* * * * *

It is with no fervor of boyish passion that you fold this letter:  it is with the trembling hand of eager and earnest manhood.  They tell you that man is not capable of love:  so the September sun is not capable of warmth!  It may not indeed be so fierce as that of July; but it is steadier.  It does not force great flaunting leaves into breadth and succulence, but it matures whole harvests of plenty!

There is a deep and earnest soul pervading the reply of Madge that makes it sacred; it is full of delicacy, and full of hope.  Yet it is not final.  Her heart lies intrenched within the ramparts of Duty and of Devotion.  It is a citadel of strength in the middle of the city of her affections.  To win the way to it, there must be not only earnestness of love, but earnestness of life.

Weeks roll by, and other letters pass and are answered,—­a glow of warmth beaming on either side.

You are again at the home of Nelly; she is very joyous; she is the confidante of Madge.  Nelly feels, that with all your errors you have enough inner goodness of heart to make Madge happy; and she feels—­doubly—­that Madge has such excess of goodness as will cover your heart with joy.  Yet she tells you very little.  She will give you no full assurance of the love of Madge; she leaves that for yourself to win.

She will even tease you in her pleasant way, until hope almost changes to despair, and your brow grows pale with the dread—­that even now your unworthiness may condemn you.

It is summer weather; and you have been walking over the hills of home with Madge and Nelly.  Nelly has found some excuse to leave you,—­glancing at you most teasingly as she hurries away.

You are left sitting with Madge upon a bank tufted with blue violets.  You have been talking of the days of childhood, and some word has called up the old chain of boyish feeling, and joined it to your new hope.

What you would say crowds too fast for utterance, and you abandon it.  But you take from your pocket that little, broken bit of sixpence,—­which you have found after long search,—­and without a word, but with a look that tells your inmost thought, you lay it in the half-opened hand of Madge.

She looks at you with a slight suffusion of color,—­seems to hesitate a moment,—­raises her other hand, and draws from her bosom by a bit of blue ribbon a little locket.  She touches a spring, and there falls beside your relique—­another, that had once belonged to it.

Hope glows now like the sun.

——­“And you have worn this, Maggie?”

——­“Always!”

“Dear Madge!”

“Dear Clarence!”

——­And you pass your arm now, unchecked, around that yielding, graceful figure, and fold her to your bosom with the swift and blessed assurance that your fullest and noblest dream of love is won!

V.