“Dear child, good and dear child!”

The voice was tremulous and low.  She lifted her fair, bright countenance, now convulsed with a secret trouble, and dimmed with streaming tears, to his, and gazed on him.  His eyes were shining; but his pallid cheeks, like hers, were wet with tears.  How still the room was!  How like a thought of solemn tenderness the pale gray dawn!  The world was far away, and his soul still wandered in the peaceful awe of his dream.  The world was coming back to him,—­but oh! how changed!—­in the trouble of his daughter’s face.

“Darling, what is it?  Why are you here?  Why are you weeping?  Dear child, the friend of my better days,—­of the boyhood when I had noble aims, and life was beautiful before me,—­he has been here!  I have seen him.  He has been with me—­oh! for a good I cannot tell!”

“Father, dear father!”—­he had risen, and sat upon the couch, but she still knelt before him, weeping, and clasped his hands in hers,—­“I thought of you and of this letter, all the time.  All last night till I slept, and then I dreamed you were tearing it to pieces, and trampling on it.  I awoke, and lay thinking of you, and of ——.  And I thought I heard you come down stairs, and I came here to find you.  But you were lying here so quietly, with your eyes open, and so strange a light on your face.  And I knew,—­I knew you were dreaming of him, and that you saw him, for the letter lay beside you.  O father! forgive me, but do hear me!  In the name of this day,—­it’s Christmas day, father,—­in the name of the time when we must both die,—­in the name of that time, father, hear me!  That poor woman last night,—­O father! forgive me, but don’t tear that letter in pieces and trample it under foot!  You know what I mean—­you know—­you know.  Don’t tear it, and tread it under foot.”

She clung to him, sobbing violently, her face buried in his hands.

“Hush, hush!  It’s all well,—­it’s all well.  Here, sit by me.  So.  I have—­” His voice failed him, and he paused.  But sitting by him,—­clinging to him,—­her face hidden in his bosom,—­she heard the strong beating of his disenchanted heart.

“My child, I know your meaning.  I will not tear the letter to pieces and trample it under foot.  God forgive me my life’s slight to those words.  But I learned their value last night, in the house where your blank letter had entered before me.”

She started, and looked into his face steadfastly, while a bright scarlet shot into her own.

“I know all, Netty,—­all.  Your secret was well kept, but it is yours and mine now.  It was well done, darling, well done.  O, I have been through strange mysteries of thought and life since that starving woman sat here!  Well—­thank God!”

“Father, what have you done?” The flush had failed, but a glad color still brightened her face, while the tears stood trembling in her eyes.

“All that you wished yesterday,” he answered.  “And all that you ever could have wished, henceforth I will do.”