Uncle Jo spoke first.

“Childie, what shall we do with them?”

“I do not know, uncle,” I said.  “I should feel very guilty if we did not make sure that no one else read them.  I should feel very guilty myself, except that I have read them with you.  They seem to me to belong to you, somehow.”

Uncle Jo kissed me, and we were silent again.  Then he said, “There is but one way to make sure that no human being will ever read them—­that is, to burn them; but it is as hard for me to do it as if they had been written to me.”

“Could you not put them back in the stair, and nail it up firmly?” said I.

It was a stormy night.  The wind was blowing hard, and sleet and snow driving against the windows.  At this instant a terrible gust rattled the icy branches of the syringa-bushes against the window, with a noise like the click of musketry, and above the howling of the wind there came a strange sound which sounded like a voice crying, “Burn, burn!”

Uncle Jo and I both heard it, and both sprang to our feet, white with a nervous terror.  In a second he recovered himself, and said, laughing, “Pet we are both a good deal shaken by this business.  But I do think it will be safer to burn the letters.  Poor, poor Esther.  I hope she is safe with her lover now.”

“Oh, do you doubt it?” said I; “I do not.”

“No,” said he, “I do not, either.  Thank God!”

“Uncle Jo,” said I, “do you think Esther would mind if I copied a few of these letters, and two or three of the poems?  I so want to have them that it seems to me I cannot give them up; I love her so, I think she would be willing.”

The storm suddenly died away, and the peaceful silence around us was almost as startling as the fierce gust had been before.  I took it as an omen that Esther did not refuse my wish, and I selected the four letters which I most desired to keep.  I took also the pomegranate blossom, and the Edelweiss, and the crimson Amaranth from Bethlehem.

“I think Esther would rather that these should not be burned,” I said.

“Yes; I think so too,” replied Uncle Jo.

Then we laid the rest upon the fire.  The generous hickory logs seemed to open their arms to them.  In a few seconds great panting streams of fire leaped up and rushed out of our sight, bearing with them all that was perishable of Esther Wynn’s letters.  Just as the crackling shadowy shapes were falling apart and turning black, my uncle sprang to an Indian cabinet which stood near, and seizing a little box of incense-powder which had been brought from China by his brother, he shook a few grains of it into the fire.  A pale, fragrant film rose slowly in coiling wreaths and clouds and hid the last moments of the burning of the letters.  When the incense smoke cleared away, nothing could be seen on the hearth but the bright hickory coals in their bed of white ashes.

“I shall make every effort,” said Uncle Jo, “to find out who lived in this house during those years.  I presume I can, by old records somewhere.”