high and mightiness, and there's going to be no scandal in this Familey
if I can help it."

I put the bedclothes over my head, and she went out.

But of course I could not sleep. Sis was not home yet, or mother, and I
went into Sis's room and got a novel from her table. It was the story of
a woman who had married a man in a hurry, and without really loving him,
and when she had been married a year, and hated the very way her husband
drank his coffee and cut the ends off his cigars, she found some one she
really loved with her Whole Heart. And it was too late. But she wrote
him one Letter, the other man, you know, and it caused a lot of trouble.
So she said--I remember the very words--

"Half the troubles in the world are caused by Letters. Emotions are
changable things"--this was after she had found that she really loved
her husband after all, but he had had to shoot himself before she found
it out, although not fataly--"but the written word does not change. It
remains always, embodying a dead truth and giving it apparent life. No
woman should ever put her thoughts on paper."

She got the Letter back, but she had to steal it. And it turned out that
the other man had really only wanted her money all the time.

That story was a real ilumination to me. I shall have a great deal of
money when I am of age, from my grandmother. I saw it all. It was a trap
sure enough. And if I was to get out I would have to have the letter.

IT WAS THE LETTER THAT PUT ME IN HIS POWER.