obtained my letter. It was as I had feared—it was her letter accepting me as her husband. I crushed it in my hands, and crying, ‘Oh! God, too late, too late!’ fell swooning on the floor. A few weeks later I went back to my post in the army. My comrades said I was the bravest they had ever seen. I rushed into the thickest of the fight, and feared nothing. I courted an honorable death, but bullets whistled by me, shells burst by my side, killing men by dozens. The fever broke out in our regiment, and fifty men died in one week, but I lived on. Promotion followed promotion, and at last, to please my mother, I resigned my commission, stayed at home a month, and finally promised to keep out of the army on condition that I should resume work at my old business wherever I could find it. Since then I have been in Canada, and finally drifted here to be nearer home. Now, John, let me tell you here that—”

“Mr. Phipps, answer Washington for specials, please,” called out night manager Marks from the switch, and the story was ended.

The thread thus broken was never taken up again, and by some indefinable understanding between us, I guarded his secret as jealously as if it were I who had loved and lost, and hence-forward neither of us mentioned it.

I left New York soon after this, and never saw George Phipps again until I stood one August day two years later in a small Connecticut town, and looked down upon all that was mortal of him as he lay in his coffin. His sweet face was as natural as in life, and scarcely any paler. His mother stood by and reverently kissed his brow again and again, while the sturdy frame of his grand old father trembled like a reed shaken in the wind as he gazed fondly and tearfully upon the dead. There were not many particulars of his death to be obtained. I doubted if any one except the old pastor knew of his love and the suffering he had undergone.

“He came home” said his mother “about a month ago, looking no worse than usual, but he shortly began to fail perceptibly day by day. The doctor came and prescribed a change of air, but George said he would be better soon, and begged to remain quietly where he was. One afternoon he walked out under the elms and laid down in the hammock. At six o’clock I went out and asked him to return to the house. He said ‘Not yet, mother. It is delightful here, the breeze refreshes me, and I feel perfectly easy and content. I will remain where I am, thank you, and watch the sun go down.’ When the sun had set I went out again, but,” she added, in a breaking though sweetly musical voice like George’s, “my boy had gone to rest with the sun whose downward course he watched.”

The minister came and preached the customary sermon, ranking the dead man with

the modest cortege moved away, and George Phipps was laid to rest in a solitary grave beneath the murmuring pines on a neighboring hill-side. This was done at his request, made to the old preacher whom he also acquainted with his story when he felt that the end was near. Not being a relative, I did not follow the remains to the grave, and as I prepared to leave the house I met a sweet, sad-faced woman whom I had noticed approach and gaze long and tenderly upon the form of my departed friend, and then retire to a remote corner of the room weeping painfully. Some one said she was a stranger, others that she was some woman living in the village, and still others said that she was a relative. But she was not the latter, else she would have been provided with a carriage. We left the house together, and as we walked down the neat gravel path, I said:

“This is a pretty village. Do you live here?”

“No, sir,” she replied; “I live many, many miles from here. Mr. Phipps was an old friend of mine, and my husband insisted that I should come to his funeral.”

“You live in Iowa, perhaps,” said I, gently. Our eyes met for a moment, and we understood each other.