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without noise lifted the leading of one of the panes, so that he could take out the glass, and putting his hand through the hole he unfastened the casement, and climbed in through the opening. All the household —that is to say, Mrs. Palmley, Harriet, and the little maid-servant—were asleep. Jack went straight to the burean, so he said, hoping it might have been unfastened again — it not being kept locked in ordinary — but Harriet had never unfastened it since she secured her letters there the day before. Jack told afterwards how he thought of her asleep up-stairs, earing nothing for him, and of the way she had made sport of him and of his letters; and having advanced so far, he was not to be hindered now. By forcing the large blade of his knife under the flap of the bureau he burst the weak lock ; within was the rosewood work-box just as she had placed it in her hurry to keep it from him. There being no time to spare for getting the letters out of it then, he took it under his arm, shut the bureau, and made the best of his way out of the house, latching the casement behind him, and refizing the pane of glass in its place.

‘Winter found his way back to his mother’s as he bad come, and being dog-tired, crept up-stairs to bed, hiding the box till he could destroy its contents. The next morning early he set about doing this, and carried it to the linhay at the back of his mother’s dwelling. Here by the hearth he opened the box, and began burning one by one the letters that had cost him so much labor to write and shame to think of, meaning to return the box to Harriet, after repairing the slight damage he had caused it by opening it without a key, with a note—the last she would ever receive from him—telling her triumphantly that in refusing to return what he had asked fer she had calculated too surely upon his submission to her whims.