“DEAR MR. CHARLTON: 

“I should have come to see you and told you about my trip to Metropolisville, but I am obliged to go out of town again.  I send this by Mr. Canton, and also a request to the warden to pass this and your answer without the customary inspection of contents.  I saw your mother and your stepfather and your friend Miss Marlay.  Your mother is failing very fast, and I do not think it would be a kindness for me to conceal from you my belief that she can not live many weeks.  I talked with her and prayed with her as you requested, but she seems to have some intolerable mental burden.  Miss Marlay is evidently a great comfort to her, and, indeed, I never saw a more faithful person than she in my life, or a more remarkable exemplification of the beauty of a Christian life.  She takes every burden off your mother except that unseen load which seems to trouble her spirit, and she believes absolutely in your innocence.  By the way, why did you never explain to her or to me or to any of your friends the real history of the case?  There must at least have been extenuating circumstances, and we might be able to help you.

“But I am writing about everything except what I want to say, or rather to ask, for I tremble to ask it.  Are you interested in any way other than as a friend in Miss Isabel Marlay?  You will guess why I ask the question.  Since I met her I have thought of her a great deal, and I may add to you that I have anxiously sought divine guidance in a matter likely to affect the usefulness of my whole life.  I will not take a single step in the direction in which my heart has been so suddenly drawn, if you have any prior claim, or even the remotest hope of establishing one in some more favorable time.  Far be it from me to add a straw to the heavy burden you have had to bear.  I expect to be in Metropolisville again soon, and will see your mother once more.  Please answer me with frankness, and believe me,

“Always your friend,

J.H.  LURTON.”

The intelligence regarding his mother’s health was not new to Albert, for Isa had told him fully of her state.  It would be difficult to describe the feeling of mingled pain and pleasure with which he read Lurton’s confession of his sudden love for Isabel.  Nothing since his imprisonment had so humbled Charlton as the recollection of the mistake he had made in his estimate of Helen Minorkey, and his preference for her over Isa.  He had lain on his cot sometimes and dreamed of what might have been if he had escaped prison and had chosen Isabel instead of Helen.  He had pictured to himself the content he might have had with such a woman for a wife.  But then the thought of his disgrace—­a disgrace he could not share with a wife—­always dissipated the beautiful vision and made the hard reality of what was, seem tenfold harder for the ravishing beauty of what might have been.

And now the vision of the might-have-been came back to him more clearly than ever, and he sat a long while with his head leaning on his hand.  Then the struggle passed, and he lighted his little ration of candle, and wrote: