Then there crept into her mind the question, who sent it?  Was it the Hon. John?  Was it Neil? or—­and Bessie’s heart stood still a moment and then beat with a heavy pain—­or was it Jack Trevellian, who had done this because of what her mother had told him of their needs?  It was like him, she knew, but if it were he, she could never touch the money, and without a word to her father of the letter, she wrote at once to Messrs. Blank & Blank, Lombard street, asking if it were Mr. Trevellian, and saying if it were, she must return the check as they could not keep it.

“Direct your answer to me,” she wrote, “as I transact all my father’s business for him.”

In two days the answer come, very stiffly worded, but assuring her that the donor was not Mr. Trevellian and that her father need have no scruples about taking the money, and would have none did he know from whom it came.  This satisfied Bessie, who took the letter to her father, confessing all she had done, and with him trying to guess who had been so kind to them.

“I can think of no one except my aunt in America,” Archie said, “and she is not likely to remember us in this way after so many years’ silence.”

“If I thought it were she I would write to her,” Bessie said, “and at all events I will write to somebody and thank them, and send the letter to Messrs. Blank & Blank, in London.  They know who it is and will forward it for me.”

Accordingly the next Bangor mail for London bore in it a letter from Bessie to their unknown friend.

“DEAR MADAM, OR SIR, whichever you may be,” she began, “I wish I could tell you how much joy and gladness, and relief, too, your generous gift of one hundred pounds brought to both father and me.  God bless you for it, and may you never know the want and actual need which made your gift so very welcome that instead of shrinking from it we could only cry over it, and be glad that somewhere in the world there was somebody thinking and caring for us.  Every night of my life I shall pray for you, and if I ever know who you are, and meet you face to face, I will try and thank you better than I feel that I am doing on paper.  Yours gratefully and sincerely,”

    BESSIE McPHERSON,

“P.S.—­If, as papa half suspects, you are his Aunt Betsey, I am doubly glad, because it shows that you sometimes think of us in the old home at Stoneleigh, and I wish you would write a few words to father.  It will do him so much good, and he is so sick and helpless, and lonely, and—­I dare not tell you what I fear, only he sometimes forgets my name and his own, too, and calls things different from what they are.  Oh, if he should die, I should die, too!”

This was sent to Messrs. Blank & Blank with instructions to forward it to the donor.  But Messrs. Blank & Blank were very busy with other matters than forwarding letters of thanks.  They had just written to Miss McPherson that her orders had been obeyed and the money paid, and so Bessie’s letter was put aside and forgotten, for weeks and even months, when an incident occurred which brought it to their minds and it was forwarded to Miss McPherson.