"But why did he not come home before, mamma?"

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Being a soldier he could not do that, I suppose.'

The wonderful news could not be long hid, especially in this loving family, where the parents kept none but necessary secrets from their children. The mother was soon the centre of an eager group, asking all manner of questions, and evidently regarding the whole matter as a sort of real-life fairy tale.

"Don't bother mamma, children,” said Julius, with tender authoritativeness. "Come away with me, and I'll tell you as much as I know, while she reads papa's letter."

Dr. Stedman had written, not telegraphed, that he might startle her less and give her the latest intelligence, and had sent his letter by the faithful Tommy Fox, who was to remain that night at Brook Street, and bring Mrs. Stedman back with him the first thing next morning.

"I do not want you until the morning," wrote William to his wife. "You must get a good night's rest, for I fear you may have some days, or perhaps weeks, of heavy nursing here. However, if he survives the next twentyfour hours, he will live, I doubt not. I might have sent for you to-night, but I thought it best not."

Edna felt also that it was best not-that not even his wife should share in this solemn watch which William kept so faithfully-uncertain whether after all his brother might not slip away, unrecognizing and unrecognized, into the next world. But even if Julius died, it would be a lighter burden to bear than that which Dr. Stedman had borne so patiently, so silently, all these years; not suffering it to darken his home-life, which would indeed have been both foolish and wrong. Still it was there -and his wife knew it. Almost every human heart has some such dark chamber in it; she had had hers too.

Now, was the grief to be lifted off or not? Edna could not tell; nor William. He had only said, in reference to the future, one thing "If Julius recovers, will my wife take him home?" At which the wife smiled to herself. There was no need to answer that question.

So, it was necessary to prepare for possibilities; and first, by telling the children as much of their uncle's history as she thought advisable. They were not inquisitive or worrying children. Still they had their natural curiosity, increased by the very few facts she was able to

"Still, he might have written," said Julius, a little severely. "It was unkind of him to let you and papa imagine he was dead, and grieve after him for so many years."

"People sometimes do unkind things without meaning it, or, at least, without definitely intending it," said the mother, gently. "When you are as old as I am, my son, you will have learned that-" Here she stopped, hindered by the great difficulty with all young people— how to keep them sternly to the right; and yet while preaching strict justice, to remember mercy. "In truth, my children," added she, with that plain candor which had been her safeguard all her life, and taught her sons to be as fearlessly true as herself, "it is useless to question me; for I know almost nothing, except that papa has found his brother again, which will make him so happy. You like papa to be happy, all of you?"

"Ah, yes!" and they ceased troubling her with their wonderings, but with the brilliant imagination of youth darted at once to the possibility of Uncle Julius's appearance among them, making endless speculations and arrangements concerning him. The twins, hearing he had been a soldier, brought out their favorite toy-cannon, with a man behind it, which man they immediately named "Uncle Julius." Robert, who had set his heart upon wandering half over the world, exulted in the thought of all the information he should get about foreign countries; and Will, after much meditation, leaped at once to a most brilliant conclusion.

"That folio of drawings you keep, beside the old easel in your bedroom, mamma-were they not done by Uncle Julius? You said he was an artist before he went away to India.” "Yes."

"And clever, too, to judge by those sketches, which you have never properly shown me yet, and will not let me have to copy; very good they are, some of them," continued Will, with the slightly patronizing tone of the younger generation. "Of course, he is too old to make an artist now; but he might help to make me one.

"Perhaps," said the mother, and wondered whether Uncle Julius would recognize, as his brother and she had long since began to do, the eternal law of progression, whereby one generation slips aside, or is set aside, and another takes its place-a law righteous and easy of belief to happy parents, but hard to others, who have to drop down, solitary and childless, into the great sea of oblivion, leaving not a trace behind. As she looked on her bright, brave boys growing up around her, in whom her memory and their father's would live, long

back to the days of his youth. He took quite naturally the presence of Will and Edna, and very soon began to call them by their right names, and comprehend, in a confused way, that he was under their charge. And in his total helplessness the great difficulty which William had foreseen, the stopping of the supplies of opium, became easier than they had anticipated. After he had been brought back, as it were, from the very gates of the grave, to some slight recognition of where he was, and what had happened to him, he seemed to wake up, as people often do after very severe illnesses, with the freshness of a child-asking no questions, but helplessly and obediently clinging to those about him, till sometimes none of his nurses could look at him without tears.

Gradually he passed out of sickness into convalescence, began visibly to amend in body, though how far his mind was alive to the things around him it was difficult to say. He noticed nothing much-neither the changes which Edna had gradually instituted in his ragged wardrobe, nor the comforts which she gathered around him in his homely room. He spoke little, and his whole intelligence seemed to be absorbed in trying to bear, as patiently as he could, his physical sufferings, which, for a long time, were very great. When at last Edna, to whose ministering care he had grown quite accustomed, proposed taking him "home," he assented, but without asking the slightest question as to what and where "home" was.

Letty, either as Letty or as Mrs. Vanderdecken, he never once named.

Indeed, in the complete absorption of the time, neither Edna nor her husband thought much about her themselves. The near neighborhood of Holywell Park troubled them not; the place was half shut up, the mistress being away at Brighton. Thence she never sent, never wrote; at which they were neither surprised nor sorry.

But the night before they had settled to quit Mrs. Fox's kindly roof the good woman brought to Mrs. Stedman, for whom she had conceived a great admiration, a note from the Hall.

"I don't know if you knows Mrs. Vanderdecken, ma'am, but perhaps you do, as it was through her little girl I heard of Dr. Stedman. And she's a kind lady-a very kind lady indeed: he saw her the day before he was ill. Didn't you, Sir?"

Edna interposed, and stopped the conversation, but her caution seemed needless. The sick man took no notice, and she hoped he had seen and heard nothing. However, just before she left him for the night, Julius called her back. "What was that note you had? From your sister?"

"Yes."

"Have you seen her?" "No."

This was all he asked, or was told, though, in much anxiety, Edna sat down beside him for another half hour. By-and-by Julius felt feebly for her hand.

"Are you there still, sister Edna? I like to have you beside me. I know you now, and Will too, though at first I did not. I thought I was dreaming. I have had so many queer dreams. They all came out of that box which you never will let me have."

"No, never again." "Does Will say so?" "Yes."

"Then I suppose he must be obeyed. When we were lads, kind as he was to me, Will always made me obey him." Julius smiled faint- | ly, yet more like his own smile than Edna had ever seen yet. "Where is Will to-night?" "Gone home, to get ready the house for us to-morrow, you know. Besides, he has his work to do."

"Ah, yes! and mine is all done. I shirked it once; and now, when I want to do it, I can not. Why do you and Will take me home? I would never have come of myself. I shall only be a burden upon you. Do you know, Edna, that I have not a half-penny in the world?” Yes."

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"Except, of course, my pension as a soldier -a common soldier, which I have been-I ceased to be a gentleman years ago."

Edna smiled.

"Do not mock me, it is true. You had better not take me back. I shall only be a trouble to you. Nay, even a disgrace. Will is an honest, honorable, prosperous man, while I- What will all your friends say?"

"We shall never ask them. But," added Will's wife, in reasoning not her own, for her own failed her, "it is just the story of the piece of silver-And when she hath found it she calleth her friends and neighbors together, saying, Rejoice with me, for I have found my piece that was lost.""

Julius turned away bitterly. "Don't talk to me out of the Bible. I do not believe in the Bible. Only"'—as if he feared he had hurt her -"I believe in you."

"Thank you, dear." She often called him "dear" now, in the tone she used to her own children; for, in many ways, Julius had grown so very like a child. "And I believe in the Bible. Therefore, I came here to nurse you, and keep you alive if we could. Therefore, as soon as you are stronger, I mean to take you home, to begin a new life, and never to speak of the old life any more.'

Tender as her words were, there was a certain authority in them—the quiet decision which Edna always showed-and nobody attempted to gainsay.

Julius did not, but lay quiet, with his eyelids closed, till at length he suddenly opened them. "There was a packet-letters-which I think I made up just before I was ill. Where is it?" "Mrs. Fox found it, and delivered it to the person to whom it was addressed."

"And that was-"

"Mrs. Vanderdecken."

"Are you sure of that?"

"Quite sure.

Now go to sleep."

"One minute"-and Julius lifted himself up and caught Edna's hand. "Tell her-your sister-that for the child's sake I have forgiven her all. I will never harm her. Her daughter knows nothing-never will know. Say I forgive her, and bid her good-by from me." "I will," said Edna; and then, still holding her hand, Julius dropped into the quietest slumber which he had yet known.

When alone for the night Mrs. Stedman read over again the dirty-looking note, which had lain a whole day in the pocket of a small child, one of Mrs. Vanderdecken's Sunday-class, by whom it had been sent. Letty's cowardice had followed her to the last. There was in the missive neither beginning nor ending. Nothing that could identify it or its writer, or betray any fact that it was safer to conceal.

"I know all, and was glad your husband had been sent for to the poor man, you and he being the proper persons to manage the business. Give him my best wishes, and I hope he will soon get well. If I could do any thing-but it is better not-you will understand that. Only, if you like to come and talk it over with me, I shall be very glad to see you, for I am quite alone here, though I shall return to Brighton in two days."

Edna closed the letter with a heavy sigh, and sat long pondering over it, and how she should answer it; whether it would not be advisable, under the circumstances, and especially with regard to a future that was very difficult at best, to go and see Letty, as she asked, in her own house, and, calmly but not unkindly, "talk it over," as she proposed, thus closing forever the grave of a past that could return no more.

In her husband's absence Edna was obliged to trust to her own judgment, and what she knew his would be. He had said more than once that nothing should induce him to enter his sister-in-law's door, nor did his wife dissent from this. There is a limit beyond which selfrespect can not pass; and charity itself changes its character when it becomes the subserviency of weak right to rampant wrong. But Mrs. Stedman, who had not an atom of weakness about her, or pride either, felt no hesitation whatever in crossing, just once and no more, her sister's grand threshold; neither humbly nor scornfully, but with a kindly sisterly heart. If she could do Letty any good, why, well! If not, still it was well too. They would both see clearly, once for all, what their future relations to one another were to be.

So next morning, before Julius was well awake, without saying any thing to him or any body, she started off across the common to Holywell Hall.

It was a very fine house, the finest Mrs. Stedman had ever entered; for her busy domestic life and narrow means had, until lately, kept her very much out of society. She admired it extremely, for she had such pleasure in any thing orderly, fit, and beautiful. Yet, when her little feet trod on the polished black and white

marble of the hall, and followed two tall liveried footmen up a magnificent staircase, stately, silent, and chill, her heart sank a little, and she was glad fate had not burdened her with her sister's splendid lot. It did not occur to her, in her utter lack of self-consciousness, that, had such been the case, the probabilities were that Holywell Hall would have been as bright as Brook Street.

The footman went before, and she was following him at once into Mrs. Vanderdecken's morning-room, when she heard her sister's voice within, and hesitated.

"Stedman is the name, Wood?-I don't know -yes, I do know the lady. Show her into the yellow drawing-room. Oh, she's here."

Rather awkwardly Mrs. Vanderdecken came forward, merely to shake hands, till, the servant having closed the door behind him, she stooped and kissed her sister, though not with much demonstration of affection.

"I am very glad to see you. It is extremely kind of you to come. You see I couldn't come to you-it was quite an impossibility." "Certainly."

Then Letty burst out:

"Oh! Edna, do give me a little comfort. I have been so frightened-so thoroughly miserable.

This is indeed a wretched business." "I do not see that, since it has ended so well in Julius's recovery. He might have died. It was such a merciful chance that your little girl wrote to my husband."

"Yes; and I assure you I did not scold her

"And nobody here knows who he is; but, like Gertrude, people think him Mr. Stone?"

"No-Mr. Stedman," said Edna, coldly. "My husband was not likely to be ashamed of his brother, or to conceal his relationship to him. But you need not be alarmed; we have carefully hidden our connection with you. No one here has the least idea that you are my sister."

"Thank you, thank you!" And then, some dim notion striking Letty that it was an odd thing to express gratitude for, she added, halfapologetically, "You see, we are obliged to be careful. In our position people do talk of us so. And he was so violent, so cruel, to meJulius, I mean. And there was something so disreputable-so dreadful-about his story. You know it, of course."

"No; he has told us almost nothing; and we are determined to inquire nothing. My husband believes less in the confession of sins than in the forsaking of them. Unless Julius speaks himself we shall never ask him a single question about his past life."

"Well, perhaps that is your best course; any other would be so very inconvenient. I de