single spring day should have wrought such a change
upon him.

So interested was I that next morning I was on
the look out for him. Sure enough, at the same hour,
I saw him coming up the hill; but very slowly, with a
bent back and a heavy head. It was shocking to me to
see the change in him as he approached.

"I am afraid that our air does not agree with
you, sir," I ventured to remark.

But it was as though he had no heart for talk.
He tried, as I thought, to make some fitting reply,
but it slurred off into a mumble and silence. How
bent and weak and old he seemed--ten years older at
the least than when first I had seen him! It went to
my heart to see this fine old fellow wasting
away before my eyes. There was the eternal letter
which he unfolded with his shaking fingers. Who was
this woman whose words moved him so? Some daughter,
perhaps, or granddaughter, who should have been the
light of his home instead of---- I smiled to find
how bitter I was growing, and how swiftly I was
weaving a romance round an unshaven old man and his
correspondence. Yet all day he lingered in my mind,
and I had fitful glimpses of those two trembling,
blue-veined, knuckly hands with the paper rustling
between them.