310 The Unknown River. 



is both a pretty tale and a true one, I repeat it here for 

 the reader. 



It is simple and short enough. He and his wife were 

 very poor indeed, almost destitute, and so, though they 

 loved each other much, she went out as a nurse to Paris. 

 In Paris she entered the service of some rich Americans, 

 who, when they returned to their own country, offered 

 her terms so tempting that she crossed the Atlantic with 

 them. Year after year she sent her earnings to her hus- 

 band, and year after year he laid by the hard-won gold 

 until there was enough of it to buy the cottage he lived 

 in, and a little field or two ; enough to keep them in inde- 

 pendence all their lives. He took me into the cottage, 

 arid showed me his wife's portrait (blessings on photog- 

 raphy, that enables a poor man to have a portrait of the 

 absent or the dead !) and kissed it tenderly in my pres- 

 ence, and said how hard the long separation was, and 

 how he looked for her return. As he said this the tears 

 ran down his cheeks, and he showed me the bright good 

 walnut furniture in the cottage, and the fields by the 

 river side, and said that all this comfort was her doing, 

 all this wealth her winning. She had learned to write 

 on purpose that she might write to him, and month after 

 month her kindly letters came, cheering him under the 

 long trial of her absence. It was four years since she 

 had left the cottage, and for these four lonely years the 

 father had been like a widower, and the children had 

 grown around him. And now the months went ever 

 more and more slowly, as it seemed, when he wanted 

 them to go faster, for this very autumn she was to sail 



