concluded to take up law. On top of that news, a month later, he told me that he was engaged to be married to Elsie DeForrest.
Elsie DeForrest was the kind of girl that any sister would rejoice to have her brother marry—just a naturally adorable creature, all woman, every inch of her, with a sunny, lovely disposition mirrored in the laughing expression of her eyes. Whenever Burr was able to come home from New York for a Sunday, I never begrudged a moment of the long hours he spent with Elsie. I knew she was the gentle incentive to his sudden industry, and I knew, too, he needed a steady one to keep him to the grindstone. At the end of three years Burr was a member of the New York bar. At the end of three and a half he was doing all the dirty and disagreeable work (as he described it) in a firm of three energetic young fellows about ten years older than himself.
Burr didn't get back from his ride with Elsie that Saturday afternoon until after midnight. I hadn't gone to bed. I was sitting by my window in the dark, fully dressed, still waiting. The sound of a distant motor sent me down-stairs to turn on the light on the veranda. This surely must be Burr; in our little quiet street motors are seldom heard at midnight. When I opened the door there was, indeed, an automobile drawn up
