin, the latter delivered himself oracularly.

"It's a mighty queer thing, that news about Bob! It's not that he's