George sat for a long while in silence, looking at the glowing coals in the huge reservoir stove.  Neither Perry nor I cared to interrupt his revery.  At last he roused himself.

“Well, boys,” he said, “it is late:  I think we had better go.  It is all over now, and life has gone on calmly for years.  Other people have forgotten that there ever were such persons as Phil or Herbert.”

When Perry and I reached our room we found it was almost three o’clock.  George had walked with us to the door, and very little had been said between us.  I took a cigarette and lay down on the bed.  “Perry,” I said, as he was lighting the gas.

“Sur to you,” he answered, in a way he had of imitating a certain barkeeper of our acquaintance.

“What do you think of George?”

“You know what I think of him as well as I do.”

“Yes; but I mean in connection with this that he has told us.”

“I think he acted just like himself all the way through.”

“Don’t you think he has been in love with Mrs. Herbert from the first?”

“Am I in the habit of imagining such nonsense?”

“You may think it nonsense,” I answered, with the quiet fervor of conviction, “but I am sure it is nothing but the real state of the case.”

“Bosh!” exclaimed Perry, throwing his boots into a corner; and therewith the discussion closed.

About a week ago I had a letter from him, though, in which he recalled this circumstance and acknowledged that I had been in the right.  “They are going to be married in the fall,” he wrote.  “I hope they may be happy, and I suppose they will be; but I don’t think Mrs. Herbert ought to marry him unless she loves him; and I am fearful that she only thinks to reward long years of faithful affection.  George deserves more than that.”  This was a good deal for Perry to manage to say.  He usually keeps as far away from such subjects as he well can,—­which is partly the reason, I think, that his opinion thereon is not greatly to be trusted.  As for me, I am sure George’s wife will love him as much as he deserves,—­though this is almost an infinite amount,—­and that she has not been far from loving him from the beginning.  I have bought a pair of vases to send them; and I expect that Miss Lucretia Knowles will say, when she learns how much they cost, that I was very extravagant.  Not that Lu is close or stingy at all; but she has promised to wait until I have made a start in life, and is naturally impatient for me to get on as rapidly as possible.

     FRANK PARKE.

THE WOOD-THRUSH AT SUNSET.

Lover of solitude,
  Poet and priest of nature’s mysteries,
If but a step intrude,
  Thy oracle is mute, thy music dies.

Oft have I lightly wooed
  Sweet Poesy to give me pause of pain,
Oft in her singing mood
  Sought to surprise her haunt, and sought in vain.