mine, about which I have hitherto said nothing.

Years ago, before I went to college, and when I was a teacher in the
Sunday-school, I had fallen in love with one of my fellow-teachers, and
we became engaged. She was the daughter of one of the deacons. She
had a smiling, pretty, vivacious face; was always somehow foremost in
school treats, picnics, and chapel-work, and she had a kind of piquant
manner, which to many men is more ensnaring than beauty. She never
read anything; she was too restless and fond of outward activity for
that, and no questions about orthodoxy or heresy ever troubled her
head. We continued our correspondence regularly after my appointment
as minister, and her friends, I knew, were looking to me to fix a day
for marriage. But although we had been writing to one another as
affectionately as usual, a revolution had taken place. I was quite
unconscious of it, for we had been betrothed for so long that I never
once considered the possibility of any rupture.

One Monday morning, however, I had a letter from her. It was not often
that she wrote on Sunday, as she had a religious prejudice against
writing letters on that day. However, this was urgent, for it was to
tell me that an aunt of hers who was staying at her father's was just
dead, and that her uncle wanted her to go and live with him for some
time, to look after the little children who were left behind. She said
that her dear aunt died a beautiful death, trusting in the merits of
the Redeemer. She also added, in a very delicate way, that she would
have agreed to go to her uncle's at once, but she had understood that
we were to be married soon, and she did not like to leave home for
long. She was evidently anxious for me to tell her what to do.

This letter, as I have said, came to me on Monday, when I was exhausted