“With the sincerest respect,

“A.B.E.

“P.S.—­Your postscript takes me at disadvantage.  What can I say?  Its kindness is most unkind.  The horse is a mount fit for a Prince.  I wish he might be found useful to Miss Markham; if she will accept him, I would be glad that he might be devoted to her service.  More than this I cannot say.

“B.”

I am inclined to follow these letters back to Newbury.  It took a round week for a letter and its answer to pass between Newbury and Jefferson both ways.  Somehow, it so happened that Julia, on the third day after mailing hers to Bart, was at the Post-office every day, on the arrival of the Northern mail, with the air of an unconcerned young woman who did not expect anything.  On the seventh, two letters in a hand she knew were handed her by the clerk, who looked at the time as if he thought these were the letters, but said nothing.

On her way home she opened one of them and read it, and paused, and read, and studied as if the hand was illegible, and looked grave and hurt, and as if tears would start, and then calm and proud.  “When she got home she silently handed the other to her father, and her own to her mother; then she went to her room.  An hour later she came back, took her letter, and going into her father’s office, laid it open before him, receiving his in return.  This she read with a sad face; once or twice a moisture came into her eyes in spite of her, and then she sat and said nothing; and her mother came in and read her husband’s letter also.

“Mother,” said Julia, “are all young men really like this proud, haughty, sensitive fellow? and yet he is so unhappy!  Was father at all like him?”

“I don’t know.  You must remember that few at his age have been placed in such trying positions, and had he been less, or more, or different, we might have been without cause for gratitude to him.”

“Well, he graciously permits us to know that he may at least once again approach ‘Your father’s house!’”

“Julia!  Could he have done it before?”

“Could he not, mother, when he saved my life?”

“Julia, was this poor youth more than human?”

“Mother, I have sometimes felt that he was, and that somehow more was to be required of him than of common men.”

The Judge sat in silence, with an expression that indicated that his reflections were not wholly cheerful.  The frank words that this youth had always liked him, and that the Judge had cause for dislike, so generous, were like so many stabs.

“Papa Judge,” said Julia, suddenly springing to her father’s side, “may I have him?”

“Have him!  Who?”

“Why, Silver-tail, of course,” laughing.  “There is nobody else I can have;” rather gravely.

“Will you accept him?”

“Of course I will, and ride him too.  I’ve always coveted him.  My old ‘Twilight’ has almost subsided into night, and is just fit for Nell and Pearly.  They may ride her; and when this prince wants his charger, as he will, he must come to me for him—­don’t you see?”