Yes, Beth remembered it all, and the tears were running down her cheeks as she drooped her head in silence.  The door-bell broke the stillness just then.  Dr. Woodburn was wanted.  Bidding Beth a hasty but tender good-bye, he hurried off at the call of duty.  Beth sat gazing at the coal-fire in silence after her father left.  Poor dear old father!  What a touching story it was!  He must have suffered so, and yet he had buried his sorrow and gone about his work with smiling face.  Brave, heroic soul!  Beth fell to picturing it all over again with that brilliant imagination of hers, until she seemed to see the tall woman, with her beautiful dark eyes and hair, coming down the stairs, just as he had seen her.  She seemed to hear the March winds moan as he stepped out into the night and left the beautiful young wife, pale in death.  Then she went to the window and looked out at the stars in the clear sky, and the meadow tinged with the first frost of autumn; and the pine-wood to the north, with the moon hanging like a crescent of silver above it.  It was there, at that window, Arthur had asked her to be his wife.  Poor Arthur!  She was glad her father did not know.  It would have pained him to think she had refused the son of the woman he had loved.

Beth lingered a little, gazing at the clear frosty scene before her, then rose with a firm look on her face and went up to her room.  There was one thing more to be done before she left home to-morrow.  She had resolved upon it.  It was dark in her room, but she needed no light to recognize that roll of manuscript in her drawer.  She hesitated a moment as she touched it tenderly.  Must she do it?  Yes, ah, yes!  She could not publish that story now.  Just then the picture of Arthur seemed to flash through her mind, reading it and tossing it down with that cold, silent look she had sometimes seen on his face.  It was dark in the hall as she carried it down to the drawing-room grate.  She crouched down on the hearth-rug before the coals, and a moment later the flames that played among the closely-written sheets lighted her face.  Nothing but a blackened parchment now for all that proud dream of fame!  The room grew dark again, and only the coals cracking and snapping, and the steady ticking of the old clock on the mantel piece above her head, broke the stillness.  It was done.  She went to the window and knelt down.

“Father, I have sacrificed it for Thee.  Take this talent Thou hast given me and use it for Thy honor, for I would serve Thee alone, Father.”

She slept that night with a smile on her lips.  Yes, friend, it was a hero’s deed, and He who alone witnessed it hath sealed her brow with a light such as martyrs wear in heaven.  As for the world, oh, that every book filled with dark doubts and drifting fears and shuddering gloom had perished, too, in those flames!

CHAPTER IX.

’VARSITY AGAIN.