The ten years which had passed since Mercy left him had grown harder and harder, day by day; but he bore the last as silently and patiently as he bore the first, and Mrs.White's last words to the gray-haired man who bent over her bed were,-- "You have been a good boy, Steve,--a good boy.

You'll have some rest now." Since the day he bade good-by to Mercy in the room from which Parson Dorrance had just been buried, Stephen had never written to her, never heard from her, except as all the world heard from her, in her published writings.

These he read eagerly, and kept them carefully in scrap-books.
He took great delight in collecting all the copies of her verses.
Sometimes a little verse of hers would go the rounds of the newspapers for months, and each reappearance of it was a new pleasure to Stephen.

He knew most of them by heart; and he felt that he knew Mercy still, as well as he knew her when she looked up in his face.

On the night of his mother's death he wrote to her these words:-- "MERCY,--It is ten years since we parted.