His love gave him a gay gold ring-- 'Of virtue and value above all thing.' Yet stay: behind the ballad book flung heedlessly on my desk was--what should it be but the little morocco case, empty now, in which our Francesca keeps her dead mother's engagement ring--the mother who died when she was a wee child.

Truly a very pretty modern ballad to be sung in these unromantic, degenerate days! Francesca came in at the door behind me, saw her secret reflected in my tell-tale face, saw the sympathetic moisture in my eyes, and, flinging herself into my willing arms, burst into tears.
"O Pen, dear, dear Pen, I am so miserable and so happy; so afraid that he won't come back, so frightened for fear that he will! I sent him away because there were so many lions in the path, and I didn't know how to slay them.

I thought of my f-father; I thought of my c-c-country.

I didn't want to live with him in Scotland, I knew that I couldn't live without him in America, and there I was! I didn't think I was s-suited to a minister, and I am not; but oh! this p-particular minister is so s-suited to me!" and she threw herself on the sofa and buried her head in the cushions.
She was so absurd even in her grief that I had hard work to keep from smiling.
"Let us talk about the lions," I said soothingly.

"But when did the trouble begin?
When did he speak to you ?" "After the tableau last night; but of course there had been other--other--times--and things." "Of course.