The Continental Monthly, Vol 3 No 3, March 1863, page 79 by Various Authors
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apers, laid the other before Hallet.
'This appears right,' I said, after reading it over carefully.
'Yes,' replied Hallet, taking up a pen and signing the other. Passing it to me, he added: 'Keep them both--take them now.'
'But Frank may not wish to come.'
'Then I will find some other way of helping him. He is my son! Take the papers.'
'Well, as you say,' I replied. 'David, please to witness this.'
Hallet pressed me to pass the night at his house, but I declined, and rode out to Cambridge with the old bookkeeper. With many injunctions to watch carefully over Frank, I left him about twelve o'clock, rode into town with Cragin, and the next morning started for New York.
That night, as I recounted the interview to Kate, I said:
'I never did believe in these double-quick conversions; but Hallet is an altered man.'
'Then, indeed, can the leopard change his spots.'
As usual, her womanly intuitions were right; my worldly wisdom was wrong!
CHAPTER XV.
Not long after the events I have just related, the mail brought me the following letter from Preston:
MY VERY DEAR FRIEND:--Circumstances, which I cannot explain by letter, render it imperatively necessary that I should provide another home for my daughter. Her education has been sadly neglected, and she should be where she can have experienced tutors, and good social surroundings. With her delicate organization, and sensitive and susceptible nature, she needs motherly care and affection, and I shrink from committing her to the hands of strangers. I should feel at rest about her only with you. You have been my steadfast friend through many years; you have stood by me in, sore trials--may I not then ask you to do me now a greater service than you have ever done, by receiving my little daughter into your family? I know this is an unusual, almost presumptuous request; but if you knew her as