An unopened letter is always a mysterious thing. We who receive
three or four mails every day, scan each little paper square with
a speculative eye. Most of us know what sweet uncertainty hangs on
the opening of envelopes whose contents may be almost anything
except something important, and what a vague yet delicious thrill
comes with the snip of the paper knife; but if we be in a foreign
land and long years absent from home, then is a letter subtly
powerful to move us, even more before it is opened than after it
is read.

It had been many years since a letter from home had come to Father
Beret. The last, before the one now in his hand, had made him ill
of nostalgia, fairly shaking his iron determination never to quit
for a moment his life work as a missionary. Ever since that day he
had found it harder to meet the many and stern demands of a most
difficult and exacting duty. Now the mere touch of the paper in
his hand gave him a sense of returning weakness, dissatisfaction,
and longing. The home of his boyhood, the rushing of the Rhone, a
seat in a shady nook of the garden, Madeline, his sister,
prattling beside him, and his mother singing somewhere about the
house--it all came back and went over him and through him, making
his heart sink strangely, while another voice, the sweetest ever
heard--but she was ineffable and her memory a forbidden fragrance.

Father Beret tottered across the forlorn little room and knelt
before the crucifix holding his clasped hands high, the letter
pressed between than. His lips moved in prayer, but made no sound;
his whole frame shook violently.