Then he was silent for several minutes, but when he spoke again, his voice had changed, and he proceeded more cheerfully than I had ever heard him speak before:

“Six years ago last August I was employed in an Eastern city. I worked the New York wire, and one day while I was sending, an office boy came up, and said: ‘Mr. Phipps, there’s a lady outside as wants to see yer.’ I cleared my hook, asked New York to wait a second, and went out into the vestibule of the office. A vision of loveliness such as I had never seen until then stood before me. She was an entire stranger to me, but we were soon chatting gaily, nevertheless, for she had said in the meantime: ‘I am Helen Banks, from Say-brook, and, I was passing through here, on my way to Rockville, where I am to take the office, I thought it not improper that I should call and renew, in propria persona, the acquaintance we had formed by wire.’

I have burdened you, by inference, with one exploded theory, so don’t mind another,” he continued, “I fell in love at first sight. She was a lovely creature, small of stature, bright, intelligent, modest, enchanting, and she appeared to me as suddenly and unexpectedly as Diana appeared to Endymion. How readily I accepted Endymion’s rôle, and with what alacrity I awoke from my sleep of every-day life, to a new life of love and bliss I need not tell you. She staid only a few minutes, and at parting, she said gaily;

“ ‘I expect to be intensely lonesome down at Rockville, and that my only recreation will be that derived from listening to the birds and to your musical sending. Think of me sometimes, and when the wire is idle, say a word to poor me, won’t you?’ she went on, half jocosely, half in earnest. ‘And’ she concluded, ‘when you are too busy to bid a body good-day, please imagine that

and all the rest of it. Good-by,’ and she was gone.

“How dark and dismal the old office looked as I resumed my duties. The sunbeams which in my imagination nestled in her hair and played around the dimples in her cheeks, lending a new and genial luster to the office, and blessing every nook and corner in the dim old room like a visible benediction, went out with her. I was very thoughtful and preoccupied that afternoon, and felt that I could afford to smile at my companions who sought to tease me by asking if that was the young lady who inquired so often if Mr. 66i66s was in. Well, time passed on, and what with chatting on the wire, and corresponding by mail, we finally reached that epoch in our acquaintance when I dared to offer myself in marriage. A letter was the medium of my proposal—I had not courage to make a personal appeal.”

He paused, and drummed on the desk with his fingers for a little time, and then said:

“I waited patiently three days for an answer, but none came. Then I waited a week, a month, and then she resigned and went home. I dared not make any inquiry of her meantime, though I did write confidentially to the postmaster at Rockville, and learned that he had himself delivered the letter into her hands. I saw how it was, she could not accept me, and was too kind to tell me so. I went into the army when the war broke out, but returned home on a furlough in 1863. I learned that Helen had married her cousin a few months before, and had removed to Iowa. I was resolved to make the best of it, and be a man. You see how well I have succeeded,” he said, smiling sadly. “Just before my furlough was out, I took up a copy of a morning paper published in the city where I had been formerly employed, and started on seeing my own name.

At first I thought I had been accidently included in a list of killed and wounded. I hastily turned the paper to read the heading, and my heart sank within me. Through hot, blinding tears, which I could not stay, I read the sad, sad story that made me what I am. A post-office clerk had been arrested for robbing the mail; in his room were found unindorsed, and therefore useless checks, and, ‘among other things,’ the account said, ‘Personal letters to the following named addresses.’ Then followed a list of a hundred or more names, among which was mine. I took the first train to—, and applying at police head quarters,