was far from feeling.

"This morning," said Barker briefly, but without the tremor in his
voice which Sewell expected.

"You've never been here before, I suppose," suggested Sewell, with
the vague intention of generalising or particularising the
conversation, as the case might be.

Barker abruptly rejected the overture, whatever it was. "I don't
know as you got a letter from me a spell back," he said.

"Yes, I did," confessed Sewell. "I did receive that letter," he
repeated, "and I ought to have answered it long ago. But the fact
is--" He corrected himself when it came to his saying this, and
said, "I mean that I put it by, intending to answer it when I could
do so in the proper way, until, I'm very sorry to say, I forgot it
altogether. Yes, I forgot it, and I certainly ask your pardon for my
neglect. But I can't say that as it's turned out I altogether regret
it. I can talk with you a great deal better than I could write to
you in regard to your"--Sewell hesitated between the words poems and
verses, and finally said--"work. I have blamed myself a great deal,"
he continued, wincing under the hurt which he felt that he must be
inflicting on the young man as well as himself, "for not being more
frank with you when I saw you at home in September. I hope your
mother is well?"

"She's middling," said Barker, "but my married sister that came to
live with us since you was there has had a good deal of sickness in
her family. Her husband's laid up with the rheumatism most of the