even as a legion from New Ghis pushed through the Yunkish

"I mean," returned Louis, "that he don't love you for anything but a cousin. I like J.C. very, very much, and I am glad you are to be his wife; but I've sometimes thought that if you had waited the other one would have spoken, for I was almost sure he loved you, but he don't, I know; he couldn't be so pleased with your engagement, nor write you so affectionately if he really cared."

Maude hardly knew whether she were pleased or not with Louis' reasoning. It was true, though, she said, and inasmuch as James did not care for her, and she did not care for James, she was very glad she was engaged to J.C.! And with reassured confidence in herself she sat down and wrote an answer to that note, a frank, impulsive, Maude-like answer, which, nevertheless, would convey to James De Vere no idea how large a share of that young girl's thoughts were given to himself.

The next day there came to Maude a letter bearing the Canada postmark, together with the unmistakable handwriting of Janet Hopkins. Maude had not heard of her for some time, and very eagerly she read the letter, laughing immoderately, and giving vent to sudden exclamations of astonishment at its surprising intelligence. Janet was a mother!--"a livin' mother to a child born out of due season," so the delighted creature wrote, "and what was better than all, it was a girl, and the Sunday before was baptized as Maude Matilda Remington Blodgett Hopkins, there being no reason," she said, "why she shouldn't give her child as many names as the Queen of England hitched on to hers, beside that it was not at all likely that she would ever have another, and so she had improved this opportunity, and named her daughter in honor of Maude, Matty, Harry, and her first husband Joel. But," she wrote, "I don't know what you'll say when I tell you that my old man and some others have made me believe that seein' I've an heir of my own flesh and blood, I ought to change that will of mine, so I've made another, and if Maude Matilda dies you'll have it yet. T'other five thousand is yours, anyway, and if I didn't love the little wudget as I do, I wouldn't have changed my will; but natur' is natur'."

Scarcely had Maude finished reading this letter when J.C. came in, and she handed it to him. He did not seem surprised, for he had always regarded the will as a doubtful matter; but in reality he was a little chagrined, for five thousand was only half as much as ten. Still his love for Maude was, as yet, stronger than his love for money, and he only laughed heartily at the string of names which Janet had given to her offspring, saying, "It was a pity it hadn't been a boy, so she could have called him Jedediah Cleishbotham."

"He does not care for my money," Maude thought, and her heart went out toward him more lovingly than it had ever done before, and her dark eyes filled with tears when he told her, as he ere long did, that he must leave the next day, and return to Rochester.

"The little property left me by my mother needs attention, so my agent writes me," he said, "and now the will has gone up, and we are poorer than we were before by five thousand dollars, it is necessary that I should bestir myself, you know." Maude could not tell why it was that his words affected her unpleasantly, for she knew he was not rich, and she felt that she should respect him more if he really did bestir himself, but still she did not like his manner when speaking of the will, and her heart was heavy all the day. He, on the contrary, was in unusually good spirits. He was not tired of Maude, but he was tired of the monotonous life at Laurel Hill, and when his agent's summons came it found him ready to go. That for which he had visited Laurel Hill had in reality been accomplished. He had secured a wife, not Nellie, but Maude, and determining to do everything honorable, he on the morning of his departure went to the doctor, to whom he talked of Maude, expressing his wish to marry her. Very coldly the doctor answered that "Maude could marry whom she pleased. It was a maxim of his never to interfere with matches," and then, as if the subject were suggestive, he questioned the young man to know if in his travels he had ever met the lady Maude Glendower. J.C. had met her frequently at Saratoga.

"She was a splendid creature," he said, and he asked if the doctor knew her.

"I saw her as a child of seventeen, and again as a woman of twenty- five. She is forty now," was the doctor's answer, as he walked away, wondering if the Maude Glendower of to-day were greatly changed from the Maude of fifteen years ago.

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