Is it necessary to say how this clear-headed and conscientious girl acted upon reading this transparent balderdash?  She knew, as well as you and I know, that the whole thing was a clumsy game of her worthy sire to deplete once more the little hoard that had been slowly growing during his absence.  She knew that her mother, who had worn her life out trying to support an ornamental husband, was fast failing in health, and might very soon require such attendance as nothing but money could procure.  And of course she went directly to the bank, drew out her entire deposit, and sped it on its way to Elias Hanchett, M.D., before the sun went down.

It was nearly a year after the arrival of his first letter when another epistle was received from the absent doctor.  Bad news this time—­the worst of bad news.  He had been stricken down by a terrible malady at a most critical moment in his affairs, and the consequence was that his interests had suffered irretrievably.  He might call himself, in short, a ruined man.  He felt that his distress of mind, together with the physical anguish of his disease, was more than he could bear up against for many hours longer.  It was hard for an old man to die thus among strangers, far from his own hearthstone and the gentle influences that clustered round it.  But he should be consoled in his last hour by the reflection that he had always maintained his family liberally, and had tried to be a kind and indulgent husband and father; and he hoped that his daughter, thus left alone in the world without any earthly protector, would not wholly despair, but would strive for his sake to bear up against adversity, and prove herself worthy of the father who had lost his life in trying to serve her in his old age.  And so farewell!  His eyes were now about to close for the last time upon the scenes of this earth.  Signed ELIAS HANCHETT, M.D., with the customary flourish beneath the name, as bravely executed as if the writer might have twenty years of life ahead of him yet.  But stay!  P.S.  Would not his dear daughter, for whom he had sacrificed so much, grant him one last little favor?  He had not means enough left out of the sad wreck of his fortune to procure him decent burial.  Would she not send him a small sum for that purpose?  She might direct it to his own address, for if he were gone it would be received by a friend, who would apply it faithfully according to the directions he should leave.  “And now again farewell!  And may we meet above!” Signed ELIAS HANCHETT, M.D.  Flourish as usual.

I do not believe that Dora Hanchett’s honest estimate of this letter was very far different from our own.  I am persuaded that she was mentally incapable of being seriously deceived by it.  But the heart of woman is the mystery of the universe.  In the face of her honest judgment, in the truth of that clear common sense that constituted the strongest trait in her character, this absurd girl went about bemoaning in dead earnest and in the bitterest grief