“Why Edward! how strange this is!”

“It isn’t strange to me at all,” remarked Julia, in a low, depressed voice.

“Father, I’ve a little story to tell you.  I should have told it last night, and then you would have better understood some things that have occurred.  It was nothing that happened between us yesterday morning.  I have told you every word and thing of that.”

Then she recited to the astonished Judge the incidents of her adventure in the woods with Bart and the wolverine.

“And I,” said the Judge, “have also a little incident to relate,” and he told of the occurrence on the river with which this tale began.

“Oh, father!” exclaimed Julia, “could you leave him, away there, weary and alone?”

“I did not mean to do that; I stopped, and lingered and looked back, and waited and thought he would ask or call to me,” said the humiliated Judge:  “and now he has repaid me by saving your life.”

“Father! father, dear!” going and laying her arm around his neck, and her cheek against his, “You are my own dear papa, and could never purposely harm a living thing.  It was all to be, I suppose.  Mamma, do you remember the night of Snow’s ball, when you playfully complained of his inattention to you? and he said he would atone for all offences,—­

  ’In that blissful never,
  When the Sundays come together,
  And the sun and glorious weather,
  Wrapped the earth in spring forever?’

and he has.”

“I remember, but I could not recall the words.”

“I can repeat the very words of the beautiful prayer that he made in the woods,” said the young girl.

“And which I seemed to hear,” said her mother.

“And that ‘blissful never’ came, mother, and all its good was for me—­for us.”

“Not wholly, I trust.  This young man’s mind and nature are their own law.  His mother said he was lighter-hearted and more like himself than for a long time.  He has suffered much.  He mourned more for his brother than most could.  He had lost his own self-respect somehow, and now he has regained it, and will come to take right views of things, and a blissful ever may come for him.”

“And he wanted all the past forgotten,” said the girl.

“Of all that happened between you before he has only remembered what you said to him,” said her mother.  “And you possibly remember what he said to you.”

“I remember his generosity and bravery, mother,” replied Julia.

The Judge remained thoughtful.  Turning to his wife, “Would you have me follow him to Jefferson?”

“No.  He went away in part to avoid us; he will be sensitive, and I would not go to him at present.  Write to him; write what you really feel, a warm and manly letter like your own true self.  I am not certain, though, how he will receive it.”

A silence followed which was broken by Julia.

“Father, do you know this Mr. Wade with whom Barton has gone to study?”