A TRUE friend ought to be a buried treasure that you can dig up hurriedly when you need it. I found Sam true when I had to excavate for him, but deep. How thankful I am!

This is how it all happened, beginning before it really began. Sam's mother and my mother decided to take the old rockaway and drive down Providence Road ten miles into Cherry Valley to see Sam's Great-aunt Daphne Berry, and they took me for company for Sam, because he had to drive and did n't want to do it. Not many fifteen-year-old boys would have considered an eleven-year-old child company, especially if she was a girl, but Sam has always been kind to me. Up to that time and after, he was the only friend I had in the wide world, and it was hard on him; but Sam was that freckle-faced, widemouthed, strong kind of boy that could stand responsibilities like tagging girls. Sam is remarkable.

Sam's Aunt Daphne is a most beautiful and romantic spinster lady over whom I had been dreaming ever since I had first heard about the Letter, that very spring. It was written to her mother by the great American Lover, and she had always kept it in a brocade case, and everybody says she has refused to marry

on account of nobody, in her mind, reaching the standard of the Letter. He had danced with her mother, Sam's greatgrandmother, in Louisville, on his way to Louisiana, and had written her that he was going to stop as he came back, "to drink again from the cup of your stargemmed eyes and-" That was all the Letter I got, on account of the skunk, and I have thirsted for more ever since. My young heart pitifully idealized that beautiful great-grandmother, but I still wish. she had n't married Sam's ancestor and had nine children, even if, on that account, I should have had to run the risk of Sam's being somebody else.

"Yes, I will show the Letter to Margaret, for I see in her eyes the soul to reverence it," said Miss Daphne, who was so stately and wonderful that I held my breath with worshipful awe of her.

"Margaret is a good child, and always has clean hands if she has been separated from Sam for half an hour," said Sam's mother, with a laugh, as she took out her lace crocheting and began to teach my mother a new stitch.

"I wish her legs would fill out a little," answered my mother as she began to count stitches. She runs them thin after Sam, I'm afraid." Then they both laughed.

They were cruel. How could I tell them that I ran Sam's bidding because he was the only person in the wide world who did n't laugh at what they all called my "mooning"? He hardly ever paid any attention to beautiful thoughts I expressed to him, but sometimes he 'd kindly say "Bully!" about a gorgeous sunset that we faced coming home from some of his business in the north woods lot. Once he let me read to him all about "Ah, Sir Launcelot, there thou liest," and his face got white and worked deliciously. He never would let me do it again. However, I feel sure that one time did incalculable good.

"Now, sit here in the library window and don't let a breeze even flutter It. Remember how old and frail It is," said Miss Daphne as she handed me the soft brocaded case that looked and smelled like a bunch of faded roses; and with a wonderful sympathy for me in her old eyes, which still held a spark in them, she left me alone with the Letter. I felt as if all the outdoors June came tiptoeing in the window to hover softly about me and peep as I drew the thin, yellow slip out of the case, and with beating heart and trembling fingers opened It against my knee. It It began:

exterior, we both had to have terrible things done to us to remove the odor. I can never forget it, and it still makes me fearfully ill.

I told Miss Daphne, as she stood over the negro woman in the woodshed who was doing the things to me and my clothes, that the Letter was on the window-sill in the library, and she went hurriedly to get It. She never knew that I had n't read It. I was thankful for that, because suppose she had offered to read It to me the next day, when I was still sick from the kerosene smell in my hair and faint remaining traces of that terrible animal! Only Sam knew of my great disappointment, because he found me weeping bitterly out under the old white lilacbush, with my face pressed into one of its fragrant, low branches that seemed to bend down to comfort me with its beautiful odor.

When I sobbed out how I felt about not reading the rest of It, he got red, so that his freckles stood out worse than usual, and begged me to forgive him. I did. Then I asked him never to mention it to me again, and he never has-that is, the skunk part.

He spent the dollar Miss Daphne gave him buying me a beautiful box with a cake of sweet soap and two bottles of lilac perfume in it. I still think that was a sympathetic and tactful present at fifteen, but Sam gets angry if I mention it now. Also, I shall always like lilac soap.

Several years then flew by me on dream wings through misty, golden, and adventurous months. turous months. My mother still crocheted and laughed when I let escape any of the mysterious things that seemed to fill my days and me full of an excitement that partook of both sorrows and happinesses, especially if she found one of my emotions expressed in the form of a poem. Through it all Sam's mother advised her about such things as when to let down my dresses, and it was she, with her own hair-pins, who tucked up my hair the first time it ever happened.

"Is n't she going to be a lovely dear? Look at her, Sam!" she said as she stood away from me, with her arms raised, holding up her own hair, and smiling widely at us both. Sam gets his mouth from his

mother.

"Shoo, Fly!" said Sam, rudely, as he

always does when embarrassed. "Come on, Peg; let's go fish. I'll put all the worms on if you 'll swab the sweet cream on the back of my neck if I get burned."

The mothers both laughed. I was hurt, but I went. I'm glad I did go. I shall never forget that misty, ripe-apple September day through which we sat with our poles in our hands, I on the bank of Little Harpeth, under the old sycamore, and Sam out on a rock by the eddies, and forgot all about each other, except when Sam made me totter from rock to rock across the rapids to bring him bait. It was the last happy day we ever had together. I am glad I did n't know then that he and I were to be separated forever ---that is, almost.

While Sam and I had been out at Little Harpeth being happy, our mothers had been forming a plan for and against me. I rebelled, but it did no good. Sam rebelled also.

"Oh, yes, go on and shut Peg up in a Yankee seminary, and make a priss out of a perfectly good girl," he exploded as he flung out of the room.

"I suppose we 'll have to send him to the University of Virginia, he 's such a savage," said his mother, looking after him. "He wants to go to Yale, but he needs Virginia terribly."

And thus I was torn from the only friend I had ever known, and sent up here to Farmton Semi ry, a thousand miles from my mother and her crocheting. Sam went to the station with me, patted me on my heaving back, and then I still suspect him of forgetting for all these last four years. I almost did him until I was forced to remember him by a great need, and dig.

Of course we ought to have written to each other, but we have both been living very full and happy lives, to do which a person has to keep very busy. I'm willing to forget forever the letters we did n't write, and speak of them no more.

And Sam and I have been energetic. Sam made his freshman base-ball nine, and I made my freshman basket-ball team. Sam was junior editor of his college paper, and I was the director of my Junior Prom. Between their crocheting, our mothers have written us letters, and told each of us about the other; but for all those three vacations we never saw each

other once. I went to Europe twice, and one vacation Sam prospected in Alaska, another went newspaper corresponding in Mexico, and he spent last summer in England. Our respective families came to see us off to places, but seemed leagued together to have us take world-wide educations in different directions. Though we did n't notice it then, we were virtually lost to each other, but true.

Sam did hail me across the world once. It was when I was elected president of the senior class last fall. This is what he wrote exactly. It was easy to remember, and having had it made me feel that I could dig him up hurriedly last week, as I was forced to do. I shall never stop having a regret in my heart when I remember I did n't answer it. He said:

At the time it did n't seem much of a letter to answer, though it was from a University of Virginia senior, and I was both busy and in a painfully romantic state. That's where Cammie Van Loon Height came in, only he really arrived at my Junior Prom, when I was scarcely responsible from happiness that I had made it such a go. The girls named him Cammie because his face is like a cameo, and I now think his character is just as delicate. His wonderfulness seemed what I had been waiting for all my life, and by the time we had spent that week in Vermont together at Claire Wetherby's Christmas house-party I was a changed being. At last I had found another soul that I could pour out all my beautiful dreams and aspirations to, who would understand them and me. And he had longings also that I sympathized with hours and hours at a time. He's going to be a great musical composer, but of course a Harvard freshman could n't confide such a thing as that to anybody but a true girl friend. And I was such a friend to him! I seemed to live from one Saturday to the next, when he could come down to take me skeeing across the lake or, later, canoeing down to the Charles. I opened my heart to him completely, and just how I

made a record that was an honor to the president of the senior class I shall never know, because I thought in terms of Cammie instead of physics and Latin. Each time I saw him we seemed to grow more and more congenial, though sometimes I was afraid that we would n't have enough things about which to go on talking to each other so interestingly.

It

And about the middle of May we did begin to have lapses of conversation. was in one of those pauses that I drew aside the last veil in my heart, and told him about the wonderful Letter to which I was the near neighbor. I had to let him think I had really read all of It, for how could I mention Sam and the skunk in the twilight, with the scent of wild flowers coming to us on a gusty little May breeze from across the lake? My emotion in speaking to him of this beautiful romance of my life made my voice tremble, and that seemed to bring on the tragedy, though I don't see why it should have. Oh, it does hurt me to be so disappointed in a friend as I was in Cammie, after having idealized him so completely!

It happened just as he was helping me out of the canoe after the vesper-bell had called us all in from the lake. I loathed it, and scrubbed it off my mouth with my handkerchief in between telling him what I thought of him for being so treacherous; then I put him out of my life forever. I suffered.

The next Saturday I saw him help Claire Wetherby into her canoe, and go paddling up the lake into the sunset. It made me sad and lonely, though I did n't care so much as I thought I ought to until an awful thought hit me square in the face and almost knocked me down. The Senior Reception was to be the very next week, at which I, as president, was to be the guest of honor; and I had n't a man to stand around and hold my flowers and see to me all the in-between times. All seniors must have one. It had been understood that Cammie would be there to do all that for me, but I had just forgot in my rush to make a definite engagement with him. I was glad of that. Now I knew Claire Wetherby would engage him even if she had to shunt her cousin on to somebody else who did n't have anybody. Suppose I should have to be

that somebody else! Never! Anyway, I knew it would be a shuffle, and I might be the one left high and lonesome. Every man I knew had promised himself to some other girl, in lots of cases just as I had arranged it, and I would be the only odd! I could n't stand it! I could n't!

Then in my agony I thought of Sam, and my horror all turned to warm confidence. Of course Virginia is a long way from Massachusetts, but I did n't mind that. I sat down and wrote him all about it. I was in such a hurry that I did n't put it as nicely as I ought to have done. I ended with this strong plea:

So, you see, I've got to have a man, and if I ever stood by you in things like jam, bread, and telling lies about your going in swimming in February and-skunks, come

"I don't care if he is the ugliest man in the world, and the girls all say so, and make fun of him and me; I don't want any more artistic cameos," I said to myself, with my head in the air, as I walked along the path to Senior Lodge.

As I said it, I remembered that Cammie had fitted on my arm a bracelet that his mother had ordered from Italy, to be put in the middle of my graduation Senior Reception bouquet. It was a sweet, white Aphrodite carved on pink, and surrounded by pearls. It was hauntingly lovely, and it haunted me.

"I don't believe Sam will even think of