Fancy therefore, how this man must have felt when he arrived at the little house upon the wife's claim and found his grandmother alone. They had taken his wife and all her belongings. He lived in a sort of quandary in the days that followed. His very existence became mechanical. And one day while in this unhappy state, he chanced to find a little sun bonnet that they had evidently overlooked. She had bought it the summer before, and it was too small. But he recalled now that he had thought that it made her look very sweet. How much the bonnet meant to him now! He placed it carefully away, and when he was alone in the house in after days with only her memory as a companion he would get and bring it forth, gaze at it long and tenderly. It seemed to bring back the summer before when he had been hopeful and happy and gay. It brought him more clearly to realize and appreciate what marriage really meant and the sacred vow. And during these hours he would imagine he could see her again; that she was near and from under the little bonnet that was too small he communed with her and he would thereupon hold a mythical conversation, with her as the listener.

Was it all because Jean Baptiste loved his wife? What is there between love and duty? It had never been as much a question with Jean Baptiste as to how much he loved her as it was a question of duty. She was his wife by the decree of God and the law of the land. Whatever he had been, or might have been to others, therefore had gone completely out of his mind when he had taken her to him as wife. And now that she was away, to his mind first came the question, why was she away?

Yes, that was the great question. Why was she away?

Oh, the agony this question gave the man of our story.

Not one serious quarrel had they ever had. Not once had he spoken harshly to her, nor had she been cross with him. Not once had the thought entered his mind that they would part; that they could part; that they would ever wish to part. In the beginning, true, there had been some little difficulties before they had become adjusted to each other's ways. But that had taken only a few months, after which they had gradually become devoted to each other. And so their lives had become. Out there in the "hollow of God's hand," their lives had become assimilated, they had looked forward to the future when there would be the little ones, enlarging their lives and duties.

And yet, why was his wife in Chicago without even a letter from her to him; or one from him to her? Why, why, why?

N. Justine McCarthy!